The Originals : Classic Readings in Western Philosophy

I. The Value of PhilosophyII. EpistemologyIII. MetaphysicsIV. Philosophy of ReligionV. Ethics and MoralityVI. Socio-Political PhilosophyVII. Art and AestheticsIt is important for students not only to get an appreciation and understanding of philosophy but also to be exposed to the very words and ideas of those who have shaped our thinking over the centuries. Accordingly, the title of this collection hints at the facts that these readings are from the original sources and that these philosophers were the originators of many of the issues we still discuss today. Major areas of philosophy covered here are: Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, Ethics, Socio-Political Philosophy, and finally, Aesthetics

Collaborate With Whom? Clergy Responses to Psychologist Characteristics (Chapter 2 of Psychology and the Church)

Some clergy and psychologists are willing to collaborate in providing for people under their care and some are reticent. The purpose of this research is to see if clergy are more likely to collaborate with psychologists of a particular sex or training background. Six groups of clergy were given written descriptions of a psychologist that varied on these two dimensions-the institution from which the psychologist received training and sexand were then asked to rate how likely they would be to participate in 7 collaborative scenarios with the psychologist. No group differences were found. Furthermore, clergy characteristics were not significantly related to their likelihood of collaborating with psychologists. Differences were observed among the 7 collaborative scenarios, suggesting that clergy are more interested in some forms of collaboration than others. It appears that idiographic relational factors are ultimately more important than general demographic categories in establishing clergy-psychologist collaboration

Paced left ventricular QRS width and ECG parameters predict outcomes after cardiac resynchronization therapy: PROSPECT-ECG substudy.

International audienceBACKGROUND: For patients with symptomatic New York Heart Association class III or IV, ejection fraction ≤ 35%, and QRS ≥ 130 ms, cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) has become an established treatment option. However, use of these implant criteria fails to result in clinical or echocardiographic improvement in 30% to 45% of CRT patients. METHODS AND RESULTS: The Predictors of Response to CRT (PROSPECT)-ECG is a substudy of the prospective observational PROSPECT trial. ECGs collected before, during, and after CRT implantation were analyzed. Primary outcomes were improvement in clinical composite score (CCS) and reduction of left ventricular end systolic volume (LVESV) of >15% after 6 months. Age, sex, cause of cardiomyopathy, myocardial infarction location, right ventricular function, mitral regurgitation, preimplantation QRS width, preimplantation PR interval, preimplantation right ventricular-paced QRS width, preimplantation axis categories, LV-paced QRS width, postimplantation axis categories, difference between biventricular (Bi-V) pacing and preimplantation QRS width, and QRS bundle branch morphological features were analyzed univariably in logistic regression models to predict outcomes. All significant predictors (α=0.1), age, and sex were used for multivariable analyses. Cardiomyopathy cause interaction and subanalyses were also performed. In multivariable analyses, only QRS left bundle branch morphological features predicted both CCS (odds ratio [OR]=2.46, P=0.02) and LVESV (OR=2.89, P=0.048) response. The difference between Bi-V and preimplantation QRS width predicted CCS improvement (OR=0.89, P=0.04). LV-paced QRS width predicted LVESV reduction (OR=0.86, P=0.01). Specifically, an LV-paced QRS width of ≤ 200 ms was predictive of nonischemic LVESV reduction (OR=5.12, P=0.01). CONCLUSIONS: Baseline left bundle branch QRS morphological features, LV-paced QRS width, and the difference between Bi-V and preimplantation QRS width can predict positive outcomes after CRT and may represent a novel intraprocedural method to optimize coronary sinus lead placement. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00253357

Campaigning During COVID-19: How Texas Republicans Navigated the 2020 Election

The COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruptions to political campaigns during the 2020 election. There was a stark contrast between how the two major parties approached campaigning during COVID-19, including the election in Texas, a deep red state that some thought might present opportunities for Democratic Party candidates. Using interviews with 13 campaign operatives, this study examines how Republican candidates in Texas navigated their campaigns in the context of a pandemic. Our results suggest the unique context of campaigning during COVID-19 gave Republicans key advantages over Democrats. Decisions to embrace a more organic, bottom-up approach led to more flexible campaign strategies. Democratic Party candidates followed the lead of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and mostly refrained from direct voter contact, like door knocking. Through experimentation, many Republican campaigns felt comfortable embracing a ground game and deployed complete field operations. Consultants argued this played an important role in helping Texas Republicans exceed expectations

Star Clusters in M31: I. A Catalog and a Study of the Young Clusters

We present an updated catalog of 1300 objects in the field of M31, including 670 likely star clusters of various types. Archival images were inspected to confirm cluster classifications where possible, but most of the classifications were based on spectra taken of ~1000 objects with the Hectospec fiber positioner and spectrograph on the 6.5m MMT. The spectra and images of young clusters are analyzed in detail in this paper. Ages, reddenings and masses of 140 young clusters are derived by comparing the observed spectra and photometry with model spectra. We find these to have masses as great as 10^5 with a median of 10^4 M_sun, and a median age of 0.25 Gyr. Thus these clusters are similar in mass to the LMC young massive clusters, and are in between Milky Way open clusters and the globulars of M31 and the Milky Way. Most of the M31 young clusters have the low concentration typical of Milky Way open clusters, and we expect that most of these will be disrupted in the next Gyr, but a few have high concentrations and will likely survive longer. The spatial distribution of the young clusters is well correlated with the star-forming regions as mapped out by mid-IR emission. A kinematic analysis likewise confirms the spatial association of the young clusters with the young disk in M31.Comment: 18 pages of text and figures, 23 of tables, to appear in AJ. http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/oir/eg/m31clusters/M31_Hectospec.html is a new M31 web site containing tables and postage stamp images of the entire catalo

Navigating the Looking Glass:Severing the Lawyer's Head in <i>Arkham Asylum</i>

Reading Arkham Asylum jurisprudentially, we encounter a story of the meeting of reason and unreason in the context of justice – of conscious law and its unconscious threat. Batman’s exploration of the Asylum is symbolic of the legal unconscious, and reflects the processes of repression that can be seen in dominant legal knowledge. A threat to this dominant knowledge can be seen in Two-Face’s reliance on his coin to ‘judge’ his victims. Moreover, Arkham Asylum configures the threat of law’s unconscious as the lawyer’s severed head inside the house of law. Ultimately, Batman’s journey through Arkham Asylum reminds law of the aesthetic and irrational contexts that it strives to deny and from which it seeks to defend itself – and that cultural legal studies explores. It recalls the unreason outside law’s logic, the chaos outside its order, the madness outside its sanity. The lesson of Batman’s encounters in the Asylum is that we should remember the ‘madness’ outside the legal order, and thus recognise that law is always already more than its conscious ‘sanity’ can contain

UnLearning from Experience to Avoid Spurious Correlations

While deep neural networks can achieve state-of-the-art performance in many tasks, these models are more fragile than they appear. They are prone to learning spurious correlations in their training data, leading to surprising failure cases. In this paper, we propose a new approach that addresses the issue of spurious correlations: UnLearning from Experience (ULE). Our method is based on using two classification models trained in parallel: student and teacher models. Both models receive the same batches of training data. The student model is trained with no constraints and pursues the spurious correlations in the data. The teacher model is trained to solve the same classification problem while avoiding the mistakes of the student model. As training is done in parallel, the better the student model learns the spurious correlations, the more robust the teacher model becomes. The teacher model uses the gradient of the student\u27s output with respect to its input to unlearn mistakes made by the student. We show that our method is effective on the Waterbirds, CelebA, Spawrious and UrbanCars datasets.10 page

Formation mechanism of superconducting phase and its three-dimensional architecture in pseudo-single-crystal KxFe2−ySe2

We report how the superconducting phase forms in pseudo-single-crystal KxFe2−ySe2. In situ scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation reveals that, as an order-disorder transition occurs, on cooling, most of the high-temperature iron-vacancy-disordered phase gradually changes into the iron-vacancy-ordered phase, whereas a small quantity of the high-temperature phase retains its structure and aggregates to the stripes with more iron concentration but less potassium concentration compared to the iron-vacancy-ordered phase. The stripes that are generally recognized as the superconducting phase are actually formed as a remnant of the high-temperature phase with a compositional change after an “imperfect” order-disorder transition. It should be emphasized that the phase separation in pseudo-single-crystal KxFe2−ySe2 is caused by the iron-vacancy order-disorder transition. The shrinkage of the high-temperature phase and the expansion of the newly created iron-vacancy-ordered phase during the phase separation rule out the mechanism of spinodal decomposition proposed in an early report [Z. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. B 91, 064513 (2015)]. Since the formation of the superconducting phase relies on the occurrence of the iron-vacancy order-disorder transition, it is impossible to synthesize a pure superconducting phase by a conventional solid state reaction or melt growth. By focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy, we further demonstrate that the superconducting phase forms a contiguous three-dimensional architecture composed of parallelepipeds that have a coherent orientation relationship with the iron-vacancy-ordered phase

Re-implantation of cryopreserved ovarian cortex resulting in restoration of ovarian function, natural conception and successful pregnancy after haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for Wilms tumour

With the improvement of long-term cancer survival rates, growing numbers of female survivors are suffering from treatment-related premature ovarian insufficiency (POI). Although pre-treatment embryo and oocyte storage are effective fertility preservation strategies, they are not possible for pre-pubertal girls or women who cannot delay treatment. In these cases, the only available treatment option is ovarian cortex cryopreservation and subsequent re-implantation. A 32-year-old woman had ovarian cortex cryopreserved 10 years previously before commencing high-dose chemotherapy and undergoing a haematopoietic stem cell transplant for recurrent adult Wilms tumour, which resulted in POI. She underwent laparoscopic orthotopic transplantation of cryopreserved ovarian cortex to the original site of biopsy on the left ovary. She ovulated at 15 and 29 weeks post-re-implantation with AMH detectable, then rising, from 21 weeks, and conceived naturally following the second ovulation. The pregnancy was uncomplicated and a healthy male infant was born by elective Caesarean section at 36(+4) weeks gestation. This is the first report of ovarian cortex re-implantation in the UK. Despite the patient receiving low-risk chemotherapy prior to cryopreservation and the prolonged tissue storage duration, the re-implantation resulted in rapid restoration of ovarian function and natural conception with successful pregnancy

Setiburst: A Robotic, Commensal, Realtime Multi-Science Backend For The Arecibo Telescope

Radio astronomy has traditionally depended on observatories allocating time to observers for exclusive use of their telescopes. The disadvantage of this scheme is that the data thus collected is rarely used for other astronomy applications, and in many cases, is unsuitable. For example, properly calibrated pulsar search data can, with some reduction, be used for spectral line surveys. A backend that supports plugging in multiple applications to a telescope to perform commensal data analysis will vastly increase the science throughput of the facility. In this paper, we presen