52,727 research outputs found
Geophysical tests for habitability in ice-covered ocean worlds
Geophysical measurements can reveal the structure of icy ocean worlds and
cycling of volatiles. The associated density, temperature, sound speed, and
electrical conductivity of such worlds thus characterizes their habitability.
To explore the variability and correlation of these parameters, and to provide
tools for planning and data analyses, we develop 1-D calculations of internal
structure, which use available constraints on the thermodynamics of aqueous
MgSO, NaCl (as seawater), and NH, water ices, and silicate content.
Limits in available thermodynamic data narrow the parameter space that can be
explored: insufficient coverage in pressure, temperature, and composition for
end-member salinities of MgSO and NaCl, and for relevant water ices; and a
dearth of suitable data for aqueous mixtures of Na-Mg-Cl-SO-NH. For
Europa, ocean compositions that are oxidized and dominated by MgSO, vs
reduced (NaCl), illustrate these gaps, but also show the potential for
diagnostic and measurable combinations of geophysical parameters. The
low-density rocky core of Enceladus may comprise hydrated minerals, or anydrous
minerals with high porosity comparable to Earth's upper mantle. Titan's ocean
must be dense, but not necessarily saline, as previously noted, and may have
little or no high-pressure ice at its base. Ganymede's silicious interior is
deepest among all known ocean worlds, and may contain multiple phases of
high-pressure ice, which will become buoyant if the ocean is sufficiently
salty. Callisto's likely near-eutectic ocean cannot be adequately modeled using
available data. Callisto may also lack high-pressure ices, but this cannot be
confirmed due to uncertainty in its moment of inertia
A reconstruction of the multipreference closure
The paper describes a preferential approach for dealing with exceptions in
KLM preferential logics, based on the rational closure. It is well known that
the rational closure does not allow an independent handling of the inheritance
of different defeasible properties of concepts. Several solutions have been
proposed to face this problem and the lexicographic closure is the most notable
one. In this work, we consider an alternative closure construction, called the
Multi Preference closure (MP-closure), that has been first considered for
reasoning with exceptions in DLs. Here, we reconstruct the notion of MP-closure
in the propositional case and we show that it is a natural variant of Lehmann's
lexicographic closure. Abandoning Maximal Entropy (an alternative route already
considered but not explored by Lehmann) leads to a construction which exploits
a different lexicographic ordering w.r.t. the lexicographic closure, and
determines a preferential consequence relation rather than a rational
consequence relation. We show that, building on the MP-closure semantics,
rationality can be recovered, at least from the semantic point of view,
resulting in a rational consequence relation which is stronger than the
rational closure, but incomparable with the lexicographic closure. We also show
that the MP-closure is stronger than the Relevant Closure.Comment: 57 page
Towards Closed World Reasoning in Dynamic Open Worlds (Extended Version)
The need for integration of ontologies with nonmonotonic rules has been
gaining importance in a number of areas, such as the Semantic Web. A number of
researchers addressed this problem by proposing a unified semantics for hybrid
knowledge bases composed of both an ontology (expressed in a fragment of
first-order logic) and nonmonotonic rules. These semantics have matured over
the years, but only provide solutions for the static case when knowledge does
not need to evolve. In this paper we take a first step towards addressing the
dynamics of hybrid knowledge bases. We focus on knowledge updates and,
considering the state of the art of belief update, ontology update and rule
update, we show that current solutions are only partial and difficult to
combine. Then we extend the existing work on ABox updates with rules, provide a
semantics for such evolving hybrid knowledge bases and study its basic
properties. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that an update
operator is proposed for hybrid knowledge bases.Comment: 40 pages; an extended version of the article published in Theory and
Practice of Logic Programming, 10 (4-6): 547 - 564, July. Copyright 2010
Cambridge University Pres
Analytic Scattering and Refraction Models for Exoplanet Transit Spectra
Observations of exoplanet transit spectra are essential to understanding the
physics and chemistry of distant worlds. The effects of opacity sources and
many physical processes combine to set the shape of a transit spectrum. Two
such key processes - refraction and cloud and/or haze forward scattering - have
seen substantial recent study. However, models of these processes are typically
complex, which prevents their incorporation into observational analyses and
standard transit spectrum tools. In this work, we develop analytic expressions
that allow for the efficient parameterization of forward scattering and
refraction effects in transit spectra. We derive an effective slant optical
depth that includes a correction for forward scattered light, and present an
analytic form of this correction. We validate our correction against a
full-physics transit spectrum model that includes scattering, and we explore
the extent to which the omission of forward scattering effects may bias models.
Also, we verify a common analytic expression for the location of a refractive
boundary, which we express in terms of the maximum pressure probed in a transit
spectrum. This expression is designed to be easily incorporated into existing
tools, and we discuss how the detection of a refractive boundary could help
indicate the background atmospheric composition by constraining the bulk
refractivity of the atmosphere. Finally, we show that opacity from Rayleigh
scattering and collision induced absorption will outweigh the effects of
refraction for Jupiter-like atmospheres whose equilibrium temperatures are
above 400-500 K.Comment: ApJ accepted; submitted Feb. 7, 201
Higher-Order Contingentism, Part 1: Closure and Generation
This paper is a study of higher-order contingentism – the view, roughly, that it is contingent what properties and propositions there are. We explore the motivations for this view and various ways in which it might be developed, synthesizing and expanding on work by Kit Fine, Robert Stalnaker, and Timothy Williamson. Special attention is paid to the question of whether the view makes sense by its own lights, or whether articulating the view requires drawing distinctions among possibilities that, according to the view itself, do not exist to be drawn. The paper begins with a non-technical exposition of the main ideas and technical results, which can be read on its own. This exposition is followed by a formal investigation of higher-order contingentism, in which the tools of variable-domain intensional model theory are used to articulate various versions of the view, understood as theories formulated in a higher-order modal language. Our overall assessment is mixed: higher-order contingentism can be fleshed out into an elegant systematic theory, but perhaps only at the cost of abandoning some of its original motivations
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