Auslegung: A journal of philosophy, volume 16, number 1 (winter, 1990) book review

Review of Nelson Goodman's "Of Mind and Other Matters

Linguistics

Contains reports on two research projects.National Institute of Mental Health (Grant MH-13390-03

AN INTERNATIONAL ASSESSMENT: TRANSFORMING MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE TO ECONOMICALLY VIABLE ENERGY

poster abstractThe world population is increasing daily, and waste is rising proportionally. The increase of the population, health development, economic growth and shifting population from rural life to urban life has made waste for municipalities an infrastructure concern. Currently, Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage, is one of the challenging problems for municipalities. There have been three particular ways for discarding MSW: landfilling, burning, and recycling. The usual method for waste disposal has been landfilling which handles 54.3% of produced MSW in U.S. (Environmental Protection Agency, 2010). According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP),“The increasing volumes of waste being generated would not be a problem if waste was viewed as a resource and managed properly” (2001). We can produce more waste; on the other hand we can generate more energy from that waste. Waste to Energy (WTE) technology is a green opportunity to continue the path of human ingenuity and technological advancement. The WTE goal defines a new solution that can efficiently deal with substantial percentages of waste, while also creating energy as a co-product. This study will evaluate common WTE technologies that are currently available: pyrolysis, gasification, plasma arc gasification, and anaerobic digestion. Pyrolysis, gasification and plasma arc gasification are all thermal decomposition technologies that can treat waste material in elevated temperature conditions; anaerobic digestion is a biological treatment process. Incineration is also a current WTE technology that is classified as a thermal treatment option but it is not environmentally friendly. Also, existing national and international technology providers will be discussed and their technologies in industry will be assessed while considering MSW as a feedstock and energy as a co-product

Optimal Resource Allocation in Random Networks with Transportation Bandwidths

We apply statistical physics to study the task of resource allocation in random sparse networks with limited bandwidths for the transportation of resources along the links. Useful algorithms are obtained from recursive relations. Bottlenecks emerge when the bandwidths are small, causing an increase in the fraction of idle links. For a given total bandwidth per node, the efficiency of allocation increases with the network connectivity. In the high connectivity limit, we find a phase transition at a critical bandwidth, above which clusters of balanced nodes appear, characterised by a profile of homogenized resource allocation similar to the Maxwell's construction.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

A heuristic approach for the allocation of resources in large-scale computing infrastructures

An increasing number of enterprise applications are intensive in their consumption of IT, but are infrequently used. Consequently, organizations either host an oversized IT infrastructure or they are incapable of realizing the benefits of new applications. A solution to the challenge is provided by the large-scale computing infrastructures of Clouds and Grids which allow resources to be shared. A major challenge is the development of mechanisms that allow efficient sharing of IT resources. Market mechanisms are promising, but there is a lack of research in scalable market mechanisms. We extend the Multi-Attribute Combinatorial Exchange mechanism with greedy heuristics to address the scalability challenge. The evaluation shows a trade-off between efficiency and scalability. There is no statistical evidence for an influence on the incentive properties of the market mechanism. This is an encouraging result as theory predicts heuristics to ruin the mechanism’s incentive properties. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Inference and Optimization of Real Edges on Sparse Graphs - A Statistical Physics Perspective

Inference and optimization of real-value edge variables in sparse graphs are studied using the Bethe approximation and replica method of statistical physics. Equilibrium states of general energy functions involving a large set of real edge-variables that interact at the network nodes are obtained in various cases. When applied to the representative problem of network resource allocation, efficient distributed algorithms are also devised. Scaling properties with respect to the network connectivity and the resource availability are found, and links to probabilistic Bayesian approximation methods are established. Different cost measures are considered and algorithmic solutions in the various cases are devised and examined numerically. Simulation results are in full agreement with the theory.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, major changes: Sections IV to VII updated, Figs. 1 to 3 replace

Jasminum nudiflorum Lindl.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/21248/thumbnail.jp