Expiratory flow limitation (EFL) can occur in mechanically ventilated patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other disorders. It leads to dynamic hyperinflation with ensuing deleterious consequences. Detecting EFL is thus clinically relevant. Easily applicable methods however lack this detection being routinely made in intensive care. Using a simple mathematical model, we propose a new method to detect EFL that does not require any intervention or modification of the ongoing therapeutic. The model consists in a monoalveolar representation of the respiratory (...) system, including a collapsible airway that is submitted to periodic changes in pressure at the airway opening: EFL provokes a sharp expiratory increase in the resistance Rc of the collapsible airway. The model parameters were identified via the Levenberg-Marquardt method by fitting simulated data on the airway pressure and the flow signals recorded in 10 mechanically ventilated patients. A sensitivity study demonstrated that only 8/11 parameters needed to be identified, the remaining three being given reasonable physiological values. Flow-volume curves built at different levels of positive expiratory pressure, PEEP, during PEEP trials (stepwise increases in positive end-expiratory pressure to optimize ventilator settings) have shown evidence of EFL in three cases. This was concordant with parameter identification (high Rc during expiration for EFL patients). We conclude from these preliminary results that our model is a potential tool for the non-invasive detection of EFL in mechanically ventilated patients. (shrink)

Patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, frequently exhibit expiratory airflow limitation. We propose a mathematical model describing the mechanical behavior of the ventilated respiratory system. This model has to simulate applied positive end-expiratory pressure effects during expiration, a process used by clinicians to improve airflow. The proposed model consists of a nonlinear two-compartment system. One of the compartments represents the collapsible airways and mimics its dynamic compression, the other represents the lung and chest wall compartment. For all clinical conditions (...) tested, the mathematical model simulates the removal of expiratory airflow limitation at PEEP lower than 70–80% of intrinsic end-expiratory pressure, i.e. the end-expiratory alveolar pressure without PEEP. It also shows the presence of an optimal PEEP. The optimal PEEP contributes to decrease PAet from 7.4 ± 0.9 to 5.4 ± 0.9 hPa. This simplistic mathematical model gives a plausible explanation of the expiratory airflow limitation removal with PEEP and a rationale to the practice of PEEP application to airflow limited patients. (shrink)

Volume 6 of this landmark edition contains 66 writings mainly from the unsettled period in Peirce’s life just after he moved from New York to Milford, Pennsylvania, followed shortly afterward by the death of his mother. The writings in this volume reveal Peirce’s powerful mind probing into diverse issues, looking for an underlying unity, but, perhaps, also looking for direction.

Explanatory notes on the philosophical positions (sidhānta) of Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Yogācāra, and Mādhyamika schools of Buddhism with Hinduism.

When faced with transgressions in their peer groups, children must navigate a series of situational cues (e.g., type of transgression, transgressor gender, transgressor intentionality) to evaluate the moral status of transgressions and to inform their subsequent behavior toward the transgressors. There is little research on which cues children prioritize when presented together, how reliance on these cues may be affected by certain biases (e.g., gender norms), or how the prioritization of these cues may change with age. To explore these questions, (...) 138 5- to 7-year-olds (younger children) and 8- to 10-year-olds (older children) evaluated a series of boy and girl characters who partook in physical or relational aggression with ambiguous or purposeful intent. Children were asked to provide sociomoral evaluations (i.e., acceptability, punishment, and intention attribution judgments) and social preferences. Transgressor gender only impacted children’s social preferences. Conversely, aggression form and transgressor intent shifted children’s sociomoral judgments: they were harsher toward physical transgressors with purposeful intent over those with ambiguous intent but made similar evaluations for relational transgressors regardless of intentionality. The present results suggest that gender is perhaps not uniformly relevant to children across all contexts, as other cues were prioritized for children’s sociomoral judgments. Since children likely have less familiarity with relational aggression compared to physical aggression, it follows that intent would only shift judgments about physical transgressors. This research provides insight about how children simultaneously navigate multiple cues in aggression contexts, which is likely reflective of their real-world experiences. (shrink)

The starting point of my study is Kant’s remark to the effect that Garve in his treatise on the connection between morality and politics presents arguments in defence of unjust principles. Recognition of these principles is, according to Kant, an inadvisable concession to those who are inclined to abuse it. I interpret this judgement by making a detailed comparison of the texts of the two treatises. I demonstrate that Garve’s work is an eclectic attempt to combine in one concept the (...) lessons of historical experience with the ideas drawn from British empiricism and German rationalism. These ideas were criticised by Kant in his “critical” period. There is a consensus among researchers that Garve condoned the expansionist policy of Frederick II of Prussia, totally denied that legality in international relations was possible and in general deserved the reputation of an conservative. From that point of view the key values for Garve were the security and well-being of the state. I offer an alternative interpretation of Garve’s position because I believe that the value of political stability plays an important role in it. Such an interpretation makes it possible to treat Garve’s narrative as it was assessed by Kant, i.e. as a concession to the common principles of political practice as a result of a failure to find the guiding theory. My study has established that the role of Garve’s work in the writing of Kant’s treatise Toward Perpetual Peace was more significant than Kant’s own words suggest. Besides, I show that it was under Garve’s influence that Kant turned to the problem of excessive complexity of the principles involved in the search for concrete political decisions. Garve obviously laments this complexity and yet makes these principles still more complex. Kant offers a simpler solution of the problem on the basis of his theory of morals and right. (shrink)

t. 1. A-D -- t. 2. E-M -- t. 3. N-S -- t.4. T-I︠A︡.

ABSTRACT:Daniel Callahan died on July 16, 2019, just short of his 89th birthday. In the years since, we have seen the overturning of abortion rights, a concern central to his scholarship and musings about the place of religion in American civic life. Callahan’s journey from lay Catholic journalist and commentator at Commonweal to a co-founder of the Hastings Center, during his decade of doubt, is especially relevant today as America revisits established precedent governing a woman’s right to choose. His life-long (...) struggle with faith and the secularization of bioethics is a story worth telling, as it may foster dialogue across a divide between religious and laical thinkers that has fractured our political discourse. We recall Callahan’s misgivings about the marginalization of religious perspectives in public life; he sought not the denial of complexity nor of difference in views, but rather the importance of free and honest debate around deeply held beliefs, contextualized in the realities of the contemporary world. Callahan’s ambivalence about his faith remains a part of the fabric of American life, a story that Callahan chronicled to our collective benefit for over a half-century. (shrink)

"Ise monogatari" is a remarkable monument of Japanese classical literature, dated around the end of the XIX - the beginning of the tenth century. The author of this piece is not known, although the most common traditional version states that it is one of the leading poets of Heaven's years of Arrivar-Narihira. "Ise monogatari" occupies an important place in the classical hierarchy of texts - deep knowledge of it was obligatory for an educated person; in addition, this work includes a (...) review of the life of the Heianan aristocrat, and therefore has the character of "encyclopedic" self-writing culture. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to suggest a new outlook concerning the nature of Zeno’s paradoxes. The attention is directed towards the three famous paradoxes known as “Dichotomy,” “Achilles and the Tortoise,” and “The Arrow.” An analysis of the paradigmatic proposals for a solution shows that an adequate solution has not yet been reached. An answer is provided instead to the question “How Zeno’s paradoxes emerge in their quality of aporiae?,” that is to say in their quality of impasses, (...) of problem situations without an exit, what is the original meaning of the Greek word “aporia.” It is my claim that this is the correct rational approach for solving these conceptual puzzles. In other words, I am not proposing formal solutions by criticizing and/or altering their premises assuming the continuous or discrete nature of space and time, but I try to draw the philosophical attention to the way we possess the phenomenon of motion as a result of the perception of space-time in human experience. (shrink)

_A profound meditation on Leopardi’s art and thought as well as a reframing and reassertion of Negri’s own philosophical and political project of liberation._.