In the year 308 CE, the African army raised to the purple the agens vices praefectorum praetorio Lucius Domitius Alexander. This rather unique case of a vicarius becoming emperor is deserving of investigation. Scholarly interest on the matter has traditionally focused on the broader political significance, treating Alexander as a traditional usurper. This paper argues that, contrary to traditional studies, the regime of Alexander focused on very local, African tropes. The uniqueness of the advertisement suggests that this African usurpation was (...) the product of discontent internal to Africa; in other words, it is a departure from the usurpations of the third century. The achievements of Diocletian, who supposedly stabilized the Empire, ended when he withdrew, and the rebellion of 308–310 demonstrates that there remained unaddressed tensions between the provinces and the remaining tetrarchs. (shrink)

This research examines the structure and development of the organic sesame network from Burkina Faso to explain the declining trend in organic sesame export. The paper addresses particularly the question whether the organic sesame network is structurally (re)shaped as a conventional mainstream market or whether it still presents a real alternative to conventional sesame production and trade. It is found that over the last decade organic sesame is increasingly incorporated into mainstream market channels. But contrary to the well-known case of (...) conventionalization in California, where organic agriculture grew into mainstream agro-food arrangements, this study illustrates a case where organic sesame agriculture shrank into mainstream agro-food arrangements. The weak coherence between the production and marketing nodes in the organic sesame chain resulted in failures to vertically mediate information, balance power relationships in and across sesame chains, build trust, and limit price volatility and speculation, resulting in a shrinking organic sesame market. For developing a viable alternative to conventional sesame trading, relations between production and trading nodes in the organic networks need to be strengthened through public–private partnerships, combined with other public and legal reinforcement. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

Individual-as-maximizing agent analogies result in a simple understanding of the functioning of the biological world. Identifying the conditions under which individuals can be regarded as fitness maximizing agents is thus of considerable interest to biologists. Here, we compare different concepts of fitness maximization, and discuss within a single framework the relationship between Hamilton’s (J Theor Biol 7:1–16, 1964) model of social interactions, Grafen’s (J Evol Biol 20:1243–1254, 2007a) formal Darwinism project, and the idea of evolutionary stable strategies. We distinguish (...) class='Hi'>cases where phenotypic effects are additive separable or not, the latter not being covered by Grafen’s analysis. In both cases it is possible to define a maximand, in the form of an objective function ϕ(z), whose argument is the phenotype of an individual and whose derivative is proportional to Hamilton’s inclusive fitness effect. However, this maximand can be identified with the expression for fecundity or fitness only in the case of additive separable phenotypic effects, making individual-as-maximizing agent analogies unattractive (although formally correct) under general situations of social interactions. We also feel that there is an inconsistency in Grafen’s characterization of the solution of his maximization program by use of inclusive fitness arguments. His results are in conflict with those on evolutionary stable strategies obtained by applying inclusive fitness theory, and can be repaired only by changing the definition of the problem. (shrink)

This article reviews the development of social quality indicators and the challenges ahead. First, through a review of recent Asian and Australian work carried out on social quality indicators, and the World Bank related work on “social development indicators,” the article argues that social quality indicators research should move beyond the empirical level of particular policy areas. Therefore, it should be guided by a clear methodological perspective regarding the role of indicators as part of a social quality theory (SQT) and (...) their relation to the social quality approach (SQA). Second, the article opens a debate about the rationale behind distinguishing between three different functions of social quality indicators. Indicators should address the change in the conditional factors in daily life, as manifested in its economic, socio-political, socio-cultural and environmental dimensions, in order to examine the consequences of general trends and contradictions in (1) societal circumstances, (2) the development (or lack of development) toward sustainability, and (3) the related issue of sustainable urban development. Before 2010 social quality scholars mainly concentrated on the first issue. Recently, however, they are approaching all three issues. It is essential to delve deeper into SQT and the SQA for understanding these three issues separately and integrally. This has implications for the nature of social quality indicators and their comparison to those of other mainstream approaches; the article introduces this agenda of work. (shrink)

The functional basis of disgust in disease avoidance is widely accepted; however, there is disagreement over what disgust is. This is a significant problem, as basic questions about disgust require...

Parental effects are a major source of phenotypic plasticity and may influence offspring phenotype in concert with environmental demands. Studies of “environmental epigenetics” suggest that (1) DNA methylation states are variable and that both demethylation and remethylation occur in post‐mitotic cells, and (2) that remodeling of DNA methylation can occur in response to environmentally driven intracellular signaling pathways. Studies of mother‐offspring interactions in rodents suggest that parental signals influence the DNA methylation, leading to stable changes in gene expression. If parental (...) effects do indeed enhance the “match” between prevailing environmental demands and offspring phenotype, then the potential for variation in environmental conditions over time would suggest a mechanism that requires active maintenance across generations through parental signaling. We suggest that parental regulation of DNA methylation states is thus an ideal candidate mechanism for parental effects on phenotypic variation. (shrink)

Within many animal taxa there is a trend for the species of larger body size to eat food of lower caloric value. For example, most large extant lizards are herbivorous. Reasonable arguments based on energetic considerations are often invoked to explain this trend, yet, while these factors set limits to feasible body size, they do not in themselves mathematically produce optimum body sizes. A simple optimization model is developed here which considers food search, capture, and eating rates and the metabolic (...) cost of these activities for animals of different sizes. The optimization criterion is defined as the net caloric gain a consumer accrues per day. This model does produce an optimum intermediate body size which increases with food quality - not the reverse. This discrepancy is accounted for, however, because the model also predicts that body size should be even more sensitive to increases in food abundance. In nature, many poor quality foods are also relatively abundant foods, hence the consumers eating them may maximize their daily energetic profit by evolving a relatively large body size. Optimum consumer body size also decreases with increases in consumer metabolic rate and prey speed. (shrink)

The Swiss philosopher Anton Marty (Schwyz, 1847 - Prague, 1914) belongs, with Carl Stumpf, to the first circle of Brentano’s pupils. Within Brentano’s school (and, to some extent, in the secondary literature), Marty has often been considered (in particular by Meinong) a kind of would-be epigone of his master (Fisette & Fréchette 2007: 61-2). There is no doubt that Brentano’s doctrine often provides Marty with his philosophical starting points. But Marty often arrives at original conclusions which are diametrically opposed to (...) Brentano’s views. This is true of his views about space and time and about judgment, emotions and intentionality. In the latter case, for example, Marty develops Brentano’s view and its implications in great detail (Mulligan 1989; Rollinger 2004), but uses them to formulate a very unBrentanian account of intentionality as a relation of ideal assimilation (Chrudzimski 1999; Cesalli & Taieb 2013). Marty’s philosophy of language, on the other hand, is one of the first philosophies worthy of the name. In what follows, we contrast briefly their accounts of (i) judgment and states of affairs and of (ii) emotings and value (two topics of foremost significance, for Brentano and Marty’s theoretical and practical philosophies respectively) (§1), and their philosophies of language (§2). Brentano’s view of language is based on his philosophy of mind. Marty takes over the latter and turns a couple of claims by Brentano about language into a sophisticated philosophy of language of a kind made familiar much later by Grice. Marty’s philosophy of states of affairs and value and of the mind’s relations to these also takes off from views sketched by the early Brentano, views forcefully rejected by the later Brentano. (shrink)

There have been few tests of whether exposure to naturalistic or experimental disease-threat inductions alter disgust sensitivity, although it has been hypothesized that this should occur as part of disgust’s disease avoidance function. In the current study, we asked Macquarie university students to complete measures of disgust sensitivity, perceived vulnerability to disease, hand hygiene behavior and impulsivity, during Australia’s Covid-19 pandemic self-quarantine period, in March/April 2020. These data were then compared to earlier Macquarie university, and other local, and overseas student (...) cohorts, to determine if disgust sensitivity and the other measures, were different in the lockdown sample. The most consistent finding in the lockdown sample was of higher core disgust sensitivity, with some evidence of greater germ aversion on the PVD, and an increase in hand and food-related hygiene, but with little change in impulsivity. The consistency with which greater core disgust sensitivity was observed, suggests exposure to a highly naturalistic disease threat is a plausible cause. Greater disgust sensitivity may have several functional benefits and may arise implicitly from the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Which are the philosophical consequences for one’s theory of objects and relations if one posits that every intentional act is correlated with an intentional object? In what follows, I tackle that question in examining the case of Franciscus de Mayronis . After suggesting a typology of theories of intentionality distinguishing monadic, relational, and correlational theories, I go on to expose Franciscus’ ontology and his conception of relations. It turns out that Franciscus’ theory of intentionality exemplifies a pattern according to which (...) certain epistemic-psychological constraints have serious consequences on the ontology. (shrink)

In the context of change to the “new modernity” described in Beck’s work, companies develop management modes and methods that focus more and more on individuals. Constitutive of the individualization process, human resources practices have become ambivalent as the process itself. This contribution examines how a managerial and organizational innovation as telework contributes to the process of individualization, and the paradoxes it addresses to management. At the interface of the social and the technical, teleworking appears as a flexible arrangement, meeting (...) employees’ and employer’s demands – which is a characteristic of the process of individualization – by simultaneously fragmenting collectivity, exposing individuals to social risk, and producing exclusion. The authors focus on two consecutive paradoxes of such individualized managerial practices: the individual–collective dilemma and the autonomy–control paradox. Finally, the paper reveals HRM as a new institution of individualization in a world where regulation functions are more and more transferred to individuals themselves. (shrink)

Résumé Le texte de L. Bove (suite à l’article de M. Vatter dans le numéro 9 de Multitudes ) examine à son tour le trinôme libéralisme, orthodoxie, démocratie, mais à partir de la philosophie de Spinoza. Celle-ci pense en effet une radicalité de l’orthodoxie et une radicalité démocratique en dehors d’une juridication du politique. Mais la perspective spinoziste nous conduit plutôt à penser que si la démocratie est le véritable adversaire asymétrique de la politique de l’État moderne, cette politique se (...) construit cependant, dans sa vérité effective, en symétrie parfaite avec un modèle d’orthodoxie. L’avantage de mettre à jour une telle équivalence nous permet de lire aujourd’hui l’inquiétante possibilité qu’a le libéralisme d’une voie explicite d’éradication historique (ou post-historique) radicale de son adversaire démocratique. Cette voie lui est offerte par un modèle d’orthodoxie qui a su déjà répondre au problème de la revendication démocratique. Ce modèle parfait de l’obéissance, c’est celui que Spinoza a découvert et étudié dans la théocratie hébraïque ancienne, modèle d’orthodoxie (an-historique) dont l’État monarchique hobbesien (auquel nous sommes aujourd’hui confrontés sous la figure juridico-politique de la démocratie libérale) pourrait n’être que l’expression moderne (post-historique). Ce sont les soubassements théoriques de cette inquiétante configuration, quant aux funestes perspectives qu’elle éclaire, qui sont examinés ici. Ce que nous apprend ainsi Spinoza c’est que ce que nous devons appeler « politique»s’identifie inéluctablement, pour nous, avec la question même de l’anthropogenèse. (shrink)

This article explores the category of biopolitics through the use Roberto Esposito and Giorgio Agamben make of two Greek words, bios and ōē. In particular, I argue that the separation of bios and ōē as introduced in Homo Sacer has no "natural" nor "lingual" relevance. The exposition of such a fabulous antinomy simply ruins the historical matter of Agamben's discourse on biopolitics. Here, Esposito's research could be read as an attempt to found the category of biopolitics anew without repeating the (...) fiction of a bifurcation between ōē and bios. However, Esposito, in his own celebration of biopower, undermines the very power of language and, thus, ignores the variation of the invariant that is history. Esposito's and Agamben's difficulties lead us back to the possible ambition of all politics to absorb all life, as it was already expressed by Aristotle. In this sense, "modern biopolitics" becomes a case study for the totalitarian temptation of political order. (shrink)

Many contributions explained in details the various benefits from private roads. Not only they stressed the possibility of such system, but also the functioning through different historical experiences. However, they put aside an important question: how should we proceed concretely in order to privatize the road network? Our contribution tries to answer this question. It explains the consequences of a public provision and its differences with a free market order. It defines the true meaning of the privatization process: a search (...) for justice, and proposes a solution based on Rothbard’s theory of property rights. The paper concludes on some critics that we raised to alternative process of privatization.Le réseau routier constitue un bien privé qui peut faire l’objet d’une offre de la part d’entrepreneurs. Or aujourd’hui, celui-ci est géré par le secteur public. Se pose le problème de sa “désocialisation” ou de sa transmission au secteur privé par privatisation. Nous démontrons que les procédés de privatisation couramment utilisés se focalisent seulement sur un critère de rentabilité et en cela se révèlent insuffisants. La méthode par restitution se présente quant à elle comme un procédé recherchant un principe de justice, conforme à l’éthique des droits de propriété. Nous présentons alors les modalités pratiques d’une telle méthode appliquée au réseau routier. (shrink)

resumo Esse artigo investiga a leitura que Shaftesbury fez de Marco Aurélio, a fim de comparar a visão estóica da individual ida de e da ide nt ida de pessoal com o conceito lockia no de “self” e, de ma ne i ra mais ge ral, com os mo dos pelos quais a filosofia mo de rna entendeu o si-me s mo. A ênfase recai sobre a conexão int r í nseca ent re sistema e s u b j e (...) t i v ida de no estoicismo imperial. Discute-se a re s i s t ê nc ia de autores cont e m p o r âneos em aceitar a descrição da alma ra c io nal dos estóicos como um “self”. Também se discute a aplicação que Mic hel Foucault fez do seu conceito de “subjetivação” à id é ia estóica de “si-me s mo ”. palavras-chave Estoicismo; self; identidade pessoal; Shaftesbury; Marco Aurélio; Foucault. (shrink)

A central object of study in the field of algorithmic randomness are notions of randomness for sequences, i.e., infinite sequences of zeros and ones. These notions are usually defined with respect to the uniform measure on the set of all sequences, but extend canonically to other computable probability measures. This way each notion of randomness induces an equivalence relation on the computable probability measures where two measures are equivalent if they have the same set of random sequences. In what follows, (...) we study the equivalence relations induced by Martin-Löf randomness, computable randomness, Schnorr randomness and Kurtz randomness, together with the relations of equivalence and consistency from probability theory. We show that all these relations coincide when restricted to the class of computable strongly positive generalized Bernoulli measures. For the case of arbitrary computable measures, we obtain a complete and somewhat surprising picture of the implications between these relations that hold in general. (shrink)

Can researchers, interested in novel ways to assess HIV seroprevalence among populations which are otherwise hidden, collect condoms that have been discarded on the ground in a public sex environment and test them for HIV? Researchers, who use other types of abandoned samples, such as discarded syringes, hair or saliva samples, or excess biological samples, confront similar issues. This review evaluates whether such abandoned tissues can be studied based on U.S. Code of Federal Regulations and literature on related issues including: (...) research involving banked tissues, blinded seroprevalence studies, and property claims that individuals might make on the samples.It also addresses broader questions of potential for stigma and risk to individuals and communities. The article concludes that the research should be permitted legally because either it does not involve human subjects, or it satisfies the requirements for waiver of consent; and that the research should also be permitted because the ethical principal of avoiding harm to individuals is fully satisfied based on a careful reading of the lessons of the tissue bank, biological property rights, and blinded seroprevalence study debates, as well as a consideration of other potential harms that might be involved. (shrink)

Can researchers, interested in novel ways to assess HIV seroprevalence among populations which are otherwise hidden, collect condoms that have been discarded on the ground in a public sex environment and test them for HIV? Does the Code of Federal Regulations address this question, and if not, what areas of research ethics might provide guidance to an IRB considering such a study? These questions arose as part of a preliminary study to test the feasibility of collecting discarded condoms from a (...) public sex environment in Massachusetts, and testing contained semen for HIV. Although the methodology of this study is somewhat unusual, the questions raised are not. Researchers, who wish to use other types of abandoned samples such as discarded syringes, hair or saliva samples, or even excess biological samples, commonly confront similar issues, and the analysis utilized here could guide design and review of other studies. (shrink)

La famille Poincaré trouve ses racines en Lorraine, dans les départements de Meurthe-et-Moselle, de la Meuse et des Vosges. Arrancy-sur-Crusne, Bar-le-Duc, Landaville, Longuyon, Lunéville, Nancy, Neufchâteau, Remenoncourt, Xirocourt sont quelques-unes des communes ayant vu naître des ancêtres des deux Poincaré les plus connus, Henri et Raymond. Cet article propose une histoire de la famille d’Henri Poincaré sur le temps long et prend appui sur une vaste synthèse des informations généalogiques existantes. Dans un premier temps j’explore rapidement les origines anciennes du (...) nom « Poincaré » et certaines branches indirectes de la famille ; j’analyse ensuite de manière plus fine les parcours des acteurs principaux de la branche directe, en particulier ceux du père, de l’oncle et du grand-père paternels d’Henri Poincaré. Je termine ce parcours en me focalisant rapidement sur les mariages et les descendants respectifs d’Henri Poincaré et de sa sœur Aline. Un tel essai est structuré autour d’une double ambition : d’une part, apporter une contribution à la biographie de Poincaré centrée sur la sphère privée ; d’autre part, caractériser finement le milieu social dans lequel Poincaré a pu évoluer au cours de sa vie. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper explores how the Belgian mathematician Paul Mansion became interested in probability theory. In comparison to many other countries at the time, probability theory had a much stronger presence in Belgium. In addition, Mansion, who was an avowed Catholic militant, had found probability theory to be a useful means of reflecting on certain problems pertaining to determinism and randomness that were arising in scientific debates at the time. Mansion’s work took place during a time of consolidation of mathematical education (...) in Belgium, as well as a new interest in probabilistic results and the foundation of the Institute for Philosophy in Louvain by his friend Désiré Mercier. The present paper addresses how these aspects intersected at the turn of the twentieth century. (shrink)

A semimeasure is a generalization of a probability measure obtained by relaxing the additivity requirement to superadditivity. We introduce and study several randomness notions for left-c.e. semimeasures, a natural class of effectively approximable semimeasures induced by Turing functionals. Among the randomness notions we consider, the generalization of weak 2-randomness to left-c.e. semimeasures is the most compelling, as it best reflects Martin-Löf randomness with respect to a computable measure. Additionally, we analyze a question of Shen, a positive answer to which would (...) also have yielded a reasonable randomness notion for left-c.e. semimeasures. Unfortunately, though, we find a negative answer, except for some special cases. (shrink)

The humanities and social sciences (HSS) are being turned upside down by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and their very existence could be threatened. These sciences are being profoundly destabilised by a dual process of naturalisation of social phenomena and fetishisation of numbers, accentuated by the development of AI (part 1). Both STM (science, technology, medicine) and HSS are facing major epistemological challenges, but for the latter they carry the risk of marginalisation (part 2). The humanities and social sciences remain (...) the best equipped to question the social construct represented by the development of AI. However, this essential approach is not enough. We need to ask ourselves: how can the HSS reintroduce interpretation when they have less and less control over how data is put together? Only a balanced partnership between STM and HSS is likely to meet all these challenges (part 3). Using the case of education, which has long been at the forefront of developments in other sectors of social life, we would like to show how and on what priority issues such a partnership can be built (part 4). (shrink)

Lighthouse and the Trinity House case have triggered extensive debate on the possibility of private production of public goods and, more especially, lighthouse services provision. This contribution sums up current academic debate about lighthouse provision. It shows that the English system of lighthouse services provision cannot be rigorously considered as an example of private provision. Some historical experiences have shown that private provision was possible, although governmental hindrances restrained a full-fledged market process provision. This contribution defends the interest of mobilizing (...) a political economy perspective for an understanding of the different frameworks and institutional designs for providing such services. Some national cases illustrate and sustain the proposed political economy framework. (shrink)