The place of phronesis in Gadamer’s hermeneutics

Gadamer’s concern with the concept of phronesis was ongoing and deep. This thesis explores the ethical significance of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics by examining the place of phronesis in his main work, Truth and Method. In that work, Gadamer draws upon the concept of phronesis to answer what he calls ‘the problem of application.’ It is argued that phronesis achieves this by furnishing a unique model of the relationship between universal and particular, allowing Gadamer to construct an account of the historicity of understanding which avoids any appeal to a truth outside of history without falling into the pitfall of historical relativism. It is argued that ‘concretisation’ is the best way to understand the solution arrived at here. This point helps us to understand the way in which human beings exist historically. However, this thesis also argues that phronesis plays a role in Truth and Method beyond Gadamer’s explicit discussion. Phronesis is not only a model or analogy for the historicity of understanding, but also forms part of its content. That is, the truth which manifests in understanding is a truth with an ethical significance. This is made clear in an investigation of Gadamer’s discussion of the truth of the human sciences. In this way, this thesis contributes to knowledge of the ethical implications of Gadamer’s hermeneutics, exploring how understanding is an ethical task

The Beck Initiative : training school-based mental health staff in cognitive therapy

A growing literature supports cognitive therapy (CT) as an efficacious treatment for youth struggling with emotional or behavioral problems. Recently, work in this area has extended the dissemination of CT to school-based settings. The current study has two aims: 1) to examine the development of therapists’ knowledge and skills in CT, an evidence-based approach to promoting student well-being, and 2) to examine patterns of narrative feedback provided to therapists participating in the program. As expected, school therapists trained in CT demonstrated significant gains in their knowledge of CT theory and in their demonstration of CT skills, with the majority of therapists surpassing the accepted threshold of competency in CT. In addition, an examination of feedback content suggested that narrative feedback provided to therapists most frequently consisted of positive feedback and instructions for future sessions. Suggestions for future research regarding dissemination of CT are discussed in light of increasing broad access to evidence based practices.peer-reviewe

Force-mediated parametric generation in nano-optomechanical structures

We report a novel scheme for freely engineering phase matching, enabling efficient parametric generation at arbitrary frequencies in mechanically compliant nano-optomechanical structures

The effects of nitrogen and carbon sources on the ability of two microbial isolates to produce bioemulsifiers

Pseudomonas mallei and Pseudomonas pseudomallei were isolated from produced water samples collected from Escravos Tankfarm, Nigeria. The two bacterial isolates were found to produce very high emulsion turbidities when grown on hydrocarbon culture medium. The bioemulsifier produced by these two isolates were found to be related as they contain both protein and carbohydrate moieties of very close molecular weight and no trace of lipid. The bioemulsifier produced emulsified both aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons and also a variety of hydrocarbon mixtures such as olive oil, kerosene, diesel oil and crude oil. A combination of acetate and diesel oil seemed to be the preferred carbon source for bioemulsification while Ammonium sulfate was the preferred nitrogen source. Bioemulsifier production was highest at pH 7.05 while a pH greater than 7.25 inhibited bacterial growth and emulsifying activity

Adaptive mesh refinement with spectral accuracy for magnetohydrodynamics in two space dimensions

We examine the effect of accuracy of high-order spectral element methods, with or without adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), in the context of a classical configuration of magnetic reconnection in two space dimensions, the so-called Orszag-Tang vortex made up of a magnetic X-point centered on a stagnation point of the velocity. A recently developed spectral-element adaptive refinement incompressible magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) code is applied to simulate this problem. The MHD solver is explicit, and uses the Elsasser formulation on high-order elements. It automatically takes advantage of the adaptive grid mechanics that have been described elsewhere in the fluid context [Rosenberg, Fournier, Fischer, Pouquet, J. Comp. Phys. 215, 59-80 (2006)]; the code allows both statically refined and dynamically refined grids. Tests of the algorithm using analytic solutions are described, and comparisons of the Orszag-Tang solutions with pseudo-spectral computations are performed. We demonstrate for moderate Reynolds numbers that the algorithms using both static and refined grids reproduce the pseudo--spectral solutions quite well. We show that low-order truncation--even with a comparable number of global degrees of freedom--fails to correctly model some strong (sup--norm) quantities in this problem, even though it satisfies adequately the weak (integrated) balance diagnostics.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Submitted to New Journal of Physic

Measuring Population Transmission Potential for HIV: An Alternative Metric of Transmission Risk in Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) in the US

Background Various metrics for HIV burden and treatment success [e.g. HIV prevalence, community viral load (CVL), population viral load (PVL), percent of HIV-positive persons with undetectable viral load] have important public health limitations for understanding disparities. Methods and Findings Using data from an ongoing HIV incidence cohort of black and white men who have sex with men (MSM), we propose a new metric to measure the prevalence of those at risk of transmitting HIV and illustrate its value. …See full text for complete abstract

Parents' involvement in child care: do parental and work identities matter?

The current study draws on identity theory to explore mothers' and fathers' involvement in childcare. It examined the relationships between the salience and centrality of individuals’ parental and work-related identities and the extent to which they are involved in various forms of childcare. A sample of 148 couples with at least one child aged 6 years or younger completed extensive questionnaires. As hypothesized, the salience and centrality of parental identities were positively related to mothers' and fathers' involvement in childcare. Moreover, maternal identity salience was negatively related to fathers' hours of childcare and share of childcare tasks. Finally, work hours mediated the negative relationships between the centrality of work identities and time invested in childcare, and gender moderated this mediation effect. That is, the more central a mother's work identity, the more hours she worked for pay and the fewer hours she invested in childcare. These findings shed light on the role of parental identities in guiding behavioral choices, and attest to the importance of distinguishing between identity salience and centrality as two components of self-structure

Proton-Deuteron Elastic Scattering from 2.5 to 22.5 MeV

We present the results of a calculation of differential cross sections and polarization observables for proton-deuteron elastic scattering, for proton laboratory energies from 2.5 to 22.5 MeV. The Paris potential parametrisation of the nuclear force is used. As solution method for the charged-composite particle equations the 'screening and renormalisation approach' is adopted which allows to correctly take into account the Coulomb repulsion between the two protons. Comparison is made with the precise experimental data of Sagara et al. [Phys. Rev. C 50, 576 (1994)] and of Sperison et al. [Nucl. Phys. A422, 81 (1984)].Comment: 24 pages, 8 eps figures, uses REVTe