27,941 research outputs found
How Thought Experiments Increase Understanding
We might think that thought experiments are at their most powerful or most interesting when they produce new knowledge. This would be a mistake; thought experiments that seek understanding are just as powerful and interesting, and perhaps even more so. A growing number of epistemologists are emphasizing the importance of understanding for epistemology, arguing that it should supplant knowledge as the central notion. In this chapter, I bring the literature on understanding in epistemology to bear on explicating the different ways that thought experiments increase three important kinds of understanding: explanatory, objectual and practical
Parametric Manifolds II: Intrinsic Approach
A parametric manifold is a manifold on which all tensor fields depend on an
additional parameter, such as time, together with a parametric structure,
namely a given (parametric) 1-form field. Such a manifold admits natural
generalizations of Lie differentiation, exterior differentiation, and covariant
differentiation, all based on a nonstandard action of vector fields on
functions. There is a new geometric object, called the deficiency, which
behaves much like torsion, and which measures whether a parametric manifold can
be viewed as a 1-parameter family of orthogonal hypersurfaces.Comment: Plain TeX, 13 pages, no figure
Algebraic Reduction of Feynman Diagrams to Scalar Integrals: a Mathematica implementation of LERG-I
A Mathematica implementation of the program LERG-I is presented that performs
the reduction of tensor integrals, encountered in one-loop Feynman diagram
calculations, to scalar integrals. The program was originally coded in REDUCE
and in that incarnation was applied to a number of problems of physical
interest.Comment: 16 page
The Content-Dependence of Imaginative Resistance
An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved
The nakhlite meteorites provide evidence for mineralization of martian CO2 by carbonation of silicates
Evidence from the Lafayette meteorite shows that carbon dioxide could have been sequestered very effectively from the martian atmosphere by mineral carbonation
Was the Universe Reionized by Massive Population-III Stars?
The WMAP satellite has measured a large optical depth to electron scattering
after cosmological recombination of 0.17+-0.04, implying significant
reionization of the primordial gas only ~200 million years after the big bang.
However, the most recent overlap of intergalactic HII regions must have occured
at z<9 based on the Lyman-alpha forest constraint on the thermal history of the
intergalactic medium. Here we argue that a first generation of metal-free stars
with a heavy (rather than Salpeter) mass function is therefore required to
account for much of the inferred optical depth. This conclusion holds if
feedback regulates star formation in early dwarf galaxies as observed in
present-day dwarfs.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, replaced to match version accepted by ApJ Letter
A study of the high frequency limitations of series resonant converters
A transformer induced oscillation in series resonant (SR) converters is studied. It may occur in the discontinuous current mode. The source of the oscillation is an unexpected resonant circuit formed by normal resonance components in series with the magnetizing inductance of the output transformers. The methods for achieving cyclic stability are: to use a half bridge SR converter where q0.5. Q should be as close to 1.0 as possible. If 0.5q1.0, the instability will be avoided if psi2/3q-1/3. The second objective was to investigate a power field effect transistor (FET) version of the SR converter capable of operating at frequencies above 100 KHz, to study component stress and losses at various frequencies
Institutional Investors, Corporate Ownership, and Corporate Governance: Global Perspectives
Institutional investors, Corporate ownership, Corporate governance
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