Although the burgeoning discipline of welfare economics is based on essentially utilititarian principles, the foundations of utilitarianism have received little attention in recent years. This paper seeks to reopen the debate by drawing a distinction between Harsanyi’s two defences of utilitarianism, labeling the first a teleological or ideal-observer theory, and the second a nonteleological th...

The experience of positive affect is essential for healthy functioning and quality of life. Although there is a great deal of research on ways in which people regulate negative states, little is known about the regulation of positive states. In the present study we examined age differences in the types of positive states people strive to experience and the correspondence between their desired a...

We introduce the concept of topological finite-determinacy for germs analytic functions within a fixed ideal I, which provides a notion of topological finite-determinacy of functions with non-isolated singularities. We generalize classical results of Thom and Varchenko stating the following: let A be the complement in the ideal I of the space of germs whose topological type remains unchanged un...

We )nd that adding certain amounts of inhibitory inputs to a neuron improves its capability of accurately decoding the input information. The optimal ratio r of inhibitory to excitatory inputs for decoding the input information from an observation of the e,erent interspike intervals is calculated. Surprisingly, the Fisher information could be zero for certain values of the ratio, seemingly impl...

We prove the following result: Theorem. Every algebraic distributive lattice D with at most א1 compact elements is isomorphic to the ideal lattice of a von Neumann regular ring R. (By earlier results of the author, the א1 bound is optimal.) Therefore, D is also isomorphic to the congruence lattice of a sectionally complemented modular lattice L, namely, the principal right ideal lattice of R. F...

We construct an Identity-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism (IBKEM) in a generic “leveled” multilinear map setting and prove its security under multilinear decisional Diffie-Hellmanin assumption in the selective-ID model. Then, we make our IB-KEM translated to the GGH framework, which defined an “approximate” version of a multilinear group family from ideal lattices, and modify our proof of secu...

We study well-rounded lattices which come from ideals in quadratic number fields, generalizing some recent results of the first author with K. Petersen [8]. In particular, we give a characterization of ideal well-rounded lattices in the plane and show that a positive proportion of real and imaginary quadratic number fields contains ideals giving rise to well-rounded lattices.

A uniform method to define a (restricted iterated) forcing notion to collapse a huge cardinal to a small one to obtain models with various types of highly saturated ideals over small cardinals is presented. The method is discussed in great technical details in the first chapter, while in the second chapter the application of the method is shown on three different models: Model I with an א1-comp...