Is There High-Level Causation?

The discovery of high-level causal relations seems a central activity of the special sciences. Those same sciences are less successful in formulating strict laws. If causation must be underwritten by strict laws, we are faced with a puzzle (first noticed by Donald Davidson), which might be dubbed the 'no strict laws' problem for high-level causation. Attempts have been made to dissolve this problem by showing that leading theories of causation do not in fact require that causation be underwritten by strict laws. But this conclusion has been too hastily drawn. Philosophers have tended to equate non-strict laws with ceteris paribus laws. I argue that there is another category of non-strict law that has often not been properly distinguished: namely, (what I will call) minutiae rectus laws. If, as it appears, many special science laws are minutiae rectus laws, then this poses a problem for their ability to underwrite causal relations in a way that their typically ceteris paribus nature does not. I argue that the best prospect for resolving the resurgent 'no strict laws' problem is to argue that special science laws are in fact typically probabilistic (and thus able to support probabilistic causation), rather than being minutiae rectus laws

Engaging and working with Maori? Effective practice for psychologists in education

I believe this whakatauki captures the reflective processes I am now engaged in, as I assess where I have come from and where I am going, as a second-generation pakeha of Irish descent, who completed postgraduate degrees in Psychology and Education in New Zealand and Canada, and who has been engaging and working with Māori in the field of education for many years

What gendered constructs about mathematics do parents have as their children begin school in Australia?

This study investigated whether parents have gendered constructs related to mathematics. Parents and their kindergarten-aged children from three primary schools in Sydney were interviewed to see what their understandings of boys’ and girls’ interests and abilities in mathematics were. Parents completed the Who and Mathematics questionnaire and were interviewed to determine if there were any gendered understandings and exactly what they were. The data shows that parents believe that boys are more likely to have an aptitude and interest in mathematics. In contrast, girls are perceived as more anxious, harder workers and in addition, that they have to work harder to do well in mathematics

A Basis for Slicing Birkhoff Polytopes

We present a change of basis that may allow more efficient calculation of the volumes of Birkhoff polytopes using a slicing method. We construct the basis from a special set of square matrices. We explain how to construct this basis easily for any Birkhoff polytope, and give examples of its use. We also discuss possible directions for future work

Computer Abuse: The Emerging Crime and the Need for Legislation

Advancements in computerization and the growing use of computers in business, government, education, and the private sector has resulted in the expanding potential for criminal infiltration. The problems of computer crime are in great part attributable to the shortcomings of our criminal laws, which were written long before there was knowledge of computer crimes. Moreover, there is a reluctance of our legal establishments to adapt to the new technology\u27s potential harm. This Note urges that new federal legislation be passed as a means to counteract future computer crimes

Conditional limit theorems for regulated fractional Brownian motion

We consider a stationary fluid queue with fractional Brownian motion input. Conditional on the workload at time zero being greater than a large value $b$, we provide the limiting distribution for the amount of time that the workload process spends above level $b$ over the busy cycle straddling the origin, as $b\to\infty$. Our results can be interpreted as showing that long delays occur in large clumps of size of order $b^{2-1/H}$. The conditional limit result involves a finer scaling of the queueing process than fluid analysis, thereby departing from previous related literature.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AAP605 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

From the editors

Editoria