First Causes: Divine and Human

The paper analyzes the concept of a first cause, both for event causation and for agent causation. It turns out that one is rather ready to believe in the existence of first causes that are events, but not in the existence of first causes that are agents. The paper, however, develops and defends a complex argument to the conclusion that there is a first agent-cause. one version of that argument proves -- not necessarily the existence of God -- but still the existence of a godlike agent. Finally, the notion of a first agent-cause is employed for an analysis of freely willed human action

New Product Development of a Yoghurt Dessert via E-Collaboration

The following contribution describes how an E-collaboration platform may be used within new product development. In order to develop a new dairy product (a yoghurt dessert), a leading Austrian dairy co-operated with representatives from the Austrian University of Natural Resources and Applied Live Sciences Vienna and other experts by use of a specific E-collaboration platform. The main aim of the project was the preparation of innovative product concepts. All necessary data and documents concerning consumer behaviour, market trends, product features etc. were distributed via a closed E-collaboration platform. The participants worked together for about half a year; however, only two personal meetings were necessary, all other communication processes (also group discussions) were done via the E-collaboration platform. It was possible to simultaneously communicate and co-operate even though the participants were located in Vienna, Upper Austria and Italy (South Tyrol). In the end a new product could be developed which was launched in one of the big three Austria supermarket chains in 2004. It could be proven that the state of the art in new product development is absolutely compatible with the usage of information technology for communication and knowledge transfer purposes; however, confidentiality and trust are absolutely indispensable for the success of such a project.innovation, new product development, dairy industry, E-collaboration, Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Industrial Organization,

Bonjour"s A Priori Justification of Induction

Justifications of induction, and certainly a priori justifications\ud of induction, are out of fashion these days. In a\ud chapter of his recent book, In Defense of Pure Reason\ud (1998)1, however, Lawrence Bonjour, the respected American\ud epistemologist, bucks the trend and makes a valiant\ud attempt to revive the latter. What he claims can be justified\ud a priori is that if the premise of a standard inductive argument\ud obtains, then it is likely or probable that the conclusion\ud will hold. A standard inductive premise, for Bonjour,\ud will state that a certain proportion m/n of observed cases of\ud A have been cases of B, as well as specify that there has\ud been "suitable variation of the collateral circumstances�\ud and that the "observed proportion ... converges over time\ud to the fraction m/n� (Bonjour, 206-07). The standard\ud inductive conclusion will state that there is "a corresponding\ud objective regularity in the world� (212), in other\ud words an objective regularity of the form: m/n of all As are\ud Bs

Evidence of grain growth in the disk of the bipolar proto-planetary nebula M 1--92

We investigate the dust size and dust shell structure of the bipolar proto-planetary nebula M 1--92 by means of radiative transfer modeling. Our models consists of a disk and bipolar lobes that are surrounded by an AGB shell, each component having different dust characteristics. The upper limit of the grain size $a_\mathrm{max}$ in the lobes is estimated to be $0.5 \mu$m from the polarization value in the bipolar lobe. The $a_\mathrm{max}$ value of the disk is constrained with the disk mass (0.2 M_{\sun}), which was estimated from a previous CO emission line observation. We find a good model with $a_\mathrm{max}=1000.0 \mu$m, which provides an approximated disk mass of 0.15 M_{\sun}. Even taking into account uncertainties such as the gas-to-dust mass ratio, a significantly larger dust of $a_\mathrm{max}>100.0 \mu$m, comparing to the dust in the lobe, is expected. We also estimated the disk inner radius, the disk outer radius, and the envelope mass to be 30 $R_\star$(=9 AU), 4500 AU, and 4 M_{\sun}, respectively, where $v_\mathrm{exp}$ is the expansion velocity. If the dust existing in the lobes in large separations from the central star undergoes little dust processing, the dust sizes preserves the ones in the dust formation. Submicron-sized grains are found in many objects besides M 1--92, suggesting that the size does not depend much on the object properties, such as initial mass of the central star and chemical composition of the stellar system. On the other hand, the grain sizes in the disk do. Evidence of large grains has been reported in many bipolar PPNs, including M 1--92. This result suggests that disks play an important role in grain growth.Comment: 8 pages with 3 figures. Accepted for publication in A&

The Casimir force for passive mirrors

We show that the Casimir force between mirrors with arbitrary frequency dependent reflectivities obeys bounds due to causality and passivity properties. The force is always smaller than the Casimir force between two perfectly reflecting mirrors. For narrow-band mirrors in particular, the force is found to decrease with the mirrors bandwidth.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, LaTe