Anuran amphibian metamorphosis is an immunologically interesting period. For the investigator, it provides an unusual opportunity for analyzing both humoral regulation of the immune response and the development and maintenance of self‐tolerance. Some of the questions one can ask are: Why don't immunocompetent larvae destroy antigenically disparate adult cells as they differentiate within them during metamorphosis? Do the dramatic hormonal changes occurring during this period regulate immunological function? How do animals in metamophorsis protect themselves from their immunologically hostile environment?

Raciolinguistics reveals the central role that language plays in shaping our ideas about race and vice versa. The book brings together a team of leading scholars-working both within and beyond the United States-to share powerful, much-needed research that helps us understand the increasingly vexed relationships between race, ethnicity, and language in our rapidly changing world. Combining the innovative, cutting-edge approaches of race and ethnic studies with fine-grained linguistic analyses, authors cover a wide range of topics including the struggle over the (...) very term "African American," the racialized language education debates within the increasing number of "majority-minority" immigrant communities in the U.S., the dangers of multicultural education in a Europe that is struggling to meet the needs of new migrants, and the sociopolitical and cultural meanings of linguistic styles used in Brazilian favelas, South African townships, Mexican and Puerto Rican barrios in Chicago, and Korean American "cram schools" in New York City, among other sites. Taking into account rapidly changing demographics in the U.S and shifting cultural and media trends across the globe--from Hip Hop cultures, to transnational Mexican popular and street cultures, to Israeli reality TV, to new immigration trends across Africa and Europe--Raciolinguistics shapes the future of scholarship on race, ethnicity, and language. By taking a comparative look across a diverse range of language and literacy contexts, the volume seeks not only to set the research agenda in this burgeoning area of study, but also to help resolve pressing educational and political problems in some of the most contested raciolinguistic contexts in the world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“More or Less Raped”:Foucault, Causality, and Feminist Critiques of Sexual ViolenceKelly H. BallI say “freedom of sexual choice” and not “freedom of sexual acts” because there are sexual acts like rape which should not be permitted.… I don’t think we should have as our objective some sort of absolute freedom or total liberty of sexual action.—Michel Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity, and TruthCausality in the subject, the unconscious of the subject, (...) the truth of the subject in the other who knows, the knowledge he holds unbeknown to him, all this found an opportunity to deploy itself in the discourse of sex.—Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An IntroductionMost Feminist Readers Of Foucault are familiar with the case of the “simple farmhand,” Charles Jouy, whom Foucault briefly mentions in The History of Sexuality, Volume I (henceforth Sexuality One). The case of Charles Jouy and [End Page 52 ] Sophie Adam (the relatively unknown name of the “little girl” from whom Jouy “obtained a few caresses”) is instructive for Foucault, as it illustrates both the epistemic shifts and changing technologies of power—specifically the emergence of sexuality—during the late nineteenth century (Foucault 1990, 31). By the time Foucault published Sexuality One in 1976 (translated and published in English in 1978), he had already spent considerable time analyzing the Jouy-Adam case. In his 1974-75 lectures at the College de France, Les Anormaux, Foucault delivered an extended analysis of the case resulting from archival research he undertook at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. The infamously brief 1978 appearance of the case in Sexuality One, then, is only a distilled version of the case that references Foucault’s earlier argument in Les Anormaux about the expansion of sexuality as a productive technology of power-knowledge-pleasure. 1Much of the feminist response to Foucault’s use of the Jouy-Adam case in Sexuality One is bound up with obstacles of time and translation. While Sexuality One was published in English in 1978, Foucault’s 1974–75 lectures, Les Anormaux, were not published in French until 1999, and the English translation, Abnormal, only appeared in 2003. Clearly, this translation and publishing timeline complicates the reception of Foucault’s thinking about the production and regulation of sexuality for many American readers. The relatively late appearance of Abnormal has limited Anglophone feminist theorists’ ability to engage Foucault’s theories about sexuality and violence more extensively.With few exceptions, feminists have been overwhelmingly critical of what they view as Foucault’s reductive presentation of the Jouy-Adam case and his blindness to sexual violence in Sexuality One. 2 Linda Martín Alcoff’s 1996 essay “Dangerous Pleasures: The Politics of Pedophilia” is representative of this trend. The feminist concerns Alcoff raises regarding Foucault and the Jouy-Adam case both precede her essay and persist in more recent feminist analyses. Still, the essay remains symptomatic of how feminist theorists have responded generally to Foucault’s comments on sexual violence and specifically to his comments regarding the desexualization of rape. 3 Alcoff buttresses her critique of Foucault’s presentation of the Jouy-Adam case in Sexuality One by referring to his comments on children, sexual violence, and pedophilia in a transcript of a collective interview with Jean Danet and Guy Hocquenghem, “Sexual Morality and the Law” (Alcoff 1996, 102-106). 4 Her critique in “Dangerous Pleasures” centers on preserving a feminist capacity to determine what counts as violence and make judgments accordingly. The fact that this discussion has endured for more than thirty years (beginning with Monique Plaza’s 1981 response to Sexuality One) speaks to the persistence of sexual violence against women and children as a feminist concern. 5 That concern is somewhat at odds with Foucault’s conception of sexuality as a productive mode of modern biopower. [End Page 53]Reading athwart Alcoff and the feminist tradition she represents, I argue here that the practice of making judgments about sexual violence relies upon a concept of causality that is an extension of the modern framework of power-knowledge-pleasure. I do so by focusing on Foucault’s more detailed account of the Jouy-Adam case In Abnormal. Indeed, reading... (shrink)

Originally published in 1929, this book presents a selection of Thomas Carlyle's writings, aiming 'to collect and arrange the passages most representative of Carlyle's contribution to culture and to thought, particularly in the spheres of Literary Criticism, Philosophy, Political Economy, and History.' A detailed editorial introduction is also included, with information on Carlyle's life and intellectual views. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Thomas Carlyle and his works.

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

1. We speak of causes in a large variety of contexts and in respect of a large variety of kinds of effects. For instance, we speak of one billiard ball causing the other to move; of diseases as causing death; of drunkenness as a cause of accidents; of the elasticity of the rubber as causing the balloon not to burst under pressure; of the change in temperature as causing the change in the length of the steel girder; of the (...) lemon's acidity as causing it to taste sour; of the cause of the universe, or of matter; of causes of wars, crises, depressions; of causes of other people's actions, and even of their decisions. In brief, the contexts in which talk about causes occurs are where we seek to explain causally the occurrence of happenings, events, changes, phenomena, the existence of things, the possession of properties, human behavior, states of mind, decisions, etc. Hence a satisfactory elucidation of the concept of cause must cover the variety of causes which are pointed to in causal explanations in these areas. (shrink)

Some astronomers believe that we have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. I contest this assessment. Recent discoveries of trans-Neptunian Pluto-sized objects do not require that we exclude Pluto from the planets. But the obvious alternative, that classificatory revision is a matter of arbitrary choice, is also unpalatable. I argue that this classificatory controversy — which I compare to the controversy about the classification of the platypus — illustrates how our classificatory practices are laden with normative commitments of a (...) distinctive kind. I argue that the “norm-ladenness” of classification has philosophically significant ramifications for how we think about scientific disputes and debates in the metaphysics of classification such as the monism/pluralism debate. (shrink)

The author considers two arguments concerning the nature of space which occur in Berkeley and which he thinks are not sufficiently discussed. The first one concerns the phenomenology of space, the second the physics of space. The first one is the “mite” argument, while the second draws from Newton’s two thought experiments concerning absolute space: the “bucket” experiment and the “balls” experiment. The author’s aim is to support the idealist approach to space.

When physicist Alan Sokal recently submitted an article to the postmodernist journal Social Text, the periodical's editors were happy to publish it--for here was a respected scientist offering support for the journal's view that science is a subjective, socially constructed discipline. But as Sokal himself soon revealed in Lingua Franca magazine, the essay was a spectacular hoax--filled with scientific gibberish anyone with a basic knowledge of physics should have caught--and the academic world suddenly awoke to the vast gap that has (...) opened between the scientific community and their mould-be critics. But the truth is that not only postmodern critics but Americans in general have a weak grasp on scientific principles and facts. In Connected Knowledge, physicist Alan Cromer offers a way to bridge the chasm, with a lively, lucid account of scientific thinking and a provocative new agenda for American education. Science, Cromer argues, is anything but common sense: It requires a particular habit of mind that does not come naturally. For example, something as simple as buoyancy can only be explained through Archimedes' principle--that a body in a fluid is subject to an upward force equal to the weight of fluid it displaces--yet few scientists could arrive at this ancient concept by trial and error. School children, however, are often given a ball and a tank of water, and asked to explain buoyancy any way they can. Today's de emphasis on teaching pupils necessary facts and principles, he argues, "far from empowering them, makes them slaves of their own subjective opinions." This movement in education, known as Constructivism, has close ties to postmodern critics (such as the editors of Social Text) who question the objectivity of science, and with it the existence of an objective reality. Cromer offers a ringing defense of the knowability of the world, both as an objective reality and as a finite landscape of discovery. The advance of scientific knowledge, he argues, is not unlike the mapping of the continents; at this point, we have found them all. He shows how the advent of quantum mechanics, rather than making knowledge less certain, actually offers a more precise understanding of the behavior of atoms and electrons. Turning from philosophy to education, he argues that instead of allowing students to flounder, however creatively, schools should follow a progressive curriculum that returns theoretical knowledge to the classroom. Connected Knowledge, however, goes much farther. As a discipline that insists upon connecting theory with measurable reality, physical science offers a new direction for reforming the social sciences. Cromer also shows how some of the hottest issues in public policy--including the debates over special education and group variations in I.Q., can be resolved through clear, hard headed thinking. For example, he argues for use of the G.E.D. as a national educational standard, with a new "politics of intelligence" to guide the distribution of school resources. Always forthright and articulate, Alan Cromer offers a startling new vision for integrating science, philosophy, and education. (shrink)

The picture which one naturally presents of the situation is that which would arise before an observer placed outside the earth, who could watch the light wave starting from the central mirror and pursuing the distant mirror, catching up with it at some distance beyond the point at which it was when the light wave started. In this case the observer is able to locate the points at which the parts of the apparatus were at different moments and to measure (...) the distances between. We could simulate this situation on the earth by assuming an enclosed square car, from some point in which two balls were shot out in directions at right angles to each other to the walls of the car, bounding back to the point at which they started. We will assume that the balls move with uniform velocity going and coming, and we will assume that the car is moving. An observer outside the car who marked the point on the rail directly over the starting point and the points reached by the balls when they struck the sides of the car, and then measured the distances which the balls travelled, would find that the ball which travelled with the car covered a greater distance than that traversed by the ball which went at right angles to the direction of the train, and yet the balls would return to the starting point at the same moment, provided they travelled over both their paths at the same velocity during their entire trajects, i.e., the same velocity measured within the car. The observer would be at no difficulty to explain this, for he would see that the velocity in the direction of its motion of the car had to be added to that of balls within the car. That is not the case of the light wave. The velocity of a moving shining body is not added to that of the light wave. The wave motion being set up in ether travels with its own uniform velocity of approximately 300,000 kilometers a second. The light waves then, from the standpoint of the observer outside the earth, traverse through the stagnant ether different distances at a uniform velocity and yet the ether waves exhibit on their return none of the evidence which they should exhibit in the interferometer. (shrink)

The “Tower of London” puzzle was adapted to tablet PCs to be used as a clinical bedside test. “Iso-problems”, a specific class of problems, require identical moves but ball colours are permuted. Thus difficulty is the same even if the appearance is different. We wanted to determine the impact of these as yet little-studied tasks and hypothesised that there may be a learning effect specific to them (the “iso-effect”). We interspersed a set of six iso-problems within one selection of (...) 22 tasks and analysed problem solving by 81 healthy adults (mean age 41.6 years). Participants showed learning across iso-problems (less time, fewer moves, increasingly efficient solutions). This effect was distinct from general learning, as was obvious from comparison with a series of non-isomorphic tasks. However, participants seem not to be aware of solving such problems. This “iso-effect” may be related to implicit memory, a domain that so far has not been assessed using the Tower of London. (shrink)

Each relational structure X has an associated Gaifman graph, which endows X with the properties of a graph. If x is an element of X, let $B_n (x)$ be the ball of radius n around x. Suppose that X is infinite, connected and of bounded degree. A first-order sentence ϕ in the language of X is almost surely true (resp. a. s. false) for finite substructures of X if for every x ∈ X, the fraction of substructures of $B_n (...) (x)$ satisfying ϕ approaches 1 (resp. 0) as n approaches infinity. Suppose further that, for every finite substructure, X has a disjoint isomorphic substructure. Then every ϕ is a. s. true or a. s. false for finite substructures of X. This is one form of the geometric zero-one law. We formulate it also in a form that does not mention the ambient infinite structure. In addition, we investigate various questions related to the geometric zero-one law. (shrink)

Effort is then well-nigh indescribable. Not wholly so, else it would be meaningless. Description is a matter of degree: who can fully describe red or wet? To be sure, description comes down in the end to the pointing to certain given qualities or relations or events which are just there. All connotation rests on denotation, though it may be something more. But the unique positive thing about effort is its originality; to which indeed we can point, since every one experiences (...) it in himself. Yet common to all men though it is, it is so intangible! more spirit than body, more force than substance. We should perhaps best call it not a datum but a factum, or better still, a fiat, a doing rather than a deed, yet not merely a becoming, for we see things coming to be, we hear a melody progressing and touch a moving object. Effort, dynamic as it is, is not just the process, rather it is--we must re-iterate--the start, the initiative of the process. Nor is the experience of it properly called mystical. Even if mystical experience were indescribable, as has been wrongly alleged, these would be two quite different indescribables, the one receptive, the other originative. All we can say perhaps is that effort is analogous to the push that starts the ball rolling, not the motion of the ball, not the acceleration, but the enforcement of these. Its witness does not lie in its value as explanation of the motion; the witness is direct, the immediate experience which every man has. It seems to be no object of scientific investigation in the technical sense. It cannot be measured by itself, as acceleration and motion are measured. That is why physics has abandoned the old notion of force, the physical analogue of effort, replacing it by mass-acceleration. That is why the rationalists in modern philosophy look askance at this direct experience of man, so intangible that we can draw from it no logical implications. For it has no structure. Its characteristic is not clearness nor distinctness. We might be tempted to say it is like a point in space, too small to be envisaged, yet not a zero; but it is more like a dot or spark, so small as to be just seen, so small as to have no visible spread, no content that we can analyze to draw out rational consequences connecting it with other things. Here too we see why the contemplative thinker seldom believes in free choice, which the natural man naturally accepts. Free choice is the kind of thing that might well belong to this experience; free choice is origination. Not necessarily that all effort is freely made. The baby exercises no free choice when he sucks hard at the nipple, nor the adult when he wrestles for his life with an enemy. But they want, need, desire; that is the point. Desire--that is the essence of effort. Desire has the originative quality; it comes as it were out of one's self and from no other source, it is what we want, our self insisting on its own. But the business is so deep within that it is easily overlooked, or deliberately excluded from the gaze, and without a qualm. We might say it is too near to be noticed, or too deep down to obtrude itself, as the water in the well is easy to see, but not the spring at the bottom of the well. Effort disappears from the scene when the thinker is calmly gazing; but when he acts it is felt, and strongly felt. It is in fact the very essence of the self, the well-spring of its worth and its growth. A man is what he does. His worth lies in what he makes. All that he is responsible for, all that he earns, is credited with, or guilty of, comes from this innermost source. So thinks the practical man, so we all believe when we are conducting our lives in intercourse with one another and with nature. But for the contemplative attitude there is here too little of clear articulation, of object-matter for analysis; no use can be made of it in a deductive system. So the system-builders discard it. (shrink)

The effect of mechanical deformation on the formation of quasicrystals in Zr57Ti8Nb2.5Cu13.9Ni11.1Al7.5 glassy ribbons has been investigated. The mechanical treatment drastically affects the crystallization behavior and, in particular, suppresses primary quasicrystal formation. However, quasicrystals can be formed by the addition of the appropriate amount of zirconium. This indicates that if a particular short-range order (e.g., icosahedral) is required for quasicrystal formation and if this short-range order is altered during milling, it can be restored by appropriately adjusting the chemical composition.

For any choice of initial state and weak assumptions about the Hamiltonian, large isolated quantum systems undergoing Schrödinger evolution spend most of their time in macroscopic superposition states. The result follows from von Neumann’s 1929 Quantum Ergodic Theorem. As a specific example, we consider a box containing a solid ball and some gas molecules. Regardless of the initial state, the system will evolve into a quantum superposition of states with the ball in macroscopically different positions. Thus, despite their (...) seeming fragility, macroscopic superposition states are ubiquitous consequences of quantum evolution. We discuss the connection to many worlds quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The “Tower of London” puzzle was adapted to tablet PCs to be used as a clinical bedside test. “Iso-problems”, a specific class of problems, require identical moves but ball colours are permuted. Thus difficulty is the same even if the appearance is different. We wanted to determine the impact of these as yet little-studied tasks and hypothesised that there may be a learning effect specific to them (the “iso-effect”). We interspersed a set of six iso-problems within one selection of (...) 22 tasks and analysed problem solving by 81 healthy adults (mean age 41.6 years). Participants showed learning across iso-problems (less time, fewer moves, increasingly efficient solutions). This effect was distinct from general learning, as was obvious from comparison with a series of non-isomorphic tasks. However, participants seem not to be aware of solving such problems. This “iso-effect” may be related to implicit memory, a domain that so far has not been assessed using the Tower of London. (shrink)

This paper challenges the commonplace view of T.H. Green and his followers: that they divided politically into left and right groups depending on their views of socialism, state action and the individual. By examining in detail the work of Green's followers, Bernard Bosanquet and Sidney Ball, this paper shows that there was, in fact, a broad consensus between the two on questions of the role of the state. This has significant implications for the understanding of idealism, the work of (...) Bosanquet and of Green's legacy itself. (shrink)

Islamic ethics; Muslims; conduct of life.

Many of our deepest disagreements turn on matters of definition. Philosophers discuss the definitions of knowledge, art, truth, and freedom, and social and political questions about personhood, health and disease, marriage and gender are also commonly thought of as turning in part on definitions. This book contributes to our understanding of how we engage with questions and disagreements of this kind. It argues that disputes about matters of definition are not just about the meanings of words or our concepts, and (...) they do not typically involve change of meaning. Instead, it develops a conception of definition on which engaging in an investigation or a discussion helps determine the meanings of our words without changing them; what is determined is the meaning our words had all along. This temporal externalist view—that what happens at the end of our investigation or discussion can play a role in determining what we meant and thought throughout—puts us in a position to see why typical ways we engage with questions of definition make sense, and are not confused or in need of revision. The book develops this style of view in unprecedented detail and shows how it helps make sense not only of definitional disputes, but also of disagreements about matters of taste (such as discussions of whether a particular food is delicious, or a certain film is funny.) Its defencse of temporal externalism includes powerful new criticisms of competing philosophical views about verbal dispute, metalinguistic negotiation, inconsistent concepts, conceptual engineering, and relativism. (shrink)