Events, processes, and the time of a killing

The paper proposes a novel solution to the problem of the time of a killing (ToK), which persistently besets theories of act-individuation. The solution proposed claims to expose a crucial wrong-headed assumption in the debate, according to which ToK is essentially a problem of locating some event that corresponds to the killing. The alternative proposal put forward here turns on recognizing a separate category of dynamic occurents, viz. processes. The paper does not aim to mount a comprehensive defense of process ontology, relying instead on extant defenses. The primary aim is rather to put process ontology to work in diagnosing the current state of play over ToK, and indeed in solving it

Analysis of Control Strategies for Aircraft Flight Upset Recovery

This paper proposes a framework for studying the ability of a control strategy, consisting of a control law and a command law, to recover an aircraft from ight conditions that may extend beyond the normal ight envelope. This study was carried out (i) by evaluating time responses of particular ight upsets, (ii) by evaluating local stability over an equilibrium manifold that included stall, and (iii) by bounding the set in the state space from where the vehicle can be safely own to wings-level ight. These states comprise what will be called the safely recoverable ight envelope (SRFE), which is a set containing the aircraft states from where a control strategy can safely stabilize the aircraft. By safe recovery it is implied that the tran- sient response stays between prescribed limits before converging to a steady horizontal ight. The calculation of the SRFE bounds yields the worst-case initial state corresponding to each control strategy. This information is used to compare alternative recovery strategies, determine their strengths and limitations, and identify the most e ective strategy. In regard to the control law, the authors developed feedback feedforward laws based on the gain scheduling of multivariable controllers. In regard to the command law, which is the mechanism governing the exogenous signals driving the feed- forward component of the controller, we developed laws with a feedback structure that combines local stability and transient response considera- tions. The upset recovery of the Generic Transport Model, a sub-scale twin-engine jet vehicle developed by NASA Langley Research Center, is used as a case study

Perspective: Vitamin D deficiency and COVID‐19 severity – plausibly linked by latitude, ethnicity, impacts on cytokines, ACE2 and thrombosis

Background SARS‐CoV‐2 coronavirus infection ranges from asymptomatic through to fatal COVID‐19 characterized by a ‘cytokine storm’ and lung failure. Vitamin D deficiency has been postulated as a determinant of severity. Objectives To review the evidence relevant to vitamin D and COVID‐19. Methods Narrative review. Results Regression modelling shows that more northerly countries in the Northern Hemisphere are currently (May 2020) showing relatively high COVID‐19 mortality, with an estimated 4.4% increase in mortality for each 1 degree latitude north of 28 degrees North (P = 0.031) after adjustment for age of population. This supports a role for ultraviolet B acting via vitamin D synthesis. Factors associated with worse COVID‐19 prognosis include old age, ethnicity, male sex, obesity, diabetes and hypertension and these also associate with deficiency of vitamin D or its response. Vitamin D deficiency is also linked to severity of childhood respiratory illness. Experimentally, vitamin D increases the ratio of angiotensin‐converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) to ACE, thus increasing angiotensin II hydrolysis and reducing subsequent inflammatory cytokine response to pathogens and lung injury. Conclusions Substantial evidence supports a link between vitamin D deficiency and COVID‐19 severity but it is all indirect. Community‐based placebo‐controlled trials of vitamin D supplementation may be difficult. Further evidence could come from study of COVID‐19 outcomes in large cohorts with information on prescribing data for vitamin D supplementation or assay of serum unbound 25(OH) vitamin D levels. Meanwhile, vitamin D supplementation should be strongly advised for people likely to be deficient

Is attending a mental process?

The nature of attention has been the topic of a lively research programme in psychology for over a century. But there is widespread agreement that none of the theories on offer manage to fully capture the nature of attention. Recently, philosophers have become interested in the debate again after a prolonged period of neglect. This paper contributes to the project of explaining the nature of attention. It starts off by critically examining Christopher Mole’s prominent “adverbial” account of attention, which traces the failure of extant psychological theories to their assumption that attending is a kind of process. It then defends an alternative, process-based view of the metaphysics of attention, on which attention is understood as an activity and not, as psychologists seem to implicitly assume, an accomplishment. The entrenched distinction between accomplishments and activities is shown to shed new light on the metaphysics of attention. It also provides a novel diagnosis of the empirical state of play

A higher degree of resilience: Using psychometric testing to reveal the benefits of university internship placements

Resilience is a multi-faceted concept but, in the context of learning, it can best be thought of as an individual’s capacity to create and maximise opportunities as well as responding positively to setbacks and challenges. Developing students’ resilience is becoming increasingly important. Research has shown resilience links to attainment, retention, engagement and employability. However, very little work has examined what aspects of curricula enhance resilience and the particular role of active learning frameworks in achieving this. Here, we analyse the effects of optional real-world internship placements on eight measures of resilience. Psychometric testing was conducted twice per student – at the start of their second academic year and again at the end. Students choosing an internship had significantly higher challenge orientation and adaptability scores than other students in the same cohort. Adaptability of both interns and non-interns improved over the academic year, but improvement was significantly higher for interns. Scores for optimism, purposeful direction, and ingenuity significantly increased between start-of-year and end-of-year tests for interns versus a decline for non-interns. We conclude that facilitating student engagement with real-world issues and challenges through supported internships within an active learning framework is an important mechanism for increasing students’ resilience

Investigating the veracity of self-reported post-traumatic growth: a profile analysis approach

Research into posttraumatic growth—positive psychological change that people report in their relationships, priorities in life, and self-perception after experiences of adversity—has been severely critiqued. We investigated the degree to which community members’ friends and relatives corroborated targets’ self-perceived positive and negative changes as measured by the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory-42. We found corroboration only for negative changes when we examined overall (averaged) scores. However, using a profile analysis procedure, we found significant participant–informant agreement on the domains of change that had relatively higher scores in the target’s profile and those that had relatively lower scores. Our results demonstrate that informants were able to observe that targets had changed and were sensitive to the idiosyncratic ways in which these changes had manifested in targets’ behavior