Explaining essences

This paper explores the prospects of combining two views. The first view is metaphysical rationalism : all things have an explanation. The second view is metaphysical essentialism: there are real essences. The exploration is motivated by a conflict between the views. Metaphysical essentialism posits facts about essences. Metaphysical rationalism demands explanations for all facts. But facts about essences appear to resist explanation. I consider two solutions to the conflict. Exemption solutions attempt to exempt facts about essences from the demand for explanation. Explanation solutions attempt to explain facts about essences. I argue that exemption solutions are less promising than explanation solutions. I then consider how explanation solutions might be developed. I suggest that a “generative” approach is most promising. I tentatively conclude that the prospects for combining metaphysical rationalism and metaphysical essentialism turn on the viability of a generative approach. This sets the agenda for defending the combination as well as the more general project of explaining essences

Popular Support for Welfare State Reforms: On Welfare State Preferences and Welfare State Reforms in the Netherlands

The aim of this research is to better understand what is meant by general support for the welfare state. At the start of this study, I observed an alleged discrepancy between people’s preferences and welfare state policies. Whereas on the one hand various studies demonstrate that public support for generous welfare state arrangements remained high or in some countries increased across time, actual policy designs changed in the opposite direction and became increasingly sober and conditional. This mismatch between preferences and welfare state transformations has led me to research in detail whether and why the public continues to support welfare state arrangements. In general, this study reveals three conclusions that extend previous research in the field. First, welfare state support and real welfare policies are inextricably intertwined. Individual welfare preferences cannot sufficiently be understood if the reform of various welfare state policies is not considered simultaneously. Second, support for welfare state reforms contains several theoretical and empirical dimensions. When just one general support dimension is considered, inaccurate claims about support can occur. Third, it is not merely economic self-interest that explains individual welfare state support. Moral conceptions also drive support for welfare state reforms

The Potential effect of Low Cell Osmolarity on Cell Function through decreased concentration of enzyme substrates

© The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology. All rights reserved. Some freshwater algae have lower (180 osmol m −3 ). Low osmolarities are related to the presence of flagella and the low energy cost of active water efflux following downhill water influx unconstrained by cell walls covering the plasmalemma, and the low resource cost of cell wall synthesis with the same mechanical degree of safety. One consequence of low intracellular osmolarity is limitation on the concentration of metabolites, that is, substrates and products of enzyme activity. Models of the flux through metabolic pathways, and hence the specific growth rate, using steady-state concentrations of enzymes and metabolites have involved organisms with intracellular metabolite osmolarities >280 osmol m −3 , where the metabolite concentrations are much greater than the total osmolarity of some freshwater algae. Since the protein concentration (mol m −3 ) in the cells and the specific growth rates of freshwater cells with low and with higher intracellular osmolarity are highly similar, the models of trade-offs between enzyme and metabolite concentrations for cells with high intracellular osmolarity need modification for cells with low intracellular osmolarity. The soluble free-radical scavenger ascorbate can constitute as little as 0.2% of the low intracellular metabolite concentration (mol m −3 ) of low-intracellular-osmolarity cells

Performance of the LHCb High Level Trigger in 2012

The trigger system of the LHCb experiment is discussed in this paper and its performance is evaluated on a dataset recorded during the 2012 run of the LHC. The main purpose of the LHCb trigger system is to separate heavy flavour signals from the light quark background. The trigger reduces the roughly 11MHz of bunch-bunch crossings with inelastic collisions to a rate of 5kHz, which is written to storage.Comment: Proceedings for the 20th International Conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP

Fashion and Female Beat Identity in the Writing of Jones, Johnson, and di Prima

In her article Fashion and Female Beat Identity in the Writing of di Prima, Johnson, and Jones Raven J. See discusses how the women writers of the Beat Generation have become iconically defined by their fashion choices. Clothing and accessories offer Beat women a means to construct and express their identity and Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, and Hettie Jones write about fashion in their narratives of self-creation. Like their male contemporaries, Beat women make style choices that allow them to reject mainstream culture and identify within Beat subculture. However, these women write about their decisions to accept or reject certain styles in particularly female terms. Their discussion of fashion is also a discussion of female embodiment, and their fashion choices are often assertions of control over their own bodies

Depressed youth, suicidality and antidepressants

The document attached has been archived with permission from the editor of the Medical Journal of Australia. An external link to the publisher’s copy is included.Robert D Goldney, Peter R Mansfield, Melissa K Raven, Jon N Jureidini, Joseph M Rey, Michael J Dudley, Duncan Toplis