Preface

Thiis is the preface introducing the volum

Plato's Socrates and his Conception of Philosophy

This is a study of Plato's use of the character Socrates to model what philosophy is. The study focuses on the Apology, and finds that philosophy there is the love of wisdom, where wisdom is expertise about how to live, of the sort that only gods can fully have, and where Socrates loves wisdom in three ways, first by honoring wisdom as the gods' possession, testing human claims to it, second by pursuing wisdom, examining himself as he examines others, to achieve a more well justified set of beliefs about how to live, and third by trying to live wisely, insofar as he can, which includes exhorting others to care about living wisely than anything else. The essay also includes some suggestions about how Plato criticizes and revises this model of philosophy outside the Apology

Prenatal Corticosteroids for Reducing Morbidity and mortality after Preterm Birth

Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam. First published by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, 2005.©The Trustee of the Wellcome Trust, London, 2005.All volumes are freely available online at: www.history.qmul.ac.uk/research/modbiomed/wellcome_witnesses/Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam.Annotated and edited transcript of a Witness Seminar held on 15 June 2004. Introduction by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam.In 1959 the New Zealand obstetrician Graham (Mont) Liggins began investigating mechanisms that triggered premature labour. Supported by the Wellcome Trust, he examined the effects of hormones on labour in sheep, and demonstrated coincidentally that in utero corticosteroids accelerated fetal lung maturation. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) of prenatal corticosteroids in humans by Liggins and pediatrician Ross Howie, showed a reduction of respiratory distress syndrome in preterm babies. This Witness Seminar, chaired by the late Dr Edmund Hey, discussed the influence of Liggins' and Howie's 1972 paper announcing these results, and subsequent work by Avery and Kotas on induction of pulmonary surfactant in lambs. Other subjects included Crowley's 1981 systematic review of four RCTs; the low uptake of corticosteroids in practice until the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists issued usage guidelines in 1992; trials to determine optimum drug, dose and number of courses; potential adverse effects; and cost-benefit analysis. Participants included the late Dr Mel Avery, Sir Iain Chalmers, Dr Patricia Crowley, the late Professor Harold Gamsu, Professor Jane Harding, Professor Richard Lilford, Professor Miranda Mugford, Professor Ann Oakley, Professor Dafydd Walters and Mr John Williams. Appendices from Liggins and Howie; Liggins' Wellcome Trust grant; and the protocol of the 1975 UK trial of betamethasone, complete the volume. Reynolds L A, Tansey E M. (eds) (2005) Prenatal corticosteroids for reducing morbidity and mortality after preterm birth, Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine, volume 25. London: The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is funded by the Wellcome Trust, which is a registered charity, no. 210183

A Trickster’s Oaths in The \u3cem\u3eHomeric Hymn to Hermes\u3c/em\u3e

Hermes’ maturation into a god of commerce and diplomacy is punctuated by a series of oaths. At first he uses tricky or unsworn oaths in the investigation of his theftof Apollo’s cattle, but eventually he and Apollo exchange oaths that evoke the protocols of ritualized friendship. Although the ceremony suggests that Hermes has achieved adulthood, a narrative sleight of hand leaves some ambiguity about the completion of the ritual

People on both sides of the aegean sea

International audienceOur contribution is devoted to a constructive overview over the implicit system approach in modern control of switched dynamic models. We study a class of non-stationary autonomous switched systems and formally establish the existence of solution. We next incorporate the implicit systems approach into our consideration. At the beginning of the contribution we also develop a specific system example that is used for illustrations of various system aspects that we consider. Our research involves among others a deep examination of the reachability property in the framework of the implicit system framework that we propose. Based on this methodology we finally propose a resulting robust control design for the switched systems under consideration and the proposed control strategy is implemented in the context of the illustrative example

Narrative Proverbs in the African Novel

"The situation in modern Africa amply illustrates the point about the merging of the worlds of orality and literacy. The superimposition of alphabetic writing upon the oral cultures of Africa in the nineteenth century did not extinguish the oral traditions upon which African cultures and literatures had long been established. The immediate result was that African indigenous languages were written down and brought into the mainstream of the world repertoire of literate languages, and, additionally, a substantial body of Africa's oral literatures--from epics and extended forms to unicellular tales and verbal art--was written down, recorded, and archived."--Page 198