As early as 1784, sharp-eyed engineers and scientists noted striking similarities between the dynamics of seagoing vessels and aerial vehicles. By the early twentieth century, naval engineers and scientists were developing and designing airplanes and dirigibles using empirical principles derived from naval architecture. Several key researchers in aerodynamics began their career as naval architects (David A. Taylor, William F. Durand and Jerome C. Hunsaker) and carried out their experiments in ship testing facilities. By the 1930s, however, the transfer of knowledge (...) was irrevocably reversed as empiricism gave way to more fundamental, physics-based research. The rapid evolution of complex aircraft systems and flight envelopes led to new theoretical developments in aerodynamics and maneuvering, which quickly found their way into naval ship design. The theoretical and experimental results for airfoils, rigid airships and fixed-wing aircraft developed by Ludwig Prandtl, Theodore von Kármán, Max M. Munk and Hilda M. Lyon were employed in the hydrodynamic development of surface ships and submarines. This paper examines how the ideas, concepts and data from one discipline influenced the other and explores the processes by which that knowledge was transferred between disciplines. (shrink)

The use of performance-enhancing drugs is a significant problem in sport. It cheats clean athletes of their hard-earned rewards from perfecting their skills though dedication and hard work. It defrauds fans by substituting a distorted playing field for a true competition. Anti-doping agencies have been charged with enforcing drug policies, primarily through the use of drug testing programs. We propose that drug testing, while important, is not sufficient to achieve deterrence. Engaging the principles of perceptual deterrence and development of a (...) moral community of athletes can greatly enhance compliance with rules. (shrink)

In this two-volume set, Larry D. Barnett delves into the macrosociological sources of law concerned with society-important social activities in a structurally complex, democratically governed nation. Barnett explores why, when, and where particular proscriptions and prescriptions of law on key social activities arise, persist, and change. The first volume, Societal Agents in Law: A Macrosociological Approach, puts relevant doctrines of law into a macrosociological framework, uses the findings of quantitative research to formulate theorems that identify the impact of several (...) society-level agents on doctrines of law, and takes the reader through a number of case analyses. The second volume, Societal Agents in Law: Quantitative Research, reports original multivariate statistical studies of sociological determinants of law on specific types of key social activities. Taken together, the two volumes offer an alternative to the almost-total monopoly of theory and descriptive scholarship in the macrosociology of law, comparative law, and history of law, and underscore the value of a mixed empirical/theoretical approach. (shrink)

This review article surveys five recent texts in the field of Asian philosophy. The reviewer looks at the practicability of each work for the classroom, as well as for scholars in the field. Strong points of each text are noted, as well as the intricacies of the introductions to each text supplied by the editor or translator of the respective books.The texts reviewed have as their subject China and Confucianism, with the exception of one work on Zen, though the link (...) to China is present in consideration of the history of Zen. (shrink)

Thomas Nagel contends that the actual philosophical problem in the meaning of life is the independent world we live in, and only requires a self-transcendent being who glimpses an independent world. I argue that Nagel is mistaken to think that self-transcendence evokes the same anxiety for humans living in the world of Dante as Darwin. Nagel’s view from nowhere is rather a modem version of the world. Secondly, while I concede that there is a common anxiety felt by self-transcendence in (...) glimpsing an independent objective world, we also view that world through a set of beliefs that conditions how we see that world. (shrink)

The highly publicized deaths of research participants Ellen Roche and Jesse Gelsinger are stark reminders that risk is inherent in medical research and while untoward outcomes are infrequent when compared to individual and societal benefits, injury and even death will happen. Who is responsible for the welfare of research subjects and what are they owed? Why were they put at risk to begin with? Are obligations, if any, to research subjects dependent on the type of study in which they participate, (...) in recognition that there may be personal benefit from participation in some studies?The issue of injury resulting from participation in research and answers to questions such as those just posed were last considered in depth nearly 20 years ago by the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (shrink)

Dreaming in sleep must depend on the activity of the brain as does cognition and memory in wakefulness. Yet our understanding of the physiological subtleties of state differences may still be too primitive to guide theories adequately in these areas. One can state nonetheless unequivocally that the brain in REM is poorly equipped to practice for eventualities of wakefulness through dreaming, or for consolidating into memory the complex experiences of that state. [Hobson et al., Nielsen, Solms, Vertes & Eastman, Revonsuo].