Teleological Essentialism: Generalized

Natural/social kind essentialism is the view that natural kind categories, both living and non-living natural kinds, as well as social kinds (e.g., race, gender), are essentialized. On this view, artifactual kinds are not essentialized. Our view—teleological essentialism—is that a broad range of categories are essentialized in terms of teleology, including artifacts. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments typically used to provide evidence of essentialist thinking—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2) and inferences about offspring (study 3)—we find support for the view that a broad range of categories—living natural kinds, non-living natural kinds and artifactual kinds—are essentialized in terms of teleology. Study 4 tests a unique prediction of teleological essentialism and also provides evidence that people make inferences about purposes which in turn guide categorization judgments

Towards Precision Photometry with Extremely Large Telescopes: the Double Subgiant Branch of NGC 1851

The Extremely Large Telescopes currently under construction have a collecting area that is an order of magnitude larger than the present largest optical telescopes. For seeing-limited observations the performance will scale as the collecting area but, with the successful use of adaptive optics, for many applications it will scale as $D^4$ (where $D$ is the diameter of the primary mirror). Central to the success of the ELTs, therefore, is the successful use of multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) that applies a high degree correction over a field of view larger than the few arcseconds that limits classical adaptive optics systems. In this letter, we report on the analysis of crowded field images taken on the central region of the Galactic globular cluster NGC 1851 in $K_s$ band using GeMS at the Gemini South telescope, the only science-grade MCAO system in operation. We use this cluster as a benchmark to verify the ability to achieve precise near-infrared photometry by presenting the deepest $K_s$ photometry in crowded fields ever obtained from the ground. We construct a colour-magnitude diagram in combination with the F606W band from HST/ACS. As well as detecting the "knee" in the lower main sequence at $K_s\simeq20.5$, we also detect the double subgiant branch of NGC 1851, that demonstrates the high photometric accuracy of GeMS in crowded fields.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJL (3 Sep 2015). A version of the paper with high-res images is available at http://www.astro.uvic.ca/~alan/ms_arxiv_hr.pd

Teleological Essentialism

Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3) and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments

Astrometry with MCAO: HST-GeMS proper motions in the globular cluster NGC 6681

Aims: for the first time the astrometric capabilities of the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) facility GeMS with the GSAOI camera on Gemini-South are tested to quantify the accuracy in determining stellar proper motions in the Galactic globular cluster NGC 6681. Methods: proper motions from HST/ACS for a sample of its stars are already available, and this allows us to construct a distortion-free reference at the epoch of GeMS observations that is used to measure and correct the temporally changing distortions for each GeMS exposure. In this way, we are able to compare the corrected GeMS images with a first-epoch of HST/ACS images to recover the relative proper motion of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy with respect to NGC 6681. Results: we find this to be (\mu_{\alpha}cos\delta, \mu_{\delta}) = (4.09,-3.41) mas/yr, which matches previous HST/ACS measurements with a very good accuracy of 0.03 mas/yr and with a comparable precision (r.m.s of 0.43 mas/yr). Conclusions: this study successfully demonstrates that high-quality proper motions can be measured for quite large fields of view (85 arcsec X 85 arcsec) with MCAO-assisted, ground-based cameras and provides a first, successful test of the performances of GeMS on multi-epoch data.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication by A&A Letter

A Combined Experimental and Theoretical Study of Photodouble Ionization of Water at 32 eV Excess Energy and Unequal Energy Sharing

In this paper we present a part of our investigation of the photodouble ionization (PDI) of gaseous water. Synchrotron radiation from ELETTRA storage ring was used to ionize the water molecule, and the two emitted electrons were collected in coincidence after angle and energy selection. We have compared the measured dication states with those known from literature and showed the angular distributions of the two photoelectrons measured for the first time, for different excess energies and under different energy sharing conditions. A detailed comparison with theoretical calculations is given to help understand some details of the PDI mechanism.Fil: Penson, Conner. Embry-riddle Aeronautical University; Estados UnidosFil: Turri, Giorgio. Full Sail University; Estados UnidosFil: Avaldi, Lorenzo. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche; ItaliaFil: Randazzo, Juan Martin. Comisión Nacional de Energí­a Atómica. Gerencia del Area Investigación y Aplicaciones No Nucleares. Gerencia de Física (Centro Atómico Balseiro). División Colisiones Atómicas; Argentina. University of Central Florida; Estados Unidos. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Ancarani, Lorenzo Ugo. Université de Lorraine; FranciaFil: Bolognesi, Paola. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche; Itali

Monosegment ALPPS hepatectomy preserving segment 4 for colorectal liver metastases : literature review and our experience

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Photo-double-ionization of water at 20 eV above threshold

The photodouble ionization of the water molecule is studied at 20 eV excess energy in a combined experimental and theoretical investigation. In the experiments, two photoelectrons of equal kinetic energy are detected in coincidence after energy and angular selection. On the theoretical side, a generalized Sturmian function approach is implemented to describe accurately the correlated two-electron continuum, while separable products of Moccia orbitals [J. Chem. Phys. 40, 2164 (1964)JCPSA60021-960610.1063/1.1725489] are used for the initial electronic state of the water molecule. The theoretical triple-differential cross sections (TDCSs) are averaged over all possible molecular orientations in order to be compared with the experiments. The measured TDCSs display rich angular distributions that are in large part well reproduced by the adopted first-order treatment of the interaction with a two-active-electron target.Fil: Randazzo, Juan Martin. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Turri, G.. Embry-riddle Aeronautical University, Physical Sciences; Estados UnidosFil: Bolognesi, P.. CNR-Istituto di Struttura della Materia; ItaliaFil: Mathis, J.. Embry-riddle Aeronautical University, Physical Sciences; Estados UnidosFil: Ancarani, L. U.. Université de Lorraine; FranciaFil: Avaldi, L.. CNR-Istituto di Struttura della Materia; Itali

Spectral engineering of optical fiber preforms through active nanoparticle doping

Europium doped alkaline earth fluoride [Eu:AEF(2) (AE = Ca, Sr, Ba)] nanoparticles were synthesized and systematically incorporated into the core of modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD)-derived silica-based preforms by solution doping. The resulting preforms were examined to determine the impact of the nanoparticles chemistry on the spectroscopic behavior of the glass. The dominant existence of Eu3+ was demonstrated in all preforms, which is in contrast to conventional solution doped preforms employing dissolved europium salts where Eu2+ is primarily observed. Raman spectroscopy and fluorescence lifetime measurements indicated that the nanoparticles composition is effective in controlling, at a local chemical and structural level, the spectroscopic properties of active dopants in optical fiber glasses. Further, there is a systematic and marked increase in radiative lifetime, tau, of the Eu3+ emission that follows the cationic mass; tau(Ca) \u3c tau(Sr) \u3c tau(Ba) with the BaF2-derived sample yielding a 37% lengthening of the lifetime over the CaF2-derived one. Such nanoscale control of what otherwise is silica glass could be useful for realizing property-enhanced and tailored spectroscopic performance from otherwise standard materials, e.g., vapor-derived silica, in next generation optical fibers

Modal Virtue Epistemology

10.1111/phpr.12562Philosophy and Phenomenological Researc