Alexander the Great, the dahlia, and the tortoise

Some of the problems of establishing the cause of the death of Alexander the Great are like the attempts to find causes other than hysteria for Anna O.'s symptoms. The more general problem of using plausibility as a criterion of the truth of such reconstructions are illustrated by the arguments embedded in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

The effect of events context on children's recall of non-experienced events across mutiple interviews

Purpose: The current study examined whether young children's willingness to assent to, and provide details about, a false (non-experienced) activity differs depending on whether the activity was allegedly embedded within (a) a specific event or (b) a broad (non-specified) time frame.
Method:  Ninety-nine children aged 4--5 years (from both low and high socioeconomic backgrounds) either (a) participated in a staged event that consisted of two activities or (b) did not participate in the staged event. One or two days later, all children were given false suggestions about a non-experienced (false) activity that had either high or low plausibility. Approximately 8, 15, and 22 days after the event, children were asked to recall the activities, and to answer a series of specific cued-recall questions.
Results: There was no effect of event context on assent rates, and the rate at which children reported interviewer suggestions. However, children who participated in the staged event provided fewer details about the false activity. Further, among those children who assented to the false activity, fewer subjects, objects, actions, temporal markers, locations, fantastic/improbable details, and confabulation errors were reported when the activity was embedded within the specific staged event.
Conclusion: The degree of error in children's accounts of a completely false activity is reduced when the activity is suggested to have occurred within a specified event as opposed to a broad (non-specified) time frame.

A Complexity Based Model for Quantifying Forensic Evidential Probabilities

An operational complexity model (OCM) is proposed to enable the complexity of both the cognitive and the computational components of a process to be determined. From the complexity of formation of a set of traces via a specified route a measure of the probability of that route can be determined. By determining the complexities of alternative routes leading to the formation of the same set of traces, the odds ratio indicating the relative plausibility of the alternative routes can be found. An illustrative application to a BitTorrent piracy case is presented, and the results obtained suggest that the OCM is capable of providing a realistic estimate of the odds ratio for two competing hypotheses. It is also demonstrated that the OCM can be straightforwardly refined to encompass a variety of circumstances.

Transparent Provenance Derivation for User Decisions

It is rare for data's history to include computational processes alone. Even when software generates data, users ultimately decide to execute software procedures, choose their configuration and inputs, reconfigure, halt and restart processes, and so on. Understanding the provenance of data thus involves understanding the reasoning of users behind these decisions, but demanding that users explicitly document decisions could be intrusive if implemented naively, and impractical in some cases. In this paper, therefore, we explore an approach to transparently deriving the provenance of user decisions at query time. The user reasoning is simulated, and if the result of the simulation matches the documented decision, the simulation is taken to approximate the actual reasoning. The plausibility of this approach requires that the simulation mirror human decision -making, so we adopt an automated process explicitly modelled on human psychology. The provenance of the decision is modelled in OPM, allowing it to be queried as part of a larger provenance graph, and an OPM profile is provided to allow consistent querying of provenance across user decisions.

Dietary composition of pregnant women is related to size of the baby at birth

The fetal origins theory of adult disease suggests that term infants who are small for their gestational age have an increased susceptibility to chronic disease in adulthood as a consequence of physiologic adaptations to undernutrition during fetal life. Consistent evidence for an influence of women's dietary composition during pregnancy on growth of their babies is lacking, despite robust effects in animal experiments. We undertook a prospective observational study of 557 women aged 18-41 y, living in Adelaide, South Australia. Diet was assessed in early and late pregnancy using an FFQ. In early pregnancy, medians for energy intake, the proportion of energy derived from protein and from carbohydrate were 9.0 MJ, 17 and 48%, respectively. In late pregnancy the corresponding medians were 9.2 MJ, 16 and 49%. In early pregnancy, the percentage of energy derived from protein was positively associated with birth weight (P = 0.02) and placental weight (P = 0.07), independently of energy intake and weight gain during pregnancy, and after adjustment for potential confounders, including maternal age, parity, and smoking. Effects were stronger among women (n = 429) who had reliable data, based on prespecified criteria including the plausibility of dietary data when referenced against estimated energy expenditure. In addition, for this subgroup, the percentage of energy from carbohydrate in early and late pregnancy was negatively associated with ponderal index of the baby, and a specific effect of protein from dairy sources was identified. These data support the proposition that maternal dietary composition has an effect on fetal growth. Maternal diet in Western societies may therefore be important for the long-term health of the child.

Transnational citizenship: problems of definition, culture and democracy

There is widespread disagreement over whether transnational citizenship provides defensible extensions of, or meaningful complements to, national citizenship. A significant strand of criticism relies upon empirical arguments about political motivation and the consequences of transnationalism. This paper addresses two questions arising from empirical arguments relating to the nation state and democracy. Do the alleged cultural requirements for effective political action provide an insuperable barrier to transnational citizenship? Does transnational citizenship necessarily require a commitment to transnational democracy? I argue that these largely empirical criticisms do not succeed in casting doubt upon the normative plausibility or practical viability of transnational projects. On the first question, I point to a growing transnational political culture that serves to motivate transnational citizens. On the second question, I argue for a legitimate category of transnational citizenship that, although inspired by cosmopolitan morality, is different from it, and that does not require transnational democracy.

Ultraviolet vision in birds: what is its function?

Although UV vision was first demonstrated in birds in the early 1970s, its function is still unknown. Here we review the evidence for UV vision in birds, discuss the special properties of UV light, lay out in detail hypotheses for the function of UV vision in birds and discuss their plausibility. The main hypotheses are that UV vision functions: (i) in orientation, (ii) in foraging and (iii) in signalling. The first receives support from studies of homing pigeons, but it would be unwise to conclude that orientation is UV's primary function in all birds. It is especially important to test the signalling hypothesis because bird plumage often reflects UV and tests of theories of sexual selection have virtually always assumed that birds perceive plumage ''colours'' as humans do. A priori this assumption is unlikely to be correct, for unlike humans, birds see in the UV, have at least four types of cones and have a system of oil droplets which filters light entering individual cones.

Presbyterian ethos and environment in the novels of John Buchan : a religious and historical study

The aim of this thesis is to establish, from a historical and religious perspective, that the Presbyterian ethos and environment in which John Buchan was reared was the predominating influence in the writing of his novels. Presbyterianism was not the only influence on Buchan that determined the character of his stories. Buchan was by temperament a romantic, and this had considerable influence on his literature. His novels are romances, peopled by romantic figures who pursue romantic adventures. There are the signs of Buchan's romantic nature in the contents of the novels: creative imagination, sensitivity to nature, and expectations of the intrusion of other worlds, with destiny-determining events to follow. But Buchan had also an acquired classicism. His studies at Glasgow and Oxford Universities brought him in touch with a whole range of the master-pieces of classical literature, especially the works of Plato and Virgil. This discipline gave him clarity and conciseness in style, and balanced the romantic element in him, keeping his work within the bounds of reason. At the heart of Buchan's life and work, however, was his deeply religious nature and this, while influenced by romanticism and classicism, was the dominant force behind his work. Buchan did not accept in its entirety the Presbyterian doctrine conveyed to him by his father and his Church. He was moderate by temperament and shrank from excesses in religious matters, and, being a romantic, he shied away from any fixed creeds. He did embrace the fundamentals of Christianity, however, which he learned from his father and his Church, even if he did put aside the Rev. John's orthodox Calvinism. The basic Christianity which underlies all Buchan's novels has the stamp of Presbyterianism upon it, and that stamp is evident in his characters and their adventures. The expression of Christianity which Buchan embraced was the Christian Platonism of seventeenth century theologians, who taught and preached at Cambridge University, They gave prominence to the place of reason and conscience in man's search for God, They believed that reason and conscience were the ‘candle of the Lord’ which was existed every one. It was their conviction that, if that light was followed, it would lead men and women to God. They were against superstition and fanaticism in religion, against all forms of persecution for religious beliefs, and insisted that God could only be known by renouncing evil and setting oneself to live according to God’s will. This teaching Buchan received, but the stamp of his Presbyterianism was not obliterated. The basic doctrines which arose from his father's Presbyterianism and are to be found in Buchan's novels are as follows: a. the fear (or awe) of God, as life's basic religious attitude; b. the Providence of God as the ultimate determinative force in the outcome of events; c. the reality, malignity and universality of evil which must be forcefully and constantly resisted; d. the dignity of human beings in bearing God's image; e. the conviction that life has meaning and that its ultimate goal, therefore, is a spiritual one - as opposed to the accumulation of wealth, the achieving of recognition from society, and the gaining access to power; f. the necessity of challenge in life for growth and fulfilment, and the importance of fortitude in successfully meeting such challenge; g. the belief that, in the purpose of God, the weak confound the strong. These emphases of Presbyterianism are to be found in all Buchan's novels, to a greater or lesser degree. All his characters are serious people, with a moral purpose in life. Like the pilgrims of the Bible, they seek a country: true fulfilment. This quest becomes more spiritual and more dearly defined as Buchan grows in age and maturity. The progress is to be traced from his early novels, where fulfilment is sought in honour and self-approving competence, as advocated by classicism; to the novels of his middle years, where fulfilment is sought in adventures suggested by romanticism. In his final novel Sick Heart River. Buchan appears to have moved somewhat from his earlier classicism and his romanticism as the road to fulfilment. In this novel, Buchan expresses what, for him, is ultimate fulfilment: a conversion to God that produces self-sacrificing love for others. The terminally-ill Edward Leithen sets out on a romantic adventure that will enable him to die with dignity, and so, in classic style, justify his existence. He has a belief in God, but in a God who is almighty, distant and largely irrelevant to Leithen's life. In the frozen North of Canada, where he expects to find his meagre beliefs in God's absolute power confirmed by the icy majesty of mountain and plain, he finds instead God's mercy and it melts his heart. In a Christ-like way, he brings life to others through his death, believing that, through death, he will find life. There is sufficient evidence to give plausibility to the view that Buchan is describing in Leithen his own pilgrimage. If so, it means that Buchan found his way back to the fundamental experience of the Christian life, conversion, so strongly emphasised in his orthodox Presbyterianism home and Church. However, Buchan reaches this conclusion in a Christian Platonist way, through the natural world, rather than through the more orthodox pathway of Scripture.

Possible electrical double-layer contribution to the equilibrium thickness of intergranular Glass films in polycrystalline ceramics

The plausibility of the entropic repulsion of electrical double layers acting to stabilize an equilibrium thickness of intergranular glass films in polycrystalline ceramics is explored. Estimates of the screening length, surface potential, and surface charge required to provide a repulsive force sufficiently large to balance the attractive van der Waals and capillary forces for observable thicknesses of intergranular film are calculated and do not appear to be beyond possibility. However, it has yet to be established whether crystalline particles in a liquid-phase sintering medium possess an electrical double layer at high temperatures. If they do, such a surface charge layer may well have important consequences not only for liquid-phase sintering but also for high-frequency electrical properties and microwave sintering of ceramics containing a liquid phase.

Developing a presence in a mainstream market with a product perceived as offbeat

Generally when one thinks of Australian wine regions images of the Barossa Valley, the Hunter Valley or Margaret River may be conjured up as they have developed a presence in the mainstream market. Queensland, by contrast, may be perceived as offbeat, despite its similar quality and growing conditions. This study explores the plausibility of Queensland developing a presence in a mainstream market with findings from a survey completed by 347 people. The results indicate that when consumers choose their wine on the basis of terroir that personality, reputation and label design are the most important elements. Positioning wine from Queensland on its personality may hold the key to having an offbeat product compete in a mainstream market.

A new dempster-shafer theory-based method with fuzzy targets for fuzzy sets ranking

In this paper, a new Fuzzy Set (FS) ranking method (for type-1 and interval type-2 FSs), which is based on the Dempster-Shafer Theory (DST) of evidence with fuzzy targets, is investigated. Fuzzy targets are adopted to reflect human viewpoints on fuzzy ranking. Two important measures in DST, i.e., the belief and plausibility measures, are used to rank FSs. The proposed approach is evaluated with several benchmark examples. The use of the belief and plausibility measures in fuzzy ranking are discussed and compared. We further analyze the capability of the proposed approach in fulfilling six reasonable fuzzy ordering properties as discussed in [9]-[11].

A new online updating framework for constructing monotonicity-preserving fuzzy inference systems

In this paper, a new online updating framework for constructing monotonicity-preserving Fuzzy Inference Systems (FISs) is proposed. The framework encompasses an optimization-based Similarity Reasoning (SR) scheme and a new monotone fuzzy rule relabeling technique. A complete and monotonically-ordered fuzzy rule base is necessary to maintain the monotonicity property of an FIS model. The proposed framework attempts to allow a monotonicity-preserving FIS model to be constructed when the fuzzy rules are incomplete and not monotonically-ordered. An online feature is introduced to allow the FIS model to be updated from time to time. We further investigate three useful measures, i.e., the belief, plausibility, and evidential mass measures, which are inspired from the Dempster- Shafer theory of evidence, to analyze the proposed framework and to give an insight for the inferred outcomes from the FIS model.

Is low vitamin D status a risk factor for food allergy? Current evidence and future directions

Studies from several countries have reported an association between latitudes further from the equator and proxy markers of food allergy prevalence. As latitudes further from the equator are associated with lower sun exposure and vitamin D status (VDS), it has been proposed that low VDS may be a risk factor for food allergy. A range of basic science evidence supports the biological plausibility of this hypothesis; and recent work has identified a cross sectional association between low VDS and challenge proven food allergy in infants. Overall, however, the evidence regarding the relationship between VDS and food allergy remains controversial and the limited longitudinal data are discouraging. In this review we consider the evidence for and against low VDS as a risk factor for food allergy and discuss the possibility that other factors (including genetic variables) may contribute to the inconsistent nature of the available observational evidence. We then discuss whether genetic and/or environmental factors may modify the potential influence of VDS on food allergy risk. Finally, we argue that given the rising burden of food allergy, the balance of available evidence regarding the potential relevance of VDS to this phenomenon, and the inherent limitations of the existing observational data, there is a compelling case for conducting randomised clinical trials of vitamin D supplementation for the prevention of food allergy during early life.

Revitalização do centro histórico de São Paulo e habitação popular: microeconomia e microgerografia

Esta tese de doutorado estuda a produção de unidades habitacionais para famílias de baixa renda coordenada com o programa de revitalização da região central do município de São Paulo. O estudo recupera o discurso da teoria microeconômica tradicional aplicada a estudos urbanos e o contrapõe a um discurso alternativo. Foi criada uma base de dados original na forma de um levantamento dos imóveis subutilizados nos distritos Sé e República a partir de visitas a campo, com observações diretas dos imóveis e utilizando técnicas de identificação por imagens de satélite e sistemas de geoprocessamento para avaliar a extensão e os padrões da degradação imobiliária. Os resultados da análise do banco de dados demonstram a plausibilidade do discurso alternativo e apontam para alguns fatores significativos que contribuem para o atual estado de degradação. Retoma-se então a análise da política de repovoamento da região central por meio de um programa de moradias para famílias de baixa renda e mostra-se como as técnicas empregadas permitem avaliar as razões para o baixo desempenho dessa agenda política no contexto de um amplo programa de revitalização urbana.

A mutação constitucional como realização de defesa da Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil de 1988

O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a plausividade da tese da mutação constitucional como mecanismo de efetivação da Constituição da República Federativa Brasil de 1988 e a partir dos 6 (seis) principais julgados do Supremo Tribunal Federal verificar se os limites impostos a esse fenômeno estão sendo respeitados. Com objetivo de comprovar esta tese foi estudado desde a opção do poder constituinte originário em atribuir aspecto rígido a Constituição pátria, permitindo que algumas matérias de seu texto através de mecanismos específicos possam ser alterados, até a legitimidade reflexa dos ministros do STF para atuarem como legisladores positivos alterando o sentido da norma sem modificação de seu conteúdo. A exposição dos limites impostos a mutação constitucional também foi alvo de especial destaque, pois somente a partir da compreensão destes seria possível uma análise sobre eventual extrapolação de competência do Poder Judiciário. A partir dos julgados do STF verificamos que a mutação constitucional está sendo aplicada dentro os limites impostos, logo este instituto atingiu seu objetivo central de aproximar as normas constitucionais a realidade da sociedade sem ferir o princípio da Separação de Poderes. Como resultado concluímos que a mutação constitucional a partir do cenário político atual que assume a asfixia e a consequente morosidade do Poder Legislativo, é um instrumento imprescindível para dar efetividade aos preceitos e princípios fundamentais da Constituição. Na atual conjuntura abdicar deste valioso instrumento seria o mesmo que assumir o fracasso e a inobservância de todo ordenamento jurídico, já que este não conseguirá reger as relações humanas da sociedade.