bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Quantifying Seafood Through Time: Counting Calories in the Fossil Record
Authors: Finnegan Seth
Published: June 2019

Energy and nutrients are the fundamental currencies of ecology and changes in energy and nutrient availability are thought to have played an important role in the long-term development of marine ecosystems. However, meaningfully quantifying when, where, and how such changes have occurred has been a difficult and longstanding problem. Here, some of the various lines of evidence that have been brought to bear on this issue in the past two decades are reviewed, particularly those based on the fossil record of benthic invertebrates. This paper focuses on abundance, body size, and metabolism, three distinct but closely interrelated aspects of ecosystem structure that control (or are controlled by) energy fluxes. Each of these is subject to biases and inherent uncertainties that present significant challenges for making inferences from the fossil record, but when carefully controlling for environmental, taphonomic, and methodological variations there are robust trends that can be discerned above the noise. Integrating these different types of data in a single quantitative framework presents additional complications, but coherent patterns emerge from some such analyses. Accurate quantification of energetic trends in the fossil record is difficult but is a worthwhile goal because of its potential to illuminate the energetic dimension of major diversifications, extinctions, and secular ecological-evolutionary trends and link them more directly to their Earth Systems context.
Altered Primary Production During Mass-Extinction Events
Authors: Van De Schootbrugge Bas , Gollner Sabine
Published: June 2019

The Big Five mass-extinction events are characterized by dramatic changes in primary producers. Initial disturbance to primary producers is usually followed by a succession of pioneers that represent qualitative and quantitative changes in standing crops of land plants and/or phytoplankton. On land, a transient collapse of arborescent (tree-bearing) vegetation and the rapid spread of a pioneer vegetation dominated by ferns and fern allies characterizes the Permian/Triassic (P/T), Triassic/Jurassic (T/J), and Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) mass-extinction events. The availability of low-quality food, such as herbaceous low-growing plants, likely played a role in triggering secondary extinctions of herbivores (reptiles, insects). Furthermore, malformation of acritarchs, pollen, and spores during the end-Ordovician, end-Devonian, P/T and T/J extinctions also suggests primary producers were of lesser quality. More importantly, changes in vegetation drove important increases in weathering and erosion leading to elevated nutrient transfer from the continents to the oceans. In the marine realm, the end-Ordovician, end-Devonian, end-Permian, and end-Triassic extinction events are all followed by periods of high primary production, which is reflected in the widespread deposition of black shales. Due to their small size, low nutritional quality, and possible toxicity, the abundance of picoplankton, such as prasinophytes, acritarchs, as well as bacterioplankton (cyanobacteria and green sulfur bacteria) may have been additional factors in delaying ecosystem recovery.
Exceptional Fossil Conservation through Phosphatization
Authors: Schiffbauer James D. , Wallace Adam F. , Broce Jesse , Xiao Shuhai
Published: June 2019

This paper addresses the taphonomic processes responsible for fossil preservation in calcium phosphate, or phosphatization. Aside from silicification and rarer examples of carbonaceous compression, phosphatization is the only taphonomic mode claimed to preserve putative subcellular structures. Because this fossilization window can record such valuable information, a comprehensive understanding of its patterns of occurrence and the geochemical processes involved in the replication of soft tissues are critical endeavors. Fossil phosphatization was most abundant during the latest Neoproterozoic through the early Paleozoic, coinciding with the decline of non-pelletal phosphorite deposits. Its temporal abundance during this timeframe makes it a particularly valuable window for the study of early animal evolution. Several occurrences of phosphatization from the Ediacaran through the Permian Period, including Doushantuo-type preservation of embryo-like fossils and acritarchs, phosphatized gut tracts within Burgess Shale-type carbonaceous compressions, Orsten-type preservation of meiofaunas, and other cases from the later Paleozoic are reviewed. In addition, a comprehensive description of the geochemical controls of calcium phosphate precipitation from seawater is provided, with a focus on the rates of phosphate nucleation and growth, favorable nucleation substrates, and properties of substrate tissue and pore-fluid chemistry. It is hoped that the paleontological and geochemical summaries provided here offer a practical and valuable guide to the Neoproterozoic–Paleozoic phosphatization window.
The Role of Biology in the Fossilization of Embryos and Other Soft-Bodied Organisms: Microbial Biofilms and Lagerstätten
Authors: Raff Rudolf A. , Raff Elizabeth C.
Published: June 2019

Soft-tissue fossils are among the most striking and informative remains of extinct organisms. Although relatively rare, they are diverse, ranging from single microbial cells to nuclei and chromosomes; algae; metazoan embryos and larvae; flowers; complete, small, soft-bodied metazoans, metazoan tissues; integumentary structures such as melanosomes; skin texture, vertebrate feathers and hair, insect wings with color patterns, and sometimes even the entire bodies of large animals. The susceptibility of newly dead soft tissues to physical destruction, consumption, and microbial decay makes their preservation unlikely under most taphonomic conditions. In addition, their vulnerability to rapid autolysis, bioturbation, and destructive physical processes requires that rapid biological events must occur as the critical first steps of fossilization. An understanding of the processes by which biological remains enter the fossil record is important in inferring what non-microbial and microbial processes were operative in Lagerstätten. Paleontologists have recognized that microbial biofilms often accompany soft-tissue fossils, and have suggested that bacteria play an active role in soft tissue fossilization, but that role must be determined experimentally with living bacteria and dead tissue.

Marine embryos and marine bacteria are used to investigate the processes that mediate early steps in soft-tissue preservation because they offer simple systems for laboratory investigation of the roles of autolysis-blocking environments, microbial interactions, biofilm formation, and authigenic mineralization in taphonomy. Understanding microbially mediated preservation of embryos may supply new insights into a more general biology of fossilization.
Burgess Shale-type Preservation and its Distribution in Space and Time
Authors: Gaines Robert R.
Published: June 2019

Burgess Shale-type fossil assemblages provide a unique record of animal life in the immediate aftermath of the so-called “Cambrian explosion.” While most soft-bodied faunas in the rock record were conserved by mineral replication of soft tissues, Burgess Shale-type preservation involved the conservation of whole assemblages of soft-bodied animals as primary carbonaceous remains, often preserved in extraordinary anatomical detail. Burgess Shale-type preservation resulted from a combination of influences operating at both local and global scales that acted to drastically slow microbial degradation in the early burial environment, resulting in incomplete decomposition and the conservation of soft-bodied animals, many of which are otherwise unknown from the fossil record. While Burgess Shale-type fossil assemblages are primarily restricted to early and middle Cambrian strata (Series 2–3), their anomalous preservation is a pervasive phenomenon that occurs widely in mudstone successions deposited on multiple paleocontinents. Herein, circumstances that led to the preservation of Burgess Shale-type fossils in Cambrian strata worldwide are reviewed. A three-tiered rank classification of the more than 50 Burgess Shale-type deposits now known is proposed and is used to consider the hierarchy of controls that regulated the operation of Burgess Shale-type preservation in space and time, ultimately determining the total number of preserved taxa and the fidelity of preservation in each deposit. While Burgess Shale-type preservation is a unique taphonomic mode that ultimately was regulated by the influence of global seawater chemistry upon the early diagenetic environment, physical depositional (biostratinomic) controls are shown to have been critical in determining the total number of taxa preserved in fossil assemblages, and hence, in regulating many of the important differences among Burgess Shale-type deposits.
Concretions as Agents of Soft-Tissue Preservation: A Review
Authors: McCoy Victoria E.
Published: June 2019

Carbonate concretions may preserve exceptional soft-tissue fossils. Organismal decay in sediment can produce HCO3−faster than it diffuses away, creating a local microenvironment of high alkalinity around the decaying organism that promotes carbonate precipitation. Infilling of sediment pore-space around the decaying organism decreases permeability and inhibits decay, thus increasing preservation potential within the concretion and promoting soft-tissue preservation. Different patterns of concretion growth may promote different mechanisms of soft-tissue preservation. Other factors such as shifting salinity and clay mineral chemistry, which increase preservation potential in the depositional environment, also promote soft tissue preservation within concretions. The rate of concretion nucleation and growth affects preservation; the faster concretions nucleate and grow, the better the preservation. Concretionary preservation is biased both by concretion-promoting environments and organism size effects on concretion formation.
The Exceptional Preservation of Plant Fossils: A Review of Taphonomic Pathways and Biases in the Fossil Record
Authors: Locatelli Emma R.
Published: June 2019

The exceptional preservation of plant fossils falls into two categories: whole plant preservation and anatomical detail. Whole plant preservation is controlled primarily by transport and event preservation (e.g., ash falls), whereas anatomical preservation can occur through one of several taphonomic pathways: compression-impression, silicification, coal-ball formation, pyritization, and charcoalification. This review focuses on these taphonomic pathways, highlighting important factors and controls on the exceptional preservation of plants. Special emphasis is given to data garnered from experimental and actualistic approaches.
Distinguishing Biology from Geology in Soft-Tissue Preservation
Authors: Cunningham John A. , Donoghue Philip C. J. , Bengtson Stefan
Published: June 2019

Knowledge of evolutionary history is based extensively on relatively rare fossils that preserve soft tissues. These fossils record a much greater proportion of anatomy than would be known solely from mineralized remains and provide key data for testing evolutionary hypotheses in deep time. Ironically, however, exceptionally preserved fossils are often among the most contentious because they are difficult to interpret. This is because their morphology has invariably been affected by the processes of decay and diagenesis, meaning that it is often difficult to distinguish preserved biology from artifacts introduced by these processes. Here we describe how a range of analytical techniques can be used to tease apart mineralization that preserves biological structures from unrelated geological mineralization phases. This approach involves using a series of X-ray, ion, electron and laser beam techniques to characterize the texture and chemistry of the different phases so that they can be differentiated in material that is difficult to interpret. This approach is demonstrated using a case study of its application to the study of fossils from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Biota.
Late Proterozoic–Early Phanerozoic ‘Taphonomic Windows’: The Environmental and Temporal Distribution of Recurrent Modes of Exceptional Preservation
Authors: Orr Patrick J.
Published: June 2019

Exceptional biotas—those in which the non-biomineralized tissues of organisms are preserved—are an important record of the evolutionary biology of the late Neoproterozoic—early Phanerozoic interval. Most of these biotas exhibit one of four modes of preservation: preservation of either 1) internal and external detail (Doushantuo-type preservation) or, 2) external cuticles (Orsten-type preservation) in calcium phosphate; 3) coating in pyrite films and infills (Beecher's Bed-type preservation); and 4) preservation of organic remains (Burgess Shale-type preservation). The global environmental and temporal distribution of each mode of preservation is reasonably well constrained, but not why these taphonomic windows existed when they did. The late Neoproterozoic – early Phanerozoic interval is characterized by complex, interlinked, physical, geochemical and biological changes to the Earth's biosphere and geosphere. The changing ecology of marine environments (from matground to mixgrounds: the ‘Agronomic Revolution’) occurred via an intermediate phase of stiffened, but not microbially bound sediments that extended the interval over which exceptional preservation occurred. Prolonged eustatic sea-level rise across flat-lying continental platforms ensured environments conducive to exceptional preservation were developed and, critically, sustained over large contiguous areas. During this, regolith on continental surfaces was recycled, providing an integral source of sediment and ions relevant to mineral authigenesis. Superimposed on these broad-scale changes are specific drivers that controlled the duration of individual taphonomic windows; elucidating these requires a better understanding of the environmental context and diagenetic history of fossiliferous successions at the intra-basinal scale.
Paleontology: The Window to Science Education
Authors: Stucky Richard K.
Published: June 2019

Every Young kid will tell you that dinosaurs and fossils are really cool or, in the words of one four-year old, “dinosaurs are cool, and fossils are the best!” Dinosaurs and fossils are the window through which most kids and many adults now get their first introduction to science. Paleontology is art, science, and imagination; it inspires a wealth of curiosity by students about ancient life and helps all of us to know about our origins and how our world with humans came to be.
Museums: The Underutilized Resource
Authors: Breithaupt Brent H.
Published: June 2019

One of the many ways to illustrate various scientific concepts is through the use of visual aids. Whereas materials in the classroom have the advantage of being accessible, materials seen on field trips commonly have far greater impact because of the novelty of getting out of the standard classroom setting. When asked years later the memorable experiences of various courses, many individuals remember field trips to museums. Unfortunately, even though museums are packed with possibilities for illustrating various concepts, they often are not used at all or not used to their fullest educational potential. Although the logistics and costs of taking a class to a museum may be somewhat cumbersome, the value to the education of the students cannot be overemphasized.
Fossils in the Field: Real and “Virtual” Experiences
Authors: Griffing David H. , Allmon Warren D.
Published: June 2019

Science is a method of knowing and not a set of established facts. Even though this is widely acknowledged in the literature of science education, it is not so in the perception of the general public. Therefore, it is little wonder that when a “scientific fact” changes due to the discovery of new evidence, students raised on the notion of fact-based science may become confused and begin to mistrust science. Involvement in actual scientific experience, however, can make a difference. Once students participate in scientific endeavors, they see science as an active process, something ongoing instead of something completed. Few experiences compare with the paleontological field trip as an educational tool for exemplifying the basic method of science. We believe the following reasons make frequent field trips worth incorporating into the standard science curriculum at all grade levels.
Learning from the Fossil Record An Introduction
Authors: Scotchmoor Judy
Published: June 2019

Learning from the Fossil Record is a title carefully chosen for it conveys multiple concepts. Paleontologists, geologists, biologists, and others use the fossil record to learn about the past history of the Earth. Using this knowledge, we have gained an understanding of geologic processes that continue today, biodiversity past and present, species origination and extinction, past and present climates, oceans, and atmospheres among others. In fact, we have been able to piece together the fascinating story of our dynamic Earth for the past 3.5 billion years.
Island Biogeography and Evolution: Solving a Phylogenetic Puzzle Using Molecular Genetics
Authors: Filson R. P.
Published: June 2019

Island Biogeography and Evolution is an activity about the evolution of three species of lizards on the Canary Islands. It is designed for high school biology students. Its purpose is to demonstrate to students that evolutionary problems are complex and solutions may involve data from various disciplines of science. First, students must arrive at different phylogenetic solutions using only geographical and geological data. Then, students compare the morphology of the species involved arriving at a more traditional solution to phylogeny. Finally, students deduce a phylogeny based on genetic distance using DNA sequences from cutting edge biotechnology.
Dinosaurs in the Classroom: How We Know What We Know
Authors: Munsart Craig A. , Gundy Karen Alonzi-Van
Published: June 2019

The Present wave of dinosaur mania makes it easy to utilize a student's interest in the former masters of the Earth to introduce a wide variety of concepts. Students are already familiar with the names and habits of many of the animals, but familiarity can accomplish much more. Stephen Jay Gould (1991) asks, “Could we not immediately subvert more of the dinosaur craze from crass commercialism to educational value? … Dinosaur facts and figures can inspire visceral interest and lead to greater wonder about science. Dinosaur theories and reconstructions can illustrate the rudiments of scientific reasoning.” We fervently share Gould's tenet that dinosaurs can be used as a medium not only to teach students about the way science works but to introduce a broad range of thinking skills as well.
Foram Facts An Introduction to Foraminifera
Authors: Wetmore Karen
Published: June 2019

Foraminifera (forams for short) are single-celled organisms (protists) with shells or tests (a technical term for internal shells). They are abundant as fossils for the last 540 million years. The shells are commonly divided into chambers that are added during growth, though the simplest forms are open tubes or hollow spheres. Depending on the species, the shell may be made of organic compounds, sand grains or other particles cemented together, or crystalline CaCO3 (calcite or aragonite).
Preparation Techniques for Use of Foraminifera in the Classroom
Authors: Snyder Scott W. , Huber Brian T.
Published: June 2019

Introducing Students to microfossils in the K-12 curriculum can be a rewarding and exciting experience for both instructor and student. Students, even those who collect fossils as a hobby, are generally unaware of microfossils. Exposure to microfossils opens up a whole new world of inquiry, and the extent to which that inquiry is developed can be adjusted to the grade-level and interest-level of the individual student.
Using Microfossils in Petroleum Exploration
Authors: O'neill Brian J.
Published: June 2019

When I meet new people and they find out that I'm a paleontologist working for an oil company, the second question they ask (after “What is a paleontologist?”) is usually “Why would an oil company hire one?” Most people think of dinosaurs or, at the very least, trilobites and other invertebrate fossils when they think of paleontology. However, most of the rock samples available to those engaged in finding and developing hydrocarbon resources are in the form of “cuttings.” Cuttings (Baker, 1979) are the small pieces of rock broken up by the drill bit and brought to the surface by the fluid which lubricates the drill bit and removes the cut rock from the bottom of the drill hole. If the bit encounters dinosaur bones or clam shells, they are so broken up in the process as to be almost unusable. Microfossils on the other hand, by virtue of their small size, can be recovered whole. Microfossils also happen to be abundant, especially in marine rocks, which are the most common form of sedimentary rock in the crust of the Earth.
Tracking Global Climate Change: Microfossil Record of the Planetary Heat Pump
Authors: Loubere Paul
Published: June 2019

The objective of this exercise set is to integrate knowledge from several scientific disciplines and learn something interesting about the way the world works. I want to use some basic principles from physics, biology, and geology to see how a large scale planetary process, the transport of heat over the earths surface, operates and has operated over time. This topic is of basic scientific interest, and it has real importance to the growing societal interest in global climate change. This applies whether natural variation in climate or human induced change are under discussion. The set of exercises that follows will examine how energy is absorbed by the earth from the sun; how and why this energy is distributed over the earth's surface; what controls energy distribution; how we can track the energy distributing process using the oceanic microfossil record; and what that record shows us about variation of heat distribution with time. This is an exercise in global climate change because the climate system is driven by the heat distribution process.
Interpreting Paleoenvironments with Microfossils
Authors: Culver Stephen J.
Published: June 2019

One of the basic tenets of geology is the present is the key to the past. In the present context, this simply means that if we document the distribution of organisms today and have some degree of understanding of what combination of environmental variables controls those distributions, then we can use this information to reconstruct past environments by using the fossilized representatives of the modern organisms as paleoenvironmental indicators. This classic use of microfossils, along with biostratigraphy, is of great significance in the search for oil and gas.
The Mind–Body Problem after Fifty Years
Authors: Kim Jaegwon
Published: June 2019

It was about half a century ago that the mind–body problem, which like much else in serious metaphysics had been moribund for several decades, was resurrected as a mainstream philosophical problem. The first impetus came from Gilbert Ryle'sThe Concept of Mind, published in 1948, and Wittgenstein's well-known, if not well-understood, reflections on the nature of mentality and mental language, especially in hisPhilosophical Investigationswhich appeared in 1953. The primary concerns of Ryle and Wittgenstein, however, focused on the logic of mental discourse rather than the metaphysical issue of how our mentality is related to our bodily nature. In fact, Ryle and Wittgenstein would have regarded, each for different reasons, the metaphysical problem of the mind-body relation as arising out of deplorable linguistic confusions and not amenable to intelligible discussion. There was C. D. Broad's earlier and much neglected classic,The Mind and Its Place in Nature, which appeared in 1925, but this work, although robustly metaphysical, failed to connect with, and shape, the mind–body debate in the second half of this century.
Consciousness as Existence
Authors: Honderich Ted
Published: June 2019

The difference for present purposes between ourselves and stones, chairs and our computers is that we are conscious. The difference is fundamental. Being conscious is sufficient for having a mind in one sense of the word ‘mind’, and being conscious is necessary and fundamental to having a mind in any decent sense.Whatis this difference between ourselves and stones, chairs and our computers? The question is not meant to imply that there is a conceptual or a nomic barrier in the way of non-biological things being conscious. It may happen one decade that the other minds problem will shoot up the philosophical agenda and get a lot of attention as a result of a wonderful computer attached to perceptual and behavioural mechanisms, and that the thing will in the end be taken as conscious, rightly. Our question is not what things can be conscious, but what the Property or nature of consciousness is.
Mind, Knowledge and Reality: Themes from Kant
Authors: Cassam Quassim
Published: June 2019

According to what might be described as ‘humanist’ approaches to epistemology, the fundamental task of epistemology is to investigate the nature, scope and origins of human knowledge. Evidently, what we can know depends upon the nature of our cognitive faculties, including our senses and our understanding. Since there may be significant differences between human cognitive faculties and those of other beings, it would seem that an investigation of the nature, scope and origins of human knowledge must therefore concern itself, in the first instance, with uncovering the structure and operations of the human cognitive apparatus. The most influential versions of humanism in epistemology have also been inclined to insist both that it is contingent that our cognitive faculties are as they are, and that an investigation of these faculties must be largely empirical. An empirical investigation is to be understood, very roughly, as one which relies upon observation and experiment, and to describe such an investigation as naturalistic is to draw attention to the fact that it is presupposed by humanism that the faculties being investigated are a part of the natural world, the world of space, time and causal law.
Explanation in Psychology: Truth and Teleology
Authors: Papineau David
Published: June 2019

A number of recent writers have argued that we should explain mental representation teleologically, in terms of the biological purposes of beliefs and other mental states.

A rather older idea is that the truth condition of a belief is that condition which guarantees that actions based on that belief will succeed.

What I want to show in this paper is that these two ideas complement each other. The teleological theory is inadequate unless it incorporates the thesis that truth is the guarantee of successful action. Conversely, the success-guaranteeing account of truth conditions is incomplete until it is placed in a teleological context.
Explanation in the Social Sciences: Singular Explanation and the Social Sciences
Authors: Ruben David-Hillel
Published: June 2019

Are explanations in the social sciences fundamentally (logically or structurally) different from explanations in the natural sciences? Many philosophers think that they are, and I call such philosophers ‘difference theorists’. Many difference theorists locate that difference in the alleged fact that only in the natural sciences does explanation essentially include laws.
Norms of truth and meaning
Authors: Horwich Paul
Published: June 2019

It is widely held that thenormativityof truth and meaning puts a severe constraint on acceptable theories of these phenomena. This constraint issosevere, some would say, as to rule out purely ‘naturalistic’ or ‘factual’ accounts of them. In particular, it is commonly supposed that thedeflationaryview of truth and theuseconception of meaning, in so far as they are articulated in entirely non-normative terms, must for that reason be inadequate.
On the very idea of spiritual values
Authors: Haldane John
Published: June 2019

It is unusual for an academic philosopher in the Anglo-American tradition to discuss the subject of spirituality. Not so long ago this fact might have been attributed to a general view of philosophy as the practice of conceptual analysis and the theory of logic. However in a period when the discipline has developed to a point where almost every aspect of human life has been made the subject of some department of ‘applied philosophy’ it could hardly be said that the subject of spirituality, in so far as discussion of it may have normative implications, lies outside the sphere of reasonable philosohical enquiry. Yet it is almost entirely neglected.
On criticising values
Authors: Price A. W.
Published: June 2019

If we cannot agree that evaluations are judgements that both describe things (ascribing properties to them) and express sentiments, we lack any shared understanding of a common topic. If we ever come to agree how the describing and expressing relate, we shall lose a debate. Suppose that evaluation is a mode of description essentially expressive of sentiment, and that some evaluations can be known to be true: then there must exist properties of such a kind that they can be apprehended only from appropriately affective points of view. Alternatively, it may be that evaluation involves some element distinct from description, so that, in principle, one could always accept the descriptive core of an evaluation while distancing oneself from a non-descriptive element that makes it evaluative. We may distinguish the two kinds of view aslumping, or descriptivist-cum-expressivist, andsplitting, or descriptivist-plus-expressivist. Both ascribe to evaluations an expressive aspect as well as a descriptive content; what is at issue is whether the former is integral to the latter, or detachable from it.
‘The right and the good’ and W. D. Ross's criticism of consequentialism
Authors: Wiggins David
Published: June 2019

The theme announced for these lectures is the philosophy of value. It may seem that moral philosophy, along with aesthetics, the philosophy of art, the philosophy of environment … ought to be a proper part of the philosophy of value. I have chosen mottoes to illustrate the dangers of that supposition.
Beauty and testimony
Authors: Hopkins Robert
Published: June 2019

Kant claims that the judgement of taste, the judgement that some particular is beautiful, exhibits two ‘peculiarities’. First:

[t]he judgement of taste determines its object in respect of delight (as a thing of beauty) with a claim to the agreement of every one, just as if it were objective.
Introduction
Authors: Fellows Roger
Published: June 2019

The essays collected here do not constitute a philosophy of technology, in the sense which, for instance, Don Ihde requires. According to Ihde the philosopher of technology must reflectively analyse technology in such a way ‘as to illuminate features of the phenomenon of technology itself’. The contributors to this volume do not concern themselves with the essentiahst enterprise of defining technology; they more or less take it for granted that the reader is familiar with a variety of technologies such as Information Technology, and proceed from there. Hence the title is the conjunctive one of Philosophy and Technolog..
Technology: Liberation or Enslavement?
Authors: Cooper David E.
Published: June 2019

The week, twenty-five years ago, of the Apollo spacecraft's return visit to the moon was described by Richard Nixon as the greatest since the Creation. Across the Atlantic, a French Academician judged the same event to matter less than the discovery of a lost etching by Daumier. Attitudes to technological achievement, then, differ. And they always have. Chuang-Tzu, over 2,000 years ago, relates an exchange between a Confucian passer-by and a Taoist gardener watering vegetables with a bucket drawn from a well. ‘Don't you know that there is a machine with which 100 beds are easily watered in a day?’—‘How does it work?’—‘It's a counterbalanced ladle’—‘too clever to be good … all machines have to do with formulae, artificiality [which] destroy native ingenuity … and prevent the Tao from residing peacefully in one's heart’. ‘Engines of mischief, in the words of the Luddite song, or testaments to ‘the nobility of man [as] the conqueror of matter’, in those of Primo Levi, the products of technology continue to inspire phobia and philia.
Realism and Progress: Why Scientists should be Realists
Authors: Hendry Robin Findlay
Published: June 2019

For as long as realists and instrumentalists have disagreed, partisans of both sides have pointed in argument to the actions and sayings of scientists. Realists in particular have often drawn comfort from theliteralunderstanding given even to very theoretical propositions by many of those who are paid to deploy them. The scientists' realism, according to the realist, is not an idle commitment: a literal understanding of past and present theories and concepts underwrites their employment in the construction ofnewtheories. The theme of this book is philosophy and technology, and here's the connection:newtheories point out—and explain—newphenomena. So realism, claim the realists, is at the heart of science's achievement of what Bacon, that early philosopher of technology, identified as science's aim:newknowledge offeringnewpowers.
“Preference-Formation and Personal Good”
Authors: Rosati Connie S.
Published: June 2019

As persons, beings with a capacity for autonomy, we face a certain practical task in living out our lives. At any given period we find ourselves with many desires or preferences, yet we have limited resources, and so we cannot satisfy them all. Our limited resources include insufficient economic means, of course; few of us have either the funds or the material provisions to obtain or pursue all that we might like. More significantly, though, we are limited to a single life and one of finite duration. We also age, and pursuits that were possible at earlier points within a life may become impossible at later stages; we thus encounter not only an ultimate time limit but episodic limits as well. Because we must live our lives with limited resources—material and temporal—we are pressed to choose among and to order our preferences. Without some selection and ordering, few if any of them would be satisfied, and we would be unable to live lives that are recognizably good at all. Moreover, we would be unable to function well as the autonomous beings that we are. Our practical task then is to form a coherent, stable, and attractive ordering of aims—to develop a conception of our good.
“Well-Being, Adaptation and Human Limitations”
Authors: Qizilbash Mozaffar
Published: June 2019

Philosophical accounts of human well-being face a number of significant challenges. In this paper, I shall be primarily concerned with one of these. It relates to the possibility, noted by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen amongst others, that people's desires and attitudes are malleable and can ‘adapt’ in various ways to the straitened circumstances in which they live. If attitudes or desires adapt in this way it can be argued that the relevant desires or attitudes fail to provide a reliable basis for evaluating well-being. This is, what I shall call the ‘adaptation problem’. Nussbaum and Sen have—in different ways used this argument to motivate their versions of the ‘capability approach’. However, questions remain about the implications of adaptation for philosophical accounts of well-being.
“Taking Unconsidered Preferences Seriously”
Authors: Sugden Robert
Published: June 2019

In normative economic analysis, it is conventional to treat each person's preferences as that person's own standard of value, and as the standard by which the effects of public policies on that person should be valued. The proposal that preferences should be treated in this way is usually qualified by two apparently natural conditions—that preferences are internally coherent, and that they reflect the considered judgements of the person concerned. However, there is now a great deal of evidence suggesting that, in many economic environments, preferences of the required kind simply do not exist. It seems that the preferences that govern people's actual behaviour are often incoherent and unstable. This prompts the following question: Is there a defensible form of normative economics which respects each individual'sactualpreferences, whatever form they take? I shall try to show that there is.
“Preferences, Paternalism, and Liberty”
Authors: Sunstein Cass R. , Thaler Richard H.
Published: June 2019

Our goal in this chapter is to draw on empirical work about preference formation and welfare to propose a distinctive form of paternalism, libertarian in spirit, one that should be acceptable to those who are firmly committed to freedom of choice on grounds of either autonomy or welfare. Indeed, we urge that a kind of ‘libertarian paternalism’ provides a basis for both understanding and rethinking many social practices, including those that deal with worker welfare, consumer protection, and the family.
Dramatic Irony, Narrative, and the External Perspective
Authors: Goldie Peter
Published: June 2019

There is a frequently asked philosophical question about our ability to grasp and to predict the thoughts and feelings of other people, an ability that is these days sometimes given the unfortunate name of ‘mentalising’ or ‘mind-reading’—I say ‘unfortunate’ because it makes appear mysterious what is not mysterious. Some philosophers and psychologists argue that this ability is grounded in possession of some kind of theory or body of knowledge about how minds work. Others argue that it is grounded in our capacity to take on in imagination the perspective of others; sometimes called simulating or centrally imagining another person, we entertain in our minds what the other person is thinking about and feeling: if he is thinking ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’, then we think ‘p’ and ‘if p then q’, and if he is feeling angry with someone, then we imagine feeling angry with that person. We thus recreate as well as we can in our imagination his mental life as it is ‘from the inside’. We can do this in two different ways: I can put myself in the other's shoes, simply imagining what I would do were I in his situation, or I can empathise with him, imagining being him, taking on in imagination his relevant traits and other mental dispositions; I will from now on use the term perspective-shifting to cover both of these imaginative activities.
On the Distance between Literary Narratives and Real-Life Narratives
Authors: Lamarque Peter
Published: June 2019

It is a truth universally acknowledged that great works of literature have an impact on people's lives. Well known literary characters— Oedipus, Hamlet, Faustus, Don Quixote—acquire iconic or mythic status and their stories, in more or less detail, are revered and recalled often in contexts far beyond the strictly literary. At the level of national literatures, familiar characters and plots are assimilated into a wider cultural consciousness and help define national stereotypes and norms of behaviour. In the English speaking world, Shakespeare's plays or the novels of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, and Trollope, provide imaginative material that reverberates in people's lives every bit as much as do the great historical figures, like Julius Caesar, Elizabeth I, Horatio Nelson, or Winston Churchill. What is striking is how often fictional characters from the literary tradition—like the well-loved Elizabeth Bennett, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Pip, Tess of the d'Ubervilles—enter readers' lives at a highly personal level. They become, as Martha Nussbaum puts it, our ‘friends’, and for many readers the lives of these characters become closely entwined with their own. Happy and unhappy incidents in the fictional worlds are held up against similar incidents in the real lives of readers and such readers take inspiration from the courage, ingenuity, or good fortune of their fictional heroines and heroes. Nowhere is it more true that life imitates art.
Genetic changes in layer breeding: Historical trends and future prospects
Authors: Preisinger Rudolf , Flock Dietmar K.
Published: June 2019

In commercial egg type chicken breeding three and four way crosses are used to produce commercial layers. The primary breeders are using closed nucleus breeding programmes, with birds kept under maximum biosecurity. All grand parents and parents are produced from a closed nucleus for the world wide demand of commercial layers. The breeding goals have been focused for several decades on increasing number of eggs per hen housed. Additional traits have become more important during the last decade, i.e. feed efficiency, internal and external egg quality and general adaptability. Prior to each selection, weights for individual traits within the selection index are adjusted to meet market demands. Breeding stock and commercial layers have to be bred to perform adequately in a variety of systems ranging from large intensive cage units to free range management under different environmental conditions world-wide.

Despite intensive selection for egg production the decrease in genetic variation observed in closed commercial lines is not yet critical. Peak production is approaching the biological limit of one egg a day. During this period genetic and phenotypic variation have been significantly reduced. But for early production (sexual maturity) and late production (persistency) genetic variation is still high. In a mating scheme avoiding full and half sib matings no serious inbreeding depression is observed. To achieve continued future genetic progress, selection pressure will shift to other traits like internal and external egg quality and perhaps behaviour traits which still respond to selection.

Primary breeders are responding to this challenge by testing pedigreed cross-line hens in a wide range of environments and housing systems while the pure-line elite stock is kept under conditions of maximum biosecurity. Marker assisted selection is already part of commercial breeding programmes. In the past, blood typing has been used to improve Marek's resistance, whereas today anonymous microsatellites which are linked to traits of economic interest are used for selection. In particular, selection between full sib males can give a major improvement.

The whole industry is getting more specialised. While the genetic potential of the birds is improved management and nutrition have also to be adapted to changing demands. The general goal for the future is to breed chickens with the ability to function well within a wider range of production conditions and do not respond to the slightest stress.
Issues arising from genetic selection for growth and body composition characteristics in poultry and pigs
Authors: Emmans G. C. , Kyriazakis I.
Published: June 2019

Breeders of poultry and pigs have selected for some combination of increased growth rate, decreased fatness and increased muscularity. Increasingly various fitness traits are included in the index used. The consequences of such selection include complex effects on nutritional and environmental requirements, at least some of which are reliably predictable using suitable models. Appropriate changes to the environment and to nutrition as selection proceeds will help to avoid unwanted effects occurring. Among the predictable effects are that higher ratios of nutrients to energy, and lower temperatures, will be needed by the improved genotypes. Selection for growth rate must eventually exhaust the capacity of the support systems – digestive, respiratory, circulatory and excretory – to cope with the increased metabolic rate. Selection for increased yield of valuable parts will cause these problems to occur earlier. While it is possible to predict that these problems will occur it cannot be predicted when they will. Breeders need to be aware of these problems, and use all possible routes to help them in reducing their severity. Where the appropriate actions for fitness selection, and nutritional and environmental modifications, are taken the occurrence of the problems will be delayed.
Managing metabolic disease in rapidly growing strains of poultry
Authors: Classen Henry L.
Published: June 2019

The poultry meat industry, in continual pursuit of improved efficiency, has demanded rapid growth rate. Primary breeding companies have responded to industry pressure and growth rate has increased in an almost linear fashion. Despite the obvious advantages to industry profitability, it can be argued that increased growth has placed more emphasis on the demand tissues of growth than those systems or organs that supply the substrates for rapid growth and/or are essential to support the increase in body mass. One of the consequences is that modern broilers are not as adaptable to their environments as their predecessors were. Rapid growth has also produced problems not seen in slower growing birds. Skeletal and cardiovascular disease (sudden death syndrome (SDS), ascites) are examples of growth related problems. Although it can not be said that rapid growth automatically will result in these problems, there is no doubt that the!re is a relationship.
An investigation of the thermal death kinetics ofMycobacterium paratuberculosisduring pasteurisation
Authors: Rowe M.T. , Grant I.R. , Ball H.J. , Pope C.
Published: June 2019

Mycobacterium paratuberculosis is the known cause of Johne's disease in cattle and has been implicated as a cause of Crohn's disease in humans. Concern has been expressed that the organism, which is excreted in milk and faeces of infected cattle, may be transmitted via pasteurised milk. This is largely from work that has shown an unacceptable risk of survival of the organism when it is present in raw milk at numbers exceeding 102cfu/ml. Three possible reasons for this apparent heat resistance were investigated viz. use of a milk heating menstruum, presence of a heat resistant sub–population, and the tendency of the organism to form clumps. Heat resistance studies using a combined acid–fast/viability stain, and a comparison of the relative heat sensitivities of clumped and de-clumped M. paratuberculosis cells provided circumstantial evidence that it is the organism's tendency to form clumps which confers the apparent heat resistance. This work casts doubt on the efficacy of current commercial pasteurisation heat treatments (72°C/15s) for the inactivation of M. paratuberculosis. This would be of concern if a link between M. paratuberculosis and Crohn's disease is eventually established.
Impact of genetic polymorphism on milk powder manufacture and processing
Authors: Hill J. , Boland M. , Harris P. , Paterson G.
Published: June 2019

Recombined milks manufactured from milk powders made from milk produced by b-lactoglobulin (b-LG) AA phenotype cows were not suitable for processing into ultra-heat-treated (UHT) milk products as these milks rapidly fouled heat exchanger surfaces when compared with standard mixed b-LG variant milk. Recombined milks manufactured from powders from b-LG BB phenotype milk generally gave low fouling rates upon UHT treatment and in some cases gave almost negligible fouling of UHT heat exchanger surfaces. Fresh milk from b-LG AA phenotype cows fouled evaporator preheaters more rapidly than standard milk, whereas fresh milk produced from b-LG BB phenotype cows fouled evaporator preheaters less rapidly than standard milk. Recombined milks manufactured from powders made with milk from k-casein (k-CN) BB phenotype cows fouled heat exchanger surfaces more rapidly than recombined milks manufactured from powders from milk from k-CN AA phenotype cows.