Judgement of conceptual identity in monkeys

Baboons (Papio anubis) were tested on categorization tasks at two different conceptual levels. The monkeys showed their ability (1) to judge as identical or different the objects belonging to two categories, on a perceptual basis, and (2) to perform a judgment of conceptual identity—that is, to use the same/different relation between two previously learned categories. This latter experiment represents the first demonstration of judgment of conceptual identity in a monkey specie

Alasdair MacIntyre as a Marxist and as a critic of Marxism

This essay reconstructs Alasdair MacIntyre's engagement with Marxism with a view both to illuminating the co-ordinates of his mature thought and to outlining a partial critique of that thought. While the critique of Marxism outlined in After Virtue is well known, until recently Marx's profound influence on MacIntyre was obscured by a thoroughly misleading attempt to label him as a communitarian thinker. If this erroneous interpretation of MacIntyre's mature thought is now widely discredited, the fact that he has distanced himself from several of the arguments he previously gave for rejecting Marxism both reduces the theoretical space between his mature thought and his early Marxism and highlights a consistent theme in his critique of Marxism since the 1960s to which this essay is addressed: his dissatisfaction with the ethical dimension of Marxist attempts to theorise the relationship between socialist militants and the working-class movement from below

Alasdair MacIntyre’s Contribution to Marxism: A Road not Taken

This essay questions, through a critique of his reading of classical Marxism, the path taken by Alasdair MacIntyre since his break with the Marxist Left in the 1960s. It argues that MacIntyre was uncharitable in his criticisms of Marxism, or at least in his conflation of the most powerful aspects of the classical Marxist tradition with the crudities of Kautskyian and Stalinist materialism. Contra MacIntyre, this essay locates in the writings of the revolutionary Left which briefly flourished up to and just after the Russian Revolution a rich source of dialectical thinking on the relationship between structure and agency that escapes the twin errors of crude materialism or political voluntarism. Moreover, it suggests that by reaching back to themes reminiscent of the young Marx this tradition laid the basis for a renewed ethical Marxism, and that in his youth MacIntyre pointed to the realisation of this project

The production of radiation tolerant vacuum phototriodes and their HV filters for the compact muon solenoid endcap electromagnetic calorimeter

Particle detectors which will operate at the Large Hadron Collider face unprecedented challenges in both the number of active detector elements and in operating without maintenance in a high radiation environment for many years. In the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector the scintillating crystal electromagnetic calorimeter uses vacuum photodetectors in the endcap where the lifetime neutron and hadron fluence is too high for the silicon avalanche photodiodes used in the barrel. Over 15000 radiation tolerant vacuum phototriodes (VPT) have been now been produced by industry for the endcap calorimeter. The VPT have to operate in an environment which has both a significant lifetime dose (up to 50 kGy) from electrons and gamma rays and a high neutron fluence (up to nearly 10^15 n.cm^−2 for E > 100 keV). This paper discusses the steps taken during both the development and production of the VPT to ensure that the response to the scintillation light from the lead tungstate scintillator will not be significantly degraded during the operational lifetime of the experiment. Data from the quality assurance procedures and radiation induced degradation of complete VPT devices is presented. Other components of the endcap calorimeter are also exposed to a similarly intense radiation field. The quality assurance procedure used to select the passive components (resistors and capacitors) used in the high-voltage filter cards is described

How does big data affect GDP? Theory and evidence for the UK

We present an economic approach to measuring the impact of Big Data on GDP and GDP growth. We define data, information, ideas and knowledge. We present a conceptual framework to understand and measure the production of “Big Data”, which we classify as transformed data and data-based knowledge. We use this framework to understand how current official datasets and concepts used by Statistics Offices might already measure Big Data in GDP, or might miss it. We also set out how unofficial data sources might be used to measure the contribution of data to GDP and present estimates on its contributions to growth. Using new estimates of employment and investment in Big Data as set out in Chebli, Goodridge et al. (2015) and Goodridge and Haskel (2015a) and treating transformed data and data-based knowledge as capital assets, we estimate that for the UK: (a) in 2012, “Big Data” assets add £1.6bn to market sector GVA; (b) in 2005-2012, account for 0.02% of growth in market sector value-added; (c) much Big Data activity is already captured in the official data on software – 76% of investment in Big Data is already included in official software investment, and 76% of the contribution of Big Data to GDP growth is also already in the software contribution; and (d) in the coming decade, data-based assets may contribute around 0.07% to 0.23% pa of annual growth on average

Maximum warning times for imminent volcanic eruptions

Accelerations in seismicity are important precursors to eruptions at volcanoes reawakening after extended repose intervals. These have previously been quantified for subduction-zone settings in terms of the linkage of crustal faults by shearing. Introducing a damage-mechanics criterion for the weakening of rock between major fractures, the model is here modified for failure in tension, consistent with conditions in crust surrounding a pressurized magma reservoir. The results indicate that final accelerations develop over similar to 2-3 weeks at tensile strains of (4.5 +/- 3.2)x10(-3). Since a week or more is required to identify an accelerating trend, seismic forecasts of eruptions after long repose are unlikely to be reliable more than days in advance. Improvements will require the integration of additional precursors or extension of the model to earlier stages of fracture growth in stressed crust