Remarks on the Anathemas in the Palaea Historica

Translated by Marek MajerThe original text of the Palaea Historica, a Byzantine narration based on the initial books of the Old Testament, contains two anathema directed against the Phundagiagitae (adherents of a medieval neo-Manichaean heresy), accusing them of the belief in Cain’s being the son of Satanael and in that the union of Adam and Eve occurred in the Garden of Eden already. The analysis of the relevant passages and their counterparts in two Slavic translations of the Palaea, as well as certain other Byzantine and Slavic medieval texts with related content, contributes to illuminating the circumstances under which the Slavic translations arose. The paper also discusses the very term Phundagiagitae (practically absent from all other Slavic sources) and addresses the issue of the supposed non-canonicity of the Palaea

Dualities and positivity in the study of quantum entanglement

We present a survey on mathematical topics relating to separable states and entanglement witnesses. The convex cone duality between separable states and entanglement witnesses is discussed and later generalized to other families of operators, leading to their characterization via multiplicative properties. The condition for an operator to be an entanglement witness is rephrased as a problem of positivity of a family of real polynomials. By solving the latter in a specific case of a three-parameter family of operators, we obtain explicit description of entanglement witnesses belonging to that family. A related problem of block positivity over real numbers is discussed. We also consider a broad family of block positivity tests and prove that they can never be sufficient, which should be useful in case of future efforts in that direction. Finally, we introduce the concept of length of a separable state and present new results concerning relationships between the length and Schmidt rank. In particular, we prove that separable states of length lower of equal 3 have Schmidt ranks equal to their lengths. We also give an example of a state which has length 4 and Schmidt rank 3.Comment: A shortened and amended version of author's Master's Thesi

On Medieval Storytelling. The Story of Melchizedek in Certain Slavonic Texts (Palaea Historica and the Apocryphal Cycle of Abraham)

Translated by Katarzyna GucioThe article analyses the story of the prophet-king Melchizedek (mentioned in Gen 14,17–20, Ps 110,4 and three passages in Heb: 5,6–10, 6,20, 7,1–17), recorded in Slavonic historical texts: the first and second translation of Palaea Historica, and the first and second edition of the so-called apocryphal cycle of Abraham (in which there are several references to Melchizedek). Compared to the scarce information about Melchizedek from the Old and New Testament, stories of extra-biblical origin communicate a significant amount of detail concerning the king-priest, comprising a description of nearly all of his life. Comparison of key episodes in the life of Melchizedek and Abraham (such as origin, revelation, conflict with their pagan parent, leaving home and journey, promise of greatness given by God, testimony or theophany or angelophany, experience of human sacrifice, a change of name) in the Palaea and the cycle confirms – based on the Slavonic material – analogies in the construction of the two protagonists. Both accounts – in the Palaea and the cycle – make the characters more “full-blooded” than in the Bible. The story of Melchizedek presented in the Palaea is characterised by fragmentation (being contained in four chapters), and disrupts chronological order to a small degree, emphasising cause-and-effect relationships, while at the same time it can be considered as a prototype or a singular variant of Vitae: the structure and selection of content of the bio- or hagiographic story meet the characteristics of the genre

An Experimental Investigation of Preference Misrepresentation in the Residency Match

The development and deployment of matching procedures that incentivize truthful preference reporting is considered one of the major successes of market design research. In this study, we test the degree to which these procedures succeed in eliminating preference misrepresentation. We administered an online experiment to 1,714 medical students immediately after their participation in the medical residency match--a leading field application of strategy-proof market design. When placed in an analogous, incentivized matching task, we find that 23% of participants misrepresent their preferences. We explore the factors that predict preference misrepresentation, including cognitive ability, strategic positioning, overconfidence, expectations, advice, and trust. We discuss the implications of this behavior for the design of allocation mechanisms and the social welfare in markets that use them

The IMPRESS DDT: a database design toolbox based on a formal specification language

The Database Design Tool prototype is being developed in the IMPRESS project (Esprit project 6355). The IMPRESS project started in May 1992 and aims at creating a low-level storage manager tailored for multimedia applications, together with a library of efficient operators, a programming environment, high-level design tools and methodology. The DDT is part of this last effort.\ud \ud The project focuses on the field of Technical Information Systems, where there is a need for tools supporting modeling of complex objects. Designers in this field usually use incremental design or step by step prototyping, because this seems to be best suited for users coping with complexity and uncertainty about their own needs or requirements. The IMPRESS DDT aims at supporting the database design part of this process

An Attempt at Assessment of Alnetum Incanae Lüdi 1921 Transformations in the Skawica River Valley (The Beskid Żywiecki MTS)

The paper presents an attempt at assessment of Alnetum incanae LÜDI 1921 transformations in the Skawica River valley. The field studies were carried out in the whole Skawica valley. On the basis of phytosociological relevés, the participation of species which prefer riparian habitats, the number and cover of anthropophytes, including invasive plants, were analyzed. The presence of synanthropic sites was also taken into consideration. The research demonstrated that in the study area phytocoenoses of the Alnetum incanae association have primarily retained natural character, in spite of a noticeable influence of human impact. The results suggested that the vicinity of synanthropic sites does not eliminate natural components of phytocoenosis