In this paper, I investigate backward-looking accounts of death's badness. I begin by reviewing deprivationism—the standard, forward-looking account of death's badness. On deprivationism, death is bad for its victims when it deprives them of a good future. This account famously faces two problems—Lucretius’s symmetry problem and the preemption problem. This motivates turning to backward-looking accounts of death's badness on which death is bad for its victim (in a respect) when it involves a decline from a good life. I distinguish three (...) different backward-looking accounts of death's badness in terms of decline, and I argue for the attractiveness of one in particular. I conclude by considering how the backward-looking consideration of decline might factor into our overall account of death's badness. (shrink)

Starting with the first international publication of Le Van Thiem (Lê Văn Thiêm) in 1947, modern mathematics in Vietnam is a longstanding research field. However, what is known about its development usually comes from discrete essays such as anecdotes or interviews of renowned mathematicians. We introduce SciMath—a database on publications of Vietnamese mathematicians. To ensure this database covers as many publications as possible, data entries are manually collected from scientists’ publication records, journals’ websites, universities, and research institutions. Collected data (...) went through various verification steps to ensure data quality and minimize errors. At the time of this report, the database covered 8372 publications, profiles of 1566 Vietnamese, and 1492 foreign authors since 1947. We found a growing capability in mathematics research in Vietnam in various aspects: scientific output, publications on influential journals, or collaboration. The database and preliminary results were presented to the Scientific Council of Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (VIASM) on November 13th, 2020. (shrink)