Even a decade after the end of the 1914–1918 war, economic theory assumed that the world was tranquil and orderly. By 1939 an economic slump without parallel, allied to the re-emergence of military ambition in Europe, had brought economic theorists face to face with reality. In this classic book, first published in 1967, Professor Shackle provides a study, in exact and professional language, of the precise nature, structure, presuppositions, language and inter-relations of the theories which were formulated in these (...) fourteen years - unparalleled in the whole history of economics except perhaps by the years of the Physiocrats and Adam Smith. These theories are not prototypes on the way to something better but are of essential and permanent importance. (shrink)

G.L.S. Shackle stood at the historic crossroads where the economics of Hayek and Keynes met. Shackle fused these opposing lines of thought in a macroeconomic theory that draws Keynesian conclusions from Austrian premises. In Shackle 's scheme of thought, the power to imagine alternative courses of action releases decision makers from the web of predictable causation. But the spontaneous and unpredictable choices that originate in the subjective and disparate orientations of individual agents deny us the possibility of (...) rational expectations, and therewith the logical coherence of market equilibrium over time. (shrink)

In most theories of the quantum measurement process changes in an observer’s perception of a state can take place without forces, as for example if a state is prepared in an eigenstate of \ but \ is measured. In the “special state” theory any change in wave function requires forces. This allows experimental tests to distinguish these ideas and in the present article two examples of such tests are considered. The first is a kind of double Stern–Gerlach experiment, the second (...) a check for angular momentum changes in a polarizer. (shrink)

In most theories of the quantum measurement process changes in an observer’s perception of a state can take place without forces, as for example if a state is prepared in an eigenstate of \ but \ is measured. In the “special state” theory any change in wave function requires forces. This allows experimental tests to distinguish these ideas and in the present article two examples of such tests are considered. The first is a kind of double Stern–Gerlach experiment, the second (...) a check for angular momentum changes in a polarizer. (shrink)

Protection of human participants is a fundamental facet of biomedical research. We report the activities of a health service research study in which there were three institutional review boards (IRBs), three legal departments and one research administration department providing recommendations and mandating changes in the study methods. Complying with IRB requirements can be challenging, but can also adversely affect study outcomes. Multiple protocol changes mandated from multiple IRBs created a research method that was not reflective of how substance use screening (...) would be performed in a clinical setting. There was direct conflict between the IRBs' perceptions of participants' protection with the researchers' need to use research methodology that assures the clinical relevancy of results. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the use of neurointerventions to reduce the risk that criminal offenders will reoffend. Commentators have raised several ethical concerns regarding this practice. One prominent concern is that, when imposed without the offender’s valid consent, neurointerventions might infringe offenders’ right to bodily integrity. While it is commonly held that we possess a moral right to bodily integrity, the extent to which this right would protect against such neurointerventions is as-yet unclear. In this paper, we will assess (...) whether, why, and how severely three forms of neurointervention might infringe the right to bodily integrity. We show that the severity of the infringement of the right to bodily integrity differs across different forms of neurointervention. Moreover, we argue that mental and behavioral effects of neurointerventions could in some cases be relevant to determining the severity of infringements of the right to bodily integrity. (shrink)

Disclosure of financial interests in scientific research is the centerpiece of the new conflict of interest regulations issued by the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation that became effective October 1, 1995. Several scientific journals have also established financial disclosure requirements for contributors. This paper measures the frequency of selected financial interests held among authors of certain types of scientific publications and assesses disclosure practices of authors. We examined 1105 university authors (first and last cited) from Massachusetts (...) institutions whose 789 articles, published in 1992, appeared in 14 scientific and medical journals. (shrink)

In CQ n.s. 26 . 62–84 I argued that the defeat of Sparta in 371 B.C. was not due to the pursuit of unwise policies towards the other Greek states. Unwise policies there had been. Sparta being by no means superior to Athens in the formulation of foreign policy, but these did not affect the position on the eve of Leuctra when, with Thebes politically isolated, and with some of the Boeotians disaffected, Cieombrotus at the head of a numerically superior (...) Spartan and allied army was poised for the, destruction of Theban power; a triumph of policy it must have seemed. Sparta failed for military reasons. Her army was unequal to the military genius of Epaminondas. (shrink)

Commodity chain analysis (Bair and Ramsay, 2003 Multinational Companies and Global Human Resource Strategies) is used to explore where economic pressure (from consumers) or socio-political pressure (from governments and NGOs) can be applied to reduce worker exploitation. Six paths are illustrated with examples of successful and unsuccessful application of pressure. Three conclusions are reached :Economic pressure on companies and brand owners is more likely to lead to improved workplace conditions than socio-political pressure; Brand owners are more likely to implement improved (...) workplace conditions than retailers; and Retailers who are under extreme consumer price pressure will resist improving workplace conditions. (shrink)

The reader of Demosthenes can hardly avoid the impression that there was something sadly awry with the Athenian naval system in the two decades prior to Chaeronea. The war in the north Aegean was essentially a naval war, and Demosthenes frequently enough blamedAthen's failure on her lack of preparation. ‘Why do you think, Athenians,… that all our expeditionary forces are too late for the critical moments?…In the business of the war and the preparation for it everything is in disorder, unreformed, (...) undefined. So it is that some news arrives, we appoint trierarchs, we give them the opportunity legally to get others to act in their stead, we consider provision of money, then it is decided that the metics and those “living out” should go on the ships, then again you yourselves, then to allow substitutes, and during these delays^the cause for which we would have been sailing is lost before we have sailed] For we spend the time for action on preparations, but the critical moments for action do not last as long as our dilatoriness and cautious procedures’ . This was spoken in 351 and it is much the same a decade later. (shrink)

Nothing about Xenophon's Hellenica is more outrageous than his treatment of the relations of Persia and the Greeks. It was orthodoxy in the circle of Agesilaus that Theban medizing, barbarismos, had sabotaged the plans for a glorious anabasis and recalled him to the defence of his city . Not until the Thebans woo and win the fickle favour of the King , does anything like detail emerge. In the regrettable interlude, the less said the better. If the third speech of (...) Andocides had not survived, there would have been some tangled theorizing about a note in Didymus , especially as regards ‘the ambassadors who in Sparta consented’, but sober historical judgement would never have transgressed so far from the text of Xenophon as to postulate a Peace Congress in Sparta as well as in Sardis in 392. Likewise, the merest chance of epigraphic survival assures us that the oaths, which the ‘Athenians and the Spartans and the other Greeks’ swore in 387/6, ‘the King swore’ — and so on. If we did not have the reflection of Ephorus in Diodorus, albeit a mirror cracked and blemished, we would be sadly astray in 375 and 371. When, however, the despicable Thebans become the King's favoured power, disgraceful scenes unfold. ‘Pelopidas very much had things his own way with the Persian; he could say that the Thebans alone of the Greeks had fought on the King's side at Plataea, that they had never afterwards campaigned against him, that the Spartans were at war with them because they would not join Agesilaus…etc.’ . A Persian is found at Thebes reading out the contents of a Royal Rescript, after displaying the Royal seal ; at Sparta twenty years before, such details had been left to the imagination. The cause of Xenophon's method in this matter is not for the moment under discussion, but rather the consequence, viz. our uncertainty about what precisely the King's Peace said. There was a document, inscribed on stone pillars and displayed in the national shrines . If ever a copy turns up, what can we expect to find? The measure of our uncertainty was provided by Wilcken, who produced a curious hypothesis which found little sympathy; that he could do so shows the state of the evidence. Some effort of the imagination is needed, and those who gravely disapprove of conjectures of what might have been the case need read no further. At the end one can be sure of very little. Conjectures, however, have been uttered, en passant, elsewhere. What may prove to be a chorus of disdain has begun. A formal confession may be welcome. (shrink)

It is perhaps worth briefly discussing a subject on which Demosthenes has so much to say and on which there is so little satisfactory evidence. In every speech which he delivered after 346 he referred, in greater or less detail, to breaches of the Peace of Philocrates, and this insistence on Philip's may mislead us. The case of Cardia is suggestive. In 341, in the speech On the Chersonese, he sought to create the impression that Philip was acting in breach (...) of the peace by sending troops to help defend Cardia against Diopeithes. (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while its (...) feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

It is always possible to construct a real function f, given random quantities X and Y with continuous distribution functions F and G, respectively, in such a way that f(X) and f(Y), also random quantities, have both the same distribution function, say H. This result of De Finetti introduces an alternative way to somehow describe the `opinion' of a group of experts about a continuous random quantity by the construction of Fields of coincidence of opinions (FCO). A Field of coincidence (...) of opinions is a finite union of intervals where the opinions of the experts coincide with respect to that quantity of interest. We speculate on (dis)advantages of Fields of Opinion compared to usual `probability' measures of a group and on their relation with a continuous version of the well-known Allais' paradox. (shrink)

The information-centric networking paradigm is attracting more and more interest from the research community due to its peculiarities that make it one of the best candidates for constructing the future Internet. For this reason, there are many papers in literature that study how to transform ICN principles in reality in order to magnify its relevance for the society. In order to provide a solid summary of the state of the art, the present contribution tries to summarize the main findings related (...) to this research field. In particular, an overview on the most important ICN architectures, their main aspects, common networking approaches, and differences is provided. Moreover, the work carried out in standardization bodies, with particular attention to the list of baseline scenarios defined in this context, is illustrated. Also the main international projects that are trying to integrate ICN networking primitives in pioneering use cases are presented, describing proposed architectures and related challenges for enabling information-centric primitives in current network infrastructures. Finally, the work highlights design principles and core components to build ICN-enabled network devices. (shrink)

In REG 73 and 75 I discussed various points connected with the Peace of Philocrates, a number of which have been assailed by M. M. Markle in CQ N.S. 24 in an article entitled ‘The Strategy of Philip in 346 B.C.’. Time passes, and, although de Ste. Croix in his Origins of the Peloponnesian War , p.105, felt able to declare that ‘a book shortly to be published by M. M. Markle makes a valuable and original contribution to our understanding (...) of the Peace of Philocrates’, and Markle himself confirms that a book is indeed forthcoming, some comment on his preliminary comments may be permitted. (shrink)