Kwantumverstrengelingen: dodelijk of bevrijdend?

De fysici die de kwantummechanica in de eerste helft van de twintigste eeuw ontwikkelden, waren zich er onmiddellijk van bewust dat met het ontstaan van de kwantummechanica ook de prangende vraag ontstond naar een nieuwe kennisleer en naar een nieuw wereldbeeld. Toch is het pas in de jaren zeventig dat het kwantumdebat voor het grote publiek zichtbaar werd. Toen ontstond de stroom van bestsellers die ons ervan willen overtuigen dat de kwantummechanica niet enkel de belofte van een transformatie van een materialistisch naar een holistisch wereldbeeld in zich draagt, maar tevens de impuls tot een soortgelijke cultuurtransformatie. Nu de eenentwintigste eeuw aangebroken is en we op de drempel staan van een nieuw technologisch tijdperk, waarin juist de kennis van de niet-lokale kwantumverstrengelingen omgezet wordt in technologieën als kwantumcryptografie en kwantumcomputers, willen we evalueren of de gemaakte belofte nagekomen is. Krijgt een holistische cultuur momenteel gestalte of vormen deze nieuwe technologieën een uitdrukkelijke voortzetting van de vaak ontmenselijkende technologische evolutie van de voorbije eeuw? Is het ontstane enthousiasme op het ideële vlak wel toereikend als tegenwicht voor de twintigste-eeuwse fragmentatie van onze dagelijkse leefwereld? Deze kwestie belichaamt de belangrijkste eenentwintigste-eeuwse uitdaging voor al wie nadenkt over de gevolgen van de kwantummechanica.Ronny Desmet (1959) werd in 1983 licentiaat wiskunde aan de UIA met een eindwerk over de wiskundige grondslagen van de kwantummechanica. Na een gevarieerde loopbaan in het onderwijs en in het bankwezen, werd hij in 1996 financieel en administratief directeur van Sun Microsystems BeLux. In 2002 verliet Ronny Desmet de bedrijfswereld om aan de UA voltijds filosofiestudent te worden, waar hij dit jaar licentiaat filosofie werd met een eindwerk over het einde van het mechanistische wereldbeeld. Ondertussen ging hij van start met de voorbereiding van een doctoraat o.l.v. Prof. Guido Vanheeswijck (UA) en Prof. André Cloots (KUL) onder de werktitel Rewriting Whitehead’s ‘Science and the Modern World’

Alignment and algebraically special tensors in Lorentzian geometry

We develop a dimension-independent theory of alignment in Lorentzian geometry, and apply it to the tensor classification problem for the Weyl and Ricci tensors. First, we show that the alignment condition is equivalent to the PND equation. In 4D, this recovers the usual Petrov types. For higher dimensions, we prove that, in general, a Weyl tensor does not possess aligned directions. We then go on to describe a number of additional algebraic types for the various alignment configurations. For the case of second-order symmetric (Ricci) tensors, we perform the classification by considering the geometric properties of the corresponding alignment variety.Comment: 19 pages. Revised presentatio

The State of Utah v. Joseph C. Valdez : Brief of Appellee

APPEAL FROM THE THIRD CIRCUIT COURT IN AND FOR TOOELE COUNTY, THE HONORABLE EDWARD A. WATSON PRESIDIN

Thirty years of research on children’s rights in the context of migration: towards increased visibility and recognition of some children, but not all?

This article presents a tentative analysis of 30 years of academic research in the field of children’s rights and migration (1989–2019). Much research has addressed the plight of unaccompanied, refugee and asylum-seeking children, trying better to link children’s rights considerations with international refugee law. Many publications address the best interests of the child principle and the right to be heard. Most research focuses on (migration towards) Europe. This has led to an increased visibility and recognition of children’s rights in the context of migration. However, there are still various blind spots in the research reviewed. Most research focuses on some children, but not all (e.g., accompanied children), on some rights, but not all (e.g., economic, social and cultural rights), and on some types of migration, but not all (e.g., economic migration). Moreover, refugee and migrant children tend to be studied as a group, which risks reducing attention for their internal diversity

Incorporating macroeconomic leading indicators in tactical capacity planning

Tactical capacity planning relies on future estimates of demand for the mid- to long-term. On these forecast horizons there is increased uncertainty that the analysts face. To this purpose, we incorporate macroeconomic variables into microeconomic demand forecasting. Forecast accuracy metrics, which are typically used to assess improvements in predictions, are proxies of the real decision associated costs. However, measuring the direct impact on decisions is preferable. In this paper, we examine the capacity planning decision at plant level of a manufacturer. Through an inventory simulation setup, we evaluate the gains of incorporating external macroeconomic information in the forecasts, directly, in terms of achieving target service levels and inventory performance. Furthermore, we provide an approach to indicate capacity alerts, which can serve as input for global capacity pooling decisions. Our work has two main contributions. First, we demonstrate the added value of leading indicator information in forecasting models, when evaluated directly on capacity planning. Second, we provide additional evidence that traditional metrics of forecast accuracy exhibit weak connection with the real decision costs, in particular for capacity planning. We propose a more realistic assessment of the forecast quality by evaluating both the first and second moment of the forecast distribution. We discuss implications for practice, in particular given the typical over-reliance on forecast accuracy metrics for choosing the appropriate forecasting model

Periodic mass loss episodes due to an oscillation mode with variable amplitude in the hot supergiant HD50064

We aim to interpret the photometric and spectroscopic variability of the luminous blue variable supergiant HD\,50064 ($V=8.21$).CoRoT space photometry and follow-up high-resolution spectroscopy, with a time base of 137\,d and 169\,d, respectively, was gathered, analysed and interpreted using standard time series analysis and light curve modelling methods as well as spectral line diagnostics.The space photometry reveals one period of 37\,d, which undergoes a sudden amplitude change with a factor 1.6. The pulsation period is confirmed in the spectroscopy, which additionally reveals metal line radial velocity values differing by $\sim 30\,$km\,s$^{-1}$ depending on the spectral line and on the epoch. We estimate \teff$\sim$13\,500\,K, \logg$\sim$1.5 from the equivalent width of Si lines. The Balmer lines reveal that the star undergoes episodes of changing mass loss on a time scale similar to the changes in the photometric and spectroscopic variability, with an average value of $\log\dot{\rm M}\simeq-5$ (in M$_\odot$\,yr$^{-1}$). We tentatively interpret the 37\,d period as due to a strange mode oscillation.Comment: 4 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letter

Objects with symbolic meaning: 16 directions to inspire design for well-being

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Products as Affective Modifiers of Identities

© The Author(s) 2015. Are salesclerks seen as better, more powerful, or more active when they drive Mustangs? What about entrepreneurs? What about driving a mid-sized car? Intuitively, we have ideas about these, but much of the research on the affective nature of products is on purchasing, desires, and self-fulfillment. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, we argue that people's association with products has some basis in the impression management of their identity. For this to occur, there must be some cultural consensus about the way that products modify identities. Drawing on affect control theory's (ACT) methodology and equations, we measure the goodness, powerfulness, and activeness of several products, identities, and the associated product-modified identities to explore how products function as affective modifiers of identities. We find consistent effects across several types of technology products, whereby products pull the modified identity in the direction of the products' affective qualities. Support is established for the ACT equations that predict how traits modify identities as also having utility for predicting how products modify identities. This suggests that the opening questions can be answered empirically by measuring cultural-specific sentiments of the identity and the product and by developing equations to predict the identity modification process

Using symbolic meaning as a means to design for happiness: The development of a card set for designers

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Priority-Setting and Personality

In a publicly fnanced health system, it is important that priority-setting refects social values. Many studies investigate public preferences through surveys taken from samples, but to be representative, these samples must refect value judgments of all relevant population subgroups. In this study, we explore whether, next to better-understood sources of heterogeneity such as age, education or gender, also diferences in personality play a role in how people want to set limits to health care. We investigate the infuence of dispositional optimism: whether someone anticipates a good or bad future. This is an important personality dimension that has been shown to widely reverberate into people’s lives and that can also be expected to infuence people’s views on health care. To test our hypothesis, we asked a representative sample of the Belgian population (N=750) to complete both the revised life orientation test and a discrete choice experiment about allocating healthcare resources, and we investigated the relationships between both measurements. We found that more pessimistic individuals were less supportive of using patients’ age as a selection criterion and more hesitant to invest in prevention. Since individual dispositions are usually not part of the criteria for selecting representative samples, our fndings point at a potential non-response bias in studies that elicit social values