21,217 research outputs found
Metaphysics and Law
The dichotomy between questions of fact and questions of law serves as a starting point for the following discussion of the nature of legal reasoning. In the course of the dialogue the author notes similarities and dissimilarities between legal reasoning and philosophical and mathematical reasoning. In the end we are left with a clearer insight into the distinctive features of the adjudicative process
Metaphysics and Law
The dichotomy between questions of fact and questions of law serves as a starting point for the following discussion of the nature of legal reasoning. In the course of the dialogue the author notes similarities and dissimilarities between legal reasoning and philosophical and mathematical reasoning. In the end we are left with a clearer insight into the distinctive features of the adjudicative process
Unified formalism for higher-order non-autonomous dynamical systems
This work is devoted to giving a geometric framework for describing
higher-order non-autonomous mechanical systems. The starting point is to extend
the Lagrangian-Hamiltonian unified formalism of Skinner and Rusk for these
kinds of systems, generalizing previous developments for higher-order
autonomous mechanical systems and first-order non-autonomous mechanical
systems. Then, we use this unified formulation to derive the standard
Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formalisms, including the Legendre-Ostrogradsky map
and the Euler-Lagrange and the Hamilton equations, both for regular and
singular systems. As applications of our model, two examples of regular and
singular physical systems are studied.Comment: 43 pp. We have corrected and clarified the statement of Propositions
2 and 3. A remark is added after Proposition
Motion of a spin 1/2 particle in shape invariant scalar and magnetic fields
We study the motion of a spin 1/2 particle in a scalar as well as a magnetic
field within the framework of supersymmetric quantum mechanics(SUSYQM). We also
introduce the concept of shape invariant scalar and magnetic fields and it is
shown that the problem admits exact analytical solutions when such fields are
considered.Comment: 14 page
Concurrent constraint programming with process mobility
We propose an extension of concurrent constraint programming with primitives for process migration within a hierarchical network, and we study its semantics. To this purpose, we first investigate a "pure " paradigm for process migration, namely a paradigm where the only actions are those dealing with transmissions of processes. Our goal is to give a structural definition of the semantics of migration; namely, we want to describe the behaviour of the system, during the transmission of a process, in terms of the behaviour of the components. We achieve this goal by using a labeled transition system where the effects of sending a process, and requesting a process, are modeled by symmetric rules (similar to handshaking-rules for synchronous communication) between the two partner nodes in the network. Next, we extend our paradigm with the primitives of concurrent constraint programming, and we show how to enrich the semantics to cope with the notions of environment and constraint store. Finally, we show how the operational semantics can be used to define an interpreter for the basic calculus.
Symbolic Magnifying Lens Abstraction in Markov Decision Processes
In this paper, we combine abstraction-refinement and symbolic techniques to fight the state-space explosion problem when model checking Markov decision processes (MDPs). The abstract-refinement technique, called "magnifying-lens abstraction" (MLA), partitions the state-space into regions and computes upper and lower bounds for reachability and safety properties on the regions, rather than the states. To compute such bounds, MLA iterates over the regions, analyzing the concrete states of each region in turn - as if one was sliding a magnifying lens across the system to view the states. The algorithm adaptively refines the regions, using smaller regions where more detail is required, until the difference between the bounds is below a specified accuracy. The symbolic technique is based on multi-terminal binary decision diagrams (MTBDDs) which have been used extensively to provide compact encodings of probabilistic models. We introduce a symbolic version of the MLA algorithm, called "symbolic MLA", which combines the power of both practical techniques when verifying MDPs. An implementation of symbolic MLA in the probabilistic model checker PRISM and experimental results to illustrate the advantages of our approach are presented
Symmetries and conservation laws in the Gunther k-symplectic formalism of field theory
This paper is devoted to studying symmetries of k-symplectic Hamiltonian and
Lagrangian first-order classical field theories. In particular, we define
symmetries and Cartan symmetries and study the problem of associating
conservation laws to these symmetries, stating and proving Noether's theorem in
different situations for the Hamiltonian and Lagrangian cases. We also
characterize equivalent Lagrangians, which lead to an introduction of
Lagrangian gauge symmetries, as well as analyzing their relation with Cartan
symmetries.Comment: 29 page
Phonons in the multiferroic langasite BaNbFeSiO : evidences for symmetry breaking
The chiral langasite BaNbFeSiO is a multiferroic
compound. While its magnetic order below T=27 K is now well characterised,
its polar order is still controversial. We thus looked at the phonon spectrum
and its temperature dependence to unravel possible crystal symmetry breaking.
We combined optical measurements (both infrared and Raman spectroscopy) with ab
initio calculations and show that signatures of a polar state are clearly
present in the phonon spectrum even at room temperature. An additional symmetry
lowering occurs below 120~K as seen from emergence of softer phonon modes in
the THz range. These results confirm the multiferroic nature of this langasite
and open new routes to understand the origin of the polar state
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