Proximate and ultimate factors in evolutionary thinking on art

Art is often described as an evolutionary adaptation, but not enough thought has been given to arguments in support of this claim. This can lead to a variety of explanatory issues, such as unjustly describing artmaking as an adaptation, not recognizing its complex nature, and its potentially even more complex evolutionary trajectory. This paper addresses one subject in particular, which is the conceptual distinction between ultimate and proximate levels of explanation. More specifically, this brief analysis investigates to what extent functional, adaptive explanations and proximate mechanisms might be confused, leading to strong adaptationist claims that may not be in accordance with the available evidence. In this paper, two hypotheses are discussed from this perspective, and it is argued that both of them, upon closer and more extensive analysis, might not stand the adaptationist test

Existence and non uniqueness of constant scalar curvature toric Sasaki metrics

We study compatible toric Sasaki metrics with constant scalar curvature on co-oriented compact toric contact manifolds of Reeb type of dimension at least 5. These metrics come in rays of transversal homothety due to the possible rescaling of the Reeb vector fields. We prove that there exist Reeb vector fields for which the transversal Futaki invariant (restricted to the Lie algebra of the torus) vanishes. Using existence result of [25], we show that a co-oriented compact toric contact 5-manifold whose moment cone has 4 facets admits a finite number of rays of transversal homothetic compatible toric Sasaki metrics with constant scalar curvature. We point out a family of well-known toric contact structures on $S^2\times S^3$ admitting two non isometric and non transversally homothetic compatible toric Sasaki metrics with constant scalar curvature.Comment: 22 pages, no figure

Toric geometry of convex quadrilaterals

We provide an explicit resolution of the Abreu equation on convex labeled quadrilaterals. This confirms a conjecture of Donaldson in this particular case and implies a complete classification of the explicit toric K\"ahler-Einstein and toric Sasaki-Einstein metrics constructed in [6,22,14]. As a byproduct, we obtain a wealth of extremal toric (complex) orbi-surfaces, including K\"ahler-Einstein ones, and show that for a toric orbi-surface with 4 fixed points of the torus action, the vanishing of the Futaki invariant is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of K\"ahler metric with constant scalar curvature. Our results also provide explicit examples of relative K-unstable toric orbi-surfaces that do not admit extremal metrics.Comment: 36 pages; v2: small changes (typos and sign convention); v3: few typos corrected, adjustments in the trapezoid case; to appear in Journal of Symplectic Geometr

A Grammar Sketch of Kwaraqae

A Grammar Sketch of Kwaraqae is a synchronic linguistic analysis of the Kwaraqae language, one of sixty-three languages which are part of the North Malaita dialect chain in the Solomon Islands. The data was collected at the University of Waikato from urban dwelling Kwaraqae speakers. Although some work has already been done with this language (Deck, 1934, Walter, 1931), the frameworks of analysis and interpretation from these projects are now out-dated, and consequently not as useful for Linguistic Typologists working with Oceanic languages, or those linguists investigating specific language features such as metathesis (Sohn, 1980; Pawley, 1982; Blevins & Garrett, 1998; Baird, 2002; Heinz, 2004). This thesis has addressed both of these issues by firstly recording fresh data, and secondly, by the application of contemporary linguistic descriptive and typological theory and practices to the data. The description sketches the phonological system which has bilabial and palatal glides, labio-velar stops, a basic syllable shape of (C)V(V)(C), and complex syllable transformations such as metathesis and segment deletion which are often combined. Kwaraqae tends towards an isolating agglutinative typology. When constituents are marked, this occurs on the phrasal head. The basic order of the language is SVO. The nominal system displays the alienable /inalienable semantic distinction frequently found in Oceanic languages, a small closed sub-class being locative in function. The verbal system includes inherently transitive and intransitive verbs, where valence is increased by affixation, and decreased by reduplication, although not all verbs fit this pattern. There are intransitive verbs for which a transitive counterpart could not be elicited, and transitive verbs where the valence changing affixes appear to have become fossilised on the verb. Transitive verbs are often, though not always, indexed for their direct objects. Aspect is prominent in Kwaraqae, and is expressed in the verb phrase by an imperfective, a completive and/or a terminal marker. There is a marker of temporal immediacy, and a large group of free form verbal modifiers, all of which occur in the verb phrase. Fronting of subjects and direct objects is a frequent structure in clauses

Student errors: how teachers diagnose them and how they respond to them

Current pedagogical discourse has established that teacher competence is a condition sine qua non for high level performance in the classroom. Nevertheless questions of conceptualising and measuring teacher competence have yet to be answered. In our study we analyse a facet of teacher competence essential to successful learning processes; namely, teacher competence when diagnosing and responding to student errors in a constructive manner. Two pilot studies investigate how students perceive "error culture" in their classrooms, and how teachers deal with learner errors during lessons. (DIPF/Orig.

Subset models for justification logic

We introduce a new semantics for justification logic based on subset relations. Instead of using the established and more symbolic interpretation of justifications, we model justifications as sets of possible worlds. We introduce a new justification logic that is sound and complete with respect to our semantics. Moreover, we present another variant of our semantics that corresponds to traditional justification logic. These types of models offer us a versatile tool to work with justifications, e.g.~by extending them with a probability measure to capture uncertain justifications. Following this strategy we will show that they subsume Artemov's approach to aggregating probabilistic evidence