Stud

The reproducibility of tyre and vehicle noise tests is defined for a large part by the standardization of the road surface properties. Within ISO TC43 WG 42 the TT subgroup has revised the version of 1994 and the outcome was issued in 2011 as ISO 10844:2011. The new 2011 standard formulates tightened requirements for the surface properties and also defines more advanced testing procedures. This paper explains the background of the improved set of requirements and presents the technical developments in the measurement methods for texture and acoustic absorption. Texture data acquisition can now also be based on a mobile system, running at low speed and thus giving high accuracy. The acoustic absorption is based on the well known impedance tube with two microphone technology, slightly modified to make it fit for in-situ use. The presented version is further modified to suppress the distortion due to the occurrence of destructive interference at a microphone position. In addition examp...

In a survey of cycloheximide-tolerant fungi growing from shed reptile skins, an Acremonium-like fungus was isolated that was distinctive in producing relatively large conidia in chains from phialides that tended to collapse after forming a number of conidia. Phylogenetic analysis based on ribosomal internal transcribed spacer and -tubulin sequences revealed that the isolate represented an undescribed and relatively phylogenetically isolated member of the clade containing the teleomorph genus Emericellopsis as well as related anamorphs in Acremonium and Stanjemonium. The species is here described as Acremonium exuviarum. It has been isolated only on a single occasion and its ecology is unknown. Discovery of such new species in the pharmaceutically important Emericellopsis clade is potentially of practical significance. Taxonomic novelty: Acremonium exuviarum Sigler, Zuccaro, Summerbell & Paré sp. nov.

I have two aims in this article. The first is to break the deadlocked exchange between John Skorupski and John Broome concerning how best to understand Thomas Nagel's distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action. The second is to provide a reformulation of the distinction which captures an uncontroversial distinction between those reason-giving considerations which encapsulate an indexical relationship between an agent and an object of moral concern, and those which do not. The resolution of this exchange, and subsequent reformulation of the dichotomy, has two important ramifications for contemporary debates in moral philosophy. First and foremost, it reveals the true, pre-theoretical nature of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons for action, and how the notion of agent-relativity cannot be utilized to underwrite the existence of deontic constraints. And, second, it provides definitive support for Skorupski's claim that ...

Acces au PDF sur le site de la revue [ http://analisesocial.ics.ul.pt/documentos/1292288112S5hEW4xd5Do97FW9.pdf ] "This article defends the idea that it is no longer satisfactory to study the forms of governance of the French cities through the centre-periphery analytical framework. The devolution of new functions to urban governments, the transformations on capitalism, and States' policies have turned French cities from mere implementation spaces of public policies built at other levels to central actors on urban policy production. The horizontal relationships connecting urban actors might be the first explanation for new scopes and shapes of local urban policies. It is therefore legitimate to study urban governance and policies in French cities through theoretical tools granting a primary role to the interactions between urban actors and groups and to the conflicts and coalitions in which they are involved. Amongst these theoretical tools the urban regimes approach seems ...

In recent years the distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons has been taken by many to play a key role in distinguishing deontology from consequentialism. It is central to all universalist consequentialist theories that value is determined impersonally; the real value of any state of affairs does not depend on the point of view of the agent. No reference, therefore, to the agent or to his or her position in the world need enter into a consequentialist understanding of what makes an action right or wrong or morally permissible. Consequentialism thus provides an agent-neutral account of both the right and the good.

This paper is a brief reponse to some of Douglas Portmore's criticisms of our version of the agent-relative/agent-neutral distinction.In his interesting and helpful paper ‘McNaughton and Rawling on the Agent-relative/Agent-neutral Distinction’, Douglas Portmore criticizes our formalization of duties on the grounds that we have over-looked an important class of conditional cases in which the antecedent of the conditional falls outside the scope of the deontic operator.

In this article I elaborate upon four different categories of practical reasons and the possible combinations they admit. These are explained by appeal to the distinct structure of each of the four different ways in which the obtainment of a state of affairs can be valuable. First, I explain the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative values. Second, I distinguish between person-affecting and impersonal values. The combination of these categories produces six possible ways in which the obtainment of a state of affairs can be valuable —four basic and two derived. It also shows that it is not possible for something to be at the same time both agent-neutrally and agent-relatively valuable.

As high technology development has created important resources and opportunities for some residents of cities, it has also introduced a new set of barriers and constraints for others. The new inequalities resulting from this pathway of economic development present local public officials with important challenges for managing their cities. This article argues that local strategies to confront inequalities in high technology cities are dependent on how individual states have undertaken restructuring reforms over the last 30 years. In France, the state has ceded some control over the allocation of economic resources to markets while retaining some control over the allocation of welfare resources. The rising importance of markets and the continued centrality of a redistributive state in French cities have resulted in the formation of distinct types of policy communities in the areas of economic development and welfare. The former community operates according to an entrepreneurial logic and the latter community continues to operate according to a political/statist logic. These local policy communities are like two ships passing in the night, embedded in and responding to distinct institutional constraints that lead them in very different directions.