Transparency in Complex Computational Systems

Scientists depend on complex computational systems that are often ineliminably opaque, to the detriment of our ability to give scientific explanations and detect artifacts. Some philosophers have s..

Materialism’s Affective Appeal

Citing the pronounced lack of academic engagement with Middlesex since its publication and riffing on the novel’s recounting of the demise of the auto industry in Detroit, Mazzolini examines how cycles of obsolescence and currency work within academic discourse and ultimately advocates for the novel’s potential for examining the material and affective nature of relevance itself

UTM, a universal simulator for lightcurves of transiting systems

The Universal Transit Modeller (UTM) is a light-curve simulator for all kinds of transiting or eclipsing configurations between arbitrary numbers of several types of objects, which may be stars, planets, planetary moons, and planetary rings. Applications of UTM to date have been mainly in the generation of light-curves for the testing of detection algorithms. For the preparation of such test for the Corot Mission, a special version has been used to generate multicolour light-curves in Corot's passbands. A separate fitting program, UFIT (Universal Fitter) is part of the UTM distribution and may be used to derive best fits to light-curves for any set of continuously variable parameters. UTM/UFIT is written in IDL code and its source is released in the public domain under the GNU General Public License.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proc. of'Transiting Planets', IAU Symposium 25

Applicability of a Representation for the Martin's Real-Part Formula in Model-Independent Analyses

Using a novel representation for the Martin's real-part formula without the full scaling property, an almost model-independent description of the proton-proton differential cross section data at high energies (19.4 GeV - 62.5 GeV) is obtained. In the impact parameter and eikonal frameworks, the extracted inelastic overlap function presents a peripheral effect (tail) above 2 fm and the extracted opacity function is characterized by a zero (change of sign) in the momentum transfer space, confirming results from previous model-independent analyses. Analytical parametrization for these empirical results are introduced and discussed. The importance of investigations on the inverse problems in high-energy elastic hadron scattering is stressed and the relevance of the proposed representation is commented. A short critical review on the use of Martin's formula is also presented.Comment: Two comments and one reference added at the end of Subsec. 3.3; 23 pages, 9 figures; to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

(Mind)-Reading Maps

In a two-system theory for mind-reading, a flexible system (FS) enables full-blown mind-reading, and an efficient system (ES) enables early mind-reading (Apperly and Butterfill 2009). Efficient processing differs from flexible processing in terms of restrictions on the kind of input it can take and the kinds of mental states it can ascribe (output). Thus, systems are not continuous, and each relies on different representations: the FS on beliefs and other propositional attitudes, and the ES on belief-like states or registrations. There is a conceptual problem in distinguishing the representations each system operates with. They contend that they can solve this problem by appealing to a characterization of registrations based on signature limits, but this does not work. I suggest a solution to this problem. The difference between registration and belief becomes clearer if each vehicle turns out to be different. I offer some reasons in support of this proposal related to the performance of spontaneous-response false belief tasks.Fil: Velazquez Coccia, Fernanda Maria Soledad. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Filosofía "Dr. Alejandro Korn"; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Total and diffractive cross sections in enhanced Pomeron scheme

For the first time, a systematic analysis of the high energy behavior of total and diffractive proton-proton cross sections is performed within the Reggeon Field Theory framework, based on the resummation of all significant contributions of enhanced Pomeron diagrams to all orders with respect to the triple-Pomeron coupling. The importance of different classes of enhanced graphs is investigated and it is demonstrated that absorptive corrections due to "net"-like enhanced diagrams and due to Pomeron "loops" are both significant and none of those classes can be neglected at high energies. A comparison with other approaches based on partial resummations of enhanced diagrams is performed. In particular, important differences are found concerning the predicted high energy behavior of total and single high mass diffraction proton-proton cross sections, with our values of $\sigma_{pp}^{{\rm tot}}$ at $\sqrt{s}=14$ TeV being some $25\div40$% higher and with the energy rise of $\sigma_{{\rm HM}}^{{\rm SD}}$ saturating well below the LHC energy. The main causes for those differences are analyzed and explained

Derived environment effects: A representational approach

Derived environment effects involve either overapplication or underapplication of phonological rules in phonological or morphological environments. This paper focuses on underapplication effects in both phonological and morphological environments, which are treated as resulting from representational differences between derived and non-derived environments at the appropriate level. The Government and Dependency Phonology notions of head and dependent are utilised to this end. Thus, phonologically derived environment effects result from melodic structure that differentiates branching from immediate dominance relations between elements, allowing phonological processes to target a segment of one melodic configuration to the exclusion of another. Morphologically derived environment effects, on the other hand, involve representational differences at the constituent structure level, corresponding to the fact that morphological effects are a result of junctural or morpheme-integrity effects. In the latter case, head-dependent relations are defined as holding over domains, thereby differentiating affixal from non-affixal material, while in the former junctural effects the representational difference is defined at the CV tier, with phonological processes being sensitive to the presence of empty V and C positions. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved