Examines interrelated topics in Medieval and Renaissance Latin literature: the status of women as writers, the status of women as rhetorical figures, and the status of women in society from the fifth to the early seventeenth century.

Background Clinical ethics consultants are expected to “reduce disparities, discrimination, and inequities when providing consultations,” but few studies about inequities in ethics consultation exist.1 The objectives of this study were (1) to determine if there were racial or gender differences in the timing of requests for ethics consultations related to limiting treatment, and (2) if such differences were found, to identify factors associated with that difference and the role, if any, of ethics consultants in mitigating them. Methods The study was (...) a mixed methods retrospective study of consultation summaries and hospital and ethics center data on 56 age-and gender-matched Caucasian and African American Medicare patients who received ethics consultations related to issues around limiting medical treatment in the period 2011 to 2014. The average age of patients was 70.9. Results Consultation requests for females were made significantly earlier in their stays in the hospital (6.57 days) than were consultation requests made for males (16.07 days). For African American patients, the differences in admission-to-request intervals for female patients (5.93 days) and male patients (18.64 days) were greater than for Caucasian male and female patients. Differences in the timing of a consultation were not significantly correlated with the presence of an advance directive, the specialty of the attending physician, or the reasons for the consult request. Ethics consultants may have mitigated problems that developed during the lag in request times for African American males by spending more time, on average, on those consultations (316 minutes), especially more time, on average, than on consultations with Caucasian females (195 minutes). Most consultations (40 of 56) did result in movement toward limiting treatment, but no statistically significant differences were found among the groups studied in the movement toward limiting treatment. The average number of days from consult to discharge or death were strongly correlated with the intervals between admission to the hospital and request for an ethics consultation. Conclusion Our findings suggest race and gender disparities in the timing of ethics consultations that consultants may have partially mitigated. (shrink)

A real is called properly n-generic if it is n-generic but not n+1-generic. We show that every 1-generic real computes a properly 1-generic real. On the other hand, if m > n ≥ 2 then an m-generic real cannot compute a properly n-generic real.

Fraïssé studied countable structures S through analysis of the age of S i.e., the set of all finitely generated substructures of S. We investigate the effectiveness of his analysis, considering effectively presented lists of finitely generated structures and asking when such a list is the age of a computable structure. We focus particularly on the Fraïssé limit. We also show that degree spectra of relations on a sufficiently nice Fraïssé limit are always upward closed unless the relation is definable by (...) a quantifier-free formula. We give some sufficient or necessary conditions for a Fraïssé limit to be spectrally universal. As an application, we prove that the computable atomless Boolean algebra is spectrally universal. (shrink)

Dating from about the third century A.D., the Yoga Sutra distills the essence of the physical and spiritual discipline of yoga into fewer than two hundred brief aphorisms. It is the core text for any study of meditative practice, revered for centuries for its brilliant analysis of mental states and of the process by which inner liberation is achieved. Yet its difficulties are legendary, and until now, no translation has made it fully accessible. This new translation, hailed by Yoga Journal (...) for its "unsurpassed readability," is by one of the leading Sanskrit scholars of our time, whose Bhagavad Gita has become a recognized classic. It includes an introduction to the philosophy and psychology underlying the Yoga Sutra, the full text with explanatory commentary, and a glossary of key terms in Sanskrit and English. (shrink)

This paper reports on the experiences of creative practice graduate researchers and academic staff as they seek to comply with the requirements of the Australian National Statement on the Ethical Conduct of Research Involving Humans. The research was conducted over a two-year period (2015 to 2017) as part of a wider project ‘iDARE – Developing New Approaches to Ethics and Research Integrity Training through Challenges Presented by Creative Practice Research’. The research identified the appreciation of ethics that the participants acquired (...) through their experience of institutional research ethics procedures at their university. It also revealed a disjunction between the concepts of ethics acquired through meeting institutional research ethics requirements, the notion of ethics that many researchers adopt in their own professional creative practice and the contents of professional codes of conduct. A key finding of the research was that to prepare creative practice graduates for ethical decision-making in their professional lives, research ethics training in universities should be broadened to encompass a variety of contexts and enable researchers to develop skills in ethical know-how. (shrink)

Indexicality, the ability of language to evoke the context in which it usually occurs, is a concept commonly drawn upon in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. This article applies the framework of orders of indexicality to political discourse about a controversial topic in Pittsburgh, United States, the construction of bike lanes. A concordance analysis of the term bike lanes in news media, blogs and online news comments helps to explain the variation in the indexical meanings of bike lanes between those who (...) oppose and those who support bike lanes. We argue that the orders of indexicality approach helps explain how groups with different interests can reinforce or challenge the possible discursive associations of a loaded political term. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 65-66.

Essays in Memory of Richard Helgerson: Laureations brings together new essays by leading literary scholars of the British and European middle ages and early modern period who have been influenced by the groundbreaking scholarship of Richard Helgerson. The contributors evince the ongoing impact of Helgerson's work in critical debates including those of nationalism, formal analysis, and literary careerism.

A novel Protocol Ethics Tool Kit (‘Ethics Tool Kit’) has been developed by a multi-stakeholder group of the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women9s Hospital and Harvard. The purpose of the Ethics Tool Kit is to facilitate effective recognition, consideration and deliberation of critical ethical issues in clinical trial protocols. The Ethics Tool Kit may be used by investigators and sponsors to develop a dedicated Ethics Section within a protocol to improve the consistency and transparency between clinical trial (...) protocols and research ethics committee reviews. It may also streamline ethics review and may facilitate and expedite the review process by anticipating the concerns of ethics committee reviewers. Specific attention was given to issues arising in multinational settings. With the use of this Tool Kit, researchers have the opportunity to address critical research ethics issues proactively, potentially speeding the time and easing the process to final protocol approval. (shrink)

We study arithmetic and hyperarithmetic degrees of categoricity. We extend a result of E. Fokina, I. Kalimullin, and R. Miller to show that for every computable ordinal $\alpha$, $\mathbf{0}^{}$ is the degree of categoricity of some computable structure $\mathcal{A}$. We show additionally that for $\alpha$ a computable successor ordinal, every degree $2$-c.e. in and above $\mathbf{0}^{}$ is a degree of categoricity. We further prove that every degree of categoricity is hyperarithmetic and show that the index set of structures with (...) degrees of categoricity is $\Pi_{1}^{1}$-complete. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Greek Athletics and the Olympics by Alan Beale, and: Thinking the Olympics: The Classical Tradition and the Modern Games ed. by Barbara Goff, Michael SimpsonJacques A. BrombergAlan Beale. Greek Athletics and the Olympics. Greece & Rome: Texts and Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. iv + 196 pp. Numerous color figs. Paper, $26.Barbara Goff and Michael Simpson, eds. Thinking the Olympics: The Classical Tradition and the (...) Modern Games. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011. xi + 227 pp. 23 black-and-white figs. Paper, $40.The quadrennial cycle of modern Olympiads has always assured a steady interest in the history of ancient athletics, as participants of all kinds (athletes, officials, and spectators alike) are reminded of the Games’ debts to the ancient Greeks. With the proliferation of undergraduate courses in Classical athletics, sports, and festivals in recent years, however, a growing number of undergraduates are also getting their first glimpses of Greco-Roman antiquity through the stadium door and quickly discovering how different the modern Olympics are from the ancient. The persistent conservatism of the modern Olympics thus presents instructors of undergraduate surveys with the challenge of introducing the festival to an audience that has come to accept the modern as a continuation of the ancient. In two popular histories of the Olympics, for instance, both published in 2004, one may contrast Nigel Spivey’s (The Ancient Olympics [Oxford 2004]: xix) proposed “journey to the strangeness” of Olympia with David Young’s claim (A Brief History of the Olympic Games [Malden, Mass. 2004]: 140) that “our Olympic Games are not so much a revival of the ancient Greek games as a genuine continuation of them.” Although intended for different audiences, the titles under review share the goal of de-familiarizing the Olympics both by emphasizing differences between ancient and modern athletics and by illuminating how an idealized, ancient Greek model has been used to establish and perpetuate the modern Games.There is no shortage of sourcebooks and histories of ancient athletics: Steven G. Miller, Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources (Berkeley, Calif. 2004); Rachel Sargent Robinson, Sources for the History of Greek Athletics (Chicago, Ill. 1955); Waldo E. Sweet, Sport and Recreation in Ancient Greece: A Sourcebook with Translations (Oxford 1987); and William Blake Tyrell, The Smell of Sweat: Greek Athletics, Olympics, and Culture (Wauconda, Ill. 2004), who includes on a companion CD a wider assortment of sources than any printed edition. In keeping with the goals of Cambridge’s Greece and Rome: Texts and Contexts series, Alan Beale’s Greek Athletics and the Olympics offers a combination of texts and illustrations. One need only consider the nature of the evidence to understand [End Page 703] why this approach is not simply valuable, but obligatory: the literary sources are often fragmentary, belated, or anecdotal (or all three), and the material evidence requires detailed and careful exegesis. The challenge of the evidence is compounded by the instinct to read into the modern Olympics continuity rather than innovation. Beale sets out to overcome the “superficial similarities” and re-mystify ancient athletics as something “substantially different from anything in the modern world” (1). In his brief introductions to each source or object, Beale provides the cultural framework into which students may situate texts and images, and he offers questions (many contrasting ancient with modern) aimed at stirring curiosity and facilitating discussion.The opening chapters treat athletics in the Bronze Age and the Homeric epics (chap. 1), outline the ritual origins and growth of competitive athletics at Olympia (chap. 2), and trace the development of the sanctuary and the festival site (chap. 3). Beale is cautious with the examples of Minoan and Mycenaean art (9–12) and quotes generously from both the Iliad (13–19) and Odyssey (19–22), allowing room to observe discrepancies with later athletic practice. Like Robinson (34–35), he supplements Pausanias and Strabo on the first competitions at Olympia with a sample from Pindar, Olympian 10.24–77 (25–26), and instructors who wish to discuss this early history will not find better treatments of these passages elsewhere. Chapter 3 presents the site at Olympia and the administration of the festival, and Beale is to be commended for his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophy of the Yogasūtra: An Introduction. Series: Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies by Karen O’Brien-KopChristopher Key Chapple (bio)The Philosophy of the Yogasūtra: An Introduction. Series: Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies. By Karen O’Brien-Kop. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. Pp. xii + 186, Paper $22.95, ISBN 978-135-02-8616-0.This concise book summarizes key parts of the speculative content of Patañjali’s Yogasūtra, leaning heavily on Gerald Larson’s translation of the commentary attributed (...) to Vyāsa. True to its title, this book emphasizes the philosophical arguments regarding ontology and the origins of things. It explains the firm distinction made in Sāṃkhya and Yoga between an unchanging consciousness or Self (ātman/puruṣa) and an ever-changing realm of actions (karma) and substances (dravya) emanating from primordial matter (prakṛti) and expressed through her three modes (guṇa-s) of heaviness (tamas), passion (rajas), and lightness (sattva). This perspective differs radically from other Indian systems as well as from ancient Greek thought and the European Enlightenment tradition that gave way to analytical and continental philosophy.Sāṃkhya and Yoga proclaim that all manifestation arises from a pre-existent cause (sat-kārya-vāda). This position distinguishes these schools from Buddhism, which proclaims the constant rise and fall of constituents of reality (dharma-s), and the various schools of Vedānta, which aver toward a unified view of reality that tends to dismiss the realm of change as ultimately insignificant or even unreal. O’Brien-Kop deftly summarizes various debates on causation. The book mentions the theological nuance that the inclusion of the existence of Īśvara brings to the Yoga table. However, these explorations are more in the realm of theory than practice. For instance, the book neglects the important reference to one’s chosen deity (iṣṭa-devatā, II:44) and leaves unexplored some decidedly theological, religious and devotional implications of the Yogasūtra.The author could have been more careful in explicating Jainism. Statements such as “all forms of action are morally dubious” and that “only death can bring liberation” (p. 60) repeat tropes often heard about Jain thought that echo Hindu and Buddhist critiques. This position overlooks the nuances contained in Umasvati’s Tattvārthasūtra that delineate the Jain 14-fold progression of ascent (guṇasthāna-s) wherein an individual attains a state of freedom while living in the human body at the 13th stage.This book sets the stage for further research into under-explored areas of the Yogasūtra. The rich celebration of the efficacy of ethical comportment in [End Page 1] the second chapter, though competently summarized in O’Brien-Kop’s chapter seven, calls out for further explication. The details regarding the body and the subtle body found in the third chapter of the Yogasūtra receive scant attention. One would hope that in future works the author will engage interlocutors such as Merleau-Ponty and Luce Irigaray on breath and embodiment. O’Brien-Kop’s chapter nine, “The Aesthetics of Freedom” calls into focus the centrality of the enlightenment process through which Buddhi, the bridge between conscious awareness and the material real, reverts increasingly toward sattva, the most refined and hence most liberating state of being. Brief mention is made here of the body’s perfectibility (p. 148). The discussion of metaphor at the end of the chapter invites a more extended conversation about light, jewels, and steadiness. This book advances conversations long in process about the nature and purpose of Yoga. The Yogasūtra was rediscovered in the 19th century and popularized by Swami Vivekananda, whose book Raja Yoga introduced the Yoga tradition to millions worldwide. Scholars such as Dasgupta, Eliade, Feuerstein, Larson, Barbara Stoler Miller, Rukmini, Whicher, Bryant and many others have helped bring rigor to the study of this important text, complementing the many popular translations by Swamis and teachers of modern postural Yoga.The book includes discussion questions at the end of each of the chapters. It is written in a manner accessible to undergraduate students of philosophy. O’Brien-Kop reminds us that the philosophical rigor of the... (shrink)

Understanding what numbers are means knowing several things. It means knowing how counting relates to numbers (called the cardinal principle or cardinality); it means knowing that each number is generated by adding one to the previous number (called the successor function or succession), and it means knowing that all and only sets whose members can be placed in one-to-one correspondence have the same number of items (called exact equality or equinumerosity). A previous study (Sarnecka & Carey, 2008) linked children's understanding (...) of cardinality to their understanding of succession for the numbers five and six. This study investigates the link between cardinality and equinumerosity for these numbers, finding that children either understand both cardinality and equinumerosity or they understand neither. This suggests that cardinality and equinumerosity (along with succession) are interrelated facets of the concepts five and six, the acquisition of which is an important conceptual achievement of early childhood. (shrink)

A one-of-a-kind reference to the international vocabulary of the humanities This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy—or any—translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that (...) influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages—English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas. Covers close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms that defy easy translation between languages and cultures Includes terms from more than a dozen languages Entries written by more than 150 distinguished thinkers Available in English for the first time, with new contributions by Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more Contains extensive cross-references and bibliographies An invaluable resource for students and scholars across the humanities. (shrink)

The prototypes of definiteness and indefiniteness in English are the definite article the and the indefinite article a/an, and singular noun phrases (NPs)1 determined by them. That being the case it is not to be predicted that the concepts, whatever their content, will extend satisfactorily to other determiners or NP types. However it has become standard to extend these notions. Of the two categories definites have received rather more attention, and more than one researcher has characterized the category of definite (...) NPs by enumerating NP types. Westerståhl (1985), who is concerned only with determiners in the paper cited, gives a very short list: demonstrative NPs, possessive NPs, and definite descriptions. Prince (1992) lists proper names and personal pronouns, as well as NPs with the, a demonstrative, or a possessive NP as determiner. She notes, in addition, that “certain quantifiers (e.g. all, every) have been argued to be definite” (Prince 1992: 299). This list, with the quantifiers added, agrees with that given by Birner & Ward (1998, 114). Ariel (1988, 1990) adds null anaphoric NPs. (shrink)

Like Spanish moss on a live oak tree, the scientific study of meaning in language has expanded in the last 100 years, and continues to expand steadily. In this essay I want to chart some central themes in that expansion, including their histories and their important figures. Our attention will be directed toward what is called 'formal semantics', which is the adaptation to natural language of analytical techniques from logic.[1] The first, background, section of the paper will survey the changing (...) attitudes of linguists toward semantics into the last third of the century. The second and third sections will examine current formal approaches to meaning. In the final section I will summarize some of the common assumptions of the approaches examined in the middle sections of the paper, sketch a few alternatives, and make some daring predictions. (shrink)