Employing AI to Better Understand Our Morals

We present a summary of research that we have conducted employing AI to better understand human morality. This summary adumbrates theoretical fundamentals and considers how to regulate development of powerful new AI technologies. The latter research aim is benevolent AI, with fair distribution of benefits associated with the development of these and related technologies, avoiding disparities of power and wealth due to unregulated competition. Our approach avoids statistical models employed in other approaches to solve moral dilemmas, because these are “blind” to natural constraints on moral agents, and risk perpetuating mistakes. Instead, our approach employs, for instance, psychologically realistic counterfactual reasoning in group dynamics. The present paper reviews studies involving factors fundamental to human moral motivation, including egoism vs. altruism, commitment vs. defaulting, guilt vs. non-guilt, apology plus forgiveness, counterfactual collaboration, among other factors fundamental in the motivation of moral action. These being basic elements in most moral systems, our studies deliver generalizable conclusions that inform efforts to achieve greater sustainability and global benefit, regardless of cultural specificities in constituents.     

The Moore–Penrose Pseudoinverse: A Tutorial Review of the Theory

In the last decades, the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse has found a wide range of applications in many areas of science and became a useful tool for physicists dealing, for instance, with optimization problems, with data analysis, with the solution of linear integral equations, etc. The existence of such applications alone should attract the interest of students and researchers in the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse and in related subjects, such as the singular value decomposition theorem for matrices. In this note, we present a tutorial review of the theory of the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse. We present the first definitions and some motivations, and after obtaining some basic results, we center our discussion on the spectral theorem and present an algorithmically simple expression for the computation of the Moore–Penrose pseudoinverse of a given matrix. We do not claim originality of the results. We rather intend to present a complete and self-contained tutorial review, useful for those more devoted to applications, for those more theoretically oriented, and for those who already have some working knowledge of the subject.     

A new QM/MM method oriented to the study of ionic liquids

The interest on room temperature ionic liquids has grown in the last decades because of their use as all‐purpose solvent and their low environmental impact. In the present work, a new theoretical procedure is developed to study pure ionic liquids within the framework of the quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics method. Each type of ion (cation or anion) is considered as an independent entity quantum mechanically described that follows a differentiated path in the liquid. The method permits, through an iterative procedure, the full coupling between the polarized charge distribution of the ions and the liquid structure around them. The procedure has been tested with 1‐ethyl‐3‐methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate. It was found that, similar to non‐polar liquids and as a consequence of the low value of the reaction field, the cation and anion charge distributions are hardly polarized by the rest of molecules in the liquid. Their structure is characterized by an alternance between anion and cation shells as evidenced by the coincidence of the first maximum of the anion–anion and cation–cation radial distribution functions with the first minimum of the anion‐cation. Some degree of stacking between the cations is also found. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Isolation of chavibetol from essential oil of Pimenta pseudocaryophyllus leaf by high-speed counter-current chromatography

Counter-current chromatography (CCC) was used to isolate chavibetol from the essential oil of leaves of Pimenta pseudocaryophyllus (Gomes) Landrum. Chavibetol was obtained in high purity (98%) and mass recovery (94.4%). Methyleugenol was also isolated. The CCC biphasic solvent system used was composed of hexane:n-butanol:methanol:water (12:4:4:3, v/v/v/v).     

SAR analysis of synthetic neolignans and related compounds which are anti-leishmaniasis active compounds using pattern recognition methods

Potentially active new neolignan and analogues against leishmaniasis are proposed. Structure-activity relationship (SAR) techniques were employed. Physicochemical properties such as log P, molecular volume, atomic charge and quantum chemical parameters were calculated for a group of synthetic substances for which the biological activities against leishmaniasis are known. Only about half a dozen out of more than twenty parameters were found to be efficient for the classification of the compounds into active and inactive groups.     

Dyonic Sectors and Intertwiner Connections in 2+1-Dimensional Lattice -Higgs Models

We construct dyonic states in 2+1-dimensional lattice -Higgs models, i.e. states which are both, electrically and magnetically charged. These states are parametrized by , where ɛ and μ are -valued electric and magnetic charge distributions, respectively, living on the spatial lattice . The associated Hilbert spaces carry charged representations of the observable algebra , the global transfer matrix t and a unitary implementation of the group of spatial lattice translations. We prove that for coinciding total charges these representations are dynamically equivalent and we construct a local intertwiner connection , where is a path in the space of charge distributions . The holonomy of this connection is given by -valued phases. This will be the starting point for a construction of scattering states with anyon statistics in a subsequent paper. Received: 13 December 1996 / Accepted: 19 May 1997     

β,β′-Corrole dimers

Three corrole dimers were obtained by heating a 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene solution of 5,10,15-tris(pentafluorophenyl)corrole at 200 °C. The corrole units are linked by the β,β′-positions. In one of these dimers the corrole units are linked by the 2,2′,18,18′ carbons, giving rise to an eight-membered ring.