Critical Review of Richard Moran, The Exchange of Words

Moran's book is sure to be widely read. It does more to bring to light the moral psychology characteristic of tellings understood as assurances than any other work I know. His book raises challenges for other views, introduces interesting and evocative distinctions, and puts together in one place Moran's sustained reflections on the way we provide others a distinctive kind of reason for belief though normatively binding ourselves though the exchange of words. I agree that assurances and acceptances in Moran's sense play a part in a total understanding of the epistemology of testimony. But I do not agree they cover the whole terrain. There is much more to the metaphysics and epistemology of testimony still to explore

A Domino Theory of Flavor

We argue that the fermion masses and mixings are organized in a specific pattern. The approximately equal hierarchies between successive generations, the sizes of the mixing angles, the heaviness of just the top quark, and the approximate down-lepton equality can all be accommodated by many flavor models but can appear ad hoc. We present a simple, predictive mechanism to explain these patterns. All generations are treated democratically and the flavor symmetries are broken collectively by only two allowed couplings in flavor-space, a vector and matrix, with arbitrary O(1) entries. Repeated use of these flavor symmetry breaking spurions radiatively generates the Yukawa couplings with a natural hierarchy. We demonstrate this idea with two models in a split supersymmetric grand unified framework, with minimal additional particle content at the unification scale. Although flavor is generated at the GUT scale, there are several potentially testable predictions. In our minimal model the usual prediction of exact b-tau unification is replaced by the SU(5) breaking relation m_tau / m_b = 3 / 2, in better agreement with observations. Other SU(5) breaking effects in the fermion masses can easily arise directly from the flavor model itself. The symmetry breaking that triggers the generation of flavor necessarily gives rise to an axion, solving the strong CP problem. These theories contain long-lived particles whose decays could give striking signatures at the LHC and may solve the primordial Lithium problems. These models also give novel proton decay signatures which can be probed by the next generation of experiments. Measurement of the various proton decay channels directly probes the flavor symmetry breaking couplings. In this scenario the Higgs mass is predicted to lie in a range near 150 GeV.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables. v2: Refs added, version to appear in PR

Guanidinium 2-Carboxy-6-Nitrobenzoate Monohydrate: A Two-Dimensional Hydrogen-Bonded Network Structure

In the structure of the title compound, CH6N3+ . C8H4NO6- . H2O, obtained from the reaction of guanidine carbonate with 3-nitrophthalic acid, the 2-carboxylic acid group is deprotonated and participates in an asymmetric cyclic R2/1(6) hydrogen-bonding associatiuon with the guanidine cation together with a bridging water molecule of solvation. A conjoint R2/1(7) facial association involving a nitro O-atom acceptor together with a further five guanidinium N-H...O hydrogen bonds, as well as a strong carboxyl-water interaction [2.528(3) Ang.], give a two-dimensiional network structure

Change management - practising what we teach: successfully engaging international students in the teaching, learning & assessment process

In this article we review processes of change in a module whose subject matter is change management. The module attracts mainly international students, and has suffered from uneven student engagement and performance. We will recount how a Teaching Enhancement and Student Success (TESS) project was used to inform our attempts to improve engagement and performance. Bearing in mind the origins of action research as part of Kurt Lewin‟s approach to planned change, we will use the four different elements of Lewin‟s work to reflect on the challenges we have been grappling with. The article will highlight different approaches to action research, which are linked to different aspirations as to the scope of change

Adenosinium 3,5-dinitrosalicylate

The crystal structure of adenosinium 3,5-dinitrosalicylicate, C10H14N5O4+烷H3N2O7-, shows the presence of a primary chain structure formed through homomeric head-to-tail cyclic R22(10) hydrogen-bonding interactions between hydroxy O- and both purine and amine N-donor and acceptor groups of the furanose and purine moieties of the adenosinium species. These chain structures are related by crystallographic 21 symmetry. Secondary hetero-ionic hydrogen bonding, involving the 3,5-dinitrosalicylate anion, including a cyclic R22(8) interaction between the carboxylate group and the protonated purine and amine groups of the adenosinium cation are also present, together with heteromolecular - interactions giving a three-dimensional hydrogen-bonded polymer structure.Full Tex

A Second Crystal Polymorph of Anilinium Picrate

The crystal structure of a second monoclinic polymorph of anilinium picrate shows a three-dimensional hydrogen-bonded polymer with strong primary interspecies interactions involving the proximal phenolate and adjacent nitro group O-atom acceptors and separate anilinium H-atom donors in two cyclic R (6) associations. Other nitro-O-anilinium-H hydrogen bonds together with heteromolecular interactions are also present

Disentangling the effects of geographic and ecological isolation on genetic differentiation

Populations can be genetically isolated both by geographic distance and by differences in their ecology or environment that decrease the rate of successful migration. Empirical studies often seek to investigate the relationship between genetic differentiation and some ecological variable(s) while accounting for geographic distance, but common approaches to this problem (such as the partial Mantel test) have a number of drawbacks. In this article, we present a Bayesian method that enables users to quantify the relative contributions of geographic distance and ecological distance to genetic differentiation between sampled populations or individuals. We model the allele frequencies in a set of populations at a set of unlinked loci as spatially correlated Gaussian processes, in which the covariance structure is a decreasing function of both geographic and ecological distance. Parameters of the model are estimated using a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm. We call this method Bayesian Estimation of Differentiation in Alleles by Spatial Structure and Local Ecology (BEDASSLE), and have implemented it in a user-friendly format in the statistical platform R. We demonstrate its utility with a simulation study and empirical applications to human and teosinte datasets