5,697 research outputs found
Reasoning with comparative moral judgements: an argument for Moral Bayesianism
The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements
(i.e judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of moral cognitivism are discussed
Permissive Controller Synthesis for Probabilistic Systems
We propose novel controller synthesis techniques for probabilistic systems
modelled using stochastic two-player games: one player acts as a controller,
the second represents its environment, and probability is used to capture
uncertainty arising due to, for example, unreliable sensors or faulty system
components. Our aim is to generate robust controllers that are resilient to
unexpected system changes at runtime, and flexible enough to be adapted if
additional constraints need to be imposed. We develop a permissive controller
synthesis framework, which generates multi-strategies for the controller,
offering a choice of control actions to take at each time step. We formalise
the notion of permissivity using penalties, which are incurred each time a
possible control action is disallowed by a multi-strategy. Permissive
controller synthesis aims to generate a multi-strategy that minimises these
penalties, whilst guaranteeing the satisfaction of a specified system property.
We establish several key results about the optimality of multi-strategies and
the complexity of synthesising them. Then, we develop methods to perform
permissive controller synthesis using mixed integer linear programming and
illustrate their effectiveness on a selection of case studies
Edge Theories for Polarized Quantum Hall States
Starting from recently proposed bosonic mean field theories for fully and
partially polarized quantum Hall states, we construct corresponding effective
low energy theories for the edge modes. The requirements of gauge symmetry and
invariance under global O(3) spin rotations, broken only by a Zeeman coupling,
imply boundary conditions that allow for edge spin waves. In the generic case,
these modes are chiral, and the spin stiffness differs from that in the bulk.
For the case of a fully polarized state, our results agree with
previous Hartree-Fock calculations.Comment: 15 pages (number of pages has been reduced by typesetting in RevTeX);
2 references adde
Near-Optimal Scheduling for LTL with Future Discounting
We study the search problem for optimal schedulers for the linear temporal
logic (LTL) with future discounting. The logic, introduced by Almagor, Boker
and Kupferman, is a quantitative variant of LTL in which an event in the far
future has only discounted contribution to a truth value (that is a real number
in the unit interval [0, 1]). The precise problem we study---it naturally
arises e.g. in search for a scheduler that recovers from an internal error
state as soon as possible---is the following: given a Kripke frame, a formula
and a number in [0, 1] called a margin, find a path of the Kripke frame that is
optimal with respect to the formula up to the prescribed margin (a truly
optimal path may not exist). We present an algorithm for the problem; it works
even in the extended setting with propositional quality operators, a setting
where (threshold) model-checking is known to be undecidable
The observational legacy of preon stars - probing new physics beyond the LHC
We discuss possible ways to observationally detect the superdense cosmic
objects composed of hypothetical sub-constituent fermions beneath the
quark/lepton level, recently proposed by us. The characteristic mass and size
of such objects depend on the compositeness scale, and their huge density
cannot arise within a context of quarks and leptons alone. Their eventual
observation would therefore be a direct vindication of physics beyond the
standard model of particle physics, possibly far beyond the reach of the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC), in a relatively simple and inexpensive manner. If relic
objects of this type exist, they can possibly be detected by present and future
x-ray observatories, high-frequency gravitational wave detectors, and
seismological detectors. To have a realistic detection rate, i.e., to be
observable, they must necessarily constitute a significant fraction of cold
dark matter.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. Added one reference [24]. Reformulated the
discussion at the end of Section II. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Laughlin Wave Function and One-Dimensional Free Fermions
Making use of the well-known phase space reduction in the lowest Landau
level(LLL), we show that the Laughlin wave function for the
case can be obtained exactly as a coherent state representation of an one
dimensional wave function. The system consists of copies of
free fermions associated with each of the electrons, confined in a common
harmonic well potential. Interestingly, the condition for this exact
correspondence is found to incorporate Jain's parton picture. We argue that,
this correspondence between the free fermions and quantum Hall effect is due to
the mapping of the system under consideration, to the Gaussian unitary
ensemble in the random matrix theory.Comment: 7 pages, Latex , no figure
An analysis of photoemission and inverse photoemission spectra of Si(111) and sulphur-passivated InP(001) surfaces
Photoemission (PES) and inverse-photoemission spectra (IPES) for the
sulphur-passivated InP(001) surface are compared with theoretical predictions
based on density-functional calculations. As a test case for our methods, we
also present a corresponding study of the better known Si(111) surface. The
reported spectra for InP(001)-S agree well with the calculated ones if the
surface is assumed to consist of a mixture of two phases, namely, the fully
S-covered -reconstructed structure, which contains four S atoms in
the surface unit-cell, and a structure containing two S and two P
atoms per unit cell. The latter has recently been identified in total-energy
calculations as well as in core-level spectra of S-passivated
Si(111)- is in excellent agreement with the calculations. The
comparison of the experimental-PES with our calculations provides additional
considerations regarding the nature of the sample surface. It is also found
that the commonly-used density-of-states approximation to the photo- and
inverse- photoemission spectra is not valid for these systems.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. B; 6 postscript formatted pages; 7 figures in
gif format; postscript figures available upon reques
Vortex Dynamics in Self-Dual Chern-Simons Higgs Systems
We consider vortex dynamics in self-dual Chern-Simons Higgs systems. We show
that the naive Aharanov-Bohm phase is the inverse of the statistical phase
expected from the vortex spin, and that the self-dual configurations of
vortices are degenerate in energy but not in angular momentum. We also use the
path integral formalism to derive the dual formulation of Chern-Simons Higgs
systems in which vortices appear as charged particles. We argue that besides
the electromagnetic interaction, there is an additional interaction between
vortices, the so-called Magnus force, and that these forces can be put together
into a single `dual electromagnetic' interaction. This dual electromagnetic
interaction leads to the right Aharanov-Bohm phase. We also derive and study
the effective action for slowly moving vortices, which contains terms both
linear and quadratic in the vortex velocity.Comment: 36 pages and three figures (available under request), Columbia and
CERN preprin
On the temperature dependence of correlation functions in the space like direction in hot QCD
We study the temperature dependence of quark antiquark correlations in the
space like direction. In particular, we predict the temperature dependence of
space like Bethe-Salpeter amplitudes using recent Lattice gauge data for the
space like string potential. We also investigate the effect of the space like
string potential on the screening mass and discuss possible corrections which
may arise when working with point sources.Comment: 15 pages 8 figures (not included, will be sent on request),
(SUNY-NTG-94-3
p53 mutations in urinary bladder cancer
We have screened for mutations in exons 5–8 of the p53 gene in a series consisting of 189 patients with urinary bladder neoplasms. 82 (44%) neoplasms were lowly malignant (Ta, G1–G2a) and 106 (56%) were highly malignant (G2b–G4 or ≥T1). Only one mutation was in a lowly malignant urinary bladder neoplasm, in total we found p53 mutations in 26 (14%) of the 189 patients. 30% of the samples had loss of heterozygosity (LOH) for one or both of the p53 exogenic (CA)n repeat and the p53 intragenic (AAAAT)n repeat markers. 31 samples (21%) showed LOH but were not mutated, suggesting other mechanisms inactivating p53 than mutations. 4 mutations were found at codon 280 and 2 mutations were found at codon 285, 2 previously reported hot spots for urinary bladder cancer. The study indicate a boundary between G2a and G2b tumours concerning the occurrence of genetic events affecting p53 function; moderately differentiated (G2) urinary bladder neoplasms probably are genetically heterogeneous which supports the suggestion that they should not be grouped together but instead, for example, be categorized as either lowly or highly malignant. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co
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