Money and mental contents

It can be hard to see where money fits in the world. Money seems both real and imaginary, since it has obvious causal powers, but is also, just as obviously, something humans have just made up. Recent philosophical accounts of money have declared it to be real, but for very different reasons. John Searle and Francesco Guala disagree over whether money is just whatever acts like money, or just whatever people believe to be money. In developing their accounts of institutions as a part of social reality, each uses money as a paradigm institution, but they disagree on how institutions exist. Searle argues that the institution of money belongs to an ontological level separate from the physical world, held up by the collective intentions of a group, while Guala claims that money is a part of the ordinary physical world and is just whatever performs a “money-like function” in a group, regardless of what that group believes about it. Here, we argue that any purely functional account like Guala’s will be unable to capture the distinctive phenomenon of money, since monetary transactions are defined by the attitudes transactors hold toward them. Money will be obscured or misidentified if defined functionally. As we go on to show by examining recent work by Smit et al., belief in money does not require taking on all of Searle’s ontological commitments, but money and mental contents will stand or fall together

Genetic Basis of Ammonium Toxicity Resistance in a Sake Strain of Yeast: A Mendelian Case.

High concentrations of ammonium at physiological concentrations of potassium are toxic for the standard laboratory strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae In the original description of this metabolic phenotype, we focused on the standard laboratory strains of Saccharomyces In this study, we screened a large collection of S. cerevisiae natural isolates and identified one strain that is resistant to high concentrations of ammonium. This strain, K12, was isolated in sake breweries. When the K12 strain was crossed to the standard laboratory strain (FY4), the resulting tetrads displayed 2:2 segregation of the resistance phenotype, suggesting a single gene trait. Using a bulk segregant analysis strategy, we mapped this trait to a 150-kb region on chromosome X containing the TRK1 gene. This gene encodes a transporter required for high-affinity potassium transport in S. cerevisiae Data from reciprocal hemizygosity experiments with TRK1 deletion strains in K12 and BY backgrounds, as well as analysis of the deletion of this gene in the K12 strain, demonstrate that the K12 allele of TRK1 is responsible for ammonium toxicity resistance. Furthermore, we determined the minimal amount of potassium required for both the K12 and laboratory strain needed for growth. These results demonstrate that the gene encoded by the K12 allele of TRK1 has a greater affinity for potassium than the standard allele of TRK1 found in Saccharomyces strains. We hypothesize that this greater-affinity allele of the potassium transporter reduces the flux of ammonium into the yeast cells under conditions of ammonium toxicity. These findings further refine our understanding of ammonium toxicity in yeast and provide an example of using natural variation to understand cellular processes

Development of a Mobile Friendly Self-Service Experience at Grand Rapids Community College

Computer use reflects the development of technology from the powerful desktop computers, to portable laptops, to small handheld smartphones. Users today want the capability to perform tasks from anywhere at any time with any device. In order to meet these demands and stay relevant, organizations must adopt and implement updated technologies. This project focuses on a need to adjust to the technological shift at Grand Rapids Community College. The college’s self-service system, originally developed in the early 2000’s, no longer met the needs of the campus community. Especially mobile phone users were unsatisfied with the experience. To solve the problems with the current system, this project leveraged web development tools and new programming capabilities, recently added to PeopleSoft, to create a responsive experience for all users regardless of the device. The new interface was successfully deployed on November 12, 2018, and continues to serve the college community

Convergent evolution of coloration in experimental introductions of the guppy (Poecilia reticulata).

Despite the multitude of examples of evolution in action, relatively fewer studies have taken a replicated approach to understand the repeatability of evolution. Here, we examine the convergent evolution of adaptive coloration in experimental introductions of guppies from a high-predation (HP) environment into four low-predation (LP) environments. LP introductions were replicated across 2 years and in two different forest canopy cover types. We take a complementary approach by examining both phenotypes and genetics. For phenotypes, we categorize the whole color pattern on the tail fin of male guppies and analyze evolution using a correspondence analysis. We find that coloration in the introduction sites diverged from the founding Guanapo HP site. Sites group together based on canopy cover, indicating convergence in response to light environment. However, the axis that explains the most variation indicates a lack of convergence. Therefore, evolution may proceed along similar phenotypic trajectories, but still maintain unique variation within sites. For the genetics underlying the divergent phenotypes, we examine expression levels of color genes. We find no evidence for differential expression, indicating that the genetic basis for the color changes remains undetermined

Exploring the Potential of the Web-Based Virtual World of Second Life to Improve Substance Abuse Treatment Outcomes

Provides an overview of Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world, and summarizes discussions among addiction recovery experts about integrating virtual reality into behavioral treatment as a way to teach patients new responses to real environments

Experiences with designing and managing organic rotation trials

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Practical problems encountered in two long-term organic rotation trials at Aberdeen and Elgin are discussed. Compromises have had to be made in designing and managing the trials: how to include livestock and measure output, plot size, marking and fencing, discards and paths, replication, rotation length, randomisation of crop sequence, site uniformity, manoeuvrability of machines, soil compaction and exposure to pest damage

Comparing the effects of the second OPEC oil price shock on income and resource allocation in four oil-poor developing economies: Ivory Coast, Kenya, South Korea, Turkey

The large OPEC-engineered real world oil price increases of the early and late 1970?s have set in train, via a highly integrated international trade and finance system, significant resource transfers from energy-poor to energy-rich countries. In accommodating these resource transfers both energy exporting and importing economies have been confronted with adjustment pressures. In the case of the former group, these adjustment pressures have arisen from the need for these economies to accommodate a favourable shift in their foreign terms of trade, ostensibly by way of a redirection of resources from the international to the domestic account, thus permitting higher real national income. For energy-poor countries however the required adjustment process has much less palatable consequences for economic growth and the real income aspirations of the populations. Our concern in this paper is with a subset of the latter group - the so-called oil-poor developing countries. We focus in considerable detail on four such economies; Kenya, South Korea, Ivory Coast and Turkey. As well as representing various levels of oil 'poorness' these countries exhibit interesting differences in resource endowments, the industrial composition of their gross domestic products, the oil intensity of their industrial production technologies, the skill composition of their labour forces, their openness to world trade and their commodity composition of exports and imports. By means of multisectoral economy-wide models for each of these countries, we quantify the nature and extent of the adjustment pressures imposed on them by what has now become known as the second OPEC oil shock of 1978-80.

Stabilisation strategies in primary commodity exporting countries: A case study of Chile

A number of recent studies have shown that the short term level of economic activity and employment in primary commodity exporting countries is particularly vulnerable to price fluctuations in world commodity markets. The authorities in such countries, in seeking to maintain output and employment stability, must invoke compensatory macroeconomic adjustment strategies to accommodate both favourable and unfavourable movements in the foreign terms of trade. Chile provides a case in point. Chile has traditionally been heavily reliant on raw materials exports, particularly copper, for its foreign exchange earnings. Copper exports averaged around 70 per cent of total export earnings for the period 1960-19 76. They currently represent about one half of total foreign exchange earnings.