Illusions of gunk

The possibility of gunk has been used to argue against mereological nihilism. This paper explores two responses on the part of the microphysical mereological nihilist: (1) the contingency defence, which maintains that nihilism is true of the actual world; but that at other worlds, composition occurs; (2) the impossibility defence, which maintains that nihilism is necessary true, and so gunk worlds are impossible. The former is argued to be ultimately unstable; the latter faces the explanatorily burden of explaining the illusion that gunk is possible. It is argued that we can discharge this burden by focussing on the contingency of the microphysicalist aspect of microphysical mereological nihilism. The upshot is that gunk-based arguments against microphysical mereological nihilism can be resisted

Kinetics and roles of individual TNF receptors in models of acute lung injury in mice

Mechanical ventilation, essential for the support of patients with acute lung injury (ALI), causes exacerbation of the existing pathology, a process termed ventilator-induced lung injury (VILI). The pro-inflammatory cytokine tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) has been consistently implicated in ALI/VILI. TNF activates two receptors, TNFR p55 and p75 that act in opposition during VILI to promote or protect against pulmonary oedema formation, respectively, but the mechanisms underlying this are unknown. Alveolar and plasma soluble TNFR (sTNFR) levels are elevated in ventilated ALI patients and associated with mortality. However, the relevance of these increases is unclear. This project had two main aims: to investigate kinetics and sources of sTNFRs in the alveoli and plasma and investigate mechanisms underlying differential TNFR signalling during VILI, using in vivo mouse models. Investigation of intraalveolar sTNFRs during VILI, and also ALI induced by intratracheal administration of hydrochloric acid or bacterial toxins, showed that intraalveolar sTNFRs are differentially regulated during ALI: VILI/hydrochloric acid induced leakage of sTNFR p55 and p75 from plasma, whereas bacterial toxins induced intraalveolar p75 production. These differences have important implications for TNF signalling and potential use as clinical markers. Investigation of plasma sTNFRs suggests that VILI induces direct production of sTNFRs by the pulmonary vasculature, as opposed to leakage of intraalveolar sTNFRs into the circulation as previously suggested. Development of a flow cytometry technique to study pulmonary TNFR expression was successfully validated using TNFR deficient tissue, but consolidation of data by immunohistochemistry was unsuccessful. Investigation of differential TNFR signalling mechanisms showed that following intratracheal fluid administration, p75 deficient mice exhibit physiological changes consistent with impaired fluid reabsorption, implicating p75 in lung fluid reabsorption during VILI. These data offer new, potentially clinically applicable insights into the involvement of TNFR biology in VILI/ALI and the novel methodologies developed herein constitute useful tools for future research

Enhanced learning performance in the middle school classroom through increased student motivation, by the use of educational software and question-based gaming technology.

The purpose of this research was to determine if the introduction of a competitive and collaborative computer-based gaming software system into middle school classrooms would result in improved attendance and grades, and motivate students to have a greater interest in their studies. This study was conducted over a 6 week period, with attendance and performance data being collected from 284 students. Two quantitative surveys were used to measure course interest and motivation: (a) the Course Interest Survey (CIS), and (b) the Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS). Participation in these surveys consisted of 84 students taking the CIS and 40 students taking the IMMS. The results indicated that the experimental group showed statistically better scores than the comparison group in attendance and performance. Students participating in the experimental group had significantly lower mean ranks of absenteeism compared to students in the comparison group. Results also revealed significant differences on grades. Students that were in the experimental group had significantly higher grades compared to students that were in the comparison group. Results of the CIS suggest that a statistically significant difference does not exist on Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction between the experimental and comparison groups. Results of the means and standard deviations for the IMMS Motivation Scores fell somewhere between Moderately true and Mostly true. This research study suggests that student's attendance and performance can be improved when quiz based gaming software that is both collaborative and competitive is used regularly in the classroom. However, for student's that participated in the gaming software, their interest in studying the subject doesn't appear to be significantly different from students that did not participate

Diamonds are Forever

We defend the thesis that every necessarily true proposition is always true. Since not every proposition that is always true is necessarily true, our thesis is at odds with theories of modality and time, such as those of Kit Fine and David Kaplan, which posit a fundamental symmetry between modal and tense operators. According to such theories, just as it is a contingent matter what is true at a given time, it is likewise a temporary matter what is true at a given possible world; so a proposition that is now true at all worlds, and thus necessarily true, may yet at some past or future time be false in the actual world, and thus not always true. We reconstruct and criticize several lines of argument in favor of this picture, and then argue against the picture on the grounds that it is inconsistent with certain sorts of contingency in the structure of time

Economic Losses of Catfish to Avian Predation: A Case Report

Avian predation in catfish aquaculture has been a persistent issue throughout the history of the industry, and as production has expanded predation from piscivorous birds has intensified. Catfish ponds in the Mississippi River delta (in the Mississippi migratory flyway) provide a constant and readily accessible supply of forage for birds. Intensive foraging by fish-eating birds has led to a specific regulatory policy and numerous on-farm and regional management efforts. However, in 2016, legal challenges lead to recision of some federal policies and uncertainty as to allowable management, resulting in limitations on bird depredation. Estimating the extent of fish losses to avian predators is difficult, as loss estimates from farms are often confounded with disease- and management-related mortalities. This study details the reported losses to birds that were observed in commercial-scale catfish ponds at the Thad Cochran National Warmwater Aquaculture Center, Stoneville, Mississippi, during periods of limited bird management. The observed fish losses attributed to birds ranged from 33% to 95% loss in survival and potential yield losses of 4,396 to 8,889 lb/acre, increasing production costs and decreasing net returns. Net economic losses when accounting for negative net returns and lost profits ranged from US$3,518 to$4,060/acre. Losses of this magnitude on commercial fish farms are economically detrimental, especially because catfish farms lack the compensatory economic relief programs that are available in other agriculture sectors. Roost dispersal activities that are organized by federal agencies and avoiding delays in issuing bird depredation permits are vital for mitigating this persistent and growing regulatory problem in the U.S. catfish industry

Book Reviews

Review of the following books: The McArthurs of Limington, Maine: The Family in America a Century Ago, 1783-1917 by Elizabeth Ring; Allagash: Maine\u27s Wild and Scenic River by Dean B. Bennett; Growing Up in Maine: Recollections of Childhood from the 1780\u27s to the 1920\u27s edited by Charles and Samuella Shain; The Best of Barnes: The Selected Articles and Photographs of Jack Barnes edited by Susan Conley; An Insider\u27s Guide to Maine Politics 1946-1996 by Christian Potholm

Citation Handling for Improved Summarization of Scientific Documents

In this paper we present the first steps toward improving summarization of scientific documents through citation analysis and parsing. Prior work (Mohammad et al., 2009) argues that citation texts (sentences that cite other papers) play a crucial role in automatic summarization of a topical area, but did not take into account the noise introduced by the citations themselves. We demonstrate that it is possible to improve summarization output through careful handling of these citations. We base our experiments on the application of an improved trimming approach to summarization of citation texts extracted from Question-Answering and Dependency-Parsing documents. We demonstrate that confidence scores from the Stanford NLP Parser (Klein and Manning, 2003) are significantly improved, and that Trimmer (Zajic et al., 2007), a sentence-compression tool, is able to generate higher-quality candidates. Our summarization output is currently used as part of a larger system, Action Science Explorer (ASE) (Gove, 2011)

Predator telemetry informs temporal and spatial overlap with stocked salmonids in Lake Huron

Double-Crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auratus), Walleyes (Sander vitreus), and Lake Trout (Salvelinus namaycush) are migratory predators that undergo extensive movements in Lake Huron. Stocking of juvenile salmonid fish (Oncorhynchus and Salmo sp.) is an important component of fishery management in Lake Huron and assessing the spatial and temporal extent of predator movements is a useful consideration for determining when and where to stock juvenile fish to reduce predation and maximize survival. Previous investigation indicated that some Walleyes migrate to the main basin of Lake Huron in spring from Saginaw Bay. Similarly, telemetry studies of Lake Trout movement in Lake Huron have indicated an onshore movement in the spring. We used detection histories of Walleyes implanted with acoustic transmitters tagged in Saginaw Bay and Lake Trout implanted in northern Lake Huron to estimate the arrival date of migrating adults at eight ports in Lake Huron, where hatchery reared juvenile salmonids are stocked. Satellite telemetry of Cormorants that return to nesting grounds in northern Lake Huron were used to estimate their arrival dates at the same Lake Huron ports. Arrival of Walleye at Lake Huron ports ranged from April 10th to May 7th. Cormorants arrived earlier than Walleye at most Lake Huron ports (April 11th–April 18th). Lake Trout were more variable with a range of onshore movement from March 28th to May 16th. Our results suggested stocking efforts at these ports should generally occur before April 14th to decrease predatory impact from Cormorants, Walleyes, and Lake Trout

Using Healthcare Data in Embedded Pragmatic Clinical Trials among People Living with Dementia and Their Caregivers: State of the Art

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156003/1/jgs16617_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/156003/2/jgs16617.pd

Using WordNet to Posit Hierarchical Structure in Levin's Verb Classes

In this paper we report on experiments using WordNet synset tags to evaluate the semantic properties of the verb classes cataloged by Levin 1993. This paper represents ongoing research begun at the University of Pennsylvania (Rosenzweig et al. 1997, Palmer et al. 1997) and the University of Maryland (Dorr and Jones 1996b, 1996d, 1996e). Using WordNet sense tags to constrain the intersection of Levin classes, we avoid spurious class intersections introduced by homonymy and polysemy (_run a bath, run a mile_). By adding class intersections based on a single shared sense-tagged word, we minimize the impact of the non-exhaustiveness of Levin's database (Dorr and Olsen 1996, Dorr to appear). By examining the syntactic properties of the intersective classes, we provide a clearer picture of the relationship between WordNet/EuroWordNet and the LCS interlingua for machine translation and other NLP applications. Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-97-85 Also cross-referenced as LAMP-TR-01