A large class of the dynamical laws for causal sets described by a classical process of sequential growth yields a cyclic universe, whose cycles of expansion and contraction are punctuated by single ‘‘origin elements’’ of the causal set. We present evidence that the effective dynamics of the immediate future of one of these origin elements, within the context of the sequential growth dynamics, yields an initial period of de Sitter-like exponential expansion, and argue that the resulting picture has many attractive (...) features as a model of the early universe, with the potential to solve some of the standard model puzzles without any fine-tuning. (shrink)

An iterative learning robust fault-tolerant control algorithm is proposed for a class of uncertain discrete systems with repeated action with nonlinear and actuator faults. First, by defining an actuator fault coefficient matrix, we convert the iterative learning control system into an equivalent unknown nonlinear repetitive process model. Then, based on the mixed Lyapunov function approach, we describe the stability of the nonlinear repetitive mechanism on time and trial indices and have appropriate conditions for the repeated control system’s stability in terms (...) of linear matrix inequality theory. Through LMI techniques, we have obtained satisfactory results and controller stability, and robustness against fault tolerance is also discussed in detail. Finally, the simulation results of the output tracking control of the two exemplary models verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. (shrink)

Few modern artists so consistently embodied a fuzzy logic of their own as did the Indian painter Maqbool Fida Husain (1915 – 2011). His critics tried to define him as a reckless defamer of Hindu values, but another way to define him is as a dutiful devotee of a vision that was inclusive, rather than exclusive, and that understood all boundaries and identities as fluid or blurry, rather than as fixed and immutable. Or one might say that Husain strove (...) to project what Ashis Nandy has called “Indian-style secularism,” celebrating creation, humanity, and beauty in the multiple religious forms of the subcontinent. Having lived and painted in India all his life, he was forced into exile in his nineties by right-wing Hindu politicians. In London, he continued to work on a new interpretation of Indian civilization as universally relevant, in a sequence of paintings with themes from the Mahabharata, while, in Doha, a royal patron commissioned him to paint a series relating Islamic and Christian civilization. The two series are shown, in this essay, to best exhibit Husain's view of “all distinctions” as “political, artificial.”. (shrink)