Symmetric Dependence

Metaphysical orthodoxy maintains that the relation of ontological dependence is irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive. The goal of this paper is to challenge that orthodoxy by arguing that ontological dependence should be understood as non- symmetric, rather than asymmetric. If we give up the asymmetry of dependence, interesting things follow for what we can say about metaphysical explanation— particularly for the prospects of explanatory holism

Dependence of exchange anisotropy and coercivity on the Fe–oxide structure in oxygen-passivated Fe nanoparticles

Ultrafine Fe particles have been prepared by the inert gas condensation method and subsequently oxygen passivated. The as-obtained particles consist in an Fe core surrounded by an amorphous Fe-oxide surface layer. The antiferromagnetic character of the Fe-oxide surface induces an exchange anisotropy in the ferromagnetic Fe core when the system is field cooled. Samples have been heat treated in vacuum at different temperatures. Structural changes of the Fe–O layer have been monitored by x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Magnetic properties as coercivity, hysteresis loop shift, and evolution of magnetization with temperature have been analyzed for different oxide crystallization stages. A decrease of the exchange anisotropy strength is reported as the structural disorder of the surface oxide layer is decreased with thermal treatment

Smoking cessation

"Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: 2008 Update, a Public Health Service- sponsored Clinical Practice Guideline, is a product of the Tobacco Use and Dependence Guideline Panel ("the Panel"), consortium representatives, consultants, and staff. These 37 individuals were charged with the responsibility of identifying effective, experimentally validated tobacco dependence treatments and practices. The updated Guideline was sponsored by a consortium of eight Federal Government and nonprofit organizations: the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ); Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); National Cancer Institute (NCI); National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI); National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA); American Legacy Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF); and University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health's Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI). This Guideline is an updated version of the 2000 Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: Clinical Practice Guideline that was sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service, U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. An impetus for this Guideline update was the expanding literature on tobacco dependence and its treatment. The original 1996 Guideline was based on some 3,000 articles on tobacco treatment published between 1975 and 1994. The 2000 Guideline entailed the collection and screening of an additional 3,000 articles published between 1995 and 1999. The 2008 Guideline update screened an additional 2,700 articles; thus, the present Guideline update reflects the distillation of a literature base of more than 8,700 research articles. Of course, this body of research was further reviewed to identify a much smaller group of articles."- p. v1. Overview and methods. -- 2. Assessment of tobacco use -- 3. Clinical interventions for tobacco use and dependence.. -- 4. Intensive interventions for tobacco use and dependence. -- 5. Systems interventions--mportance to health care administrators, insurers, and purchasers. -- 6. Evidence and recommendations.. -- 7. Specific populations and other topics. -- Appendix A. Financial disclosure for panel members, liaisons, and peer reviewers -- Appendix B. Helpful Web site addresses -- Appendix C. Coding information regarding the diagnosis of and billing for tobacco dependence treatment -- Appendix D. Key recommendation changes From the 2000 PHS-sponsored clinical practice guideline: treating tobacco use and dependenceMichael C. Fiore (panel chair) ... [et al.]."May 2008."Available on the Internet as an Acrobat .pdf file (2.04 MB, 276 p.).Mode of access: Internet from the Office of the Surgeon General web site. Address as of 5/16/08: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/tobacco/.Bibliographical references listed at www.surgeongeneral.gov/tobacco/gdlnrefs.ht

Extreme Dependence Models

Extreme values of real phenomena are events that occur with low frequency, but can have a large impact on real life. These are, in many practical problems, high-dimensional by nature (e.g. Tawn, 1990; Coles and Tawn, 1991). To study these events is of fundamental importance. For this purpose, probabilistic models and statistical methods are in high demand. There are several approaches to modelling multivariate extremes as described in Falk et al. (2011), linked to some extent. We describe an approach for deriving multivariate extreme value models and we illustrate the main features of some flexible extremal dependence models. We compare them by showing their utility with a real data application, in particular analyzing the extremal dependence among several pollutants recorded in the city of Leeds, UK.Comment: To appear in Extreme Value Modelling and Risk Analysis: Methods and Applications. Eds. D. Dey and J. Yan. Chapman & Hall/CRC Pres

System-size dependence

The final state in The final state in heavy-ion collisions has a higher degree of strangeness saturation than the one produced in collisions between elementary particles like p-p or p-$\bar{p}$. A systematic analysis of this phenomenon is made for C-C, Si-Si and Pb-Pb collisions at the CERN SPS collider and for $Au-Au$ collisions at RHIC and at AGS energies. Strangeness saturation is shown to increase smoothly with the number of participants at AGS, CERN and RHIC energies.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, presented at SQM2003 conferenc

Atemporalism and dependence

It is widely thought that Atemporalism—the view that, because God is “outside” of time, he does not foreknow anything —constitutes a unique solution to the problem of freedom and foreknowledge. However, as I argue here, in order for Atemporalism to escape certain worries, the view must appeal to the dependence of God’s timeless knowledge on our actions. I then argue that, because it must appeal to such dependence, Atemporalism is crucially similar to the recent sempiternalist accounts proposed by Trenton Merricks, Philip Swenson, and Jonathan Westphal, and I conclude by briefly sketching some implications of this result