Dennis Showalter and the history of armour during Second World War

Whenever one thinks of the World War II, the image of dark menacing panzers cutting deep swathes into enemy forces comes up to the mind. No amount of interpretation and overinterpretation can belittle the extraordinary role-played by the panzers in World War II. Similarly, despite the presence of numerous good works by various historians and introduction of exotic methodologies, Professor Dennis Showalter’s place in the world of academic writings on World War II can never be marginalized. The present article humbly attempts to highlight one aspect of Professor Showalter’s research: history of tanks during the World War II. This essay has two sections. The first section evaluates Showalter’s three works dealing with armour during the World War II. In the next section, the present author, inspired by Showalter’s works on armoured war, attempts to recount the evolution of armoured branch in the Indian Army until the end of World War II. Indian tank units, as this article argues, played a crucial role in the capture of Meiktila and the subsequent ‘Race to Rangoon’.

Current Science and the Black Hole Connection

In this chapter, an attempt is made to provide a condensed overview of the alarming state of the art of current scientific endeavor, as it is revealed in an international spectrum of critical reports but often is not openly discussed in the scientific community. These calamities include the lack of a basic analysis of the current scientific world itself, by which major influences of corrupt science policies and the power of traditional views remain in the dark. In addition, there is a worrying increase in technology-induced information dependence. We are facing an information wave of such magnitude that in order to survive we need to learn to ride it in a proper way by realizing our bio-cosmological connections and interconnectedness. The current problems in science, as observed by the present author and extensively put forward by leading scientists all over the world, are listed, and a set of potential solutions is tentatively offered.

Oceny w opisie znaczenia jednostek leksykalnych – wybrane problemy

Autorka artykułu stawia tezę, że po pierwsze, czynności związane z oceną kogoś lub czegoś są prymarnie lingwistyczne. Po drugie, ocena w ściśle aksjologicznym sensie tego słowa powinna być odróżniona od wartościowań i innych oszacowań. Po trzecie, oceny zawartej w znaczeniu jednostki leksykalnej nie należy zrównywać z rozmaitymi cechami, które ta jednostka konotuje pragmatycznie. Po czwarte, błędem jest identyfikowanie komponentów oceniających z efektami emotywnymi lub ekspresywnymi. Cechy semantyczne związane z ocenami mogą być zlokalizowane w różnych miejscach struktury semantycznej: zarówno w jej tematycznej, jak i rematycznej części. W słownikach wygodnie jest opisywać oceny dane rematycznie przy użyciu stosownych kwalifikatorów, np. pejor ‘pejoratywne’ i amelior ‘amelioratywne’. Evaluations in the semantic description of lexical units: selected problems Summary: The present author puts forward the thesis that (1) activities related to the evaluation of someone or something are primarily linguistic, (2) an evaluation in the strictly axiological sense of the word should be distinguished from other estimates, (3) an evaluation embedded in the meaning of a lexical unit should not be equated with the various features that this unit connotes pragmatically and (4) it is wrong to identify evaluation components with emotive or expressive effects. The semantic features related to evaluations can be located in various places within the semantic structure of an expression, i.e. in both its thematic and rhematic parts. In dictionaries, it is convenient to employ rhematic evaluations which make use of appropriate qualifiers, e.g. pejor ‘pejorative’ and amelior ‘ameliorative’.

Proof of the universal density of charged states in QFT

We prove a recent conjecture by Harlow and Ooguri concerning a universal formula for the charged density of states in QFT at high energies for global symmetries associated with finite groups. An equivalent statement, based on the entropic order parameter associated with charged operators in the thermofield double state, was proven in a previous article by Casini, Huerta, Pontello, and the present author. Here we describe how the statement about the entropic order parameter arises, and how it gets transformed into the universal density of states. The use of the certainty principle, relating the entropic order and disorder parameters, is crucial for the proof. We remark that although the immediate application of this result concerns charged states, the origin and physics of such density can be understood by looking at the vacuum sector only. We also describe how these arguments lie at the origin of the so-called entropy equipartition in these type of systems, and how they generalize to QFT’s on non-compact manifolds.

How Confident Should the Religious Believer Be in the Face of Religious Pluralism?

Chapter 3 explores the prospects for resisting the sorts of arguments in which religious diversity or disagreement seem to support skepticism regarding justified (or rational) religious belief. Those religious believers who would resist can (i) argue that the principles that convict the faithful of irrationality overreach, and would establish a more widespread skepticism about rational belief; (ii) downgrade their disagreeing interlocutor(s); (iii) appeal to epistemic permissivism; or (iv) argue that the believer is no worse off, epistemically speaking, than the atheist or agnostic non-believer. After presenting what the present author regards as the best version of the argument from diversity or disagreement, the chapter argues that any believer who hopes for truth will not get much solace from any of these responses.

On the 2PN Periastron Precession of the Double Pulsar PSR J0737–3039A/B

One of the post-Keplerian (PK) parameters determined in timing analyses of several binary pulsars is the fractional periastron advance per orbit kPK. Along with other PK parameters, it is used in testing general relativity once it is translated into the periastron precession ω˙PK. It was recently remarked that the periastron ω of PSR J0737–3039A/B may be used to measure/constrain the moment of inertia of A through the extraction of the general relativistic Lense–Thirring precession ω˙LT,A≃−0.00060∘yr−1 from the experimentally determined periastron rate ω˙obs provided that the other post-Newtonian (PN) contributions to ω˙exp can be accurately modeled. Among them, the 2PN seems to be of the same order of magnitude of ω˙LT,A. An analytical expression of the total 2PN periastron precession ω˙2PN in terms of the osculating Keplerian orbital elements, valid not only for binary pulsars, is provided, thereby elucidating the subtleties implied in correctly calculating it from k1PN+k2PN and correcting some past errors by the present author. The formula for ω˙2PN is demonstrated to be equivalent to that obtainable from k1PN+k2PN by Damour and Schäfer expressed in the Damour–Deruelle (DD) parameterization. ω˙2PN actually depends on the initial orbital phase, hidden in the DD picture, so that −0.00080∘yr−1≤ω˙2PN≤−0.00045∘yr−1. A recently released prediction of ω˙2PN for PSR J0737–3039A/B is discussed.

Лексико-семантический анализ топонимии чувашского села Большое Алдаркино Борского района Самарской области и его окрестностей

The article deals with the inventory of toponyms of the village of Bolshoe Aldarkino, Borskii district, Samara region, introduced and analyzed for the first time by the present author. The village was founded by the descendants of Virjal Chuvash in 1767. The research database has been formed by the evidence on the toponymics of the village and its surrounding area collected by the author from locals and local historians during his field trip in 2018. Also, for a comparative analysis of the toponyms under study, he has made use of the relevant material collected by him in other Chuvash villages of the Samara Volga region in the period between 2015 and 2019; these are first of all the villages in Borskii, Pokhvistnevskii, and Isaklinskii districts. As a result, it was possible to identify the principal elements of the toponymic items of the Chuvash idiolect of Bolshoe Aldarkino, their particular forms and semantics. To illustrate, such terms as var (ravine) or oshken´(street) have peculiarities in their structure, forms, and semantics, which make them distinctly characteristic of this particular Chuvash dialect in contrast to those spoken in the neighboring Chuvash villages. Most of the names presented in the article are etymologized from the Chuvash and Russian languages, a number of toponyms are currently de-etymologized, but there are no grounds to refer them to any other language. There is no substrate layer in the toponymic space under study. Some geographical names display the features of the Virjal dialect of the Chuvash language, including Odar, Vyras Oshken, Tikhon Oshken, etc. A few geographical items of the toponymic space of Bolshoe Aldarkino have convincing lexical and semantic parallels in the toponymic spaces of other Chuvash villages in the region, as well as of other settlements of Chuvash speakers.

The Dispute between Vladimir Solovyov and Alexander Kireev about the Union of Churches in 1897: Chronology, Context, Sources

The article is devoted to documents concerning the polemical exchange between Vladimir Solovyov and Alexander Kireev on the unification of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in 1897 as well as the final stage of their relationship on the whole. For the first time, the author reconstructs the exact chronology and sequence of the first set of polemics between the two thinkers after a ten-year break that took place on the pages of several newspapers and journals from May to September 1897 of that year. Some portions of this polemic have never been republished, and some other articles were republished with significant alterations. This introductory article examines the arguments of Solovyov and Kireev, as well as the positions of the respective presses themselves. Novoye Vremya [New Time], Moskovskiye Vedomosti [Moscow Gazette] and Russkoe Obozrenie [Russian Review]. This article provides an assessment of the context in which this dispute broke out, and the appendix provides a list of fifteen historical sources arranged in chronological order. In addition to the open letters between Solovyov and Kireev directed against each other, notes by Nikolay Engelhardt and Boris Shchetinin concerning this dispute are also included. In addition, for the first time, Solovyov’s archival letters to Anatoly Alexandrov as well as Kireev's previously unpublished memoirs about Solovyov (from the 1900s) are also presented. With the publication of the articles by the two thinkers, the present author has taken into account all discrepancies and alterations when comparing the original journal and newspaper texts with their subsequent re-printings in the collected works of Solovyov and Kireev.

Panini’s Astadhyayi in the Eyes of Plant Invasion on Indian Subcontinent

Indigenous plantlore is a manifestation in a given community, based on adaptation and wisdom of local people and environment. It develops over times and continues so also. This treasure of traditional knowledge is used to sustain the community and its bioculture. In long past, people of great understanding, christalized their wisdom in some treatises such as the Panini’s Astadhyayi. This treatise is understood and well known for the genesis and development of Sanskrit knowledge. Ancient Sanskrit scripts usually contain information concerning culture and sustenance based on plant world. The present author analysed it in view of plant invasion on Indian landmass in Panini’s time. Total 45 exotic plant species belonging to 44 genera and 29 angiospermic families are divulged from it. These belong to nearly all corners of the Old and New Worlds. Majority of them (28 species) are cultigens and still continue even in modern period in India. Of course, rest of them are wild, naturalised and presently constitute integral part of Indian biodiversity. The importance of such ancient treatises is dilated in this communication.

Analysis of fitness among Korean adults by the cause–effect relation in lump mean scheme

Background The aim of this study was to examine whether the fitness of Korean adults can be analyzed by the cause-effect relation using the linearity or Gaussianity in the lump mean scheme (LMS). Methods This study analyzed previous results for the sit-up test obtained in the LMS by regression analysis in Sigmaplot 14. The effects of the body mass index (BMI) and new waist-to-height ratio (WHT2R) introduced by the present author on fitness were investigated. Results The distribution of the sit-up test score with respect to the BMI and WHT2R were interpreted by their Gaussianity and linearity, respectively. This means that the muscular endurance of males is determined by two causes (fat and muscle) when the BMI is a variable and one cause (abdominal fat) when the WHT2R is a variable. Conclusions Personal exercise aims were simpler to establish using WHT2R than using BMI. On the other hand, it was recommended for people with a low BMI to increase their fitness using exercises that increase their muscle mass.