nomadreid

Situation: a scientist who was fatally ill asked his only daughter to publish his work which he (the father) had finished but not had time to publish. But he did not leave this request in writing. In submitting the work for posthumous publication, a publisher is demanding proof that she has this right. She can provide proof that she is the deceased's daughter, but she needs also to cite a regulation that indicates that the only offspring has the right to publish the parents' works. Since the publisher is an American concern, it would obviously need to be a regulation in the American legal system.

Note: please do not merely tell me that she has this right, since I already know that. Also please do not just give me a link to something like Wikipedia. I need a definite link to an authoritative source.

Thank you.

Situation: a US citizen, living in Canada, sold one house and bought another. The difference between the purchase price of the first house and its sale price counts as a capital gain, and is more than his exemption (which is higher because he lives outside the US, but it is not infinite). However, with most of this money he then bought another house. Is there any way to subtract the purchase cost of his new house, in whole or in part, to reduce his taxable capital gain? Please point me to the specific IRS form to use to do this; please do not just tell me to refer that person to an accountant or to the IRS phone lines.

If we are given:

circles O1 and O2 which meet exactly at the points {A,D} so that the diameter AB of O1 is tangential to O2 at the point A, and the diameter AC of O2 is tangential to O1 at the point A (and so AB is perpendicular to AC),

then

the question is: does D lie on the line BC?

To find out, I used A as the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system, with the diameters lining up with the positive x and y axes respectively.

The equation of the line AC is immediate.

The approach of finding the points of intersection of the two circles (in order to see if it lay on the line) was not feasible.

Another approach was to find the points of intersection of L with each of the circles, and then see if the answers coincided.

If I did not make a mistake, then the answers did not coincide unless the diameters were equal.

This is frustrating, as the gut feeling, bolstered by various drawings of various diameters always appearing to show that D lies on AC.

So, 2 questions:

(a) is this result known?

(b) is there an easier way to do this?

(c) am I wrong, and somehow D does lie on AC?

As any mathematician or even good philosopher, and many physicists or even readers of Dostoevsky know, Lobachevsky's non-Euclidean geometry detroyed Kant's main thesis in his Critique of Pure Reason, to wit, that there exists a priori synthetic truths. Fine, I know that, but if I want to recommend a popular book related this history, without too many technical details but also not down to idiot level, to someone who is not a mathematician, philosopher, physicist, or reader of Dostoevsky, what books exist, if any? A search on Google turned up some books but none which would appeal to the lay reader. Please, actual recommendations; wisecracks tend to be less amusing that their authors thinks.

Recently my highlighting (that is, when you hold down the right mouse and drag the cursor over a text, for example for cut and pasting) has been malfunctioning -- the selected text will only stay highlighted about 20% of the time. Also, clicking on menus is also malfunctioning in the same way. Finally, my calculator sometimes doubles the digits I click on (I click 2, it gives me 22.) Short of re-installing the operating system, is there anything I can do about this? I have a Pentium 3Ghz computer, RAM 2GB, 32 bit OS, running Windows 7. The highlighting problem also exists in other applications besides Word, such as the text boxes in an email.

I started to download a film, but the film turned out to defective, so I aborted the download. However, I now have in my computer a file with the title of that film, indicating that it is opened via "Demon Lite", which I have on the computer. That seemed harmless until I tried to delete this file from the computer, and a window told me that I could not do this because the file was open in System; it said that I was to close the file.... but since System is not a place where files are kept, I see no way to close the file. Any suggestions to get rid of this file? (I scanned the file and my virus protection program said that it was not infected.) Thanks.

For example, I have iTunes installed. However, I am trying to get rid of unnecessary programs, and I see that in my Temp folder in C drive, the iTunesSetup file takes up 78 MB. Can I erase this file without affecting the iTunes on my computer? Thanks.

This is not a rhetorical question, or a question meant to knock pantheism or advocate any other religion, and not inviting cute replies, or replies from people with a religious cause. Rather, I would prefer answers from anyone who has any serious knowledge on the subject.

Analysis: Pantheism is usually defined as the belief that the natural universe is a single deity. Dividing up the word: pan, from nature, and theism, from belief in a deity. Deity is supernatural, outside of nature. Hence we end up with a belief that nature is outside of nature. A contradiction. Is there anything wrong with this analysis and, if so, what?

When I started to download something, the usual window came up asking if I wished to allow the download to go ahead, and it was stated: "Verified publisher: Artua Vladislav". A google search for this came up empty. So I haven't yet downloaded it until I know whether or not this is a safe installer. No guesses, please, only those who have a real answer. Thanks to those who give a valid answer.

The formula for finding arc length of a function f is the integral of the square root of (1+ (the square of the derivative of f)). For most functions, this ends up as an integral that is hard or impossible to find, so one approximates. However, with the trigonometric functions tan(x) and cot(x), as well as variations on x^(3/2), and of course linear functions, the formula gives something that is easy to integrate, so one has a precise answer. But outside of these three kinds of functions, I have not found other types of functions that work nicely. Does anyone know of any non-linear functions that do not have the power 3/2 or tangent or cotangent but come out with precise expressions for the arc length?

The classic derivation of the volume of a cone by the shell method in integration starts with the cone right-side up. And of course there are other ways of finding the volume of a cone by integration. I know, so please do not send me one of these derivations. I just want to see the mistake in the following derivation.

Take an inverted cone, so that

the tip is at the origin,

the maximum radius is the constant R,

the maximum height is the constant H,

h and r stand for the variables of radius and height. Then

Let "Int" = The integral from r= 0 to r = R

Volume= Int 2*pi* r*h dr

Int 2pi*r (H/R) r dr

2pi (H/R Int r^2)dr

2pi (H/R) r^3/3 from 0 to R

2pi*H(R^2)/3

Which is a factor of 2 too much. Where is the error?

I have seen two justifications for the absolute value sign in ln|x| as the antiderivative of 1/xm, but neither one seems sufficient. The first one is quite lame, that ln can only deal with a non-zero positive domain (as long as we are sticking to the real numbers). But this would not rule out a definition such as (as example only)

ln(x) if x is positive

-ln(|x|) if x is negative.

Or something like this. I am not proposing this as a definition; only showing how the justification above is insufficient.

The next justification I have seen is that the area under the curve 1/x over an interval (a,b), with a<b<0, will be the same as the area under the curve 1/x over the interval (|b|,|a|), so we take the absolute value. However, the integral is not the same thing as the area; if we are looking at the negative side of the x-axis, we get negative "signed areas" from the integral, not the areas.

So, why the absolute value? Serious answers only, please. Thanks.

I am teaching a secondary school calculus course in which topics such as Newton's method, Simpson's rule, and other approximation techniques are presented. But the students not only have powerful calculators, these calculators are even obligatory on their external exam. They can find approximations to zeros and areas very quickly on these calculators. There are many mathematical techniques which are intermediaries in other processes, justifying their inclusion in a course even when the techniques can be done by calculator, but I cannot find any such justification for Newton's method or Simpson's rule. Nor can they be justified with the argument that the techniques used for their development are good to know: there are lots of other more worthwhile recursive procedures along the lines of Newton's method, and the proofs for Simpson's rule are simply tedious. However, I have to teach these topics, as there is an external exam which will put questions which require the use of these techniques. So, my question is: is there some justification which is not artificial which I can present to the students for learning these techniques, besides "it's on the exam"?

Please outline a nice derivation of the fact that, if a function f is differentiable at x=a and continuous, then the point of the intersection of the tangent to f at a intersects the x-axis at the point

x= a - [f(a)/f'(a)].

I am reviewing mathematics curricula of other teachers. One teacher listed, among the tests for convergence, "candidates test", without explanation. What convergence test did that teacher mean?

If you wish to put down a silly answer, please amuse yourself somewhere else. For serious answers, thanks.

In different countries, a private citizen may or may not submit a proposal for a law. The US, a private citizen can submit a proposal for a law, although it must be submitted to the legislature by an elected representative, such as a Senator or Congressman. I do not know how it is in other countries. But I am interested not only in the form that such a proposal must take, but mainly the legal brief containing the arguments for such a law proposal which would accompany the proposal. I would like some examples of such proposals and, more importantly, of such briefs. Obviously one cannot give the full example here, but one could give the appropriate links from the Internet. This question would especially be good for a lawyer. Those who just want two points by giving a silly answer, please stay away.

In the Wikipedia article about the national bus company Egged in Israel,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egged

it is written,

"During the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973, Egged buses and drivers helped to reinforce the logistics system of the IDF and drove soldiers and food to the battlefields."

However, no reference or source is given to this claim. Looking it up in Google, I find only articles that do nothing but copy the Wikipedia article, but nowhere is this claim substantiated. However, I suppose there must be some sites with some reliable historical information on this. Can anyone direct me to such a site?

This is not an opening for a political discussion, so please leave political opinions for elsewhere. Nor are racial slurs appreciated, no matter whom you are slurring or supporting. I am only interested here in a matter of historical research.

Of the four letters aleph, vav, he, yud (י , ה , ו , א ) , they are sometimes considered vowels (that is,vowels = consonantal vowels; I don't mean the niqqudot), and sometimes consonants . They are, for example, considered consonants at the beginning of the word. But it would seem to me that all other times they would be considered (consonantal) vowels, except when the vav is pronounced like a "v". But this is apparently not right. For example, in מרהיבות, is the ה considered a consonant, and the י a vowel? Or, in the words

אהבה

אומרים

הזדמנות

ישיבה

ותיק

האזינו

יהירות

הוראה

except for the first letters of the words, aren't all instances of י , ה , ו , א considered vowels?

A teacher of Hebrew explained the accents, dagesh'im, nikkudot, etc when a word is written with all the phonetic signs. One of them is unfamiliar to me, and looks like a little lowercase omega (like a smooth w) above a letter in a word. What does this mean, and what is the name for this sign? Please no guessing.