Vacuum Condensates and the Anomalous Magnetic Moment of a Dirac Fermion

We address anticipated fermion-antifermion and dimension-4 gauge-field vacuum-condensate contributions to the magnetic portion of the fermion-photon vertex function in the presence of a vacuum with nonperturbative content, such as that of QCD. We discuss how inclusion of such condensate contributions may lead to a vanishing anomalous magnetic moment, in which case vacuum condensates may account for the apparent consistency between constituent quark masses characterizing baryon magnetic moments and those characterizing baryon spectroscopy.Comment: 32 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Foundations of Physics (1999

The Meeting of Water, Trash, & Us

The sewer system is an integral part of an urban context. It separates types of wastewater, while also making our city cleaner and more beautiful. However, these pipes clog and back up, loosening the functional system. As a result, we now face unseen daily accumulations of trash and flooding. Due to the dynamic topography in this old part of the city, the Gateway Mall is a great place to highlight the sewer system and play play with the rules of the old sewer system. Humans have built up thousands of plastic and concrete pipes underground to move the wastewater. In the site, three ‘rivers’ collect surface runoff from streets, which ease the pressure for real river and urban flooding, and a catch basin and a rain garden provide stops for the trash. The use of soil transfer creates a more dramatic terrain, combined with decks to provide a richer level of space. Intuitively facing the strong contrast between the hills piled up by human waste and the beautiful environment will cause people to think about their personal habits. The more attention people pay for themselves, the more motivation to recover the environment by the action.https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/fall2019_stanek/1002/thumbnail.jp

Reason and Caring about in Akratic Action

I shall focus on the following question: what is the relation between agents and their akratic action, in some complicated cases? I shall compare three routes: (1) akratic agents cannot be active, (2) akratic agents can act for good reasons, and (3) agents might care about their akratic action more than their better judgment. In Chapter 1, I shall explain the concept of akrasia and its irrational factors. In addition, I shall offer some cases to show the difficulties of understanding akrasia and the Irrational-passive Proposal’s shortcomings. In Chapter 2, I shall analyse Nomy Arpaly’s (2003) view on “inverse akrasia”, taking Huckleberry Finn’s case as an example, and argue that: it is plausible to say that deliberation is not necessary for responding to reasons. However, this Reason-responsive Proposal might fail to capture some interesting features of Huckleberry Finn’s case, especially the lack of the first-person justification. More details taken from the novel might show us an alternate interpretation. To set the stage for the alternative, in Chapter 3, I shall focus on two concepts offered by Harry Frankfurt (1988, 1999): caring about and volitional necessity. If their relative independence of desires and reason-responsiveness can be defended, this leaves room for a discrepancy between caring about and reason-responsiveness, which can be reduced to neither one between desires and reason-responsiveness, nor one within reason-responsiveness. In Chapter 4, I shall offer a proposal based on Chapter 3, and suggest that in some cases, agents act akratically because they do not care about their better judgments as much as they care about what their akratic action benefits. Then I shall use this Out-of-caring-about Proposal to interpret several cases to show its merits and features. In Chapter 5, I shall reply to some objections and mention one implication that the Out-of-caring-about Proposal might have