Yellowism and Ontology: A Skeptical Analysis

When Vladimir Umanets entered the Tate Modern on October 7, 2012 and defaced Rothko\u27s Black on Maroon, he was operating, not as an artist or a vandal, but as a Yellowist. Yellowism is neither art nor anti-art but is instead a supposedly new cultural element that exists for its own sake and is about nothing but the color yellow. It might be tempting to write Yellowism and the Rothko defacement off as a mere prank or as pseudo-intellectual fraud, but I argue that, intentionally or not, the Yellowists have raised issues salient to those invested in both the ontology of art and social ontology more generally. In particular, their actions highlight issues pertaining to the relationship between stipulation and ontology. I explore these issues in this paper

Negotiating Inefficient Compromises: Is Less Better than More?

Significant efforts are made to design and implement decision and negotiation support systems to identify efficient alternatives. The underlying assumption is that decision-makers prefer an efficient alternative over an inefficient one. Experimental studies indicate that people often accept inefficient compromises and are unwilling to improve them even if prompted to do so. This report presents preliminary results for the analysis of 605 bilateral negotiations in which only 20.8% of negotiators who achieved an inefficient compromise entered the post-settlement phase in an attempt to improve the compromise

How to Be Omnipresent

Attributions of omnipresence, most familiar within the philosophy of religion, typically take the omnipresence of an entity to either consist in that entity's occupation of certain regions or be dependent upon other of that entity's attributes, such as omnipotence or omniscience. This paper defends an alternative conception of omnipresence that is independent of other purported divine attributes and dispenses with occupation. The resulting view repurposes the metaphysics of necessitism and permanentism, taking omnipresent entities to be those entities that exist at all regions. This view is then shown to best accommodate attributions of omnipresence to a diverse range of metaphysical posits, like abstract entities, and a more diverse class of religious posits

The Four or Five Barred Cage: The Consequences of Hofstede's View of Culture

A study of citations in four prominent journals indicates how deeply Hofstede's conceptualization dominates the understanding of culture in international business research. The implications of this intellectual hegemony for the development of the field are examined After considering some critiques of Hofstede's approach, three diverse alternatives to the value-based approach are discussed

Prevalence of Salmonella in Swine and Pork: A Farm to Consumer Study

Fecal, tissue, and environmental cultures and serological tests were performed on 100 swine on a multi–site farrow to finish production facility. Salmonella of 10 types were identified in the swine herd and environment but none were recovered from rodents or flies caught in the production units. At slaughter, 52% (24 of 46) of swine were serologically positive for Salmonella antibodies, while 9% (4 of 46) were positive by culture. Although clinical salmonellosis was not detected in the study herd, multiple serotypes of Salmonella were causing endemic infections in the study herd

Antimicrobial resistance patterns of Campylobacter from feedlot cattle

Aims: This study examined 448 Campylobacter strains isolated in 1999 and 2000 from US feedlot cattle for resistance to 12 antimicrobials. Methods and Results: Isolates were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility using the E-test method. Approximately 60% (n = 267) were resistant to one or more antimicrobials, and 19·6% (n = 88) were resistant to two or more antimicrobials. Of the Campylobacter jejuni isolates, 49·1% (n = 187) were resistant to tetracycline, 10·2% (n = 39) were resistant to nalidixic acid, 8·4% were resistant to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, and 1·8% (n = 7) were resistant to ciprofloxacin. Resistance to any of the other eight antimicrobials was 1·3% or less, but 14·4% (n = 55) were resistant to two or more antimicrobials. In the Campylobacter coli group, 65·7% (n = 44) were resistant to tetracycline, 52·2% (n = 35) were resistant to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, 22·4% (n = 15) were resistant to nalidixic acid, and 9·0% (n = 6) were resistant to ciprofloxacin. Resistance to any of the remaining eight antimicrobials was 3·0% or less, although 49·3% (n = 33) were resistant to two or more antimicrobials. Conclusions: Although antimicrobials are widely used in US feedlot cattle production, our results demonstrate generally low levels of resistance to a broad range of commonly used antimicrobials relative to other recent studies. Significance and Impact of the Study: Resistance data on Campylobacter isolated from this major US livestock commodity is lacking. This overview enhances current knowledge and provides a basis for further studies

Antimicrobial resistance patterns of Campylobacter from feedlot cattle

Aims: This study examined 448 Campylobacter strains isolated in 1999 and 2000 from US feedlot cattle for resistance to 12 antimicrobials. Methods and Results: Isolates were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility using the E-test method. Approximately 60% (n = 267) were resistant to one or more antimicrobials, and 19·6% (n = 88) were resistant to two or more antimicrobials. Of the Campylobacter jejuni isolates, 49·1% (n = 187) were resistant to tetracycline, 10·2% (n = 39) were resistant to nalidixic acid, 8·4% were resistant to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, and 1·8% (n = 7) were resistant to ciprofloxacin. Resistance to any of the other eight antimicrobials was 1·3% or less, but 14·4% (n = 55) were resistant to two or more antimicrobials. In the Campylobacter coli group, 65·7% (n = 44) were resistant to tetracycline, 52·2% (n = 35) were resistant to trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole, 22·4% (n = 15) were resistant to nalidixic acid, and 9·0% (n = 6) were resistant to ciprofloxacin. Resistance to any of the remaining eight antimicrobials was 3·0% or less, although 49·3% (n = 33) were resistant to two or more antimicrobials. Conclusions: Although antimicrobials are widely used in US feedlot cattle production, our results demonstrate generally low levels of resistance to a broad range of commonly used antimicrobials relative to other recent studies. Significance and Impact of the Study: Resistance data on Campylobacter isolated from this major US livestock commodity is lacking. This overview enhances current knowledge and provides a basis for further studies

Salmonella prevalence and antimicrobial resistance in swine from 5 US states from 2003 to 2005

The Collaboration in Animal Health and Food Safety Epidemiology (CAHFSE), a USDA joint program of ARS, APHIS, and FSIS was established to track food borne pathogens and monitor animal health issues. Fecal samples (n=9020) were collected and cultured for Salmonella from pens of pigs near slaughter weight (generally~ 22 weeks old) from swine farms in five U.S. states. A prevalence of 8.0, 10.1, and 8.5% was observed in 2003, 2004, and 2005, respectively The top 10 serotypes accounted for 94% of the total Salmonella isolates with S. Derby (45%), S. Typhimurium var. 5- (15%), and S Heidelberg (9%) comprising the top three serotypes each year. Salmonella Give was found in 8% of samples in 2003, 3% of samples m 2004, but was not found in the top 10% of ISolates m 2005. The percentage of Salmonella isolates that were susceptible to all of the 16 antimicrobials tested increased from 6% in 2003 to 15% in 2005. At the same time, the percentage of isolates resistant to 10 or more antimicrobials increased from 1% to 15%. The increase in multiple drug resistance was coincident with an increase in the percentage of S. Derby isolates. Overall, frequency of resistance to individual antimicrobials was relatively stable from 2003 to 2005 and observed differences were related to changes in serotypes over time, which highlights the importance of reporting resistance data by individual serotype. CAHFSE provides a mechanism to monitor changes in serotypes of Salmonella as well as antimicrobial resistance patterns over time

Prevalence and Antimicrobial Resistance of Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter in Pigs from Swine Producing States in the United States

The purpose of the study was to determine the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility of Salmonella, Campylobacter and generic E. coli (commensal bacteria which may harbor antimicrobial resistance genes) from swine feces collected over one year from the top three swine producing states (Iowa, North Carolina, and Minnesota), which represent 51% of the total pig crop in the U.S, plus Ohio. The prevalence of Salmonella (n=462/4426), Campylobacter (n=994/1184) and E. coli (n=833/845) at the sample level was 10.4%, 98.6% and 83.6%, respectively