Academia as a league system

In this paper, we explain the stability of top university ranks and discuss attempts to create top national universities. Firstly, it is shown theoretically that in a world with differently-gifted poor and rich students, a three-tier university system may become very stable, with a super league of the best research universities that attract the best students, whether rich or poor. Secondly, it is empirically demonstrated that half of the highest ranked universities enjoy very stable competitive advantages. Thirdly, we examine attempts of China, France and Germany to overcome these disadvantages and to get into this super league. The recent attempt of China to create such super league universities shows the financial and societal costs of these attempts. France demonstrates how the concentration of financial resources on two newly built universities that complement the forces of existing ones—either real or only by labelling—may succeed. Despite the complexly designed and competitive German Excellence Initiative, ongoing since 2004, no German university was among the top 50 in the Shanghai ranking in 2021 (compared to one university in 2004). The mixed results of all these worldwide attempts may reflect the problem that late market entry into the super league may be too costly, given that the classical university business model is in the mature phase of its life cycle.

Shapira’s Deuteronomy, Its Decalogue, and Dead Sea Scrolls Authentic and Forged

This essay engages Idan Dershowitz’s recent attempt to rehabilitate the Deuteronomy fragments Moses Wilhelm Shapira offered for sale in 1883. After summarizing the contents of Dershowitz’s volume, this paper evaluates Shapira’s fragments in relation to the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Moabitica and other forgeries connected to Shapira. It considers the implications of Shapira’s transcription of the text, which Dershowitz uses to demonstrate Shapira’s innocence. To counter Dershowitz’s hypothesis regarding the “proto-biblical” origin of the fragments, it is proposed that the composition is better understood as a post-biblical pastiche. Dershowitz has endeavored to sever the text from the possibilities allowed by 19th century European scholarship; the present article contextualizes the find within the religious world of 19th century Jerusalem. While the allure of significance can encourage scholars to overcome doubts and accept the authenticity of suspicious objects, Shapira’s fragments remain very dubious indeed.

The Power of Food Science and Technology and Nutrition for Sustainable Planet Health: Food Processing Saves Lives

Food processing includes a chain of events that starts in the farm and continues to the serving plate. These may include washing, dehydration, blanching, heat processing, and packaging, among others. While processing is essential for providing a safe food supply by eliminating harmful microorganisms and certain undesirable components, as well as revealing the desirable flavor of food, there has been much recent attempt to condemn food processing. Thus, loss of certain nutrients during processing and use of additives in ready to eat food as well as high levels of salt, sugar and fat/oil have been noted as being responsible for many non-communicable diseases due to increased incidence of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. These have all been categorised as ultra-processed food but attention to the definitions and details is most important.

Fitting-Attitude Analysis

‘Fitting-Attitude Analysis’ introduces fitting-attitude (FA) analysis. This pattern of value analysis has received considerable attention over the past two decades, and various iterations of it have been proposed and discussed. After having outlined some of the advantages of FA analysis, it is made clear why we should be neither too confident about its success nor too worried about the challenges it faces. A large part of the chapter deals with different challenges to FA analysis, including a recent attempt (which goes back to Franz Brentano) to handle the so-called ‘wrong kind of reason’ problem. The chapter also considers an issue that has received less attention in the literature, which again takes us back to Brentano. G. E. Moore argued that Brentano was wrong in his analysis of what it is for something to be more valuable than something else is. It is argued that Moore was wrong on this matter. In this connection, a way of understanding the strength and weight of reasons is proposed. The proposal is hard to avoid if the FA advocate understands the notion of reason to be primitive in his analysis. The chapter ends by discussing some recent challenges to FA analysis that arise in the wake of the insight that reasons are agency-dependent, but values are not. Once we modify the standard FA analysis in a certain way, these challenges turn out to be less serious than they appear.

Culture Dynamics across the World Today: Tourism and the Palette of Imagination

In general,this manuscript critiques the contemporary dynamisms of the formation/deformation of the cultural sphere under the increased mobilisations of globalization.In particular,it inspects the symphysis [SYMPHYSIS] between 'tourism' and 'culture',where the latter stands as an immense portmanteau phenomenon embracing many different things (under the vicissitudes of globalisation/glocalisation) across the protean realms of race, gender, entertainment, consumerism, meaning-making, et cetera.Critiquing Jamal and Robinson's recent attempt at panoramic coverage of the geography of tourism/tourism studies), it argues that tourism is regularly implicated in cultural practices relating to power-exercises in/across society. Then, in synthesising Bauman’s vision of contemporary society as that moving from seemingly well-ordered stabilities to a geographic realm where change is the-only-permanence and uncertainty the-onlycertainty, the manuscript generates five lead propositions calling for 'plural knowability',viz.,for a deeper/richer palette-of-imagination on the teeming multiplicities and throbbing provisionalities of culture as it emerges/unfolds or otherwise gets recast under the destabilising 'nomadic logics' of our time. In viewing culture as a vehicle of both 'impermanence' and 'seduction nowadays, the paper notes how in so many places and spaces, individuals are less inclined to be engaged locally/regionally/nationally as culture —partly through the volatile iterability of travel/tourism — has become an ever-widening polylogue.

Data update for Vietnam economics research institutions as of October 2021

Research data in Vietnam have been fragmented, and this is a long-standing fact. Although several universities repeatedly claim that they have been the leading players in economics research, actual data may not support their claims. In a recent attempt, Dr. Le Van Ut of Ton Duc Thang University in Ho Chi Minh City compiled a data set to figure out Vietnamese scholars’ internal capacity. Nonetheless, this report covers too large a spectrum that economics research has little weight. In fact, only one person represents the humanities and social sciences in Dr. Ut’s 22-person lifetime achievement list, and only a handful in his 2021 most influential list.

The Raychaudhuri equation for a quantized timelike geodesic congruence

A recent attempt to arrive at a quantum version of Raychaudhuri’s equation is looked at critically. It is shown that the method, and even the idea, has some inherent problems. The issues are pointed out here. We have also shown that it is possible to salvage the method in some limited domain of applicability. Although no generality can be claimed, a quantum version of the equation should be useful in the context of ascertaining the existence of a singularity in the quantum regime. The equation presented in the present work holds for arbitrary $$n+1$$ n + 1 dimensions. An important feature of the Hamiltonian in the operator form is that it admits a self-adjoint extension quite generally. Thus, the conservation of probability is ensured.

Enabling the Reuse of Long-Term Marine Biological Observations in Essential Variables Frameworks Through a Practical Approach

Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) and Biological and Ecosystem Essential Ocean Variables (BioEco EOVs) are two cooperative conceptual frameworks which help harmonize and process multi-source marine biodiversity observations into robust indexes, in order to measure progress toward policy conservation goals. Long-term monitoring networks are encouraged to contribute to these frameworks by mobilizing historical times series which are suitable for detecting impacts of management policies. In this paper, we identify specific recommendations for increasing reuse in the EV frameworks of the biodiversity historical data collected and maintained by the Gulf of Venice (GOV) site, i.e., the monitoring facility that is selected as case study in the Italian Long-Term Ecological Research network (LTER-Italy). The recommendations are obtained through a practical approach comprising two phases. In the first phase, a literature review helps extract the guidelines for implementing the principles representing the most recent attempt to unify management of EBV and BioEco EOV data, i.e., Benson’s tenets. In the second phase, we compare the guidelines to the data management practices enacted by the selected monitoring site in order to recommend curation interventions. The outputs of the analysis are discussed in order to verify if the approach and the recommendations are general enough to be replicated in the marine component of monitoring networks to coordinate the LTER data contribution to the EV frameworks.

Mary, did you consent?

The Christian and Islamic doctrine of the virgin birth claim God asexually impregnated the Virgin Mary with Jesus, Mary's impregnation was fully consensual (virgin consent), and God never acts immorally (divine goodness). First, I show that God's actions and Mary's background beliefs undermine her consent by virtue of coercive incentives, Mary's comparative powerlessness, and the generation of moral conflicts. Second, I show that God's non-disclosure of certain reasonably relevant facts undermines Mary's informed consent. Third, I show that a recent attempt by Jack Mulder to rescue virgin consent fails. As divine goodness and virgin consent are more central to orthodoxy, Christians and Muslims have powerful reason to reject virgin birth.

Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Type of Contextual Integrative Thinking

Coinciding with the recent psychological attention paid to the broad topic of wisdom, interest in the intellectual virtue of phronesis or practical wisdom has been burgeoning within pockets of psychology, philosophy, professional ethics, and education. However, these discourses are undercut by frequently unrecognized tensions, lacunae, ambivalences, misapplications, and paradoxes. While a recent attempt at conceptualizing the phronesis construct for the purpose of psychological measurement offers promise, little is known about how phronesis develops psychologically, what motivates it, or how it can be cultivated. Many psychologists aspire to make sense of wise thinking without the contextual, affective, and holistic/integrative resources of phronesis. This article explores some such attempts, in particular, a new “common model” of wisdom. We argue for the incremental value of the phronesis construct beyond available wisdom accounts because phronesis explains how mature decision-making is motivated and shaped by substantive moral aspirations and cognitively guided moral emotions. We go on to argue that, in the context of bridging the gap between moral knowledge and action, phronesis carries more motivational potency than wisdom in the “common model.” The phronesis construct, thus, embodies some unique features that psychologists studying wise decision-making ignore at their peril.