Black hole entropy from Quantum Geometry

Quantum Geometry (the modern Loop Quantum Gravity using graphs and spin-networks instead of the loops) provides microscopic degrees of freedom that account for the black-hole entropy. However, the procedure for state counting used in the literature contains an error and the number of the relevant horizon states is underestimated. In our paper a correct method of counting is presented. Our results lead to a revision of the literature of the subject. It turns out that the contribution of spins greater then 1/2 to the entropy is not negligible. Hence, the value of the Barbero-Immirzi parameter involved in the spectra of all the geometric and physical operators in this theory is different than previously derived. Also, the conjectured relation between Quantum Geometry and the black hole quasi-normal modes should be understood again.Comment: a new section ``The spin probability distribution'' adde

A 2-Surface Quantization of the Lorentzian Gravity

This is a contribution to the MG9 session QG1-a. A new quantum representation for the Lorentzian gravity is created from the Pullin vaccum by the operators assigned to 2-complexes. The representation uses the original, spinorial Ashtekar variables, the reality conditions are well posed and Thiemann's Hamiltonian is well defined. The results on the existence of a suitable Hilbert product are partial. They were derived in collaboration with Abhay Ashtekar.Comment: QG1-a session of MG

Gender stereotyping in EFL grammar textbooks. A diachronic approach

Gender stereotyping in educational materials (especially in EFL textbooks) has been a common theme in linguistic research (cf., e. g., Hellinger 1980; Porreca 1984; Freebody/Baker 1987; Sunderland 1994; Lee/Collins 2010). However, very little attention has been paid to the representation of men and women in EFL/ESL grammar textbooks; i. e. the way both genders are portrayed in constructed examples of usage and practice sentences. The present contribution is intended to fill this gap. The paper investigates the scope of gender stereotyping from a diachronic perspective: it seeks to demonstrate whether and how the images of men and women have changed following the dissemination of guidelines for non-sexist language and equal treatment of the two genders in English language educational materials. To this aim, two corpora have been compiled. The first one includes sentences derived from three EFL textbooks published in the 1970s and 1980s, while the other one contains analogous data from three 21st century titles. The contrastive analysis of the sentences in the two corpora across 11 semantic domains has found that the recently published grammar textbooks portray the two genders in a much less stereotyped way than the 20th century course books

Sociolects and Registers – a Contrastive Analysis of Two Kinds of Linguistic Variation

The paper, which is a theoretical contribution to investigations of social varieties of language, deals with two major dimensions of sociolinguistic variation: sociolectal and registerial. Drawing upon the views of Polish and Anglo-Saxon linguists, the author explores the concepts of sociolect (social dialect) and register, focusing mainly on their definitions, controlling variables, methodological frameworks, and typologies. In the final section, he attempts to shed some new light on the two kinds of variation and suggests new methodological solutions that could be applied in studies of sociolinguistic variation.

Elites vs the people: populism in the political thought of Law and Justice

The purpose of this paper was to specify what is the share of narrowly understood micro-ideology in the political thought of Law and Justice. Embarking on the analysis of the above-stated problem, we first and foremost fixed particular methodological assumption. As a point of departure for our analysis we adopted the conception of the ideological morphology by Michael Freeden. In line with it, we assumed that ideologies are not fully distinct entities but they interact with one another. They are also partly overlapping and thus they share some contiguous points. In accordance with the concept of populism, as worked out within our framework, we focused our attention on the problematics of elites and the people. As conceived of by Law and Justice, elites did not discharge their duties, alienating themselves from the society and caring mainly about their own socio-economic interest. Furthermore, the critique of elites was mainly related to their non-democratic genesis and artificially created putative “super-expertise”.Eventually, we proved that populism may be regarded as one of the phenomena characterizing the political thought of Law and Justice

An event-aware cluster-head rotation algorithm for extending lifetime of wireless sensor Network with smart nodes

Smart sensor nodes can process data collected from sensors, make decisions, and recognize relevant events based on the sensed information before sharing it with other nodes. In wireless sensor networks, the smart sensor nodes are usually grouped in clusters for effective cooperation. One sensor node in each cluster must act as a cluster head. The cluster head depletes its energy resources faster than the other nodes. Thus, the cluster-head role must be periodically reassigned (rotated) to different sensor nodes to achieve a long lifetime of wireless sensor network. This paper introduces a method for extending the lifetime of the wireless sensor networks with smart nodes. The proposed method combines a new algorithm for rotating the cluster-head role among sensor nodes with suppression of unnecessary data transmissions. It enables effective control of the cluster-head rotation based on expected energy consumption of sensor nodes. The energy consumption is estimated using a lightweight model, which takes into account transmission probabilities. This method was implemented in a prototype of wireless sensor network. During experimental evaluation of the new method, detailed measurements of lifetime and energy consumption were conducted for a real wireless sensor network. Results of these realistic experiments have revealed that the lifetime of the sensor network is extended when using the proposed method in comparison with state-of-the-art cluster-head rotation algorithms