The Importance of Understanding Each Other in Philosophy

What is philosophy? How is it possible? This essay constitutes an attempt to contribute to a better understanding of what might be a good answer to either of these questions by reflecting on one particular characteristic of philosophy, specifically as it presents itself in the philosophical practice of Socrates, Plato and Wittgenstein. Throughout this essay, I conduct the systematic discussion of my topic in parallel lines with the historico-methodological comparison of my three main authors. First, I describe a certain neglected aspect of the Socratic method. Then, exploring the flipside of this aspect, I show that despite the fact that both Socrates and Wittgenstein understand their philosophical approaches as being essentially directed at the particular problems and modes of understanding that are unique to single individuals, they nevertheless aspire to philosophical understanding of the more ‘mundane’ kind that is directed at the world. Finally, interpreting parts of Plato’s dialogues Phaedrus and Laches, I further develop my case for seeing the role of mutual understanding in philosophy as fundamentally twofold, being directed both at the individual and what they say (the word), and at things that are ‘external’ to this human relation at any particular moment of philosophical understanding (the world)

‘It’s better than daytime television’: questioning the socio-spatial impacts of massage parlours on residential communities

It has been shown that street sex work is problematic for some communities, but there is less evidence of the effects of brothels. Emerging research also suggests that impact discourses outlined by residential communities and in regulatory policies should be critiqued, because they are often based on minority community voices, and limited tangible evidence is used to masquerade wider moral viewpoints about the place of sex work. Using a study of residents living in close proximity to brothels in Blackpool, this paper argues that impact is socially and spatially fluid. Impact needs to be evaluated in a more nuanced manner, which is considerate of the heterogeneity of (even one type of) sex work, and the community in question. Brothels in Blackpool had a variety of roles in the everyday socio-spatial fabric; thus also questioning the common assumption that sex work only impacts negatively on residential communities

FlyTED: the Drosophila Testis Gene Expression Database

FlyTED, the Drosophila Testis Gene Expression Database, is a biological research database for gene expression images from the testis of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. It currently contains 2762 mRNA in situ hybridization images and ancillary metadata revealing the patterns of gene expression of 817 Drosophila genes in testes of wild type flies and of seven meiotic arrest mutant strains in which spermatogenesis is defective. This database has been built by adapting a widely used digital library repository software system, EPrints (http://eprints.org/software/), and provides both web-based search and browse interfaces, and programmatic access via an SQL dump, OAI-PMH and SPARQL. FlyTED is available at http://www.fly-ted.org/

Comparison of the prognostic value of tumour and patient related factors in patients undergoing potentially curative surgery for colon cancer

<b>Aim</b>: To comprehensively compare the prognostic value of tumour and patient-related factors in patients undergoing curative surgery for colon cancer. <b>Methods</b>: From a database of 287 patients who underwent elective resection between 1997-2005, tumour factors including stage and host factors including systemic inflammatory response (modified Glasgow Prognostic Score (mGPS)) were identified. <b>Results</b>: Median follow-up was 65 months. Over this time period 125 patients died, 80 from cancer. On multivariate analysis of all significant patient and tumour related factors, Dukes stage (P<0.01), vascular invasion (P<0.01), and the mGPS (P<0.01) were independently associated with cancer-survival. Of the patient-related factors, age (P<0.01), haemoglobin (P<0.01), white-cell (P<0.01), neutrophil (P<0.01) and platelet (P<0.01) counts and alkaline phosphatase (P<0.01) were most significantly associated with the mGPS. <b>Conclusion</b>: In addition to tumour-related factors such as Dukes stage and vascular invasion, the pre-operative mGPS should be included to guide prognosis in patients undergoing curative resection for colon cancer

The Imperial IRAS-FSC Redshift Catalogue: luminosity functions, evolution and galaxy bias

We present the luminosity function and selection function of 60 micron galaxies selected from the Imperial IRAS-FSC Redshift Catalogue (IIFSCz). Three methods, including the 1/Vmax} and the parametric and non-parametric maximum likelihood estimator, are used and results agree well with each other. A density evolution proportional to (1+z)^3.4 or a luminosity evolution exp(1.7 t_L / \tau)$ where t_L is the look-back time is detected in the full sample in the redshift range [0.02, 0.1], consistent with previous analyses. Of the four infrared subpopulations, cirrus-type galaxies and M82-type starbursts show similar evolutionary trends, galaxies with significant AGN contributions show stronger positive evolution and Arp 220-type starbursts exhibit strong negative evolution. The dominant subpopulation changes from cirrus-type galaxies to M82-type starbursts at log (L_60 / L_Sun) ~ 10.3. In the second half of the paper, we derive the projected two-point spatial correlation function for galaxies of different infrared template type. The mean relative bias between cirrus-type galaxies and M82-type starbursts, which correspond to quiescent galaxies with optically thin interstellar dust and actively star-forming galaxies respectively, is calculated to be around 1.25. The relation between current star formation rate (SFR) in star-forming galaxies and environment is investigated by looking at the the dependence of clustering on infrared luminosity. We found that M82-type actively star-forming galaxies show stronger clustering as infrared luminosity / SFR increases. The correlation between clustering strength and SFR in the local Universe seems to echo the basic trend seen in star-forming galaxies in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) fields at z ~ 1.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Reference to the index of the personal and miscellaneous correspondence and papers relating to agriculture, forestry, hydro electricity, welfare, education, economics and politics of William Ebenezer Shoobridge (1846-1940)

W. E. Shoobridge was educated at Horton College, where he was introduced to the study of hydraulics, chemistry and electricity, which he continued to study after leaving school in 1860,thinking of becoming an engineer. However in 1864 his father had the chance of acquiring Bushy Park estate with its water resources and W. E. Shoobridge, with his brothers, helped to develop it,later purchasing also Kentdale and Glenora and forming the firm of E. Shoobridge and Sons(later Shoobridge Brothers). W.E.Shoobridge constructed an irrigation system for the hopfields on Valleyfield and later replanned and reconstructed the irrigation works on Bushy Park(originally made by the first settler of Bushy Park Mr Humphries). In 1908,with the help of his son, Marcus,who had trained in the Westinghouse Factory in Canada, W.E. Shoobridge installed a hydro-electric plant for the estate. W.E.Shoobridge was especially interested in the development of water conservation, irrigation and hydro-electric schemes for Tasmania. In 1914 he went on a trade mission to Canada and the United States to inquire particularly into hydro-electric power schemes and industries connected with them, including papermaking,and irrigation schemes forcloser settlement. He negotiated the transfer of the Hydro-Electric scheme from the Electrolytic Zinc Company to the State Government and also consulted Dr.Fortier of Berkley,California,about plans for the use of Tasmanian water although these were rejected by the Legislative Council.W. E. Shoobridge also did much to develop the fruit industry, not only in irrigation and methods of pruning to allow the sun to shine equally on all fruit,but especially in developing a ventilated coolstore system to prevent deterioration of apples through "brown heart"

The impact of dark matter cusps and cores on the satellite galaxy population around spiral galaxies

(Abridged) We use N-body simulations to study the effects that a divergent (i.e. "cuspy") dark matter (DM) profile introduces on the tidal evolution of dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). Our models assume cosmologically-motivated initial conditions where dSphs are DM-dominated systems on eccentric orbits about a host galaxy composed of a dark halo and a baryonic disc. We find that the resilience of dSphs to tidal stripping is extremely sensitive to the halo cuspiness; whereas dwarfs with a cored profile can be easily destroyed by the host disc, those with cusps always retain a bound remnant. For a given halo profile the evolution of the structural parameters as driven by tides is controlled solely by the total amount of mass lost. This information is used to construct a semi-analytic code that simulates the hierarchical build-up of spiral galaxies assuming different halo profiles and disc masses. We find that tidal encounters with discs tend to decrease the average mass of satellites at all galactocentric radii. Interestingly, satellites accreted before re-ionization (z>6), which may be singled out by anomalous metallicity patterns, survive only if haloes are cuspy. We show that the size-mass relation established from Milky Way (MW) dwarfs strongly supports the presence of cusps in the majority of these systems, as cored models systematically underestimate the masses of the known Ultra-Faint dSphs. Our models also indicate that a massive M31 disc may explain why many of its dSphs fall below the size-mass relationship derived from MW dSphs. We use our models to constrain the mass threshold below which star formation is suppressed in DM haloes, finding that luminous satellites must be accreted with masses above 10^8--10^9 M_sol in order to explain the size-mass relation observed in MW dwarfs.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, MNRAS accepted after minor revisio