On the conversion of Indians and Heathens

Read a review of Ineke Loots – Joke Spaans (eds.), Johannes Hoornbeeck (1617-1666), On the conversion of Indians and Heathens. An annotated translation ofDe conversione Indorum et gentilium (1669), [Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 290/21], (Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2018), Johannes Hoornbeeck (1617- 1666), On the conversion of Indians and Heathens, ISBN: 978-90-04-25544-9, List price: Euro 129 / US$ 149

Crystal field states of Kondo lattice heavy fermions CeRuSn3 and CeRhSn3

Inelastic neutron scattering experiments have been carried out to determine the crystal field states of the Kondo lattice heavy fermions CeRuSn3 and CeRhSn3. Both the compounds crystallize in LaRuSn3-type cubic structure (space group Pm-3n) in which the Ce atoms occupy two distinct crystallographic sites with cubic (m-3) and tetragonal (-4m.2) point symmetries. The INS data of CeRuSn3 reveal the presence of a broad excitation centered around 6-8 meV which is accounted by a model based on crystal electric field (CEF) excitations. On the other hand, the INS data of isostructural CeRhSn3 reveal three CEF excitations around 7.0, 12.2 and 37.2 meV. The neutron intensity sum rule indicates that the Ce ions at both cubic and tetragonal Ce sites are in Ce3+ state in both CeRuSn3 and CeRhSn3. The CEF level schemes for both the compounds are deduced. We estimate the Kondo temperature T_K = 3.1(2) K for CeRuSn3 from neutron quasielastic linewidth in excellent agreement with that determined from the scaling of magnetoresistance which gives T_K = 3.2(1) K. For CeRhSn3 the neutron quasielastic linewidth gives T_K = 4.6 K. For both CeRuSn3 and CeRhSn3, the ground state of Ce3+ turns out to be a quartet for the cubic site and a doublet for the tetragonal site.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Trade Liberalization in the South African Livestock Industry: implications for rural development

Livestock farming is an important facet of agriculture and livelihood in South Africa. It forms the essence of rural agriculture contributing food, socio-economic stability, employment and income. After the liberalization of the agricultural sector and phasing out of past protection mechanisms South Africa introduced a process of tariff reform. Furthermore, a system of tariff rate quotas was introduced in compliance with WTO regulations. A partial equilibrium comparative static model was used to investigate the impact of further liberalization in the livestock industry of South Africa, particularly in meat products using four policy scenarios. Specific emphasis was given to the liberalization of the current TRQ regime. The implication of the results are that the development efforts by government aimed at commercializing emerging commercial stock farming in order to address equity and poverty may be slowed down considerably with further trade liberalization; especially since substitution with other agricultural enterprises are limited. The conclusion is that the expansion in current quotas might be a more proper policy directive than reducing applied tariffs over the short to medium run to comply with trade liberalization targets as well as WTO commitments. The reason for this is that quota expansion brings about moderate changes in domestic prices of livestock and meat products as compared to tariff reductions.Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Food Security and Poverty, Health Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, International Relations/Trade, Marketing, Productivity Analysis, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Tariff and Tariff Rate Quota Liberalization in the South African Livestock Industry: Approaches to Welfare Measurement

The liberalization of the agricultural sector and phasing out of past protection mechanisms in South Africa saw the introduction of a process of tariff reform. Furthermore, a system of tariff rate quotas was introduced in compliance with WTO regulations. This study uses a partial equilibrium comparative static model to measure the welfare effects of further liberalization in the livestock industry of South Africa, particularly in meat products using four policy scenarios. The traditional method of welfare analyses using the CS and PS was applied, while the EV was used to integrate a well-behaved objective function. Although the CS and PS could have over-estimated welfare due to the fact that the demand system used in this study is non-linear, they still gave useful information sufficient to compare the impact of trade liberalization on consumers and producers of livestock products. Furthermore, the EV explains the income change necessary to attain the welfare level resulting from trade liberalization given the current prices. When expressed as a percentage of the real gross national income and real disposable income, the values are quite marginal. The results from both methods of welfare measurement suggest that it is worth considering the effects on producers if further trade liberalization is envisaged in the South African livestock industry.International Relations/Trade, Livestock Production/Industries,

Implications of Tariff Rate Quotas Liberalization in the South African Livestock Industry

Livestock farming is an important facet of agriculture and livelihood in South Africa. It forms the essence of rural agriculture contributing food, socio-economic stability, employment and income. After the liberalization of the agricultural sector and phasing out of past protection mechanisms South Africa introduced a process of tariff reform. Furthermore, a system of tariff rate quotas was introduced in compliance with WTO regulations. A partial equilibrium comparative static model was used to investigate the impact of further liberalization in the livestock industry of South Africa, particularly in meat products using four policy scenarios. Specific emphasis was given to the liberalization of the current TRQ regime. The conclusion is that the expansion in current quotas might be a more proper policy directive than reducing applied tariffs over the short to medium run to comply with trade liberalization targets.International Trade, Agricultural Development, Partial Equilibrium Model, Applied Welfare Economics, International Relations/Trade, Livestock Production/Industries,

Taking Defeasible Entailment Beyond Rational Closure

We present a systematic approach for extending the KLM framework for defeasible entailment. We first present a class of basic defeasible entailment relations, characterise it in three distinct ways and provide a high-level algorithm for computing it. This framework is then refined, with the refined version being characterised in a similar manner. We show that the two well-known forms of defeasible entailment, rational closure and lexicographic closure, fall within our refined framework, that rational closure is the most conservative of the defeasible entailment relations within the framework (with respect to subset inclusion), but that there are forms of defeasible entailment within our framework that are more “adventurous” than lexicographic closure

Physical properties of noncentrosymmetric superconductor LaIrSi3: A {\mu}SR study

The results of heat capacity C_p(T, H) and electrical resistivity \rho(T,H) measurements down to 0.35 K as well as muon spin relaxation and rotation (\muSR) measurements on a noncentrosymmetric superconductor LaIrSi3 are presented. Powder neutron diffraction confirmed the reported noncentrosymmetric body-centered tetragonal BaNiSn3-type structure (space group I4\,mm) of LaIrSi3. The bulk superconductivity is observed below T_c = 0.72(1) K. The intrinsic \Delta C_e/\gamma_n T_c = 1.09(3) is significantly smaller than the BCS value of 1.43, and this reduction is accounted by the \alpha-model of BCS superconductivity. The analysis of the superconducting state C_e(T) data by the single-band \alpha-model indicates a moderately anisotropic order parameter with the s-wave gap \Delta(0)/k_B T_c = 1.54(2) which is lower than the BCS value of 1.764. Our estimates of various normal and superconducting state parameters indicate a weakly coupled electron-phonon driven type-I s-wave superconductivity in LaIrSi3. The \muSR results also confirm the conventional type-I superconductivity in LaIrSi3 with a preserved time reversal symmetry and hence a singlet pairing superconducting ground state.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Further Comparisons of Finite Difference Schemes for Computational Modelling of Biosensors

Simulations are presented for a reaction-diffusion system within a thin layer containing an enzyme, fed with a substrate from the surrounding electrolyte. The chemical term is of the nonlinear Michaelis-Menten type and requires a technique such as Newton iteration for solution. It is shown that approximating the nonlinear chemical term in these systems by a linearised form reduces both the accuracy and, in the case of second-order methods such as Crank-Nicolson, reduces the global error order from O(δT2) to O(δT). The first-order methods plain backwards implicit with and without linearisation, and Crank-Nicolson with linearisation are all of O(δT) and very similar in performance, requiring, for a given accuracy target, an order of magnitude more CPU time than the efficient methods backward implicit with extrapolation and Crank-Nicolson, both with Newton iteration to handle the nonlinearity. Steady state computations agree with expectations, tending to the known solutions for limiting cases. The Crank-Nicolson method shows some concentration oscillations close to the outer layer boundary but this does not propagate to the inner boundary at the electrode. The backward implicit methods do not result in such oscillations and if concentration profiles are of interest, may be preferred

A KLM Perspective on Defeasible Reasoning for Description Logics

In this paper we present an approach to defeasible reasoning for the description logic ALC. The results discussed here are based on work done by Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor (KLM) on defeasible conditionals in the propositional case. We consider versions of a preferential semantics for two forms of defeasible subsumption, and link these semantic constructions formally to KLM-style syntactic properties via representation results. In addition to showing that the semantics is appropriate, these results pave the way for more effective decision procedures for defeasible reasoning in description logics. With the semantics of the defeasible version of ALC in place, we turn to the investigation of an appropriate form of defeasible entailment for this enriched version of ALC. This investigation includes an algorithm for the computation of a form of defeasible entailment known as rational closure in the propositional case. Importantly, the algorithm relies completely on classical entailment checks and shows that the computational complexity of reasoning over defeasible ontologies is no worse than that of the underlying classical ALC. Before concluding, we take a brief tour of some existing work on defeasible extensions of ALC that go beyond defeasible subsumption