Modern Moral Conscience

This article challenges the individualism and neutrality of modern moral conscience. It looks to the history of the concept to excavate an older tradition that takes conscience to be social and morally responsive, while arguing that dominant contemporary justifications of conscience in terms of integrity are inadequate without reintroducing these social and moral traits. This prompts a rethinking of the nature and value of conscience: first, by demonstrating that a morally-responsive conscience is neither a contradiction in terms nor a political absurdity; second, by suggesting how a morally-responsive conscience can be informed by the social world without being a mere proxy for social power or moribund tradition

Epistemic Sentimentalism and Epistemic Reason-Responsiveness

Epistemic Sentimentalism is the view that emotional experiences such as fear and guilt are a source of immediate justification for evaluative beliefs. For example, guilt can sometimes immediately justify a subject’s belief that they have done something wrong. In this paper I focus on a family of objections to Epistemic Sentimentalism that all take as a premise the claim that emotions possess a normative property that is apparently antithetical to it: epistemic reason-responsiveness, i.e., emotions have evidential bases and justifications can be demanded of them. I respond to these objections whilst granting that emotions are reason-responsive. This is not only dialectically significant vis-à-vis the prospects for Epistemic Sentimentalism, but also supports a broader claim about the compatibility of a mental item’s being reason-responsive and its being a generative source of epistemic justification

Remote lightning monitor system

An apparatus for monitoring, analyzing and accurately determining the value of peak current, the peak rate of change in current with respect to time and the rise time of the electrical currents generated in an electrical conductive mast that is located in the vicinity where lightning is to be monitored is described. The apparatus includes an electrical coil for sensing the change in current flowing through the mast and generating a voltage responsive. An on-site recorder and a recorder control system records the voltages produced responsive to lightning strikes and converts the voltage to digital signals for being transmitted back to the remote command station responsive to command signals. The recorder and the recorder control system are carried within an RFI proof environmental housing into which the command signals are fed by means of a fiber optic cable so as to minimize electrical interference

Receiving Holy Callings, and Being Wholly Responsive

What does it mean to receive a holy calling? That\u27s a good question! Whereas holy is an adjective, describing the just and loving character of God, a calling is the activity by which we are encountered by God in a way which transforms ourselves and our reasons for being. The image associated with a calling is an invitation to come and join another person in a task and into a personal relationship. Notice how a calling is the opposite of a command or an order. An order sends some­one away with a task to be completed (Keleuo). A calling, however (Kaleo), invites the called to join the caller in partnership. Out of the rela­tionship between partners, then, emerges a sense of mission and the em­powerment with which to effect it. Every spiritual calling is founded upon a spiritual encounter between ourselves and God. And, every spiritual encounter becomes a divine call­ing with a mission to be carried out. Spiritual encounters and holy callings are inextricably entwined. One cannot exist without the other coming in­to being

Embodying and Modeling Healthy Self-Care in Teacher Education

To care for others well, teachers must care for themselves in healthy and responsive ways. The “love mandate” in Scripture, says that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind and love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22: 37-39). Far too often, Christians (particularly those in serving professions) fail to properly understand and enact healthy, God-honoring care for themselves. When teacher educators fail to model responsive self-care, they unwittingly perpetuate unhealthy messages about what it means to care well for others, and communicate to teacher candidates that doing good supersedes being well. In order to break unhealthy cycles and scripts relative to self-care, this paper presents four axioms for embodying and modeling healthy self-care

Student perspectives of a place-responsive outdoor education programme

There is a growing recognition of the role that places have in influencing learning In outdoor education. Being aware of the importance of place encourages the development of outdoor programmes that respond to the uniqueness of the locality and the community. This article investigates student perspectives of a place-responsive outdoor education programme. The findings indicate that this approach is a viable form of outdoor education practice that has the potential to foster positive interpersonal relationships and strengthen participants’ appreciation of and attachment to place(s). These findings contribute to a growing body of literature demonstrating that place-responsive outdoor education has the potential to enrich participants' understanding and enjoyment of places In addition to providing a challenging and enjoyable outdoor experience

Materials science: the key to revolutionary breakthroughs in micro-fluidic devices

In microfluidics, valves and pumps that can combine specifications like precise flow control, provision of precise reagent quantities, minimal sample carryover, and low-cost manufacture, while also being inherently compatible with microfluidic system fabrication, are beyond the current state of the art. Actuators in micro-fluidics made using stimuli-responsive materials are therefore of great interest as functional materials since actuation can be controlled without physical contact, offering improvements in versatility during manifold fabrication, and control of the actuation mechanism. Herein we review the potential use of novel approaches to valving and pumping based on stimuli-responsive polymers for controlling fluid movement within micro-fluidic channels. This has the potential to dramatically simplify the design, fabrication and cost of microfluidic systems. In particular, stimuli-responsive gels incorporating ionic liquids (ILs) produce so-called ‘ionogels’ that have many advantages over conventional materials. For example, through the tailoring of chemical and physical properties of ILs, robustness, acid/ base character, viscosity and other critical operational characteristics can be finely adjusted. Therefore, the characteristics of the ionogels can be tuned by simply changing the IL and so the actuation behaviour of micro-valves made from these novel materials can be more closely controlled