Toward a Collectivist National Defense

Most philosophers writing on the ethics of war endorse “reductivist individualism,” a view that holds both that killing in war is subject to the very same principles of ordinary morality ; and that morality concerns individuals and their rights, and does not treat collectives as having any special status. I argue that this commitment to individualism poses problems for this view in the case of national defense. More specifically, I argue that the main strategies for defending individualist approaches to national defense either fail by their own lights or yield deeply counterintuitive implications. I then offer the foundations for a collectivist approach. I argue that such an approach must do justice to the collective goods that properly constituted states make possible and protect through certain acts of defensive war; and that any such picture of national defense must make room for some form of national partiality

The Case for an Autonomy-Centred View of Physician-Assisted Death

Most people who defend physician-assisted death (PAD) endorse the Joint View, which holds that two conditions—autonomy and welfare—must be satisfied for PAD to be justified. In this paper, we defend an Autonomy Only view. We argue that the welfare condition is either otiose on the most plausible account of the autonomy condition, or else is implausibly restrictive, particularly once we account for the broad range of reasons patients cite for desiring PAD, such as “tired of life” cases. Moreover, many of the common objections to an Autonomy Only view fail once we understand the extent of the autonomy condition’s requirements—in particular, the importance of one’s values for autonomous choices. If our view is correct, then the scope of permissible PAD is broader than is currently accepted in both the philosophical literature and the law, and therefore poses an important challenge to this widely accepted view on justified PAD

The Amazing Aggregation Skills of the Red Flour Beetle

The Red Flour Beetle is a major pest of grain processing plants. They are commonly found in temperate areas, such as the southern parts of the United States. The beetles are usually reddish brown, with adults ranging about 1/8 of an inch in size. It's very common to find large numbers of Red Flour Beetles clumped together within infested grain (Baldwin and Fasulo, 2003). This dense clumping has caused speculation on whether this strange aggregation behavior is due to environmental factors or related to shared genetic traits. Scientists can look at the influence of genes on behavior by using a mathematical formula called a heritability estimate. Heritability estimates give information about how much of an impact genes have on a behavior in a certain environment (Khan Academy, 2018). Instinctive behavior is also connected to the genetic information, when best determines behavior when a species' environment varies little from generation to generation (Breed and Sanchez, 2010). This instinctive behavior theory correlated with the hypotheses, if you place Red Flour beetles with different genetic strains into an environment together then the Red Flour Beetles with similar genetic strains will aggregate together. While conducted the research which included placing different Beetles with different genetic strains into the same environment, and recording the data, the result supported the hypothesis and helped further prove the instinctive behavior that organisms possess when it comes to their genetic information. When using the graphs theory to analyze the data, the results showed that in the first day of observation, the largest percentage of interactions per group was for neither the genetic traits nor the environmental traits. However, when observing the second day the largest percentage of interactions per group was the genetic traits, helping to support the question of the different effects genetic and environmental traits have on the aggregation of Red Flour Beetles. The results seem to support the fact that genetic information is a major key in helping to create interactions between organisms of the same genetic strain, as well as bringing these interactions back to equilibrium when the population is shuffled. These finding are huge for the Animal Sciences and Industry field, by helping to prove that instincts and behavior coexist and are more significant than just an environmental change, when it comes to organisms. This research also helps to pinpoint different aggregation habits

SUPER-Screening

We present a framework for embedding scalar-tensor models of screened modifed gravity such as chameleons, symmetrons and environmental dilatons into global supersymmetry. This achieved by secluding the dark sector from both the observable and supersymmetry breaking sectors. We examine the resulting supersymmetric features in a model-independent manner and find that, when the theory follows from an underlying supergravity, the mediation of supersymmetry breaking to the dark sector induces a soft mass for the scalar of order the gravitino mass. This is enough to forbid the construction of supersymmetric symmetrons and ensures that when other screening mechanisms operate, no object in the universe is unscreened thereby precluding any observable signatures. In view of a possible origin of modifed gravity within fundamental physics, we find that no-scale models are the only ones that can circumvent these features. We also present a novel mechanism where the coupling of the scalar to two other scalars charged under U(1) can dynamically generate a small cosmological constant at late times in the form of a Fayet-Iliopoulos term.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Dynamics of Supersymmetric Chameleons

We investigate the cosmological dynamics of a class of supersymmetric chameleon models coupled to cold dark matter fermions. Supergravity corrections ensure that these models are efficiently screened in all astrophysical objects of interest, however this does not preclude the enhancement of gravity on linear cosmological scales. We analyse the background cosmology and solve the modified equations for the growth of cold dark matter density perturbations in closed form. Using this, we go on to derive the modified linear power spectrum which is characterised by two scales, the horizon size at matter-radiation equality and at the redshift when the chameleon reaches the minimum of its effective potential. The model includes a cosmological constant in the form of a Fayet-Illiopolous term, which emerges at late times due to the coupling of the chameleon to two charged scalars. We examine the conditions under which this leads to viable background cosmology and go on to analyse the deviations from the LCDM predictions in the linear regime. We find that for reasonable values in the model's parameter space there is generically a region where the model's cosmology is viable and current measurements can be reproduced. A small discrepancy of the matter power spectrum from its LCDM counterpart can be obtained in a smaller subset of the parameter space.Comment: 29 pages, five figures, updated to reflect published version. Section five has been heavily updated to include a discussion on deviations in the CDM power spectrum on large scale

Effective Leader Development Within a Church-Planting Organization for a Changing and Chaotic World

A challenge in cross-cultural church planting is developing leaders. Cross-cultural church-planting organizations like Latin American Mission (LAM; pseudonym) that lack a leadership development strategy struggle to form lasting leaders, sending missionaries with Biblical training but not leader development training. Additionally, developing leaders in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment creates specific challenges that missionaries must address. The purpose of this qualitative, Delphi method study was to investigate the leadership development perceptions and experiences among existing LAM missionaries in the regions of Latin America (Colombia, Cuba, Mexico City, Peru, Brazil, and Ecuador) to provide suggestions for improving effective leadership development within a VUCA environment. Understanding the LAM missionaries’ perceptions and experiences provided insight into best practices and strategies for developing leaders. Thus, the problem was that LAM needed to further understand the realities of their missionaries to better equip them to effectively train new church leaders for a VUCA environment. Concepts of positive leadership, vertical leadership development, cross-cultural leadership, followership, and coaching influenced this investigation. This qualitative Delphi method study proved effective in gathering collective wisdom, using consensus data from a panel of experts within a context. Using a three-round modified Delphi method, a panel of 17 participants who lived and worked as missionaries in a Latin American context with the LAM church-planting organization provided wisdom for best practices in leadership development within a VUCA context. Five themes emerged from the panel’s experience that endorsed many tenets of the conceptual framework, specifically within positive leadership, vertical leadership development, and coaching. The panel confirmed that a VUCA environment affected their experience in developing leaders. Other themes included influences vi on leader development like positive organizational climates, both the developer’s and new leader’s mindset, trusting relationships between developers and new leaders, and positive feedback. The conclusions were that missionaries desiring to develop new leaders in a VUCA world could use the key tenets of positive leadership and vertical leadership development; also, coaching was an effective development tool for a VUCA context

Integer Solutions to Optimization Problems and Modular Sequences of Nexus Numbers

In this thesis, we examine the use of integers through two ideas. As mathematics teachers, we prefer students not use calculators on assessments. In order to require this, students compute the problems by hand. We take a look at the classic Calculus I optimization box problem while restricting values to integers. In addition, sticking with the integer theme, we take a new look at the nexus numbers. Nexus numbers are extensions of the hex and rhombic dodecahedral numbers. We put these numbers into a sequence, and through a few computations of modular arithmetic, we analyze the sequences and their patterns based upon the different moduli. These patterns are specific to whether the power is even or odd. Within each power, there are other properties to this set of sequences. Depending on modulus, there are some sequences that stand out more than others