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Makes Clear (make + clear)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences66%

Selected Abstracts

Quine, Davidson, and the Naturalization of Metaethics

DIALECTICA, Issue 2 2001
Robert Feleppa
Quine's ethical views typify what might seem to be natural sympathies between empiricism and ethical noncognitivism. LikeAyer, he sees a case for noncognitivism rooted in an epistemic discontinuity between ethics and science. Quine argues that the absence of genuine moral observation sentences, and thus the absence of empirical checkpoints for the resolution of theoretical disputes, renders ethics, as he terms it, "methodologically infirm" However, recent papers in this journal make clear that Quine appears to be voicing mutually incompatible commitments to both noncognitivism and cognitivism. Here I argue that Davidson's theory of interpretation offers promising ways to resolve these tensions. His constructive program fleshes out the implications of Quine's largely destructive critique of intensional semantics and contains a fairly well-articulated account of evaluative semantics, one which seems to combine cognitivist and noncognitivist elements harmoniously. Moreover, it is argued that Davidson's long-standing differences with Quine over the epistemological status Quine accords observation sentences with do not undermine Quine's metaethical critique. [source]

Nitrate behaviour in the groundwater of a headwater wetland, Chiba, Japan

HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 16 2004
Changyuan Tang
Abstract A wetland is an important part of the headwater in the discharge area of a basin. It controls not only groundwater discharge such as seepage or springs, but also the migration of chemical matter from the basin. In order to make clear how and where natural attenuation processes happen in wetlands, a typical headwater in Chiba, Japan, was chosen for an investigation of the behaviour of nitrate in groundwater. From the viewpoint of hydro-geomorphology, the wetland in the study site can be divided into three zones: the shallow water-table zone, the seepage zone, and the spring zone along the downstream direction. There were six piezometer groups; each group contained four piezometers, individually set at depths of 1, 2, 3 and 4 m. Major ions and ,15N of groundwater from piezometers, wells and springs were analysed. It was found that nitrate in groundwater mainly came from the fertilizers used in the upstream recharge area of the study site. When the groundwater moved up across the wetland, nitrate concentration in the groundwater decreased rapidly in the shallow water-table zone due to denitrification. Nitrate-free water can be found at the seepage zone. However, the behaviour of nitrate in the spring water was different from that in the seepage zone, since both dilution and denitrification processes were involved in the decrease of nitrate concentration in groundwater. In particular, the dilution process mainly controlled the decline of nitrate at the location where the nitrate-free groundwater flowing horizontally from the seepage zone mixed with the high-nitrate groundwater flowing upward before emerging as a spring. It was also found that denitrification only occurs suddenly in a narrow zone or a thin layer of the order of a few metres. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

INTRODUCTION: COMPARATIVE CIVIC CULTURE

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2008
LAURA A. REESE
ABSTRACT:,This symposium presents a subset of findings from a larger multicity research project using a single operational and methodological scheme to explore the nature of civic culture. The overall purpose is to explore civic cultures in an array of larger cities, test an initial typology of civic culture, and begin to examine the connections between civic culture and local policy. The articles in the symposium make clear that it is possible to empirically identify a parsimonious taxonomy of local civic cultures focusing on systems of community power, values, and decision-making. While many questions about the internal dynamics of each type remain to be answered, the civic cultures identified here appear empirically distinct and theoretically logical. Future research and dialogue need to focus on defining what culture is and what it is not, and then move to explore the linkages between the elements of civic culture and ultimately to local policy. [source]

The algebraic approach to the phase problem

ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA SECTION A, Issue 5 2005
A. Cervellino
A rather detailed report is presented on the present status of the algebraic approach to the phase problem in the case of an ideal crystal in order to make clear that some points must still be proven for it to apply to neutron scattering. To make this extension, the most important results that were previously obtained in the case of X-ray scattering are derived again by a different procedure. By so doing, the three-dimensional case is treated explicitly, the polynomial equations in a single variable whose roots determine the positions of the scattering centres are explicitly reported and the procedure is shown to generalize to neutron scattering, overcoming the difficulty related to the non-positivity of the scattering density. In this way, it is fully proven that the atomicity assumption removes the phase ambiguity in the sense that the full diffraction pattern of an ideal crystal can uniquely be reconstructed from a suitable finite portion of it in both X-ray and neutron scattering. The procedures able to isolate these portions that contain the pattern's full information are also given. [source]

Microstructural Analysis of the Reinforced Al-Cu5mgti/Tib2 5,wt % Alloy for Investment Casting Applications,

ADVANCED ENGINEERING MATERIALS, Issue 6 2010
Pedro Egizabal
Abstract The paper describes the influence of 5,wt % titanium diboride (TiB2) particles on the microstructure of an Al-Cu alloy produced by plaster casting process. The elaboration route leads to a composite material with 1% of in situ TiB2 particles and 4% ex situ of TiB2 particles. The comparison of the reinforced alloy with the corresponding non-reinforced counterpart makes clear that the presence of TiB2 particles has a large influence in the observed microstructure. The presence of TiB2 particles decreases the grain sizes and the porosity level. It is also found that TiB2 particles play an important role in the precipitation events of Al2Cu precipitates that are formed during solidification at the TiB2/aluminum matrix interfaces. [source]

Testimony and Trauma in Herta Müller's Herztier

GERMAN LIFE AND LETTERS, Issue 1 2000
Beverley Driver Eddy
This article attempts to distinguish between testimony (an account of one's personal, limited knowledge of a crime or an atrocity) and trauma (a reconstructed life-story intended to overcome a troubling, recurring memory by locating that memory within its larger, historical context). It is the author's contention that Herta Müller's novel Herztier is a skilful blending of testimony and trauma narrative that illuminates the terrors of the Ceaus¸escu dictatorship and their lasting impact on its survivors. The testimonial aspects of the novel reveal one's inability to achieve complete knowledge of another's trauma, while the trauma narrative, through skilful incorporation of recurring, ,transfinite' images into the text, links the personal stories of the narrator and her friends by subsuming them and making them part of the history of a larger, national trauma. As Müller's novel makes clear, neither testimony nor trauma narrative is able to heal or bring closure to the victims of the Romanian state terror. [source]

The Cat and Mouse Game at the Mexico-U.S. Border: Gendered Patterns and Recent Shifts1

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 2 2008
Katharine M. Donato
This paper provides new insights into the process of undocumented border crossing by examining both men and women in the process. We investigate differences in the ways in which men and women make their way across the well-guarded Mexico-U.S. border, and the extent to which men and women by the end of the 1990s were similar to, or different from, their counterparts who crossed before 1986 and the implementation of immigration policy designed to reduce undocumented migration. We find substantial differences in how men and women crossed the border without legal documents and in their chances of being apprehended. Our analysis makes clear that shifts in U.S. immigration policy after 1986 have led to women's greater reliance on the assistance of paid smugglers to cross without documents but men were more likely to cross alone. Moreover, immediately after 1986, women on first U.S. trips faced higher risks of being apprehended compared to women who migrated in the early 1980s, but men faced lower risks. After accumulating some U.S. experience, however, both women and men faced lower risks of being detected after 1986 compared to earlier in that decade. [source]

The Hawthorne Aspect of T. S. Eliot's Coriolan

ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 1 2007
Allusive Journey as Errancy
Allusion is generally understood as a textual maneuver that calls into play remembered fragments and transfigured motifs in literature. While pursuing an allusive trail, readers sometimes neglect to consider the detours, certain errant trips a narrative prompts them to make in memory. This essay reads T. S. Eliot's Coriolan fragments alongside Nathaniel Hawthorne's ,,My Kinsman, Major Molineux,'' both texts featuring young men's errancy and rebellion leading to their respective realities of life. On an allusive trail a reader is a quester; allegory aligns readers and characters in fiction in their common pursuit for the meanings they seek. While parallels, correspondences, and repetitions are remarkable, readers are not always obliged to seek the arresting ground of an empirical ,,source.'' The reading here shows how Eliot appears to have reworked a large Hawthornian paradigm involving American colonial history and an individual American's progress in life. It illustrates further how allusion is both a tribute to tradition and a repudiation of its authority, a detail we remark both in Robin and the ,,hero'' of Coriolan fragments. Both Eliot and Hawthorne before him have been, therefore, sensitive to the burden of paternal inheritance, an aspect Eliot's allusive practice in particular makes clear when he draws upon Hawthorne. Eliot's ,,Hawthorne aspect'' thus enables us to see for once the advantage of looking away from a professed allusive lead in the title (Shakespeare's Coriolanus) but towards another paternal link the poet appears to have suppressed (Hawthorne's American tale). [source]

Front and Back Covers, Volume 21, Number 5.

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 5 2005
October 200
Front and back cover caption, volume 21 issue 5 Front cover Children in the favela (squatter community) of 'Caxambu', in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Although favelas are often depicted as dangerous and as the housing option of last resort, they are also characterized by dense and multi-stranded social ties between residents, long histories of occupation and settlement, and multi-generational families. Caxambu (a pseudonym) was originally settled at the beginning of the 20th century, and residents often describe the neighbourhood as a 'big family'. As the photo makes clear, the alleys, street corners and other public spaces in the favela often serve as giant playgrounds for local children. Back cover THE HUMAN BODY The photo on the back cover shows one of the exhibits from Gunther von Hagens' anatomical exhibition Body Worlds, discussed by Uli Linke in this issue. The exhibits in this show are fashioned from human corpses. The male figure shown here, the body of a man holding and gazing at his own skin, attempts to convey something about the human skin. The anatomical museum markets corpses, artfully transformed to appeal to the viewer. Body Worlds has toured internationally, and attracted millions of visitors. Dead bodies are transformed into sensually appealing 'works of art', playing to fantasies of the alluring body common to the dream worlds promoted by multinational media and entertainment industries. In the exhibition anatomy and pedagogy, economy and medical science, pathology and human rights are closely intertwined. But where do the bodies come from? The corpses, contrary to the exhibitor's claims, are not supplied by German donors - they are procured from Eastern Europe, Russia, Kyrgyzstan and China, from places where human rights and bioethical standards are not enforced. Von Hagens insists that bodies displayed are from donors, and his exhibition website (www.bodyworlds.com) welcomes donations to its body donation programme. In his body factory in Dalian, China, thousands of corpses, including the remains of executed prisoners, are flayed and prepared for later use. This trade in bodies, a multi-million-dollar enterprise, is highly problematic. For the trumpeted 'art of anatomy', with its beautified corpses and eroticized installations, also has a violent dimension, with human victims whose bodies are bought and sold for profit. In November 2002, Gunther von Hagens risked prosecution by holding the first public dissection of a (donated) body in the UK since the 1830s, in London's Atlantis Gallery. The issues surrounding procurement, preparation, dissection and display of human remains are central to anthropology, and in this article Uli Linke discusses in particular the various ways in which this exhbition was interpreted in Germany. [source]