The Best-Selling Bibles: What Librarians Need to Know

This article presents guidance for librarians in the selection and recommendation of Bible translations. Pairing a reader with an appropriate Bible requires clear understanding of patron reading level and intended purpose along with a general knowledge of the major translations and their key characteristics. Bibliographic details and annotative summaries of the 10 best-selling Bibles in the United States are included. Ranking is based on the latest unit sales data released April 2014 by the Association for Christian Retail

Detecting Oceans on Extrasolar Planets Using the Glint Effect

Glint, the specular reflection of sunlight off Earth's oceans, may reveal the presence of oceans on an extrasolar planet. As an Earth-like planet nears crescent phases, the size of the ocean glint spot increases relative to the fraction of illuminated disk, while the reflectivity of this spot increases. Both effects change the planet's visible reflectivity as a function of phase. However, strong forward scattering of radiation by clouds can also produce increases in a planet's reflectivity as it approaches crescent phases, and surface glint can be obscured by Rayleigh scattering and atmospheric absorption. Here we explore the detectability of glint in the presence of an atmosphere and realistic phase-dependent scattering from oceans and clouds. We use the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Virtual Planetary Laboratory 3-D line-by-line, multiple-scattering spectral Earth model to simulate Earth's broadband visible brightness and reflectivity over an orbit. Our validated simulations successfully reproduce phase-dependent Earthshine observations. We find that the glinting Earth can be as much as 100% brighter at crescent phases than simulations that do not include glint, and that the effect is dependent on both orbital inclination and wavelength, where the latter dependence is caused by Rayleigh scattering limiting sensitivity to the surface. We show that this phenomenon may be observable using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) paired with an external occulter.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures; accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

On Causal Inferences in the Humanities and Social Sciences: Actual Causation

The last forty years have seen an explosion of research directed at causation and causal inference. Statisticians developed techniques for drawing inferences about the likely effects of proposed interventions: techniques that have been applied most noticeably in social and life sciences. Computer scientists, economists, and methodologists merged graph theory and structural equation modeling in order to develop a mathematical formalism that underwrites automated search for causal structure from data. Analytic metaphysicians and philosophers of science produced an array of theories about the nature of causation and its relationship to scientific theory and practice.Causal reasoning problems come in three varieties: effects-of-causes problems, causes-of-effects problems, and structure-learning or search problems. Causes-of-effects problems are the least well-understood of the three, in part because of confusion about exactly what problem is supposed to be solved. I claim that the problem everyone is implicitly trying to solve is the problem of identifying the actual cause(s) of a given effect, which I will call simply the problem of actual causation. My dissertation is a contribution to the search for a satisfying solution to the problem of actual causation.Towards a satisfying solution to the problem of actual causation, I clarify the nature of the problem. I argue that the only serious treatment of the problem of actual causation in the statistical literature fails because it confuses actual causation with simple difference-making. Current treatments of the problem of actual causation by philosophers and computer scientists are better but also ultimately unsatisfying. After pointing out that the best current theories fail to capture intuitions about some simple voting cases, I step back and ask a methodological question: how is the correct theory of actual causation to be discovered? I argue that intuition-fitting, whether by experimentation or by armchair, is misguided, and I recommend an alternative, pragmatic approach. I show by experiments that ordinary causal judgments are closely connected to broadly moral judgments, and I argue that actual causal inferences presuppose normative, not merely descriptive, information. I suggest that the way forward in solving the problem of actual causation is to focus on norms of proper functioning

Interactions of Reduced Deforestation and the Carbon Market: The Role of Market Regulations and Future Commitments

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) has been proposed as a potentially inexpensive and plentiful source of emission abatement to supplement other longterm climate policies. However, critics doubt that REDD credits are environmentally equivalent to domestic emission reductions, and suggest an excess supply may disrupt carbon markets. In this context, we investigate the economic implications of emissions market regulations and future emissions reduction commitments, as well as uncertainties in REDD credit supply. Numerical simulations with a multi-country equilibrium model of the global emissions market show unrestricted exchange of REDD units reduces the international carbon price by half and cuts Annex I compliance costs by roughly one third. Restricting supply or demand of REDD credits reduces price impacts, but comes at the cost of economic efficiency. Alternatively, Annex I reduction commitments could be increased by almost two thirds at constant carbon prices. While REDD provides large economic benefits for tropical rainforest regions, any REDD policy scenario also reduces wealth transfers to traditional CDM host countries through increased competition on the supply-side of the carbon market. --Climate Change,Kyoto Protocol,Emissions Trading,Deforestation,REDD

The Older Inmate

Educational Objectives 1. Present a general overview of elderly inmates, including statistics, characteristics, crimes, mental and medical illnesses, and disabilities. 2. Describe Virginia’s only geriatric correctional facility. 3. Explain the practice of release planning, focusing especially on geriatric release

Counting Experiments

In this paper, I show how one might resist two influential arguments for the Likelihood Principle by appealing to the ontological significance of creative intentions. The first argument for the Likelihood Principle that I consider is the argument from intentions. After clarifying the argument, I show how the key premiss in the argument may be resisted by maintaining that creative intentions sometimes independently matter to what experiments exist. The second argument that I consider is Gandenberger’s (2015) rehabilitation of Birnbaum’s (1962) proof of the Likelihood Principle from the (supposedly) more intuitively obvious principles of conditionality and sufficiency. As with the argument from intentions, I show how Gandenberger’s argument for his Experimental Conditionality Principle may be resisted by maintaining that creative intentions sometimes independently matter to what experiments exist