Educating through Exemplars: Alternative Paths to Virtue

This paper confronts Zagzebski’s exemplarism with the intertwined debates over the conditions of exemplarity and the unity-disunity of the virtues, to show the advantages of a pluralistic exemplar-based approach to moral education (PEBAME). PEBAME is based on a prima facie disunitarist perspective in moral theory, which amounts to admitting both exemplarity in all respects and single-virtue exemplarity. First, we account for the advantages of PEBAME, and we show how two figures in recent Italian history (Giorgio Perlasca and Gino Bartali) satisfy Blum’s definitions of ‘moral hero’ and ‘moral saint’ (1988). Then, we offer a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of heroes and saints with respect to character education, according to four criteria derived from PEBAME: admirability, virtuousness, transparency, and imitability. Finally, we conclude that both unitarist and disunitarist exemplars are fundamental to character education; this is because of the hero's superiority to the saint with respect to imitability, a fundamental feature of the exemplar for character education

Collusion through Joint R&D: An Empirical Assessment

This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We consider an oligopolistic setting where firms enter in research joint ventures (RJVs) to lower production costs or coordinate on collusion in the product market. We show that a sufficient condition for identifying collusive behavior is a decline in the market share of RJV-participating firms, which is also necessary and sufficient for a decrease in consumer welfare. Using information from the US National Cooperation Research Act, we estimate a market share equation correcting for the endogeneity of RJV participation and R&D expenditures. We find robust evidence that large networks between direct competitors – created through firms being members in several RJVs at the same time – are conducive to collusive outcomes in the product market which reduce consumer welfare. By contrast, RJVs among non-competitors are efficiency enhancing

Automatic creation of apps using images of arranged physical media

The creation of software applications, e.g., mobile apps, requires the developer to have some knowledge of coding. This can be a hurdle for people that have creative ideas for applications but lack the requisite computer skills. Per the techniques of this disclosure, user interface widgets are printed on magnets and organized into kits. A user that wishes to create an app physically arranges the magnets on a board to create a UI and takes a picture of the board. Using computer vision, the resulting image is rendered into an editable app UI that is connected to data and ready to be published

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Two-Season ACTPol Spectra and Parameters

We present the temperature and polarization angular power spectra measured by the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol). We analyze night-time data collected during 2013-14 using two detector arrays at 149 GHz, from 548 deg$^2$ of sky on the celestial equator. We use these spectra, and the spectra measured with the MBAC camera on ACT from 2008-10, in combination with Planck and WMAP data to estimate cosmological parameters from the temperature, polarization, and temperature-polarization cross-correlations. We find the new ACTPol data to be consistent with the LCDM model. The ACTPol temperature-polarization cross-spectrum now provides stronger constraints on multiple parameters than the ACTPol temperature spectrum, including the baryon density, the acoustic peak angular scale, and the derived Hubble constant. Adding the new data to planck temperature data tightens the limits on damping tail parameters, for example reducing the joint uncertainty on the number of neutrino species and the primordial helium fraction by 20%.Comment: 23 pages, 25 figure

Complejos industriales fronterizos globales: genealogías, epistemologías, sexualidades

At the end of 2018, the world witnessed when a large group of asylum seekers, who traveled from Central America to the southern border of the United States, experienced all the unleashed rigor of an increasingly global border industrial complex. Few people would use this expression, but it was an extended notion, that the line between the United States and Mexico would be amplified and protected by a dense network of different national, international, informative, nonprofit, organizations that had developed to respond to human flows between national borders, and more specifically, at the borders between the global north and the global south. While the United States and Mexico staged a confrontation with the thousands of refugees seeking to flee violence and misery in their home countries, they intensified the use of a series of already common material and discursive tactics, which included militarization, private police , and the racialized discourses of migratory threat that sought to violently contain and control these "migrant caravans." In addition to the ways in which the State deployed the border industrial complex, the caravan also illustrates the ways in which local actors and activists got involved in the project of a large-scale border industrial complex, and benefited from migration control in many times. opaque and ambivalentA finales de 2018, el mundo presenció cuando un numeroso grupo de solicitantes de asilo, que viajó desde Centroamérica a la frontera sur de Estados Unidos, experimentó todo el rigor desatado de un complejo industrial fronterizo cada vez más global. Pocas personas usarían esta expresión, pero era una noción extendida, que la línea entre Estados Unidos y México estaría amplificada y protegida por una densa red de diferentes organizaciones nacionales, internacionales, informativas, con y sin ánimo de lucro, que se habían desarrollado para responder a flujos humanos entre fronteras nacionales, y más específicamente, en las fronteras entre el norte global y el sur global. Mientras Estados Unidos y México protagonizaban una confrontación con los miles de refugiados que buscaban huir de la violencia y la miseria en sus países de origen, intensificaron el uso de una serie de tácticas materiales y discursivas ya comunes, que incluían la militarización, la policía privada, y los discursos racializados de amenaza migratoria que buscaban contener y controlar de manera violenta estas «caravanas de migrantes». Además de las formas como el Estado desplegó el complejo industrial fronterizo, la caravana también ilustra las maneras como actores locales y activistas se involucraron en el proyecto de un complejo industrial fronterizo a mayor escala, y se beneficiaron del control de la migración de maneras muchas veces opacas y ambivalentes

SDSS Catalog of Stars in the Draco Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has scanned the entire region containing the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy to 23rd magnitude in g*. We present a catalog of stars found in a 453 square arcminute, elliptical region centered on the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Objects in the catalog are matched with five previously published catalogs. The catalog contains SDSS photometry for 5634 individual objects, and also the photometry from matches to any of the other catalogs. A comparison of the photometry between catalogs allows us to identify 142 candidate variable objects. One hundred and twelve of the suspected variables have colors consistent with RR Lyrae variables.Comment: To appear in ApJS 14 pages, 6 figure

A Facile Route to Polymer Solar Cells with Optimum Morphology Readily Applicable to a Roll-to-Roll Process without Sacrificing High Device Performances

No AbstractPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78079/1/E5047_ftp.pd

Low-mass suppression of the satellite luminosity function due to the supersonic baryon--cold-dark-matter relative velocity

We study the effect of the supersonic baryon--CDM flow, which has recently been shown to have a large effect on structure formation during the dark ages 10 <~ z <~ 1000, on the abundance of luminous, low-mass satellite galaxies around galaxies like the Milky Way. As the supersonic baryon--CDM flow significantly suppresses both the number of halos formed and the amount of baryons accreted onto such halos of masses 10^6 < M_{halo} / M_solar < 10^8 at z >~ 10, a large effect results on the stellar luminosity function before reionization. As halos of these masses are believed to have very little star formation after reionization due to the effects of photo-heating by the ultraviolet background, this effect persists to the present day. We calculate that the number of low-mass 10^6 < M_{halo} / M_solar < 10^8 halos that host luminous satellite galaxies today is typically suppressed by 50 percent, with values ranging up to 90 percent in regions where the initial supersonic velocity is high. We show that this previously-ignored cosmological effect resolves most of the tension between the observed and predicted number of low-mass satellites in the Milky Way, obviating the need for any other mass-dependent star-formation suppression before reionization.Comment: ApJ, submitte