Structural hierarchy of rock masses and the mechanisms of its formation

The formation mechanisms for the structural hierarchy in geological media are discussed. It is shown that the formation of such a hierarchy is caused by certain external and internal circumstances. The first ones consist in the fact that, because of external actions, the Earth’s poles continuously execute the translational and rotational motions responsible for a regular structure of rock fracture and for the appearance of the scale factor √2. The second ones consist in the fact that, under the action of many random factors and because of external actions, during the formation of geological media there appear dissipative structures and, hence, some self-similar fractal structures are formed.     

Reply to Nathan: How to reconstruct the causal argument

Nicholas Nathan tries to resist the current version of the causal argument for sense-data in two ways. First he suggests that, on what he considers to be the correct re-construction of the argument, it equivocates on the sense of proximate cause. Second he defends a form of disjunctivism, by claiming that there might be an extra mechanism involved in producing veridical hallucination, that is not present in perception. I argue that Nathan’s reconstruction of the argument is not the appropriate one, and that, properly interpreted, the argument does not equivocate on proximate cause. Furthermore, I claim that his postulation of a modified mechanism for hallucinations is implausibly ad hoc.     

Nitroxide‐mediated radical polymerization in miniemulsion: Bimolecular termination in monomer‐free model systems

Bimolecular termination in nitroxide‐mediated radical polymerization in miniemulsion has been investigated through the heating of a polystyrene–2,2,6,6‐tetramethylpiperidinyl‐1‐oxy macroinitiator and its 4‐hydroxy‐2,2,6,6‐tetramethylpiperidinyl‐1‐oxy analogue in an aqueous toluene dispersion with sodium dodecyl benzenesulfonate as a surfactant at 125 °C. The level of bimolecular termination by combination, evaluated from the high‐molecular‐weight shoulder, was higher in miniemulsion than in solution and increased with decreasing particle size. Quantitative analysis revealed that these results cannot be rationalized solely by nitroxide partitioning to the aqueous phase. The results are explained by an interface effect, by which nitroxide is adsorbed or located at the aqueous–organic interface. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 45: 4995–5004, 2007