Online research in philosophy

The paper discuses the unique method of Operations and Maintenance (O and M) type of financing with special reference to the Sri Satya Sai Water Supply Project in the Ananthapuram district of Andhra Pradesh. The successful completion of the project is an extraordinary example of public-private and people partnership, which has set an example to the policymakers, the State government and the beneficiaries.

There are two ways to do the unexpected. The banal way—let's call it the expectedly unexpected—is simply to chart the waters of what is and is not done, and then set out to do something different. For a philosopher, this can be done by embracing a method of non sequitor or by perhaps inverting some strongly held assumption of the field. The more interesting way— the unexpectedly unexpected—is to transform the expectations themselves; to do something new and contextualize it (...) in such a way that it not only makes perfect sense, but has the audience scratching their heads and saying, “Of course!” To do the unexpectedly unexpected on a regular basis is the true mark of genius. It recalls Kant's characterization of the genius as the one who not merely follows or breaks the rules of art but that, “Genius is the natural endowment that gives the rule to art.” We would not like to make the bold claim that Paul M. Churchland (PMC) is a philosophical genius of Kantian standards, but he sometimes achieves the unexpectedly unexpected and his position on the issue of scientific realism is a fine example of this. Given other views he holds and the philosophical forebears he holds dear, one might expect him to embrace an antirealism with respect to the posits of scientific theories. But, quite to the contrary, Churchland is one of the strongest contemporary philosophical voices on behalf of scientific realism. And, as we will discuss in this chapter, a closer look at this reasoning reveals that his realism is not perverse, it is exactly the sort of position he should be expected to hold, if only we understand the philosophical issues correctly. (shrink)

Governments of all nations presume they possess full discretionary policymaking powers over the lands and waters within their geopolitical boundaries. At least one global environmental issue—the rapid loss of the world’s biodiversity, the sixth major mass extinction event in geological time—challenges the legitimacy of this presumption. Increment by increment, the present generation is depleting the world’s biodiversity by way of altering species’ habitats for the sake of short term economic gain. When biodiversity is understood as an essential environmental condition—essential (...) in the long term because it is the source of the biological resources upon which humans depend—then the strongly differential distribution of benefits and burdens between generations raises an issue of intergenerational justice. We receive the short-term benefits of economic development; future generations will receive the resulting burden of a biosphere in which one of the life-support systems necessary for humanity will have been compromised. Using Ronald Dworkin’s conceptions of distributive justice, it can be demonstrated that constitutional constraints on the discretionary powers of governments, for the sake of intergenerational justice, are entirely consistent with central tenets of liberal democracy. As a result, we should abandon to some extent the presumption that governments have full jurisdiction over the lands and waters within their boundaries. (shrink)

water paradox has long served as an argument against the Principle of Indifference. A solution to the paradox is proposed, with a view toward resolving general difficulties in applying the principle.

Rescued in 1972 from a storeroom in which rats and seeping water had severely damaged the fifty-year-old manuscript, this text is the earliest major work (1919-1921) of the great Russian philosopher M. M. Bakhtin. Toward a Philosophy of the Act contains the first occurrences of themes that occupied Bakhtin throughout his long career. The topics of authoring, responsibility, self and other, the moral significance of "outsideness," participatory thinking, the implications for the individual subject of having "no-alibi in existence," the difference (...) between the world as experienced in actions and the world as represented in discourse--all are broached here in the heat of discovery. This is the "heart of the heart" of Bakhtin, the center of the dialogue between being and language, the world and mind, "the given" and "the created" that forms the core of Bakhtin's distinctive dialogism. A special feature of this work is Bakhtin's struggle with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Put very simply, this text is an attempt to go beyond Kant's formulation of the ethical imperative. Toward a Philosophy of the Act will be important for scholars across the humanities as they grapple with the increasingly vexed relationship between aesthetics and ethics. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors have detected a new effect in the area of geomagnetism, related to the behavior of a magnetic dipole freely floating on water surface. An experiment is described in the present paper in which a magnetic dipole fixed upon a float placed on non- magnetized water surface undergoes displacement along with reorientation caused by fine structure of the earth's magnetic field. This fact can probably be explained by secular decrease of the earth's major dipole moment. Further, (...) a detailed study of the phenomenon may create interesting premises for its practical use, particularly for the analysis of fine structure of geomagnetic field and its time-dependent anomalies. A strange behavior of some sea fish species prior to strong earthquakes may be explained if the fish are assumed as 'live magnetic dipoles'. (shrink)

In order to rebut G. E. Moore’s open question argument, ethical naturalists adopt a theory of direct reference for our moral terms. T. Horgan and M. Timmons have argued that this theory cannot be applied to moral terms, on the ground that it clashes with competent speakers’ linguistic intuitions. While Putnam’s Twin Earth thought experiment shows that our linguistic intuitions confirm the theory of direct reference, as applied to ‘water’, Horgan and Timmons devise a parallel thought experiment about moral terms, (...) in order to show that this theory runs against our linguistic intuitions about such terms. My claim is that the Horgan–Timmons argument does not work. I concede that their thought experiment is a good way to test the applicability of the theory of direct reference to moral terms, and argue that the upshot of their experiment is not what they claim it is: our linguistic intuitions about Moral Twin Earth are parallel to, not different from, our intuitions about Twin Earth. (shrink)

Property-identical divine-command theory (PDCT) is the view that being obligatory is identical to being commanded by God in just the way that being water is identical to being H2O. If these identity statements are true, then they express necessary a posteriori truths. PDCT has been defended in Robert M. Adams (1987) and William Alston (1990). More recently Mark C. Murphy (2002) has argued that property-identical divine-command theory is inconsistent with two well-known and well-received theses: the free-command thesis and the supervenience (...) thesis. I show that Murphy's argument is vitiated by mistaken assumptions about the substitutivity of metaphysical identicals in contexts of supervenience. The free-command thesis and the supervenience thesis therefore pose no serious threat to PDCT. (Published Online August 11 2004). (shrink)

This paper is about three of the most prominent debates in modern epistemology. The conclusion is that three prima facie appealing positions in these debates cannot be held simultaneously. The first debate is scepticism vs anti-scepticism. My conclusions apply to most kinds of debates between sceptics and their opponents, but I will focus on the inductive sceptic, who claims we cannot come to know what will happen in the future by induction. This is a fairly weak kind of scepticism, and (...) I suspect many philosophers who are generally anti-sceptical are attracted by this kind of scepticism. Still, even this kind of scepticism is quite unintuitive. I’m pretty sure I know (1) on the basis of induction. (1) It will snow in Ithaca next winter. Although I am taking a very strong version of anti-scepticism to be intuitively true here, the points I make will generalise to most other versions of scepticism. (Focussing on the inductive sceptic avoids some potential complications that I will note as they arise.) The second debate is a version of rationalism vs empiricism. The kind of rationalist I have in mind accepts that some deeply contingent propositions can be known a priori, and the empiricist I have in mind denies this. Kripke showed that there are contingent propositions that can be known a priori. One example is Water is the watery stuff of our acquaintance. (‘Watery’ is David Chalmers’s nice term for the properties of water by which folk identify it.) All the examples Kripke gave are of propositions that are, to use Gareth Evans’s term, deeply necessary (Evans, 1979). It is a matter of controversy presently just how to analyse Evans’s concepts of deep necessity and contingency, but most of the controversies are over details that are not important right here. I’ll simply adopt Stephen Yablo’s recent suggestion: a proposition is deeply contingent if it could have turned out to be true, and could have turned out to be false (Yablo, 2002)1. Kripke did not provide examples of any deeply contingent propositions knowable a priori, though nothing he showed rules out their existence.. (shrink)

Let me tell you what philosophy is about, then about how Sydney does it in its own special way. Does life have a meaning, and if so what is it? What can I be certain of, and how should I act when I am not certain? Why are the established truths of my tribe better than the primitive superstitions of your tribe? Why should I do as I’m told? Those are questions it’s easy to avoid, in the rush to acquire (...) goods and prestige. Even for many of a more serious outlook, they are questions easy to dismiss with excuses like “it’s all a matter of opinion” or “let’s get on with practical matters” or “they’re too hard”. They are questions that may be ignored, but they do not go away. They’re philosophical questions. There’s a right way to approach them – you read the writings of the classical and recent philosophers and consider carefully their arguments back and forth. There are many wrong ways to approach them, such as choosing at random among the ideas your parents or friends or gurus have, or ideas that feel good. Or you can just not bother. Sydney has a certain reputation for superficiality in this regard. A character in David Williamson’s Emerald City says “No-one in Sydney ever wastes time debating the meaning of life — it’s getting yourself a water frontage”, says If you have a Writers Festival or a conference on Happiness in Sydney, you don’t normally expect philosophers to be invited. Caroline Jones’ radio series, ‘The Search for Meaning’. (shrink)

As I am sitting at my desk in front of my computer, a thought crosses my mind: There's water in the glass. The thought has a particular content: that there is water in the glass. And, if all is well, there is water in the glass, so my thought is true. According to external-world skepticism, I still do not know that there is water in the glass, because my way of telling what's in front of me does not allow me (...) to rule out the possibility that I’m only under some kind of illusion about what's in front of me. Analogously, according to content skepticism, I cannot know that I am thinking that there is water in my glass, even if in fact that is what I am thinking. This is because for all I know, my way of telling what I am thinking does not allow me to rule out the possibility that I am only under some kind of illusion about what I am thinking. (shrink)

In one of the more compelling introductions to philosophy, Bertrand Russell begins with this question: “Is there any knowledge in the world that is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?” (Presumably he means to include women.) “So certain that no reasonable man could doubt it.” And it’s a good question to begin an introduction to philosophy with, because so often, philosophy is in the mode of skepticism, so often it’s in the mode of offering a critical assessment (...) of conventional wisdom. So, Russell wonders, is there anything so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it. And when we embark on this question, I suppose we have to ask about the question itself, we have to wonder what Russell’s talking about—right? We have to wonder what certainty is. So, what is certainty? It can’t merely be powerful confidence, it can’t merely be something like the assurance that we feel for ordinary knowledge claims. After all, there are lots of things that I know: I know that two plus two is four, I know that water is H2O, I know that I’m standing here before you. But I’d balk if you pressed me and asked me whether I was certain about these things—well, I don’t know if I’m certain about these things, I believe them on what I take is good evidence, I have a considerable confidence in these claims, I’d even bet a whole lot on at least some of them, but certain about it? I’m not sure about that. So we have to ask: what more is required than our confidence, then something like reasonable belief on plausible evidence? What’s certainty? (shrink)

In larger animals a considerable part of the total body mass (e.g. body water, dissolved substances, mineral and organic deposits) does not consume significant amounts of oxygen. These materials can be considered to form a metabolically inert infrastructure which mainly serves three functions: (1) structural support to the organism, (2) storage of nutrients (building material and energy stores) and (3) transport and distribution of these materials. Considering the transport and support function of the metabolically inert structures and their interconnections it (...) is likely that the infrastructure will basically show some tree-like, branching building plan. The weight of the metabolically inert infrastructure of an organism, can be given by bW/(c+W), in which W=body weight, b and c are constants. With increasing size the weight of the metabolic inert infrastructure increases disproportionably. Experimental data concerning basic metabolic rate (M) in relation to body weight (W) better fit the equation M=a W(1-bW)/(c+W), (a=constant) than the conventional power law. (shrink)

A recent initiative at Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology, Hyderabad, India, has resulted in setting up a program called Centre for Environment Studies and Socioresponsive Engineering which seeks to involve undergraduate students in studying and solving environmental problems in and around the city of Hyderabad, India. Two pilot projects have been undertaken — one focusing on design and construction of an eco-friendly house, The Natural House, and another directed at improving environmental and general living conditions in a slum (...) area. The paper describes our attempts and experience of motivating our students to take interest in such projects. In an interesting development we invited a member of a student-faculty team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) that is doing a project in Nepal on safe drinking water. We report in our paper how the presentation by the guest from M.I.T. served as a catalyst for generating interest among civil and mechanical engineering students in our own projects. The paper includes contributions from one of our students and the M.I.T. staff member, reporting on their experiences related to the slum development project. (shrink)

This page now has an access count of: nuclear salt water rocket , a radical new concept for propulsion in space. It is the idea of Robert M. Zubrin of the Martin Marietta Corp., author of the fascinating recent Analog science-fact article "The Magnetic Sail", which the cover described as " a liberating new concept in space travel". The nuclear salt..

I. Growing up zigzag: -- Art is my vocation -- Newport and the Jameses -- The father -- Harvard, 1861 -- Science and the Civil War -- Comparative anatomy and medical school -- The gulls at the mouth of the Amazon -- Tea squalls and a life according to nature -- We must be our own providence -- A dead and drifting life -- Minnie Temple -- William James, M.D. -- Treading water -- The end of youth -- II. The (...) action of consciousness: Hitting bottom -- Turning to physiology -- The Metaphysical Club and Chauncey Wright -- Charles Pierce -- Cambridge and Harvard, 1872 -- Teaching -- To Europe and back -- Emerson, Mill, and Blood -- From physiology to physiological psychology -- Days of rapture and heartbreak -- The trouble with Herbert Spencer -- The action of consciousness -- III. The principles of Psychology: Spaces -- The heart wants its chance -- The feeling of effort -- Hegel in Cambridge -- Death of a mother -- Goodbye, my sacred old father -- The wonderful stream of our consciousness -- Not a simple temperament -- What is an emotion? -- The literary remains of Henry James Sr. -- The death of Herman -- Mrs. Leonora Piper -- My only absolutely satisfying companion (Alice) -- Hypnotism and summers at Chocorua -- Instinct and will -- Santayana at Harvard -- The psychology of belief -- Reunion with Alice: the hidden self --. (shrink)

The claim that there is an explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal properties is perhaps the leading current challenge to materialist views about the mind. Tye tries to block this challenge, not by providing an explanation to bridge the gap but by denying that phenomenalphysical identities introduce an explanatory gap. Since an explanatory gap exists only if there is something unexplained that needs explaining, and something needs explaining only if it can be explained (whether or not it lies within the (...) power of human-beings to explain it), there is no gap. (Tye ????, p. ???) Tyes strategy differs crucially from the claim that identities never stand in need of explanation because they constitute ultimate explanations; for he allows that identities such as water = H?O are explainable. Unlike WATER and H?O, which are descriptive concepts, phenomenal concepts are perspectival and hence irreducible to descriptive concepts, according to Tye. The fact that something picked out by a perspectival concept is identical to something picked out by a non-perspectival concept cannot be explained.1 So, he concludes, phenomenalphysical identities need not be explained. (shrink)

The argument known as the 'McKinsey Recipe' tries to establish the incompatibility of semantic externalism (about natural kind concepts in particular) and _a priori _self- knowledge about thoughts and concepts by deriving from the conjunction of these theses an absurd conclusion, such as that we could know _a priori _that water exists. One reply to this argument is to distinguish two different readings of 'natural kind concept': (i) a concept which _in fact _denotes a natural kind, and (ii) a concept (...) which _aims_ to denote a natural kind. Paul Boghossian has argued, using a _Dry Earth _scenario, that this response fails, claiming that the externalist cannot make sense of a concept aiming, but failing, to denote a natural kind. In this paper I argue that Boghossian's argument is flawed. Borrowing machinery from two-dimensional semantics, using the notion of 'considering a possible world as actual', I claim that we can give a determinate answer to Boghossian's question: which concept would 'water' express on Dry Earth? (shrink)

The experience of conscious will is the feeling that we are doing things. This feeling occurs for many things we do, conveying to us again and again the sense that we consciously cause our actions. But the feeling may not be a true reading of what is happening in our minds, brains, and bodies as our actions are produced. The feeling of conscious will can be fooled. This happens in clinical disorders such as alien hand syndrome, dissociative identity disorder, and (...) schizophrenic auditory hallucinations. And in people without disorders, phenomena such as hypnosis, automatic writing, Ouija board spelling, water dowsing, facilitated communication, speaking in tongues, spirit possession, and trance channeling also illustrate anomalies of will – cases when actions occur without will or will occurs without action. This book brings these cases together with research evidence from laboratories in psychology to explore a theory of apparent mental causation. According to this theory, when a thought appears in consciousness just prior to an action, is consistent with the action, and appears exclusive of salient alternative causes of the action, we experience conscious will and ascribe authorship to ourselves for the action. Experiences of conscious will thus arise from processes whereby the mind interprets itself – not from processes whereby mind creates action. Conscious will, in this view, is an indication that we think we have caused an action, not a revelation of the causal sequence by which the action was produced. Key Words: apparent mental causation; automatism; conscious will; determinism; free will; perceived control. (shrink)

Edited in hypertext by Andrew Chrucky. Reprinted with the permission of Professor David Rosenthal. Editor's Note: Due to the limitation of current hypertext, the following conventions have been used. In general, if an expression has some mark over it, that mark is placed as a prefix to the expression. All Greek characters (except phi) are rendered by their names. Subscripts are placed in parentheses as concatenated suffixes: thus, e.g., H(2)O is the chemical formula for water. Sellars' dot quotes are expressed (...) by bold periods. (shrink)

The rationale for pesticide use in agriculture is that costs associated with pesticide pollution are to be justified by its benefits, but this is not so obvious. Valuing the benefits by simple economic analysis has increased pesticide use in agriculture and consequently produced pesticide-induced “public ills.” This paper attempts to explore the research gaps of the economic and social consequences of pesticide use in developing countries, particularly with an example of Nepal. We argue that although the negative sides of agricultural (...) development, for example- soil, water, and air pollution; pest resistance and resurgence; bioaccumulation, bio-magnification; and loss of biodiversity and ecosystem resilience caused by the use of pesticides in agriculture, are “developmental problems” and are “unintentional,” the magnitude may be increased by undervaluing the problems in the analysis of its economic returns. Despite continuous effort for holistic system analyses for studying complex phenomena like pesticides impacts, the development within the academic science has proceeded in the opposite direction that might have accelerated marginalization of the third world subsistence agricultural communities. We hypothesize that, if these adversities are realized and accounted for, the benefits from the current use of pesticides could be outweighed by the costs of pollution and ill human health. This paper also illustrates different pathways and mechanisms for marginalization. In view of potential and overall negative impacts of pesticide use, we recommend alternative ways of controlling pests such as community integrated pest management (IPM) along with education and training activities. Such measures are likely to reduce the health and environmental costs of pesticide pollution, and also enhance the capabilities of third world agricultural communities in terms of knowledge, decision making, innovation, and policy change. (shrink)

Quantum mechanical and molecular dynamics methods were used to analyze the structure and stability of neutral and zwitterionic configurations of the extracted active site sequence from a Burkholderia cepacia lipase, histidyl-seryl-glutamin (His86-Ser87-Gln88) and its mutated form, histidyl-cysteyl-glutamin (His86-Cys87-Gln88) in vacuum and different solvents. The effects of solvent dielectric constant, explicit and implicit water molecules and side chain mutation on the structure and stability of this sequence in both neutral and zwitterionic forms are represented. The quantum mechanics computations represent that the (...) relative stability of zwitterionic and neutral configurations depends on the solvent structure and its dielectric constant. Therefore, in vacuum and the considered non-polar solvents, the neutral form of the interested sequences is more stable than the zwitterionic form, while their zwitterionic form is more stable than the neutral form in the aqueous solution and the investigated polar solvents in most cases. However, on the potential energy surfaces calculated, there is a barrier to proton transfer from the positively charged ammonium group to the negatively charged carboxylat group or from the ammonium group to the adjacent carbonyl oxygen and or from side chain oxygen and sulfur to negatively charged carboxylat group. Molecular dynamics simulations (MD) were also performed by using periodic boundary conditions for the zwitterionic configuration of the hydrated molecules in a box of water molecules. The obtained results demonstrated that the presence of explicit water molecules provides the more compact structures of the studied molecules. These simulations also indicated that side chain mutation and replacement of sulfur with oxygen leads to reduction of molecular flexibility and packing. (shrink)

The concept of natural behavior is a key element in current Dutch policy-making on animal welfare. It emphasizes that animals need positive experiences, in addition to minimized suffering. This paper interprets the concept of natural behavior in the context of the scientific framework for welfare assessment. Natural behavior may be defined as behavior that animals have a tendency to exhibit under natural conditions, because these behaviors are pleasurable and promote biological functioning. Animal welfare is the quality of life as perceived (...) by the animal. Animals have evolved cognitive-emotional systems (“welfare needs”) to deal with a variable environment. Animals do not only have so-called physiological needs such as the need for food, water, and thermal comfort. They also need to exercise certain natural behaviors such as rooting or nest-building in pigs, and scratching or dust-bathing in poultry. All needs must be taken into account in order to assess overall welfare. The degree of need satisfaction and frustration can be assessed from scientific information about the intensity, duration, and incidence of (welfare) performance criteria such as measurements of behavior and/or (patho)physiology. Positive welfare value relates to how animals are inclined to behave under natural conditions, in preference tests, and in consumer-demand studies. Negative welfare value relates to stress, frustration, abnormal behavior, aggression, and reduced fitness. Examples are given to illustrate how the need to perform natural behaviors can be assessed following the general principles for welfare assessment, providing a first approximation of how different natural behaviors affect animal welfare. (shrink)

So, here you are, reading about conscious will. How could this have happened? One way to explain it would be to examine the causes of your behavior. A team of scientists could study your reported thoughts, emotions, and motives, your genetics and your history of learning, experience, and development, your social situation and culture, your memories and reaction times, your physiology and neuroanatomy, and lots of other things as well. If they somehow had access to all the information they could (...) ever want, the assumption of psychology is that they could uncover the mechanisms that give rise to all your behavior, and so could certainly explain why you are reading these words at this moment. However, another way to explain the fact of your reading these lines is just to say that you decided to begin reading. You consciously willed what you are doing. The ideas of conscious will and psychological mechanism have an oil and water relationship, having never been properly reconciled. One way to put them together is to say that the mechanistic approach is the explanation preferred for scientific purposes, but that the person’s experience of conscious will is utterly convincing and important to the person – and so must be understood scientifically as well. The mechanisms underlying the experience of will are themselves a fundamental topic of scientific study. (shrink)

This article documents, in the cases of Libya and Egypt, situations that occur in many other nations: conversion of farmlands to nonagricultural uses, exhaustion of nonrenewable water resources, irrigation leading to waterlogging and salinization of agricultural lands, development that does not benefit people in the regions being developed, etc. It is suggested that use of natural resources should be in accord with nationally determined priorities and should occur in a sustainable manner.

The chief sources of groundwater contamination on farms come from point sources and diffuse sources. Possible point sources are feedlots, poorly-sited manure piles, septic sewage-treatment systems—all of which can release nitrate, phosphates and bacteria— and sites of chemical spills. Diffuse sources are typified by excess fertilizer leaching from a number of arable fields. The basis of quality standards for drinking-water is discussed in relation to common contaminants present on farms. Samples of drinking-water were collected in 1991–1992 from wells on about (...) 1,200 farms in order to study the quality of rural groundwater in Ontario. Analysis showed that approximately one third of wells were contaminated with bacteria, 14% were contaminated with nitrate, two wells were contaminated with pesticide, but 40% were considered unsafe because of the presence of at least one contaminant. These values were similar to those reported for similar regions in the U.S. There was no significant effect of agricultural practice on the proportion of contaminated samples. One response of Ontario's farmers to information on water quality has been to initiate their own program, the Environmental Farm Plan, which has 23 modules by which the risk of environmental contamination can be assessed. Government policies for agriculture can be expected to influence farming practices. However, the literature suggests that the consequences of policies aimed at reducing environmental contamination are poorly understood, not least because the instruments used for implementation can have widely differing impacts. The need for discussions on the ethics surrounding the relationship between food producers and consumers with regard to environmental contamination is identified. (shrink)

In a recent study on the spawn of the common frog (Rana temporaria) surveyed over several breeding sites, a significant linear relationship (p < 0.001) was found to exist between the number of spawn ''clumps'' making up a bouyant spawn ''mass'' and the area of the mass visible from above the water surface (Griffiths and Raper, 1994). An open question exists, as to why such (...) a strong linear relationship is to be found. Using elementary physics, I suggest some factors which may underly the observed linearity and how it may reveal characteristics other than size of a breeding population. A follow-up experiment is outlined to test for these in the field and some ecological implications are discussed. (shrink)

Recent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and pathological studies have indicated that axonal loss is a major contributor to disease progression in multiple sclerosis. 1 H magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), through measurement of N -acetyl aspartate (NAA), a neuronal marker, provides a unique tool to investigate this. Patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis have few lesions on conventional MRI, suggesting that changes in normal appearing white matter (NAWM), such (...) as axonal loss, may be particularly relevant to disease progression in this group. To test this hypothesis NAWM was studied with MRS, measuring the concentration of N -acetyl derived groups (NA, the sum of NAA and N -acetyl aspartyl glutamate). Single-voxel MRS using a water-suppressed PRESS sequence was carried out in 24 patients with primary progressive multiple sclerosis and in 16 age-matched controls. Ratios of metabolite to creatine concentration (Cr) were calculated in all subjects, and absolute concentrations were measured in 18 patients and all controls. NA/Cr (median 1.40, range 0.86–1.91) was significantly lower in NAWM in patients than in controls (median 1.70, range 1.27–2.14; P = 0.006), as was the absolute concentration of NA (patients, median 6.90 mM, range 4.62–10.38 mM; controls, median 7.77 mM, range 6.60–9.71 mM; P = 0.032). There was no significant difference in the absolute concentration of creatine between the groups. This study supports the hypothesis that axonal loss occurs in NAWM in primary progressive multiple sclerosis and may well be a mechanism for disease progression in this group. (shrink)

In 1953 a young female Japanese macaque called Imo began washing sweet potatoes before eating them, presumably to remove dirt and sand grains. Soon other monkeys had adopted this behaviour, and potato washing gradually spread throughout the troop. When, three years after her first invention, Imo devised a second novel foraging behaviour, that of separating wheat from sand by throwing mixed handfuls into water and scooping out the floating grains, she was almost instantly heralded around the world as a 'monkey (...) genius'. Imo is probably the most celebrated of animal innovators. In fact, many animals will invent new behaviour patterns, adjust established behaviours to a novel context, or respond to stresses in an appropriate and novel manner. -/- Innovation is an important component of behavioural flexibility, vital to the survival of individuals in species with generalist or opportunistic lifestyles, and potentially of critical importance to those endangered or threatened species forced to adjust to changed or impoverished environments. Innovation may also have played a central role in avian and primate brain evolution. Yet until recently animal innovation has been subject to almost complete neglect by behavioural biologists, psychologists, social learning researchers, and conservation-minded biologists. -/- This collection of stimulating and readable articles by leading scientific authorities is the first ever book on 'animal innovation', designed to put the topic of animal innovation on the map and heighten awareness of this developing field. (shrink)

An appeal to all that doubt or disbelieve the truths of the Gospel, whether they be deists, Arians, Socinians, or nominal Christians, by W. Law.--Siris; a chain of philosophical reflexions and inquiries concerning the virtues of tar water, and divers other subjects, by G. Berkeley.--Observations on man, his frame, his duty, and his expectations, by D. Hartley.--The theory of moral sentiments, by A. Smith.--An essay on original genius, by W. Duff.--The light of nature pursued, by A. Tucker.--A new system; or, (...) An analysis of antient mythology, by J. Bryant.--Enquiry concerning political justice and its influence on morals and happiness, by W. Godwin. (shrink)