Truths and euphemisms: How euphemisms are used in the political arena

Politicians are notorious for their employment of words in a disguised fashion through the usage of euphemisms. Consequently, their message becomes a recurrent theme of conspicuous deception. Elected government representatives deliberately engage in grandiloquent expression conscious of its subversive capacity. The deviancy of euphemisms is guided by social norms that politicians are permitted to exercise in order to safeguard their images. When politicians envelop seemingly good intentions with conscious deception, people are harmed in the process. Those in power transgress justice and commit crimes with their overwhelming command of euphemisms. In fact, euphemisms are utilized as masks, hiding truths under the protective tones of a speaker with a genuine, worthwhile goal. Selective vocabulary is employed to arouse, rationalize and justify. To achieve this end, politicians misrepresent the facts of various political situations by using terms that completely transform or falsify them. Euphemisms are used simplistically in daily conversations. However, where they are used and misused more frequently is in the political arena, in such cases as “soft targets” or “peace keepers” or “collateral damage.” These expressions are heard frequently, while past ones are forgotten and new ones primed in their place as transgressions continue. In this paper, I will make use of Jurgen Habermas’ public sphere theory, a critical theory that demonstrates how the audience’s outlook affects political action. This article will demonstrate the deliberate use of euphemisms in political language both as a cultural element and as one that is constantly changing to suit the ever-changing political arena

Geometric rigidity of constant heat flow

Let $\Omega$ be a compact Riemannian manifold with smooth boundary and let $u_t$ be the solution of the heat equation on $\Omega$, having constant unit initial data $u_0=1$ and Dirichlet boundary conditions ($u_t=0$ on the boundary, at all times). If at every time $t$ the normal derivative of $u_t$ is a constant function on the boundary, we say that $\Omega$ has the {\it constant flow property}. This gives rise to an overdetermined parabolic problem, and our aim is to classify the manifolds having this property. In fact, if the metric is analytic, we prove that $\Omega$ has the constant flow property if and only if it is an {\it isoparametric tube}, that is, it is a solid tube of constant radius around a closed, smooth, minimal submanifold, with the additional property that all equidistants to the boundary (parallel hypersurfaces) are smooth and have constant mean curvature. Hence, the constant flow property can be viewed as an analytic counterpart to the isoparametric property. Finally, we relate the constant flow property with other overdetermined problems, in particular, the well-known Serrin problem on the mean-exit time function, and discuss a counterexample involving minimal free boundary immersions into Euclidean balls.Comment: Replaces the earlier version arXiv: 1709.03447. To appear in Calculus of Variations and PD

Optimal eigenvalue estimates for the Robin Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds

We consider the first eigenvalue $\lambda_1(\Omega,\sigma)$ of the Laplacian with Robin boundary conditions on a compact Riemannian manifold $\Omega$ with smooth boundary, $\sigma\in\bf R$ being the Robin boundary parameter. When $\sigma>0$ we give a positive, sharp lower bound of $\lambda_1(\Omega,\sigma)$ in terms of an associated one-dimensional problem depending on the geometry through a lower bound of the Ricci curvature of $\Omega$, a lower bound of the mean curvature of $\partial\Omega$ and the inradius. When the boundary parameter is negative, the lower bound becomes an upper bound. In particular, explicit bounds for mean-convex Euclidean domains are obtained, which improve known estimates. Then, we extend a monotonicity result for $\lambda_1(\Omega,\sigma)$ obtained in Euclidean space by Giorgi and Smits to a class of manifolds of revolution which include all space forms of constant sectional curvature. As an application, we prove that $\lambda_1(\Omega,\sigma)$ is uniformly bounded below by $\frac{(n-1)^2}4$ for all bounded domains in the hyperbolic space of dimension $n$, provided that the boundary parameter $\sigma\geq\frac{n-1}{2}$ (McKean-type inequality). Asymptotics for large hyperbolic balls are also discusse

Sharp bounds for the first eigenvalue of a fourth order Steklov problem

We study the biharmonic Steklov eigenvalue problem on a compact Riemannian manifold Ω with smooth boundary. We give a computable, sharp lower bound of the first eigenvalue of this problem, which depends only on the dimension, a lower bound of the Ricci curvature of the domain, a lower bound of the mean curvature of its boundary and the inner radius. The proof is obtained by estimating the isoperimetric ratio of non-negative subharmonic functions on Ω, which is of independent interest. We also give a comparison theorem for geodesic balls

Lower bounds for the first eigenvalue of the magnetic Laplacian

We consider a Riemannian cylinder endowed with a closed potential 1-form A and study the magnetic Laplacian with magnetic Neumann boundary conditions associated with those data. We establish a sharp lower bound for the first eigenvalue and show that the equality characterizes the situation where the metric is a product. We then look at the case of a planar domain bounded by two closed curves and obtain an explicit lower bound in terms of the geometry of the domain. We finally discuss sharpness of this last estimate.Comment: Replaces in part arXiv:1611.0193

On the evolution of the instance level of DL-lite knowledge bases

Recent papers address the issue of updating the instance level of knowledge bases expressed in Description Logic following a model-based approach. One of the outcomes of these papers is that the result of updating a knowledge base K is generally not expressible in the Description Logic used to express K. In this paper we introduce a formula-based approach to this problem, by revisiting some research work on formula-based updates developed in the '80s, in particular the WIDTIO (When In Doubt, Throw It Out) approach. We show that our operator enjoys desirable properties, including that both insertions and deletions according to such operator can be expressed in the DL used for the original KB. Also, we present polynomial time algorithms for the evolution of the instance level knowledge bases expressed in the most expressive Description Logics of the DL-lite family