There is an inconsistency in the ways that doctors make clinical decisions regarding the treatment of babies born extremely prematurely. Many experts now recommend that clinical decisions about the treatment of such babies be individualized and consider many different factors. Nevertheless, many policies and practices throughout Europe and North America still appear to base decisions on gestational age alone or on gestational age as the primary factor that determines whether doctors recommend or even offer life-sustaining neonatal intensive care treatment. These (...) policies are well intentioned. They aim to guide doctors and parents to make decisions that are best for the baby. That is an ethically appropriate goal. But in relying so heavily on gestational age, such policies may actually do the babies a disservice by denying some babies treatment that might be beneficial and lead to intact survival. In this paper, we argue that such policies are unjust to premature babies and ought to be abolished. In their place, we propose individualized treatment decisions for premature babies. This would treat premature babies as we treat all other patients, with clinical decisions based on an individualized estimation of likelihood that treatment would be beneficial. (shrink)

Learning from the Inside-Out: Child Development and School Choice is the first book of its kind to marry child development, educational psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy. This book goes beyond the now banal conversation of differentiating students based upon gender, race, and class. This book is about the cognitive and social needs of students throughout the developmental span and how to identify schools that meet those needs. In essence, this book rejects the one-size-fits-all discourse of education reform in favor of a (...) focus on individualized educational decision-making. Learning from the Inside-Out acknowledges that contrary to the popular saying, good teaching is not good teaching. What one student needs in a teacher, classroom environment or curricula is not necessarily what another student might need despite demographic similarities. After reading this book, parents and teachers will be empowered and informed when making decisions about how best to educate children. (shrink)

Mathematicians routinely pass judgements on mathematical proofs. A proof might be elegant, cumbersome, beautiful, or awkward. Perhaps the highest praise is that a proof is right, that is, that the proof fits the theorem in an optimal way. It is also common to judge that one proof fits better than another, or that a proof does not fit a theorem at all. This paper attempts to clarify the notion of mathematical fit. We suggest six criteria that distinguish proofs as being (...) more or less fitting, and provide examples from several different mathematical fields. (shrink)

The inference systems proposed for solving SAT are unsound for solving MaxSAT and MinSAT, because they preserve satisfiability but not the minimum and maximum number of clauses that can be falsified, respectively. To address this problem, we first define a clause tableau calculus for MaxSAT and prove its soundness and completeness. We then define a clause tableau calculus for MinSAT and also prove its soundness and completeness. Finally, we define a complete clause tableau calculus for solving both MaxSAT and MinSAT, (...) in that the minimum number of generated empty clauses provides an optimal MaxSAT solution and the maximum number provides an optimal MinSAT solution. (shrink)

The logical calculus for SAT are not valid for MaxSAT and MinSAT because they preserve satisfiability but not the number of unsatisfied clauses. To overcome this drawback, a MaxSAT resolution rule preserving the number of unsatisfied clauses was defined in the literature. This rule is complete for MaxSAT when it is applied following a certain strategy. In this paper we first prove that the MaxSAT resolution rule also provides a complete calculus for MinSAT if it is applied following the strategy (...) proposed here. We then describe an exact variable elimination algorithm for MinSAT based on that rule. Finally, we show how the results for Boolean MinSAT can be extended to solve the MinSAT problem of the multiple-valued clausal forms known as signed conjunctive normal form formulas. (shrink)

Supercommentary on Anuvyākhyāna, verse commentary by Madhva, 13th cent., on Brahmasūtra by Bādarāyaṇa, representing Dvaita point of view; with twenty five supercommentaries : Nyāyasudhābindu by Vijayindratīrtha ; Parimaḷa by Rāghavendratīrtha ; Vāgvajra by Pādarājatīrtha ; Gurvarthadīpikā by Vādirājatīrtha ; Ṭippaṇī by Yadupatyācārya ; Vākyārthavivr̥ti by Vaṃśapallī Śrīnivāsācārya ; Ānanda by Galagalī Narasiṃhācārya ; Vivr̥ti by Kambālūru Rāmacandratīrtha ; Ṭippaṇī by Śrīnidhitīrtha ; Vākyārthacandrikā by Vidyādhīsatīrtha ; Śeṣavākyārthacandrikā by Pāṇḍuraṅgī Keśavācārya ; Vākyārtharatnamālā by Pāṇḍuraṅganarasiṃhācārya ; Sudhāvivr̥tti by Satyavrtatīrtha ; Rasakūlaṅkaṣa by (...) Kuṇḍalagiriācārya ; Durghaṭavākyārthavicāra by Satyanāthatīrtha ; Ṭippaṇī by Viṭṭhalabhaṭṭa ; Rasarañjanī by Viṣṇutīrtha ; Laghurasarañjanī by Aḍavī Kr̥ṣṇācārya ; Caṣaka by Mannārī Kr̥ṣṇācārya ; Upasparśa by Erī Bālācārya ; Kāśī ṭippaṇī by Kāśī Ācārya ; Guḍhakar̥trkā by Gudhakaratr̥kācārya ; Pradīpa by Pradīpakāra ; Ṭippaṇī by Pāndhrī Śrīnivāsācārya ; Huggi by Kallāpūra Satyādhirājācārya. (shrink)

Employee governance, which includes employee ownership and employee participation in decision making, is regarded by manyas morally preferable to control of corporations by shareholders. However, employee governance is rare in advanced market economies due to its relative inefficiency compared with shareholder governance. Given this inefficiency, should employee governance be given up as an impractical ideal? This article contends that the debate over this question is hampered by an inadequate conception of employee governance that fails to take into account the difference (...) between employees and shareholders. It offers a different, more adequate conception of employee governance that recognizes a sense in which employees currently have some ownership rights. The argument for this conception of employee governance is built on an expanded understanding of the ownership of a firm. The article also suggests new strategies for strengthening the role of employees in corporate governance. (shrink)

The paper explores the relationship between environmental knowledge and farming and fallowing strategies on degraded forest land in the Upper Manya Krobo district of southeastern Ghana. Changes in cropping strategies are related to the expansion and transformation of frontier agrarian settlement, increasing population density, social differentiation, and land hunger. As a consequence land degradation has become a serious problem among the smaller farmers with insufficient land to allow fallow recuperation. Small farmers' awareness and perceptions of the processes of degradation (...) are explored, as are possible innovative contributions to the development of agroforestry research. But labor constraints often prevent the farmer from developing practical systems of fallow management. Local environmental knowledge reveals important insights into the processes of fallow degradation, potentials for fallow management, constraints that farmers face, and some problems that might emerge with the transformation of current agroforestry technology to farmers' fields. It is suggested that this knowledge should not be abstracted from its socio-economic context. The problems that local farmers' knowledge reveal are in this respect as important as questions of its efficacy and potential as a resource. (shrink)