In this commentary on Jeremy Fantl's The Limitations of the Open Mind, I focus mainly on the book's second half and argue against Fantl's view that you should rarely engage closed-mindedly with those putting forth claims that you know are false and arguments that you know are misleading. I argue that this kind of engagement can be fruitfully exercised without problematic deception. If we are attuned to the social dimension of epistemology, and we see that false and potentially pernicious beliefs are spreading, we have good reason to engage with at least some of these believers with the aim of altering their epistemic attitudes, and to allow for more collective knowledge.

It is well known that marginalized communities of color, particularly young Black men, are more likely to experience police-initiated contact that other groups. Research suggests that these events contribute to legal cynicism, or the belief that the law and its agencies are ineffective, unwilling to help, and untrustworthy. In turn, cynical orientations limit one’s willingness to call the police to help. However, recent work on marginalized women suggests that despite holding cynical attitudes towards the police, their immediate needs for safety and services supersede these beliefs. The current study examines the racialized and gendered linkages between police-initiated contact and help-seeking outcomes (reporting crime, calling for an emergency, and seeking help from police for non-emergencies). Using data from the Police Public Contact Survey (from the Police Public Contact Survey–2020) results indicate that Black and Hispanic participants were less likely than White participants to seek help. However, Black and Hispanic women were more likely than their male counterparts for calls for help regarding a crime or disturbance. Across all outcomes, police-initiated contact was associated with higher rates of help-seeking. Perceived illegitimacy of street stops reduced the odds of reporting crimes to the police. However, perceived traffic stop illegitimacy was not related to help-seeking. Police initiated contacts and perceptions of legitimacy did not moderate the relationships between demographic variables and help-seeking outcomes. Implications for theories on legal socialization and the impact of police-initiated contacts on help-seeking are discussed.

It is unclear whether larval infestations of Rhagoletis pomonella (Walsh) (Diptera: Tephritidae) in earlier (softer) apple (Rosaceae) cultivars are greater than in later (firmer) apple cultivars in Washington State, United States of America, where flies were introduced and are quarantine pests of apple. Here, a field survey of apples in a noncommercial setting in Washington and experiments testing whether earlier apples are more suitable than later apples for Washington-origin R. pomonella were conducted. Early season ‘Gala’ and ‘Golden Delicious’, midseason ‘Red Delicious’, and late-season ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘Fuji’ were exposed to flies reared from early and midseason apples in laboratory experiments and to wild flies in apple trees in field experiments. The field survey provided evidence for softer apples being more infested and suitable. Likewise, most of the laboratory and field experimental data showed that ‘Gala’ and ‘Golden Delicious’, two of the softer apples tested, produced the most larvae and were most suitable, regardless of whether test apples were conventional or organic and ripe or unripe. To optimise fly trapping protocols in Washington, trapping in early apple trees near ‘Gala’ and ‘Golden Delicious’ orchards should be prioritised over trapping near mid- or late-season apple cultivar orchards.

We prove a local gradient estimate for positive eigenfunctions of the $\mathcal {L}$-operator on conformal solitons given by a general conformal vector field. As an application, we obtain a Liouville type theorem for $\mathcal {L} u=0$, which improves the one of Li and Sun [‘Gradient estimate for the positive solutions of $\mathcal Lu = 0$ and $\mathcal Lu ={\partial u}/{\partial t}$ on conformal solitons’, Acta Math. Sin. (Engl. Ser.) 37(11) (2021), 1768–1782]. We also consider applications where manifolds are special conformal solitons and obtain a better Liouville type theorem in the case of self-shrinkers.

Cet article vise à élucider la nature de l'enquête. Je présente tout d'abord les desiderata communs à toute théorie de l'enquête. Je catégorise ensuite l'enquête comme un processus structuré en me concentrant sur ses composantes essentielles : des attitudes de questionnement guidant des actions. Enfin, je me penche sur l'objection récente selon laquelle les attitudes de questionnement ne sont pas nécessaires à l'enquête. Je défends la thèse selon laquelle l'enquête est un processus structuré essentiellement constitué d'attitudes de questionnement ayant deux rôles fonctionnels précis, soit d'initier et de guider le déploiement de capacités cognitives en vue d'un but épistémique.

This study explores the diachronic variation of mid-vowel aperture (/e, ɛ, o, ɔ/) in word-final and penultimate-syllable positions in vowel harmony (VH) contexts in declamatory/journalistic French from 1925 to 2023.

Our corpora include two pre-existing corpora – the INA broadcast archives corpus (1940–1999) and the ESTER corpus (2000–2004) – as well as two novel corpora, which include recordings from the Archives de la Parole by Hubert Pernot (1925–1929) and a selection from Radio France and YouTube spanning 2020 to 2023.

Our results suggest a general tendency of VH weakening over the last century. Additionally, we found a significant acoustic convergence in terms of aperture between vowels /o/ and /ɔ/, but no convergence between /e/ and /ɛ/ in word-final position, contrary to prior research.

An auxiliary imitation experiment was designed to investigate the correlation between the loud/projected voice in older recordings and the F1 of mid-vowels in VH contexts. The imitation experiment reveals a significant increase in F1 in loud declamatory speech. However, no effect of speech style on VH was observed, supporting the diachronic process of VH reduction.

I introduce the book symposium on Jeremy Fantl's The Limitations of the Open Mind. The symposium began as a session at the 2023 American Philosophical Association meeting in Montreal; it features replies to Fantl's book by Nathan Ballantyne and Miriam Schleifer McCormick with replies to the replies by Fantl.

Compacted bentonite, used as an engineering barrier for permanent containment of high-level radioactive waste, is susceptible to mineral evolution resulting in compromise of the expected barrier performance due to alkaline–thermal chemical interaction in the near-field. To elucidate the mineral-evolution mechanisms within bentonite and the transformation of the nuclide adsorption properties during that period, experimental evolution of bentonite was conducted in a NaOH solution with a pH of 14 at temperatures ranging from 60 to 120°C. The results showed that temperature significantly affects the stability of minerals in bentonite under alkali conditions. The dissolution rate of fine-grained cristobalite in bentonite exceeds that of smectite, with the phase-transition products of smectite being temperature-dependent. As the temperature rises, smectite experiences a three-stage transformation: initially, at 60°C, the lattice structure thins due to the collapse of the octahedral sheets; at 80°C, the lattice disintegrates and reorganizes into a loose framework akin to albite; and by 100°C, it further reorganizes into a denser framework resembling analcime. The adsorption properties of bentonite exhibit a peak inflection point at 80°C, where the dissolution of the smectite lattice eliminates interlayer pores and exposes numerous polar or negatively charged sites which results in a decrease in specific surface area and an increase in cation exchange capacity and adsorption capacity of Eu3+. This research provides insights into the intricate evolution of bentonite minerals and the associated changes in radionuclide adsorption capacity, contributing to a better understanding of the stability of bentonite barriers and the effective long-term containment of nuclear waste.

For a positive integer $n \geq 2$, define tn to be the smallest number such that the additive energy E(A) of any subset $A \subset \{0,1,\cdots,n-1\}^d$ and any d is at most $|A|^{t_n}$. Trivially, we have $t_n \leq 3$ and

\begin{equation*} t_n \geq 3 - \log_n\frac{3n^3}{2n^3+n} \end{equation*}

by considering $A = \{0,1,\cdots,n-1\}^d$. In this note, we investigate the behaviour of tn for large n and obtain the following non-trivial bounds:

\begin{equation*} 3 - (1+o_{n\rightarrow\infty}(1)) \log_n \frac{3\sqrt{3}}{4} \leq t_n \leq 3 - \log_n(1+c), \end{equation*}

where c > 0 is an absolute constant.

We study the topological structure of the space $\mathcal{X}$ of isomorphism classes of metric measure spaces equipped with the box or concentration topologies. We consider the scale-change action of the multiplicative group ${\mathbb{R}}_+$ of positive real numbers on $\mathcal{X}$, which has a one-point metric measure space, say $*$, as only one fixed-point. We prove that the ${\mathbb{R}}_+$-action on $\mathcal{X}_* := \mathcal{X} \setminus \{*\}$ admits the structure of non-trivial and locally trivial principal ${\mathbb{R}}_+$-bundle over the quotient space. Our bundle ${\mathbb{R}}_+ \to \mathcal{X}_* \to \mathcal{X}_*/{\mathbb{R}}_+$ is a curious example of a non-trivial principal fibre bundle with contractible fibre. A similar statement is obtained for the pyramidal compactification of $\mathcal{X}$, where we completely determine the structure of the fixed-point set of the ${\mathbb{R}}_+$-action on the compactification.

EXOSC10 is an exosome-associated ribonuclease that degrades and processes a wide range of transcripts in the nucleus. The initial segment (IS) of the epididymis is crucial for sperm transport and maturation in mice by affecting the absorption and secretion that is required for male fertility. However, the role of EXOSC10 ribonuclease-mediated RNA metabolism within the IS in the regulation of gene expression and sperm maturation remains unknown. Herein, we established an Exosc10 conditional knockout (Exosc10 cKO) mouse model by crossing Exosc10F/F mice with Lcn9-Cre mice which expressed recombinase in the principal cells of IS as early as post-natal day 17. Morphological and histological analyses revealed that Exosc10 cKO males had normal spermatogenesis and development of IS. Moreover, the sperm concentration, morphology, motility, and frequency of acrosome reactions in the cauda epididymides of Exosc10 cKO mice were comparable with those of control mice. Thus, Exosc10 cKO males had normal fertility. Collectively, our genetic mouse model and findings demonstrate that loss of EXOSC10 in the IS of epididymis is dispensable for sperm maturation and male fertility.

The inverse dynamics model of an industrial robot can predict and control the robot’s motion and torque output, improving its motion accuracy, efficiency, and adaptability. However, the existing inverse rigid body dynamics models still have some unmodelled residuals, and their calculation results differ significantly from the actual industrial robot conditions. The bootstrap aggregating (bagging) algorithm is combined with a long short-term memory network, the linear layer is introduced as the network optimization layer, and a compensation method of hybrid inverse dynamics model for robots based on the BLL residual prediction algorithm is proposed to meet the above needs. The BLL residual prediction algorithm framework is presented. Based on the rigid body inverse dynamics of the Newton–Euler method, the BLL residual prediction network is used to perform error compensation on the inverse dynamics model of the Franka robot. The experimental results show that the hybrid inverse dynamics model based on the BLL residual prediction algorithm can reduce the average residuals of the robot joint torque from 0.5651 N·m to 0.1096 N·m, which improves the accuracy of the inverse dynamics model compared with those of the rigid body inverse dynamics model. This study lays the foundation for performing more accurate operation tasks using industrial robots.

There is an interpretative puzzle at the centre of Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. The text presents the single principle of morality (G, 4: 392), but instead of providing a definitive statement of the principle, we find a three-step sequence of formulas. The puzzle concerns the formula relation: given the contrast between the moral law’s individuality and the plurality of formulas, how do the formulas relate to each other and the moral law? This paper takes the first step towards a new account by focusing on G, 4: 436, a passage in which Kant makes claims about the matter and form of the moral law. By understanding the hylomorphism entailed by these claims, it is possible to achieve new perspectives on common questions about Kant’s ethics, in particular, the role of the formulas in deriving or explaining duties and how the formulas are used in the argument of Groundwork II and its transition from popular moral philosophy to metaphysics of morals.