Roger Williams, The Founder of Providence – The Pioneer of Religious Liberty

By Amasa M. Eaton, A.M., LL.B. With Suggestions for Study in Schools by Clara E. Craig. Department of Education, State of Rhode Island. Rhode Island Education Circulars, Historical Series II – 1908. A biography of Roger Williams first delivered as an address before the Rhode Island Historical Society on October 2, 1906, on the unveiling of the tablets placed by the state to mark the site of the spring where the settlers first landed and on the site the Roger Williams Home Lot.https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/ri_history/1013/thumbnail.jp

Wagering on Pragmatic Encroachment

Lately, there has been an explosion of literature exploring the the relationship between one’s practical situation and one’s knowledge. Some involved in this discussion have suggested that facts about a person’s practical situation might affect whether or not a person knows in that situation, holding fixed all the things standardly associated with knowledge (like evidence, the reliability of one’s cognitive faculties, and so on). According to these “pragmatic encroachment” views, then, one’s practical situation encroaches on one’s knowledge. Though we won’t endorse pragmatic encroachment here, we find the view intriguing, and it’s popularity warrants carefully considering it’s implications. One potential avenue of exploration concerns religious epistemology, in particular, whether pragmatic encroachment has consequences concerning the epistemic requirements of atheism. We begin the journey down that avenue by connecting Pascal’s Wager to pragmatic encroachment in order to defend this conditional: If there is pragmatic encroachment, then it is ceteris paribus more difficult to know that atheism is true (if it is) than it is to know that God exists (if God does exist)

Optical realization of the dissipative quantum oscillator

An optical realization of the damped quantum oscillator, based on transverse light dynamics in an optical resonator with slowly-moving mirrors, is theoretically suggested. The optical resonator setting provides a simple implementation of the time-dependent Caldirola-Kanai Hamiltonian of the dissipative quantum oscillator, and enables to visualize the effects of damped oscillations in the classical (ray optics) limit and wave packet collapse in the quantum (wave optics) regime.Comment: The article is dedicated to Professor Orazio Svelto on the occasion of his 80th birthday. To appear in Optics Letter

Tariffs as Insurance: Optimal Commercial Policy When Domestic Markets Are Incomplete

Free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile - ex post, and markets for contingent claims are incomplete. The government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing insurance markets. Using a combination of analytical and simulation techniques we demonstrate that optimal policy for this purpose will often have an anti-trade bias. We also show that the usual preference by economists for factor or product taxes and subsidies over tariffs and export subsidies may not be justified in this context.

An adaptive, hanging-node, discontinuous isogeometric analysis method for the first-order form of the neutron transport equation with discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation

In this paper a discontinuous, hanging-node, isogeometric analysis (IGA) method is developed and applied to the first-order form of the neutron transport equation with a discrete ordinate (SN) angular discretisation in two-dimensional space. The complexities involved in upwinding across curved element boundaries that contain hanging-nodes have been addressed to ensure that the scheme remains conservative. A robust algorithm for cycle-breaking has also been introduced in order to develop a unique sweep ordering of the elements for each discrete ordinates direction. The convergence rate of the scheme has been verified using the method of manufactured solutions (MMS) with a smooth solution. Heuristic error indicators have been used to drive an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm to take advantage of the hanging-node discretisation. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated for three test cases. The first is a homogeneous square in a vacuum with varying mean free path and a prescribed extraneous unit source. The second test case is a radiation shielding problem and the third is a 3×3 “supercell” featuring a burnable absorber. In the final test case, comparisons are made to the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) using both straight-sided and curved quadratic finite elements

Punitive Damages and the Processing of Tort Claims

Punitive damages are one of the most controversial aspects of tort litigation and have been the subject of various theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies. One criticism of punitive damages refers to the effect that they have on civil litigation processes. In particular, Polinsky (1997) argues that the uncertainty and unpredictability that punitive damage claims inject into a case may increase both the rate and amount of settlements, thus implying that punitive damages carry systemic consequences for the general processing of tort claims. This paper represents the first, empirical examination of this implication. With one of the largest and most comprehensive data sets of tort litigation (over 25,000 cases filed from 1994 through 1997 in several counties in Georgia), we examine the effect of the decision to seek punitive damages on several major decision points in the tort litigation process in a series of logit regression models. With extensive control variables for type of case, the presence or absence of caps on damages, and other potentially important variables, we find that seeking punitive damages has no statistically significant effect on most phases of the tort litigation process.Torts, Litigation, Punitive Damages, Settlement Rates

Hierarchy in the Medical Field

Prior to volunteering in a southern United States hospital setting I had only my preconceptions of hierarchy in medicine, but this hospital had a different reality. At the hospital, I noticed a decreased sensitivity to the hierarchical structure of medical professionals in the hospital. I was able to learn that these professionals intermingled very well. As a volunteer on a floor, I could not even differentiate between the different professions, as they all wore similar uniforms and interacted with everyone on the floor. While participating in this volunteer program, I noticed how the health professionals at Arkansas Children’s Hospital used tolerance, patience, and empathy to understand the struggles and hardships of co-workers of different professions notably more than they did in hospitals I have volunteered at in Michigan. I was able to develop an appreciation for this style of interactions among medical professionals in a hospital setting and notice how these interactions positively impacted the daily lives of those professionals and their patients. From this experience, I discovered that this regional difference in hierarchical systems in hospitals was significant and by putting myself in the situation of these health professionals both emotionally and physically, I can better understand their feelings and motivations; this will help me to study this area of interest. Due to the large number of GVSU students seeking entry into one of the health-related professions at various levels of profession, and due to the increasingly large medical community in the Grand Rapids area, this study will be of interest to the University and West Michigan communities. Not many people understand, much less have studied the idea of a hierarchical structure within the medical field. A few areas of interest include regional differences, generational differences, and specialty differences in hierarchical structure. To further investigate, a total of five health professionals of varying practices were interviewed on their thoughts on this controversial issue. These professionals spanned a variety of occupations, as well as generational and regional backgrounds. They were interviewed using a non-biased, multiple-choice questionnaire on their opinion and experience with this issue. From this data, we can infer the general opinion of medical professionals, and further analyze their responses based on their gender, occupation, and generational background. The objectives of this study are to examine the different forms of hierarchy among health professionals and discover where and why these hierarchies do or do not exist; and to examine the effects of these relationships on the medical professionals themselves as well as their patients