Private Schools and Queue‐jumping: A reply to White

John White (2016) defends the UK private school system from the accusation that it allows an unfair form of ‘queue jumping’ in university admissions. He offers two responses to this accusation, one based on considerations of harm, and one based on meritocratic distribution of university places. We will argue that neither response succeeds: the queue-jumping argument remains a powerful case against the private school system in the UK. We begin by briefly outlining the queue-jumping argument (§1), before evaluating White’s no-harm (§2) and meritocracy (§3) arguments

Performance measurement in small motels in Australia

This research explores the measurement of performance in small motels. There are many challenges facing business performance management in small firms. Most of these challenges are due to resource shortages, lack of functional expertise and environmental instability. Of major importance to firm survival is the small enterprise owner-manager’s ability to monitor the operations performance. Key components of the monitoring process include the ability to identify key performance indicators to track results as well as an understanding of the most suitable measures to use. Specifically, the study focuses on identifying the key constructs of performance for small firms which include the key components of drivers and results. The specific monitoring and measurement activities of small motel owner-operators were identified using a case research approach. The findings of the study indicate that those owner-managers who operate successful motels employ a balanced approach to performance measurement by utilising a small number of key measures to monitor results and to review management activities

Propositions as Truthmaker Conditions

Propositions are often aligned with truth-conditions. The view is mistaken, since propositions discriminate where truth conditions do not. Propositions are hyperintensional: they are sensitive to necessarily equivalent differences. I investigate an alternative view on which propositions are truthmaker conditions, understood as sets of possible truthmakers. This requires making metaphysical sense of merely possible states of affairs. The theory that emerges illuminates the semantic phenomena of samesaying, subject matter, and aboutness

A new Middle Cambrian polymerid trilobite from north-western Tasmania

A new species of trilobite, Pianaspis(?) leveni, is described from the Radfords Creek Group, Dial Range Trough, north-western Tasmania. Its age is late Middle Cambrian, either of the Lejopyge laevigata II Zone, or the L. laevigata III Zone

Geology of the Maydena Range

The oldest rocks of the area are the (?) Precambrian pyritic quartzites with interbedded conglometates. These are overlain by 60 m of pebbly siltstone, about 300 m of ferruginous sandstones and siltstone and 300 m of quartzitc and siltstone which represent a stable tectonic environment of pre-Ordovician age. The pre-Ordovician rocks were folded before deposition of the Ordovician sediments. The Arenigian Florentine Valley Mudstone is at least 140 m thick and is overlain by the lower 600m. of the Gordon Limestone, the upper parts of. Which are faulted out.The Lower•Upper Middle Devonian .Tabberabberan Orogeny resulted In the formation of north-westerly plunging folds. A complete flatly dipping Permian sequence begins with at least 220 m of Lower Sakmarian Wynyard Tillite, which was derived from a glacier With a north-westerly origin .This. is overlain by 137 m of Woody Island Siltstone, 9.2 m of fossiliferous siltstones, 3.7 m of Darlington Limestone, and 32 m of Bundella Mudstone all of which are marine. These are overlain by the freshwater sedimennts of the Mersey Group (with a maximum thickness of 52 m), followed] by a marine sequence composed of 80 m of the Cascades Group, 64 m of the Malbina Siltstone and Sandstone and about 150 m of the Ferntree Group. The terrestrial Cygnet Coal Measures 4.4 m thick, is the top Permian formation. The Permian rocks form a very shallow east plunging syncline. Three hundred and twenty metres of freshwater Triassic sediments disconformably overly the Permian rocks and are intruded by a Middle Jurassic dolerite sill. Normal faults, with down throw to the east -north-east and to t he northwest and probably associated with the formation of the Tertiary Derwent Graben, cut the older rocks. Dolerite talus slopes developed as periglacial material during the Pleistocene

Spatio-temporal dynamics in graphene

Temporally and spectrally resolved dynamics of optically excited carriers in graphene has been intensively studied theoretically and experimentally, whereas carrier diffusion in space has attracted much less attention. Understanding the spatio-temporal carrier dynamics is of key importance for optoelectronic applications, where carrier transport phenomena play an important role. In this work, we provide a microscopic access to the time-, momentum-, and space-resolved dynamics of carriers in graphene. We determine the diffusion coefficient to be $D \approx 360$cm$^{2}$/s and reveal the impact of carrier-phonon and carrier-carrier scattering on the diffusion process. In particular, we show that phonon-induced scattering across the Dirac cone gives rise to back-diffusion counteracting the spatial broadening of the carrier distribution

Millet crop-loss assessment methods (NRI Bulletin 62)

At present, losses to the millet crop of Sahelian subsistence farmers are seldom adequately monitored, yet an assessment of such losses is essential in evaluating the effects of and need for different farming inputs and methods. Millet Crop-Loss Assessment Methods offers a range of assessment techniques, each presented as a sequence of steps, including sampling, calculation interpretation and comparative accuracy. Choice of the most appropriate method will depend on government or farmer needs, time constraints and available skills. This publication will be of interest to all those involved in practical agricultural research and extension work in semi-arid areas, either at the level of the individual farmer or village or at the regional and national level of policy evaluation

Rule-based and Resource-bounded: A New Look at Epistemic Logic

Syntactic logics do not suffer from the problems of logical omniscience but are often thought to lack interesting properties relating to epistemic notions. By focusing on the case of rule-based agents, I develop a framework for modelling resource-bounded agents and show that the resulting models have a number of interesting properties

Impossible worlds

Impossible worlds are representations of impossible things and impossible happenings. They earn their keep in a semantic or metaphysical theory if they do the right theoretical work for us. As it happens, a worlds-based account provides the best philosophical story about semantic content, knowledge and belief states, cognitive significance and cognitive information, and informative deductive reasoning. A worlds-based story may also provide the best semantics for counterfactuals. But to function well, all these accounts need use of impossible and as well as possible worlds. So what are impossible worlds? Graham Priest claims that any of the usual stories about possible worlds can be told about impossible worlds, too. But far from it. I'll argue that impossible worlds cannot be genuine worlds, of the kind proposed by Lewis, McDaniel or Yagisawa. Nor can they be ersatz worlds on the model proposed by Melia or Sider. Constructing impossible worlds, it turns out, requires novel metaphysical resources