An examination of British and French weights exchanged between the Royal Society and the Académie royale des sciences in the 1730s has led to a re‐assessment of the Elizabethan troy standards from the Exchequer and the suggestion that the mass of the troy pound has been revised upwards. In turn this is used to support the idea of an evolutionary relationship between the early bullion ounces of England, France, and the Low Countries.

Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems are here. Technological development will see them become widespread in the near future. This is in a matter of years rather than decades. When the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meets on 10-14th November 2014, well-considered guidance for a decision on the general policy direction for LAWS is clearly needed. While there is widespread opposition to LAWS—or ‘killer robots’, as they are popularly called—and a growing campaign advocates banning them outright, we argue the opposite. LAWS (...) may very well reduce suffering and death in war. Rather than banning them, they should be regulated, to ensure both compliance with international humanitarian law, and that this positive outcome occurs. This policy memo sets out the basic structure and content of the regulation required. (shrink)

This is the short version, in French translation by Anne Querrien, of the originally jointly authored paper: Müller, Vincent C., ‘Autonomous killer robots are probably good news’, in Ezio Di Nucci and Filippo Santoni de Sio, Drones and responsibility: Legal, philosophical and socio-technical perspectives on the use of remotely controlled weapons. - - - L’article qui suit présente un nouveau système d’armes fondé sur des robots qui risque d’être prochainement utilisé. À la différence des drones qui sont manoeuvrés à distance (...) mais comportent une part importante de discernement humain, il s’agit de machines programmées pour défendre, attaquer, ou tuer de manière autonome. Les auteurs, philosophes, préfèrent prévenir de leur prochaine diffusion et obtenir des Nations Unies leur régulation. Une campagne internationale propose plutôt leur interdiction. (shrink)

May lethal autonomous weapons systems—‘killer robots ’—be used in war? The majority of writers argue against their use, and those who have argued in favour have done so on a consequentialist basis. We defend the moral permissibility of killer robots, but on the basis of the non-aggregative structure of right assumed by Just War theory. This is necessary because the most important argument against killer robots, the responsibility trilemma proposed by Rob Sparrow, makes the same assumptions. We show that the (...) crucial moral question is not one of responsibility. Rather, it is whether the technology can satisfy the requirements of fairness in the re-distribution of risk. Not only is this possible in principle, but some killer robots will actually satisfy these requirements. An implication of our argument is that there is a public responsibility to regulate killer robots ’ design and manufacture. (shrink)

There is little empirical evidence showing a direct link between a capacity for statistical learning (SL) and proficiency with natural language. Moreover, discussion of the role of SL in language acquisition has seldom focused on literacy development. Our study addressed these issues by investigating the relationship between SL and reading ability in typically developing children and healthy adults. We tested SL using visually presented stimuli within a triplet learning paradigm and examined reading ability by administering the Wide Range Achievement Test (...) (WRAT-4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006). A total of 38 typically developing children (mean age of 9;5 years, range 6;4–12;5) and 37 healthy adults (mean age of 21 years, range 18–34) were assessed. In children, SL was significantly related to reading ability. Importantly, this relationship was independent of grade and also age. The adult data, too, revealed that SL was significantly related to reading ability. A regression analysis of the combined child and adult data revealed that SL accounted for a unique amount of variance in reading ability, after age and attention had been taken into consideration. For the first time, this study provides empirical evidence that a capacity for more effective SL is related to higher reading ability in the general population. (shrink)

As legal scholar Ariela Dubler notes, the institution of marriage casts a long shadow across contemporary social life. Much more than a way of conferring social sanction on sexual and romantic relationships, marriage unlocks a wide range of social goods, from inheritance rights to medical records access. In addition, though, and as generations of feminists, queer activists, and others have made clear, this institution is part of a wider network of power relationships that it helps to shore up and conceal. (...) Critics most often point to the way the marital regime quietly reinforces patriarchal, bourgeois liberal, and heteronormative assumptions, hiding them in the shadow of putatively benign, private, and natural social structures. This article brings the overlooked connections between marriage and race out of the shadows and more fully into view. Using and refining a fourfold notion of racial invisibility developed in Taylor’s Black Is Beautiful, we consider two respects in which this ocularcentric metaphor for racialized epistemic short-circuiting is particularly appropriate for discussing the marital regime. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References and Further Reading.

Several themes can be identified in the commentaries. The first is that the climbing fibers may have more than one function; the second is that the climbing fibers provide sensory rather than motor signals. We accept the possibility that climbing fibers may have more than one function consequence(s)’ in the title. Until we know more about the function of the inhibitory input to the inferior olive from the cerebellar nuclei, which are motor structures, we have to keep open the possibility (...) that the climbing fiber signals can be a combination of sensory and motor signals. (shrink)

(1992). Grain packing in early standard capacity measures: Evidence from the scottish dry capacity standards. Annals of Science: Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 337-350.

An examination of British and French weights exchanged between the Royal Society and the Académie royale des sciences in the 1730s has led to a re‐assessment of the Elizabethan troy standards from the Exchequer and the suggestion that the mass of the troy pound has been revised upwards. In turn this is used to support the idea of an evolutionary relationship between the early bullion ounces of England, France, and the Low Countries.

The current qualitative study explores women’s conceptions of the normative family and their day-to-day family lives. To that aim, we conducted five focus group interviews in two low-income neighborhoods of Istanbul. The sample included 43 women who had at least one child between ages 3 and 8 in their care. Participants were 35.64 years old on average and were all married. Women had approximately two children whose mean age was 7.92 years old. Each focus group was semi-structured, lasted for 1–1.5 (...) h, and included 5–12 participants. Thematic analysis of the focus group interview data, moderator memos, and observer’s notes revealed five defining features of healthy family functioning: cohesion, healthy child, parenting, conflict, control, and family organization. Overall, women prioritized motherhood over their other social identities and idealized the happy family, which contradicted their actual lived experiences in the family system. We discuss how women’s depictions of all family processes revolved around cultural constructs of gender, socio-economic status, and independence/interdependence. The findings of this study shed light on future interventions for low-income women and their families in Turkey. (shrink)

In this thoughtful essay Wallulis argues that a rethinking of Gadamer's seminal claims about our historical situatedness is necessary if we are to have an adequate account of personal achievement. He argues that in stressing that we are the effect of tradition, Gadamer does not allow personal initiative its due. Wallulis wants to oppose a consciousness of "having been enabled" to what he sees as Gadamer's exclusive emphasis on a consciousness of being affected by history, as well as to Habermas's (...) notion of a consciousness oriented towards emancipation, that is, towards overcoming pseudo-natural constraints and attaining complete self-transparency. While sympathetic to Gadamer's hermeneutic critique of Habermas, Wallulis wants to offer a corrective to Gadamer's one-sided focus and thereby to elaborate a "hermeneutic of life history" that does justice to personal achievement. (shrink)

First-year university students have multiple motives for studying and these motives may interact. Yet, past research has primarily focused on a variable-centered, dimensional approach missing out on the possibility to study the joint effect of multiple motives that students may have. Examining the interplay between motives is key to better explain student differences in study success and wellbeing, and to understand different effects that interventions can have in terms of wellbeing and study success. We therefore applied a student-centered, multidimensional approach (...) in which we explored motivational profiles of first-year university students by combining three dimensions of motives for studying which have been shown to be differently related to academic functioning. Using cluster analysis in two independent, consecutive university student cohorts, we identified four meaningful profiles and coined them motivational mindsets. We validated the four mindset profiles not only within each student sample but also found almost identical profiles between the student samples. The motivational mindset profiles were labeled: high-impact mindset, low-impact mindset, social-impact mindset, and self-impact mindset. In addition to validating the paradigm, we developed a mindset classification tool to further use these mindsets in practice and in future research. (shrink)