The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

In view of the aging and dejuvenation of the working population and the expected shortages in employees’ skills in the future, it is of utmost importance to focus on older workers’ employability in order to prolong their working life until, or even beyond, their official retirement age. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between older workers’ employability (self-)perceptions and their intention to continue working until their official retirement age. In addition, we studied the role (...) of potential antecedents of their perceived employability at three different levels: training and education in current expertise area as well as in an adjacent expertise area (individual level factor), learning value of the job (job level factor), and organizational career management practices (organizational level factor). Data were collected by means of e-questionnaires that were distributed among two groups of Dutch older (45-plus) white collar workers. The samples consisted of 223 employees of an insurance company, and 325 university workers, respectively. Our research model was tested separately in each sample using Structural Equation Modeling. We controlled for effects of respondents’ (self-)perceived health and (self-)perceived financial situation. Similar results were found for both samples. First, the relationship of perceived employability with the intention to continue working until one’s retirement age was positive, whereas the relationship between a perceived good financial situation with the intention to continue working until one’s retirement age was negative. Secondly, as regards the potential antecedents, results showed that the learning value of the job was positively related to perceived employability. In addition, an employee’s perception of good health is a relevant correlate of perceived employability. So, whereas perceived employability contributes to the intention to continue working until one’s retirement age, a good financial situation is a push factor to retire early. In order to promote the labor participation of older workers, this study indicates that organizations should focus on the learning possibilities that are inherent to one’s job rather than on providing additional training or career management. Further research is needed to test the generalizability of our results to other samples. (shrink)

In a recent paper in this journal Charles B. Saunders et al. argue that corporations have no social responsibility regarding alienation in the workplace in that there is no significant degree of alienation in the workplace, at least in white collar and management level positions in corporate America.Contrary to Saunders et al., this paper defines the concept of alienation. Having done that, it proceeds to show that the argument Saunders et al. make flounders on logical grounds. I conclude that (...) Saunders et al. provide no evidence for the claim that alienation is lacking (in any degree) in corporate America. (shrink)

For half a century, J. I. Packer's classic has helped Christians everywhere discover the wonder, glory, and joy of knowing God. This fiftieth anniversary edition of a thought-provoking work seeks to renew and enrich our understanding of God, bringing together knowing about God and knowing God through a close relationship with Jesus Christ.

Inter-disciplinary studies are emerging rapidly to meet the insistent demands of the modern age. Biblical interpretation is itself inter-disciplinary, drawing together the biblical traditions and others to address the problem of interpreting texts. Christian ethics is also multi-disciplinary and thus no stranger to this new ethos. To bring these two areas together is a potentially creative undertaking. It comes at a time when much attention is being paid to reading texts and the interpretive tradition. The author's principal aim is to (...) read the Bible in the context of moral concern. Attention is paid to the liberal quest and to eschatology and ethics (each marking a distinct epoch in the relationship of Bible and ethics), before the post-critical age is studied under the rubric 'participation in meaning'. The final section deals with ethics and historical reading, and with ethics and contemporary reading. The book concludes with a discussion of selected practical topics. (shrink)

Environmental problems cannot be solved solely by achieving technical developments: innovations in the social structure are strongly needed as well. The nature of these social changes required and the integration still present the subject of prolonged debates (Tóth 1998). It is very difficult to decide whether on the long run effects of the globalization are favourable or detrimental for the environmental protection. The majority of environmentalists disagree of globalization and integration. The purpose of my essay would be to present the (...) difference between globalization and integration. Additional I would like to argue in the favour of such an integration, as only this process and the formation of an attached sovereignty can level out the pernicious effects of globalization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:45. HUME'S DIFFICULTIES WITH THE SELF One of the more baffling and apparently inconclusive parts of the Treatise is the section on personal identity. Hume himself, when he takes a backward glance at it in those notorious passages in the Appendix, singles it out as representing an unresolved problem in his philosophy. It is a matter of fairly general agreement among recent writers on the subject that one of (...) Hume's chief difficulties -- though not one he recognizes — is his assigning to the mind (or, sometimes, the "imagination") certain activities, which he claims are instrumental in generating belief in, and awareness of, the very mind or self whose activities they are said to be. Hume talks about customs and habits of the mind and the expectations arising out of these, of the acts of observing, noticing and associating, of believing, of feigning, and so on, acts which the mind is required to perform in order for us to be able to explain along acceptable empiricist lines how the idea of an abiding self arises. Such talk, it seems, already presupposes the existence of a self and our possession of the idea thereof. So does, of course, the talk involved in Hume's accounts of the external world and of causality. Insofar as these involve his theory of belief, they, too, seem to presuppose a self which is more than a fiction, more than a product of the imagination. Yet the account he gives of the self seems to yield precisely a fiction in just the sense in which our ideas of the external world and of its causal connections are ideas of fictions. Quite generally, then, if Hume's theory of belief presupposes a continually existing self, what sense can be made of his arguments to show that our belief in such a self is the belief in a fiction? I want to argue that Hume can be defended against such criticisms and that the appearance of circularity here is just that: an appearance. It results largely from 46. two features of the Treatise. The first is that since at different points in the Treatise Hume is obviously concerned with different problems, his language reflects this. It is for this reason only that at times he talks in ways which make it seem that a continually existing self is being presupposed. The second feature responsible for the appearance of circularity is that while Hume draws a distinction between "perfect" and 'imperfect" identity, he fails to make that distinction explicit enough, so that one may easily miss the all-important point that it is only the former sort of identity which is being denied of the self, and the latter sort which is being explained and accounted for along Humean empiricist lines. If we keep this in mind, we shall see that the references in his account of the identity of the self to the activities of the self are not questionbegging, and that the attribution of these activities to the very same "fiction" whose existence is being accounted for carries no absurdity. II One way to bring out the differences between the kind of self which is alleged to be presupposed by Hume's account and that which, as I shall argue, is really involved in that account, is to put pressure on Hume's doctrine of 2 association. It is frequently urged by commentators that the notion of association which is so fundamental for much of Hume's philosophy is ambiguous, showing as it does the influence of two very different models, deriving from Hutcheson and Newton respectively. On the first model, a continuing self is presupposed as the agent of the various sorts of associative acts he invokes; on the second it is the items associated (perceptions) which are themselves the entities doing the associating. Clearly, the question whether Hume's theory of belief involves the assumption that a continuing self exists (harmless in the uses of that 47. theory in other contexts, but possibly fatal in its use in a theory of personal identity) may be seen to resolve into the question, which model of association is fundamental for Hume? It is, of course, an undeniable... (shrink)