A Formal Sociologic Study of Free Will

We make a formal sociologic study of the concept of free will. By using the language of mathematics and logic, we define what we call everlasting societies. Everlasting societies never age: persons never age, and the goods of the society are indestructible. The infinite history of an everlasting society unfolds by following deterministic and probabilistic laws that do their best to satisfy the free will of all the persons of the society. We define three possible kinds of histories for everlasting societies: primitive histories, good histories, and golden histories. In primitive histories, persons are inherently selfish, and they use their free will to obtain the personal ownerships of all the goods of the society. In good histories, persons are inherently good, and they use their free will to distribute the goods of the society. In good histories, a person is not only able to desire the personal ownership of goods, but is also able to desire that a good be owned by another person. In golden histories, free will is bound by the ethic of reciprocity, which states that "you should wish upon others as you would like others to wish upon yourself". In golden societies, the ethic of reciprocity becomes a law that partially binds free will, and that must be abided at all times. In other words, the verb "should" becomes the verb "must"

Gaia Data Release 1. Cross-match with external catalogues - Algorithm and results

Although the Gaia catalogue on its own will be a very powerful tool, it is the combination of this highly accurate archive with other archives that will truly open up amazing possibilities for astronomical research. The advanced interoperation of archives is based on cross-matching, leaving the user with the feeling of working with one single data archive. The data retrieval should work not only across data archives, but also across wavelength domains. The first step for seamless data access is the computation of the cross-match between Gaia and external surveys. The matching of astronomical catalogues is a complex and challenging problem both scientifically and technologically (especially when matching large surveys like Gaia). We describe the cross-match algorithm used to pre-compute the match of Gaia Data Release 1 (DR1) with a selected list of large publicly available optical and IR surveys. The overall principles of the adopted cross-match algorithm are outlined. Details are given on the developed algorithm, including the methods used to account for position errors, proper motions, and environment; to define the neighbours; and to define the figure of merit used to select the most probable counterpart. Statistics on the results are also given. The results of the cross-match are part of the official Gaia DR1 catalogue.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication by A&

On the conceptual design of the novel balanced rolling piston expander

This work presents a novel type of positive-displacement expander, named the balanced rolling piston expander. It proposes also a design procedure and assesses the mechanical behavior of a virtual prototype. The expander is conceptually capable of operating at higher fluid temperatures than other positive-displacement expanders, such as scroll- or screw-type machines. Moreover, it employs a radially balanced rotor, differently from common rolling piston technologies and does not require any timing mechanism for filling and emptying the working chambers, differently from Wankel or reciprocating solutions. The investigated virtual prototype is chosen for the study case of a small-scale heat recovery unit currently under investigation. The results indicate that a prototype of about 300 mm in diameter and 100 mm in length is capable of an ideal power of 20 kW. Moreover, vane accelerations can be relatively high but anyhow comparable to those in sliding vane machines, while pressure drops in percent terms are in general lower than 1%. Lastly, load-induced displacements are manageable by a proper radial clearance at room temperature. In brief, the balanced rolling piston expander is a promising option for small-scale power generation units operating with temperatures not achievable by common technologies and, hence, it deserves further investigation

Noise Induced Phenomena in the Dynamics of Two Competing Species

Noise through its interaction with the nonlinearity of the living systems can give rise to counter-intuitive phenomena. In this paper we shortly review noise induced effects in different ecosystems, in which two populations compete for the same resources. We also present new results on spatial patterns of two populations, while modeling real distributions of anchovies and sardines. The transient dynamics of these ecosystems are analyzed through generalized Lotka-Volterra equations in the presence of multiplicative noise, which models the interaction between the species and the environment. We find noise induced phenomena such as quasi-deterministic oscillations, stochastic resonance, noise delayed extinction, and noise induced pattern formation. In addition, our theoretical results are validated with experimental findings. Specifically the results, obtained by a coupled map lattice model, well reproduce the spatial distributions of anchovies and sardines, observed in a marine ecosystem. Moreover, the experimental dynamical behavior of two competing bacterial populations in a meat product and the probability distribution at long times of one of them are well reproduced by a stochastic microbial predictive model.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures; to be published in Math. Model. Nat. Phenom. (2016

Searching for Ground Truth: a stepping stone in automating genre classification

This paper examines genre classification of documents and its role in enabling the effective automated management of digital documents by digital libraries and other repositories. We have previously presented genre classification as a valuable step toward achieving automated extraction of descriptive metadata for digital material. Here, we present results from experiments using human labellers, conducted to assist in genre characterisation and the prediction of obstacles which need to be overcome by an automated system, and to contribute to the process of creating a solid testbed corpus for extending automated genre classification and testing metadata extraction tools across genres. We also describe the performance of two classifiers based on image and stylistic modeling features in labelling the data resulting from the agreement of three human labellers across fifteen genre classes.

Studying the evolution of AGB stars in the Gaia epoch

We present asymptotic giant branch (AGB) models of solar metallicity, to allow the interpretation of observations of Galactic AGB stars, whose distances should be soon available after the first release of the Gaia catalogue. We find an abrupt change in the AGB physical and chemical properties, occurring at the threshold mass to ignite hot bottom burning,i.e. $3.5M_{\odot}$. Stars with mass below $3.5 M_{\odot}$ reach the C-star stage and eject into the interstellar medium gas enriched in carbon , nitrogen and $^{17}O$. The higher mass counterparts evolve at large luminosities, between $3\times 10^4 L_{\odot}$ and $10^5 L_{\odot}$. The mass expelled from the massive AGB stars shows the imprinting of proton-capture nucleosynthesis, with considerable production of nitrogen and sodium and destruction of $^{12}C$ and $^{18}O$. The comparison with the most recent results from other research groups are discussed, to evaluate the robustness of the present findings. Finally, we compare the models with recent observations of galactic AGB stars, outlining the possibility offered by Gaia to shed new light on the evolution properties of this class of objects.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS (2016 July 11

Agriculture and Sustainability: a GIS Based Model to Appraise Incentive Policy

Agriculture is the major form of protection of local identities and sustainability and one of the most fragile Italian economic sectors, exposed to fluctuations of the financial/economic crisis. As a consequence, boosting agricultural policies should integrate conflicting objectives connected to preservation and innovation, effectiveness/efficiency, and landscape features and job opportunities. Referring to a large land area located in the central part of Sicily (Italy) the paper proposes an assessment/planning pattern aimed at providing some axiological items and a specific algorithm able to appraise each specific land parcel, generating different strategies and selecting the best format of funding allocation. The pattern combines some WebGIS tools helpful for spatial analysis and management of the big data amount coming from the Landscape Regional Plan and the cadastral vector database. The general approach integrates monetary and qualitative features, as well as land estate and landscape values within a multidimensional pattern providing the quantitative conditions for supporting qualitative and sustainable development

The flight of Arcadia: spatial CO2/SO2 variations in a cross section above the Nord East crater of Etna volcano

The CO2/SO2 ratio in volcanic plumes of open conduit volcanoes can provide useful information about the magma depth inside a conduit and the possible occurrence of an eruptive event. Moreover, the same CO2 measurement when combined with a SO2 flux measurement, commonly carried out at many volcanoes nowadays, is used to contribute to an improved estimate of global volcanic CO2 budget. Today worldwide at 13 volcanoes automated in-situ instruments (known as Multi-GAS stations) are applied to continuously determine CO2/SO2 ratios and to use this signal as additional parameter for volcanic monitoring. Usually these instruments carry out measurements of half an hour 4 – 6 times/day and thus provide continuous CO2/SO2 values and their variability. The stations are located at crater rims in a position that according to the prevailing winds is invested by the plume. Obviously, although the stations are carefully positioned, it is inevitable that other sources than the plume itself, e.g. soil degassing and surrounding fumaroles, contribute and will be measured as well, covering the ‘real’ values. Between July and September 2014 experiments were carried out on the North East crater (NEC) of Mount Etna, installing a self-made cable car that crossed the crater from one side to the other. The basket, called “Arcadia”, was equipped with an automated standard Multi-GAS station and a GPS, which acquired at high frequency (0.5 Hz) the following parameters : CO2, SO2, H2S, Rh, T, P and geo-coordinates. The choice of NEC of the volcano Etna was based on its accessibility, the relative small diameter (about 230 m) and the presence of a relatively constant and rather concentrated plume. Actually, NEC belongs also to the monitoring network EtnaPlume (managed by the INGV of Palermo). The aim of these experiments was to observe variations of each parameter, in particular the fluctuation of the CO2/SO2 ratio within the plume, moving from the edge to the center of the crater. The gained results give a first possibility to understand if common measurements carried out at the edge of a crater are subject to overor underestimation and about the order of derivations caused by other sources than the plume. A preliminary analysis results in a lower CO2/SO2 ratio in the central part of the crater versus the more peripheral one. The deviation between the average CO2/SO2 ratio and the center of the plume ranges from a minimum of 58% up to a maximum of 74%. An increased CO2/SO2 emission could be caused by the influence of soil and/or fumarolic degassing at the crater rim. This interpretation leads us to the conclusion that measurements by fixed installed stations might overestimate the CO2/SO2 ratio compared to values originating from the “pure” plume. Further on, it means that variations of up to 74%(in our experiment) don’t necessarily correlate with volcanic activity changes

Modelling Bacterial Dynamics in Food Products: Role of Environmental Noise and Interspecific Competition

In this paper we review some results obtained within the context of the predictive microbiology, which is a specific field of the population dynamics. In particular we discuss three models, which exploit tools of statistical mechanics, for bacterial dynamics in food of animal origin. In the first model, the random fluctuating behaviour, experimentally meas- ured, of the temperature is considered. In the second model stochastic differential equations are introduced to take into account the influence of physical and chemical variables, such as temperature, pH and activity water, subject to deter- ministic and random variations. The third model, which is an extended version of the second one, neglects the environ- mental fluctuations, and concentrates on the role of the interspecific bacterial interactions. The comparison between expected results and observed data indicates that the presence of noise sources and interspecific bacterial interactions improves the predictive features of the models analyzed