The Otherworlds of Men

The Otherworlds of Men is a collection of short stories that draws equally from the traditions of speculative science fiction dystopias and western noir. The stories often have a plot grounded in gritty realism, similar to the stories of Annie Proulx, Daniel Woodrell, Cormac McCarthy, and Jim Harrison; however, the main character typically is typically injured by a psychic wound that leads to a speculative, otherworldly occurrence. The characters experience time travel, out of body experiences, wormholes to other worlds, spaceflight, distortions of relativistic physics, and, in one case, a character is haunted by Geronimo’s ghost. The characters experience these otherworldly adventures as coping mechanisms to help heal their unseen wounds. The speculative, dystopian aspects of the plots were influenced by writers such as Robert Heinlein, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Ray Bradbury

The \u27I\u27 in First-Person Thought and What is Meant by Self-Knowledge

There has been a great deal of disagreement over what exactly it is that is being referenced by the first-person pronoun, ‘I.’ Immanuel Kant believed the ‘I’ associated with a thinking subject is just a formal representation of the substantially existing subject. This raises the question about whether or not ‘I’ is actually a referring expression? In this paper I explore two accounts from both sides of the debate which opens up a dialectical space for determining a positive answer for this question. On the one hand, ‘I’ is said to be a referring term for the speaker or utterer of a given thought or expression. In every instance, ‘I’ uniquely picks out its object. On the other hand, this account of ‘I’ as a referring term merely tells us the way that it refers to the person associated with it, but it fails to tell us how the reference takes place. What drives this second account, which ultimately says it is not a referring expression, is that when we consider how we are able to refer to an object is determined by the perspective we have on the object. When we refer to our coffee mug or to the cat on the windowsill, the reference is made possible by perception. Moreover, this kind of relationship to the object being referred is one that involves a criterion for getting it right about the object. When it comes to self-reference, the perspective I have of ‘I’ is in virtue of my being identical with it, not by perception. This means that there is no need for a criterion of identity since getting it right is already achieved though my unmediated first-person knowledge of myself. The last part of this paper will consider what has been said about self-consciousness here, as well as in other views, and show that no account of self-knowledge is made possible through them. There has been a widely held misconception of self-knowledge which amounts to a conflation between this and self-consciousness. This is a problem because it obscures what is meant by the “self” and how we have knowledge of it

Development and evaluation of a prototype in-flight instrument flight rules (IFR) procedures trainer

An in-flight instrument flight rules (IFR) procedures trainer capable of providing simulated indications of instrument flight in a typical general aviation aircraft independent of ground based navigation aids was developed. The IFR navaid related instruments and circuits from an ATC 610J table top simulator were installed in a Cessna 172 aircraft and connected to its electrical power and pitot static systems. The benefits expected from this hybridization concept include increased safety by reducing the number of general aviation aircraft conducting IFR training flights in congested terminal areas, and reduced fuel use and instruction costs by lessening the need to fly to and from navaid equipped airports and by increased efficiency of the required in-flight training. Technical feasibility was demonstrated and the operational feasibility of the concept was evaluated. Results indicated that the in-flight simulator is an effective training device for teaching IFR procedural skills

Identifying biological and environmental indicators of emerging infectious diseases: the case of Buruli ulcer.

Understanding disease ecology is vital in preventing future outbreaks of established infections and to predict the emergence of new pathogens. In recent decades there have been a number of high profile infectious diseases which have swept across countries and in some cases the world. Many of these begin as generalist emerging infections; such microbes are difficult to study in the wild due to their inherently ambiguous life histories and complex associations with numerous hosts and the environment. In this PhD a number of techniques are used to pinpoint and further understand the life history of one such pathogen Mycobacterium ulcerans, the causative agent of Buruli ulcer, in the hope that this data can be used to predict and prevent future outbreaks and can be applied to other emerging infections. The results of this study include the first identification of the pathogen in the environment for a whole new continent, South America. Further to this it has led to the discovery of the likely ecological niche of the bacilli by linking its presence to specific functional groups of organisms. In turn the occurrences of these groups have been related to anthropogenic conditions such as deforestation and human mediated land use. Finally complex links between climatic fluctuations and outbreaks of the disease in Southern America and Cameroon, central Africa help complete our understanding of this mysterious disease

The role of nutrients in coral bleaching

Luke Morris investigated the role of nutrients in coral bleaching. While he found that environmental nutrients do not substantially influence heat tolerance, nutritional destabilisation of the coral-algal symbiosis was integral to explaining coral bleaching and mortality. These results inform the management and understanding of mass coral bleaching and mortality events

The Monster that Can\u27t Be Defeated Here

This thesis is a poetry manuscript that establishes its footing in multiple poetic traditions, particularly blank verse and free verse, in order to discuss general themes of separation, isolation, and alienation on both the personal and social fronts in an imaginative light that proves aesthetically pleasing and points the reader in the direction of solutions to these problems. While the poems of the first section generally speak to issues of both the struggle to tame language to one’s own desires and to issues of personal alienation, the poems of later sections branch out more into the world in general and take on a wider breadth of themes, such as environmental degradation, socioeconomic conditions, and the appreciation of beauty. Many of these themes have a more explicitly social nature than those of the first section