Логические аллюзии в сюжетах фантастической литературы: от «дилеммы Авраама» до «новояза»

The present paper presents various cases whose essence is the analysis of the logical background of various subjects of sci-fi and fantasy. To begin, I investigate the properties of self-unfulfilling prophecies and point out the situations in which its schemes and mechanisms are involved (Abraham’s Dilemma, Smullyan’s Hippie’s Paradox, “stoic happiness”; the “anaesthetic effect”, the “epistemological nightmare”, etc.). Next, I propose to apply the plot of “return from the stars” by Stanisław Lem to the analysis of the present-day acceleration of social processes. The third important block of the paper is formed by a semantic story (regarding the phenomenon of the expressive power of languages) about Georgy Shakhnazarov’s notion of concept, Plato’s myth of the cave and Orwell’s Newspeak.В настоящей работе представлены различные кейсы, сутью которых является разбор логической подоплеки различных сюжетов фантастической литературы. Для начала разбираются свойства самонесбывающегося пророчества, указываются ситуации, в которых работают его схемы и механизмы («дилемма Авраама», «парадокс хиппи» Р. Смаллиана, «стоическое счастье»; «эффект анальгина», «эпистемический кошмар» и др.). Далее предлагается применить сюжет «возвращение со звезд» С. Лема к анализу ускорения социальных процессов в настоящее время. Третий важный блок работы образует семантический рассказ (относительно феномена «выразительные возможности языков») о концепции понятия Г. Шахназарова, «мифе о пещере» Платона и «новоязе» Дж. Оруэлла

Forty-two years of scientific research on eight legs-celebrating the 60th birthday of Dr Yuri M. Marusik

The biography of Dr Yuri Mikhailovich Marusik is presented, and his scientific life illuminated on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Yuri is a renowned specialist of spiders. He has described 718 new species, 57 new genera, and two new subfamilies of order Araneae. Twenty-five species and one genus have been dedicated to him. Facts and impressions are given as well as a bibliography of his 545 publications

Unipolar barrier structures based on HgCdTe for infrared detection

One of the topical areas of solid state photoelectronics is the creation of infrared detectors based on unipolar barrier systems (for example, with an nBn architecture). The greatest progress has been achieved in the development of barrier detectors based on semiconductors of the AIIIBV group, which is associated with the possibility of realizing systems with a zero barrier in the valence band. Unipolar barrier detectors based on mercury cadmium telluride (HgCdTe) grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) are of interest due to significant technological advantages, since the creation of such devices can abandon the defect forming procedure of ion implantation. Despite a significant number of theoretical works, only a few attempts are known to practically implement nBn detectors based on MBE HgCdTe

Dicyemida and Orthonectida: Two Stories of Body Plan Simplification

Two enigmatic groups of morphologically simple parasites of invertebrates, the Dicyemida (syn. Rhombozoa) and the Orthonectida, since the 19th century have been usually considered as two classes of the phylum Mesozoa. Early molecular evidence suggested their relationship within the Spiralia (=Lophotrochozoa), however, high rates of dicyemid and orthonectid sequence evolution led to contradicting phylogeny reconstructions. Genomic data for orthonectids revealed that they are highly simplified spiralians and possess a reduced set of genes involved in metazoan development and body patterning. Acquiring genomic data for dicyemids, however, remains a challenge due to complex genome rearrangements including chromatin diminution and generation of extrachromosomal circular DNAs, which are reported to occur during the development of somatic cells. We performed genomic sequencing of one species of Dicyema, and obtained transcriptomic data for two Dicyema spp. Homeodomain (homeobox) transcription factors, G-protein-coupled receptors, and many other protein families have undergone a massive reduction in dicyemids compared to other animals. There is also apparent reduction of the bilaterian gene complements encoding components of the neuromuscular systems. We constructed and analyzed a large dataset of predicted orthologous proteins from three species of Dicyema and a set of spiralian animals including the newly sequenced genome of the orthonectid Intoshia linei. Bayesian analyses recovered the orthonectid lineage within the Annelida. In contrast, dicyemids form a separate clade with weak affinity to the Rouphozoa (Platyhelminthes plus Gastrotricha) or (Entoprocta plus Cycliophora) suggesting that the historically proposed Mesozoa is a polyphyletic taxon. Thus, dramatic simplification of body plans in dicyemids and orthonectids, as well as their intricate life cycles that combine metagenesis and heterogony, evolved independently in these two lineages

MISHIMA - a new method for high speed multiple alignment of nucleotide sequences of bacterial genome scale data

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Large nucleotide sequence datasets are becoming increasingly common objects of comparison. Complete bacterial genomes are reported almost everyday. This creates challenges for developing new multiple sequence alignment methods. Conventional multiple alignment methods are based on pairwise alignment and/or progressive alignment techniques. These approaches have performance problems when the number of sequences is large and when dealing with genome scale sequences.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We present a new method of multiple sequence alignment, called MISHIMA (Method for Inferring Sequence History In terms of Multiple Alignment), that does not depend on pairwise sequence comparison. A new algorithm is used to quickly find rare oligonucleotide sequences shared by all sequences. Divide and conquer approach is then applied to break the sequences into fragments that can be aligned independently by an external alignment program. These partial alignments are assembled together to form a complete alignment of the original sequences.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>MISHIMA provides improved performance compared to the commonly used multiple alignment methods. As an example, six complete genome sequences of bacteria species <it>Helicobacter pylori </it>(about 1.7 Mb each) were successfully aligned in about 6 hours using a single PC.</p

Advances in the study of the spider fauna of ex-USSR

Volume: 2Start Page: 472End Page: 47

Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Wholly Aromatic Copolyesters Based on 4′-Hydroxybiphenyl-3-Carboxylic and 3-Hydroxybenzoic Acids

A series of new wholly aromatic (co)polyesters based on m-substituted bifunctional comonomers—4′-hydroxybiphenyl-3-carboxylic (3HBCA) and 3-hydroxybenzoic (3HBA) acids with molar ratios of 3HBCA:3HBA from 0:100 to 60:40, respectively—was synthesized. NMR and FTIR spectroscopy methods proved the full compliance of the copolymer composition with the target ratio of comonomers, as well as high compositional homogeneity (absence of block sequences). The resulting copolyesters have a sufficiently high molecular weight and their intrinsic viscosity values are in the range of 0.6–0.8 dL/g. Thermal analysis showed that all 3HBCA-3HBA copolyesters are amorphous, and with an increase in the content of biphenyl units (3HBCA), the glass transition temperature increases significantly (up to 190 °C). The onset of the intense thermal decomposition of the synthesized polyesters occurs above 450 °C. Thus, this indicates a sufficiently high thermal stability of these polyesters. Rheological measurements have shown that melts of copolyesters with a high content of 3HBCA units exhibit anisotropic properties. At the same time, the method of polarization optical microscopy did not confirm the transition to the liquid crystal state for these polyesters. These results confirm that it is possible to obtain high-performance polyesters based on 3HBCA, but not a mesogenic comonomer. Thus, 3HBCA is a promising comonomer for the synthesis of new thermotropic copolyesters with controlled anisotropic properties

Femtoscopy within a hydrodynamic approach based on flux tube initial conditions

In pp scattering at LHC energies, large numbers of elementary scatterings will contribute significantly, and the corresponding high multiplicity events will be of particular interest. Elementary scatterings areparton ladders, identified with color flux tubes. In high multiplicity events, many of these flux tubes are produced in the same space region, creating high energy densities. We argue that there is good reason to employthe successful procedure used for heavy ion collisions: matter is assumed to thermalize quickly, so that theenergy from the flux tubes can be taken as initial condition for a hydrodynamic expansion. This scenario getsspectacular support from very recent results on Bose–Einstein correlations in pp scattering at 900 GeV atthe LHC