This paper presents a propositional version of Kit Fine’s (quantified) logic for essentialist statements, provides it with a semantics, and proves the former adequate (i.e. sound and complete) with respect to the latter.

As community attitudes change, healthcare costs and adverse events spiral, and evidence accumulates, the healthcare system is steadily recognizing the importance of moving towards more holistic and wellness-based models. Such models reduce costs and lead to better therapeutic outcomes. The ‘ESSENCE of Health’ is the basis for the Health Enhancement Program (HEP) taught as core curriculum for al...

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are often used to extract a lower-dimensional feature descriptor from images. Though they have recently been deployed successfully to solve tasks in computer vision such as semantic segmentation, image reconstruction or depth understanding, the inner workings of CNNs are still subject to current research. Recent research to better understand features learned...

The idea that aging is a purposeful, programmed series of events is intuitively appealing based on its many conserved aspects and the demonstrated feasibility of modifying life span by manipulating single genes or pathways. Yet, the case for a nonadaptive basis of aging is strong and now all but generally accepted in the field. Here, we briefly review why the case for programmed aging is weak, ...

Confounding is examined from first principles. In follow-up studies a confounder is a predictor of diagnosing the illness--by being either a risk indicator or a determinant of diagnostic errors; in addition, it shows different distributions between the exposed and nonexposed series. In case-referent studies confounding can arise in two ways. A priori confounders are correlates of exposure in th...

∗This paper was published in Mind , 115/459 (July 2006): 659–693. Note: In transferring the LTEX in this preprint to the format used for publication in Mind, a couple of symbols were omitted. This preprint can be used to determine what the missing symbols are. †I’d like to thank Adriano Palma and Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde for inviting me to prepare this material and present it at the École Normal...

This paper suggests ways to facilitate creativity and innovation in agile development. The paper applies four perspectives – Product, Project, Process, and People to identify ways to support creative software development based on agile principles. The paper then describes a new facility Software Innovation Research Lab (SIRL) and drafts a new method concept for software innovation called Essenc...