A Transactional Analysis of Interaction Free Measurements

The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics is applied to the "interaction-free" measurement scenario of Elitzur and Vaidman and to the Quantum Zeno Effect version of the measurement scenario by Kwiat, et al. It is shown that the non-classical information provided by the measurement scheme is supplied by the probing of the intervening object by incomplete offer and confirmation waves that do not form complete transactions or lead to real interactions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Foundations of Physics Letter

The influence of vision on susceptibility to acute motion sickness studied under quantifiable stimulus-response conditions

Twenty-four healthy men, 22 to 25 years of age, were exposed to stressful accelerations in a rotating room until acute mild motion sickness was elicited. Thirteen subjects in one group were exposed first with eyes open and later with eyes covered; the reverse order was used with the remaining eleven in the other group. The stressful accelerations were generated by requiring the subject to execute 120 standardized head movements at each 1-rpm increase in angular velocity until the desired endpoint was reached. When susceptibility to motion sickness with eyes open and covered is compared, 19 subjects were more susceptible with eyes open, three with eyes covered, and in the remaining two susceptibility was the same. The maximum difference in velocity between trial 1 and 2 was 7 rpm when susceptibility was greater with eyes open and 3 rpm when it was greater with eyes covered; the means, respectively, were 3.2 and 2.0 rpm. Among subjects manifesting greater susceptibility with eyes open than covered the group differences were small, indicating little or no adaptation effects. The findings are discussed mainly on the basis that vision may act also to decrease susceptibility under the stimulus conditions described

Participants’ Reasoning in Controversy Coverage

In their analyses of controversy, many researchers begin with the assumption that it is a juvenile or failed dialectical exchange. In conceptualizing controversy this way, they get caught in an is-ought dilemma, often shaping controversy into a two-sided affair involving an open issue with arguments marshalled but then simultaneously pointing out its shortcomings against these same criteria. As Dascal has pointed out, thinking of controversy as a juvenile dialectical exchange seems to be a therapeutic gesture that may present it as a better-behaved object of study than experience would support. In this paper, I approach controversy first and foremost as a textual object, rather than as a dialectical or argumentative one. While I am ultimately interested in the reasoning of participants, I begin by asking how media texts represent controversies. I start here because media texts are the dominant channel by which we learn about public controversies. Their presentation will have a powerful effect on the ways that the events, arguments, participants, and so on are memorialized. In addition, media texts are part of the variegated institutional, historical, social, and textual environment in which controversies emerge. In this paper, I analyze the reasoning of participants in the Brooklyn Museum controversy as it is presented by in a corpus of media texts reporting on the event. I ask the following question: How much and what kinds of reasoning by controversy participants do media texts present in this case? In discussing my results I reflect on the role of media texts as source material for argument and debate reconstruction

Handbook for estimating toxic fuel hazards

Computer program predicts, from readily available meteorological data, concentration and dosage fields downwind from ground-level and elevated sources of toxic fuel emissions. Mathematical model is applicable to hot plume rise from industrial stacks and should also be of interest to air pollution meteorologists

Biofilms: Five-Star Accommodations for the Aerobically Challenged

SummaryThe human microbiome contains a diverse array of microbes that affect human health. A recent study finds that fungal biofilms are capable of supporting growth of anaerobic bacteria, suggesting that these fungi can promote bacterial growth in otherwise toxic environments

Untersuchungen zur Motilität von Sorbitol-fermentierenden enterohämorrhagischen Escherichia coli O157

Sorbitol-fermentierende enterohämorrhagische Escherichia coli (EHEC) O157:H- gelten als unbeweglich und exprimieren kein H-Antigen. An 10 Stämmen SF EHEC O157 wurde untersucht, ob sich Motilität durch Passage in semisolidem Agar induzieren lässt. fliC sowie ein Gen des Master-Operons flhC wurden im Hinblick auf vorbeschriebene Mutationen untersucht, die mit dem Verlust an Motilität in EHEC O157:H- in Verbindung gebracht werden. Motile Stämme wurden auf die Expression von H7-Antigen sowie auf das Vorhandensein von Flagellen untersucht. Alle untersuchten EHEC O157:H- verfügten über eine typische Kombination bestimmter für Virulenzfaktoren kodierender Gene. Sie beherbergten ein intaktes fliC. In flhC ließ sich in allen Stämmen eine in der Literatur vorbeschriebene Deletion nachweisen. Motilität ließ sich in allen Stämmen beobachten. Drei zeigten die Expression von H7-Antigen. Elektronenmikroskopisch zeigten sich fimbrienartige Organellen, die an unbeweglichen Organismen nicht zur Darstellung kamen. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass die vorbeschriebene Deletion in flhC die Entwicklung von Motilität in EHEC O157:H- nicht verhindert