12,378 research outputs found
Windmills and the production of gunpowder in Malta
Each and every discussion revolving around the history of windmills in Malta has always and, wrongly so, focused on their exclusive use for grinding wheat and barley, without taking into consideration that some of these windmills, in particular those situated behind the fortified walls (but not only), could have had a dual function; that of being powder mills and machines for the grinding of corn. Old maps of the Grand Harbour have clearly documented the use of windmills in Malta forthe exclusive production of gunpowder at the turn of the seventeenth century. For security reasons, gunpowder mills were mostly situated within the city walls. However, in the absence of historical records, the major difficulties are: which of these windmills were used for milling grain? Which had a dual function? Which were used exclusively for producing gun powder? This paper seeks to answer these questions.peer-reviewe
The Entitlement Theory of Justice in Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia
Nozick’s entitlement theory of justice has its major attempts to defend the institution of private property and to criticize the redistributive measures on the part of government. Nozick frowns at Rawls’ approach and the approach of welfare economics, which focused on evaluating only current time-slices of a distribution with no concern about the procedural aspects of justice. His notion of distributive justice has its anchorage on the account of what and how a given person is entitled to in virtue of what he has acquired and earned. While Rawls, whose position seems incompatible with that of Nozick holds a notion of justice on the account of the equality of the claims of each person in respect of basic needs and of the means to meet such needs. Nozick’s theory is a reaction against Rawls’ notion of distributive justice which he terms patterned, and of which he feels if upheld would consistently interfere with individual’s rights. This paper therefore argues that contrary to what Robert Nozick seems to suggest we do not see his theory as all satisfying nor any alternative, rather we are convinced that the inherent merits of his theory would suitably complement other patterned theories of distributive justice. This paper employed the expository method as well as critical analysis and prescriptive methods
Gauge theory duals of black hole - black string transitions of gravitational theories on a circle
We study the black hole - black string phase transitions of gravitational
theories compactified on a circle using the holographic duality conjecture. The
gauge theory duals of these theories are maximally supersymmetric and strongly
coupled 1 + 1 dimensional SU(N) Yang-Mills theories compactified on a circle,
in the large limit. We perform the strongly coupled finite temperature
gauge theory calculations on a lattice, using the recently developed exact
lattice supersymmetry methods based on topological twisting and orbifolding.
The spatial Polyakov line serves as relevant order parameter of the confinement
- deconfinement phase transitions in the gauge theory duals.Comment: v2: 8 pages, 2 figures. References added. Talk given at the 6th
International Symposium on Quantum Theory and Symmetries (QTS6), Lexington,
Kentucky, 20-25 Jul 200
Probabilistic growth of large entangled states with low error accumulation
The creation of complex entangled states, resources that enable quantum
computation, can be achieved via simple 'probabilistic' operations which are
individually likely to fail. However, typical proposals exploiting this idea
carry a severe overhead in terms of the accumulation of errors. Here we
describe an method that can rapidly generate large entangled states with an
error accumulation that depends only logarithmically on the failure
probability. We find that the approach may be practical for success rates in
the sub-10% range, while ultimately becoming unfeasible at lower rates. The
assumptions that we make, including parallelism and high connectivity, are
appropriate for real systems including measurement-induced entanglement. This
result therefore shows the feasibility for real devices based on such an
approach.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Distributed quantum computation with arbitrarily poor photon detection
In a distributed quantum computer scalability is accomplished by networking
together many elementary nodes. Typically the network is optical and inter-node
entanglement involves photon detection. In complex networks the entanglement
fidelity may be degraded by the twin problems of photon loss and dark counts.
Here we describe an entanglement protocol which can achieve high fidelity even
when these issues are arbitrarily severe; indeed the method succeeds with
finite probability even if the detectors are entirely removed from the network.
An experimental demonstration should be possible with existing technologies.Comment: 5 pages, 4 fig
Harmonic response of the organ of corti: results for wave dispersion
Inner ear is a remarkable multiphysical system and its modelling is a great challenge. The approach used in this paper aims to reproduce physic with a realistic description of the radial cross section of the cochlea. A 2D‐section of the organ of Corti is fully described. Wavenumbers and corresponding modes of propagation are calculated taking into account passive structural responses. The study is extended to six cross sections of the organ of Corti and a large frequency bandwidth from 100 Hz to 3 kHz. Dispersion curves reveal the influence of fluid structure interactions with a dispersive behavior at high frequencies. Longitudinal mechanical coupling provides new interacting modes of propagation
Surgical excision of renal cell carcinoma with caval and intra-atrial tumour thrombus extension using deep hypothermic circulatory arrest
Surgery for tumour thrombus extension in Renal Cell Carcinoma may be associated with a good prognosis if no distant metastases are identified and if the thrombus can be completely excised. The surgical approach chosen will depend on the level of tumour thrombus extension. We present a case of Renal Cell Carcinoma in the right kidney with tumour thrombus extension into the right atrium. This was successfully removed by right radical nephrectomy and excision of the atrial thrombus using cardio-pulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. This is the first procedure of its kind to be undertaken in Malta.peer-reviewe
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