Time and Causality: A Thermocontextual Perspective

The Thermocontextual Interpretation (TCI) is proposed here as an alternative to existing interpretations of physical states and time. Prevailing interpretations are based on assumptions rooted in classical mechanics. Logical implications include the determinism and reversibility of change, and an immediate conflict. Determinism underlies causality, but causality implies a distinction between cause and effect and an arrow of time, conflicting with reversibility. Prevailing interpretations also fail to explain the empirical irreversibility of wavefunction collapse without untestable and untenable metaphysical implications. They fail to reconcile nonlocality and relativity without invoking superdeterminism or unexplained superluminal correlations. The Thermocontextual Interpretation defines a system’s state with respect to its actual surroundings at a positive ambient temperature. The TCI bridges existing physical interpretations and thermodynamics as special cases, which define states either with respect to an absolute-zero reference or with respect to a thermally equilibrated reference. The TCI defines system time as a complex property of state spanning both reversible mechanical time and irreversible thermodynamic time, and it distinguishes between system time and the reference time of relativity and causality, as measured by an observer’s clock. And, the TCI provides a physical explanation for nonlocality, consistent with relativity, without hidden variables, superdeterminism, or “spooky action.”

Time and Causality: A Thermocontextual Perspective

The Thermocontextual Interpretation (TCI) is proposed here as an alternative to existing interpretations of physical states and time. Prevailing interpretations are based on assumptions rooted in classical mechanics. Logical implications include the determinism and reversibility of change, and an immediate conflict. Determinism underlies causality, but causality implies a distinction between cause and effect and an arrow of time, conflicting with reversibility. Prevailing interpretations also fail to explain the empirical irreversibility of wavefunction collapse without untestable and untenable metaphysical implications. They fail to reconcile nonlocality and relativity without invoking superdeterminism or unexplained superluminal correlations. The Thermocontextual Interpretation defines a system’s state with respect to its actual surroundings at a positive ambient temperature. The TCI bridges existing physical interpretations and thermodynamics as special cases, which define states either with respect to an absolute-zero reference or with respect to a thermally equilibrated reference. The TCI defines system time as a complex property of state spanning both reversible mechanical time and irreversible thermodynamic time, and it distinguishes between system time and the reference time of relativity and causality, as measured by an observer’s clock. And, the TCI provides a physical explanation for nonlocality, consistent with relativity, without hidden variables, superdeterminism, or “spooky action.”

Estimating the Chirp Mass of Eccentric Inspiraling Binary Systems from Time-Frequency Representations of their Gravitational Radiation

Using the simplest yet meaningful Peters-Mathews model describing the orbital damping of a compact binary system under the emission of gravitatonal radiation, we show that the chirp-mass of an eccentric inspiraling binary, and its (Keplerian) orbital eccentricity at some reference time, can be estimated from the time-frequency skeleton of its gravitational wave signal. The estimation algorithm is nicely simple, and is robust against the non-ideal (non Gaussian, non stationary) features of detector noise.

Tense and aspect in Xhosa

This dissertation investigates the semantics of each tense and aspect in Xhosa. Since tense and aspect perform important pragmatic functions, the analysis takes into account the correlation between the verb and the wider discourse in which it is embedded. Tense reflects the temporal relation between the time of the utterance (speech time) and an interval the speaker makes the assertion about (reference time). The Remote Past and the Remote Future tenses differ from their Recent/Immediate counterparts in that they denote events which occurred in a significantly different situation than the speech time and/or events in the surrounding discourse. Aspect does not only indicate the relation between the time occupied by the real world event and the reference time chosen by the speaker. The Perfective aspect represents an event as a unique change-of-state that pertains to a single point on the timeline which at the same time functions as the reference time. By contrast, for the Imperfective aspect temporally links the event to a contextually provided reference time, e.g. the utterance time, a time adverbial, a period of time previously introduced in the preceding discourse, or the interlocutors’ shared experience. At the pragmatic level, the Perfective aspect tends to introduce an event’s resulting state into the discourse, whereas the Imperfective aspect tends to rule it out. Like the Imperfective aspect, the Anterior and the Prospective aspects assert an event’s occurrence from a contextually defined reference time. They refer to the consequent and the preparatory states of an event, respectively. On the pragmatic level, the Anterior aspect may also indicate that the truth-conditionality of the event’s resulting state is contradicted in the immediate discourse. This study shows that tense and aspect temporally represent different means of temporally assigning an event to a particular portion of the timeline. I further argue that aspect indicates whether the reference time is provided in the context (Imperfective, Anterior, Prospective) or whether it is introduced by the verb itself (Perfective). Furthermore, this study shows that aspect exhibits a pragmatic function by laying focus on different parts of the event that are relevant in the upcoming discourse.

The interpretation and distribution of temporal focus particles

Among the scalar usages of only, there is one that has a temporal dimension. In Carla understood the problem only on Sunday, for instance, Sunday is considered late for Carla to have understood the problem. In this paper, we explore the interpretation and distribution of temporal only along with other focus particles that permit a temporal reading. We focus on the Dutch counterpart of temporal only, pas (see Barbiers 1995). This particle is formally distinct from both exclusive only (alleen) and non-temporal scalar only (maar). We concentrate on two core issues. The first concerns the observation that temporal focus particles systematically support two modes of interpretation, a purely temporal one and a lack-of-progress reading. The latter is found in an example like Billy has only read three books (so far), which implies that three is a low number of books for Billy to have read at the reference time. The second issue concerns ‘Barbiers’s Generalization,’ the requirement that temporal focus particles immediately c-command the category they interact with. We propose a semantic analysis that captures these observations, building on previous work by König (1979, 1981), Löbner (1989), Krifka (2000) and Klinedinst (2004), among others.

Non-Parametric Stochastic Sequential Assignment With Random Arrival Times

We consider a problem wherein jobs arrive at random times and assume random values. Upon each job arrival, the decision-maker must decide immediately whether or not to accept the job and gain the value on offer as a reward, with the constraint that they may only accept at most n jobs over some reference time period. The decision-maker only has access to M independent realisations of the job arrival process. We propose an algorithm, Non-Parametric Sequential Allocation (NPSA), for solving this problem. Moreover, we prove that the expected reward returned by the NPSA algorithm converges in probability to optimality as M grows large. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm empirically on synthetic data and on public fraud-detection datasets, from where the motivation for this work is derived.

A new measurement of the 122Sb half-life

Following significant discrepancies observed when decay-correcting 122Sb γ-peak count rates to a reference time, we looked at the literature supporting the presently recommended 2.7238(2) d (1σ) 122Sb half-life value as the source of these discrepancies. Investigation revealed that the value was derived from an inconsistent dataset and was published without reporting details of the experiment nor the uncertainty budget. In this work we performed a new measurement of the 122Sb half-life by measuring the 122Sb decay of neutron-activated antimony samples using state-of-the-art γ-detection systems characterized in terms of efficiency drift and random pulse pile-up. The measurement was carried out in two different laboratories with the same method. The resulting 2.69454(39) d and 2.69388(30) d (1σ) 122Sb half-life values are in agreement at the evaluated 10–4 relative combined standard uncertainty level but are significantly lower (1.07% and 1.10% lower, respectively) than the preexisting recommended value.

AB0612 THE FRACTURE PREVENTION UNIT OF THE VIRGEN MACARENA HOSPITAL REDUCES THE GAP IN THE MANAGEMENT OF OP, PARTICULARLY IN MALES AND MEETS IOF/ESCEO QUALITY STANDARDS

Background:The Virgen Macarena University Hospital belongs to the Public Health System of Andalusia and serves 481,296 inhabitants in Seville, Spain. In 2018 the Fracture Liaison Service switched to a multidisciplinary unit.Objectives:To describe FLS, to know the characteristics of patients with emphasis on gender differences and to know the completion of International Osteoporosis Foundation quality standards.Methods:Prospective, observational, analytical, research of usual clinical practice. All the consecutive patients attended from May 2018 to October 2019, ≥50 years, with a fragility fracture (occurred in the previous 24 months) were included. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee, Code 1084-N-16.Results:Our FLS is a type A multidisciplinary Unit, with a high level of intervention in the evaluation, estimation of fracture risk and fall risk, treatment prescription and follow-up of the patients. We included 408 patients, 80% females, one third with ≥80 years. Fragility fractures recorded in 328 women were hip (132, 40%), clinical vertebral (81, 25%) and no hip no vertebral (115, 35%). Those recorded in 82 males were hip (53, 66%), clinical vertebral (20, 24%) and no hip no vertebral (9, 10%), p=0.0001. Males had a higher rate of secondary causes of OP, drinker, and smoking. The most relevant gender difference was the low percentage of patients receiving pre-FF OP treatment. Forty-nine (16%) women versus 9 (7%) males had received it at some point in their life, p=0.04. Two hundred and seventy-one (86%) women vs 48 males (63%) had received it at after their FF in their reference unit, and all them were treated after the FLS evaluation. The probability of a male not receiving prior treatment was 2.5 (95% CI 1.01- 6.51); p=0,04. This probability was 0.64 (0.38-1.09) after the FF. After twelve months of follow-up in FLs, 96% continued treatment, with no differences between men and women. The completion of IOF quality standards was bad (red light) for patient identification items and FLS reference time. It was poor (amber traffic light) for initial OP screening standard and was good (green light) for the remaining 10 indicators. The completion of IOF quality standards was bad (red light) for patient identification items and FLS reference time. It was poor (amber traffic light) for initial OP screening standard and was good (green light) for the remaining 10 indicators (Figure 1).Figure 1.Figure 1.Conclusion:The FLS is a multidisciplinary type A. Its operation has narrowed the gap in diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up of FF patients, especially males. It is essential to improve patient recruitment, reduce referral times and increase the overall assessment of the patients.References:[1]Ganda K. et al. Models of care for the secondary prevention of osteoporotic fractures: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Osteoporos Int 2013;24:293-406.[2]Javaid MK et al. A patient-level key performance indicator set to measure the effectiveness of fracture liaison services and guide quality improvement: a position paper of the IOF Capture the Fracture Working Group, National Osteoporosis Foundation and Fragility Fracture Network. Osteoporos Int. 2020 Jul;31(7):1193-1204.Acknowledgements:Spanish Society of Research in Mineral and Bone Metabolism for its support through the competitive project FLS Excellence 2018 to obtain a training grant from the case management nurse.Disclosure of Interests:Blanca Hernández-Cruz Speakers bureau: Sociedad Española de Reumatología, Abbvie, Roche, Bristol, MSD, Lilly, Pfizer, Amgen, Sanofi, Consultant of: Abbvie, Lilly, Sanofi, STADA, UCB, Amgen, Galapagos., Grant/research support from: Fundación para la Investigación Sevilla, Junta de AndalucíaFundación Andaluza de Reumatología, Sociuedad Española de Reumatología., Francisco Jesús Olmo Montes: None declared., Maria José Miranda García: None declared., María Dolores Jimenez Moreno: None declared., María Angeles Vázquez Gómez: None declared., Mercedes Giner García: None declared., Miguel Angel Colmenero Camacho: None declared., José Javier Pérez Venegas: None declared., María José Montoya García: None declared.

On the Use of Standardized Multi-Temporal Indices for Monitoring Disturbance and Ecosystem Moisture Stress across Multiple Earth Observation Systems in the Google Earth Engine

In this work we explore three methods for quantifying ecosystem vegetation responses spatially and temporally using Google’s Earth Engine, implementing an Ecosystem Moisture Stress Index (EMSI) to monitor vegetation health in agricultural, pastoral, and natural landscapes across the entire era of spaceborne remote sensing. EMSI is the multitemporal standard (z) score of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) given as I, for a pixel (x,y) at the observational period t. The EMSI is calculated as: zxyt = (Ixyt − ?xyT)/?xyT, where the index value of the observational date (Ixyt) is subtracted from the mean (?xyT) of the same date or range of days in a reference time series of length T (in years), divided by the standard deviation (?xyT), during the same day or range of dates in the reference time series. EMSI exhibits high significance (z > |2.0 ± 1.98σ|) across all geographic locations and time periods examined. Our results provide an expanded basis for detection and monitoring: (i) ecosystem phenology and health; (ii) wildfire potential or burn severity; (iii) herbivory; (iv) changes in ecosystem resilience; and (v) change and intensity of land use practices. We provide the code and analysis tools as a research object, part of the findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable (FAIR) data principles.

GNSS-to-GNSS time offsets: study on the broadcast of a common reference time

We present two different approaches to broadcasting information to retrieve the GNSS-to-GNSS time offsets needed by users of multi-GNSS signals. Both approaches rely on the broadcast of a single time offset of each GNSS time versus one common time scale instead of broadcasting the time offsets between each of the constellation pairs. The first common time scale is the average of the GNSS time scales, and the second time scale is the prediction of UTC already broadcast by the different systems. We show that the average GNSS time scale allows the estimation of the GNSS-to-GNSS time offset at the user level with the very low uncertainty of a few nanoseconds when the receivers at both the provider and user levels are fully calibrated. The use of broadcast UTC prediction as a common time scale has a slightly larger uncertainty, which depends on the broadcast UTC prediction quality, which could be improved in the future. This study focuses on the evaluation of two different common time scales, not considering the impact of receiver calibration, at the user and provider levels, which can nevertheless have an important impact on GNSS-to-GNSS time offset estimation.