Fatalism and Future Contingents

In this paper I address issues related to the problem of future contingents and the metaphysical doctrine of fatalism. Two classical responses to the problem of future contingents are the third truth value view and the all-false view. According to the former, future contingents take a third truth value which goes beyond truth and falsity. According to the latter, they are all false. I here illustrate and discuss two ways to respectively argue for those two views. Both ways are similar in spirit and intimately connected with fatalism, in the sense that they engage with the doctrine of fatalism and accept a large part of a standard fatalistic machinery

Thermal Wave Measurements with a Mirage Detection for Investigation of Thermal Diffusivity of GdCa4O(BO3)3 Single Crystals

Single crystals of GdCa4O(BO3)3 were examined to determine their thermal properties. Samples were grown by the Czochralski pulling technique. There were three types of samples: a pure crystal, the crystal doped with neodymium (4 at.% of Nd), and the third one doped with ytterbium (7 at.% of Yb). All samples were rectangular prisms with edges parallel to the axes of the optical indicatrix X, Y , Z (principal axes). The thermal diffusivity was determined by means of the thermal wave method with the optical detection of the temperature disturbance based on a mirage effect. Experimental results showed anisotropy of the thermal diffusivity. The thermal diffusivity along Y direction has the highest value while values obtained in X and Z axes are much lower. Dopants cause decrease in the thermal diffusivity for all investigated directions

Visible light communication with efficient far-red/near-infrared polymer light-emitting diodes

Visible light communication (VLC) is a wireless technology that relies on optical intensity modulation and is potentially a game changer for internet-of-things (IoT) connectivity. However, VLC is hindered by the low penetration depth of visible light in non-transparent media. One solution is to extend operation into the “nearly (in)visible” near-infrared (NIR, 700–1000 nm) region, thus also enabling VLC in photonic bio-applications, considering the biological tissue NIR semitransparency, while conveniently retaining vestigial red emission to help check the link operativity by simple eye inspection. Here, we report new far-red/NIR organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) with a 650–800 nm emission range and external quantum efficiencies among the highest reported in this spectral range (>2.7%, with maximum radiance and luminance of 3.5 mW/cm2 and 260 cd/m2, respectively). With these OLEDs, we then demonstrate a “real-time” VLC setup achieving a data rate of 2.2 Mb/s, which satisfies the requirements for IoT and biosensing applications. These are the highest rates ever reported for an online unequalised VLC link based on solution-processed OLEDs

The Models of Personal Incomes in USA

The shapes of distributions of personal incomes in USA have been investigated based on the data for 1993 to 2008. Comparisons between four models utilizing various number of parameters have been performed. The studies showed that the empirical data is described the best by the three-parameter Dagum model. Values of the models parameters indicate that the distribution of personal incomes can be regarded as zero-modal one. However, one-parameter exponential model shows a good agreement with data and can be treated as a good approximation of empirical distribution with the exception of the region with very high incomes. The high-income region is characterized by the relatively great number of events and is described much better by the Dagum distribution

Effect of zinc nanoparticles on embryo and chicken growth, and the content of zinc in tissues and faeces

The hypothesis was that owing to their high bioavailability, zinc oxide nanoparticles (NanoZnO) can effectively replace (Zn) salts and reduce Zn excretion with faeces. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of NanoZnO on the development of chicken embryos, the growth of broiler chickens, and Zn excretion with faeces. At day 1 of incubation, 120 eggs were randomly divided between a control group (not injected) and groups injected with a hydrocolloid of NanoZnO in increasing concentrations (50, 100, 500 mg/L). At day 19 of incubation, no differences were observed in the bodyweight, but 100 and 500 mg/L affected liver and heart weights, indicating that high levels of NanoZnO may induce differential organ development. In the subsequent experiment, 308 chickens were randomly divided into six groups. The control diet was supplemented with 55 mg Zn/kg (standard level), the 0 group received no Zn supplement, and groups fed NanoZnO received 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the standard level. The 100% replacement of ZnO with NanoZnO increased the chickens’ bodyweight compared with the standard level of ZnO, but to the same level as the diet without ZnO supplementation. Furthermore, NanoZnO did not reduce the content of Zn in faeces, which was only significantly lower in the group without ZnO supplementation in comparison with other groups. The results indicate that the replacement of ZnO with NanoZnO had no negative effects on chicken growth. Compared with ZnO, NanoZnO did not reduce Zn excretion with faeces. Keywords: broiler, development, excretion, mineral, nanonutritio

Evidence for the Gompertz Curve in the Income Distribution of Brazil 1978-2005

This work presents an empirical study of the evolution of the personal income distribution in Brazil. Yearly samples available from 1978 to 2005 were studied and evidence was found that the complementary cumulative distribution of personal income for 99% of the economically less favorable population is well represented by a Gompertz curve of the form $G(x)=\exp [\exp (A-Bx)]$, where $x$ is the normalized individual income. The complementary cumulative distribution of the remaining 1% richest part of the population is well represented by a Pareto power law distribution $P(x)= \beta x^{-\alpha}$. This result means that similarly to other countries, Brazil's income distribution is characterized by a well defined two class system. The parameters $A$, $B$, $\alpha$, $\beta$ were determined by a mixture of boundary conditions, normalization and fitting methods for every year in the time span of this study. Since the Gompertz curve is characteristic of growth models, its presence here suggests that these patterns in income distribution could be a consequence of the growth dynamics of the underlying economic system. In addition, we found out that the percentage share of both the Gompertzian and Paretian components relative to the total income shows an approximate cycling pattern with periods of about 4 years and whose maximum and minimum peaks in each component alternate at about every 2 years. This finding suggests that the growth dynamics of Brazil's economic system might possibly follow a Goodwin-type class model dynamics based on the application of the Lotka-Volterra equation to economic growth and cycle.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables. LaTeX. Accepted for publication in "The European Physical Journal B

A system of relational syllogistic incorporating full Boolean reasoning

We present a system of relational syllogistic, based on classical propositional logic, having primitives of the following form: Some A are R-related to some B; Some A are R-related to all B; All A are R-related to some B; All A are R-related to all B. Such primitives formalize sentences from natural language like `All students read some textbooks'. Here A and B denote arbitrary sets (of objects), and R denotes an arbitrary binary relation between objects. The language of the logic contains only variables denoting sets, determining the class of set terms, and variables denoting binary relations between objects, determining the class of relational terms. Both classes of terms are closed under the standard Boolean operations. The set of relational terms is also closed under taking the converse of a relation. The results of the paper are the completeness theorem with respect to the intended semantics and the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem.Comment: Available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10849-012-9165-