El patrimonio (y el matrimonio) en singapur

Este articulo muestra que las ideas desacreditadas hace mucho tiempo como las concepciones eugenesicas, que creia posible 'mejorar' las cualidades humanas mediante la reproducción selectiva de los 'grupos más aptos': arios, inteligentes o ricos, resurgen en forma de políticas supuestamente basadas en la ciencia pero que, en realidad no tienen más "apoyo que los prejuicios sociales de sus defensores". El eje del artículo es la critica de la pretención de mejorar el 'capitalismo humano' dando prioridad a la procreación de los graduados universitarios y a la educación de sus hijos; para ello hace una breve revisión de los debates sobre el coeficiente de inteligencia y el éxito academico; sintetiza la larga discusión sobre la heredabilidad de los rasgos adquiridos, el papel de la herencia genética y la interacción con la con el entorno - un tema que Shakespeare acuñó en la frase nature or nature (naturaleza ó crianza) y que recorre la obra de Amartya Sen, el reciente Nobel de Economía- y, finalmente, llega a la siguiente conclusión: "Sería más sensato y menos controvertido construir más escuelas".This article demonstrates that ideas which were long ago discredited -such as eugenic concepts, which believed it possible to "improve" human qualities by means of the selective reproduction of the "most apt" groups: Aryans, the intelligent, or the rich- reemerge in the form of policies supposedly based on science but which, in fact, haveno more "support than the social prejudices of their defenders." The crux of the article is a critique of the pretension to "improve human capital" by giving priority to the procreation of university graduates and to the education of their children. For that end it provides a brief review of the debates over IQ and academic success; it synthesizesthe long discussion about the inheritability of acquired characteristics, the role of genetic inheritance, and interaction with the environment -a subject for which Shakespeare coined the phrase "nature or nurture" and which runs through th.ework of Amartya Sen, the recent Nobel Prize winner in Economics- and finally it arrives at the following conclusion: "It would be more sensible and less controversial to buildmore schools

Protoconch and slit of Siliquaria squamata Blainville

13 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. 12-13)."Siliquaria, described for the first time, is 0.25 mm. wide, helically coiled, and has a sinuous aperture, whereas that of the other two siliquariid genera is 1 mm. wide and planispiral, with a circular aperture. Protoconch form can no longer be used as the chief diagnostic familial characteristic as proposed by Morton (1951). The siliquariid slit is analogous in form, but not in function, to the selenizone of slit-bearing archaeogastropods. Since the siliquariid slit is much longer than that of archaeogastropods, the morphology of slit healing differs. To prevent lateral filling of the slit by growth increments running longitudinally along the slit toward the slit-healing lamina, such increments are either not deposited or else run underneath, rather than in the same surface, as in their predecessors"--P. 11-12

Justice Scalia's misunderstanding

Appears in But cf. ... editorial sectio

A soluble model of evolution and extinction dynamics in a rugged fitness landscape

We consider a continuum version of a previously introduced and numerically studied model of macroevolution (PRL 75, 2055, (1995)) in which agents evolve by an optimization process in a rugged fitness landscape and die due to their competitive interactions. We first formulate dynamical equations for the fitness distribution and the survival probability. Secondly we analytically derive the $t^{-2}$ law which characterizes the life time distribution of biological genera. Thirdly we discuss other dynamical properties of the model such as the rate of extinction and conclude with a brief discussion.Comment: 6 pages LaTeX source with 2 figures. Submitted to PRL (Jan. 97

Constitutional Ethnography: An Introduction

Constitutional ethnography is the study of the central legal elements of polities using methods that are capable of recovering the lived detail of the politico-legal landscape. This article provides an introduction to this sort of study by contrasting constitutional ethnography with multivariate analysis and with nationalist constitutional analysis. The article advocates not a universal one-size-fits-all theory or an elegant model that abstracts away the distinctive, but instead outlines an approach that can identify a set of repertoires found in real cases. Learning the set of repertoires that constitutional ethnography reveals, one can see more deeply into particular cases. Constitutional ethnography has as its goal, then, not prediction but comprehension, not explained variation but thematization

Science in neo-Victorian poetry

This article considers the work of three contemporary poets and their engagement, in verse, with Victorian science. Beginning with the outlandish ‘theories’ of Mick Imlah’s ‘The Zoologist’s Bath’ (1983), it moves on to two works of biografiction – Anthony Thwaite’s poem ‘At Marychurch’ (1980), which outlines Philip Henry Gosse’s doomed attempts to unite evolution and Christianity, and Ruth Padel’s Darwin: A Life in Poems (2009). Starting off with John Glendening’s idea that science in neo-Victorian fiction, if fully embraced, provides an opportunity for self-revelation to characters, this article explores the rather less happy resolutions of each of these poems, while in addition discussing the ways in which these poems perform the formal changes and mutability discussed within them