20,671 research outputs found
ADAM SMITH'S OPTIMISTIC TELEOLOGICAL VIEW OF HISTORY
No full textAdam Smith's four-stage theory provides the framework for his writings on history. The fourth stage is the commercial epoch; the culmination of history in this stage is a key component in the conventional interpretation of Adam Smith as a prophet of commercialism. In two historical case studies Smith shows the capacity of commercial society to regenerate itself. This potent capacity suggests that commercial society is inevitable. At a certain point in time it also overcomes the major obstacles to its permanence. Smith's philosophy of history anticipates the end of history views of Kant and Hegel.Political Economy,
Tests for tuberculosis infection: landscape analysis
No full textOnly tuberculin skin tests (TST) and two interferon-γ release assays (IGRA) – QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube and T-SPOT.TB – are currently endorsed by the World Health Organization as tests for tuberculosis (TB) infection. While IGRAs are more specific than TST, they require sophisticated laboratory infrastructure and are costly to perform. However, both types of tests have limited performance to predict development of active TB. Tests with improved predictive performance and operational characteristics are needed.
We reviewed the current landscape of tests for TB infection identified through a web-based survey targeting diagnostic manufacturers globally.
We identified 20 tests for TB infection including 15 in-vitro tests and five skin tests. Thirteen of the in-vitro tests are whole-blood IGRA and 14 uses early secreted antigenic target 6 (ESAT-6) and culture filtrate protein 10 (CFP-10), with or without additional antigens. Ten are based on assays other than an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay such as a fluorescent lateral flow assay, which requires less manual operation and shorter assay time and hence is more suitable for decentralisation compared to the existing IGRA.
Four of the five skin tests use ESAT-6 and CFP-10 proteins while the remaining one uses a new antigen that is specific to Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.
New tests have the potential to improve accuracy, operational characteristics and end-user access to tests for TB infection. However, published data in various populations and settings are limited for most new tests. Evaluation of these new tests in a standardised design would facilitate their endorsement and programmatic scale-up
How Might Adam Smith Pay Professors Today?
No full textAdam Smith’s proposal for paying professors was intended to induce increased faculty knowledge. If students have imperfect information about what they learn, and universities can only imperfectly measure the input of faculty time in student learning, publications may be used to measure faculty knowledge. If professors’ ability to publish is positively related to their ability to produce student learning, which universities can imperfectly measure, publications may be necessary to attract more able professors. Since research signals faculty knowledge, schools that do not value publications per se could require higher publication standards and pay higher wages than schools that value only publications.
Unidentified Penn School Graduate, August 2009
No full textAn unidentified 81-year-old female Penn School graduate interview, who was a classmate of Robert Ralph Middleton and is now the board member of the Penn Center and member of Brick Baptist Church. She attended school from 1932, and she attended Adam Street Church as a child. The interview covers the use of classic English versus Gullah, and the emphasis of the spirituals at Penn. She recalls that that Penn School emphasized the Gullah culture through the food, spirituals (which she recalls were performed in Gullah), and through the preservation of the language. She recalls why Penn School required students to stay on campus the last two years, as well as the convenience it provided to other island communities like Hilton Head and Shell Island, which did not have high schools for black students. She recalls the routines of Penn School such as the flag service and chapel service, as well as the numerous individuals who came to study the songs and the educational models at Penn. They discuss Mr. J. P. King, who went to school with her father at Hampton College. The interviewee discusses the quartet contests, as well as the site of the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. She recalls her own baptism, the baptisms that occured at the creek, and the communion service traditions at churches on the island. She then shifts back to Penn School to discuss the number of boys who were drafted during World War II. She discusses the benefits of the isolation of Saint Helena Island before the bridge was built, and the importance of midwives and doctors at Penn School. The interview cuts off in the middle of her discussing the vesper services held by a principal at Penn School. After a break in the recording, the interviewee discusses her brother\u27s education at Penn School, and the fact that some individuals would have to leave Penn because they could not afford tuition. She recalls that Mrs. Agnes Sherman brought back some of the old customs after she was hired as a cultural coordinator at the Penn Center, and she explains the experience of these celebrations, such as Fourth of July and Labor Day. She also discusses Mrs. Sherman\u27s collaboration with James Garfield Smalls. As Crawford and the interviewee look through artifacts, she remembers how both girls and boys were involved in the war effort during World War II. She also sings a few bars of Leanin\u27 on the Lord, which Garfield would sing. She also sings parts of Hold Out Your Light.https://digitalcommons.coastal.edu/eric-crawford-oral-histories/1003/thumbnail.jp
ADAM SMITH'S VIEW OF HISTORY: CONSISTENT OR PARADOXICAL?
No full textThe conventional interpretation of Adam Smith is that he is a prophet of commercialism. The liberal capitalist reading of Smith is consistent with the view that history culminates in commercial society. The first part of the article develops this optimistic interpretation of Smith's view of history. Smith implies that commercial society is the end of history because 1) it supplies the ends of nature that he identifies; 2) it is inevitable; and 3) it is permanent. The second part of the article shows that Smith has some dark moments in his writings where he seems to reject completely such teleological notions. In this more civic humanist mood he confesses that commercial society does not supply the ends of nature, nor is it inevitable, nor is it permanent. Both views exist in Smith and the commentator is forced to choose between passages in Smith's work in order to support a particular interpretation of the former's view of history.Political Economy,
Adam Smith and Moral Knowledge
No full textThis paper examines the contribution of The Theory of Moral Sentiments to the study of how we acquire moral knowledge. In Smith, this is associated with the moral judgment of an impartial spectator, a hypothetical ideal conjured in the imagination of an agent. This imagined spectator has the properties of impartiality, information and sympathy. I argue Smith develops this construct in the context of personal ethics, i.e., as a guide to moral conduct in personal relationships. There are limitations, however, to this model for personal ethics, as acknowledged by Smith himself and suggested by subsequent social science findings. Moreover, this model does not necessarily extend to social ethics, i.e., to moral judgment in less personal economic and social interactions, such as firms, industries and governments. Hence, I propose modifying the spectator model in light of modern social science methods and of Smith’s own insights to address its limitations for personal ethics and to provide it with a foundation for social ethics. The proposed approach is based on a quasi-spectator, i.e., the empirical analysis of the moral views of real spectators whose properties approximate those of the ideal spectator. A review of quasi-spectator studies suggests this as a promising method for informing both descriptive and prescriptive ethics.Adam Smith, ethics, moral knowledge
Large-scale induction and evaluation of lexical resources from the Penn-II treebank
No full textIn this paper we present a methodology for extracting
subcategorisation frames based on an automatic LFG f-structure annotation algorithm for the Penn-II Treebank. We extract abstract syntactic function-based subcategorisation frames (LFG semantic forms), traditional CFG categorybased subcategorisation frames as well as mixed
function/category-based frames, with or without preposition information for obliques and particle information for particle verbs. Our approach does not predefine frames, associates probabilities with frames conditional on the lemma, distinguishes between active and passive frames, and fully reflects the effects of long-distance dependencies in the source data structures. We extract 3586 verb lemmas,
14348 semantic form types (an average of 4 per lemma) with 577 frame types. We present a large-scale evaluation of the complete set of forms extracted against the full COMLEX resource
Adam Smith and Roman Servitudes
No full textThis essay is a preprint of an article that appeared at: Tijdschrift voor Rechstsgeschiedenis, 72 (2004), 327–57.This essay discusses Adam Smith historical jurisprudence and his use of Roman law materials in his Lectures on Jurisprudence. It argues that Smith found it difficult to maintain his theory of legal development in the face of a highly developed body of Roman law literature
The tail of the Jurassic fish Leedsichthys problematicus (Osteichthyes: Actinopterygii) collected by Alfred Nicholson Leeds - an example of the importance of historical records in palaeontology
No full textThe specimen of the tail of <i>Leedsichthys problematicus</i>, now in The Natural History Museum, London, was one of the most spectacular fossil vertebrates from the Oxford Clay Formation of Peterborough, but as an isolated find it shares no bones in common with the holotype of the genus and species. However, a letter from Alfred Nicholson Leeds and related documents cast valuable new light on the excavation of the tail, indicating that it was discovered with cranial bones, gill-rakers, and two pectoral fins, thereby including elements that can potentially be compared with those of the holotype. The documents also clearly indicate that The Natural History Museum's specimen is not part of the same individual as any other numbered specimen of <i>Leedsichthys</i> as had been speculated on other occasions. The maximum size of the animal represented by The Natural History Museum's specimen was possibly around 9 metres, considerably less than previous estimates of up to 27.6 metres for <i>Leedsichthys</i>. Historical documentary evidence should therefore be rigorously checked both when studying historical specimens in science, and in preparing text for museum display labels
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