We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

This paper discusses racism and the liberation of racially oppressed peoples. An account of insurrectionist ethics is offered, outlining the types of moral intuitions, character traits, and methods required to garner impetus for the liberation of oppressed groups. For illustrative purposes, the core tenets of insurrectionist ethics are highlighted in the work of Angela Davis. It is argued that insurrectionist ethics and its militant posture of resistance is crucial to human liberation and social amelioration in the face of racism.

This symposium examines insurrectionist ethics, the brainchild of Leonard Harris. The position does not stem from one key source; it was born out of Harris’s philosophical interaction with various philosophers over an extended period, including thinkers as diverse as David Walker, Karl Marx, Edward Wilmot Blyden, Alain Locke, and Angela Davis. The driving questions are: What counts as justified protest? Do slaves have a moral duty to insurrect? What character traits and modes to resistance are most conducive to liberation (...) and the amelioration of oppressive material conditions? Insurrectionist ethics is meant to address such questions. This symposium attempts to locate insurrectionist ethics in the work .. (shrink)

Charles Demuth is widely recognized as one of the most significant American modernists. His precisionist cityscapes, exquisite flowers, and free-wheeling watercolors of vaudeville performers, homosexual bathhouses, and cabaret scenes hang in many of the country's most prestigious collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the Art Institute of Chicago, and in Demuth's Lancaster, Pennsylvania, family residence, now home of the Demuth Foundation. At a (...) time when many American artists remained tied to Europe, Demuth "Americanized" European modernism. This collection of 155 of his letters offers valuable views of the arts and letters colonies in Provincetown, New York, and Paris. Besides offering information on Demuth's own works, the letters also shed light on the output of his contemporaries, as well as references to their trips, liaisons, and idiosyncrasies. Demuth numbered among his correspondents some of the most famous artists and writers of his time, inluding Georgia O'Keeffe, Eugene O'Neill, John Reed, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Stieglitz, Carl Van Vechten, and William Carlos Williams. In his travels in the United States and abroad, he encountered many other talented contemporaries: Peggy Bacon, Muriel Draper, Marcel Duchamp, the Stettheimer sisters, artists and writers, patrons, and gallery owners. Whether he is offering to pick up a copy of Joyce'sUlyssesfor Eugene O'Neill or trying to convince Georgia O'Keeffe to decorate his music room, Demuth is always in the thick of art and literary life. Flamboyant in attire but descreet in his homosexuality, Demuth also reveals in his letters the life of a talented homosexual in the teens and twenties. With his best friends Robert Locher and Marsden Hartley, he circulated through the art colonies of Greenwich Village, Provincetown, and Paris, meeting everyone. The book also contains reprints of some short appraisals of Demuth and his work that were published during his lifetime, long out of print, including pieces by A. E. Gallatin, Angela E. Hagen, Marsden Hartley, Helen Henderson, Henry McBride, Carl Van Vechten, Rita Wells, and Willard Huntington Wright. Author note:Bruce Kellneris Emeritus Professor of English, Millersville University, and a member of the Demuth Foundation Board of Directors. He is the author or editor of 10 other books. (shrink)

International research, sponsored by for-profit companies, is regularly criticised as unethical on the grounds that it exploits research subjects in developing countries. Many commentators agree that exploitation occurs when the benefits of cooperative activity are unfairly distributed between the parties. To determine whether international research is exploitative we therefore need an account of fair distribution. Procedural accounts of fair bargaining have been popular solutions to this problem, but I argue that they are insufficient to protect against exploitation. I argue instead (...) that a maximin principle of fair distribution provides a more compelling normative account of fairness in relationships characterised by extreme vulnerability and inequality of bargaining potential between the parties. A global tax on international research would provide a mechanism for implementing the maximin account of fair benefits. This model has the capacity to ensure fair benefits and thereby prevent exploitation in international research. (shrink)

A perspectiva de Jacques Rancière sobre o “momento qualquer” tem sido um dos conceitos mais frutíferos para compreender a elaboração contemporânea de cenas políticas de dissenso de um ponto de vista estético. Mas o que exatamente seria um “tempo qualquer”? Como se relaciona com a criação de narrativas políticas? Este texto descreve algumas relações entre tempo e comunicação a partir da visão de Rancière acerca das temporalidades intervalares que coexistem na construção de narrativas contra-hegemônicas sobre a existência de formas de (...) vida heterogêneas. Argumenta que (1) o conceito de "momento qualquer" se refere a uma categoria política, não apenas temporal; (2) a formação de cenas de dissenso está relacionada à definição dos significados de “tempos desmedidos” em cada ocasião, pois (3) opera na liminaridade dos tempos hegemônicos que enquadram a comunicação. (shrink)

There is an alleged tension between undue inducement and exploitation in research trials. This paper considers claims that increasing the benefits to research subjects enrolled in international, externally-sponsored clinical trials should be avoided on the grounds that it may result in the undue inducement of research subjects. This article contributes to the debate about exploitation versus undue inducement by introducing an analysis of the available empirical research into research participants' motivations and the influence of payments on research subjects' behaviour and (...) risk assessment. Admittedly, the available research in this field is limited, but the research that has been conducted suggests that financial rewards do not distort research subjects' behaviour or blind them to the risks involved with research. Therefore, I conclude that research sponsors should prioritise the prevention of exploitation in international research by providing greater benefits to research participants. (edited). (shrink)

In 2004 Emanuel et al. published an influential account of exploitation in international research, which has become known as the 'fair benefits account'. In this paper I argue that the thin definition of fairness presented by Emanuel et al, and subsequently endorsed by Gbadegesin and Wendler, does not provide a notion of fairness that is adequately robust to support a fair benefits account of exploitation. The authors present a procedural notion of fairness – the fair distribution of the benefits of (...) research is to be determined on a case-by-case basis by the parties involved in each study. The fairness of the distribution of benefits is not assessed against an independent normative standard. Emanuel et al.'s account of fairness provides a framework for objecting only to transactions that occur without the fully informed consent of the weaker party. As a result, a debate about exploitation collapses into a debate about consent. This is problematic because, as the proponents of the fair benefits framework acknowledge, neither the trial participants' consent nor the host community's consent preclude exploitation. Attempts to stipulate normative standards of fairness to protect research subjects in developing countries have been controversial and divisive, and it is therefore understandable that bioethicists would be tempted to develop accounts of exploitation that are independent of such prescriptive principles. I conclude, however, that the utility of the fair benefits model of exploitation as a policy tool will ultimately depend on whether a substantive principle of fairness can be developed to underpin it. (shrink)

Social capital has as its key element the value of social relationships to generate positive outcomes, both for the key parties involved and for wider society. Some authors have noted that social capital nevertheless has a dark side. There is a moral element to such a conceptualisation, yet there is scarce discussion of ethics within the social capital literature. In this paper ethical theory is applied to four traditions or approaches to economic social capital: neo-capitalism; network/reputation; neo-Tocquevellian; and development. Each (...) is considered in detail and subject to ethical analysis by the application of utilitarianism, Kantianism, justice and rights, and ethic of care. Accordingly, the assumption that social capital is either value-neutral or a force for good is critiqued, and a framework for understanding social capital from an ethics perspective is presented. (shrink)

The question which this paper examines is that of the correct scope of the claim that extra-linguistic factors (such as gender and social status) can block the proper workings of natural language. The claim that this is possible has been put forward under the apt label of silencing in the context of Austinian speech act theory. The ‘silencing’ label is apt insofar as when one’s ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is ‘blocked’ by one’s gender or social status (...) then one might justly be said to be silenced. The notion that factors independent of any person’s linguistic competence might block her ability to exploit the inherent dynamic of language is of considerable social as well as theoretical significance. I shall defend the claim that factors independent of a person’s linguistic competence can indeed block her ability to do things with words but I will show that the cases that have been previously considered to be cases of illocutionary failure are instances of rhetic or locutionary act failure instead. I shall refine the silencing claim as previously advanced in the debate in at least one fundamental respect. I also show that considering the metaphysics of speech acts clarifies many of the issues previously appearing as thorny bones of contention between those who hold that the only notion of silencing that is coherent is that of physically preventing someone from speaking or writing and those who hold the opposite sort of claim sketched above. (shrink)

El bioderecho es un neologismo que trata las reglas jurídicas de comportamiento en el contexto de cuestiones bioéticas; se ocupa también del hombre, su dignidad, vida e identidad. El presente estudio descriptivo busca atribuir significado al concepto de dignidad en dos modelos de bioderecho, que develan el estatuto jurídico reconocido por estos a los adultos mayores. Se aplica el método de análisis elaborado por Laura Palazzani. Los resultados evidencian diferencias en el contenido del concepto de dignidad y, por ende, en (...) el estatuto jurídico reconocido a las personas mayores. (shrink)

The chorus of doubts concerning the continued viability of the Western liberal tradition itself, in both ideational and institutional aspects, has grown much louder over the past several years. Can this tradition be said to be in a time of twilight – that time that falls? It is this question that would be explored in this paper. While searching the confirmation of the position, indicated in the title of the paper, author turns to contemporary ideological sources of Western liberalism. Such (...) concepts as capitalism, socialism, justice, democracy are considered in this context based on the works of two thinkers, John Rawls and Fred Dallmayr. By stressing ideal justice and ignoring concrete injustice, Rawls’ ideas seem strange even apart from the present crisis. The subsequent evolution of his thoughts is estimated by the author as the transition from daylight to twilight. It has manifested in Rawls’ refusal to apply his principles of justice to the international arena, his condescending attitude toward underdeveloped countries. The atmosphere of The Law of Peoples is still redolent of the assumption of American hegemony. The author wishes to extract from Dallmayr’s book for present purposes is above all his commitment to a version of socialism. But what neither Dallmayr nor Rawls and other liberal thinkers will gainsay is that central to the twilight zone in which we are wandering is the heavy hand of global capitalism. The next problem is that the modern liberal democratic theory has always professed to make the assumption of equality, but it has never fully embraced it. The most important conceptual element in accounting for this failure is the notion of majority rule. The author mentions three difficulties with the idea of majority rule: the problem of time and the problem of the identity of the human units who compose the majority, and the problem of information. He analyzes the recent political evolutions of both the United Kingdom and the United States, and France as well, which have certainly given Western liberalism a badname in many quarters. (shrink)

Ten years ago, I stopped work as a junior doctor at a provincial New Zealand hospital and enrolled in a creative writing degree. I finished on a night shift—quiet, but marred by a particularly upsetting case of domestic violence. I remember getting changed at the end of the night into my own clothes, stuffing the scrubs I’d been wearing into the laundry bag that hung outside the doctor’s lounge, and leaving the hospital to pack for the move to a new (...) city. It was a strange way to finish, on a Sunday morning, without the colleagues in the Woman, Child and Family service with whom I’d spent so much time.For the next year, instead of ward rounds, night shifts, and on-call, I read, wrote poetry, and trekked up the hill.. (shrink)

Il brano del "Fedro" (269el-270c5) in cui è menzionato Ippocrate e il suo metodo è uno dei più controversi dell'opera platonica. Alcuni studiosi si sono serviti degli scolî antichi al dialogo, tramandati sotto il nome del neoplatonico Ermia (V sec. d. C.), per sostenere che il metodo in questione non implica un'indagine preliminare dell'universo. È tuttavia utile (oltreché finora intentato) ripercorrere quanto l'esegeta neoplatonico dice a proposito dell'intero brano in questione per constatare come egli, al contrario, ne fornisca un'interpretazione cosmologica, (...) sulla base della significazione tecnica di ἡ ὅλη ψυχή come "anima dell'universo". In ogni caso l'esegesi di Ermia risulta essere non una semplice parafrasi grammaticale del testo platonico, ma anche una sua riformulazione filosofica nei termini della dottrina neoplatonica, la quale è estremamente complessa anche nel caso dell'anima umana. (shrink)

This article discusses the hypothesis of a recovery of the phenomenological and literary paradigms of antiquity to cross the complexity of the existential, educational and relational experience in the digital contemporary world, focusing on the problems of the construction of identity and digital citizenship in social coexistence intended as a place of education.

This paper uses the advent of human-animal hybrids, created though somatic cell nuclear transfer experiments in America and Australia, as a tool to deconstruct and challenge the dualistic belief that humans are morally distinct and superior to animals. The view that moral value corresponds to species membership creates a scientific and cultural environment that prohibits or restricts human embryo experimentation whilst permitting the extensive use of animals for research. The dualistic premise therefore motivates the creation of human-animal hybrids for research (...) as a way for scientists to side-step restrictive legislation. Furthermore, ethical frameworks that incorporate the dualistic assumption have been incapable of objectively assessing the moral value of hybrid embryos. This failure indicates the arbitrariness of the moral dichotomy between animals and humans. Moral dualism, based on species membership, should be replaced with a liberal ethical framework based on a consistent standard such as interests. (shrink)

The verses have constituted a living document upon which our various forebears, seeking to discover and revitalize for themselves identities in the world, have left behind a succession of exegetical imprints.

We previously reported a high level of information on the Austrian organ donation law in medical and non-medical students, patients and ICU nurses, whereby ICU nurses at University Hospital in Graz (n = 185) were very well informed and also had the most critical view of the Austrian organ donation law.

The parents of Charlie Gard, who was born August 4, 2016, with an exceedingly rare and incurable disease called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, fought a prolonged and heated legal battle to allow him access to experimental treatment that they hoped would prolong his life and to prevent his doctors from withdrawing life-sustaining care. Charlie's clinicians at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London believed that the brain damage Charlie had suffered as a result of frequent epileptic seizures, along with many (...) other severe disabilities, would render any innovative therapy futile, and they disagreed with his parents’ wishes to use an experimental therapy. They felt it in Charlie's best interest that he be allowed to die. A battle ensued among Charlie's parents, his doctors, and a guardian who had been appointed to represent him that drew the attention of politicians and prominent persons from all over the world. The case was much in the news over the past year, but it has also been frequently misunderstood. (shrink)

In The Agrarian Vision , Thompson argues that a better appreciation of agrarian ideals could lead to a more virtuous, more sustainable way of life. While I agree with Thompson in many respects, there are some aspects of the book that I question and others that I would like to hear Thompson explicate in greater detail. In this paper, I question Thompson’s claim that agrarian farmers and farming communities serve as ideal models of virtuous habits and good character. I challenge (...) Thompson’s use of virtue theory, particularly the notion that farming virtues can be acquired without participating in farming practices. In the end, I make the point that Thompson seems to vacillate between being realistic and being idealistic, which may seriously complicate our notions of responsibility and obligation in practice. (shrink)

This book proposes a new interpretative key for reading and overcoming the binary of idealism and realism. It explores the way human consciousness unfolds through the relationship between the I and the world-a field of phenomenological investigation that cannot and must not remain closed within the limits of its own disciplinary boundaries. The book focuses on the question of realism in contemporary debates, ultimately dismantling prejudices and automatisms that one finds therein. It shows that at the root of the controversy (...) between realism and idealism there often lie equivocations of a semantic nature. By returning to the origins of modern phenomenology this study mines the Husserlian concept of transcendental idealism. Following this path, and neutralizing the extreme positions of an acritical idealism and a naïve realism, the book proposes a "transcendental realism": the horizon of a dynamic unity that embraces the process of cognition and that grounds the relation, and not the subordination, of subject and object. The close reading of this reciprocity offered here allows one to surpass the limits of the domain of knowing, leading one to fundamental questions about the ultimate sense of things and their origin. (shrink)

Collective Dreams looks at ideals of community, frequently embraced as the basis for reform across the political spectrum, as the predominant form of political imagination in America today.

Članak je kritičko preispitivanje krize u vladavini zakona u kontekstu suvremene politike u SAD. Tekst navodi neke primjere američke nacionalne i vanjske politike u svezi s tzv. ‘kultom demokracije’. Članak je podijeljen na dva dijela. Prvi se dio bavi izvješćem, koje se bavi, redom, službenim odnosima SAD prema međunarodnom zakonodavstvu; zatim prema moći institucije predsjedništva; te glede uloge Vrhovnoga Suda. Drugi dio ispituje neke filozofijske implikacije američke politike, a u svezi s pitanjima demokracije i vladavine zakona.