Operation Ought Research Articles

Fantastic, Spirits, Pseudo-Science and Risorgimento in Nineteenth-Century Italian Narrative: The Case of Tarchetti's A Dead Man's Bone

This paper aims to study the Italian ghost story entitled A Dead Man's Bone, included in Tarchetti's Fantastic Tales (1869) to illustrate, by means of this specific case, both the way and the purpose of the reception of the Gothic and Fantastic in Italian narrative. For this reason, it is necessary to frame the textual analysis within the historical and cultural coordinates of the post-Unification years, in order to, first of all, clarify the fact that the operation ought to be evaluated in a specific ideological and compositional context rather than from a thematic point of view. In this regard, the study of A Dead Man's Bone intends to highlight that the most relevant outcomes of Tarchetti's rewriting of a ghost story by Théophile Gautier have to be appreciated as the opening for new experiments in narrative forms which root in a rapidly changing situation and, nurtured by the disillusionment of the post-unification years. Moreover, the author's use of codes and conventions of a specific subgenre of modern Fantastic, such as the ghost story, is also related with his direct involvement in pseudoscientific movements as Mesmerism and Spiritism. It goes without saying that the author's effort to innovate narrative forms is meant to convey a personal interpretation of the present by means of a new kind of realism in art.

Propositions and the Meaning of ‘Ought’

Matthew Chrisman’s new book, The Meaning of ‘Ought’: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics, presents a semantic treatment of the deontic modal operator Ought designed to address the problem of subject-sensitivity: why, for example, “I ought to dance with you” might be true, while “You ought to dance with me” is false. Such sentence-pairs challenge the view that Ought is an operator on propositions—an assumption which is common ground amongst both classical and much contemporary work. Chrisman argues that rather than propositions, the operator Ought takes as its argument a non-propositional formal object called a practition. In this review, I discuss the inspiration and formal features of this treatment. While I argue that the distinction between practitions and propositions is not adequately characterized in Chrisman’s compositional semantics, subject-sensitivity raises interesting questions about the metaethical assumptions at play in the formal semantics—including the worry that treating Ought as a propositional operator illicitly begs the question in favor of broadly consequentialist views.

Composite filtering effect in a SESAM mode-locked fiber laser with a 3.2-GHz fundamental repetition rate: switchable states from single soliton to pulse bunch.

States that are switchable from single soliton to pulse bunch in a compact semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) mode-locked fiber laser with a fundamental repetition rate of 3.2 GHz are experimentally investigated and further studied via simulations. A composite filtering effect comprising an intracavity low-finesse Fabry-Perot (FP) filter, an artificial optical low-pass filter, and a gain filter implements the state switching to pulse bunch. A numerical model is proposed to clarify the mechanism underlying the switching. It reveals that, for pulse interval ∆T > τA (relaxation time of the SESAM) in a pulse bunch, the laser operates in pulse-bound build up. In an inverse mechanism the state returns to single soliton, in which the ∆T is obtained from the free spectral range Ωc of the intracavity FP filter by mechanically controlling the distance between the SESAM and gain fiber. This pulse bunch regime of operation ought to be amenable to a quasi-steady-state treatment. It represents an alternative emergence trait in the temporal domain between a main soliton with strong sidelobes in both sides and a bound soliton pair with weak sub-sidelobes. Another profile of the pulse bunch state is that the side peak amplitude in the autocorrelation trace is more than 50%, which is distinct and larger than that in the conventional bound state regime in fiber lasers. The optical spectra, radio frequency spectra, and frequency chirp are further analyzed. These numerical results agree well with the experimental ones within the variation range of the crucial values of Ωc and enable the explicit understanding of such behavior in SESAM mode-locked high-repetition-rate fiber lasers.

On the Hamiltonian and energy operators in a curved spacetime, especially for a Dirac particle

The definition of the Hamiltonian operator H for a general wave equation in a general spacetime is discussed. We recall that H depends on the coordinate system merely through the corresponding reference frame. When the wave equation involves a gauge choice and the gauge change is time-dependent, H asan operator depends on the gauge choice. This dependence extends to the energy operator E, which is the Hermitian part of H. We distinguish between this ambiguity issue of E and the one that occurs due to a mere change of the “representation” (e.g. transforming the Dirac wave function from the “Dirac representation” to a “Foldy-Wouthuy senre presentation”). We also assert that the energy operator ought to be well defined in a given reference frame at a given time, e.g. by comparing the situation for this operator with the main features of the energy for a classical Hamiltonian particle.

Necessary Truths are Just True: A Reply to Rossberg

One longstanding problem for glut theorists (also known as dialetheists) is the problem of ‘just true.’ On Beall’s conservative version of glut theory advanced in Spandrels of Truth (2009), he addresses the problem in two steps. The first is a rejection of the problem: he claims that the only general notion of ‘just true’ is just truth itself. On that view, the alleged problem of ‘just true’ is reduced to the problem of truth itself, which (according to glut theorists) has a solution—glut theory.The second step is to acknowledge that there is a notion of ‘just true’ which is more limited but nonetheless meets all reasonable criteria demanded by those who advance the longstanding just-true objection. Marcus Rossberg (Thought 2013) disagrees. According to Rossberg, a just-true operator ought to iterate and be non-arbitrary in ways that Beall’s proposed just-true operator is not. My aim in this paper is to construct a new conditional in terms of which a new just-true operator may be defined, a necessity operator, and to show that it meets all of the target desiderata of the debate. I then use that new operator to address the arbitrariness worries raised by Rossberg.

Árboles Biselados

The objective of this study is to assess the complexity order of search operations, insertion and/or elimination in a beveled tree. For the deployment of a node the very utilized rotation technique is used in the trees AVL. For the evaluation of the complexity of operations the amortized method of analysis is used. The amortized analysis in beveled trees is beneficial insofar as is applied when a succession of m operations is realized for so that overall the time of the operation ought to be no more of O (m Log n), although individually every operation can be of order O(n).

Optimized finned absorber geometries for solar air heating collectors

Solar air heaters are limited in their thermal performance due to the low density, the small volumetric heat capacity and the small heat conductivity of air. For high solar gains, an efficient thermal coupling between absorber and fluid is required, while the electrical power for the fan operation ought to be as small as possible. As heat transfer augmentation usually increases friction losses, an optimum fin geometry has to be found. For a solar ventilation air preheater, mounted on a south facing façade in Würzburg, Germany, optimized geometries have been derived. For a specific air mass flow rate of 70 kg/(m 2 h) the air gap for smooth absorbers without fins should be about 7 to 8 mm to get a maximized yearly net energy output of about 680 MJ/m 2 during the heating season from October through April. Finned absorbers perform much better. Continuous aluminum-fins, 0.1 mm thick and spaced about 6 mm apart in a 30-mm-wide air gap yield about 900 MJ/m 2 yearly net output. Offset strip fins do not show an improved performance compared to optimally spaced continuous fins, due to the larger electrical power for this geometry. However, offset strip fins yield high net energy gains for large fin spacings.

WHICH IMMUNOMODULATOR?

Immunotherapy has come a long way since George Bernard Shaw lampooned the medical profession in his 1906 play The Doctor's Dilemma. One of the characters, fashionable physician Dr Ralph Bloomfield Bonington, was a devout disciple of immunotherapy at the beginning of this century:‘… Drugs can only repress symptoms; they cannot eradicate disease … There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes … they devour the disease and the patient recovers — unless, of course, he's too far gone‘.In this same play, Shaw also caricatured surgeons and perhaps even predicted thymectomy for cancer prevention, for the surgeon Cutler Walpole said:‘… Phagocytosis is pure rot, the knife is the real remedy … it amuses me to hear you physicians talking about clinical experience. What do you see at the bedside but the outside of the patient. What you need is daily familiarity with people's insides. The nuciform sac is full of decay … cut it out. The operation ought to be compulsory. It's ten times more important than vaccination‘.1

Routine radiological examination of the sinuses before septoplasty.

Records of septoplasties performed during the last five years were reviewed with the aim of evaluating the results of routine pre-operative radiological examination of the sinuses. A positive correlation was found between the information of sinusitis within the last two years and the radiological finding of complete density or fluid. The roentgenograms showed normal conditions in 73 per cent of the cases and various degrees of pathology in 27 per cent; no case showed signs of malignancy. Puncture and irrigation or sinoscopy had been performed in 52 per cent of the cases with pathological X-rays. Following this treatment, surgery was postponed in 12 patients, and in nine patients a drainage tube was placed in the maxillary sinus peroperatively. Complications developed post-operatively in five of these nine patients and it is concluded that septoplasty should have been postponed. We find that it is important to identify the four per cent (12 + 9) of patients in whom the radiological findings are so pronounced that operation ought to be postponed.

Trapezio-metacarpal arthroplasty by total prosthesis

Thirty-four total trapezio-metacarpal prostheses have been fitted since 1971. Twenty-eight have had a follow-up for more than six months (up to a maximum of five years) and allow a valid assessment of the situation. The operations were undertaken for rheumatoid, osteoarthritic disease, and following trauma. The reasons were either pain, mechanical instability, or stiffness. Two out of three times results were good. The best results were obtained for pain and stability. Those where the indication was stiffness were less satisfying. There were five cases of loosening of the trapezial cup due to operative errors. The mediocre results in general are caused by incomplete treatment allowing an associated lesion to develop. Greater strictness in the indications and in carrying out of operation ought to ensure better results.

Dupuytren's contracture. How limited should a limited fasciectomy be?

The author submits a material of 520 operated cases of Dupuytren's contracture from the Department of Hand Surgery, Orthopaedic Hospital, Copenhagen, followed for 2-8 years. On the basis of the 183 oldest cases, 70 having total and 113 limited fasciectomy, it is concluded that the future operative method should be limited fasciectomy. 450 cases treated by limited fasciectomy were included in the follow-up study. These cases were analysed according to which surgeon had performed the operation. The technique had differed somewhat, and from the material it is apparent that the operation ought to be a balance between local radicality and gentle treatment of the tissues to avoid local recurrence on the one hand and cicatricial contractions and posttraumatic fibrosis and dystrophy on the other. In the most severe cases plastic repair of the skin or a McCash procedure should be applied.

RECENT ADVANCES IN ANAESTHETICS

There are three main types of anaesthesia in use to-day : (1) inhalation combined with premedication, (2) spinal combined with premedication, and (3) intravenous, with or without premedication. I will deal with them in this order. Before considering the anaesthetics themselves it is advisable to stress an important point?namely, that all patients who are to undergo a major surgical operation ought to be carefully investigated. This should include a blood and urine analysis, in addition to a general clinical examination. Special attention is paid to the blood pressure and the Moot-McKesson cardiac energy index. The formula for this index provides an approxi mate index to the cardiac reserve. ,_ . . _ pulse pressurexlOO _.. . , . A . Moot s index = __.??-.-=50 (in normal subjects) diastolic pressure Patients presenting an index of between 40 and 60 show ample cardiac reserve ; those in whom the index lies between 25 and 40, or between 60 and 75, have probably adequate cardiac reserve, whilst the reserve is gravely inadequate in those having an index below 25 or above 75. (Tliis index is unreliable in cases of ihyro toxicosis, owing to the high pulse pressure.) No enemata, purges, or any other form of dehydration should be per mitted for at least forty-eight hours before any major operation. , The patient is supplied with ample fluids and glucose, and everything is done to ensure that his general condition is the best the pathological state allows.

THE ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS IN VAGINAL HYSTERECTOMY.Read in the Section of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women, at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association.

The experience of gynecologists is gradually establishing the fact that the removal of the uterus through the vagina is not in itself a very dangerous operation. Of course there is a mortality connected with all operations involving any considerable amount of cutting, but there is nothing about the one under consideration involving any special, unavoidable danger. What there is comes not so much from the' danger of the operation as from certain avoidable circumstances which may be considered under three heads, viz: 1. Unsuitable cases for operations; 2. Imperfection in the technique; 3. Mistakes in the after-treatment. It would be absurd to maintain that unfavorable circumstances can always be avoided in practice, yet there is much to be accomplished in that direction, and a great majority of the deaths due to the operation ought not to occur. 1. Unsuitable Cases for Operation .—Unfortunately, the great majority of cases are unsuitable ones—

IS SENN'S GAS TEST INFALLIBLE AND ALWAYS DEVOID OF DANGER? TWO CASES OF SHOT WOUNDS. CONCLUSIONS.

I report to-day one case of laparotomy for shot wound, and another in which an operation ought to have been performed, and would have been, had I not been deterred on account of the failure of the Senn method, being led thereby to believe that the intestines were intact. It is not always pleasant to report our failures, but believing it a duty we owe the profession, in order that our statistics may be reliable, I have made it a rule to report all my failures as well as successes in abdominal surgery. It is true this course may subject me to criticism owing to some sins of omission or commission, but as criticism will teach me wherein I have erred, I shall still be the gainer. Should the criticism be unjust, I trust it will proceed from him only who has never made a mistake in surgery. This apologetic

LECTURES

Scirrhus of the breast. Circumstances under which an operation ought or ought not to be performed. Results of the operation. Danger of the operation. Effusion in the pleurœ generally the cause of death. Identity of the different forms of cancer.