Fallacies and the concept of an argument

This paper argues that recent theoretical attempts to understand fallacious reasoning fail because these theories presuppose problematic accounts of the nature of argument. The paper outlines an alternative view of fallacious reasoning based on Wright \u27s recent work on the concept of an argument. This alternative view suggests that fallacious reasoning results from a kind of incompetence. Such failures of competence, however, are not nearly as common as traditional accounts of fallacious reasoning su ggests. Moreover, the very possibility of being tempted by fallacious reasoning depends on our being very competent in normal cases

The Attenuation of a Detonation Wave by an Aircraft Engine Axial Turbine Stage

A Constant Volume Combustion Cycle Engine concept consisting of a Pulse Detonation Combustor (PDC) followed by a conventional axial turbine was simulated numerically to determine the attenuation and reflection of a notional PDC pulse by the turbine. The multi-stage, time-accurate, turbomachinery solver TURBO was used to perform the calculation. The solution domain consisted of one notional detonation tube coupled to 5 vane passages and 8 rotor passages representing 1/8th of the annulus. The detonation tube was implemented as an initial value problem with the thermodynamic state of the tube contents, when the detonation wave is about to exit, provided by a 1D code. Pressure time history data from the numerical simulation was compared to experimental data from a similar configuration to verify that the simulation is giving reasonable results. Analysis of the pressure data showed a spectrally averaged attenuation of about 15 dB across the turbine stage. An evaluation of turbine performance is also presented

Characterising bidirectional interactions between synovial fibroblasts and myeloid cells

Synovial fibroblasts and macrophages are incriminated in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) but the interactions between these cells and the roles of cellular subsets are only partially understood. To address this, fibroblasts isolated from normal, resolving arthritis, very early RA, established RA, and longer duration RA patients were co-cultured in vitro with myeloid cells; synovial fibroblast and macrophage subsets were identified, and the transcriptomes of synovial cells were analysed. Co-culture of fibroblasts and monocytes elicited an increase in IL-6 release and a reduction in CCL2/CCL4 levels. No difference in response was elicited by fibroblasts from different stages of RA. Fibroblast and macrophage markers were defined in frozen tissue sections. A synovial tissue digestion protocol was then developed and used to isolate synovial cells. Fibroblast and macrophage populations were identified and the proportions of fibroblast subsets correlated with clinical variables. Transcriptional analysis identified differentially expressed genes between fibroblast subsets and one distinct macrophage population. Analysis of previously generated transcriptome data for fibroblasts from RA stages identified cassettes of genes differentially expressed at each disease stage. This work expands previous findings on fibroblast function by beginning to assign functions to subsets and demonstrating that fibroblasts from stages of RA have distinct gene expression