The Epistemic Relevance of Morphological Content

Morphological content is information that is implicitly embodied in the standing structure of a cognitive system and is automatically accommodated during cognitive processing without first becoming explicit in consciousness. We maintain that much belief-formation in human cognition is essentially morphological: i.e., it draws heavily on large amounts of morphological content, and must do so in order to tractably accommodate the holistic evidential relevance of background information possessed by the cognitive agent. We also advocate a form of experiential evidentialism concerning epistemic justification—roughly, the view that the justification-status of an agent’s beliefs is fully determined by the character of the agent’s conscious experience. We have previously defended both the thesis that much belief-formation is essentially morphological, and also a version of evidentialism. Here we explain how experiential evidentialism can be smoothly and plausibly combined with the thesis that much of the cognitive processing that generates justified beliefs is essentially morphological. The leading idea is this: even though epistemically relevant morphological content does not become explicit in consciousness during the process of belief-generation, nevertheless such content does affect the overall character of conscious experience in an epistemically significant way: it is implicit in conscious experience, and is implicitly appreciated by the experiencing agent.     

Synaptic plasticity induced transition of spike propagation in neuronal networks

We investigate the impact of short-term plasticity on spike propagation in neuronal networks. We shown that for different combinations of the synaptic rise and decay time, neurons in the network exhibit a variety of different spike propagation transitions as the parameter related to the short-term plasticity increases. We establish the criteria for the existence and stability of simple and composite traveling waves, and we verify the analytical results by means of numerical simulations. Interestingly, we discover that the coexistence of simple and composite traveling waves, as well as the coexistence of stable and unstable waves is possible, provided only the short-term plasticity is properly set.     

Skew Pieri rules for Hall–Littlewood functions

We produce skew Pieri rules for Hall–Littlewood functions in the spirit of Assaf and McNamara (J. Comb. Theory Ser. A 118(1):277–290, 2011). The first two were conjectured by the first author (Konvalinka in J. Algebraic Comb. 35(4):519–545, 2012). The key ingredients in the proofs are a q-binomial identity for skew partitions and a Hopf algebraic identity that expands products of skew elements in terms of the coproduct and the antipode.     

The influence of repellent coatings on surface free energy of glass plate and cotton fabric

The aim of this research was to determine the influence of chemical finishes on the surface properties of glass plate, considered as a model homogeneous smooth surface and cotton fabric as a non-ideal heterogeneous rough surface. Microscopic slides and 100% cotton fabric in plain weave were coated with fluorocarbon polymers (FCP), paraffin waxes with zirconium salts (PWZ), methylolmelamine derivatives (MMD), polysiloxanes with side alkyldimethylammonium groups (PSAAC) and aminofunctional polysiloxanes (AFPS). From the goniometer contact angle measurements of different liquids, the surface free energy of the coated glass plates was calculated according to approaches by Owens-Wendt-Kaelble, Wu, van Oss-Chaudhury-Good, and Li-Neumann-Kwok. The results showed that all the coatings decreased the surface free energy of the substrate, which was also influenced by the liquid combination and the theoretical approach used. In spite of the fact that the liquid contact angles were much higher on the coated fabric samples than on glass plates and resulted in the lower values of work of adhesion, a very good correlation between the coatings deposited on both substrates was obtained. The presence of repellent coatings FCP, PWZ and MMD converted the solid surface from polar to highly apolar by masking the functional groups of glass and cellulose. PSAAC and AFPS coatings did not decrease the solid surface free energy to such an extent as the former three coatings due to their monopolar character.     

MnOx Nanoparticles Supported on a New Mesostructured Silicate with Textural Porosity

A two‐step synthesis of a novel mesostructured silicate, KIL‐2, and its manganese‐containing analogue, Mn/KIL‐2, has been developed. KIL‐2 possesses interparticle mesopores with pore dimensions between 5 and 60 nm and a surface area of 448 m². The mesopores are formed by the aggregation of silica nanoparticles, which creates a network with interparticle voids. The particle size and the pore diameters depend on the temperature of the ageing step (first step) and on the solvothermal treatment in ethanol (second step), respectively. Mn/KIL‐2 contains octahedrally coordinated Mn³⁺ (80 %) and tetrahedrally coordinated Mn²⁺ (20 %) ions. Mn³⁺ ions are present in the extra‐framework MnO_x nanoparticles with typical dimensions of 2 nm, which are homogeneously distributed throughout the material. Mn²⁺ ions occur as isolated manganese framework sites. The material is also able to retain its structure characteristics after the hydrothermal treatment in boiling water. Because of its non‐toxic nature and cost‐effective synthesis, Mn/KIL‐2 thus exhibits properties that are needed for an environment‐friendly catalyst.     

The synthesis, structure and physical properties of lanthanide(III) complexes with nicotinic acid

This article reports the synthesis of novel, rare-earth coordination complexes with nicotinic acid. Three compounds with the general formula Ln₂[(C₅H₄NCOO)₆(H₂O)₄] (Ln = Yb, 1; Ln = Gd, 2; Ln = Nd, 3) were prepared from relatively cheap and readily available reactants. Their compositions and structure were characterized by IR spectroscopy and single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The magnetic and thermogravimetric properties were also studied. The complexes consist of centrosymetric, dimeric molecules having all six nicotinato ligands coordinated with the central atom in the bidentate mode. The coordination environment of the Ln³⁺ for all three compounds is 8. Here we describe the crystal structure of Yb and Gd complexes with nicotinic acid.      

Stable Crystalline Forms of Na Polysulfides: Experiment versus Ab Initio Computational Prediction

For the design of light‐metal–sulfur batteries and for the understanding of their performance, knowledge on the stable crystalline polysulfides is very important. We confronted experimental and ab initio crystal structure prediction studies on the stability of Na polysulfides. The selected evolutionary‐based structure‐prediction algorithm was able to quickly and correctly predict the thermodynamically stable crystalline forms of Na polysulfides with small unit cells. For Na polysulfides with large unit cells, the algorithm correctly proposed short unbranched polysulfide chains to be energetically favorite structural motifs, but could not find proper three‐dimensional structures in the limited number of generations. Experimentally, the polysulfides were studied by X‐ray diffraction and ²³Na solid‐state NMR spectroscopy. Complemented by calculations of the isotropic chemical shifts and quadrupolar coupling constants, NMR spectroscopy proved to be an excellent tool for the examination of Na polysulfides, because it allowed easy distinction and quantification of components in the samples.     

Core and Ancillary Epistemic Virtues

We argue, primarily by appeal to phenomenological considerations related to the experiential aspects of agency, that belief fixation is broadly agentive; although it is rarely (if ever) voluntary, nonetheless, it is phenomenologically agentive because of its significant phenomenological similarities to voluntary-agency experience. An important consequence is that epistemic rationality, as a central feature of belief fixation, is an agentive notion. This enables us to introduce and develop a distinction between core and ancillary epistemic virtues. Core epistemic virtues involve several inter-related kinds of epistemic rationality in belief fixation. Other “habits of mind” pertinent to belief fixation constitute ancillary epistemic virtues. Finally, we discuss the relationship between both kinds of virtues, offering a unified account of epistemic virtuousness.     

Weakly coupled analysis of a blade in multiphase mixing vessel

Two or more physical systems frequently interact with each other, where the independent solution of one system is impossible without a simultaneous solution of the others. An obvious coupled system is that of a dynamic fluid-structure interaction. [8] In this paper a computational analysis of the fluid-structure interaction in a mixing vessel is presented. In mixing vessels the fluid can have a significant influence on the deformation of blades during mixing, depending on speed of mixing blades and fluid viscosity. For this purpose a computational weakly coupled analysis has been performed to determine the multiphase fluid influences on the mixing vessel structure. The multiphase fluid field in the mixing vessel was first analyzed with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code CFX. The results in the form of pressure were then applied to the blade model, which was the analysed with the structural code MSC.visualNastran forWindows, which is based on the finite element method (FEM). (© 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)