Leave truth alone: on deflationism and contextualism

According to deflationism, grasp of the concept of truth consists in nothing more than a disposition to accept a priori (non-paradoxical) instances of the schema:(DS) It is true that p if and only if pAccording to contextualism, the same expression with the same meaning might, on different occasions of use, express different propositions bearing different truth-conditions (where this does not result from indexicality and the like).On this view, what is expressed in an utterance depends in a non-negligible way on the circumstances. Charles Travis claims that contextualism shows that ‘deflationism is a mistake’, that truth is a more substantive notion than deflationism allows. In this paper, I examine Travis's arguments in support of this ‘inflationary’ claim and argue that they are unsuccessful

Meaningful Ethics Reforms for the New Albany

The corruption scandals of the last few years have profoundly shaken the faith of New Yorkers in their state government. This report examines the system erected by New York's current ethics laws and makes clear recommendations for a way forward

Discovery of Materials Through Applied Machine Learning

Advances in artificial intelligence technology, specifically machine learning, have cre- ated opportunities in the material sciences to accelerate material discovery and gain fundamental understanding of the interaction between certain the constituent ele- ments of a material and the properties expressed by that material. Application of machine learning to experimental materials discovery is slow due to the monetary and temporal cost of experimental data, but parallel techniques such as continuous com- positional gradients or high-throughput characterization setups are capable of gener- ating larger amounts of data than the typical experimental process, and therefore are suitable for combination with machine learning. A random forest machine learning algorithm has been applied to two different materials discovery challenges - discovery of new metallic glass forming ternary compositions and discovery of novel ammonia decomposition catalysts - and has led to accelerated discovery of high-performing materials

Synthesis and Anti-Proliferative Activity of N,N’-bis(arylmethyl)benzimidazolium Salts

A series of N,N’-bis(arylmethyl)benzimidazolium salts with hydrophilic and lipophilic substituents have been synthesized, characterized, and tested against select non-small cell cancer cell lines. Substituent variations on the imidazole ring have shown that lipophilicity and hydrophilicity can influence the imidazolium salts’ anti-proliferative activity and aqueous solubility

Stare Decisis and Autran v. State

In Autran v. State, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found [t]he officers [sic] interest in the protection of appellant\u27s property, as well as the protection of... the agency from claims of theft, can be satisfied by recording the existence of and describing and/or photographing the closed or locked container. Thus, Autran interpreted Article I, Section 9 of the Texas Constitution as requiring less intrusive means than the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for conducting automobile inventory searches. This note examines the proper scope of an automobile inventory search as currently defined under federal and Texas law, and discusses Autran\u27s failure to adhere to stare decisis\u27 by unnecessarily overturning previously relied upon precedents

SB21-11/12: Cross-Listing

SB21-11/12: Cross-Listing. This resolution passed with unanimous consent during the December 7, 2011 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM)

SB10-10/11: Legislative Session

SB10-10/11: Legislative Session. This resolution passed 17Y-4N on a roll call vote during the February 2, 2011 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM)

SB13-10/11: Legislative Session

SB13-10/11: Legislative Session. This resolution passed unanimously during the February 2, 2011 meeting of the Associated Students of the University of Montana (ASUM)