Presents general information about meteorology, weather, and climate and includes more than thirty activities to help study these topics, including making a ...

The Bible has influenced contemporary culture both positively and negatively. The present volume is a collection of papers that were discussed at an international colloquium on the use of the Bible in Ethics in the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield in April 1995. Participants came from many parts of the world and from different backgrounds, and the papers reflect their varied interests and the contexts in which they work. The contributors, in addition to the three editors, (...) are John Barton, Bruce Birch, Mark Brett, Mark Chapman, David Clines, Philip Davies, Cheryl Exum, Stephen Fowl, Norman Gottwald, John Haldane, Walter Houston, Sharon Ringe, Chrisopher Rowland, Lisa Sowle Cahill and Gerald West. (shrink)

The underrepresentation of females in mathematics-related fields may be explained by gender differences in mathematics self-concept (rather than ability) favoring males. Mathematics self-concept typically declines with student age, differs with student ethnicity, and is sensitive to teacher influence in early schooling. We investigated whether change in mathematics self-concept occurred within the context of a longitudinal intervention to raise and sustain teacher expectations of student achievement. This experimental study was conducted with a large sample of New Zealand primary school students and (...) their teachers. Data were analyzed using longitudinal multilevel modelling with mathematics self-concept as the dependent variable and time (which represents students’ increasing age each year), gender, and ethnicity entered as predictors and achievement in mathematics included as a control variable. Interaction terms were also explored to investigate changes over time for different groups. All students demonstrated a small increase in mathematics self-concept over the three-year period of the current study but mathematics self-concept was consistently greater for boys than girls. Māori, Asian, and Other students’ initial mathematics self-concept was higher than that of New Zealand European and Pacific Islanders’ (after controlling for achievement differences). However, a statistically significant decline in mathematics self-concept occurred for Māori students alone by the end of the study. The expected age-related reduction over time in student mathematics self-concept appeared to be mitigated in association with the longitudinal study. Nevertheless, the demonstration of a comparatively lower mathematics self-concept remained for girls overall and declined for Māori. Our results reinforce implications for future research into mathematics self-concept as a possible determinant of female student career choices. (shrink)

The De Malo represents some of St. Thomas Aquinas' most mature thinking on goodness, badness, and human agency. Together with the second part of the Summa Theologiae, it is one of his most sustained contributions to moral philosophy and theology. Aquinas examines the full range of questions associated with evil: its origin, its nature, its variety, its relation to good, and its compatibility with the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent God. This edition offers the Leonine Commission's authoritative edition of the (...) Latin text with a new, clear, and readable English translation by Richard Regan with an extensive introduction and notes by Brian Davies. (shrink)

Three experiments investigated the relationship between subjective experience and attentional lapses during sustained attention. These experiments employed two measures of subjective experience to examine how differences in awareness correspond to variations in both task performance and psycho-physiological measures . This series of experiments examine these phenomena during the Sustained Attention to Response Task . The results suggest we can dissociate between two components of subjective experience during sustained attention: task unrelated thought which corresponds to an absent minded disengagement from the (...) task and a pre-occupation with one's task performance that seems to be best conceptualised as a strategic attempt to deploy attentional resources in response to a perception of environmental demands which exceed ones ability to perform the task. The implications of these findings for our understanding of how awareness is maintained on task relevant material during periods of sustained attention are discussed. (shrink)

Considering a growing nurse shortage and the need for qualified nurses to handle increasingly complex patient care situations, how ethical beliefs are influenced and the consequences that can occur when moral conflicts of right and wrong arise need to be explored. The aim of this study was to explore influencers identified by nurses as having the most impact on the development of their ethical beliefs and whether these influencers might impact levels of moral distress and the potential for conscientious objection. (...) Nurses whose ethical beliefs were most influenced by their religious beliefs scored higher in levels of moral distress and demonstrated greater differences in areas of conscientious objection than did nurses who developed their ethical beliefs from influencers such as family values, life and work experience, political views or the professional code of ethics. (shrink)

This article discusses five attempts at justifying the provision of welfare on Kantian grounds. I argue that none of the five proposals is satisfactory. Each faces a serious challenge on textual or systematic grounds. The conclusion to draw from this is not that a Kantian cannot defend the provision of welfare. Rather, the conclusion to draw is that the task of defending the provision of welfare on Kantian grounds is a difficult one whose success we should not take for granted.

Fair Trade companies have pulled off an astonishing tour de force. Despite their relatively small size and lack of resources, they have managed to achieve considerable commercial success and, in so doing, have put the fair trade issue firmly onto industry agendas. We analyse the critical role played by social capital in this success and demonstrate the importance of values as an exploitable competitive asset. Our research raises some uncomfortable questions about whether fair trade has 'sold out' to the mainstream (...) and whether these companies have any independent future or whether their ultimate success lies in the impact they have had on day-to-day trading behaviour. (shrink)

An experiment investigated the relationship between the ability to encode verbal stimuli during an attentional lapse. The task employed a variation on the sustained attention to response task which involved the detection of an infrequent target against a background of words. As a manipulation, participants were either instructed to encode the stimuli or were merely exposed to the stimuli. Retrieval was measured using process dissociation. Irrespective of the instructions given to the participants during the task, participants were more likely to (...) retrieve information on the basis of recollection after an error was made than before, whilst the likelihood of retrieving information on the basis of familiarity remained invariant over the same period. The implications of this result for methods of investigating subjective experience are discussed. (shrink)

In their recent target article, Bluhm et al. (2023) discuss the construct of “invasiveness” as it relates to medical treatments, and in particular to treatments that affect brain function. Cruciall...

During the last decade, several court cases have focused attention on the moral and legal aspects of withholding or withdrawing food and fluids from certain patients. The courts have not been unanimous in their judgments on these matters. In attempting to explore this issue, this article reviews both the nursing and medical literature on the withdrawing and withholding of food and fluids with particular attention to empirical studies. Several themes which emerge from the literature are used to explore the similarities (...) and differences between the practices of nursing and medicine where nutritional support is concerned. (shrink)

Most discussions of medical futility try to answer the Futility Question: when is a medical procedure futile? No answer enjoys universal support. Some futility policies say that the health care provider will answer this question when the provider and patient cannot agree. This raises the Decision Question: who has the moral authority to decide what to do in cases where futility is disputed? I look for a procedural answer to this question, an answer that does not turn on whether a (...) given party happens to answer the Futility Question correctly. I argue that these policies get it right; the provider should decide because providers have a right of conscientious refusal that extends to refusing procedures on grounds of futility. This is a procedural answer because providers have this right even if they are sincerely mistaken about whether a procedure is futile. (shrink)

Object-oriented ontologists understand relations of cause and effect to be sensory or aesthetic in nature, not involving direct interaction between objects. Four major arguments are used to defend an indirect view of causation: 1) that there are analogies between perception and causation, 2) that the indirect view can account for cases of causation which a direct view cannot, 3) an Occasionalist argument that direct interaction would make causation impossible, and 4) that the view simply fits better with object-oriented ontology’s own (...) premises. However, each argument is fallacious or otherwise unconvincing. The first affirms the consequent. The second fails because the relevant cases can easily be accounted for with a direct view. The third makes false assumptions about the relation between parts and wholes. And the fourth can also be used to argue against object-oriented ontology. Many of these problems can be traced to the methodological aspects of object-oriented ontology and might be avoided by emphasizing the role of non-argumentative justification in metaphysics. (shrink)

As the gap between the need for and supply of human organs continues to widen, the aim of securing additional sources of these “gifts of the body” has become a seemingly overriding moral imperative, one that could—and some argue, should—override the widespread ban on organ markets. As a medical practice, organ transplantation entails the inherent risk that one human being, a donor, will become little more than a means to the end of healing for another human being and that he (...) or she will come to have a purely instrumental value. With the establishment of organ markets, not only will the harms of instrumentalization be a reality—the ends of medicine will be further compromised and confused. (shrink)

This paper examines Roger Scruton's acousmatic account of music, situating it in relation to the anthropology that accompanies it. It suggests that in order to adequately maintain the anthropology Scruton desires (a cognitive rather than an ontological dualism), and to take full account of the parallel he draws between musical and inter-personal understanding (through gesture), the materiality of music needs to be more fully into his account of musical understanding.

As the most famous woman scientist of the twentieth century, there has been no shortage of books and articles on the life and career of Marie Curie . Her role as a director of a laboratory-based research school in the new scientific field of radioactivity, a field which embraced both chemistry and physics, however, has never been examined. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the question of research schools, and Morrell, Ravetz, Geison, and Klosterman, amongst others, (...) have written on this subject. Using, in part, the methodology of Morrell, this paper investigates the role of Marie Curie as a school director in the Paris Faculty in the years 1907–14, examining the work and characteristics of her school and assessing her effectiveness as a director. (shrink)

In this book Jeremy Dunning-Davies deals with the influence that "conventional wisdom" has on science, scientific research and development. He sets out to explode' the mythical conception that all scientific topics are open for free discussion and argues that no-one can openly raise questions about relativity, dispute the 'Big Bang' theory, or the existence of black holes, which all seem to be accepted facts of science rather than science fiction. In today's modern climate with "Britain's radioactive refuse heap already (...) big enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall" (Edmund Conway, Economics Editor The Daily Telegraph 28.11.06), it is alarming that there are potential advances in hadronic mechanics which could conceivably pave the way for new clean energies and even a safe in-house method for the disposal of nuclear waste, that have not even been considered by the present establishment. These examples are from the field of physics but there can be little doubt that outside factors have affected the progress of most, if not all, branches of science for many years. Factors other than purely scientific ones still appear to be exerting tremendous influences on progress in a wide variety of fields. Is it too idealistic or nai;ve, to expect that science should remain pure and stay unaffected by such factors? Dr Dunning-Davies presents a beautifully written argument that if science is to progress, and be of any real use, these external factors must be held at bay. (shrink)

In this collection of his speeches and addresses, Dr. Davis McCaughey challenges our perceptions of what tradition and dissent mean to each of us. Freedom to dissent is part of the tradition that we have inherited. Dr. McCaughey surveys our inherited traditions (including that of the Crown), discusses the meaning of, the freedom to and the present need for dissent, and discourses on topics such as accountability in learned institutions and universities, and ethical issues such as euthanasia and responsibilities in (...) a nuclear age. Dr. McCaughey's observations are illuminating and engaging, intelligent and critical, encouraging and challenging. He writes with authority and wisdom on matters of vital importance for our national self-understanding. In speaking at the commemorations for many notable traditionalists and dissenters, among them intellectual and social leaders of Australia, and in Anzac Day addresses, Dr. McCaughey reminds us of the continuing need to honour and support those among us who see the need for both tradition and dissent. (shrink)

Angelaki, Volume 18, Issue 4, Page 125-133, December 2013.