663 research outputs found
Intelligent Agents in Military, Defense and Warfare: Ethical Issues and Concerns
Due to tremendous progress in digital electronics now intelligent and autonomous agents are gradually being adopted into the fields and domains of the military, defense and warfare. This paper tries to explore some of the inherent ethical issues, threats and some remedial issues about the impact of such systems on human civilization and existence in general. This paper discusses human ethics in contrast to machine ethics and the problems caused by non-sentient agents. A systematic study is made on paradoxes regarding the long-term advantages of such agents in military combat. This paper proposes an international standard which could be adopted by all nations to bypass the adverse effects and solve ethical issues of such intelligent agents
Exploring senior doctors' beliefs and attitudes regarding mental illness within the medical profession: a qualitative study
OBJECTIVE: To explore the views of senior doctors on mental illness within the medical profession. BACKGROUND: There has been increasing interest on the issue of doctors' mental health. However, there have been few qualitative studies on senior doctors' general attitude towards mental illness within the medical profession. SETTING: Large North London teaching hospital. PARTICIPANTS: 13 hospital consultants and senior academic general practitioners. METHODS: A qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews and reflective work. The outcome measures were the themes derived from the thematic framework approach to analysis. RESULTS: Four main themes were identified. (1) 'Doctors' attitudes to mental illness'—doctors felt that there remained a significant stigma attached to suffering from a mental illness within the profession. (2) ‘Barriers to seeking help’—doctors felt that there were numerous barriers to seeking help such as negative career implications, being perceived as weak, denial and fear of prejudice. (3) ‘Support’—doctors felt that the use of support depended on certainty concerning confidentiality, which for occupational health was not thought to be guaranteed. Confiding in colleagues was rare except among close friends. Supervision for all doctors was raised. (4) ‘General Medical Council (GMC) involvement’—doctors felt that uneasy referring colleagues to the GMC and the appraisal and revalidation process was thought not to be thorough enough in picking up doctors with a mental illness. CONCLUSIONS: Owing to the small size of this study, the conclusions are limited; however, if the findings are confirmed by larger studies, they suggest that greater efforts are needed to destigmatise mental illness in the profession and improve support for doctors. Additional research should be carried out into doctors’ views on occupational health services in managing doctors with mental illness, the provision of supervision for all doctors and the effectiveness of the current appraisal and revalidation process at identifying doctors with a mental illness
Multibiometric Authentication System Processed by the Use of Fusion Algorithm
The present day authentication system is mostly uni-model i.e having only single authentication method which can be either finger print, iris , palm veins ,etc. Thus these models have to contend with a variety of problems such as absurd or unusual data, non-versatility; un authorized attempts, and huge amount of error rates. Some of these limitations can be reduced or stopped by the use of multimodal biometric systems that integrate the evidence presented by several sources of information. This paper converses a multi biometric based authentication system based on Fusion algorithm using a key. Our work mainly focuses on the fusion algorithm, i.e fusion of finger and palm print out of which the greatest features from the above two traits are taken into account. With minimum possible features the fusion of the both the traits is carried out. Then some key is generated for multi biometric authentication. By processing the test image of a person, the identity of the person is displayed with his/her own image. By the fusion algorithm, it is found that it has less computation time compared to the existing algorithms. By matching results, we validate and authenticate the particular individual
Mood and transient cardiac dysfunction in everyday life
Emotion in daily life may be associated with transient myocardial ischemia, ventricular tachycardia and impaired autonomic function in cardiac patients, but the precise temporal sequence is unclear. Eighty-eight patients with suspected coronary artery disease underwent 24-h electrocardiographic monitoring, and affect was measured with the Day Reconstruction Method. Thirteen patients (15%) experienced one or more episodes of ST depression or ventricular tachycardia, nine of whom provided concurrent mood data. Mood and heart rate variability were analyzed for the 15 min before, during, and 15 min after each ST depression/ventricular tachycardia episode, and were compared with control periods not associated with cardiac dysfunction. Patients reported more negative mood in the 15 min preceding cardiac dysfunction compared with control periods (P = 0.02). Heart rate increased in the 5 min before cardiac dysfunction (P = 0.005), whereas low frequency heart rate variability was reduced at onset but not before cardiac dysfunction (P = 0.007). There were not changes in high frequency heart rate variability. This small study indicates that emotional state may contribute to vulnerability of cardiac dysfunction in everyday life
Towards Deconstruction of the Type D (2,0) Theory
We propose a four-dimensional supersymmetric theory that deconstructs, in a
particular limit, the six-dimensional theory of type . This 4d
theory is defined by a necklace quiver with alternating gauge nodes
and . We test this proposal by comparing the
6d half-BPS index to the Higgs branch Hilbert series of the 4d theory. In the
process, we overcome several technical difficulties, such as Hilbert series
calculations for non-complete intersections, and the choice of
versus gauge groups. Consistently, the result matches the Coulomb
branch formula for the mirror theory upon reduction to 3d
Home Automation Using Arduino and ESP8266
With the advent of technology, life has become faster in pace and shorter in interactions, with others, as well as with the surroundings. In such a scenario, there is a need to have an endeavor to have everything at the push of a button away, and more importantly, automated. Home Automation is such an endeavor, in which, all the electrical appliances present at home are connected to each other, having interactions with sensors placed at strategic positions in a closed loop manner in order to perform meager tasks automatically, leaving less burden on the humans. With this project we are promoting the fact that Home Automation can greatly contribute to energy conservation too
Nodeless time-reversal symmetry breaking in the centrosymmetric superconductor Sc5Co4Si10 probed by muon-spin spectroscopy
A Note on Vectorial AdS/CFT Duality for Spin- Boundary Theory
The vectorial holographic correspondences between higher-spin theories in
AdS and free vector models on the boundary are extended to the cases where
the latter is described by free massless spin- field. The dual higher-spin
theory in the bulk does not include gravity and can only be defined on rigid
AdS background with boundary. We discuss various properties of these
rather special higher-spin theories and calculate their one-loop free energies.
We show that the result is proportional to the same quantity for spin-
doubleton treated as if it is a AdS field. Finally, we consider even more
special case where the boundary theory itself is given by an infinite tower of
massless higher-spin fields.Comment: 27 pages, version to appear in JHE
Quivers, words and fundamentals
40 pages + Appendices, 9 figures40 pages + Appendices, 9 figure
M5-branes from gauge theories on the 5-sphere
We use the 5-sphere partition functions of supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories
to explore the (2,0) superconformal theory on S^5 x S^1. The 5d theories can be
regarded as Scherk-Schwarz reductions of the 6d theory along the circle. In a
special limit, the perturbative partition function takes the form of the
Chern-Simons partition function on S^3. With a simple non-perturbative
completion, it becomes a 6d index which captures the degeneracy of a sector of
BPS states as well as the index version of the vacuum Casimir energy. The
Casimir energy exhibits the N^3 scaling at large N. The large N index for U(N)
gauge group also completely agrees with the supergravity index on AdS_7 x S^4.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figure, v4: ref added, clarified weak/strong coupling
behaviors of large N free energy, minor improvements, version to be published
in JHE
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