(Zen And The Art Of) Post-Modern Philosophy: A Partially Interpreted Model

Wittgenstein once wrote, “a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism,” and Nyberg’s explanation as to why Hilary Putnam’s answer to the question of whether we might intelligibly suppose ourselves to be “brains in a vat” is wrong takes us, by way of Wittgenstein’s statement, to the intersection of metaphysics and epistemology, i.e., to the very cornerstone of western philosophy, where we find, waiting for us, the absolute I of solipsism. Yet, it is the solipsistic I which in its articulation most obviously violates the private language argument’s stricture against criterionless reference, though the solipsist has available a reply of sorts – the reply of silence, a complete silence which shrouds equally the blank slates of absolute solipsism and pure realism. Through silence, the I of solipsism becomes the eye of realism and, no longer visible even to itself, vanishes from the realm of analytic discourse, only to be reborn at the correspondent point of each successive incarnation of the paradigm. Other methods of philosophy must, thus, be adopted if we are ever to escape the analytic paradigm’s cyclic limits. It is here, at the point where analysis alone can carry us no further, that “Zen” transitions from an unusually-structured but still traditional philosophic essay into something else entirely, with the incorporation into its closing pages of 15 poetic pieces, each drawn from Nyberg’s 100, a longer text of philosophical poetry which takes up where “Zen” leaves off. [email protected] Iowa City, Iowa/Palo Alto, California/New York, New York/Los Angeles, California/Rapid City, South Dakota June 1982-January 202

Testing an autoregressive structure in binary time series models

This paper introduces a Lagrange Multiplier (LM) test for testing an autoregressive structure in a binary time series model proposed by Kauppi and Saikkonen (2008). Simulation results indicate that the two versions of the proposed LM test have reasonable size and power properties when the sample size is large. A parametric bootstrap method is suggested to obtain approximately correct sizes also in small samples. The use of the test is illustrated by an application to recession forecasting models using monthly U.S. data.LM test, Binary response, Dynamic probit model, Parametric bootstrap, Recession forecasting

QR-GARCH-M Model for Risk-Return Tradeoff in U.S. Stock Returns and Business Cycles

In the empirical finance literature findings on the risk return tradeoff in excess stock market returns are ambiguous. In this study, we develop a new QR-GARCH-M model combining a probit model for a binary business cycle indicator and a regime switching GARCH-in-mean model for excess stock market return with the business cycle indicator defining the regime. Estimation results show that there is statistically significant variation in the U.S. excess stock returns over the business cycle. However, consistent with the conditional ICAPM, there is a positive risk-return relationship between volatility and expected return independent of the state of the economy.Regime switching GARCH model; GARCH-in-mean model; probit model; stock return; risk-return tradeoff; business cycle

Postglacial colonization and parallel evolution of metal tolerance in the polyploid Cerastium alpinum

The Fennoscandian flora is characterized by a high frequency of polyploids, probably because they were more successful than diploid plants in colonizing after the last Ice Age. The first postglacial colonizers were likely poor competitors and became displaced from the lowlands as forests advanced. Consequently, many of these pioneers are currently found only above tree line. However, some have persisted within the forests on open habitats such as naturally toxic serpentine soils where succession is arrested at the pioneer stage. These populations represent relicts of former widely distributed plants. The polyploid Cerastium alpinum L. (Caryophyllaceae) grows on serpentine soils throughout Fennoscandia. C. alpinum populations on different soil types provide a model system for the study of the early postglacial colonization history of Fennoscandia. Genetic markers showed that C. alpinum populations in western Fennoscandia differ genetically from eastern populations, suggesting a two-way colonization. The two lineages meet in a hybrid zone in Northern Scandinavia where a high degree of genetic variation was found. Plants from Fennoscandia and the Western Arctic (Canada, Greenland and Iceland) shared many AFLP fragments, which suggests they originate from common refugia. The Fennoscandian populations were more distantly related to the populations in potential refugia in southern Europe. In fact, the northern populations contained AFLP fragments not found in populations in the Pyrenees and the Alps. Lack of chloroplast DNA variation indicates fast postglacial range expansions and/or a recent origin of C. alpinum. Crosses were made to establish the inheritance of enzyme markers. The results strengthen the evidence for an allopolyploid origin of C. alpinum. Adjacent serpentine and non-serpentine populations of C. alpinum provide a model system of natural replicates to test whether adaptation to serpentine is constitutive (common for all populations) or locally evolved. A growth experiment with high concentrations of nickel and magnesium, two metals that limit the fertility of serpentine soils, showed that the degree of metal tolerance reflects site-specific soil conditions. Since local adaptation was found in both the eastern and the western immigration lineages, the postglacial colonization of Fennoscandia has involved parallel evolution of metal tolerance in C. alpinum

Hospital Service Plans: Their Contract Provisions and Administrative Procedures

We propose an FDI system for the wind turbine benchmark designed by the application of a generic automated method. No specific adaptation of the method for the wind turbine benchmark is needed, and the number of required human decisions, assumptions, as well as parameter choices is minimized. The method contains in essence three steps: generation of candidate residual generators, residual generator selection, and diagnostic test construction. The proposed FDI system performs well in spite of no specific adaptation or tuning to the benchmark. All faults in the predefined test sequence can be detected and all faults, except a double fault, can also be isolated shortly thereafter. In addition, there are no false or missed detections

Easement Condemnation and State v. Doyle: Fair Market Value without a Market

Rapporten presenterar ett tillvägagångssätt att med moderna medel angripa en av äldre tidens kryptotekniker, bokchiffer, där nummer utifrån boktexter utgör kryptotexten. Ett speciellt fall som varit olöst i närmare 200 år, det så kallade Beale-kryptot, kommer att vara huvudområdet och tillskillnad från den klassiska metodiken att medels penna och papper räkna och lösa, tillåta datorn att snabba på den långdragna arbetsprocessen. Ett inför rapporten skapat datorprogram kommer att användas, ett program som dels klarar av att replikera den gamla metodiken, dels att introducera nya lösningsgångar och dels att presentera statistik över dokument som undersöks. Programmet kan presentera de lösningarna man sedan vill titta närmare på i dekrypterad form, något som blir intressant både ur ett replikerbarhetsperspektiv men också om nya intressanta dokument dyker upp under den statistiska testningen. Testfallen resulterar inte i några nya intressanta nycklar, men visar på att metoden är rättvisande då ett historiskt löst dokument får markanta utstickande resultat

Forest and water relations in miombo woodlands

Miombo is a significant biome covering about 10% of the African landmass. Climate semi-aridity is the main edaphic determinant. Range of annual rainfall and dry season length is high, but the unimodal rainfall distribution is common for all miombo. Water is increasingly an issue of trade-off between different land uses and increasing demand on biomass production. This review gives a basic description of major components in the relations between tree cover and water in semi-arid landscapes. From this, in lack of relevant research within miombo landscapes, a scientifically based discussion is given on how future uses and management of these complex woodlands could serve in better management of scarce water resources and in what ways more research in these aspects could enlighten this discussion. It is concluded that, like for other semi-arid landscapes, there is need for understanding and developing more complex stand management to optimize biomass production and water use efficiency. At the same time climate change adaptation will add to this need of deepened biophysical process understandin

Doubly Perfect Nonlinear Boolean Permutations

Due to implementation constraints the XOR operation is widely used in order to combine plaintext and key bit-strings in secret-key block ciphers. This choice directly induces the classical version of the differential attack by the use of XOR-kind differences. While very natural, there are many alternatives to the XOR. Each of them inducing a new form for its corresponding differential attack (using the appropriate notion of difference) and therefore block-ciphers need to use S-boxes that are resistant against these nonstandard differential cryptanalysis. In this contribution we study the functions that offer the best resistance against a differential attack based on a finite field multiplication. We also show that in some particular cases, there are robust permutations which offers the best resistant against both multiplication and exponentiation base differential attacks. We call them doubly perfect nonlinear permutations