Plato's Parmenides Reconsidered offers a very accessible, detailed, and historically-sensitive account of Plato's Parmenides. Against the prevailing scholarly wisdom, he illustrates conclusively that Parmenides is a satirical dialogue in which Plato attempts to expose the absurd nature of the doctrines and method of his philosophical opponents.

A scholarly exploration of Marx's thought without any favorable or critical ideological agendas, this book opposes the compartmentalization of Marx's thought into various competing doctrines, such as historical materialism, dialectical materialism, and different forms of economic determinism.

Over the past few years, the emphasis in heavy ion target design has moved from the distributed radiator target to the 'hybrid' target because the hybrid target allows a larger beam focal spot than the distributed radiator ({approx} 5 mm radius rather than {approx} 2 mm radius). The larger spot relaxes some of the requirements on the driver, but introduces some new target physics issues. Most notable is the use of shine shields and shims in the hohlraum to achieve symmetry rather than achieving symmetry by beam placement. The shim is a thin layer of material placed on or near the capsule surface to block a small amount of excess radiation. While we have been developing this technique for the heavy ion hybrid target, the technique can be used in any indirect drive target. We have begun testing the concept of a shim to improve symmetry using a double-ended z-pinch hohlraum on the Sandia Z-machine. Experiments using shimmed thin wall capsules have shown that we can reverse the sign of a P{sub 2} asymmetry and significantly reduce the size of a P{sub 4} asymmetry. These initial experiments demonstrate the concept of a shim as another method for controlling early time asymmetries in ICF capsules.

This paper investigates the effects of limiting the evaluation period in a typical experiment to measure myopic loss aversion (MLA). We corroborate previous results and found that the aggregation effect had diminishing returns. This indicates that there is a point where limiting investor access to the results of the portfolio ceases to yield a significant MLA. We also found evidence of a learning process occurring during the experiment.

Key scientific results from recent experiments, modeling tools, and heavy ion accelerator research are summarized that explore ways to investigate the properties of high energy density matter in heavy-ion-driven targets, in particular, strongly-coupled plasmas at 0.01 to 0.1 times solid density for studies of warm dense matter, which is a frontier area in high energy density physics. Pursuit of these near-term objectives has resulted in many innovations that will ultimately benefit heavy ion inertial fusion energy. These include: neutralized ion beam compression and focusing, which hold the promise of greatly improving the stage between the accelerator and the target chamber in a fusion power plant; and the Pulse Line Ion Accelerator (PLIA), which may lead to compact, low-cost modular linac drivers.

Coupling efficiency, the ratio of the capsule absorbed energy to the driver energy, is a key parameter in ignition targets. The hohlraum originally proposed for NIF coupled {approx}11% of the absorbed laser energy to the capsule as x-rays. We describe here a second generation of hohlraum target which has higher coupling efficiency, {approx}16%. Because the ignition capsule's ability to withstand 3D effects increases rapidly with absorbed energy, the additional energy can significantly increase the likelihood of ignition. The new target includes laser entrance hole (LEH) shields as a principal method for increasing coupling efficiency while controlling symmetry in indirect-drive ICF. The LEH shields are high Z disks placed inside the hohlraum to block the capsule's view of the cold LEHs. The LEH shields can reduce the amount of laser energy required to drive a target to a given temperature via two mechanisms: (1) keeping the temperature high near the capsule pole by putting a barrier between the capsule and the pole, (2) because the capsule pole does not have a view of the cold LEHs, good symmetry requires a shorter hohlraum with less wall area. Current integrated simulations of this class of target couple 140 kJ of x-rays to a capsule out of 865 kJ of absorbed laser energy and produce {approx}10 MJ of yield. In the current designs, which are not completely optimized, the addition of the LEH shields saves {approx}95 kJ of energy (about 10%) over hohlraums without LEH shields.

The standard capsule design1 and other laser plasma targets at the National Ignition Facility offer the possibility of generating and studying thermal rates for significant astrophysical fusion reactions such as {sup 3}He({sup 3}He,2p){alpha}, {sup 7}Be(p, {gamma})B, and {sup 15}N(p, {alpha}){sup 12}C. At present the ''S'' factors for these reactions are determined either by extrapolation from higher energy scattering data or by underground laboratory, low event rate experiments such as at LUNA on un-ionized atoms with concomitantly large screening corrections. The ability to directly generate astrophysical fusion reactions in thermonuclear plasmas will be complemented by new, ab initio, ''no frozen core'' detailed shell model predictions for such light ion reactions. In addition, the expected fluence of neutrons from the main D + T {yields} {alpha} burn reaction, is high enough to drive 10-20% of seeded spectator nuclei into excited states via (n, n') reactions. Furthermore, the {approx}2% ''minority'' D + D {yields} {sup 3}He + n can drive reactions pertinent to the r, s, and p process nucleosynthesis of heavy elements, including branches that pass through excited states with t> 10 ps, that can be studied using particle spectroscopy and radiochemistry. Additionally, for the first time, it will be possible to measure the effects of plasma screening on thermonuclear reactions. In the latter arena it will be possible to address the controversy of whether or not there are significant quantum corrections to Salpeter screening. Radiochemistry measurements of noble gas end species can be made with very high efficiency with only {approx} 10{sup 4} atoms required. Solid collection systems are being developed as well (with 10 atoms required at present). Because the capsule is essentially thin to neutrons, the reaction rate on an advected set of marker nuclei is a linear functional of the neutron source distribution. Determining this source function is thus computationally analogous to similar problems in medical imaging.

Ion fast ignition, like laser fast ignition, can potentially reduce driver energy for high target gain by an order of magnitude, while reducing fuel capsule implosion velocity, convergence ratio, and required precisions in target fabrication and illumination symmetry, all of which should further improve and simplify IFE power plants. From fast-ignition target requirements, we determine requirements for ion beam acceleration, pulse-compression, and final focus for advanced accelerators that must be developed for much shorter pulses and higher voltage gradients than today's accelerators, to deliver the petawatt peak powers and small focal spots ({approx}100 {micro}m) required. Although such peak powers and small focal spots are available today with lasers, development of such advanced accelerators is motivated by the greater likely efficiency of deep ion penetration and deposition into pre-compressed 1000x liquid density DT cores. Ion ignitor beam parameters for acceleration, pulse compression, and final focus are estimated for two examples based on a Dielectric Wall Accelerator; (1) a small target with pr{approx}2 g/cm{sup 2} for a small demo/pilot plant producing {approx}40 MJ of fusion yield per target, and (2) a large target with {rho}r{approx}10 g/cm{sup 2} producing {approx}1 GJ yield for multi-unit electricity/hydrogen plants, allowing internal T-breeding with low T/D ratios,>75 % of the total fusion yield captured for plasma direct conversion, and simple liquid-protected chambers with gravity clearing. Key enabling development needs for ion fast ignition are found to be (1) ''Close-coupled'' target designs for single-ended illumination of both compressor and ignitor beams; (2) Development of high gradient (>25 MWm) linacs with high charge-state (q{approx}26) ion sources for short ({approx}5 ns) accelerator output pulses; (3) Small mm-scale laser-driven plasma lens of {approx} 10 MG fields to provide steep focusing angles close-in to the target (built-in as part of each target); (4) beam space charge-neutralization during both drift compression and final focus to target. Except for (1) and (2), these critical issues may be explored on existing heavy-ion storage ring accelerator facilities.