Defending Standards Contextualism

It has become more common recently for epistemologists to advocate the pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, the claim that the appropriateness ofknowledge ascriptions is dependent on the relevant practical circumstances. Advocacy of practicalism in epistemology has come at the expense of contextualism, the view that knowledge ascriptions are independent of pragmatic factors and depend alternatively on distinctively epistemological, semantic factors with the result that knowledge ascriptions express different knowledge properties on different occasions of use. Overall, my goal here is to defend a particular version of contextualism drawn from work by Peter Ludlow, called ‘standards contextualism.’ My strategy will be to elaborate on this form of contextualism by defending it from various objections raised by the practicalists Jason Stanley, Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath. In showing how standards contextualism can effectively repel these criticisms I hope to establish that standards contextualism is a viable alternative to practicalism

Stock predictability and preceding stock price changes - Evidence from central and Eastern European markets

This paper extends the empirical evidence on stock returns after preceding price innovations using data from Central and Eastern European (CEE) markets. In contrast to many previous papers, we find no evidence of either overreaction effects or rational adjustments to increased risk after large preceding price movements. We do, however, see strong evidence of trends in the data with price falls(rises) of all sizes being followed by subsequent price falls(rises)

A synthesis of the role of media reports and elections in Nigerian democracy

This paper examines the interplay between the media and the elections in Nigeria, and discusses some of the relevant communication models that could assist the media in effectively reporting future elections in the country. This study has employed a historical approach, and argues that since Nigeria attained its political independence in 1960; conducting free and fair elections has been the major political problem in the country. The paper observed that the June 12 1993 Presidential Elections resulted in a stalemate, while the 2007 Elections were flawed with cases of electoral irregularities. Many of the results of the elections that were approved earlier by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were later cancelled by the Nigerian Judiciary, a confirmation that the elections were rigged as confirmed by most of the internal and the external observers that monitored the elections. As a part of the solutions to the problem of elections in Nigeria, this paper recommends the establishment of an Inter-Party Central Committee (ICPP), made up of the national executives of the registered political parties, to work in collaboration with the media as the committee supports the electoral commission to conduct free and fair elections in the country

New Media and the Arab Spring of 2011

About media and the Arab sprin

Which heuristics can aid financial-decision-making?

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. We evaluate the contribution of Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, often in association with his late co-author Amos Tversky, to the development of our understanding of financial decision-making and the evolution of behavioural finance as a school of thought within Finance. Whilst a general evaluation of the work of Kahneman would be a massive task, we constrain ourselves to a more narrow discussion of his vision of financial-decision making compared to a possible alternative advanced by Gerd Gigerenzer along with numerous co-authors. Both Kahneman and Gigerenzer agree on the centrality of heuristics in decision making. However, for Kahneman heuristics often appear as a fall back when the standard von-Neumann-Morgenstern axioms of rational decision-making do not describe investors' choices. In contrast, for Gigerenzer heuristics are simply a more effective way of evaluating choices in the rich and changing decision making environment investors must face. Gigerenzer challenges Kahneman to move beyond substantiating the presence of heuristics towards a more tangible, testable, description of their use and disposal within the ever changing decision-making environment financial agents inhabit. Here we see the emphasis placed by Gigerenzer on how context and cognition interact to form new schemata for fast and frugal reasoning as offering a productive vein of new research. We illustrate how the interaction between cognition and context already characterises much empirical research and it appears the fast and frugal reasoning perspective of Gigerenzer can provide a framework to enhance our understanding of how financial decisions are made

CFD in the context of IHPTET: The Integrated High Performance Turbine Technology Program

The Integrated High Performance Turbine Engine Technology (IHPTET) Program is an integrated DOD/NASA technology program designed to double the performance capability of today's most advanced military turbine engines as we enter the twenty-first century. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is expected to play an important role in the design/analysis of specific configurations within this complex machine. In order to do this, a plan is being developed to ensure the timely impact of CFD on IHPTET. The developing philosphy of CFD in the context of IHPTET is discussed. The key elements in the developing plan and specific examples of state-of-the-art CFD efforts which are IHPTET turbine engine relevant are discussed

The benefits of combining seasonal anomalies and technical trading rules

Although many seasonal anomalies and technical trading rules have been shown to have predictive ability, investigations have focused only on them operating individually. We study the benefits of trading based on combinations of three of the best known effects: the moving average rule, the turn of the month effect, and the Halloween effect. We show that the rules can be combined effectively, giving significant levels of returns predictability with low risk and offering the possibility of profitable trading. This new investment approach is especially beneficial for a typical individual investor, who faces high transaction costs and is poorly diversified

Quantifying Acetaldehyde in Astronomical Ices and Laboratory Analogues: IR Spectra, Intensities, 13C Shifts, and Radiation Chemistry

Acetaldehyde is of interest to astrochemists for its relevance to both interstellar and cometary chemistry, but little infrared (IR) spectral data have been published for the solid phases of this compound. Here we present IR spectra of three forms of solid acetaldehyde, with spectra for one form being published for the first time. Direct measurements of band strengths and absorption coefficients also are reported for the first time for amorphous aldehyde, the form of greatest interest for astrochemical work. An acetaldehyde band strength at 1350 cm1 that has been used as a reference for about 20 yr is seen to be in error by about 80 per cent when compared to the direct measurements presented here. Spectra and peak positions also are presented for H13C(O)13CH3, and then used for the first identification of ketene as a radiation product of solid acetaldehyde

Do house prices overreact to relevant information? New evidence from the UK housing market

We use recent panel data and various empirical models to investigate the validity of the irrational expectations hypothesis and the feedback theory in the UK housing market. We provide the first empirical evidence to justify the statistically significant and positive feedback causality effect between the changes in bubbles and the contemporaneous changes in house prices. While we have found evidence to support the idea that the irrational expectation hypothesis best fits the UK housing market in the short-run, we failed to find evidence in support of the feedback theory. We observe that an increase in bubbles could cause a subsequent decrease in house prices, ceteris paribus, suggesting that people also learn from their mistakes and attempt to compromise by acting as rationally as possible. Overall, we observe that the causality effects are asymmetrical, being more significant from bubble to house price than they are from house price to bubble

Effect of double layers on magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling

The Earth's auroral zone contains dynamic processes occurring on scales from the length of an auroral zone field line which characterizes Alfven wave propagation to the scale of microscopic processes which occur over a few Debye lengths. These processes interact in a time-dependent fashion since the current carried by the Alfven waves can excite microscopic turbulence which can in turn provide dissipation of the Alfven wave energy. This review will first describe the dynamic aspects of auroral current structures with emphasis on consequences for models of microscopic turbulence. A number of models of microscopic turbulence will be introduced into a large-scale model of Alfven wave propagation to determine the effect of various models on the overall structure of auroral currents. In particular, the effects of a double layer electric field which scales with the plasma temperature and Debye length is compared with the effect of anomalous resistivity due to electrostatic ion cyclotron turbulence in which the electric field scales with the magnetic field strength. It is found that the double layer model is less diffusive than in the resistive model leading to the possibility of narrow, intense current structures