Polymorphism in alternating polyketones studied by x-ray diffraction and calorimetry

Differential scanning calorimetry and high temperature x-ray diffraction were used to study the perfectly alternating copolymer of ethene and carbon monoxide (polyketone; POKC2). It was found that oriented POK-C2 fibers show a crystalline phase transition at a temperature between 110–125°C with a 10% change in crystalline density. At this temperature, the crystal structure reported recently (POK-α) is transformed to a crystal structure that was reported in the past for room temperature imperfectly alternating polyketone. The latter structure will be designated as POK-β. The influence of chain defects on the crystal structure was studied by synthesizing terpolymers (POK-C2/C3), in which small amounts of propylene-CO units are incorporated into the polymer backbone. The resulting terpolymers differ from the copolymer by the presence of methyl groups randomly distributed along the polyketone backbone chain. Evidence is presented that indicates that the methyl groups are built into the crystal lattice as defects. With more than 5 mole-% propene the terpolymer fibers crystallize exclusively in the β-modification. Below this level the α/β ratio (at room temperature) increases with decreasing amounts of propene. Both as-synthesized and as-spun POK-C2 were found to consist of both POK-α and POK-β; the α/β ratio depends on the method of preparation. Because the drawn POK-C2 fibers studied here consist exclusively of POK-α, the process of spinning and drawing leads to the transformation of unoriented β-rich material into oriented POK-α. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Quantum structures: An attempt to explain the origin of their appearance in nature

We explain quantum structure as due to two effects: (a) a real change of state of the entity under the influence of the measurement and (b) a lack of knowledge about a deeper deterministic reality of the measurement process. We present a quantum machine, with which we can illustrate in a simple way how the quantum structure arises as a consequence of the two mentioned effects. We introduce a parameter that measures the size of the lack of knowledge of the measurement process, and by varying this parameter, we describe a continuous evolution from a quantum structure (maximal lack of knowledge) to a classical structure (zero lack of knowledge). We show that for intermediate values of we find a new type of structure that is neither quantum nor classical. We apply the model to situations of lack of knowledge about the measurement process appearing in other aspects of reality. Specifically, we investigate the quantumlike structures that appear in the situation of psychological decision processes, where the subject is influenced during the testing and forms some opinions during the testing process. Our conclusion is that in the light of this explanation, the quantum probabilities are epistemic and not ontological, which means that quantum mechanics is compatible with a determinism of the whole.     

Framework for possible unification of quantum and relativity theories

We put forward a framework, inspired by recent axiomatic and operational approaches to generalized quantum theories, wherein we investigate the possibility of unifying quantum and relativity theories. The framework concentrates on a detailed analysis of a general construction of reality that can be used in both quantum and relativity theories. By means of this construction of reality we clarify some well-known conceptual problems that stand in the way of a conceptual unification of quantum and relativity theories on a more profound physical level than the purely mathematical algebraic level on which unification attempts are generally investigated. More specifically we concentrate on the problem of what is physical reality in quantum and relativity theories.     

Identifying Quantum Structures in the Ellsberg Paradox

Empirical evidence has confirmed that quantum effects occur frequently also outside the microscopic domain, while quantum structures satisfactorily model various situations in several areas of science, including biological, cognitive and social processes. In this paper, we elaborate a quantum mechanical model which faithfully describes the Ellsberg paradox in economics, showing that the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics is capable to represent the ambiguity present in this kind of situations, because of the presence of contextuality. Then, we analyze the data collected in a concrete experiment we performed on the Ellsberg paradox and work out a complete representation of them in complex Hilbert space. We prove that the presence of quantum structure is genuine, that is, interference and superposition in a complex Hilbert space are really necessary to describe the conceptual situation presented by Ellsberg. Moreover, our approach sheds light on ‘ambiguity laden’ decision processes in economics and decision theory, and allows to deal with different Ellsberg-type generalizations, e.g., the Machina paradox.     

Are Words the Quanta of Human Language? Extending the Domain of Quantum Cognition

In previous research, we showed that ‘texts that tell a story’ exhibit a statistical structure that is not Maxwell–Boltzmann but Bose–Einstein. Our explanation is that this is due to the presence of ‘indistinguishability’ in human language as a result of the same words in different parts of the story being indistinguishable from one another, in much the same way that ’indistinguishability’ occurs in quantum mechanics, also there leading to the presence of Bose–Einstein rather than Maxwell–Boltzmann as a statistical structure. In the current article, we set out to provide an explanation for this Bose–Einstein statistics in human language. We show that it is the presence of ‘meaning’ in ‘texts that tell a story’ that gives rise to the lack of independence characteristic of Bose–Einstein, and provides conclusive evidence that ‘words can be considered the quanta of human language’, structurally similar to how ‘photons are the quanta of electromagnetic radiation’. Using several studies on entanglement from our Brussels research group, we also show, by introducing the von Neumann entropy for human language, that it is also the presence of ‘meaning’ in texts that makes the entropy of a total text smaller relative to the entropy of the words composing it. We explain how the new insights in this article fit in with the research domain called ‘quantum cognition’, where quantum probability models and quantum vector spaces are used in human cognition, and are also relevant to the use of quantum structures in information retrieval and natural language processing, and how they introduce ‘quantization’ and ‘Bose–Einstein statistics’ as relevant quantum effects there. Inspired by the conceptuality interpretation of quantum mechanics, and relying on the new insights, we put forward hypotheses about the nature of physical reality. In doing so, we note how this new type of decrease in entropy, and its explanation, may be important for the development of quantum thermodynamics. We likewise note how it can also give rise to an original explanatory picture of the nature of physical reality on the surface of planet Earth, in which human culture emerges as a reinforcing continuation of life.     

Polymorphism of sorbitol

The polymorphism of sorbitol was investigated, confirming the existence of four anhydrous crystalline phases plus the hydrate. The crystallised melt (CM), the alpha form, and the gamma form were obtained via a dry route. The CM was confirmed to be a crystalline state with a spherulite morphology. The alpha form was obtained via direct conversion from the CM, in contrast to more complicated routes previously reported, and was found to have a very high crystallinity. Gamma crystals were obtained by seeding the melt at high temperature; however, crystallinity was clearly less than for alpha crystals.     

Interpreting Quantum Particles as Conceptual Entities

We elaborate an interpretation of quantum physics founded on the hypothesis that quantum particles are conceptual entities playing the role of communication vehicles between material entities composed of ordinary matter which function as memory structures for these quantum particles. We show in which way this new interpretation gives rise to a natural explanation for the quantum effects of interference and entanglement by analyzing how interference and entanglement emerge for the case of human concepts. We put forward a scheme to derive a metric based on similarity as a predecessor for the structure of ‘space, time, momentum, energy’ and ‘quantum particles interacting with ordinary matter’ underlying standard quantum physics, within the new interpretation, and making use of aspects of traditional quantum axiomatics. More specifically, we analyze how the effect of non-locality arises as a consequence of the confrontation of such an emerging metric type of structure and the remaining presence of the basic conceptual structure on the fundamental level, with the potential of being revealed in specific situations.