Philosophy at the Beginning of the 21st Century

À la dernière moitié du 20 e siècle, la postmodernité a rejeté entièrement la notion de réalité objective et celui de vérité. On doit s'en souvenir que la vérité en dépend de ce qu’il montre et s'il n'y avait aucune réalité objective il n'y avait aucune vérité non plus. Mais aujourd’hui, au commencem ent du 21 e siècle, est survenue une nouvelle vue appelée la post post -modernité qui est un retour subtil à la modernité et qui tende trouver des choses fermes dans la réalité et des certitudes dans la pensée. Ainsi, ce courent reconnaît que notre expérien ce nous enseigne qu'il y a un monde réel qui existe indépendamment de nous, indépendamment de nos expériences, de nos pensées et de notre langue. À ce moment il semble qu'il y a une opportunité de revenir à une position réaliste, qui a du sens tant dans la science que dans la théologie. Elle fournit une vision du monde qui se veut correspondante à la réalité, cohérente en lui -même et capable à répondre systématiquement aux questions de la vie

Global Imbalances-Just How Dangerous?

The combination of rising current account surpluses in Asia and a growing current account deficit in the United States has raised concerns that the resulting imbalances pose a threat to the world economy, especially if they are reversed in a disorderly manner. Some experts believe that normal market forces will resolve these imbalances over time; others argue that policy-makers should facilitate the adjustment with policies that curb domestic demand in deficit countries and stimulate it in surplus countries. Little and Lafrance provide a guide to the major issues and controversies involved in the debate.

Selected Virginia Cooperative Extension Services\u27 Professional Personnel\u27s Perceptions of Concepts and Competences in Extension Program Development.

The purpose of the study was to determine the perceptions of Extension Agents, Unit Chairmen and District Staff relative to selected concepts and competences dealing with Extension Program development in the local unit. A conceptual model of Extension Program development that was developed in 1974 was used as the basis for this study. These six concepts were further used as categories for the 120 items identified for the questionnaire. The instrument was pretested prior to submitting to the population of 423 personnel of the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service. Two-hundred and ninety five, or 70 percent, who responded indicated their perceptions via a 5 point Likert-scale. Each concept and competence was responded to twice, (1) the perceived importance of the concept (or competence) to Extension Agents in Extension Program development; and (2) the perceived degree of understanding needed of the concept (or competence) by those local individuals formally involved in developing the local unit\u27s Extension Program. The major findings were described in Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Some of the major conclusions and implications are presented in the following statements. Based upon the perceptions of Extension Agents, Unit Chairmen and District Staff relative to the importance of the concepts and competences, it is concluded that there was a consensus of agreement as to the importance of the concepts to Extension Agents in Extension Program Development. Ironically, the relationship of the Extension Agents\u27 or Unit Chairmen\u27s indicated time spent in a given program emphasis area increases, the more likely they are to perceive similar concepts and competences to be of less importance to Extension Agents in Extension program development. Based upon the perceptions of Extension Agents and Unit Chairmen from urban and rural units relative to the importance of the concept categories, it is concluded that there was a consensus of agreement that the concept categories are important to Extension Agents located in urban and rural units. The findings based on the perception of the respondents relative to these concepts and competences as to the degree of understanding needed of each by local (non-Extension) individuals formally involved in developing the local unit\u27s Extension program were reported in Chapter 6. Based upon the perceptions of Extension Agents, Unit Chairmen and District Staff relative to the degree of understanding of the concepts and competences needed by local (non-Extension) individuals formally involved in developing the local unit\u27s Extension program, it was concluded that there was not a consensus between the respondents by position groups

Tensile film clamps and mounting block for the rheovibron and autovibron viscoelastometer

A set of film clamps and a mounting block for use in the determination of tensile modulus and damping properties of films in a manually operated or automated Rheovibron is diagrammed. These clamps and mounting block provide uniformity of sample gripping and alignment in the instrument. Operator dependence and data variability are greatly reduced

Law, Justice, and Moral Knowledge

Societies concerned for the improvement of the human condition within their own citizens as well as those in other societies will promote scientific inquiry and knowledge acquisition. It is by this that those societies encourage a healthy cultural development and a positive international economic and social presence. However, in order for this to become a living reality, it is necessary that such a society be a just society and not merely a society with a legal code. This paper will argue that a society that promotes the improvement of the human condition for its citizens and cultural excellence by its people will require nothing less than a just society which requires just laws. Justice is not determined merely by the administration of the laws of the land. It is essential that the laws themselves are just and justly administrated which requires that the legal system be constructed on a common morality acknowledged by humanity in general.society, law, justice, moral knowledge, humanity

High turnover in electro-oxidation of alcohols and ethers with a glassy carbon-supported phenanthroimidazole mediator.

Glassy carbon electrodes covalently modified with a phenanthroimidazole mediator promote electrochemical alcohol and ether oxidation: three orders of magnitude increase in TON, to ∼15 000 in each case, was observed compared with homogeneous mediated reactions. We propose the deactivation pathways in homogeneous solution are prevented by the immobilization: modified electrode reversibility is increased for a one-electron oxidation reaction. The modified electrodes were used to catalytically oxidize p-anisyl alcohol and 1-((benzyloxy)methyl)-4-methoxybenzene, selectively, to the corresponding benzaldehyde and benzyl ester, respectively

Inhalant abuse of 1,1-difluoroethane (DFE) leading to heterotopic ossification: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Heterotopic ossification (HO) is the formation of mature, lamellar bone within soft tissues other than the periosteum. There are three recognized etiologies of HO: traumatic, neurogenic, and genetic. Presently, there are no definitively documented causal factors of HO. The following factors are presumed to place a patient at higher risk: 60 years of age or older, male, previous HO, hypertrophic osteoarthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, prior hip surgery, and surgical risk factors.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 33-year-old male, involved in a motor vehicle crash, sustained an irreducible acetabulum fracture/dislocation, displaced proximal humerus fracture, and an impacted pilon fracture. During the time of injury, he was intoxicated from inhaling the aerosol propellant used in "dust spray" cans (1,1-difluoroethane, C₂H₄F₂). Radiographs identified rapid pathologic bone formation about the proximal humeral metaphysis, proximal femur, elbow, and soft tissue several months following the initial injury.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The patient did not have any genetic disorders that could have attributed to the bone formation but had some risk factors (male, fracture with dislocation). Surgically, the recommended precautions were followed to decrease the chance of HO. Although the patient did not have neurogenic injuries, the difluoroethane in dusting spray can cause damage to the central nervous system. Signals may have been mixed causing the patient's body to produce bone instead of tissue to strengthen the injured area.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>What is unusual in this case is the rate at which the pathological bone formation appeared, which was long outside the 4–6 week window in which HO starts to appear. The authors are not certain as to the cause of this rapid formation but suspect that the patient's continued abuse of inhaled aerosol propellants may be the culprit.</p

A Semantic and Syntactic Similarity Measure for Political Tweets

Measurement of the semantic and syntactic similarity of human utterances is essential in allowing machines to understand dialogue with users. However, human language is complex, and the semantic meaning of an utterance is usually dependent upon the context at a given time and learnt experience of the meaning of the words that are used. This is particularly challenging when automatically understanding the meaning of social media, such as tweets, which can contain non-standard language. Short Text Semantic Similarity measures can be adapted to measure the degree of similarity of a pair of tweets. This work presents a new Semantic and Syntactic Similarity Measure (TSSSM) for political tweets. The approach uses word embeddings to determine semantic similarity and extracts syntactic features to overcome the limitations of current measures which may miss identical sequences of words. A large dataset of tweets focusing on the political domain were collected, pre-processed and used to train the word embedding model, with various experiments performed to determine the optimal model and parameters. A selection of tweet pairs were evaluated by humans for semantic equivalence and correlated against the measure. The new measure can be used in a variety of applications, including for identifying and analyzing political narratives. Experiments on three diverse human-labelled test datasets demonstrate that the measure outperforms an existing measure, performs well on tweets from the political domain and may also generalize outside the political domain

Use of complementary and alternative medicine in pediatric otolaryngology patients attending a tertiary hospital in the UK

Objective: Little data is available on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use in children attending otolaryngology services. We investigated the prevalence and pattern of CAM use among children attending the pediatric otolaryngology department in a tertiary pediatric teaching hospital in Scotland. Design: A cross-sectional survey conducted by administering an anonymous questionnaire to the parents accompanying patients attending the pediatric otolaryngology department. Elective admissions and clinic attendees were included over a 3-month period in 2005/2006. Setting: Academic tertiary care referral centre in North-East Scotland. Patients: Five hundred and fifty-four consecutive patients aged less than 16 years were eligible. The response rate was 59% (n = 327). Main outcome measures: Prevalence of CAM use in children. Secondary measures include types of CAM used, indications for use and communication with family physicians. Results: Based on 327 responses, 93 patients (29%) had ever used CAM, 20% within the last year. Commonly used CAM preparations were cod-liver oil, echinacea, aloe vera, cranberry, primrose oil and herbal vitamin supplements. The popular non-herbal CAM included homeopathy, massage, aromatherapy, chiropractic, yoga and reiki. Nineteen percent used CAM for their admission illness. Sixty-one percent of parents thought that CAM was effective and 65% would recommend it to others. Fifty-one percent of parents stated that the family physician was unaware of CAM use by the child. Conclusions: Despite concerns regarding the efficacy, safety and cost effectiveness of complementary and alternative medicine, its use among the pediatric otolaryngology population is more common than many providers may realize. This has implications for all healthcare workers involved in their care