Brian O'Connor, "Adorno."

This book is a most welcome addition to the Routledge Philosophers series. Brian O’Connor’s slim volume is perhaps the most concise yet wide-ranging of all introductions to Theodor W. Adorno’s (1903–1969) thought currently in print today. Having edited The Adorno Reader back in 2000 and authored Adorno’s Negative Dialectics: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality in 2004, O’Connor has been steeped in Adorno’s Critical Theory for some time now, and he thus makes for an ideal guide through Adorno’s labyrinthine oeuvre. The fact that Adorno is such an intensely dialectical thinker makes it difficult to stay with him for the duration of the journey his texts provide. Indeed, for those who are familiar with his work, the task of providing a summary of Adorno’s thought is a seemingly Sisyphean one. In this case, the path of the Sisyphean boulder is an apt metaphor for that which one encounters while engaging one of Adorno’s texts, or even something as granular as a sentence from one of his texts. Just when the boulder is nearing the summit of comprehension, the boulder rolls backwards. In spite of this, Brian O’Connor has produced an overview where one of the most infamous members of the Frankfurt School gets his due. O’Connor’s book does not delve too deeply into the influence that Kant, Hegel, or Marx may or may not have had Adorno’s work; as befits an introduction, this is a text primarily about Adorno’s original contribution to philosophy

Henri Lefebvre, "Metaphilosophy." Trans. David Pernbach.

This may be a difficult book for some philosophers to read, in a number of ways. First and foremost, it is written by someone who orbits and even penetrates the discipline of philosophy in a professional capacity, yet he is calling for its end. More precisely, its author, Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), is saying stop whatever philosophy you’re currently doing. On the one hand, this is a clarion call to philosophers around the world to take philosophy to its limits and beyond. On the other hand, it offers a bleak take on the contemporary relevance of philosophical inquiry. To Lefebvre, much of philosophy is moribund and has been so for some time. That is, of course, if it is not already dead. Lefebvre identifies eleven aporia that he deems to be at the heart of philosophy’s withering away, all of which detail the contradiction of the gap between the real and the idea; everyday life and the privileged position of the philosopher. In a way, it could even be seen as anti-philosophy. Regardless of where it stands on any philosophical purity spectrum, it is above all inspired by Marx’s famous theses on Feuerbach, specifically the eleventh thesis: ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.’ Lefebvre is, essentially, saying that the world cannot change if philosophy does not change, and the world ought to change

Symbolism and Fact of Matter: History, Politics, Journalism, and Waste in James Joyce's Ulysses

Joyce uses excrement in Ulysses (1922) not only to bridge the gap between literature and reality, but as a gateway to history as waste, journalism as irrelevant, and the politics that influences them both. Critic Valérie Bénéjam says that looking at feces through a symbolic lens is problematic because it takes away from the physicality of the act. Joyce is able to convey both the reality and the symbolism attached to the expulsion of human waste. Leopold Bloom’s trip to the bathroom breaks down a barrier between what can and cannot be written about in literature. Instead of writing about fecal matter in a satirical or overtly humorous way, this particular bowel movement possesses a frankness about the body and its function that was unheard of in the 1920s and even now is considered impolite. Joyce’s ability to layer frankness and history, and journalism and politics comes from his need to create the “new now” as opposed to the news of the now. Rather than printing titbits, he carefully constructs the new now using the thought by thought stream of consciousness of Bloom and the nutritious bits of history, leaving the waste behind.Ope

The Common Ground of Open Access and Interdisciplinarity

In recent years, Open Access and interdisciplinarity have emerged as two prevalent trends in academia. Although seemingly separate pursuits with separate literature, goals, and advocates, there are significant interconnections between these two movements that have largely gone unnoticed. This paper provides a philosophical inquiry into the unexplored relationship between these two trends and makes the case that there is an intrinsic affinity between Open Access and interdisciplinarity and, as such, concludes that all interdisciplinary research, to remain true to the foundational tenets of interdisciplinarity, ought to be Open Access

Impact of Alcohol Abuse on Susceptibility to Rare Neurodegenerative Diseases

Despite the prevalence and well-recognized adverse effects of prenatal alcohol exposure and alcohol use disorder in the causation of numerous diseases, their potential roles in the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases remain poorly characterized. This is especially true of the rare neurodegenerative diseases, for which small population sizes make it difficult to conduct broad studies of specific etiological factors. Nonetheless, alcohol has potent and long-lasting effects on neurodegenerative substrates, at both the cellular and systems levels. This review highlights the general effects of alcohol in the brain that contribute to neurodegeneration across diseases, and then focuses on specific diseases in which alcohol exposure is likely to play a major role. These specific diseases include dementias (alcohol-induced, frontotemporal, and Korsakoff syndrome), ataxias (cerebellar and frontal), and Niemann-Pick disease (primarily a Type B variant and Type C). We conclude that there is ample evidence to support a role of alcohol abuse in the etiology of these diseases, but more work is needed to identify the primary mechanisms of alcohol’s effects

Achieving diffraction-limited performance on the Berkeley MET5

The Berkeley MET5, funded by EUREKA, is a 0.5-NA EUV projection lithography tool located at the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley National Lab. Wavefront measurements of the MET5 optic have been performed using a custom in-situ lateral shearing interferometer suitable for high-NA interferometry. In this paper, we report on the most recent characterization of the MET5 optic demonstrating an RMS wavefront 0.31 nm, and discuss the specialized mask patterns, gratings, and illumination geometries that were employed to accommodate the many challenges associated with high-NA EUV interferometry

A project management focused framework for assuring quality work processes

Federal Manufacturing & Technologies/New Mexico (FM&T/NM) of AlliedSignal is an organization of approximately 300 associates providing operations support, engineering, and other technical services for DOE, New Mexico`s National Laboratories, etc. Work performed is primarily project-oriented and ranges from executing a major long-term contract for retrofitting and maintaining a large fleet of escort vehicles to creating a single, small, prototype electronic device for measuring radiation in a unique environment. FM&T/NM is functionally organized and operates in a classic matrix format with functional departments providing personnel with technical expertise, necessary physical resources, and administrative support to several project-based groups. Like most matrix-based organizations that provide support to diverse customers, FM&T/NM has encountered problems that occur when a group of project managers is expected to work together in using and scheduling a shared set of limited resources for the good of the organization as a whole. The framework for managing projects that we present focuses on developing, understanding, and managing the relationships between the functional organization structure, the system of work processes, and the management of projects. FM&T/NM retains its functional structure which primarily assigns personnel to work processes. The evolving role of the process leader focuses primarily on designing, managing, and improving the process, and the interactions among the subprocesses. The project manager is responsible for (1) translating customer requirements into product specifications, (2) determining the sequence of activities needed to meet project goals, (3) scheduling the required work processes, (4) monitoring project progress, (5) providing liaison between the customer and process leaders, and (6) having the desired product and/or service delivered to a satisfied customer in a timely manner

Belief bias and representation in assessing the Bayesian rationality of others

People often assess the reasonableness of another person’s judgments. When doing so, the evaluator should set aside knowledge that would not have been available to the evaluatee to assess whether the evaluatee made a reasonable decision, given the available information. But under what circumstances does the evaluator set aside information? On the one hand, if the evaluator fails to set aside prior information, not available to the evaluatee, they exhibit belief bias. But on the other hand, when Bayesian inference is called for, the evaluator should generally incorporate prior knowledge about relevant probabilities in decision making. The present research integrated these two perspectives in two experiments. Participants were asked to take the perspective of a fictitious evaluatee and to evaluate the reasonableness of the evaluatee’s decision. The participant was privy to information that the fictitious evaluatee did not have. Specifically, the participant knew whether the evaluatee’s decision judgment was factually correct. Participants’ judgments were biased (Experiments 1 and 2) by the factuality of the conclusion as they assessed the evaluatee’s reasonableness. We also found that the format of information presentation (Experiment 2) influenced the degree to which participants’ reasonableness ratings were responsive to the evaluatee’s Bayesian rationality. Specifically, responsivity was greater when the information was presented in an icon-based, graphical, natural-frequency format than when presented in either a numerical natural-frequency format or a probability format. We interpreted the effects of format to suggest that graphical presentation can help organize information into nested sets, which in turn enhances Bayesian rationality

Overview and status of the 0.5NA EUV microfield exposure tool at Berkeley Lab

A 0.5-NA extreme ultraviolet micro-field exposure tool has been installed and commissioned at beamline 12.0.1.4 of the Advanced Light Source synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Commissioning has demonstrated a patterning resolution of 13 nm half-pitch with annular 0.35-0.55 illumination; a patterning resolution of 8 nm half-pitch with annular 0.1-0.2 illumination; critical dimension (CD) uniformity of 0.7 nm 1σ on 16 nm nominal CD across 80% of the 200 um x 30 um aberration corrected field of view; aerial image vibration relative to the wafer of 0.75 nn RMS and focus control and focus stepping better than 15 nm

Live-Cell Monitoring of Periodic Gene Expression in Synchronous Human Cells Identifies Forkhead Genes involved in Cell Cycle Control

We developed a system to monitor periodic luciferase activity from cell cycle-regulated promoters in synchronous cells. Reporters were driven by a minimal human E2F1 promoter with peak expression in G1/S or a basal promoter with six Forkhead DNA-binding sites with peak expression at G2/M. After cell cycle synchronization, luciferase activity was measured in live cells at 10-min intervals across three to four synchronous cell cycles, allowing unprecedented resolution of cell cycle-regulated gene expression. We used this assay to screen Forkhead transcription factors for control of periodic gene expression. We confirmed a role for FOXM1 and identified two novel cell cycle regulators, FOXJ3 and FOXK1. Knockdown of FOXJ3 and FOXK1 eliminated cell cycle-dependent oscillations and resulted in decreased cell proliferation rates. Analysis of genes regulated by FOXJ3 and FOXK1 showed that FOXJ3 may regulate a network of zinc finger proteins and that FOXK1 binds to the promoter and regulates DHFR, TYMS, GSDMD, and the E2F binding partner TFDP1. Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by high-throughput sequencing analysis identified 4329 genomic loci bound by FOXK1, 83% of which contained a FOXK1-binding motif. We verified that a subset of these loci are activated by wild-type FOXK1 but not by a FOXK1 (H355A) DNA-binding mutant