On a Nonlinear Newtonian Gravity and Charging a Black Hole

A scalar field gravitational analog of the Reissner-Nordstrom solution is investigated. The nonlinear Newtonian model has an upper-limit of charge for a central mass which agrees with the general relativistic condition required for the existence of the black hole horizon. The maximum limit for accumulation by bombardment of charged particles is found. The aim is to investigate the resulting physics after severing the effects of curvature from the effects of energy-mass equivalence.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, To appear in the American Journal of Physic

Melt-extruded polyethylene oxide (PEO) rods as drug delivery vehicles: Formulation, performance as controlled release devices and the influence of co-extruded excipients on drug release profiles

The utility of controlled release medication formulations lies in their ability to keep drugs at steady levels in the blood plasma of recipients and within the termini of the maximum and minimum effective therapeutic levels. This avoids the “ups” and “downs” of medication levels within the body which would have been the result had conventional immediate release tablets been administered instead. In the veterinary field, controlled release medications are essential¹ because of the logistical difficulties of administering drugs on a regular (e.g., daily) basis to animals. The chief advantages of controlled release veterinary medications lie in the ease with which they can be administered; decrease in stress for animals, owing to less need for rounding up and frequent dosing; and, most importantly for farmers, the reduced cost of treatment relative to that for a multiple dosage regime

If BB and f(B)f(B) are Brownian motions, then ff is affine

It is shown that if the processes $B$ and $f(B)$ are both Brownian motions (without a random time change) then $f$ must be an affine function. As a by-product of the proof, it is shown that the only functions which are solutions to both the Laplace equation and the eikonal equation are affine.Comment: 4 page

Seeing With the Two Systems of Thought—a Review of ‘Seeing Things As They Are: a Theory of Perception’ by John Searle (2015)

As so often in philosophy, the title not only lays down the battle line but exposes the author’s biases and mistakes, since whether or not we can make sense of the language game ‘Seeing things as they are’ and whether it’s possible to have a ‘philosophical’ ‘theory of perception’ (which can only be about how the language of perception works), as opposed to a scientific one, which is a theory about how the brain works, are exactly the issues. This is classic Searle—superb and probably at least as good as anyone else can produce, but lacking a full understanding of the fundamental insights of the later Wittgenstein and with no grasp of the two systems of thought framework, which could have made it brilliant. As in his previous work, Searle largely avoids scientism but there are frequent lapses and he does not grasp that the issues are always about language games, a failing he shares with nearly everyone. After providing a framework consisting of a Table of Intentionality based on the two systems of thought and thinking and decision research, I give a detailed analysis of the book. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019

Reflecting at the Speed of Light

A perfectly reflecting accelerating boundary produces thermal emission to an observer at $\mathscr{I}_L^+$ and a finite amount of energy to an observer at $\mathscr{I}_R^+$ by asymptotically traveling to the speed of light without an acceleration horizon.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; In memory of Kerson Huan

Editorial. Clinical pragmatics: an emergentist perspective

[First Paragraph] Clinical pragmatics has been a major growth area in clinical linguistics and speech and language pathology over the past two decades. Its scope is vast: if we define pragmatics in broad terms, there are no communicative disorders which do not involve pragmatic impairment at least to some degree (Perkins, 2003). Early work in the area tended to focus on the application of pragmatic theory in the analysis of pragmatic impairment (e.g. speech act theory (Hirst, LeDoux, & Stein, 1984), conversational implicature (Damico, 1985) and, more recently, relevance theory (Leinonen & Kerbel, 1999)) and on the development of pragmatic assessments, tests and profiles which included a theoretically eclectic range of items drawn from both pragmatic theory and elsewhere (e.g. Bishop, 1998; Penn, 1985; Prutting & Kirchner, 1983). In more recent years there has been an increasing interest in the neurological and cognitive bases of pragmatic impairment (e.g. Paradis, 1998; Perkins, 2000; Stemmer, 1999) and in the use of interactional approaches such as conversation analysis (e.g. Goodwin, 2003). This special issue of Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics draws on all of these areas but focuses on a particular aspect of pragmatic impairment which has often been overlooked – namely, that the behaviours we describe as pragmatic impairments are in fact the outcome of very varied and highly complex processes. This neglect is partly due to a common tendency to see pragmatics as a separate ‘level’ or even ‘module’ of language, on a par with syntax and semantics. Influenced on the one hand by speech act theory, with its distinction between language structure and communicative acts, and on the other hand by clinical populations who were either able to communicate well despite being linguistically impaired or else were poor communicators despite having good linguistic ability, clinicians assumed there to be a clear dissociation between linguistic and pragmatic competence. Although there is still considerable neurological evidence for a broadly modular view in terms of the lateralisation of linguistic and pragmatic functions, there is also compelling evidence for seeing pragmatic impairment as a more complex, non-unitary phenomenon. Non-modular, or ‘interactional’, views of pragmatic impairment have been influenced by connectionist and functional models of linguistic and cognitive processing (e.g. Bates, Thal, & MacWhinney, 1991), by a growing awareness of the role played in pragmatics by cognitive capacities such as inference, theory of mind and executive function (Martin & McDonald, 2003), and by approaches such as Conversation Analysis (e.g. Damico, Oelschlaeger, & Simmons-Mackie, 1999) which focus on those features of pragmatics which can only be accounted for in terms of interpersonal, collaborative activity. All of these interactional approaches share a view of pragmatic impairment as ‘emergent’, or ‘epiphenomenal’ (Perkins, 1998), rather than as a stand-alone, monadic entity

Discussion of: Brownian distance covariance

We discuss briefly the very interesting concept of Brownian distance covariance developed by Sz\'{e}kely and Rizzo [Ann. Appl. Statist. (2009), to appear] and describe two possible extensions. The first extension is for high dimensional data that can be coerced into a Hilbert space, including certain high throughput screening and functional data settings. The second extension involves very simple modifications that may yield increased power in some settings. We commend Sz\'{e}kely and Rizzo for their very interesting work and recognize that this general idea has potential to have a large impact on the way in which statisticians evaluate dependency in data. [arXiv:1010.0297]Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AOAS312B the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org). With Correction