Neo-Thomism and the Problem of Animal Suffering

Proponents of the problem of animal suffering claim that the millions of years of apparent nonhuman animal pain and suffering provides evidence against the existence of God. Neo-Cartesianism attempts to avoid this problem mainly by denying the existence of phenomenal consciousness in nonhuman animals. However, neo-Cartesian options regarding animal minds have failed to compel many. In this essay, I explore an answer to the problem of animal suffering inspired by the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Instead of focusing on phenomenal consciousness, the neo-Thomistic view of animal minds focuses on self-awareness. After proposing and providing evidence for this view, I conclude that nonhuman animal suffering is not morally significant

Rotational equilibrium of C2 in interstellar clouds

In this work the understanding of the rotational equilibrium of C2 in interstellar clouds is updated. It is critical for this equilibrium to be well understood if C2 is to be used as a probe of the physical conditions in these clouds. Although new data continues to be published, the model was last updated in 1987. In this work, new data is collected and incorporated into the model using the program Radex, which will provide a standard format for sharing data, facilitate future updates, and enable the model to quickly run for a grid of temperature and density conditions

Reduced chemistry for butanol isomers at engine-relevant conditions

Butanol has received significant research attention as a second-generation biofuel in the past few years. In the present study, skeletal mechanisms for four butanol isomers were generated from two widely accepted, well-validated detailed chemical kinetic models for the butanol isomers. The detailed models were reduced using a two-stage approach consisting of the directed relation graph with error propagation and sensitivity analysis. During the reduction process, issues were encountered with pressure-dependent reactions formulated using the logarithmic pressure interpolation approach; these issues are discussed and recommendations made to avoid ambiguity in its future implementation in mechanism development. The performance of the skeletal mechanisms generated here was compared with that of detailed mechanisms in simulations of autoignition delay times, laminar flame speeds, and perfectly stirred reactor temperature response curves and extinction residence times, over a wide range of pressures, temperatures, and equivalence ratios. The detailed and skeletal mechanisms agreed well, demonstrating the adequacy of the resulting reduced chemistry for all the butanol isomers in predicting global combustion phenomena. In addition, the skeletal mechanisms closely predicted the time-histories of fuel mass fractions in homogeneous compression-ignition engine simulations. The performance of each butanol isomer was additionally compared with that of a gasoline surrogate with an antiknock index of 87 in a homogeneous compression-ignition engine simulation. The gasoline surrogate was consumed faster than any of the butanol isomers, with tert-butanol exhibiting the slowest fuel consumption rate. While n-butanol and isobutanol displayed the most similar consumption profiles relative to the gasoline surrogate, the two literature chemical kinetic models predicted different orderings.Comment: 39 pages, 16 figures. Supporting information available via https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.energyfuels.6b0185

Acoustic Vector-Corrected Impedance Meter

We describe the development of a novel instrument intended for the measurement of the acoustical reflection coefficient of materials. The instrument effectively implements a one-port vector-corrected network analyzer in the acoustic, rather than the electromagnetic, domain. Employing the well-documented methods of error correction familiar to microwave engineers, this instrument permits automated measurement of an acoustic impedance presented to a waveguide port. A dual-directional coupler allows a working frequency range of well over an octave. In principle, a set of six couplers would allow measurement from 100 to 50000 Hz

The peacebuilding potential of healthcare training programs.

Global health professionals regularly conduct healthcare trainings, such as first aid courses, in disadvantaged communities across the world. Many of these communities lack healthcare infrastructure because of war and political conflict. The authors draw on their experience conducting a first aid course in South Sudan to provide a perspective on how healthcare trainings for people with no medical background can be used to bridge ethnic, political, and religious differences. They argue that a necessary step for turning a healthcare training into a vehicle for peacebuilding is to bring people from different communities to the same physical space to learn the course material together. Importantly, simply encouraging contact between communities is unlikely to improve intergroup relations and could be detrimental if the following features are not incorporated. Buy-in from respected community leaders is essential to ensure that training participants trust that their safety during the training sessions is not at risk. Trainers should also create a supportive environment by conferring equal status and respect on all trainees. Finally, hands-on training exercises allow for positive interactions between trainees from different groups, which in turn can challenge stereotypes and facilitate cross-group friendships. These features map onto social psychological principles that have been shown to improve intergroup relations and are consistent with lessons learned from peace through health initiatives in public health and medicine. By adopting peacebuilding features, healthcare trainings can serve their primary goal of medical education and provide the added benefit of strengthening social relations

Is Everything Neutral?

In his well-known analysis of the national debt, Robert Barro introduced the notion of a "dynastic family." This notion has since become a standard research tool, particularly in the areas of public finance and macroeconomics. In this paper, we critique the assumptions upon which the dynastic mode1 is predicated, and argue that this framework is not a suitable abstraction in contexts where the objective is to analyze the effects of public policies. We reach this conclusion by formally considering a world in which each generation consists of a large number of distinct individuals, as opposed to one representative individual. We point out that family linkages form complex networks, in which each individual may belong to many dynastic groupings. The resulting proliferation of linkages between families gives rise to a host of neutrality results, including the irrelevance of all public redistributions, distortionary taxes, and prices. Since these results are not at all descriptive of the real world, we conclude that, in some fundamental sense, the world is not even approximately dynastic. These observations call into question all policy related results based on the dynastic framework, including the Ricardian equivalence hypo thesis.

Determining acoustical directionality in an impedance tube using multiple fixed microphones

Acoustic impedance of a port or object is a valuable piece of knowledge describing how well sound is transmitted or reflected. The commonly used slotted-line method is labourious and time consuming, requiring manual movement to find the maxima and minima at each frequency. This paper outlines a technique to computationally determine the magnitude and phase of the constituent travelling waves from the standing plane sound wave measurements in an impedance tube. Measured magnitude and phase data from multiple fixed microphones carefully spaced along the length of the impedance tube is numerically fitted to incident and reflected wave models, which can then be used to calculate the complex acoustic impedance at each frequency of interest