Backward Causation, Isolation and the Pursuit of Justice

The recent operationalization of the famous Newcomb's game by Schmidt (1998) offers an interesting and thought-provoking look at the plausibility of backward causation in a Newtonian universe. Hereby we investigate two details of the Schmidt's scenario which may, at least in principle, invalidate his conclusion in two different domains: one dealing with the issue of Newtonian predictability in specific instance of human actions, and the other stemming from a possible strategy aimed at obviating the anthropically oriented view of backward causation as applied to a judicial and ethical problem posed by a version of the scenario. We conclude that the scenario is at least to be more complex than originally presented in order to remain viable. However, it points to a very deep and delicate question of compatibility of backward causation with the conventional ethical standards.Comment: Epistemologia, accepted for publicatio

Economic analysis and optimization for bio-hydrogen production from oil palm waste via steam gasification

Biomass steam gasification with in-situ carbon dioxide capture using CaO exhibits good prospects for the production of hydrogen rich gas. In Malaysia, due to abundance of palm waste, it is a good candidate to be used as a feedstock for hydrogen production. The present work focuses on the mathematical modeling of detailed economic analysis and cost minimization of the flowsheet design for hydrogen production from palm waste using MATLAB. The influence of the operating parameters on the economics is performed. It is predicted that hydrogen cost decreasing by increasing both temperature and steam/biomass ratio. Meanwhile, the hydrogen cost increases when increasing sorbent/biomass ratio. Cost minimization solves to give optimum cost of 1.9105 USD/kg with hydrogen purity, hydrogen yield, hydrogen efficiency and thermodynamic efficiency are 79.9 mol%, 17.97 g/hr, 81.47% and 79.85% respectively. The results indicate that this system has the potential to offer low production cost for hydrogen production from palm waste

Public-Private Partnership\u27s Contract in Malaysia: Some Areas of Concern in a Land Swap Arrangement

This paper seeks to explore the public-private partnership initiative and salient provisions of government contracts in Malaysia. This paper further examines some areas of concern emphasising on a land swap type of contract. There are still many other provisions that need to be addressed for example on obligations, design and constructions, choosing the right type of contracts, operations and maintenance, sub-contracts, relief events, liability and damages, performance security, default and termination and dispute resolutions which is not dealt in this paper

O círculo vicioso que prende os periódicos nacionais (The vicious circle in which national periodicals are trapped )

Scientific periodicals published by the less developed countries and which do not have English as national language have to face many barriers. Even when included in international databases, they are usually unable to break into the circle of those titles regularly analyzed by the most prestigious citation indexes. Sometimes they reflect problems of national political and economic stability. Thy are often amateurish in production, and have a poor distribution scheme, are not regular and dye easily. They are probably not widely read, nor are they the first choice of authors, if there is a better, international chance. What are they good for? This article reports on a survey, still in progress, of citations done by articles published by one Brazilian periodical, which aims to verify whether the national output is read and cited by Brazilian authors and results may contradict some of these notions. It points the to electronic version as a solution which would help overcome some of the difficulties encountered to break the vicious circle in which national periodicals are trapped

Isothermal sintering of BZT ceramics

Starting mixtures of BaCO3 •ZnO and Ti02 were mechanically activated for 0,5, 10,20.40 and 80 minutes in a planetary ball mill. The powders obtained were sintered isothermally to temperatures between 1000 and 1300 °C. The phase composition of powders and sintered samples were followed by X-ray analyses. Also, the changes in microstructures were detected using SEM

ADOPSI PETANI TERHADAP INOVASI TANAMAN PADI SAWAH ORGANIK DI DESA MOLOMPAR KECAMATAN TOMBATU TIMUR, KABUPATEN MINAHASA TENGGARA

The objective of this research is to know the Innovation Adoption of Organic rice farmers in Tombatu Village Molompar Eastern District o Southeast Minahasa Regency and determine factors underlying farmers to adopt organic farming systems, especially organic rice. The study lasted for 3 (three) months, starting from December 2015 to March 2016. The determination of the territories in which the sample is determined by using the model of purposive sampling. For the research sample was taken 10 percent of the population that is 41 organic paddy rice farmers in the Molompar Village. The results showed that the adoption rate of organic paddy rice high enough that most farmers have implemented or adopted the organic paddy rice; based on the speed of innovation adoption of organic rice paddy, earlyimplemented farmer groups was categorized as the most speed of innovation adoption of organic paddy rice; there is a relationship between the level of age, education, extensive land ownership and income. Younger age, higher education, ownership of land, and the high revenue level tend to be of higher organic rice paddy level of adoption

Ginger extract (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) triggers apoptosis in hepatocarcinogenesis induced rats

Ginger extract has been reported previously by our group to exhibit anticancer and an-tioxidant effects by reducing tumour burden and lipid peroxidation respectively in he-patocarcinogenesis induced rats. The current study examined the expression of pro-apoptotic protein caspase-8 and anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 in hepatocarcinogenesis treated rats. Thirty normal male Wistar rats were divided into 5 groups based on the diet given: i) control (normal rat chow), ii) olive oil, iii) ginger extract (100mg/kg body weight), iv) choline deficient diet + ethionine, CDE (to induce liver cancer) and v) CDE+ ginger extract. Rats were killed at week 8, and liver tissues were excised for immuno-histochemical study to identify pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic proteins, caspase-8 and Bcl-2. The observation on H&E staining confirmed the CDE diet induced liver can-cer as indicated by the presence of numerous oval cells. Identification of Bcl-2 expres-sion showed that 91.6% (11/12) of the samples from the CDE group revealed positive staining while treatment with ginger extract however inhibited the expression with only 8.4% (1/12) samples showing positive staining for Bcl-2. As for caspase-8 protein, 41.7% (5/12) of the samples from CDE group showed positive staining, which in-creased to 100% (12/12) with ginger extract treatment. Our findings suggest that gin-ger extract has an anticancer effect by inducing apoptosis in liver cancer cells via up-regulation of the expression of pro-apoptotic protein, caspase-8 and down-regulation of the expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-