The Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality

John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital shifted the focus of current thought on capital and economic development to the cultural and conceptual ideas that underpin market economies and that are taken for granted in developed nations. This collection of essays assembles 21 philosophers, economists, and political scientists to help readers understand these exciting new theories

Structural Neuroimaging of Anorexia Nervosa: Future Directions in the Quest for Mechanisms Underlying Dynamic Alterations.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious eating disorder characterized by self-starvation and extreme weight loss. Pseudoatrophic brain changes are often readily visible in individual brain scans, and AN may be a valuable model disorder to study structural neuroplasticity. Structural magnetic resonance imaging studies have found reduced gray matter volume and cortical thinning in acutely underweight patients to normalize following successful treatment. However, some well-controlled studies have found regionally greater gray matter and persistence of structural alterations following long-term recovery. Findings from diffusion tensor imaging studies of white matter integrity and connectivity are also inconsistent. Furthermore, despite the severity of AN, the number of existing structural neuroimaging studies is still relatively low, and our knowledge of the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms for macrostructural brain changes is rudimentary. We critically review the current state of structural neuroimaging in AN and discuss the potential neurobiological basis of structural brain alterations in the disorder, highlighting impediments to progress, recent developments, and promising future directions. In particular, we argue for the utility of more standardized data collection, adopting a connectomics approach to understanding brain network architecture, employing advanced magnetic resonance imaging methods that quantify biomarkers of brain tissue microstructure, integrating data from multiple imaging modalities, strategic longitudinal observation during weight restoration, and large-scale data pooling. Our overarching objective is to motivate carefully controlled research of brain structure in eating disorders, which will ultimately help predict therapeutic response and improve treatment

Longitudinal variations, the opposition effect and monochromatic albedos for Mars

Magnitude at zero phase, phase coefficient, and monochromatic albedo computed for Mars as function of wavelengt

A Response Surface Validation of a Quantum Key Distribution Model

The need for secure communication in the presence of an adversary introduced the field of cryptology -- the practice and study of techniques for secure communication. A common method to secure communication is to distribute a secret key among authorized parties so they can encrypt and decrypt messages between each other. By doing so, ideally, any messages intercepted by a third party are meaningless. An innovative technique to distribute a shared key is Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). QKD uses laws of quantum mechanics to generate and distribute such keys. The purpose of this thesis is to validate an existing mathematical model that is abstract enough to model the essential characteristics of a wide range of QKD system designs. The current model is based on a set of coupled equations. Equation coupling is high as many output variables for a specific phase are inputs for other equations. Because of this, the model output response function is complex, motivating the use of experimentation and response surface modeling to characterize and understand the relationship between inputs and outputs. The mathematical model was designed to capture the essential details associated with a wide variety of system configurations (i.e., designs). Surfaces representing the relationships between inputs and outputs are plotted and used with subject matter experts (SME\u27s) to validate model behavior. After validation, a genetic algorithm is used to optimize the estimated surface. Our findings confirm the complexity of the model and indicate the presence of extreme outliers

Habitat conversion and global avian biodiversity loss

The magnitude of the impacts of human activities on global biodiversity has been documented at several organizational levels. However, although there have been numerous studies of the effects of local-scale changes in land use (e.g. logging) on the abundance of groups of organisms, broader continental or global-scale analyses addressing the same basic issues remain largely wanting. None the less, changing patterns of land use, associated with the appropriation of increasing proportions of net primary productivity by the human population, seem likely not simply to have reduced the diversity of life, but also to have reduced the carrying capacity of the environment in terms of the numbers of other organisms that it can sustain. Here, we estimate the size of the existing global breeding bird population, and then make a first approximation as to how much this has been modified as a consequence of land-use changes wrought by human activities. Summing numbers across different land-use classes gives a best current estimate of a global population of less than 100 billion breeding bird individuals. Applying the same methodology to estimates of original land-use distributions suggests that conservatively this may represent a loss of between a fifth and a quarter of pre-agricultural bird numbers. This loss is shared across a range of temperate and tropical land-use types

Tracking the Evolution of Stare Decisis

At the United States Supreme Court, what is old is new again. In a series of recent opinions,1 the justices have repeatedly offered differing views on how stare decisis should be positioned when tasked with justifying or rejecting existing precedent. Indeed, in three recent Supreme Court decisions the justices have wrestled with the effect of stare decisis on future decisions. Reversing a decision, according to Justice Kagan, “demand[s] a ‘special justification.’” In contrast, Justice Thomas posited that “[w]hen faced with demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it.” Chief Justice Roberts, in explaining his switch in direction from a prior dissent, concluded that “[t]he legal doctrine of stare decisis requires us, absent special circumstances, to treat like cases alike.” The result is that some precedent is retained while other precedent is discarded, which ensues the debate over whether the justices “practice what they preach.