Program explanations and causal relevance

Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit have defended a non-reductive account of causal relevance known as the ‘program explanation account’. Allegedly, irreducible mental properties can be causally relevant in virtue of figuring in non-redundant program explanations which convey information not conveyed by explanations in terms of the physical properties that actually do the ‘causal work’. I argue that none of the possible ways to spell out the intuitively plausible idea of a program explanation serves its purpose, viz., defends non-reductive physicalism against Jaegwon Kim’s Causal Exclusion Argument according to which non-reductive physicalism is committed to epiphenomenalism because irreducible mental properties are ‘screened off’ from causal relevance by their physical realizers. Jackson and Pettit’s most promising explication of a program explanation appeals to the idea of invariance of effect under variation of realization, but I show that invariance of effect under variation of realization is neither necessary nor sufficient for causal relevance.     

Ultraviolet Luminescence in Mg0.12Zn0.88O Alloy Films

We investigate the origin of ultraviolet （UV） emission from Mg0.12 Zn0.88 O alloy thin films with a wurtzite structure fabricated on c-plane Al2O3 substrates by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy. At room temperature, the absorption edge and UV emission band of the Mg0.12Zn0.88O film shift to high-energy side compared with ZnO films. Temperature dependence of the photoluminescence spectra shows that the UV emission is composed of free exciton and neutral donor bound exciton emissions. Two-step dissociation processes of the UV emission are observed with the increasing temperature. The thermal quenching mechanism is attributed to the dissociation of the free exciton from the neutral donor bound exciton in the low temperature region and the dissociation of free electron and hole from the free exciton in the high temperature region.     

iShopFloor: an Internet-enabled agent-based intelligent shop floor

Global competition is driving manufacturing companies to change the way they do business. New kinds of shop floor control systems need to be implemented for these companies to respond quickly to changing shop floor environments and customer demands. This paper presents a new concept called iShopFloor-an intelligent shop floor based on the Internet, web, and agent technologies. It focuses on the implementation of distributed intelligence in the manufacturing shop floor. The proposed approach provides the framework for components of a complex control system to work together as a whole rather than as a disjoint set. It encompasses both information architecture and integration methodologies. The paper introduces the basic concept of iShopFloor, a generic system architecture, and system components. It also describes the implementation of eXtensible Markup Language message services in iShopFloor and the application of intelligent agents to distributed manufacturing scheduling. A prototype environment is presented, and some implementation issues are discussed.     

Stimulation of negative magnetoresistance by an electric field and light in silicon doped with boron and manganese

It is experimentally ascertained that light stimulates the negative magnetoresistance observed in a high electric field in silicon doped with boron and manganese. The optimum conditions (the electric field, temperature, illumination, and resistivity of the material) for observation of the largest magnitude of negative magnetoresistance in (Si:B):Mn are determined. The dependence of the negative magnetoresistance on the concentration of compensating impurity is established.     

Crystallographic report: Bis{[diacetyl‐bis(2,6‐isopropylphenylimine)]nickel(I)(µ‐chloro)}

The first α‐diimine nickel(I) complex having a chloro bridge is reported. The centrosymmetric dinuclear structure of {[ArN?C(Me)C(Me)?NAr]NiCl}₂[Ar?2,6?C₆H₃(i‐Pr)₂] features two chelating α‐diimine ligands and two bridged chlorine atoms, so that a distorted tetrahedral N₂Cl₂ coordination geometry for nickel results. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Order restricted randomized designs for control versus treatment comparison

We develop a method of randomizing units to treatments that relies on subjective judgement or on possible coarse modeling to produce restrictions on the randomization. The procedure thus fits within the general framework of ranked set sampling. However, instead of selecting a single unit from each set for full measurement, all units within a set are used. The units within a set are assigned to different treatments. Such an assignment translates the positive dependence among units within a set into a reduction in variation of contrasting features of the treatments. A test for treatment versus control comparison, with controlled familywise error rate, is developed along with the associated confidence intervals. The new procedure is shown to be superior to corresponding procedures based on completely randomized or ranked set sample designs. The superiority appears both in asymptotic relative efficiency and in power for finite sample sizes. Importantly, this test does not rely on perfect rankings; rather, the information in the data on the quality of rankings is exploited to maintain the level of the test when rankings are imperfect. The asymptotic relative efficiency of the test is not affected by estimation of the quality of rankings, and the finite sample performance is only mildly affected.     

When should you sack a football manager? Results from a simple model applied to the English Premiership

What strategy should a football (soccer, in American parlance) club adopt when deciding whether to sack its manager? This paper introduces a simple model assuming that a club's objective is to maximize the number of league points that it scores per season. The club's strategy consists of three choices: the length of the honeymoon period during which it will not consider sacking a new manager, the level of the performance trapdoor below which the manager get the sack, and the weight that it will give to more recent games compared to earlier ones. Some data from the last six seasons of the English Premiership are used to calibrate the model. At this early stage of the research, the best strategy appears to have only a short honeymoon period of eight games (much less than the actual shortest period of 12 games), to set the trapdoor at 0.74 points per game, and to put 47% of the weight on the last five games. A club adopting this strategy would obtain on average 56.8 points per season, compared to a Premiership average of 51.8 points.