The Morality of Price/Quality and Ethical Consumerism

Hussain claims that ethical consumers are subject to democratic requirements of morality, whereas ordinary price/quality consumers are exempt from these requirements. In this paper, we demonstrate that Hussain’s position is incoherent, does not follow from the arguments he offers for it, and entails a number of counterintuitive consequences

Assessment of maintenance strategies for railway vehicles using Petri-Nets

The density of railway traffic has been steadily increasing over past years and decades. The developments have implicated a growing need for efficient operation and maintenance of railway rolling stock systems. Also the increased operation of articulated trains has induced new challenges on maintenance organization and planning. Selecting optimal maintenance strategies for each component does not only influence the availability of the railway vehicles but also the operational performance and the profitability of the operator. Suitable tools to analyse, compare and optimize different maintenance strategies are therefore required. Petri nets are such a mathematical tool that and have been applied for maintenance modeling and simulations of different applications. Several types of Petri nets with different properties have been introduced. One of the recently proposed extensions of Petri nets are the Abridged Petri Nets (APN) which fulfill the specific requirements of railway rolling stock maintenance. In this paper, we propose the application of APN in combination with the Monte-Carlo simulation for railway rolling stock maintenance evaluation. In a first step, the applicability of the APN approach was demonstrated on a theoretical case study comprising a condition based maintenance strategy for a system. In a second case study, several real application case studies were modeled and compared based on the processes and real application field data of three railway vehicle components. The tool can be further extended by pre-defining selected strategies that be easily implemented within an overall decision support system

Cartier Crystals have finite global dimension

We show that the category of quasi-coherent Cartier crystals is equivalent to the category of unit Cartier modules on an F-finite noetherian ring R, and that these equivalent categories have finite global dimension, by showing that every quasi-coherent Cartier crystal has a finite injective resolution. The length of the resolution is uniformly bounded by a bound only depending on R. Our result should be viewed as a generalization of a result of Ma showing that the category of unit R[F]-modules over a F-finite regular ring R has finite global dimension dim R + 1.Comment: 11 page

Quantum computing through the lens of control: A tutorial introduction

Quantum computing is a fascinating interdisciplinary research field that promises to revolutionize computing by efficiently solving previously intractable problems. Recent years have seen tremendous progress on both the experimental realization of quantum computing devices as well as the development and implementation of quantum algorithms. Yet, realizing computational advantages of quantum computers in practice remains a widely open problem due to numerous fundamental challenges. Interestingly, many of these challenges are connected to performance, robustness, scalability, optimization, or feedback, all of which are central concepts in control theory. This paper provides a tutorial introduction to quantum computing from the perspective of control theory. We introduce the mathematical framework of quantum algorithms ranging from basic elements including quantum bits and quantum gates to more advanced concepts such as variational quantum algorithms and quantum errors. The tutorial only requires basic knowledge of linear algebra and, in particular, no prior exposure to quantum physics. Our main goal is to equip readers with the mathematical basics required to understand and possibly solve (control-related) problems in quantum computing. In particular, beyond the tutorial introduction, we provide a list of research challenges in the field of quantum computing and discuss their connections to control

Enhanced Optimization with Composite Objectives and Novelty Selection

An important benefit of multi-objective search is that it maintains a diverse population of candidates, which helps in deceptive problems in particular. Not all diversity is useful, however: candidates that optimize only one objective while ignoring others are rarely helpful. This paper proposes a solution: The original objectives are replaced by their linear combinations, thus focusing the search on the most useful tradeoffs between objectives. To compensate for the loss of diversity, this transformation is accompanied by a selection mechanism that favors novelty. In the highly deceptive problem of discovering minimal sorting networks, this approach finds better solutions, and finds them faster and more consistently than standard methods. It is therefore a promising approach to solving deceptive problems through multi-objective optimization.Comment: 7 page

Pelvic inflammatory disease

Die in der Regel klinisch diagnostizierte «pelvic inflammatory disease» umschreibt eine Entzündung des oberen weiblichen Genitaltrakts. Die Symptome sind unspezifisch, häufig nur diskret ausgebildet oder fehlen. Unverzügliche Therapieeinleitung und Prävention sexuell übertragbarer Krankheiten – etwa durch Einführung eines geeigneten Screenings – mindern das Langzeitrisiko der Sterilität, Extrauteringravidität und chronischer Bauchschmerzen

1999-2000 Master Class Playing To Win - Sergiu Schwartz (Violin)

https://spiral.lynn.edu/conservatory_masterclasses/1188/thumbnail.jp