Supererogatory Spandrels

Standing in San Marco Cathedral in Venice, you immediately notice the exquisitely decorated spandrels: the triangular spaces bounded on either side by adjoining arches and by the dome above. You would be forgiven for seeing them as the starting point from which to understand the surrounding architecture. To do so would, however, be a mistake. It is a similar mistaken inference that evolutionary biologists have been accused of making in assuming a special adaptive purpose for such biological features as fingerprints and chins. I argue that a mistake of just this sort is being made by ethicists who appeal to the intrinsic value of supererogatory acts in their efforts to make space for supererogation in ethical theory. Many cases of supererogatory action are simply spandrels: by-products of uncontroversial commitments elsewhere in our moral thought. This is not to downplay their value but rather to show that their value need not be the justification for making room for the supererogatory. I demonstrate this by examining two areas: rights and the distribution of burdens among a group. My argument has significance for those who take themselves to be defends of the possibility of supererogatory actions, as well as those who are committed to the contrary and those who believe themselves to be indifferent on the matter

One Mountain, Two Traditions: Buddhist and Taoist Claims on Zhongnan shan in Medieval Times

article about Mount Zhongnan in the Tang dynast

Changes in the Ownership and Governance of Securities Exchanges: Causes and Consequences

Over the past five years we have witnessed substantial changes in the ownership and governance structures of securities exchanges, particularly in Europe. Recent surveys indicate that a substantial majority of the world’s exchanges would like to “demutualize” in the coming years. The concept of demutualization remains a hazy one, however, along multiple dimensions: the factors that distinguish a demutualized from a mutualized exchange, the factors that motivate demutualization, and the implications of demutualization for the way in which exchanges are regulated. In seeking to clarify the meaning of demutualization, we hope as well to clarify the sources of conflict between the role of an exchange as a commercial enterprise acting in the interests of its owners and its role as a quasi-regulatory body. Government regulators around the world have expressed concern about the effect of exchange ownership and governance reforms on the ability of exchanges to meet the self-regulatory obligations devolved to them. Mutuality and self-regulation in the public interest are typically seen as going hand-in-hand. As we discuss in some detail, it is this misapprehension that lies at the heart of many concerns directed at demutualization. Regulatory failures are inevitable any time self-regulatory obligations imposed on an exchange conflict with the commercial interests of the exchange’s owners. Such commercial interests are no less powerful for a mutualized exchange than for a demutualized one.

To You

This poem is a collection of dedications to poems that did not quite articulate the true feelings of the author. The dedications capture a loss of words and an inability to say the “right thing” to student affairs. This poem speaks to more than just the field of student affairs; it speaks to anyone who is in need of hope. To you

Integración de mercados financieros regionales: aprender de la experiencia europea

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) El llamado modelo europeo de integración de mercados ha venido evolucionando a lo largo de muchas décadas. En particular, el plan original de integrar económicamente a Europa por la vía de un programa progresivo de harmonización de legislaciones nacionales, especialmente en el campo de los mercados financieros, ha cedido a una alternativa radical basada en el reconocimiento mutuo de los estados miembros de la legislación y la normativa nacional en vigor. Dado que ese cambio se puso en marcha más que nada por motivos pragmáticos, el enfoque de reconocimiento mutuo ha adquirido desde entonces una dimensión ideológica y estratégica en las negociaciones políticas que le confiere aún más importancia al estudio de sus repercusiones en el terreno.

Robot navigation control based on monocular images: An image processing algorithm for obstacle avoidance decisions

This paper covers the use of monocular vision to control autonomous navigation for a robot in a dynamically changing environment. The solution focused on using colour segmentation against a selected floor plane to distinctly separate obstacles from traversable space, this is then supplemented with canny edge detection to separate similarly coloured boundaries to the floor plane. The resulting binary map (where white identifies an obstacle-free area and black identifies an obstacle) could then be processed by fuzzy logic or neural networks to control the robot’s next movements. Findings shows that the algorithm performed strongly on solid coloured carpets, wooden and concrete floors but had difficulty in separating colours in multi-coloured floor types such as patterned carpets

Gradient matching methods for computational inference in mechanistic models for systems biology: a review and comparative analysis

Parameter inference in mathematical models of biological pathways, expressed as coupled ordinary differential equations (ODEs), is a challenging problem in contemporary systems biology. Conventional methods involve repeatedly solving the ODEs by numerical integration, which is computationally onerous and does not scale up to complex systems. Aimed at reducing the computational costs, new concepts based on gradient matching have recently been proposed in the computational statistics and machine learning literature. In a preliminary smoothing step, the time series data are interpolated; then, in a second step, the parameters of the ODEs are optimised so as to minimise some metric measuring the difference between the slopes of the tangents to the interpolants, and the time derivatives from the ODEs. In this way, the ODEs never have to be solved explicitly. This review provides a concise methodological overview of the current state-of-the-art methods for gradient matching in ODEs, followed by an empirical comparative evaluation based on a set of widely used and representative benchmark data