An approach to description logic with support for propositional attitudes and belief fusion

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-89765-1_8Revised Selected and Invited Papers of ISWC International Workshops, URSW 2005-2007.In the (Semantic) Web, the existence or producibility of certain, consensually agreed or authoritative knowledge cannot be assumed, and criteria to judge the trustability and reputation of knowledge sources may not be given. These issues give rise to formalizations of web information which factor in heterogeneous and possibly inconsistent assertions and intentions, and make such heterogeneity explicit and manageable for reasoning mechanisms. Such approaches can provide valuable metaknowledge in contemporary application fields, like open or distributed ontologies, social software, ranking and recommender systems, and domains with a high amount of controversies, such as politics and culture. As an approach to this, we introduce a lean formalism for the Semantic Web which allows for the explicit representation of controversial individual and group opinions and goals by means of so-called social contexts, and optionally for the probabilistic belief merging of uncertain or conflicting statements. Doing so, our approach generalizes concepts such as provenance annotation and voting in the context of ontologies and other kinds of Semantic Web knowledgeThis work was partially funded by the German National Research Foundation DFG (Br609/13-1, research project “Open Ontologies and Open Knowledge Bases”) and by the Spanish National Plan of R+D, project no. TSI2005-08225-C07-0

Dynamics of Nanometer-Scale Foil Targets Irradiated with Relativistically Intense Laser Pulses

In this letter we report on an experimental study of high harmonic radiation generated in nanometer-scale foil targets irradiated under normal incidence. The experiments constitute the first unambiguous observation of odd-numbered relativistic harmonics generated by the $\vec{v}\times\vec{B}$ component of the Lorentz force verifying a long predicted property of solid target harmonics. Simultaneously the observed harmonic spectra allow in-situ extraction of the target density in an experimental scenario which is of utmost interest for applications such as ion acceleration by the radiation pressure of an ultraintense laser.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Bond v. United States

Although the majority’s outcome was correct, the application of the clear statement rule in this situation seems incorrect. The majority misconstrues the statute not to reach Mrs. Bond’s conduct when it should have done so. The concurrences properly assert that despite the conduct here falling within the clear definition of the statute, the Court should have reversed the conviction on constitutional grounds. As a result of this decision, Congress should now plan to make clarifying statements about the scope of the statute in order to avoid the clear statement problem identified here. Separately, although only dicta, Justice Scalia’s assertion that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not extend beyond the “making” of treaties does not seem correct. It appears necessary and proper for the making of treaties that the power to execute be implied, and the non-self executing treaty was a later judicial invention that the original language could not have taken into account. However, Justice Thomas’s use of the domestic and international matter distinction appears to be a useful limit on the treaty power, and it is on that point that future cases could seek to draw a distinction

Bond v. United States

Although the majority’s outcome was correct, the application of the clear statement rule in this situation seems incorrect. The majority misconstrues the statute not to reach Mrs. Bond’s conduct when it should have done so. The concurrences properly assert that despite the conduct here falling within the clear definition of the statute, the Court should have reversed the conviction on constitutional grounds. As a result of this decision, Congress should now plan to make clarifying statements about the scope of the statute in order to avoid the clear statement problem identified here. Separately, although only dicta, Justice Scalia’s assertion that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not extend beyond the “making” of treaties does not seem correct. It appears necessary and proper for the making of treaties that the power to execute be implied, and the non-self executing treaty was a later judicial invention that the original language could not have taken into account. However, Justice Thomas’s use of the domestic and international matter distinction appears to be a useful limit on the treaty power, and it is on that point that future cases could seek to draw a distinction

Bond v. United States

Although the majority’s outcome was correct, the application of the clear statement rule in this situation seems incorrect. The majority misconstrues the statute not to reach Mrs. Bond’s conduct when it should have done so. The concurrences properly assert that despite the conduct here falling within the clear definition of the statute, the Court should have reversed the conviction on constitutional grounds. As a result of this decision, Congress should now plan to make clarifying statements about the scope of the statute in order to avoid the clear statement problem identified here. Separately, although only dicta, Justice Scalia’s assertion that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not extend beyond the “making” of treaties does not seem correct. It appears necessary and proper for the making of treaties that the power to execute be implied, and the non-self executing treaty was a later judicial invention that the original language could not have taken into account. However, Justice Thomas’s use of the domestic and international matter distinction appears to be a useful limit on the treaty power, and it is on that point that future cases could seek to draw a distinction

Bond v. United States

Although the majority’s outcome was correct, the application of the clear statement rule in this situation seems incorrect. The majority misconstrues the statute not to reach Mrs. Bond’s conduct when it should have done so. The concurrences properly assert that despite the conduct here falling within the clear definition of the statute, the Court should have reversed the conviction on constitutional grounds. As a result of this decision, Congress should now plan to make clarifying statements about the scope of the statute in order to avoid the clear statement problem identified here. Separately, although only dicta, Justice Scalia’s assertion that the Necessary and Proper Clause does not extend beyond the “making” of treaties does not seem correct. It appears necessary and proper for the making of treaties that the power to execute be implied, and the non-self executing treaty was a later judicial invention that the original language could not have taken into account. However, Justice Thomas’s use of the domestic and international matter distinction appears to be a useful limit on the treaty power, and it is on that point that future cases could seek to draw a distinction

Federalism and State Marijuana Legislation

An increasing number of states have passed legislation legalizing medical and recreational marijuana. This Note provides a survey of the language utilized by these states in their legislation and legislative materials, searching for and highlighting those purposes and intentions of the states, which implicate, explicitly or implicitly, federalism. Through this survey of mostly primary source materials, various trends and similarities among the materials will be apparent, and this Note will provide a useful resource for those trying to understand why the states may have enacted these laws

Energetic beams of negative and neutral hydrogen from intense laser plasma interaction

One of the most striking demonstrations of intermolecular forces is the tension at the surface of liquid n-alkanes. The prediction of surface tension is important in the design of distillation towers, extraction units and tower internals such as bubble caps and trays, since it has a considerable influence on the transfer of mass and energy across interfaces. Surface tension data are needed wherever foaming emulsification, droplet formation or wetting are involved. They are also required in a number of equations for two-phase flow calculations and for determining the flow regime. Petroleum engineers are especially interested in the surface tension in the extraction of crude oil to add surfactants to modify the interfacial properties between crude oil and the geological reservoir to improve production and increase oil yields. In this work, a simple computer program using Arrhenius-type asymptotic exponential function, Vandermoned matrix and Matlab technical computing language, is developed for the estimation of surface tension of paraffin hydrocarbons as a function of molecular weight and temperature. The surface tension is calculated for temperatures in the range of 250 to 440 K and paraffin hydrocarbons molecular weights between 30 and 250. The proposed numerical technique is superior owing to its accuracy and clear numerical background, wherein the relevant coefficients can be retuned quickly if more data become available in the future. Estimations are found to be in excellent agreement with the reliable data in the literature with average absolute deviation being less than 2%