Meaningful Ethics Reforms for the New Albany

The corruption scandals of the last few years have profoundly shaken the faith of New Yorkers in their state government. This report examines the system erected by New York's current ethics laws and makes clear recommendations for a way forward

Einstein's conversion from his static to an expanding universe

In 1917 Einstein initiated modern cosmology by postulating, based on general relativity, a homogeneous, static, spatially curved universe. To counteract gravitational contraction he introduced the cosmological constant. In 1922 Alexander Friedman showed that Einstein's fundamental equation also allowed dynamical worlds, and in 1927 Geroges Lemaitre, backed by observational evidence, concluded that our universe was expanding. Einstein impetuously rejected Friedman's as well as Lemaitre's findings. However, in 1931 he retracted his former static model in favour of a dynamic solution. This investigation follows Einstein on his hesitating path from a static to the expanding universe. Contrary to an often repeated belief the primary motive for his switch was not observational evidence, but the realisation that his static model was unstable.Comment: Published in EPJH (European Physics Journal - History) on February 4, 2014, 26 pages, 5 figures. A note on an unpublished draft by Einstein, found at the AEA, has been added in proof. Full biblio info was added on March 24, and a printing error was correcte

Discovery and Strategic Partnership Group Concept Mapping: 2014-2015 Progress Report

In 2014, New York State received funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to begin the NYS PROMISE (Promote the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income) research initiative. The goal of this initiative is to coordinate the system of support surrounding these youths to better catalyze their potential to transition from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to a sustainable future of living and earning as independent adults. To guide strategy and support PROMISE priorities over the course of the initiative, NYS PROMISE convened the NYS PROMISE Steering Committee, comprised of appointed liaisons from agencies who are connected to the NYS PROMISE initiative. To support sustainable partnership development for greater progress and impact on the goals of NYS PROMISE, the Steering Committee engaged in a structured, time sensitive strategic planning and partnership framework development effort. To develop the elements of a prioritized strategy, the group used Group Concept Mapping (GCM), and constructed a visual framework, or concept map, that served as the basis for prioritization and strategy development throughout the process. The GCM approach employs a group process to capture individual contributions for consensus around a given topic, using a structured approach with a specific sequence of steps that support timely and consistent engagement in the process. GCM incorporates opinions and values, and presents the results in ways that are understandable and usable. 25 individuals from 8 member agencies took part in the concept map development, contributing elements in response to the following prompt: “To yield enduring individual outcomes, a viable system to support youth with disabilities in their transition from high school to successful adult lives needs to include…

A Sociotechnical View of Information Diffusion and Social Changes: From Reprint to Retweet

This research in progress study explores the role of Twitter during the 2011 Egypt revolution. Drawing on a research method of historians who investigated the role of print technology during the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe during the early 16th century, we explicate the socio-technical implications of information diffusion through retweeting during radical social changes. Through retweet analysis, we identify inseparable dynamics of (1) existence of a few opinion leaders, (2) a large number of supporting individuals, and (3) the emergence of attendant collective sense-making process as a critical antecedent of radical social changes

Do organisms have an ontological status?

The category of ‘organism’ has an ambiguous status: is it scientific or is it philosophical? Or, if one looks at it from within the relatively recent field or sub-field of philosophy of biology, is it a central, or at least legitimate category therein, or should it be dispensed with? In any case, it has long served as a kind of scientific “bolstering” for a philosophical train of argument which seeks to refute the “mechanistic” or “reductionist” trend, which has been perceived as dominant since the 17th century, whether in the case of Stahlian animism, Leibnizian monadology, the neo-vitalism of Hans Driesch, or, lastly, of the “phenomenology of organic life” in the 20th century, with authors such as Kurt Goldstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Georges Canguilhem. In this paper I try to reconstruct some of the main interpretive ‘stages’ or ‘layers’ of the concept of organism in order to critically evaluate it. How might ‘organism’ be a useful concept if one rules out the excesses of ‘organismic’ biology and metaphysics? Varieties of instrumentalism and what I call the ‘projective’ concept of organism are appealing, but perhaps ultimately unsatisfying

Eptistomological Aspects of Knowledge-Based Decision Support Systems

Knowledge-based decision support applications differ from those typical of artificial intelligence expert systems in their open-ended, evolutionary character and need to coordinate with other systems resources, such as organizational databases and quantitative analysis routines. While knowledge representation machinery is becoming available, the corresponding formalization of managerial/administrative knowledge needed for DSS application is still lacking. This entails problems of an epistomological nature, identifying the foundational concepts of business. An abstract framework based on formal languages and denotational semantics is proposed, and ontological issues are identified