Plato and Frankfurt: Two Theories of the Relations Between Love and Living Well

This thesis provides a comparison of the ideas of caring and love as they appear in the works of Plato and Frankfurt. Frankfurt, a contemporary philosopher, maintains that an individual arrives at the most meaningful life through understanding what it is that heor she cares about the most. Interestingly, the instances of eros in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus resonate with this idea. We see throughout these erotic dialogues similarities to Frankfurt's notions of care and love.Throughout his many works, Frankfurt provides us with several distinct features of care and love. This thesis offers an in depth discussion of each of these features andalso provides commentary from other contemporary philosophers who are familiar with Frankfurt's work. In addition, this thesis applies these features of care and love to Plato's erotic dialogues, and emphasizes areas in which Plato and Frankfurt agree and those inwhich they disagree. In essence, it becomes apparent that while there are many similarities between the ideas of these two prominent thinkers, Plato and Frankfurt do not agree about what constitutes the best human life. Plato maintains that the best life is onespent dedicated to philosophy and in pursuit of the 'good'. Frankfurt, on the other hand,imposes no such limitations on what we should consider the best life because people are likely to have different life experiences that lead them to care about and love different things. Instead he suggests that the best or most meaningful human life is one in which a person spends his or her life caring about the things he or she does, indeed, care aboutand loving those things he or she does, indeed, love.

Characterization of vascular cavity coatings and microscopic tube-shaped structures from Upper Cretaceous dinosaur bone: evidence of a bacterial origin for dinosaur blood vessels""

Recent claims of blood vessels extracted from dinosaur fossils challenge classical views of soft-tissue preservation. Alternatively, these structures may represent postdepositional,diagenetic biofilms that grew on vascular cavity surfaces within the fossil. Similar red, hollow, tube-shaped structures were recovered from well-preserved and poorly-preserved (abraded, desiccated, exposed) Upper Cretaceous dinosaur fossils in this study. Integration of light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy was used to compare these vessel structures to the fossils from which they are derived. Vessel structures are typically 100-400 μm long, 0.5-1.5 μm thick, 10-40 μm in diameter and take on a wide range of straight, curved, andbranching morphologies. Interior surfaces vary from smooth to globular and typically contain spheres, rods, and fibrous structures (< 2 μm in diameter) incorporated into the surface. Exterior surfaces exhibit 2-μm-tall converging ridges, spaced 1-3 μm apart, that are sub-parallel to the long axis of the vessel structure. Fossil vascular cavities are typically coated with a smooth or grainy orange layer that shows a wide range of textures including smooth, globular, rough, ropy, and combinations thereof. Coatings tend to overlay secondary mineral crystals and framboids, confirming they are not primary structures of the fossil. For some cavity coatings, the surface that had been in contact with the bone exhibits a ridged texture, similar to that of vessel structures, having formed as a mold of the intravascular bone surface. Thus, vessel structures are interpreted as intact cavity coatings isolated after the fossil is demineralized. The presence of framboids and structures consistent in size and shape with bacteria cells, the abundance of iron in cavity coatings, and the growth of biofilms directly from the fossil that resemble respective cavity coatings support the hypothesis that vessel structures result from ironconsuming bacteria that form biofilms on the intravascular bone surfaces of fossil dinosaur bone. This also accounts for microstructures resembling osteocytes as some fossil lacunae are filled with the same iron oxide that comprises vessel structures andcoatings. Results of this study show that systematic, high-resolution SEM analyses of vertebrate fossils can provide improved insight on microtaphonomic processes, including the role of bacteria in diagenesis. These results conflict with earlier claims of dinosaurblood vessels and osteocytes.

The Insufficient Void": The Problem of an Earthly Paradise in Wuthering Heights and Dracula"

The aim of my thesis is to chart how death and the spirit world - what might be defined as our living essence - becomes the sites of a new and remarkably subversive Victorian exploration of the supernatural.

Using the Natural Period of a Structure as an Indicator of the Significance of Second-Order Effects

This study investigates the feasibility of predicting the momentamplification in beam-column elements of steel moment-resisting frames using the structure's natural period. Unlike previous methods, which perform moment-amplification on a story-by-story basis, this study develops and tests two models that aim to predict a global amplification factor indicative of the largest relevant instance of local moment amplification in the structure. To thisend, a variety of two-dimensional frames is investigated using first and secondorder finite element analysis. The observed moment amplification is then compared with the predicted amplification based on the structure's natural period, which is calculated by first-order finite element analysis. As a benchmark, design moment amplification factors are calculated for each story using the story stiffness approach, and serve to demonstrate the relativeconservatism and accuracy of the proposed models with respect to current practice in design. The study finds that the observed moment amplification factors may vastly exceed expectations when internal member stresses are initially very small. Where the internal stresses are small relative to the member capacities, thesecases are inconsequential for design. To qualify the significance of the observed amplification factors, two parameters are used: the second-order moment normalized to the plastic moment capacity, and the combined flexural and axial stress interaction equations developed by AISC

Design, Construction, and Validation of an Atmospheric Combustor for Alternative Fuel Studies

An atmospheric combustion apparatus was designed through several iterations for Bucknell University's combustion laboratory. The final design required extensive fine-tuning of the fuel and air systems and repeated tests to arrive at a satisfactory procedure to transfer from gaseous to liquid fuel operation. Measurement of exhaust emissions were obtained under tests of gaseous methane and liquid heptane were operation in order to validate the functionality of the combustion apparatus, the fuel transition procedure, and emissions analyzer systems. The emission concentrations of CO, CO2, NOx, 02, S02, and unburned hydrocarbons from a multianalyzer and HFID analyzer were obtained for a range of equivalence ratios. The results verify the potential for future alternative fuel tests and illuminate necessary alterations for further liquid fuel studies.

Does Israel Follow the Law? A Critical Analysis of Israel's Application of the International Law of Belligerent Occupation in the Occupied Territories

Israel's occupation of territories it captured in 1967 has become one of the longest and most controversial occupations of the last fifty years. Eschewing the traditional political analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this paper aims to explore whether Israel has adequately applied international law in the occupied territories, in particular, the law of belligerent occupation. The two actors under assessment are the Israeli government, particularly its military which enforces and maintains the law in the territories, and the Supreme Court of Israel, which has the power of review over military actions in the territories. The particular issues of the occupation that are critically analyzed are the general legal framework that Israel established in the territories, Israel's civilian settlement policy in territories, and Israel's construction of a barrier in the West Bank. This paper concludes that Israel has incorrectly applied the legal framework of belligerent occupation by refusing to apply the Fourth Geneva Convention; it has wrongly concluded that the establishment of civilian settlements in the territories conform with international law; yet it has rightly concluded that the construction of the barrier in the West Bank is permissible under international law, in contrast to the conclusion of the much publicized International Court of Justice's Advisory Opinion on the 'Wall.' Along with these general assessments, the author will also provide some historical and political insight into why the Israeli government and the Supreme Court may have applied the law in the way that they did.

IMPULSE CONTROL AND COOPERATION IN CAPUCHIN MONKEYS (Cebus apella)

The benefits animals derive from living in social groups have produced the evolution of many forms of cooperative behavior. To cooperate, two or more individuals coordinate their actions to accomplish a common goal. One cognitive process that has the potential to influence cooperation is self control. Individuals delaying their impulsive choice for an immediate reward may potentially receive a larger reward later by cooperating with others. In this study, I measured whether brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were capable of impulse control and whether impulse control was related to cooperation. Impulse control and cooperation were measured using a lazy susan-like apparatus, on which animals could turn a wheel to receive food rewards. The capuchins went through two training phases that taught them how to turn the wheel efficiently to obtain rewards and how to turn the wheel to obtain the larger of two rewards. After training, I tested impulse control by giving the capuchins a choice between a smaller and a larger reward placed at shorter or more distant locations on the wheel. The capuchins demonstrated impulse control in that they tended to inhibit the impulse to select the smaller reward when it was closer and easier to reach and instead selected the larger reward when it was farther away. Cooperation was tested in all possible dyads of seven individuals, a total of 21 dyads, by allowing each dyad 10 trials to work together with effort on the lazy-susan so that each would obtain a reward. Seventeen out of 21 dyads cooperated by simultaneously moving the wheel in the same direction. The correlation between how often a particular dyad cooperated and their average impulse control score was not statistically significant, r(21) = -.125, p = .591. Capuchins demonstrated impulse control and cooperation using this novel apparatus but the two abilities were not related. Other factors such as the unique social relationship between two individuals may play a more prominent role in the motivation to cooperate rather than the cognitive capacity to inhibit behavior.

Closed Time-like Curves and Inertial Frame Dragging: How to Time Travel via Spacetime Rotation

As the number of solutions to the Einstein equations with realistic matter sources that admit closed time-like curves (CTC's) has grown drastically, it has provoked some authors [10] to call for a physical interpretation of these seemingly exotic curves that could possibly allow for causality violations. A first step in drafting a physical interpretation would be to understand how CTC's are created because the recent work of [16] has suggested that, to follow a CTC, observers must counter-rotate with the rotating matter, contrary to the currently accepted explanation that it is due to inertial frame dragging that CTC's are created. The exact link between inertialframe dragging and CTC's is investigated by simulating particle geodesics and the precession of gyroscopes along CTC's and backward in time oriented circular orbits in the van Stockum metric, known to have CTC's that could be traversal, so the van Stockum cylinder could be exploited as a time machine. This study of gyroscopeprecession, in the van Stockum metric, supports the theory that CTC's are produced by inertial frame dragging due to rotating spacetime metrics.

Second-Generation Orthopaedic Measurement Device for in-vivo Assessment of Bone Quality

There are two main types of bone in the human body, trabecular and cortical bone. Cortical bone is primarily found on the outer surface of most bones in the body while trabecular bone is found in vertebrae and at the end of long bones (Ross 2007). Osteoporosis is a condition that compromises the structural integrity of trabecular bone, greatly reducing the ability of the bone to absorb energy from falls. The current method for diagnosing osteoporosis and predicting fracture risk is measurement of bone mineral density. Limitations of this method include dependence on the bone density measurement device and dependence on type of test and measurement location (Rubin 2005). Each year there are approximately 250,000 hip fractures in the United States due to osteoporosis (Kleerekoper 2006). Currently, the most common method for repairing a hip fracture is a hip fixation surgery. During surgery, a temporary guide wire is inserted to guide the permanent screw into place and then removed. It is believed that directly measuring this screw pullout force may result in a better assessment of bone quality than current indirect measurement techniques (T. Bowen 2008-2010, pers. comm.). The objective of this project is to design a device that can measure the force required to extract this guide wire. It is believed that this would give the surgeon a direct, quantitative measurement of bone quality at the site of the fixation. A first generation device was designed by a Bucknell Biomedical Engineering Senior Design team during the 2008- 2009 Academic Year. The first step of this project was to examine the device, conduct a thorough design analysis, and brainstorm new concepts. The concept selected uses a translational screw to extract the guide wire. The device was fabricated and underwent validation testing to ensure that the device was functional and met the required engineering specifications. Two tests were conducted, one to test the functionality of the device by testing if the device gave repeatable results, and the other to test the sensitivity of the device to misalignment. Guide wires were extracted from 3 materials, low density polyethylene, ultra high molecular weight polyethylene, and polypropylene and the force of extraction was measured. During testing, it was discovered that the spring in the device did not have a high enough spring constant to reach the high forces necessary for extracting the wires without excessive deflection of the spring. The test procedure was modified slightly so the wires were not fully threaded into the material. The testing results indicate that there is significant variation in the screw pullout force, up to 30% of the average value. This significant variation was attributed to problems in the testing and data collection, and a revised set of tests was proposed to better evaluate the performance of the device. The fabricated device is a fully-functioning prototype and further refinements and testing of the device may lead to a 3rd generation version capable of measuring the screw pullout force during hip fixation surgery.

Group Stereotypes and The Self: How Social Status and Interaction Expectation Affect Self-Stereotyping

This study examined how ingroup status affects the tendency for people to internalize ingroup stereotypes (i.e. self-stereotype) when expecting to interact with another individual who holds stereotypic views of them. Past research has demonstrated that people self-stereotype when they want to affiliate with another individual who holds stereotypic views of them. By self-stereotyping, individuals create a common bond or shared set of beliefs with the other individual. This line of research has not yet examinedif there are any moderators in the relationship between affiliation motivation and self-stereotyping. However, there is reason to believe that members of lower-status groups are more likely to feel the need to create this common bond through self-stereotyping because 1) they identify more closely with their social group, 2) their group identity is more salient 3) they are more aware of the expectations of others, 4) and they care more about the quality of an interaction with a member from a higher-status group. For this experiment, I recruited twenty-seven members of Alpha Chi Omega andtwenty-eight members of Delta Gamma, two sororities that are perceived to be middle-ranked (as determined by a pre-test survey). Upon arriving to the study, half the participants were informed that they would be interacting with a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, a higher-ranked sorority (as determined by a pre-test survey) and half the participants were informed that they would be interacting with a member of a Chi Omega, a lower-ranked sorority (as determined by a pre-test survey). Participants were also informed that this partner held stereotypic views of their (i.e. the participant’s)sorority. After, participants were given the Self-Stereotyping Measure in which they rated how well sixteen characteristics described themselves. The results of the series of analyses performed on participants’ ratings on the Self-Stereotyping Measure indicated that when expecting to interact with another individual, members of low-status groups self-stereotype more than members of high-statusgroups and those who do not expect to interact. Furthermore, unexpectedly, among members of high-status groups, those who expected to interact with a member of a low-status group self-stereotyped less than those who did not expect to interact. Thus, this research provides support for the hypothesis that group status is a moderator in the relationship between self-stereotyping and affiliation motivation.

The Failure of Silence and the Manipulation of Memory: How Spain's pact of oblivion has failed to rid the country of its troubled past

This thesis is an analysis of Spain’s development from dictatorship to democracy in light of the trauma that it endured during the Spanish Civil War of 1936 – 1939 and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which lasted until 1975. Drawing from the work of Maurice Halbwachs and Pierre Nora, this thesis seeks to use the concepts of collective memory and lieux de mémoire to analyze what role memory has played in Spanish society from 1939 to the present day. Theanalysis begins with an overview of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s ensuing dictatorship in order to establish an understanding of the trauma endured by Spain and its people. Of importance will be the manner in which the presentation of history became manipulated anddistorted under Franco as the dictator sought to control the country’s collective memory. With this background in mind, the thesis then turns to analyze how the memory of Spain’s past has affected the country’s development in two eras: during its transition to democracy in the 1970s and in the present day. Of central importance is the pact of silence that was established during the transition to democracy, which was a tacit agreement among the Spanish people to notdiscuss the past. This pact of silence still clouds Spain’s memory today and affects modern discourse concerning the past. Yet it is clear that Spain has not been reconciled to its past, as the provocation of history inevitably results in tension and controversy. The central contention of this thesis is that the pact of silence that surrounds Spain’s past has not eliminated the trauma of the Civil War and dictatorship, as demonstrated by the controversy stirred up by people, groups and places in the present day. This contention has repercussions for the study of history as a whole, as it indicates that the past cannot be muted in order to achievereconciliation; rather, it suggests that we must engage the past in order to be reconciled to it.

Shading Silhouettes of Smaller Ones

I am truly honored to have been given the amazing opportunity to create this original piece, this powerful journey through memory and emotive exploration of the loss of childhood. How do we feel about the loss of our child-self? Could we ever get them back? How long, how deep would one have to dig in the graveyards, the playgrounds of memory, to uncover what was buried there... to un-erase what waserased? shading silhouettes of smaller ones will ultimately encourage a reconnection with the Inner Child hidden inside all of us, as well as an intimate awareness of the adult version of the self by looking back to the smaller ones. The main inspiration for this piece is then of course, Inner Child Work. Most people may not be familiar with this therapeutic exploration of childhood... It wasimportant to me then, to present this concept in an imaginative, theatrical way, as a gift to you - a comprehensive and intensely moving gift. Speaking from experience, working on my Inner Child - my little Bianca - has been the most painful, frightening, yetrewarding and powerful experience within my personal life. Some people spend their entire lives trying to love themselves, to prove themselves, or be accepted. Some are too afraid to look back to where it all began. The characters within this piece will face thatfear... in a regression from the complexities of adulthood to the confusion of adolescence, all the way back to the wonder and bliss of childhood. They will reveal memories, of both joy and pain, love and abandonment, journeying backwards through time - through memory - through a playground - back to the beginning... We will enter a world where a push of a merry-go-round spins us to games of Truth or Dare after a high school dance at 16 - or the slam of a metal fence reminds us of the door Dad slammed in our face at 9 - where the sound of chain links swings us back to scrapping our knee by the sandbox at 5 This piece will attempt to connect everyone, both cast and audience, through a universal understanding and discussion of what it means to grow up, as well as a discovery of WHY we are the way we are - how experiences or relationships from our childhood have shaped our adult lives. We will attempt to challenge your honesty and nerve by inviting you to ask questions of yourselves, your past - to remember what it's like to have the innocence and hope of a child, to engage with and discover your Inner Child, to realize when or why you left them behind, and if you want to this magical part of yourself. It is my hope that you will join us in a collective journey - gather the courage to dig up the little kid you buried so long ago...* The creation, design, choreography, and direction for shading silhouettes of smaller ones mark the culminating experience of a year-long independent study in Theatre.

La Sojización: The Soyization" of the Argentine Countryside in the Province of Santa Fe"

In the present era of transnational capitalism, some scholars contend that capital accumulation is achieved primarily through dispossession. This paper seeks to analyze the effects of this dispossession upon small agricultural producers in the developing world. By employing the example of soy producers in Argentina, it should become abundantly clear that the issues confronting these farmers are not simply domestic questions but rather indicative of larger structural issues embedded in the global capitalist system.

The Pressures of History: Shakespearean Performance and Interpretation

Interpretations of Shakespeare’s characters have been subject to the pressures of history, exhibiting a progression of performance styles in accordance with changes in ideas and concerns over time. Shakespeare’s complex portrayals of women leave room for cultural influences of a time period to greatly influence interpretations because of the ambiguous nature of some of his major female characters. Lady Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing’s Beatrice both overstep and challenge gender boundaries, and the combination of their defiant natures and textual ambiguities have made these characters highly controversial over the past four centuries.Various cultures over time have imposed specific readings of the characters that serve to reinforce the male-dominated expectations of a given society. The examination of variations in performance styles and interpretations of these two extremely canonical characters revealinsights into gender ideologies that existed during various time periods throughout history. The combination of this analysis with an exploration of the effects of the more recent applications offeminism and film, which have both helped to reshape the cultural images of both Lady Macbeth and Beatrice, will aide in an observation of the status of gender relations in our contemporary society. The current trend of interpretations of these characters could also provide predictions about future gender relations in our culture.

Dynamics of Spatial Game Theory Networks with Novel Modifications

Introduction: Advances in biotechnology have shed light on many biological processes. In biological networks, nodes are used to represent the function of individual entities within a system and have historically been studied in isolation. Network structure adds edges that enable communication between nodes. An emerging fieldis to combine node function and network structure to yield network function. One of the most complex networks known in biology is the neural network within the brain. Modeling neural function will require an understanding of networks, dynamics, andneurophysiology. It is with this work that modeling techniques will be developed to work at this complex intersection. Methods: Spatial game theory was developed by Nowak in the context of modeling evolutionary dynamics, or the way in which species evolve over time. Spatial game theory offers a two dimensional view of analyzingthe state of neighbors and updating based on the surroundings. Our work builds upon this foundation by studying evolutionary game theory networks with respect to neural networks. This novel concept is that neurons may adopt a particular strategy that will allow propagation of information. The strategy may therefore act as the mechanism for gating. Furthermore, the strategy of a neuron, as in a real brain, isimpacted by the strategy of its neighbors. The techniques of spatial game theory already established by Nowak are repeated to explain two basic cases and validate the implementation of code. Two novel modifications are introduced in Chapters 3 and 4 that build on this network and may reflect neural networks. Results: The introduction of two novel modifications, mutation and rewiring, in large parametricstudies resulted in dynamics that had an intermediate amount of nodes firing at any given time. Further, even small mutation rates result in different dynamics more representative of the ideal state hypothesized. Conclusions: In both modificationsto Nowak's model, the results demonstrate the network does not become locked into a particular global state of passing all information or blocking all information. It is hypothesized that normal brain function occurs within this intermediate range and that a number of diseases are the result of moving outside of this range.