We analyze the dynamics of nosocomial infections in intensive care units (ICUs) by using a Markov chain model. Since population size in the ICU is small, in contrast to previous studies, we concentrate on the analytical solution rather than using simulation. We investigate how changes in the system parameters affect to some important behavioral indicators of the spread of the pathogen. We also present an exact measure of the number of secondary cases of infection produced by one colonized patient.

The logic BN4 was defined by R.T. Brady in 1982. It can be considered as the 4-valued logic of the relevant conditional. E4 is a variant of BN4 that can be considered as the 4-valued logic of entailment. The aim of this paper is to define reduced general Routley-Meyer semantics for BN4 and E4. It is proved that BN4 and E4 are strongly sound and complete w.r.t. their respective semantics.

The logic BN4 can be considered as the 4-valued logic of the relevant conditional and the logic E4, as the 4-valued logic of entailment. The aim of this paper is to endow E4 with a 2-set-up Routley-Meyer semantics. It is proved that E4 is strongly sound and complete w.r.t. this semantics.

RESUMEN: El presente texto pretende analizar la sociedad actual. En ella la tecnociencia tiene una presencia importante y ésta, a su vez, no es muy diferente con respecto a las demandas intelectuales, culturales y sociales del Barroco. Es decir, en la sociedad actual podríamos decir que sucede lo mismo, interesa más obtener resultados, que se nos asombre, más que comprender el cómo funciona o se realizan. Si bien, como aconteció en el Barroco, sectores de la sociedad emprendieron acciones para dotar (...) de más identidad y cultura a la sociedad e ir en contra de lo institucionalmente establecido. La sociedad actual, se puede decir que es una prolongación del barroco, y nos encontramos en el neobarroco. Este al igual que en el pasado se rebela contra el sistema que sólo está preocupado por la acumulación de dinero, así como contra la ausencia de libertad y, por tanto, contra la represión y la violencia institucionalizada. En definitiva, con este artículo se trata de dar una visión desde la hermenéutica de las similitudes del Barroco con nuestra sociedad actual. ABSTRACT: This paper aims to analyze current society, where techno-science has a major presence while at the same time not differing greatly from that of the Baroque era with respect to intellectual, cultural, and social demands. As in the Baroque era, we are today more interested in getting results than in understanding how things works or how things are done. Also as in the Baroque era, sectors of society are taking action to encourage more identity and culture in society and are going against what is institutionally established. Today we can say that our society is an extension of the Baroque, and that we are in the neo-Baroque era. As in the past, there is now a rebellion against a system that is only concerned with the accumulation of money, as well as a rebellion against the lack of freedom and therefore against repression and institutionalized violence. In short, this article aims to present, from the point of view of hermeneutics, similarities between our current society and that of the Baroque era. (shrink)

The causal theory of action is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency -- the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources (...) while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action ; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action -oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues. Contributors: Fred Adams, Jesús H. Aguilar, John Bishop, Andrei A. Buckareff, Randolph Clarke, Jennifer Hornsby, Alicia Juarrero, Alfred R. Mele, Michael S. Moore, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Josef Perner, Johannes Roessler, David-Hillel Ruben, Carolina Sartorio, Michael Smith, Rowland Stout The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket. (shrink)

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic mineralization, diagenesis, metamorphism, and finally weathering and exhumation. Determining which tissues are preserved and how biases affect their preservation pathways is important for interpreting fossils in phylogenetic, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks. Although laboratory decay experiments reveal important aspects of fossilization, applying the results directly to the interpretation of exceptionally preserved fossils may overlook the impact of other key processes that (...) remove or preserve morphological information. Investigations of fossils preserving non-biomineralized tissues suggest that certain structures that are decay resistant are rarely preserved, and decay-prone structures can fossilize, albeit rarely. As we review here, decay resistance is an imperfect indicator of fossilization potential, and a suite of biological and geological processes account for the features preserved in exceptional fossils. Organisms decayed experimentally in seawater have been used as direct analogs for soft-bodied fossil taxa, with fossils representing a snapshot of a particular stage of decay. We argue that numerous geological and biological processes account for fossilization and that all of these should be considered when reconstructing extinct organisms. (shrink)

Exceptionally preserved fossils are the product of complex interplays of biological and geological processes including burial, autolysis and microbial decay, authigenic mineralization, diagenesis, metamorphism, and finally weathering and exhumation. Determining which tissues are preserved and how biases affect their preservation pathways is important for interpreting fossils in phylogenetic, ecological, and evolutionary frameworks. Although laboratory decay experiments reveal important aspects of fossilization, applying the results directly to the interpretation of exceptionally preserved fossils may overlook the impact of other key processes that (...) remove or preserve morphological information. Investigations of fossils preserving non-biomineralized tissues suggest that certain structures that are decay resistant are rarely preserved, and decay-prone structures can fossilize, albeit rarely. As we review here, decay resistance is an imperfect indicator of fossilization potential, and a suite of biological and geological processes account for the features preserved in exceptional fossils. Organisms decayed experimentally in seawater have been used as direct analogs for soft-bodied fossil taxa, with fossils representing a snapshot of a particular stage of decay. We argue that numerous geological and biological processes account for fossilization and that all of these should be considered when reconstructing extinct organisms. (shrink)

Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower (...) believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust (identifiably Christian) doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith. (shrink)

Religious ethics, like its sibling, religious studies, emerged out of the divinity schools and theological seminaries in the mid‐20th century. Many years have now passed since these academic disciplines have secured independent standing in universities and colleges, independent from their theological beginnings. The time seems right, then, to ask what theological inquiry might gain from religious ethics and what religious ethics might look like when done in a theological mode. Reflection on the manumission scene in the 15th chapter of John's (...) gospel, on the exegetical puzzles it poses, offers one possible example of these gains and this mode. (shrink)

The 1996 European Summer Meeting of the Association of Symbolic Logic was held held the University of the Basque Country, at Donostia (San Se bastian) Spain, on July 9-15, 1996. It was organised by the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI) and the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Sciences of the University of the Basque Coun try. It was supported by: the University of Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unib ertsitatea, the Ministerio de Education y Ciencia (DGCYT), Hezkuntza Saila (...) (Eusko Jaurlaritza), Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia, and Kuxta Fun dazioa. The main topics of the meeting were Model Theory, Proof Theory, Re cursion and Complexity Theory, Models of Arithmetic, Logic for Artifi cial Intelligence, Formal Semantics of Natural Language and Philosophy of Contemporary Logic. The Program Committee consisted of K. Ambos Spies (Heidelberg), J.L. Balcazar (Barcelona), J.E. Fenstad (Oslo), D. Israel (Stanford), H. Kamp (Stuttgart), R. Kaye (Birmingham), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian), D. Lascar (Paris, chairman), A. Marcja (Firenze), G. Mints (Stanford), M. Otero (Madrid), S. Ronchi della Rocca (Torino), K. Segerberg (Uppsala) and L. Vega (Madrid). The organizing Committee consisted of X. Arrazola (San Sebastian), A. Arrieta (San Sebastian), R. Beneyeto (Valencia), B. Carrascal (San Se bastian), K. Korta (San Sebastian), J.M. Larrazabal (San Sebastian, chair man), J.C. Martinez (Barcelona), J.M. Mendez (Salamanca), F. Migura (Victoria) and J. Perez (Victoria). (shrink)

Wilhelm Bousset, a leading member of the religionsgeschichtliche school and author of a seminal work on early Christology, Kyrios Christos, is typically regarded by reviewers of his work as a classic nineteenth-century liberal who sought a secure foundation for faith in the historical Jesus. However, this view of Bousset fails to appreciate the significant development of his theological perspective on the relationship between faith and history, a perspective that underwent a profound shift due to the influence of the English historian (...) Thomas Carlyle and the Kantian philosopher Jakob Friedrich Fries. It is the influence of these two figures that enables Bousset to justify a full-scale flight from history and to seek faith's foundation elsewhere, in the poetic symbol of Jesus Christ. The resulting solution to the problem of faith and history represents a unique and compelling alternative to the solutions of the leading theologians and New Testament scholars of the early twentieth century. (shrink)

In popular image, Jesus as friend is sentimentalized, but not so in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus gave his life in love for others and always spoke and acted boldly—marks of friendship in the cultural world of the New Testament.

In this article I examine M. Williams’ antisceptical strategy of considering skepticism as an unnatural position philosophically charged, which for him implies that skepticism has nothing to do with our epistemic practices. I admit that this strategy is really promising, especially when applied to Cartesian scepticism. However, when it faces an older ancestor of Cartesian scepticism, Pyrrhonian scepticism, this situation changes. I concentrate on Fogelin’s neopyrrhonist proposal and how Williams’ strategy would face it. I will defend that Pyrrhonian scepticism is (...) a completely natural kind of scepticism according to our epistemic practices. I will also maintain that this kind of skepticism is the unavoidable result of reflecting about those epistemic practices. (shrink)

Although Kant had a high regard for Jesus as a moral teacher, interpreters typically assume that his philosophy disallows belief in Jesus as God. Those who regard Kant as a moral reductionist are especially likely to offer a negative construal of the densely-argued subsection of his 1793 Religion that relates directly to this issue. The recent “affirmative” trend in Kant-scholarship provides the basis for an alternative reading. First, theologians must regard Jesus as human so that belief in Jesus can empower (...) believers to become good. Second, theologians may refer to Jesus as divine by identifying his disposition as exemplifying the “archetype of perfect humanity.” Third, Judeo-Christian history poses an empirical problem that theologians can solve by interpreting Jesus’s divinity according to the schematism of analogy. While this does not constitute a robust (identifiably Christian) doctrine of Jesus’s divinity, it does provide clear guidelines for formulating such a tenet of historical faith. (shrink)

Mark's Gospel is a narrative parable of the meaning of the life and death of Jesus which draws the reader into the personal engagement that takes place in interpretation and appropriation of the text in a life of discipleship.

A welcome republication of Guignebert's impressive scholarly study of the life, teaching, and death of Jesus. Guignebert's conclusion, on the basis of a careful examination of sources, is that nothing or very little of Jesus' work remained and that, from an historical point of view, he cannot be considered the founder of Christianity. -- R. B.