New reaction tester accurate within 56 microseconds

Testing device measures simple and disjunctive reaction time of human subject to light stimuli. Tester consists of reaction key, logic card, panel mounted neon indicators, and interconnecting wiring. Device is used for determining reaction times of patients undergoing postoperative neurological therapy

Bridges

This entry discusses the linguistic (prosodic) features of the Ancient Greek poetic phenomenon of the metrical bridge, a position in a line of verse where a word division is either disallowed or strongly disfavored

Dowry and Intrahousehold Bargaining: Evidence from China

This paper analyzes the relationship between a woman’s intrahousehold bargaining position and her welfare within marriage. Simultaneity problems common to the literature are overcome by using dowry to proxy for bargaining position. Omitted variable bias is addressed by using grain shocks in the year preceding marriage and sibling sex composition as instruments for dowry. Instrumented dowry positively impacts several measures of a wife’s welfare, including time allocation, household purchases, and the wife’s decision-making authority, thereby offering strong evidence to support collective models of the household.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39994/3/wp608.pd

Differentiating Averroes’ Accounts of the Metaphysics of Human Epistemology in his Middle and Long Commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima

Averroes (an Islamic Andalusian philosopher in the 12th century) discusses the metaphysics of human epistemology extensively, and his socio-religious context sheds light on this discussion. Several of his works, most prominently his three commentaries on Aristotle’s De Anima, attempt to explain how finite, particular minds interact with universal, eternal intelligibles. Current scholarship focuses on the two longer commentaries, the Middle Commentary and the Long Commentary, but there is no consensus regarding which of these presents Averroes’ final articulation of the metaphysics of human epistemology. Those who maintain that Averroes wrote the Middle Commentary last tend to minimize the differences between the two accounts. This paper does not take a position on the chronology of Averroes’ works. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate that, even if Averroes wrote the Middle Commentary last, in light of Averroes’ socio-political environment, it is evident that the accounts of the metaphysics of human epistemology in the Middle and Long commentaries differ substantively

The Mental Database

This article uses database, evolution and physics considerations to suggest how the mind stores and processes its data. Its innovations in its approach lie in:- A) The comparison between the capabilities of the mind to those of a modern relational database while conserving phenomenality. The strong functional similarity of the two systems leads to the conclusion that the mind may be profitably described as being a mental database. The need for material/mental bridging and addressing indexes is discussed. B) The consideration of what neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) between sensorimotor data and instrumented observation one can hope to obtain using current biophysics. It is deduced that what is seen using the various brain scanning methods reflects only that part of current activity transactions (e.g. visualizing) which update and interrogate the mind, but not the contents of the integrated mental database which constitutes the mind itself. This approach yields reasons why there is much neural activity in an area to which a conscious function is ascribed (e.g. the amygdala is associated with fear), yet there is no visible part of its activity which can be clearly identified as phenomenal. The concept is then situated in a Penrosian expanded physical environment, requiring evolutionary continuity, modularity and phenomenality.Several novel Darwinian advantages arising from the approach are described

The Hebraic Monarchy as God’s Redemptive Response to Israel’s Unfaithfulness

The first portion of this paper will argue that the Old Testament portrays the monarchy neither as God’s chosen method of relating to his people, nor as an intrinsically evil institution, but as God’s redemptive response to Israel’s unfaithfulness. The second portion addresses a potential objection to this portrayal by arguing that Moses serves primarily as a type for Samuel, not the monarchy

Social values and the corruption argument against financial incentives for healthy behaviour

Footnotes Funding This research was funded by the Centre for the Study of Incentives in Health, from a strategic award from the Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Programme (PI Marteau: 086031/Z/08/Z).Peer reviewedPublisher PD