Good Nietzsche, Bad Nietzsche: The Role of Friedrich Nietzsche in Richard Rorty’s Political Thought.

Richard Rorty found Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of epistemology (perspectivism) to be a helpful tool in getting us to stop thinking of knowledge as something we find, and instead as something that we create. He also found perspectivism to be a helpful tool in that of the private sphere, of private self-creation. The Nietzsche that provides perspectivism is “The Good Nietzsche”. Rorty, however, conceived of Nietzsche’s ideas as being absolutely useless when it comes to politics, along with his ideas regarding morality, the Will to Power, and the Übermensch. These are the ideas of “The Bad Nietzsche”. Rorty’s actual usage of Nietzsche’s ideas, however, defies such easy, self-defined categorization, because these ideas extend outside of their spheres into the realm of politics in Rorty’s own writings. Most traditional analyses of the relationship between Nietzsche and Rorty as it regards politics tend to focus on Nietzsche. By focusing on Rorty’s appropriation of Nietzsche, through looking at his extensive writings and interviews, a more subtle, and complex relationship between Nietzsche’s various ideas and Rorty’s politics is seen to exist

Large-Scale Structure of the Molecular Gas in Taurus Revealed by High Linear Dynamic Range Spectral Line Mapping

We report the results of a 100 square degree survey of the Taurus Molecular Cloud region in the J = 1-0 transition of 12CO and 13CO. The image of the cloud in each velocity channel includes ~ 3 million Nyquist sampled pixels on a 20" grid. The high sensitivity and large linear dynamic range of the maps in both isotopologues reveal a very complex, highly structured cloud morphology. There are large scale correlated structures evident in 13CO emission having very fine dimensions, including filaments, cavities, and rings. The 12CO emission shows a quite different structure, with particularly complex interfaces between regions of greater and smaller column density defining the boundaries of the largest-scale cloud structures. The axes of the striations seen in the 12CO emission from relatively diffuse gas are aligned with the direction of the magnetic field. Using a column density-dependent model for the CO fractional abundance, we derive the mass of the region mapped to be 24,000 solar masses, a factor of three greater than would be obtained with canonical CO abundance restricted to the high column density regions. We determine that half the mass of the cloud is in regions having column density below 2.1x10^{21} per square cm. The distribution of young stars in the region covered is highly nonuniform, with the probability of finding a star in a pixel with a specified column density rising sharply for N(H2) = 6x10^{21} cm^{-2}. We determine a relatively low star formation efficiency (mass of young stars/mass of molecular gas), between 0.3 and 1.2 %, and an average star formation rate during the past 3 Myr of 8x10^{-5} stars yr^{-1}.Comment: 53 pages, 21 figure

Variation in Morphology vs Conservation of a Mitochondrial Gene in Montastraea cavernosa (Cnidaria, Scleractinia)

Skeletal morphology of many scleractinian corals may be influenced by environmental factors and may thus result in substantial intraspecific phenotypic plasticity and, possibly, in overlapping morphologies between species. Environmentally induced variation can also mask phenotypic variation that is genetically based. Morphological analyses and DNA sequence analyses were performed on Montastraea cavernosa from the Flower Garden Banks, Texas, and from the Florida Keys in order to assess variation within and between geographic regions. Skeletal characters, including corallite diameter, columella width, theca thickness, nearest-neighbor distance, length of first septa cycle, and width of first septa cycle, varied within colonies, among colonies, and between the Flower Garden Banks and the Florida Keys. Morphological variation may be controlled by environmental and genetic influences at different levels. If phenotype is under genetic control, it is not influenced by the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene, because analysis of a 708 base pair fragment revealed identical sequences of M. cavernosa from these geographic regions. This high level of nucleotide sequence similarity may result from functional constraints, efficient DNA repair mechanisms, or other processes. This gene was not found to exhibit any variation in association with that observed in the morphology, and we suggest that it is an inappropriate genetic marker to use to assess intraspecific variation within this species and possibly other scleractinian species as well. Analysis via other molecular techniques will be necessary in order to assess the factors that influence morphological variation and that distinguish populations within this species

Whole Genome Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction Using Colored de Bruijn Graphs

We present kleuren, a novel assembly-free method to reconstruct phylogenetic trees using the Colored de Bruijn Graph. kleuren works by constructing the Colored de Bruijn Graph and then traversing it, finding bubble structures in the graph that provide phylogenetic signal. The bubbles are then aligned and concatenated to form a supermatrix, from which a phylogenetic tree is inferred. We introduce the algorithms that kleuren uses to accomplish this task, and show its performance on reconstructing the phylogenetic tree of 12 Drosophila species. kleuren reconstructed the established phylogenetic tree accurately, and is a viable tool for phylogenetic tree reconstruction using whole genome sequences. Software package available at: https://github.com/Colelyman/kleurenComment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted at BIBE 2017. Minor modifications to the text due to reviewer feedback and fixed typo

High elevation of the ‘Nevadaplano’ during the Late Cretaceous

During the Late Cretaceous, central Nevada may have been a high elevation plateau, the Nevadaplano; some geodynamic models of the western US require thickened crust and high elevations during the Mesozoic to drive the subsequent tectonic events of the Cenozoic while other models do not. To test the hypothesis of high elevations during the late Mesozoic, we used carbonate clumped isotope thermometry to determine the temperature contrast between Late Cretaceous to Paleocene carbonates atop the putative plateau in Nevada versus carbonates from relatively low paleoelevation central Utah site. Lacustrine carbonates from the Nevada site preserve summer temperatures ∼13 °C cooler than summer temperatures from paleosol carbonates from the Utah site, after correcting for ∼1.2 °C of secular climatic cooling between the times of carbonate deposition at the two sites. This ∼13 °C temperature difference implies an elevation difference between the two sites of ∼2.2–3.1 km; including uncertainties from age estimation and climate change broadens this estimate to ⩾2 km. Our findings support crustal thickness estimates and Cenozoic tectonic models that imply thickened crust and high elevation in Nevada during the Mesozoic

Think-Pair-Share as a Springboard for Study Buddies in a Virtual Environment

Many powerful teaching techniques have not yet fully transitioned from face-to-face use to the new remote instructional paradigm forced on teacher educators and teacher candidates during the pandemic. Experiences by candidates and by instructors in this new environment need to be compiled and shared as we head forward into structures and situations. This article describes how one such technique, Think-Pair-Share (Lyman, 1981) inspired assigning Study Buddies in a co-taught graduate level teacher education course, Managing Culturally Responsive Classrooms, in the summer of 2020. Two teacher candidates, two professors and Dr. Frank Lyman, offer insight and suggestions about this practice, its possibilities and its limitations as the course moved from a traditional implementation to a virtual setting