THE NOTHINGNESS OF THE GETTIER PROBLEM

This work, “The Nothingness” of the Gettier Problem is an attempt to deconstruct the popularly held view that a fourth condition may be necessary for the Traditional Account of Knowledge otherwise known as JTB. Plato, it was who championed the traditional account of knowledge as justified Belief in response to the agitation of the skeptics notably Georgias and Protagoras. This tripartite account held sway until Edmund Gettier Challenged the position with his article “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Since this challenge, scholars have tried to solve what has become known as the Gettier Problem by trying to fashion out a fourth condition to JTB. This work argues that the celebrated Gettier counter-examples in the challenge of the tripartite account is a "nothingness". The traditional account is rather fundamental in knowledge claim, hence any new vista in form of additional information on JTB should not invalidate it. The textual analysis was adopted as a method for this research

Training Needs and Management of National and Institutional Archives and Records for National Development

This study critically examined the role and impact of training on records and archives managers for effective management of national and institutional records and archives for national development. It highlighted and defined some basic concepts such as training, records, archives, national archives, institutional archives. The needs for training of managers of national and institutional records and archives were examined and their relevance for national development x-rayed. Sources of archival records and the context in which there are organized were indicated. The paper further appraised the processing of organizing archival materials to include packing, labeling, shelvings which are considered crucial in the management of archives and records. It is observed that management of archival materials differ from that of library materials because their organization followed some basic principles such as provenance, sanctity of original order, arrangement determines description and description moves from general to specific. Some challenges relating to institutional and national archives identified. The paper concluded by recommending that: adequate funds, training, opportunities, creation of an ideal classification schemes and provisions of conducive working condition for Archives and records managers to operate successfully have become essential. Keywords: Training, records, archives, national archives, institutional archives

Multimodal Cuing of Autobiographical Memory in Semantic Dementia

OBJECTIVE: Individuals with semantic dementia (SD) have impaired autobiographical memory (AM), but the extent of the impairment has been controversial. According to one report (Westmacott, Leach, Freedman, & Moscovitch, 2001), patient performance was better when visual cues were used instead of verbal cues; however, the visual cues used in that study (family photographs) provided more retrieval support than do the word cues that are typically used in AM studies. In the present study, we sought to disentangle the effects of retrieval support and cue modality. METHOD: We cued AMs of 5 patients with SD and 5 controls with words, simple pictures, and odors. Memories were elicited from childhood, early adulthood, and recent adulthood; they were scored for level of detail and episodic specificity. RESULTS: The patients were impaired across all time periods and stimulus modalities. Within the patient group, words and pictures were equally effective as cues (Friedman test; χ² = 0.25, p = .61), whereas odors were less effective than both words and pictures (for words vs. odors, χ² = 7.83, p = .005; for pictures vs. odors, χ² = 6.18, p = .01). There was no evidence of a temporal gradient in either group (for patients with SD, χ² = 0.24, p = .89; for controls, χ² \u3c 2.07, p = .35). CONCLUSIONS: Once the effect of retrieval support is equated across stimulus modalities, there is no evidence for an advantage of visual cues over verbal cues. The greater impairment for olfactory cues presumably reflects degeneration of anterior temporal regions that support olfactory memory

BEDT-TTF radical-cation salts with tris(oxalato)chromate and guest additives

The family of radical-cation salts β′′-(BEDT-TTF)4[(A)M3+(C2O4)3]·guest (M = Fe, Cr, Ga, Al, Co, Mn, Rh, Ru; A = K+, H3O+, NH4+) has produced superconductors, metals, semiconductors, and metal–insulators through introduction of different guest molecules into the structure. We present three new additions to the family β′′-(BEDT-TTF)4[(A)Cr(C2O4)3]·guest with the guest molecules toluene, phenol, or salicylaldehyde. These new guests are liquid or solid additives within the electrocrystallisation medium. All three salts show metallic behaviour from room temperature down to <10 K and do not show a superconducting transition

Delusions in frontotemporal lobar degeneration

We assessed the significance and nature of delusions in frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), an important cause of young-onset dementia with prominent neuropsychiatric features that remain incompletely characterised. The case notes of all patients meeting diagnostic criteria for FTLD attending a tertiary level cognitive disorders clinic over a three year period were retrospectively reviewed and eight patients with a history of delusions were identified. All patients underwent detailed clinical and neuropsychological evaluation and brain MRI. The diagnosis was confirmed pathologically in two cases. The estimated prevalence of delusions was 14 %. Delusions were an early, prominent and persistent feature. They were phenomenologically diverse; however paranoid and somatic delusions were prominent. Behavioural variant FTLD was the most frequently associated clinical subtype and cerebral atrophy was bilateral or predominantly right-sided in most cases. We conclude that delusions may be a clinical issue in FTLD, and this should be explored further in future work

Apraxia in progressive nonfluent aphasia

The clinical and neuroanatomical correlates of specific apraxias in neurodegenerative disease are not well understood. Here we addressed this issue in progressive nonfluent aphasia (PNFA), a canonical subtype of frontotemporal lobar degeneration that has been consistently associated with apraxia of speech (AOS) and in some cases orofacial apraxia, limb apraxia and/or parkinsonism. Sixteen patients with PNFA according to current consensus criteria were studied. Three patients had a corticobasal syndrome (CBS) and two a progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) syndrome. Speech, orofacial and limb praxis functions were assessed using the Apraxia Battery for Adults-2 and a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis was conducted on brain MRI scans from the patient cohort in order to identify neuroanatomical correlates. All patients had AOS based on reduced diadochokinetic rate, 69% of cases had an abnormal orofacial apraxia score and 44% of cases (including the three CBS cases and one case with PSP) had an abnormal limb apraxia score. Severity of orofacial apraxia (but not AOS or limb apraxia) correlated with estimated clinical disease duration. The VBM analysis identified distinct neuroanatomical bases for each form of apraxia: the severity of AOS correlated with left posterior inferior frontal lobe atrophy; orofacial apraxia with left middle frontal, premotor and supplementary motor cortical atrophy; and limb apraxia with left inferior parietal lobe atrophy. Our findings show that apraxia of various kinds can be a clinical issue in PNFA and demonstrate that specific apraxias are clinically and anatomically dissociable within this population of patients

Introduction of new guest molecules into BEDT-TTF radical-cation salts with tris(oxalato)ferrate

Radical-cation salts of formula β′′-(BEDT-TTF)4[(H3O)Fe(C2O4)3]·guest have produced a large number of superconductors and provided a route to introduce magnetism and chirality into the same multifunctional material. A relationship has been found in these salts between the length of the b axis and the superconducting Tc. Increasing the b axis length by introducing larger guest molecules, such as benzonitrile and nitrobenzene, gives the highest superconducting Tcs in this family of salts. Smaller guests such as pyridine show no superconducting transition, whilst asymmetrical guests which are larger than nitrobenzene have given a different bilayered structure. Other potential guest molecules have been limited by their ability to be used as the solvent in which the crystals are grown via electrocrystallisation. This paper reports a method which introduces guest molecules into the crystal which are a solid or liquid additive within the crystal-growing solvent 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene:ethanol. We present the crystal structures of five new BEDT-TTF radical-cation salts with tris(oxalato)ferrate anions using guest molecules toluene, phenol, benzaldehyde, 4-bromobenzaldehyde, and kojic acid

Logopenic and nonfluent variants of primary progressive aphasia are differentiated by acoustic measures of speech production

Differentiation of logopenic (lvPPA) and nonfluent/agrammatic (nfvPPA) variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia is important yet remains challenging since it hinges on expert based evaluation of speech and language production. In this study acoustic measures of speech in conjunction with voxel-based morphometry were used to determine the success of the measures as an adjunct to diagnosis and to explore the neural basis of apraxia of speech in nfvPPA. Forty-one patients (21 lvPPA, 20 nfvPPA) were recruited from a consecutive sample with suspected frontotemporal dementia. Patients were diagnosed using the current gold-standard of expert perceptual judgment, based on presence/absence of particular speech features during speaking tasks. Seventeen healthy age-matched adults served as controls. MRI scans were available for 11 control and 37 PPA cases; 23 of the PPA cases underwent amyloid ligand PET imaging. Measures, corresponding to perceptual features of apraxia of speech, were periods of silence during reading and relative vowel duration and intensity in polysyllable word repetition. Discriminant function analyses revealed that a measure of relative vowel duration differentiated nfvPPA cases from both control and lvPPA cases (r2 = 0.47) with 88% agreement with expert judgment of presence of apraxia of speech in nfvPPA cases. VBM analysis showed that relative vowel duration covaried with grey matter intensity in areas critical for speech motor planning and programming: precentral gyrus, supplementary motor area and inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally, only affected in the nfvPPA group. This bilateral involvement of frontal speech networks in nfvPPA potentially affects access to compensatory mechanisms involving right hemisphere homologues. Measures of silences during reading also discriminated the PPA and control groups, but did not increase predictive accuracy. Findings suggest that a measure of relative vowel duration from of a polysyllable word repetition task may be sufficient for detecting most cases of apraxia of speech and distinguishing between nfvPPA and lvPPA

Students' awareness, willingness and utilisation of facebook for research data collection: Multigroup analysis with age and gender as control variables

Previous research has extensively analysed teachers' and students' Facebook use for instructional engagement, writing, research dissemination and e-learning. However, Facebook as a data collection mechanism for research has scarcely been the subject of previous studies. The current study addressed these gaps by analysing students' awareness, willingness, and utilisation of Facebook for research data collection [RDC]. This study aimed to predict students’ Facebook use for research data collection based on their awareness and willingness and to determine age and gender differences in such predictions. A sample of 11,562 students of tertiary institutions participated in an online survey. The researchers designed and validated the online survey. Exploratory Factor Analysis was used for dimensionality. Average Variance Extracted [AVE] was used for convergent validity, whilst the Fornel-Larcker criterion and Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio were used for discriminant validity. Composite reliability indices of .97, .94 and .90 proved the instrument’s three sub-scales usable. One sample t-test and multigroup analysis were conducted using SPSS 27 and Smart PLS 3. The study found high awareness but low usage of Facebook for RDC among Nigerian university students. Younger and male students showed higher willingness and actual use of Facebook for RDC. Awareness directly impacted by awareness, and acted as Facebook usage for RDC, with stronger impacts for males and students aged 19 to 28. Willingness was positively impacted and acted as a negative mediator between awareness and usage for some age groups and genders. These findings provide important insights into using Facebook for RDC among students in Nigerian universities and highlight the need to consider the impact of demographic factors such as age and gender when promoting social media platforms for academic purposes

From least action in electrodynamics to magnetomechanical energy -- a review

The equations of motion for electromechanical systems are traced back to the fundamental Lagrangian of particles and electromagnetic fields, via the Darwin Lagrangian. When dissipative forces can be neglected the systems are conservative and one can study them in a Hamiltonian formalism. The central concepts of generalized capacitance and inductance coefficients are introduced and explained. The problem of gauge independence of self-inductance is considered. Our main interest is in magnetomechanics, i.e. the study of systems where there is exchange between mechanical and magnetic energy. This throws light on the concept of magnetic energy, which according to the literature has confusing and peculiar properties. We apply the theory to a few simple examples: the extension of a circular current loop, the force between parallel wires, interacting circular current loops, and the rail gun. These show that the Hamiltonian, phase space, form of magnetic energy has the usual property that an equilibrium configuration corresponds to an energy minimum.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, 65 reference