Readers who followed the serial publication of Bleak House (March 1852--September 1853) were met with a scene both grotesque and mysterious in the tenth installment of December 1852. At that point in the novel, Guppy and Jobling are shocked to find their rooms infected by some horrible substance: thick yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil, with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder. Upon venturing downstairs to Mr. Krook's quarters, they find no sign of the man, there is a smouldering suffocating vapour in the room, and a dark greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. Even more remarkable: Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it coal? O Horror, he IS here! The dreadful scene leads to only one conclusion: Mr. Krook is dead from Combustion, and none other of all the deaths that can be died (403; ch. 32). This episode of spontaneous combustion met immediately with criticism from scientist, philosopher, and literary critic George Henry Lewes. (1) Lewes protested the impossibility of such a manner of death in an article published in The Leader, sparking a public debate with Dickens, detailed in Gordon Haight's 1968 article, and Lewes on Spontaneous Combustion. (2) Since then, other critics have joined the fray. Rarely has the significance of spontaneous combustion been in question--critics generally agree that the episode symbolizes Krook's association with the all-consuming Court of Chancery. More often at issue is whether the symbolism of Krook's death relies upon the credibility of spontaneous combustion, as Dickens's defensive response to Lewes seems to suggest. Dickens writes to Lewes that he must have assumed that knew nothing at all about the question--had no kind of sense of my responsibility--and had taken no trouble to discriminate between truth and falsehood. On the contrary, Dickens continues, I looked into a number of books with great care, expressly to learn what the truth (Letters 7: 2829). Critics have argued that Dickens's mistaken belief in the possibility of spontaneous combustion does not affect its metaphorical importance (Levine 133; Denman 140). Some have offered scientific evidence contemporary with the novel in order to justify Dickens's defense of spontaneous combustion (Wilkinson 23247; Gaskell 2635). Others have suggested that plausibility actually does matter, arguing that a grasp of the full import of Krook's death requires a suspension of disbelief (Blount 211). More recently, Daniel Hack has asserted that the symbolism of Krook's death is most meaningful when read as a contestation of science as the supreme authority of truth (146). In response to Hack's point that spontaneous combustion undermines the authority of science (even as the public debate with Lewes apparently adheres to its standards of proof ), will be arguing, rather, that Dickens subordinates empirical science to other forms of cognition. While it may seem that the debate about spontaneous combustion has been exhausted--that Dickens was simply obstinate or misinformed or both--I suggest that the question of spontaneous combustion in Bleak House is symptomatic of a larger contemporary debate that moves beyond the pages of fiction. Examining Krook's explosive death in the context of a Victorian discourse about creativity, art, science and morality, allows us to understand better what was at stake for Dickens in his exchange with Lewes, and why he had to insist science was on his side in order to make his case for the imagination. The necessity of employing both head and heart is central to Bleak House, which attempts to negotiate the symbiosis of heart and mind while answering to the objective clarity of facts that science demands in its explanations. âŠ
An analysis is made of agencification reform in the Netherlands from the viewpoint of the management of the complex change process. We will present a processual analysis of the complex change process of agencification reform by means of organization science insights on âemergent changeâ and administrative science insights on âcomplex networksâ. The analysis of the process of change events shows that it is not an example of centrally planned and controlled change. The reform is rather an example of âemergent and complex changeâ. The reform is a complex system of different intertwined change processes with many different decentralized actors, which is âmanagedâ by different central âchange agentsâ. The âchange managersâ themselves form a complex system as well. Points for practitioners One of the important reform trends in Dutch central administration is the âagencificationâ of executive government organizations, that is, the increase of managerial autonomy of executive parts of ministerial departments. In this article we analyse how this two-decades-long reform process was âmanagedâ by various central actors like Parliament, the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Home Affairs, various internal and external advisory committees and supervisory committees. It turned out that the reform can hardly be described as a centrally planned and controlled process. Initiatives for reform, in fact, popped up locally within the various ministries and agencies. The reform process was more a continuous accumulation of local initiatives for agencification. The various central actors tried to exercise some coordinating or supervisory influence, but that was rather indirect, reactive and limited.
Public Policy and Administration Research
Management and Organizational Studies
Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development
The concept of holonics manufacturing systems (with divided intelligence) is the most intelligent, autonomous, elastic, units collaborating with each other. The idea takes as a starting point the fact that the today's environmental circumstances are exceptionally unsettled; there is need for companies with the ability to respond quickly to maintain competitiveness. Holonic manufacturing systems (HMS) have been recognized as a paradigm to accommodate changes and meet customersâ requirements flexibly based on the notion of the holon, flexible and decentralized manufacturing architecture. Koestler proposed the word âholonâ to describe a basic unit of organization in biological and social systems. A holon is an autonomous, co-operative and intelligent entity able to collaborate with other holons to process tasks. Autonomy and cooperation are two important characteristics of holons. In this study, we investigated a Holonic Manufacturing Systems for dry-working machine group.
This paper attempts to trace and find evidence for the linkages between the quality of governance, and development at the local level since the adoption of the fiscal decentralization policy in the Philippines in 1991. The concern since then over the links has been prompted by the observed persistent imbalances in local development â across and within regions â which many believe is due to the less than prudent exercise of the devolved powers and responsibilities â hence, low quality of local governance. To be sure, the decentralization has led to not a few innovations in local service delivery and financing, and in increased peopleâs participation in local civic activities. However, the spread of innovation has been slow and there has been less than genuine participation in the mandated local special bodies. The uneven quality of local governance thus may have contributed to imbalanced regional growth. Evidence also indicate that the initial level of economic conditions determine the acceptable quality of local governance, which explains why certain poor areas remain in the vicious circle of penury and misgovernance. To help improve the quality of local governance, some policy inputs are suggested.
Like many developing countries, the Philippines has decentralized its public health system. Despite its supposed advantages, however, the decentralization, has not led to widespread improvements in local provision. This is partly because many local government units are found financially inadequate since the current revenue-sharing scheme does not factor in the distribution of the devolved expenditure responsibilities across LGU. Moreover, this particular flaw in the present revenue-sharing scheme has made corrective policy measures more difficult to undertake since it is no longer sufficient to compensate those LGUs originally with financing difficulties. More crucially, it has also become politically necessary to compensate those adversely affected by the corrective policy measure. If only to avoid the added cost of further adjustments, the experience of the Philippines underscores the importance of a well-designed and carefully implemented decentralization program.
A sensor network typically refers to a collection of sensor nodes equipped with sensing, communication and processing capabilities. It brings an opportunity to solve many difficult problems including real time monitoring, tracking, and controlling. While the applications of sensor networking become many and varied, security has always been one of the major concerns in real deployments. In this dissertation, we design physical primitives for secure communication in wireless sensor networks, and develop a wireless security framework to provide conventional security services. We investigate the feasibility of achieving perfect secrecy and information authenticity without shared secrets via two physical primitives: (i) cooperative jamming primitive, where we introduce a secure coding problem in which not only the sender but also the receiver participates in the coding. In essence, the receiverâs role is to selectively jam the senderâs transmission at the level of bits, bytes, or packets. We then design a class of secure codes, called âdialog codesâ, for diverse channel models and receiver models. (ii) spatial verification primitive, where we exploit the spatial signature induced by the radio communications of a node on its neighboring nodes, and design a spatial primitive that robustly and efficiently validates the authenticity of the source of messages. To address trust initialization, we propose a zero knowledge proof alternative that allows bootstrapping trust among individuals in a distributed way.
Samuel S. Lieberman, Joseph J. Capuno, HoĂ ng VÄn Minh
This paper examines decentralization experiences in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam during the last 18 years (1985-2003). The analysis suggests that decentralization dividends so far have been modest and concentrated in some areas in the country. This is partly macroeconomic and political context in which decentralization was introduced. More importantly, however, current arrangements within the health sector have not worked well as hoped, including ensuring access for the poor to quality health services. To improve the gains, a stewardship role for the MOH is suggested. In this role, the MOH would focus on critical health functions, namely: communicable disease surveillance and control; standard setting and quality assurance for devolved health services; and pharmaceuticals; ensuring access of the poor to health services; and, sustaining health financing.
As the use of Internet grows beyond all boundaries, the number of menaces rises to become subject of concern and increasing research. Against this, Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) monitor local networks to separate legitimate from dangerous behaviours. According to their capabilities and goals, NIDS are divided into misuse detection systems (which aim to detect well-known attacks) and anomaly detection systems (which aim to detect zero-day attacks). So far, no system to our knowledge combines advantages of both without any of their disadvantages. Moreover, the use of historical data for analysis or sequential adaptation is usually ignored, missing in this way the possibility of anticipating the behaviour of the target system. ESIDE-Depian, a Bayesian-networks-based misuse and anomaly detection system. In another work, we detailed the composition of the Bayesian network, its training methodology and showed general performance results. Here we have focused on evaluating the integration of misuse and anomaly detection. To this end, we have adopted Snort (a well-known misuse detector) as misuse detector trainer so the Bayesian Network of ĂŻÂŹÂve experts is able to react against both misuse and anomalies. The Bayesian experts are devoted to the analysis of different network protocol aspects and obtain the common knowledge model by means of separated Snort-driven automated learning process Since ESIDE-Depian has passed the experiments brilliantly, it is possible to conclude that ESIDE-Depian using of Bayesian Networking concepts allows to conĂŻÂŹÂrm an excellent basis for paradigm unifying Network Intrusion Detection, providing not only stable Misuse Detection but also effective Anomaly Detection capabilities, with one only ĂŻÂŹâexible knowledge representation model and a well-proofed inference and adaptation bunch of methods. On the other hand, the Bayesian approach also enables to implement powerful features over it, such as Dynamic-Bayesian-Network-based full representation of time, in order to accomplish totally-characterised connection tracking and low level chronological event correlation, or explanation tracking of the inferred cause-effect reasoning processes. Furthermore, contrary to other approaches such as Neural Networks, Bayesian networks allow administrative managing of inner information structures, so speciĂŻÂŹÂc relationships among packet detection parameters and ĂŻÂŹÂnal conclusion can be explained, in a white-box manner. Moreover, it is not only possible to recover reasoning information, but also to act on both Bayesian network
Formalist positions towards money are considered from a perspective of formal methods in computing. The Formaleuro (FEUR) as a dimension for monetary quantities is proposed as well as the Formalbitcoin (FBTC) which represents an item ready for circulation in a model of informational money. An attempt is made to understand the concept of money from scratch. In order to provide a definition of money the need is felt to make use of a tailored theory of definition. To that end a theory of imaginative definitions is presented and its implications for definitions of money are sketched. It is argued that a theory of money may be dependent on the role of its holder. A survey of some roles is given, with the so-called subordinate administrative role (SAR) in a central position. The concepts of virtual memory and virtual machine are taken as the point of departure for a definition of the notion of virtual money. It is argued that from the perspective of a component (division) of a large organization (ORG) its local financial system (LFS) provides a virtual money vm(LFS, ORG) which may well fail to meet the most common general and acknowledged moneyness criteria. Inverse moneyness preference is coined as phrase to assert the tendency of top-management of ORG to make its virtual money deviate from these criteria.
Claus Huitfeldt, Yves Marcoux, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
The type/token distinction introduced by C. S. Peirce and taken up by many others is familiar when applied to individual symbols or characters in a writing system, and also when applied at a higher level to words (and word-like objects). Some writers apply the distinction not only at some basic or foundational level but also as a description of higher levels of organization. This paper follows their example by outlining a concrete extension of the type/token distinction to all levels of document organization, specifying that higher-level types may contain sequences of lower-level types, and similarly for higher- and lower-level tokens. We further extend the usual model of types and tokens by allowing higher-level types to contain not just sequences of (lower-level) types but also sets, bags, conjunctions and disjunctions of types. This allows the system to deal gracefully both with indeterminate documents (e.g., a manuscript in which it is not clear whether a given mark on the page represents a 'c' or a 't') and with intentionally polyvalent documents, in which some marks are to be read as tokens of more than one type, as in the âambigramâ, a sort of combination puzzle and calligraphic artwork in which the shapes on the page may be read in different ways, or the same way, in different directions. This account of document structure in terms of types and tokens is similar in many ways to that offered by SGML, XML, and other systems of descriptive markup. On this view, SGML and XML elements are, strictly speaking, types (and tokens) in Peirce's sense of those words. Some techniques developed in other areas to which the type/token distinction is relevant may be useful in work on markup languages (and vice versa).
Digital Humanities and Scholarship
Mathematics, Computing, and Information Processing
The finance control pattern of the parent-subsidiary enterprise is the continual dynamical equilibrium which between the centralization and the decentralization. In this dynamic process, the essence is financial authority of the control mechanism which is fundamental match the financial non-authority of the control mechanism developing and replacing the authority control mechanism because of the bureaucratic Structure. We can understand the question about dilemma of the finance control pattern through studying the development of the finance control mechanism of the parent-subsidiary enterprise.
Based on statistics data from 1987 to 2007 in China, this paper, using spatial panel data model, has conducted an empirical study of the influence factors on finance competition of local governments to foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. The results show that tax competition and expense competition, two widely-used finance competition tools for absorbing FDI, have different promotion to FDI inflows. Expense competition is significantly positive correlated to FDI inflows, but tax competition is not significant. Furthermore, competition tool selection is correlate with time span and economic development level in China. On the one hand, judging from the time aspect, on a nation wide scale, the use of competition tools have changed from tax competition to expense competition since the 1994 fiscal decentralization reform in view of FDI inflows competition. On the other hand, judging from the regional aspect, the developed regions tend to use expense competition tool, while the underdeveloped ones remain preferential tax policy for absorbing FDI.
Thomas Elsner, Nhung T. H. Nguyen, Björn Scheuermann
WiFi sharing communities offer an attractive alternative to commercial hot-spots and cellular networks for users who seek Internet access while being away from home. The growing number of mobile devices with Internet usage capabilities has formed a basis for the establishment and growth of several such communities. However, critical security problems exist in all current WiFi sharing approaches because they employ a central operator. We show how to overcome these issues by decentralizing the community's organization structure and present radioActive WiFi, a system that implements this approach.
Endre Bangerter, Stephan Krenn, AhmadâReza Sadeghi, Thomas Schneider
Abstract. Automatic generation of cryptographic protocols is an emerging field of research which aims to bring complex protocols into practice. In this work we discuss the desired properties of a compiler for automatic generation of zeroknowledge proof of knowledge (ZKPoK) protocols. We evaluate and compare existing approaches with respect to these properties: In particular, it seems to us that the authors of the paper accepted for USENIX Security 2010 (ZKPDL: A Language-Based System for Efficient Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Electronic Cash) were not aware of our previous work done within the European project âComputer
In 2000, the first Academic Emergency Medicine consensus conference was convened. The topic, âErrors in Emergency Medicine,â was interposed between two well-known Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports of direct relevance: To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System1 (1999) and Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century2 (2001). This foreshadowed the great degree of relevance and timeliness that would characterize future consensus conferences, each of which has as its primary goal the development of a research agenda that will guide the science of the topic at hand. This year, Academic Emergency Medicine convened its 11th consensus conference, âBeyond Regionalization: Integrated Networks of Emergency Care,â in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in Phoenix, Arizona. The proceedings will appear in the December issue of this journal. In this fashion, another timely research agenda will be developed, refined, and disseminated. These consensus conferences have not occurred in a vacuum. They have, to a demonstrable degree, had their intended effect of stimulating research. This monthâs issue of the journal is the first to be devoted primarily to dissemination of research and concepts that have grown from prior consensus conferences. There is every reason to believe that a new and useful tradition has been established. The topics of the prior AEM consensus conferences have been: 2000: Errors in Emergency Medicine 2001: The Unraveling Safety Net 2002: Assuring Quality 2003: Disparities in Emergency Care 2004: Emergency Medicine Information Technology 2005: Ethical Conduct of Resuscitation Research 2006: The Science of Surge 2007: Knowledge Translation in Emergency Medicine: Establishing a Research Agenda and Guide Map for Evidence Uptake 2008: The Science of Simulation in Health Care: Defining and Developing Clinical Expertise 2009: Public Health in the Emergency Department: Surveillance, Screening, and Intervention 2010: Beyond Regionalization: Integrated Networks of Emergency Care A number of the consensus conferences have received significant financial support from Canadian, American federal, other public, and various private sources. Focusing on the conferences of 2007, 2008, and 2009 is illustrative. The 2007 conference received financial support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and among the featured speakers who took time from their busy schedules to join us in Chicago was Carolyn Clancy, the director of the AHRQ since 2003. Support also came from the National Center for Research Resources, an organization promoting the Clinical and Translational Science Awards program within the United States National Institutes of Health, and the Knowledge Translation Workshops and Symposia Grant Program of the Canadian Institutes of Health.3 The 2008 conference received primary financial support from AHRQ, the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, MedEdPORTAL (an electronic publication of the American Association of Medical Colleges), and the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions. Over 30 other medical organizations and academic departments nationwide provided smaller degrees of support. In addition, unrestricted educational grants were received from major manufacturers of medical simulator hardware and software.4 The 2009 conference was primarily supported by a grant from AHRQ and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health, with secondary support from the National Institute of Mental Health; the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA); âJoin Togetherâ of the Boston University School of Public Health; and the Departments of Emergency Medicine of Boston University, Brown University, Emory University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, and Yale University. This conference featured participation from Dr. Richard Denisco from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Ralph Hingson from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Dr. Amy Goldstein from the National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. James Heffelfinger from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Richard Saitz from Boston University, and Dr. Jack Stein, director of SAMHSAâs Center for Substance Abuse Treatment.5 Given the significant and continuing financial support of the agencies and foundations that have supported our consensus conferences, it seems prudent to provide them with proof that their efforts have been followed by meaningful responses to the numerous calls for research contained within the consensus conference summary statements and proceedings. In other words, this issue of our journal can be thought of as the first installment of a series of âitemized receiptsâ that will document how the financial support provided to enable the consensus conferences has been worthwhile. The first several consensus conferences did not enjoy such external financial support, but as the size and scope of the sessions grew, so did the need for funding. Our journal will continue to present these annual consensus conferences into the foreseeable future, and they will require the expenditure of significant resources of time and finances. To be able to document, from the pages of our own journal, that prior consensus conferences have had the desired effect of stimulating relevant research may increase the likelihood that the organizers of future conferences can continue to achieve similar external financial support. Looking forward, it is hoped that an even greater number of research efforts will be inspired by our consensus conferences and that much of that research will appear in our journal. It must be noted that not all of this monthâs articles were submitted by authors who had the express intent that they appear in this special consensus conference follow-up issue. The Associate Editors and Senior Associate Editors, as well as Kathleen Seal, our Technical Editor, have referred a number of manuscripts submitted to the journal, but not submitted specifically for appearance in this issue, to the attention of the consensus conference guest editors group. In other words, our work group had to âprime the pumpâ somewhat. It is hoped that this will not be necessary in the future and that a greater number of manuscripts will be submitted with the goal that they appear in the consensus conference follow-up proceedings. A suggestion going forward relates to the probability that the research agendas set forth at a given consensus conference may eventually become âdated.â Toward that end, it is possible that future consensus conference follow-up issues might only accept manuscripts inspired by consensus conferences of the past 3 to 5 years. This issue contains a total of 15 manuscripts, with the following representation: 2002: one manuscript 2003: two manuscripts 2004: two manuscripts 2005: zero manuscripts 2006: two manuscripts 2007: three manuscripts 2008: one manuscripts 2009: four manuscripts I would be remiss not to thank several people without whom this edition of the journal would not have been possible. The Guest Assistant Editors, who functioned most capably as decision editors, included Gail DâOnofrio, Nicole Deiorio, Lynne Richardson, and Terri Schmidt. I am indebted to them for their efforts. It would be misleading to state that this process evolved exactly as first envisioned, and I must also thank these Guest Assistant Editors for their patience with the evolving processes. David Cone gave me the opportunity to more truly understand the extreme degree of knowledge and organization he brings to his role as Editor-in-Chief. Finally, but most importantly, I thank Kathleen Seal for her most capable guidance and patience. I have learned to an even greater degree than before what a valuable resource she is to our journal.
Quine (1966) offered his classic characterization of the notion of paradox, a taxonomy for paradoxical arguments and some vocabulary for discussing them. In this article, I shall generalize Quineâs taxonomy and defend a simpler characterization. The simpler characterization will have the virtue or the flaw (as might be) of making paradox a matter of degree. For Quine, a paradox is an apparently successful argument having as its conclusion a statement or proposition that seems obviously false or absurd. That conclusion he calls âthe proposition ofâ the paradox in question. What is paradoxical is of course that, if the argument is indeed successful as it seems to be, its conclusion must be true. On this view, to resolve the paradox is (i) to show either that (and why) despite appearances the conclusion is true after all, or that the argument is fallacious, and (ii) if the former, to explain away the deceptive appearances. Quine divides paradoxes into three groups. A âveridicalâ paradox is one whose âpropositionâ or conclusion is in fact true despite its air of absurdity. We decide that a paradox is veridical when we look carefully at the argument and it convinces us, i.e. it manages to show us how it is that the conclusion is true after all and appearances to the contrary were misleading. Quineâs two main examples of this are the puzzle of Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance (who has reached the age of 21 after passing only five birthdays) and the Barber Paradox, which Quine considers simply a sound proof that there can be no such barber as is described.1 A âfalsidicalâ paradox is one whose âpropositionâ or conclusion is indeed obviously false or self-contradictory, but which contains a fallacy that is detectably responsible for delivering the absurd conclusion. We decide that a paradox is falsidical when we look carefully at the argument and spot the fallacy. Quineâs leading example here is De Morganâs trick argument for the proposition that 2 = 1.2 Oddly, Quine does not mention a third related category, the obverse of a veridical paradox: the argument in question could have an obviously false or self-contradictory conclusion, yet rest on no error of reasoning however subtle â so long as it has a premiss that looks for all the world true until we let the argument itself show us that, and how, the premiss is false after all. For example, the Barber is classified as veridical because its conclusion is the truth that there is no barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves; but turn it on its head, so that its conclusion is rather the absurdity that there is a barber who both does and does not shave her-/himself. There is still no fallacy, but only the innocent-seeming premiss that there is a barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves.3 We might call this sort of paradox, for want of better, âpremiss-flawed.â Finally (returning to Quine), an âantinomyâ is an intractable paradox, one that we cannot see how to resolve in either of the foregoing two ways: the argument does not succeed in convincing us that its conclusion is true-despite-appearances (often because the conclusion is overtly contradictory or otherwise incoherent, yet we can find no fallacious move in the argument; nor is there a premiss that is shown false-despite-appearances. Antinomies, Quine says, âbring on the crises in thoughtâ (5); they show the need of drastic revision in our customary ways of looking at things. My main problem with Quineâs taxonomy is its heavy dependence on the current state of oneâs knowledge and on oneâs ability to figure things out. Let me explain. All a valid deductive argument shows, just in virtue of its validity, is that a certain set of propositions is internally inconsistent. If all we know about an argument is that it is valid, we do not thereby have even the slightest reason to believe that the conclusion C is true, even though doubtless the person who constructed the argument was reasoning, from P1, P2, ⊠taken as premisses, to C. For unless we are independently moved to accept those premisses, their jointly implying C is of little interest; and even if we do already accept them, seeing that they imply C may make us reconsider one or more of them, rather than inclining us any the more strongly to endorse C as well.4 In this sense, an argument has no intrinsic direction; its direction has been imparted to it rhetorically by a speaker who has recruited it for a particular dialectical purpose. Intrinsically, the argument is just the inconsistent set {P1, P2, âŠ, âŒC}. The relevance of that (I hope uncontroversial) point for Quine is that, faced with an apparently inconsistent set of plausible statements, anyone may choose which of the statementsâ denials to single out as âthe propositionâ or âconclusionâ of the corresponding paradoxical argument, either arbitrarily or on a ground of some sort. (Remember that a paradox in Quineâs sense has an already appalling conclusion, so there is not initially any epistemic reason, as opposed to expository reasons, why the conclusion appears as such rather than being negated and taken as a premiss.) And given a paradoxical argument, two theorists might well disagree on whether the paradox is veridical, because they may disagree as to which component propositions are more plausible than which; in particular, one theorist may find the argument veridical while the other finds the âconclusionââs denial more plausible than one of the âpremissesâ. In Quineâs examples of veridical and falsidical arguments, the comparison of plausibility is sufficiently obvious and uncontroversial that in fact no one would dispute his judgements about them. But we should bear in mind that that is because we all think roughly alike on issues of Leap Year and birthdays and barbers and arithmetic; a person who for whatever reason had different background beliefs and very different interests might resist Quineâs judgements. In short, to classify a paradox as veridical is to assume that oneâs own preferred way of resolving the paradox is the correct way. More generally, then, a Paradox (I mark my own proposed usage with the capital letter) is an inconsistent set of propositions, each of which is very plausible.5 And to resolve a Paradox is to decide on some principled grounds which of the propositions to abandon. One might then think of saying that when that decision is comparatively easy, we could call the Paradox either veridical or falsidical, depending on which of the component propositions have been designated as âpremissesâ and which has been denied by way of âconclusionâ, though when the choice of culprit is difficult or controversial, we call the Paradox an antinomy, as Quine does. But that translation of Quineâs terminology into mine would not be accurate, for in regard to my notion of Paradox, Quineâs âveridicalâ and âfalsidicalâ are not natural opposites. A Paradox would count as veridical in the proposed new sense just in case (a) one of its members turns out to be clearly less plausible than the others, and (b) the Paradox is already (for whatever reason) cast in the form of a deductive argument having the culpritâs denial as its conclusion. But there would be no such thing as a falsidical Paradox, for a falsidical argument in Quineâs sense is fallacious, and the apparent inconsistency corresponding to it is not real. In my terms, then, a falsidical paradox in Quineâs sense is only an apparent Paradox.6 But on my view the âveridicalâ/âfalsidicalâ distinction really loses its point. Rather, there are inconsistent sets containing identifiable culprits â call those âtractableâ Paradoxes â and there are the antinomies. It is better just to drop Quineâs terms. There is a further complication. I have defined âParadoxâ in terms of actual inconsistency, namely, as a set of propositions that is in fact inconsistent. But (a) a set can be inconsistent without anyoneâs knowing that it is or even being able to know that it is; and more importantly, (b) we may have reason to think that a set is inconsistent when actually it is not. Case (b), Quineâs falsidical again, is not uncommon; we have some plausible premisses and we use what seems to be a sound principle of reasoning to deduce our absurdity, but in fact the absurdity does not follow and the fault is in the principle of reasoning rather than in any of the premisses. (De Morgan divides through by a number that is covertly equal to 0; elsewhere (Lycan 1993, 2001) I have argued that when one is reasoning in English rather than in a truth-functional calculus, reliance on the rule Modus Ponens can lead from perfectly acceptable premisses to contradictory conclusions and so must be rejected.) Now, to circumvent this complication and keep the terminology neat, let us dispense with every even faintly dubious principle of reasoning. That is, let us require that for a Paradox to be worthy of its capital âPâ, it must be formulated truth-functionally, with every initially non-truth-functional principle of reasoning replaced by that principleâs corresponding material conditional inserted as a member of the inconsistent set that constitutes the Paradox in question; thus we shall make every possibly controversial inference principle explicit. And, owing to the semantical completeness of the propositional calculus, any Paradox is provably as well as model-theoretically inconsistent.7 It must be conceded that, in at least three ways, even the propositional calculus is âcontroversialâ. First, there is the question of relevant implication. Relevance logicians8 brand the truth-functional calculus as libertine, charging that some of the inferences it sanctions (notably Disjunctive Syllogism) introduce informational irrelevancies and are therefore not ones that English speakers would or should make. But however we feel about this as a complaint against the analysis of English or any other natural language in truth-functional terms, it does not apply to my idea of reconstructing paradoxes into Paradoxes; I am here using the propositional calculus and its libertine notion of validity only as a tool for strict truth-preservation in inferential moves between propositions that are already formulated in the truth-functional idiom. Disjunctive Syllogism may not be a valid principle in the logic of English (any more than are Antecedent-Strengthening and Modus Ponens), but it is valid trivially and by definition for the tilde and the vel. Second, paraconsistent systems have been offered as rivals to standard contradiction-shunning logic,9 and in particular dialetheists led by Graham Priest (1987, 1995) have maintained that there are actually true contradictions. Indeed, Priest cites some familiar paradoxes as examples; there is nothing to âresolve,â because the contradictions simply are true. But this view is no opponent of my characterization of a Paradox. It merely takes a refreshing attitude toward Paradoxes once they are identified. Third, Quine, Putnam and others have suggested that even elementary logic may be brought into question by exotic scientific developments such as in quantum mechanics. Once again we must distinguish between logical laws intended as representing the logic of English and the theorems of a formal system whose truth-theoretic semantics has been officially and stipulatively assigned. My notion of Paradox is tied to the latter, and has no implications regarding the former. But if(!) I understand quantum logicians correctly, they mean to impugn even standard propositional logic understood as formulated in terms of the traditional truth-defined connectives. Depending on oneâs view of analyticity,10 and once we have distinguished the matter of epistemic revisability from the metaphysical issue of truth by virtue of stipulated meaning, this may not make sense. But even if it does and we are thereby forced to admit a notion of falsidical Paradox after all, at least my format will make the point of contention as explicit as anything could. Two objections have been made to me; oddly (but fortunately) they oppose each other. The first11 is that most or at least many people think of paradoxes as arguments, hence, contrary to my conception, as being intrinsically directional, from premisses to conclusion. It may be that many people do so; and that way of thinking is well represented by Quineâs model. But I have pointed out that arguments themselves are not intrinsically directional, save by prior commitments of their proponents. To repeat, the speaker who has deployed the argument has chosen to present one or more propositions as its premisses and infer another proposition as its conclusion, but that is rhetoric; we can equally argue from the âconclusionâsâ negation to that of one of the âpremissesâ, and nothing about the argument itself tells us which should be preferred. The second objection is that paradigmatic paradoxes are single sentences or statements such as the Liar, hence not inconsistent sets of propositions (and, n.b., not arguments either).12 Whether or not the Liar is paradigmatic, it is a single sentence rather than an inconsistent set, and it does suggest mild readjustment of our formula. I said that a Paradox is an inconsistent set of propositions âeach of which is very plausible,â but on its face the Liar cannot be so described. It can be expressed as an inconsistent set, {â(L) is true,â â(L) is false,â â(L) is either true or false but not bothâ}, but none of those three propositions has great intuitive appeal. What is true is at best that each of the propositions has a strong argument in its defence.13 Those three arguments have premisses, such as âWhat (L) says is that (L) is falseâ and âIf S says that P then S is true iff P,â so a Paradox as I originally defined it would feature those undefended premisses, not the lemmas as above. So, either we can say that the Paradox is that more complicated set, which is not very natural (also, we would get different versions depending on exactly how the ultimate premisses were formulated), or we can liberalize the definition by replacing âeach of which is very plausibleâ by âeach of which either is very plausible in its own right or has a seemingly conclusive argument for itâ. If we stick by my notion of Paradox, we will regard the distinction between âtractableâ Paradoxes and antinomies as theory-infected and somewhat presumptuous, but above all a distinction of degree. There are actually two matters of degree involved: the disparity in plausibility between a putative culprit proposition and the other, more plausible propositions in the set, and the average degree of plausibility all around. The higher both of these degrees go, the more readily we will see a Paradox as intractable; we get a real antinomy when the first is near zero and the second is still high. If the second is low, we have only a mild Paradox, and I am loath to call it antinomic, but only an array of competing theories.14
This article examines the intersection of race, gender, and American political development in the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in the mid-twentieth century. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the NACW was one of the last remaining autonomous Black organizations that could truly be called âcivic.â Membership was decentralized, active, and widespread among female citizens who might not otherwise be engaged in public affairs. Political change and subsequent developments in African American and women's organizations in the mid-twentiethh century encouraged NACW leaders to begin considering new approaches to organizing Black womanhood. The collective identity that defined NACW clubwomen's public activism as local, nonpolitical, and nonpartisan eventually gave way to more deliberately nationalized, partisan, and political forms. This article argues that NACW clubwomen worked in solidarity and shared common goals with other African American and civil rights organizations, but faced a transformation unique to women's clubs, one that involved questions not only about who would participate in public life, but also about how and through what kinds of organizations. The struggles of the NACW to integrate the collective identities that defined their race and their gender, on the one hand, with forms, and, on the other hand with strategies of organization are particularly useful for thinking and theorizing about contemporary forms of intersectionality.
Race, History, and American Society
American History and Culture
Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
Matteo Maffei, Giulio Malavolta, Manuel Reinert, Dominique Schröder
The existing (election) voting systems, e.g., representative democracy, have many limitations and often fail to serve the best interest of the people in collective decision making. To address this issue, the concept of liquid democracy has been emerging as an alternative decision-making model to make better use of "the wisdom of crowds". Very recently, a few liquid democracy implementations, e.g. Google Votes and Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), are released; however, those systems only focus on the functionality aspect, as no privacy/anonymity is considered. In this work, we, for the first time, provide a rigorous study of liquid democracy under the Universal Composability (UC) frame- work. In the literature, liquid democracy was achieved via two separate stages -- delegation and voting. We propose an efficient liquid democracy e-voting scheme that uni es these two stages. At the core of our design is a new voting concept called statement voting, which can be viewed as a natural extension of the conventional voting approaches. We remark that our statement voting can be extended to enable more complex voting and generic ledger-based non-interactive multi-party computation. We believe that the statement voting concept opens a door for constructing a new class of e-voting schemes.
This study focuses on the employment decentralization process in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR) between 1991 and 2001. Disaggregating employment data among four categories of knowledge-intensive activities (Knowledge-Intensive Services; High- Technology Industries; Producer Services; and Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) and two groups of other employment (Other Manufacturing and Other Services), the aim is to test whether these four groups decentralized in a similar way to other employment, and whether this process encouraged them to locate in a polycentric or spatially dispersed pattern. The results show that knowledgeintensive and other employment activities decentralize in a similar way, although the former tends to be more concentrated through the formation of employment subcenters and therefore follows a polycentric location model. As a result, physical proximity is still important for numerous activities, especially those that incorporate more knowledge.
Environmental Health has just received its first Impact Factor by Thomson ISI. At a level of 2.48, this achievement is quite satisfactory and places Environmental Health in the top 25% of environmental science journals. When the journal was launched in 2002, it was still unclear whether the Open Access publishing model could be made into a viable commercial enterprise within the biomedical field. During the past eight years, Open Access journals have become widely available, although still covering only about 15% of journal titles. Major funding agencies and institutions, including prominent US universities, now require that researchers publish in Open Access journals. Because of the profound role of scientific journals for the sharing of results and communication between researchers, the advent of Open Access may be of as much significance as the transition from handwriting to printing via moveable type. As Environmental Health is an electronic Open Access journal, the numbers of downloads at the journal website can be retrieved. The top-20 list of articles most frequently accessed shows that all of them have been downloaded over 10,000 times. Back in 2002, the first article published was accessed only 49 times during the following month. A year later, the server had over 1,000 downloads per month, and now the total number of monthly downloads approaches 50,000. These statistics complement the Impact Factor and confirm the viability of Open Access in our field of research. The advent of digital media and its decentralized mode of distribution - the internet - have dramatically changed the control and financing of scientific information dissemination, while facilitating peer review, accelerating editorial handling, and supporting much needed transparency. Both the meaning and means of "having an impact" are therefore changing, as will the degree and way in which scientific journals remain "factors" in that impact.
A recent meta-analysis of 79 studies involving 142 740 patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest of presumed cardiac aetiology documented a survival-to-hospital discharge rate of 7.6% (95% CI 6.7â8.4) [1]. This analysis showed that survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest has changed little over the last 30 years, although a few recent studies report improving survival rates [2, 3]. Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) increases the chances of long-term survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest [1, 4] but bystander CPR rates are low: in England in 2004â2006 the bystander CPR rate was 36% (unpublished data, National Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Project), which is consistent with the 32% documented in the recent international meta-analysis [1]. Reasons for bystandersâ not attempting CPR include: no previous training [5]; panic; concern about causing harm; and unwillingness to perform mouth-to-mouth ventilation (rescue breathing) [6]. Is ventilation of the lungs absolutely necessary during CPR? Intuitively, the provision of oxygen, even if in the form of expired air (approximately 17% oxygen) ought to be essential if full neurological recovery is to be achieved after anything but a very brief period of cardiac arrest. Yet many animal studies of cardiac arrest have shown either no difference in survival [7] or reduced survival [8, 9] with the addition of ventilation to chest compressions. A limitation of these studies is that, in contrast to humans, the airways of the animals are generally patent when supine, which may enable chest compressions alone to generate some ventilation. In animal studies, frequent gasping occurs during good quality CPR and this provides significant ventilation [10]. Gasping is also common after cardiac arrest in humans but it decreases rapidly with time. Only 7.1% of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest were noted to be gasping on arrival of emergency medical services (EMS) personnel in Japan [11], but in another study, gasping was present in 39 of 119 (33%) cardiac arrests that were witnessed by EMS personnel [12]. When the EMS arrival time was more than 9 min after cardiac arrest, gasping was present in just 25 of 338 (7%) patients [12]. Not surprisingly, gasping is associated with survival [13]. Animal models that incorporate an obstructed airway [14, 15] or paralysis of the animals [16] may better reflect the clinical situation: they show worse outcomes with compression-only CPR â in these studies arterial oxygenation decreased substantially with compression-only CPR. If airway patency is maintained, do chest compressions generate adequate ventilation in human cardiac arrest? A study of 17 patients in an emergency department who were undergoing chest compressions using a mechanical compression device (Lund University Cardiopulmonary Assist System â LUCAS), their tracheas intubated, documented a median tidal volume per compression of just 42 ml â considerably less than the dead space [17]. These patients had been in cardiac arrest for more than 40 min, which implies that their lung compliance was probably poor (lung compliance decreases with prolonged CPR). Almost five decades ago, Peter Safar [18] showed that following failed prolonged attempts at CPR, chest compressions alone produced zero ventilation in 10 out of 12 patients with intubated tracheas. To my knowledge, there are no human data on tidal volumes produced with chest compressions immediately after the onset of cardiac arrest, but high-quality compressions may prolong gasping, probably adding significantly to any ventilation achieved with compressions alone. Aside from the reluctance by laypeople and healthcare professionals to provide mouth-to-mouth ventilation [19-21], the latter has other disadvantages. Mouth-to-mouth ventilation is associated with a significantly increased risk of regurgitation compared with no CPR or compression-only CPR [22]. The time taken to attempt two rescue breaths, which may be as long as 14â16 s [23, 24], represents a significant interruption to chest compressions and contributes to the âno-flowâ time. In comparison with conventional CPR, compression-only CPR is easier to learn [25]. In a study of dispatch-assisted CPR (the caller is given instructions by the ambulance controller on how to do CPR), full instructions were more likely to be delivered completely when the ventilation component was omitted and survival was non-significantly higher in the compression-only group [26]. There are no prospective randomised trials comparing compression-only CPR with conventional CPR. However, eight observational studies have showed similar survival rates when bystanders delivered compression-only CPR instead of conventional CPR, and all showed that survival to hospital discharge was higher with compression-only CPR compared with no CPR [11, 27-33]. The methodology in all these studies was similar: on arrival at the scene, EMS personnel observed and documented the technique of bystander resuscitation (none, compression-only, or conventional CPR). Although compression-only CPR was not associated with statistically higher survival rates overall compared with conventional CPR, one of the studies documented subgroups in which the outcome was significantly better for the compression-only group, for example response times less than 4 min and shockable rhythms [11]. The interpretation of observational studies such as these is fraught with difficulties because of the strong possibility of undetected confounders. Despite this, there has been a strong plea from some experts for compression-only CPR to be incorporated into international guidelines [34, 35] and the American Heart Association has published an advisory statement on âhands-onlyâ CPR â this advocates compression-only CPR if the bystander is not trained in CPR or is not confident in the ability to provide high-quality conventional CPR with minimal interruptions for rescue breaths [36]. Should we stop teaching rescue breathing to laypeople, and instead teach them to perform compression-only CPR? The strongest reason to adopt this approach is that it ought to (although we have no proof) increase the chance of a bystanderâs providing CPR â we know that âany CPR is better than no CPRâ. This strategy should produce at least equivalent outcomes (compared with conventional CPR) for those patients in cardiac arrest from a cardiac cause and where EMS response times are short. Approximately 58% (Japan) [2] to 80% (Scotland) [37] of out-of-hospital EMS-treated cardiac arrests are of primary cardiac aetiology. Those with asphyxial cardiac arrests (e.g. children or drowning victims), or where response times are long, are likely to need early ventilation if they are to have any chance of surviving. The findings of a recent observational study (using the methodology described above) of outcome among children in Japan with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest impact significantly on the compression-only CPR debate [38]. Of 5170 paediatric (aged 17 years and younger) out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Japan from 2005 to 2007, 71% were from non-cardiac causes. Within this subgroup, conventional CPR produced more favourable neurological outcome than did compression-only CPR (7.2% (45/624) vs 1.6% (1/380); odds ratio 5.54 (95% CI 2.52â16.99)). Among those children who had arrests from cardiac causes, favourable neurological outcome did not differ between conventional and compression-only CPR (9.9% (28/282) vs 8.9% (14/158), respectively; odds ratio 1.20 (95% CI 0.55â2.66)). New cardiopulmonary resuscitation guidelines will be published in October 2010; what should be advised in relation to CPR by laypeople? The 2005 International Consensus on CPR Science already includes the recommendation that: âRescuers should be encouraged to do compression-only CPR if they are unwilling to do airway and breathing manoeuvres or if they are not trained in CPR or are uncertain how to do CPRâ [39]. This message is consistent with the advisory statement that was published later by the American Heart Association [36] and remains reasonable in the face of data published since then. This stance should encourage bystanders at least to attempt some CPR. More controversial is the suggestion that laypeople should be taught to provide compression-only CPR in preference to conventional CPR for witnessed, sudden collapse (even if they have been trained in conventional CPR) [40]; all the available data indicate that this is likely to be beneficial only if the EMS response times are short (4 min or less). If we want laypeople to provide conventional CPR for victims of asphyxial cardiac arrest (including most children), it implies that everyone still needs to be trained to provide mouth-to-mouth ventilation, which takes us back to where we are now. Handley has described a solution that would, at a minimum, get everyone trained to do compression-only CPR, while encouraging as many as possible to learn conventional CPR as well [41]. In this very sensible, staged approach, compression-only CPR is taught to the whole community; the training would be simple and brief and, with the use of a variety of media, could even be self-directed. Those completing this training could then be encouraged to attend âfollow-up trainingâ where they would be taught conventional CPR. Those with a duty of care, for example lifeguards and healthcare professionals, should continue to be trained in conventional CPR. Whether or not this strategy is adopted in the 2010 European Resuscitation Council and Resuscitation Council (UK) Guidelines will be made known later this year.