Moral Dilemmas in Greek Tragedies: a Discussion of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and Sophokles’s Antigone

By looking at the situations faced by the protagonists of two classic plays (in purely philosophical terms rather than literary-critical or historical), I try to shed light on what it means to face an insoluble moral dilemma, what it might mean to deal with it, and how the dilemma can reveal certain crucial information about the decision-maker (i) to us readers-spectators, (ii) to other characters in the play who witness, or are implicated by, the incident, (iii) as well as, and perhaps most importantly, to the protagonist himself. In so doing, I distinguish the above dilemmas from moral-prudential dilemmas and from apparent dilemmas constituted by the mere lack of epistemological access. Indeed, I generally resist the various reductive approaches characteristic of much analytic moral philosophy, and challenge the notion of a uniquely right answer to which all rational moral agents can be held accountable

The irreducibility of the personal perspective in ethics. A reply to Baccarini

Elvio Baccarini has responded generously to my book Medical Ethics: Ordinary Concepts, Ordinary Lives (2008), but I would like to respond to three of his criticisms: first, about the role that theory ought to play in, and in relation to, moral experience; second, about my defence of a doctor’s right to conscientiously object to performing legal abortions; and third, to the reality of posthumous harm. Baccarini claims that I have overstated my claims, and drawn illegitimate metaphysical conclusions from people’s ordinary language. However, I argue that moral language is special precisely because of the way it expresses an irreducible personal perspective

The Last Chapter in the Story: A Place for Aristotle\u27s Eudaemonia in the Lives of the Terminally Ill

The \u27deficiency model\u27 of aging has often been criticized for its lack of attention to the individual patient\u27s narrative understanding of his own life. However, such narrative conceptions tend to focus on a generic adult person, situated in specific on-going projects and relationships, moving toward a more or less clear conception of the future. What interest me, on the other hand, are those individuals who have become aware of their own death as imminent, and who therefore strive to compose the \u27last chapter\u27 of their life story. Imminence is not to be taken in chronological or clinical terms, but as revealing an attitude to oneself and one\u27s own life. The composition of the last chapter requires recollecting and reappraising the events of one\u27s life in an effort to make sense of the life as a whole. I propose revising the ancient Greek word eudaemonia to capture this sense of achieving an integrated meaning to one\u27s life

Swimming with ShARCS: Comparison of On-sky Sensitivity With Model Predictions for ShaneAO on the Lick Observatory 3-meter Telescope

The Lick Observatory's Shane 3-meter telescope has been upgraded with a new infrared instrument (ShARCS - Shane Adaptive optics infraRed Camera and Spectrograph) and dual-deformable mirror adaptive optics (AO) system (ShaneAO). We present first-light measurements of imaging sensitivity in the Ks band. We compare measured results to predicted signal-to-noise ratio and magnitude limits from modeling the emissivity and throughput of ShaneAO and ShARCS. The model was validated by comparing its results to the Keck telescope adaptive optics system model and then by estimating the sky background and limiting magnitudes for IRCAL, the previous infra-red detector on the Shane telescope, and comparing to measured, published results. We predict that the ShaneAO system will measure lower sky backgrounds and achieve 20\% higher throughput across the $JHK$ bands despite having more optical surfaces than the current system. It will enable imaging of fainter objects (by 1-2 magnitudes) and will be faster to reach a fiducial signal-to-noise ratio by a factor of 10-13. We highlight the improvements in performance over the previous AO system and its camera, IRCAL.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, Montreal 201

Spacesuit and Space Vehicle Comparative Ergonomic Evaluation

With the advent of the latest manned spaceflight objectives, a series of prototype launch and reentry spacesuit architectures were evaluated for eventual down selection by NASA based on the performance of a set of designated tasks. A consolidated approach was taken to testing, concurrently collecting suit mobility data, seat-suit-vehicle interface clearances and movement strategies within the volume of a Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle mockup. To achieve the objectives of the test, a requirement was set forth to maintain high mockup fidelity while using advanced motion capture technologies. These seemingly mutually exclusive goals were accommodated with the construction of an optically transparent and fully adjustable frame mockup. The mockup was constructed such that it could be dimensionally validated rapidly with the motion capture system. This paper will describe the method used to create a motion capture compatible space vehicle mockup, the consolidated approach for evaluating spacesuits in action, as well as the various methods for generating hardware requirements for an entire population from the resulting complex data set using a limited number of test subjects. Kinematics, hardware clearance, suited anthropometry, and subjective feedback data were recorded on fifteen unsuited and five suited subjects. Unsuited subjects were selected chiefly by anthropometry, in an attempt to find subjects who fell within predefined criteria for medium male, large male and small female subjects. The suited subjects were selected as a subset of the unsuited subjects and tested in both unpressurized and pressurized conditions. Since the prototype spacesuits were fabricated in a single size to accommodate an approximately average sized male, the findings from the suit testing were systematically extrapolated to the extremes of the population to anticipate likely problem areas. This extrapolation was achieved by first performing population analysis through a comparison of suited subjects performance to their unsuited performance and then applying the results to the entire range of population. The use of a transparent space vehicle mockup enabled the collection of large amounts of data during human-in-the-loop testing. Mobility data revealed that most of the tested spacesuits had sufficient ranges of motion for tasks to be performed successfully. A failed tasked by a suited subject most often stemmed from a combination of poor field of view while seated and poor dexterity of the gloves when pressurized or from suit/vehicle interface issues. Seat ingress/egress testing showed that problems with anthropometric accommodation does not exclusively occur with the largest or smallest subjects, but rather specific combinations of measurements that lead to narrower seat ingress/egress clearance

Variable effects of exposure to formulated microbicides on antibiotic susceptibility in firmicutes and proteobacteria

Microbicides are broad-spectrum antimicrobial agents that generally interact with multiple pharmacological targets. While they are widely deployed in disinfectant, antiseptic, and preservative formulations, data relating to their potential to select for microbicide or antibiotic resistance have been generated mainly by testing the compounds in much simpler aqueous solutions. In the current investigation, antibiotic susceptibility was determined for bacteria that had previously exhibited decreased microbicide susceptibility following repeated exposure to microbicides either in formulation with sequestrants and surfactants or in simple aqueous solution. Statistically significant increases in antibiotic susceptibility occurred for 12% of bacteria after exposure to microbicides in formulation and 20% of bacteria after exposure to microbicides in aqueous solutions, while 22% became significantly less susceptible to the antibiotics, regardless of formulation. Of the combinations of a bacterium and an antibiotic for which British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy breakpoints are available, none became resistant. Linear modeling taking into account phylogeny, microbicide, antibiotic, and formulation identified small but significant effects of formulation that varied depending on the bacterium and microbicide. Adaptation to formulated benzalkonium chloride in particular was more likely to increase antibiotic susceptibility than adaptation to the simple aqueous solution. In conclusion, bacterial adaptation through repeated microbicide exposure was associated with both increases and decreases in antibiotic susceptibility. Formulation of the microbicide to which the bacteria had previously adapted had an identifiable effect on antibiotic susceptibility, but it effect was typically small relative to the differences observed among microbicides. Susceptibility changes resulting in resistance were not observed. IMPORTANCE The safety of certain microbicide applications has been questioned due to the possibility that microbicide exposure could select for microbicide and antibiotic resistance. Evidence that this may happen is based mainly on in vitro experiments where bacteria have been exposed to microbicides in aqueous solution. Microbicides are, however, normally deployed in products formulated with surfactants, sequestrants, and other compounds. While this may influence the frequency and extent of susceptibility changes, few studies reported in the literature have assessed this. In the current investigation, therefore, we have investigated changes in antibiotic susceptibility in bacteria which exhibited decreased microbicide susceptibility following repeated exposure to microbicides in simple aqueous solutions and in formulation. We report that the microbicide formulation had an identifiable effect on antibiotic susceptibility, but it was typically small relative to the differences observed among microbicides. We did not observe susceptibility changes resulting in resistance

Finding the ‘Sweet Spot’ for reproductive performance in north Australian beef herds

We know that nutrition has a dominating effect on the reproductive performance of beef breeding females, but the level of pasture utilisation required for optimal cow herd production in northern Australia is unknown. We are using existing datasets to: 1) quantify the effect of pasture utilisation rates on reproductive performance (pregnancy, lactating cows pregnant within four months, calf loss and weaning percentage); 2) improve the capacity of existing models to predict cow performance and economics of herd management; and 3) recommend management to improve cow herd performance, production and profitability while maintaining the land and pasture resource for different land types and regions in northern Australia