Whence philosophy of biology?

A consensus exists among contemporary philosophers of biology about the history of their field. According to the received view, mainstream philosophy of science in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s focused on physics and general epistemology, neglecting analyses of the ‘special sciences’, including biology. The subdiscipline of philosophy of biology emerged (and could only have emerged) after the decline of logical positivism in the 1960s and 70s. In this paper, I present bibliometric data from four major philosophy of science journals (Erkenntnis, Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science), covering 1930-1959, which challenge this view

Runtime aspect weaving through metaprogramming

technical reportWe describe an extension to the Java language, Handi-Wrap, that supports weaving aspects into code at runtime. Aspects in Handi-Wrap take the form of method wrappers, which allow aspect code to be inserted around method bodies like advice in AspectJ. Handi- Wrap offers several advantages over static aspect languages such as AspectJ. First, aspects can be woven into binary libraries. Second, a wrapper in Handi-Wrap is a first-class Java value, which allows users to exploit Java mechanisms to define and weave wrappers. For example, wrappers can be passed explicit constructor arguments, and wrapper objects can be composed. Finally, methods in all Java classes, including anonymous classes, can be wrapped. A prototype of Handi-Wrap is implemented in a compile-time metaprogramming system for Java, called Maya; we briefly describe how Maya?s features support Handi- Wrap

Maya: multiple-dispatch syntax extension in Java

technical reportWe have designed and implemented Maya, a version of Java that allows programmers to extend and reinterpret its syntax. Maya generalizes macro systems by treating grammar productions as generic functions, and semantic actions on productions as multimethods on the corresponding generic functions. Programmers can write new generic functions (i.e., grammar productions) and new multimethods (i.e., semantic actions), through which they can extend the grammar of the language and change the semantics of its syntactic constructs, respectively. Maya?s multimethods are compile-time metaprograms that transform abstract syntax: they execute at program compile-time, because they are semantic actions executed by the parser. Maya?s multimethods can be dispatched on the syntactic structure of the input, as well as the static, source-level types of expressions in the input. In this paper we describe what Maya can do and how it works. We describe how its novel parsing techniques work and how Maya can statically detect certain kinds of errors such as hygiene violations. Finally, to demonstrate Maya's expressiveness, we describe how Maya can be used to implement the MultiJava language, which was described by Clifton et al. at OOPSLA 2000

Attachment bond, parental death, and parental divorce as predictive variables of depression

Discussions regarding the topics of attachment and loss are ubiquitous and cannot be avoided. Losing a loved one---especially a parent---to death or divorce is difficult at any age, perhaps most difficult during the age of adolescence. Depression is a common product of such loss. A study was conducted that attempted to look at the quality of attachment between the child and primary caregiver, along with the any possible parent loss, and their implications for the prevalence of depression. Data on 170 students at a major university in the Northeast was collected. A moderately strong negative correlation existed between attachment and depression, indicating that stronger attachment bonds were positively related to lower depression scores. Parent death and divorce did not serve as mediating factors. These results have implications for the counseling field; depressive diagnoses must be considered in working with individuals reporting low attachment bonds to attachment figures

Instrumentation and Measurement of Thermoelectric and Structural Properties of Binary Chalcogenides and Half-Heusler Alloys at Extreme Conditions Using a Paris-Edinburgh Press

Understanding the high-pressure behavior of transport properties has been a driving force in the study of materials under extreme conditions for well over a century being pioneered by P.W. Bridgman in the early 20th century. Research dedicated to the study of these properties leads to a variety of important applications: exploration of insulator to semi-conductor to metal, structural, and electronic phase transitions, correlation of pressure-induced structural phase transitions and the electronic properties along phase boundaries, identifying electronic topological transitions, testing the validity of theoretical models and providing input parameters for calculations at high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, exploration of sample synthesis and behavior of electronic structure at extreme conditions, understanding the effects of chemical pressure when compared to chemical substitution, among a slew of other applications. This work’s main goal was the design and development of a specialized sample cell assembly for use with a Paris-Edinburgh press capable of performing high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) electrical resistance, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity measurements alongside energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction and X-ray radiography imaging up to 6 GPa and 500°C to fully characterize the electrical, thermal, and structural properties of materials simultaneously at extreme conditions. This system has been installed at Argonne National Laboratory at the Advanced Photon Source at the Sector 16 BM-B beamline of the High-Pressure Collaborative Access Team and is now available to general users as a measurement technique. The results for pure elemental bismuth and the classical thermoelectric material PbTe are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the system. With this system, we have also measured the electrical, thermal, and structural properties of SnTe and Mn-doped SnTe thermoelectric materials and the half-Heusler compounds TiNiSn and TiCoSb