498 research outputs found
Substitution in a sense
The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate ‘( ) is a horse’ does not refer to a property is point out that ‘( ) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. However, when we understand ‘substitution’ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism; in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances; the reification of sense; the difference between terms and predicates; and the relation between reference and disquotation. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like
Energy level displacement of the excited nl state of pionic hydrogen
The energy level displacements of the excited nl states of pionic hydrogen
and the contribution of the ns -> 1s transitions and the (pi^-p)_Coul -> 1s
transitions of the pi^-p pair, coupled by the attractive Coulomb field in the
S-wave state with a continuous energy spectrum, to the shift of the energy
level of the ground state of pionic hydrogen, caused by strong low-energy
interactions, are calculated within a quantum field theoretic, relativistic
covariant and model-independent approach developed in nucl-th/0306047.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, latex, text is revised, references are adde
The flora and vegetation of an old solvay process tip in Jaworzno (Upper Silesia, Poland)
This paper demonstrates the flora, plant communities and substrates of an old soivay process spoil tip in Upper Silesia, Poland. In an area of 15 000 m2 there are growing 136 vascular plant species. The flora is characterised by the preponderance of Asteraceae - species and long-lived perennial herbs, many of them coming from meadows and grasslands. Ninety-five percent of species are apophytes despite the anthropogenic origin of the site. A majority of species are associated with moderately dry, base-rich soils with low or moderate levels of nitrogen. The site is shown to be an important refuge for some protected species, montane species and other elements uncommon in the local flora.
An analysis of a series of samples used a methodology based on the assessment of percentage cover of particular species and multivariate analysis based on TWINSPAN. Both suggested a relatively high overall similarity between the samples with minor variations associated with moister substrates.
Elemental analysis and pH determinations of soil samples associated with the releves revealed a narrow range of pH and an absence of any strong concentrations of heavy metals. A redundancy analysis of the soil-plant relationships suggested that the strongest trend of differentiation was most closely associated with a phosphate gradient, and the next strongest was pH and possibly waterlogging. The most species-rich vegetation was associated with low phosphate and high pH levels.
The results could be interpreted to suggest that processes of soil development and plant succession are slow but nevertheless perceptible, with implications for future loss of diversity. The vegetation constitutes an assemblage essentially of one type showing only weak relationships with described vegetation types such as Molinio-Arrhenatheretea meadow, Festuco- Brometea grassland and Caricetalia davallianae mire. The results also suggest that the vegetation of the site is of considerable value for nature conservation. The site should be protected and be the subject of further research
Galactic Chemical Evolution of Radioactive Isotopes with an s-process Contribution
Analysis of inclusions in primitive meteorites reveals that several short-lived radionuclides (SLRs) with half-lives of 0.1-100 Myr existed in the early solar system (ESS). We investigate the ESS origin of 107Pd, 135Cs, and 182Hf, which are produced by slow neutron captures (the s-process) in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. We modeled the Galactic abundances of these SLRs using the OMEGA+ galactic chemical evolution (GCE) code and two sets of mass- and metallicity-dependent AGB nucleosynthesis yields (Monash and FRUITY). Depending on the ratio of the mean-life τ of the SLR to the average length of time between the formations of AGB progenitors γ, we calculate timescales relevant for the birth of the Sun. If τ/γ ⪆ 2, we predict self-consistent isolation times between 9 and 26 Myr by decaying the GCE predicted 107Pd/108Pd, 135Cs/133Cs, and 182Hf/180Hf ratios to their respective ESS ratios. The predicted 107Pd/182Hf ratio indicates that our GCE models are missing 9%-73% of 107Pd and 108Pd in the ESS. This missing component may have come from AGB stars of higher metallicity than those that contributed to the ESS in our GCE code. If τ/γ ≲ 0.3, we calculate instead the time (T LE) from the last nucleosynthesis event that added the SLRs into the presolar matter to the formation of the oldest solids in the ESS. For the 2 M o˙, Z = 0.01 Monash model we find a self-consistent solution of T LE = 25.5 Myr
A calculation of the Lepage-Mackenzie scale for the lattice axial and vector currents
We calculate the perturbative scales (q*) for the axial and vector currents
for the Wilson action, with and without tadpole improvement, using Lepage and
Mackenzie's formalism. The scale for the pseudoscalar density (times the mass)
is computed as well. Contrary to naive expectation, tadpole improvement reduces
q* by only a small amount for the operators we consider. We also discuss the
use of a nonperturbative coupling to calculate the perturbative scale.Comment: 13 pages. One postscript figur
Separable potential model for interactions at low energies
The effective separable meson-baryon potentials are constructed to match the
equivalent chiral amplitudes up to the second order in external meson momenta.
We fit the model parameters (low energy constants) to the threshold and low
energy data. In the process, the -proton bound state problem is
solved exactly in the momentum space and the 1s level characteristics of the
kaonic hydrogen are computed simultaneously with the available low energy
cross sections. The model is also used to describe the
mass spectrum and the energy dependence of the amplitude.Comment: 31 pages, v2 - added corrections to make it compatible with the
published versio
Tuning gastropod locomotion: Modeling the influence of mucus rheology on the cost of crawling
Common gastropods such as snails crawl on a solid substrate by propagating
muscular waves of shear stress on a viscoelastic mucus. Producing the mucus
accounts for the largest component in the gastropod's energy budget, more than
twenty times the amount of mechanical work used in crawling. Using a simple
mechanical model, we show that the shear-thinning properties of the mucus favor
a decrease in the amount of mucus necessary for crawling, thereby decreasing
the overall energetic cost of locomotion.Comment: Corrected typo
Dilepton production in proton-proton collisions at BEVALAC energies
The dilepton production in elementary reactions at
BEVALAC energies GeV is investigated. The calculations
include direct decays of the vector mesons , , and , Dalitz decays of the -, -, -, -, and -mesons, and of the baryon resonances
. The subthreshold vector meson production cross sections in
collisions are treated in a way sufficient to avoid double counting with the
inclusive vector meson production. The vector meson dominance model for the
transition form factors of the resonance Dalitz decays is
used in an extended form to ensure correct asymptotics which are in agreement
with the quark counting rules. Such a modification gives an unified and
consistent description of both radiative decays and meson decays.
The effect of multiple pion production on the experimental efficiency for the
detection of the dilepton pairs is studied. We find the dilepton yield in
reasonable agreement with the experimental data for the set of intermediate
energies whereas at the highest energy GeV the number of
dilepton pairs is likely to be overestimated experimentally in the mass range
MeV.Comment: 25 pages (IOP style), 5 figures, revised manuscript accepted for
publication in JP
Two-loop Anomalous Dimensions of Heavy Baryon Currents in Heavy Quark Effective Theory
We present results on the two-loop anomalous dimensions of the heavy baryon
HQET currents with arbitrary Dirac matrices
and . From our general result we obtain the two-loop
anomalous dimensions for currents with quantum numbers of the ground state
heavy baryons , and . As a by-product of our
calculation and as an additional check we rederive the known two-loop anomalous
dimensions of mesonic scalar, pseudoscalar, vector, axial vector and tensor
currents in massless QCD as well as in HQET.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures are included in PostScript forma
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