The debate over environmental, health, and safety regulation has reached a new crescendo in the 104th Congress. So impassioned is the debate on occasion, and so high the feelings, that even the tools of regulatory analysis have become part of the combat.To some, the term cost-benefit analysis, for example, is virtually a swearword, a nefarious tool used by big business to undermine regulations aimed at benefiting the people at large. To others, it is the mechanism for achieving more effective regulation (...) at less cost.This new book on the subject of reforming regulation is aimed at increasing the light and turning down the heat. It consists of an introduction and nine chapters written by scientists, public policy analysts, and economists on various aspects of regulation and regulatory analysis.The book advances the latest knowledge and evidence on risk analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and related techniques for improving regulation--all based on experience and data accumulated over the quarter century since regulation in the areas of environment, health, and safety became a major player on the governmental stage. The strengths and limitations of those analytical tools are an important part of the portrait that is painted, but a common thesis is that, properly used, the tools can be helpful in getting better regulatory results. (shrink)

The latest volume in the Cambridge Histories of Philosophy series, The Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century brings together twenty-nine leading experts in the field and covers the years 1790-1870. Their twenty-seven chapters provide a comprehensive survey of the period, organizing the material topically. After a brief editor's introduction, it begins with three chapters surveying the background of nineteenth century philosophy: followed by two on logic and mathematics, two on nature and natural science, five on mind and language, (...) including psychology, the human sciences and aesthetics, four on ethics, three on religion, seven on society, including chapters on the French Revolution, the decline of natural right, political economy, and social discontent, and three on history, dealing with historical method, speculative theories of history and the history of philosophy. The essays are framed by an editor's introduction and a bibliography. (shrink)

Many groups of closely related species have reticulate phylogenies. Recent genomic analyses are showing this in many insects and vertebrates, as well as in microbes and plants. In microbes, lateral gene transfer is the dominant process that spoils strictly tree‐like phylogenies, but in multicellular eukaryotes hybridization and introgression among related species is probably more important. Because many species, including the ancestors of ancient major lineages, seem to evolve rapidly in adaptive radiations, some sexual compatibility may exist among them. Introgression and (...) reticulation can thereby affect all parts of the tree of life, not just the recent species at the tips. Our understanding of adaptive evolution, speciation, phylogenetics, and comparative biology must adapt to these mostly recent findings. Introgression has important practical implications as well, not least for the management of genetically modified organisms in pest and disease control. (shrink)

One of the unique insights provided by the growing number of fully sequenced genomes is the pervasiveness of gene duplication and gene loss. Indeed, several metrics now suggest that rates of gene birth and death per gene are only 10–40% lower than nucleotide substitutions per site, and that per nucleotide, the consequent lineage‐specific expansion and contraction of gene families may play at least as large a role in adaptation as changes in orthologous sequences. While gene family evolution is pervasive, it (...) may be especially important in our own evolution since it appears that the “revolving door” of gene duplication and loss has undergone multiple accelerations in the lineage leading to humans. In this paper, we review current understanding of gene family evolution including: methods for inferring copy number change, evidence for adaptive expansion and adaptive contraction of gene families, the origins of new families and deaths of previously established ones, and finally we conclude with a perspective on challenges and promising directions for future research. (shrink)

This commentary proposes keeping the bridge locus construct with a revised definition which requires the bridge locus to be dynamic, representation-independent and influenced by top-down processes. The denial of the uniformity of content thesis is equivalent to dualism. The active perception perspective is a valuable one.

There is a prima facie conflict between the semantical theory of direct reference and an intuitively plausible view often called 'individualism'. Direct reference theory is the view that certain expressions pick out their referent directly, without any intervening semantical mechanism. In order to describe the meaning of a sentence which contain such an expression, we have to mention the referent itself. Individualism is a view that mental states are individuated without reference to the subject's environment, either social or physical, and (...) therefore without mentioning an external object of reference. ;I argue that there is no conflict because it is a mistake to carry over the results of a semantical theory into a theory of mental content. My argument ultimately relies on a certain understanding of the difficult notions of mental content and linguistic meaning, gained in part by a close analysis of the historical context in which the theory of reference emerged out of the parallel work in the theory of intentionality. Fundamentally, the elucidation of these concepts is the principal aim of the dissertation, rather than the dismantling of an apparent conflict between two currently accepted views. ;There are two ways in which the conflict may be thought to arise. One argument relies on the identification of linguistic meaning with mental content. Against this I argue that we cannot hold both direct reference and the thesis, crucial to the argument, that linguistic meaning is identical to the thought-content of a competent. The short argument for conflict, therefore, fails. ;The second argument for the conflict is less direct. There are some thoughts, called De Re, which are said to constitute a direct connection between thinker and object. It is often thought that such thoughts are the ones attributed correctly using directly referential expressions. But what we attribute in such cases are just mental states whose attribution essentially involves the extra-mental objects of thought themselves, pace individualism. I argue that this argument depends on a conception of De Re, inherited from W. V. O. Quine, which mistakenly collapses issues of mental content with those of thought-attribution. (shrink)

Neonatal brain monitoring in the neonatal intensive care units (NICU) requires a continuous review of the spontaneous cortical activity, i.e., the electroencephalograph (EEG) background activity. This needs development of bedside methods for an automated assessment of the EEG background activity. In this paper, we present development of the key components of a neonatal EEG background classifier, starting from the visual background scoring to classifier design, and finally to possible bedside visualization of the classifier results. A dataset with 13,200 5-minute EEG (...) epochs (8–16 channels) from 27 infants with birth asphyxia was used for classifier training after scoring by two independent experts. We tested three classifier designs based on 98 computational features, and their performance was assessed with respect to scoring system, pre- and post-processing of labels and outputs, choice of channels, and visualization in monitor displays. The optimal solution achieved an overall classification accuracy of 97% with a range across subjects of 81–100%. We identified a set of 23 features that make the classifier highly robust to the choice of channels and missing data due to artefact rejection. Our results showed that an automated bedside classifier of EEG background is achievable, and we publish the full classifier algorithm to allow further clinical replication and validation studies. (shrink)

The following statement is a report of the Committee on Philosophy in Education of the American Philosophical Association and was approved by the Association's Board of Officers in September, 1959. The Committee was composed of the following: C. W. Hendel, Chairman, H. G. Alexander, R. M. Chisholm, Max Fisch, Lucius Garvin, Douglas Morgan, A. E. Murphy, Charner Perry, and R. G. Turnbull. Primary responsibility for the preparation of this report belonged to a subcommittee composed of Roderick M. Chisholm, Chairman, H. (...) G. Alexander, Lewis Hahn, Paul C. Hayner, and Charles W. Hendel. (shrink)