Instantiation in Trope Theory

The concept of instantiation is realized differently across a variety of metaphysical theories. A certain realization of the concept in a given theory depends on what roles are specified and associated with the concept and its corresponding term as well as what entities are suited to fill those roles. In this paper, the classic realization of the concept of instantiation in a one-category ontology of abstract particulars or tropes is articulated in a novel way and defended against unaddressed objections

Describing mixed spin-space entanglement of pure states of indistinguishable particles using an occupation number basis

Quantum mechanical entanglement is a resource for quantum computation, quantum teleportation, and quantum cryptography. The ability to quantify this resource correctly has thus become of great interest to those working in the field of quantum information theory. In this paper, we show that all existing entanglement measures but one fail important tests of fitness when applied to n particle, m site states of indistinguishable particles, where n,m>=2. The accepted method of measuring the entanglement of a bipartite system of distinguishable particles is to use the von Neumann entropy of the reduced density matrix of one half of the system. We show that expressing the full density matrix using a site-spin occupation number basis, and reducing with respect to that basis, gives an entanglement which meets all currently known fitness criteria for systems composed of either distinguishable or indistinguishable particles. We consider an output state from a previously published thought experiment, a state which is entangled in both spin and spatial degrees of freedom, and show that the site entropy measure gives the correct total entanglement. We also show how the spin-space entanglement transfer occurring within the apparatus can be understood in terms of the transfer of probability from single-occupancy to double-occupancy sectors of the density matrix.Comment: 2 figures; added Appendix A; added Figure 2; made changes to take account of v2 of quant-ph/0105120; some typos remove

Does one trust judgement fit all? Linking theory and empirics

Copyright @ 2010 The Authors. This is the accepted version of the following article: Fisher, J., Van Heerde, J. and Tucker, A. (2010), Does One Trust Judgement Fit All? Linking Theory and Empirics. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 12: 161–188, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2009.00401.x/abstract.Few questions in political science have received more attention in recent times than the role of trust in democracy, democratic government and political participation. In Britain this has become a particular concern as levels of democratic engagement in traditional politics have declined, exacerbated by media reports of politicians' untrustworthy behaviour. A common feature of previous empirical work on political trust is that trust is treated as a single theoretical concept. Scholars have assumed that trust operates in a similar fashion across different political institutions—that citizens' trust mechanisms are the same for trusting parliament, the prime minister or the European Union. As a consequence, the operationalisation of trust has generally been through a single measure. In this article we draw on recent research from political theory, where different forms of judgements whether to trust—strategic, moral and deliberative—have been conceptualised, to argue that trust judgements may vary in application and significance depending upon the institution under examination. Using specially designed data sets generated from YouGov's weekly omnibus and the British Election Study's Continuous Monitoring Panel, we operationalise these three forms of trust judgements to examine trust in two British institutions—political parties and politicians. We find, as hypothesised, that different forms of trust judgements are of differing significance depending upon the institution under consideration

Experiments with calibrated digital sideband separating downconversion

This article reports on the first step in a focused program to re-optimize radio astronomy receiver architecture to better take advantage of the latest advancements in commercial digital technology. Specifically, an L-Band sideband-separating downconverter has been built using a combination of careful (but ultimately very simple) analog design and digital signal processing to achieve wideband downconversion of an RFI-rich frequency spectrum to baseband in a single mixing step, with a fixed-frequency Local Oscillator and stable sideband isolation exceeding 50 dB over a 12 degree C temperature range.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures, to be published in PAS

Party finance reform as constitutional engineering? The effectiveness and unintended consequences of party finance reform in France and Britain

In both Britain and France, party funding was traditionally characterized by a laissez faire approach and a conspicuous lack of regulation. In France, this was tantamount to a 'legislative vacuum'. In the last two decades, however, both countries have sought to fundamentally reform their political finance regulation regimes. This prompted, in Britain, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and in France a bout of 'legislative incontinence' — profoundly transforming the political finance regime between 1988 and 1995. This article seeks to explore and compare the impacts of the reforms in each country in a bid to explain the unintended consequences of the alternative paths taken and the effectiveness of the new party finance regime in each country. It finds that constitutional engineering through party finance reform is a singularly inexact science, largely due to the imperfect nature of information, the limited predictability of cause and effect, and the constraining influence of non-party actors, such as the Constitutional Council in France, and the Electoral Commission in Britain

Fractal Droplets in Two Dimensional Spin Glasses

The two-dimensional Edwards-Anderson model with Gaussian bond distribution is investigated at T=0 with a numerical method. Droplet excitations are directly observed. It turns out that the averaged volume of droplets is proportional to l^D with D = 1.80(2) where l is the spanning length of droplets, revealing their fractal nature. The exponent characterizing the l dependence of the droplet excitation energy is estimated to be -0.42(4), clearly different from the stiffness exponent for domain wall excitations.Comment: 4 pages 4 figure