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.     

Highly selective PVC-membrane electrodes based on Co(II)-Salen for determination of nitrite ion.

A cobalt(II) derivative was used as a suitable ionophore for the preparation of a polymeric membrane nitrite-selective electrode. The electrode reveals a Nemstian behavior over a very wide NO2- ion concentration range (1.0 x 10(-6)-1.0 x 10(-1) M) and a very low detection limit (5.0 x 10(-7) M). The potentiometric response is independent of the pH of solution in the pH range 4.0-9.5. The electrode shows advantages such as low resistance, fast response and, most importantly, good selectivity relative to a wide variety of inorganic and organic anions. In fact, the selectivity behavior of the proposed NO2- ion-selective electrode shows great improvements compared to the previously reported electrodes for nitrite ion. The proposed electrodes could be used for at least 2 months without any significant changes in potentials. The electrode was successfully applied to the determination of nitrate ion concentrations in sausage and milk samples.