Ontología y gnoseología en la Logica ingredientibus de Pedro Abelardo

El trabajo se ocupa de la sección de las Glosas a la Isagogé de Porfirio de Pedro Abelardo dedicada a las tres cuestiones sobre los universales. La parte “destructiva”, en la que Abelardo somete a crítica las doctrinas realistas de Guillermo de Champeaux no tiene un sentido meramente negativo, sino que busca llegar al punto de partida de la propia posición de Abelardo: las cosas no sólo difieren por sus formas (accidentes), sino también por sus materias (esencias). Al hablar de la imagen correspondiente al nombre universal, Abelardo no se detiene a explicar la formación del concepto universal a partir de la cosa, sino que más bien se refiere a la significación intelectual de los términos, en tanto “generan intelecciones”. Esta omisión puede explicarse por el hecho de que, para Abelardo, la inteligencia humana rara vez o nunca llega a captar las esencias de las cosas.The paper deals with the section of Peter Abaelard’s Glossae super Porphyrium concerning the three questions about the universals. The pars destruens, in which Abaelard criticizes the realistic doctrines of William of Champeaux, does not have a merely negative function, but it tries to reach the starting-point of Abaelard’s own position, namely, that things differ not only in their forms or accidents, but also in their matters or essences. When he speaks of the image of the universal term, he does not explain the process of the elaboration of the universal concept starting from the thing, but he rather refers to the intellectual signification of terms, in so far as they “produce intellections”. This default could be explained because of the fact that, in Abaelard’s view, the human intelligence hardly ever or never grasps the essences of things

Geometrical statistics of the vorticity vector and the strain rate tensor in rotating turbulence

We report results on the geometrical statistics of the vorticity vector obtained from experiments in electromagnetically forced rotating turbulence. A range of rotation rates $\Omega$ is considered, from non-rotating to rapidly rotating turbulence with a maximum background rotation rate of $\Omega=5$ rad/s (with Rossby number much smaller than unity). Typically, in our experiments ${\rm{Re}}_{\lambda}\approx 100$. The measurement volume is located in the centre of the fluid container above the bottom boundary layer, where the turbulent flow can be considered locally statistically isotropic and horizontally homogeneous for the non-rotating case, see van Bokhoven et al., Phys. Fluids 21, 096601 (2009). Based on the full set of velocity derivatives, measured in a Lagrangian way by 3D Particle Tracking Velocimetry, we have been able to quantify statistically the effect of system rotation on several flow properties. The experimental results show how the turbulence evolves from almost isotropic 3D turbulence ($\Omega\lesssim 0.2$ rad/s) to quasi-2D turbulence ($\Omega\approx 5.0$ rad/s) and how this is reflected by several statistical quantities. In particular, we have studied the orientation of the vorticity vector with respect to the three eigenvectors of the local strain rate tensor and with respect to the vortex stretching vector. Additionally, we have quantified the role of system rotation on the self-amplification terms of the enstrophy and strain rate equations and the direct contribution of the background rotation on these evolution equations. The main effect is the strong reduction of extreme events and related (strong) reduction of the skewness of PDFs of several quantities such as, for example, the intermediate eigenvalue of the strain rate tensor and the enstrophy self-amplification term.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 3 table

Area Quantization in Quasi-Extreme Black Holes

We consider quasi-extreme Kerr and quasi-extreme Schwarzschild-de Sitter black holes. From the known analytical expressions obtained for their quasi-normal modes frequencies, we suggest an area quantization prescription for those objects.Comment: Final version to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

High overtones of Dirac perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole

Using the Frobenius method, we find high overtones of the Dirac quasinormal spectrum for the Schwarzschild black hole. At high overtones, the spacing for imaginary part of $\omega_{n}$ is equidistant and equals to $\Im{\omega_{n+1}}-\Im{\omega_{n}} =i/8M$, ($M$ is the black hole mass), which is twice less than that for fields of integer spin. At high overtones, the real part of $\omega_{n}$ goes to zero. This supports the suggestion that the expected correspondence between quasinormal modes and Barbero-Immirzi parameter in Loop Quantum Gravity is just a numerical coincidence.Comment: 5 pages, Latex, 3 figures, Physical Review D.,at pres

Collective behaviour without collective order in wild swarms of midges

Collective behaviour is a widespread phenomenon in biology, cutting through a huge span of scales, from cell colonies up to bird flocks and fish schools. The most prominent trait of collective behaviour is the emergence of global order: individuals synchronize their states, giving the stunning impression that the group behaves as one. In many biological systems, though, it is unclear whether global order is present. A paradigmatic case is that of insect swarms, whose erratic movements seem to suggest that group formation is a mere epiphenomenon of the independent interaction of each individual with an external landmark. In these cases, whether or not the group behaves truly collectively is debated. Here, we experimentally study swarms of midges in the field and measure how much the change of direction of one midge affects that of other individuals. We discover that, despite the lack of collective order, swarms display very strong correlations, totally incompatible with models of noninteracting particles. We find that correlation increases sharply with the swarm's density, indicating that the interaction between midges is based on a metric perception mechanism. By means of numerical simulations we demonstrate that such growing correlation is typical of a system close to an ordering transition. Our findings suggest that correlation, rather than order, is the true hallmark of collective behaviour in biological systems.Comment: The original version has been split into two parts. This first part focuses on order vs. correlation. The second part, about finite-size scaling, will be included in a separate paper. 15 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, 5 video

Finite-size scaling as a way to probe near-criticality in natural swarms

Collective behaviour in biological systems is often accompanied by strong correlations. The question has therefore arisen of whether correlation is amplified by the vicinity to some critical point in the parameters space. Biological systems, though, are typically quite far from the thermodynamic limit, so that the value of the control parameter at which correlation and susceptibility peak depend on size. Hence, a system would need to readjust its control parameter according to its size in order to be maximally correlated. This readjustment, though, has never been observed experimentally. By gathering three-dimensional data on swarms of midges in the field we find that swarms tune their control parameter and size so as to maintain a scaling behaviour of the correlation function. As a consequence, correlation length and susceptibility scale with the system's size and swarms exhibit a near-maximal degree of correlation at all sizes.Comment: Selected for Viewpoint in Physics; PRL Editor's Suggestio

Ictiólogos de la Argentina: Elvira Mariana Siccardi.

En esta serie se mencionan a todos aquellos que, a través de sus pequeños o grandes aportes, contribuyeron a la consolidación de la disciplina en nuestro país. El plan general de esta contribución consiste en la elaboración de fichas individuales que contengan una lista de trabajos de los diferentes autores, acompañadas por bibliografía de referencia y, cuando ello fuera posible, por imágenes personales y material adicional. Se tratará de guardar un orden cronológico, pero esto no es excluyente, ya que priorizaremos las sucesivas ediciones al material disponible. Este es otro camino para rescatar y revalorizar a quienes en diversos contextos históricos sentaron las bases de lo que hoy es la ictiología nacional. Considero que este es el comienzo de una obra de mayor magnitud en la que se logre describir una parte importante de la historia de las ciencias naturales de la República Argentina

Study of the bone pathology in early mucolipidosis II (I-cell disease).

Histological examination of the bones obtained on autopsy of a 5-month-old child with mucolipidosis II (I-cell disease) revealed inhibition of the growth plate calcification with defective vascular invasion and signs of hyperparathyroidism. These findings are the chondro-osseous basis of the early radiological ricket-like appearance of bones in the neonatal period or soon thereafter. Whether the early skeletal abnormalities of mucolipidosis II result from a primary enzymatic defect of cartilage and bone cells or from factors controlling bone metabolism deserves further study

Quasi-normal modes of the scalar hairy black hole

We calculate QNMs of the scalar hairy black hole in the AdS background using Horowitz-Hubeny method for the potential that is not known in analytical form. For some black hole parameters we found pure imaginary frequencies. Increasing of the scalar field mass does not cause the imaginary part to vanish, it reaches some minimum and then increases, thus in the case under consideration the infinitely long living modes (quasi-resonances) do not appear.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figures, LaTe

The phase transition and the Quasi-Normal Modes of black Holes

We reexamined the argument that the quasinormal modes could be a probe of the phase transition of a topological black hole to a hairy configuration by investigating general scalar perturbations. We found further evidence in the quasinormal modes for this phase transition. For the general black hole configurations, we observed that although the quasinormal modes can present us different phases of different configurations, there is no dramatic change in the slope of quasinormal frequencies at the critical point of the phase transition. More detailed studies of quasinormal modes are needed to reveal the subtle behavior of the phase transition.Comment: Revised version, accepted for publication in JHE