Character and Method in Plato\u27s Republic

It is obvious enough that Plato\u27s literary style, including his use of dramatic form and character, alters drastically along with his philosophical method. It is most economical, though not essential, to attribute these parallel changes to Plato\u27s own chronological development. As Guthrie puts it, Plato began by giving vivid pictures of Socrates engaged on his mission, and as he went on became more concerned to develop positive doctrines. He retains the dialogue form, but it becomes less dramatic and pictorial and he allows Socrates to indulge in uncharacteristically long discourses only punctuated by expressions of assent from the others (HGP iv.42). But why? Why does Plato use dramatic form to portray Socratic inquiry in the early dialogues? And why does he employ that form so differently when representing more positive ideas? The Republic is a unique crucible for examining such questions, because of the marked alteration in literary and philosophical style after the first book. Book 1 resembles the early or Socratic or elenctic dialogues, and as such deploys dramatic form and character very differently from the remainder of the work. Since Books 2-10 are clearly intended as a continuation of Book 1 (whatever their relative dates), we may expect the stylistic shifts to tell us something about Plato\u27s own shifting attitudes towards philosophical method and its literary expression. I shall therefore start by looking at the characters of Socrates\u27 interlocutors in book 1 of the Republic, and trying to elucidate the relationship of characterization to the method that is portrayed there. I\u27ll then turn to the radically different dramatic style of the rest of the work, and end by considering some possible reasons for this evolution

'A bright eye to the main chance' : Brogdens' Navvies - British labourers building New Zealand's railways : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History, at Massey University, New Zealand

Historians have generally regarded the group known as Brogdens' Navvies as part of a special settlement scheme, induced to migrate to provide essential labour. In 1872 British labourers were recruited to construct New Zealand's railway network. The contracting firm John Brogden and Sons became reluctant immigration agents so they could fulfil their agreement with the New Zealand Government for the massive and costly public works undertaking. Rollo Arnold, when studying English immigrants of the 1870s, argued that the navvies were largely from rural backgrounds thus desirable potential settlers. However, history has largely ignored their contribution to settlement as it was engulfed by the government assisted immigrants. Additionally, as their immigration was privately funded, there has been an information deficit about these men and their backgrounds. The investigation collected data on the lives of just over 1,000 men, and the families that accompanied them. The approach combines conventional historical archival research with genealogical methodology, making use of commercial websites like Ancestry and Findmypast. Quantitative research was supplemented by qualitative case studies to determine if Brogden's navvies showed any enduring distinctive identity. This thesis compares Brogdens' Navvies to typical British navvies. It investigates the progress of members of the Brogdens' Navvies group to determine if the cultural narrative that expected immigrants would easily make economic and social advancements was correct in this case. Both British and New Zealand navvy groups included both labourers and tradesmen. Those recruited were some of the poorest in their communities and there was more diversity in their backgrounds than is seen in official records. Navvy culture had much in common with labouring culture generally and railway camps were not exclusively male. Much of the evidence in primary sources focuses on periods when navvies displayed socially undesirable behaviours, usually coinciding with periodic access to money and alcohol. Key findings were their significant contribution to railways, not only in construction but in maintenance, and that a substantial proportion was absorbed quickly and successfully into New Zealand society. Additionally, this study uncovered a greater range of life-paths than was expected from the existing historiography

Detection of Financial Time Series Turning Points: A New CUSUM Approach Applied to IPO Cycles

This paper presents a new Cumulative Sum approach for the detection of turning points in financial time series that are subject to cyclical mean level and volatility regime shifts. The new CUSUM approach is applied to the problem of detecting turning points in “hot issue” markets for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), thus providing a multi-dimensional characterization of states of the IPO cycle

Grounding Techne

Technê is the ancient Greek word for "both a practical skill and for the systematic knowledge or experience which underlies it" (Aristotle and Tarán, 2000). Landscape architects have delegated the tool-making aspects of the technê of landscape design to others. By not taking full responsibility for the technê of practice, landscape architecture's unique professional identity is jeopardized, landscape architects do not have full control of their craft, and the knowledge required to innovate in response to the ever-changing demands on design is not inherent to the discipline. This lack of engagement may have been caused by historical rifts between landscape architects and tools at the inception of the discipline. Landscape gardeners, the predecessors of the discipline, worked in a society that viewed nature and technology as fundamentally opposed forces and were commissioned to design idealized versions of nature that intentionally masked the use of technology in their creation. Furthermore, the very division of labor that formed the discipline severed landscape architects from the tools required to realize built landscapes. Rectifying landscape architecture's separation from the creation of tools provides many opportunities, as tools extend the capabilities of their user. However, tools can also lead the user astray. Understanding and evaluating tools is crucial to be able to exploit their opportunities while avoiding pitfalls. A better understanding of human perception provides a framework for interpreting two sensory tools that had opposing effects on landscape architecture: the Claude Glass, which narrowed and subjectivized the vision of the designer to the point of blinding, and the Earth Observation Satellite, which overwhelmed the designer with raw objective information and encouraged distanced observation of sites. The ideal sensory tools for the landscape architect's toolkit would combine subjective and objective observation, allowing the user to gather objective information while immersed in the site. These tools are so inherently specific to practice that they must be created within the discipline. As Maker culture and wearable technologies have become mainstream phenomena, landscape architects have ready access to the tools and skills they need to tinker their own tools. I tested this idea by developing a series of tinkering projects or "physical sketches" of new tools for landscape architects: a Small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS), the Digital Nerve, the Haptic Surveyor, and the Baro-Receiver. I found that tinkering can produce new tools that beget new opportunities and design outcomes for landscape architecture. If approached as a new directive, tinkering new tools for a design technê wholly formed by landscape architects has potential to revolutionize the discipline

Dopamine perturbation of gene co-expression networks reveals differential response in schizophrenia for translational machinery.

The dopaminergic hypothesis of schizophrenia (SZ) postulates that positive symptoms of SZ, in particular psychosis, are due to disturbed neurotransmission via the dopamine (DA) receptor D2 (DRD2). However, DA is a reactive molecule that yields various oxidative species, and thus has important non-receptor-mediated effects, with empirical evidence of cellular toxicity and neurodegeneration. Here we examine non-receptor-mediated effects of DA on gene co-expression networks and its potential role in SZ pathology. Transcriptomic profiles were measured by RNA-seq in B-cell transformed lymphoblastoid cell lines from 514 SZ cases and 690 controls, both before and after exposure to DA ex vivo (100 μM). Gene co-expression modules were identified using Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis for both baseline and DA-stimulated conditions, with each module characterized for biological function and tested for association with SZ status and SNPs from a genome-wide panel. We identified seven co-expression modules under baseline, of which six were preserved in DA-stimulated data. One module shows significantly increased association with SZ after DA perturbation (baseline: P = 0.023; DA-stimulated: P = 7.8 × 10-5; ΔAIC = -10.5) and is highly enriched for genes related to ribosomal proteins and translation (FDR = 4 × 10-141), mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, and neurodegeneration. SNP association testing revealed tentative QTLs underlying module co-expression, notably at FASTKD2 (top P = 2.8 × 10-6), a gene involved in mitochondrial translation. These results substantiate the role of translational machinery in SZ pathogenesis, providing insights into a possible dopaminergic mechanism disrupting mitochondrial function, and demonstrates the utility of disease-relevant functional perturbation in the study of complex genetic etiologies

Genz and Mendell-Elston Estimation of the High-Dimensional Multivariate Normal Distribution

Statistical analysis of multinomial data in complex datasets often requires estimation of the multivariate normal (MVN) distribution for models in which the dimensionality can easily reach 10–1000 and higher. Few algorithms for estimating the MVN distribution can offer robust and efficient performance over such a range of dimensions. We report a simulation-based comparison of two algorithms for the MVN that are widely used in statistical genetic applications. The venerable Mendell- Elston approximation is fast but execution time increases rapidly with the number of dimensions, estimates are generally biased, and an error bound is lacking. The correlation between variables significantly affects absolute error but not overall execution time. The Monte Carlo-based approach described by Genz returns unbiased and error-bounded estimates, but execution time is more sensitive to the correlation between variables. For ultra-high-dimensional problems, however, the Genz algorithm exhibits better scale characteristics and greater time-weighted efficiency of estimation