A Voting-Based System for Ethical Decision Making

We present a general approach to automating ethical decisions, drawing on machine learning and computational social choice. In a nutshell, we propose to learn a model of societal preferences, and, when faced with a specific ethical dilemma at runtime, efficiently aggregate those preferences to identify a desirable choice. We provide a concrete algorithm that instantiates our approach; some of its crucial steps are informed by a new theory of swap-dominance efficient voting rules. Finally, we implement and evaluate a system for ethical decision making in the autonomous vehicle domain, using preference data collected from 1.3 million people through the Moral Machine website.Comment: 25 pages; paper has been reorganized, related work and discussion sections have been expande

The relationship between Lp(a) and CVD outcomes: a systematic review

Summary of QUIPS quality assessment domains (60 studies). (DOCX 54 kb

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF SUSPENSION SYSTEM

A suspension system or shock absorber is really a mechanical device made to lessen or moist shock impulse, and dissipate kinetic energy. The shocks duty would be to absorb or dissipate energy. In the vehicle, it cuts down on the result of traveling over rough ground, resulting in improved quality of ride, while increasing in comfort because of substantially reduced amplitude of disturbances. Whenever a vehicle travels on an amount road and also the wheels strike a bump, the spring is compressed rapidly. The compressed spring will Endeavour revisit its normal loaded length and, in that way, will rebound past its normal height, resulting in the body to become lifted. The load from the vehicle will push the spring lower below its normal loaded height. Within this project a surprise absorber was created along with a 3D model is produced using Pro/Engineer. The model can also be altered by altering the thickness from the spring. Structural analysis and modal analysis are carried out around the shock absorber by different material for spring, Spring Steel and Beryllium Copper. Comparison is completed for 2 materials to ensure best material for spring in Shock absorber. Modeling is completed in Pro/ENGINEER and analysis is completed in ANSYS. Pro/ENGINEER may be the standard in 3D product design, featuring industry-leading productivity tools that promote guidelines in design. ANSYS is general-purpose finite element analysis (FEA) software program. Finite Element Analysis is really a statistical approach to deconstructing an intricate system into really small pieces (of user-designated size) known as elements

Effect of powder metallurgy synthesis parameters for pure aluminium on resultant mechanical properties

In this work, pure aluminium powders of different average particle size were compacted, sintered into discs and tested for mechanical strength at different strain rates. The effects of average particle size (15, 19, and 35 μm), sintering rate (5 and 20 °C/min) and sample indentation test speed (0.5, 0.7, and 1.0 mm/min) were examined. A compaction pressure of 332 MPa with a holding time of six minutes was used to produce the green compacted discs. The consolidated green specimens were sintered with a holding time of 4 h, a temperature of 600 °C in an argon atmosphere. The resulting sintered samples contained higher than 85% density. The mechanical properties and microstructure were characterized using indentation strength measurement tests and SEM analysis respectively. After sintering, the aluminium grain structure was observed to be of uniform size within the fractured samples. The indentation test measurements showed that for the same sintering rate, the 35 μm powder particle size provided the highest radial and tangential strength while the 15 μm powder provided the lowest strengths. Another important finding from this work was the increase in sintered sample strength which was achieved using the lower sinter heating rate, 5 °C/min. This resulted in a tangential stress value of 365 MPa which was significantly higher than achieved, 244 MPa, using the faster sintering heating rate, 20 °C/min

Turning down the lamp: Software specialisation for the cloud

© USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing, HotCloud 2010.All right reserved. The wide availability of cloud computing offers an unprecedented opportunity to rethink how we construct applications. The cloud is currently mostly used to package up existing software stacks and operating systems (e.g. LAMP) for scaling out websites. We instead view the cloud as a stable hardware platform, and present a programming framework which permits applications to be constructed to run directly on top of it without intervening software layers. Our prototype (dubbed Mirage) is unashamedly academic; it extends the Objective Caml language with storage extensions and a custom run-time to emit binaries that execute as a guest operating system under Xen. Mirage applications exhibit significant performance speedups for I/O and memory handling versus the same code running under Linux/Xen. Our results can be generalised to offer insight into improving more commonly used languages such as PHP, Python and Ruby, and we discuss lessons learnt and future directions

Predicting short- to medium-term care home admission risk in older adults:a systematic review of externally validated models

Introduction: Predicting risk of care home admission could identify older adults for early intervention to support independent living, but require external validation in a different dataset before clinical use. We systematically reviewed external validations of care home admission risk prediction models in older adults.Methods: We searched Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Library until 14/08/23 for external validations of prediction models for care home admission risk in adults aged ≥65 years with up to three years of follow-up. We extracted and narratively synthesised data on study design, model characteristics, and model discrimination and calibration (accuracy of predictions). We assessed the risk of bias and applicability using PROBAST.Results: Five studies reporting validations of nine unique models were included. Model applicability was fair but risk of bias was mostly high due to not reporting model calibration. Morbidities were used as predictors in four models, most commonly neurological or psychiatric diseases. Physical function was also included in four models. For 1-year prediction, three of the six models had acceptable discrimination (AUC/c statistic 0.70 to 0.79) and the remaining three had poor discrimination (AUC &lt;0.70). No model accounted for competing mortality risk. The only study examining model calibration (but ignoring competing mortality) concluded that it was excellent.Conclusions: The reporting of models was incomplete. Model discrimination was at best acceptable, and calibration was rarely examined (and ignored competing mortality risk when examined). There is a need to derive better models that account for competing mortality risk and report calibration as well as discrimination. <br/

Performance of models for predicting one to three year mortality in older adults: a systematic review of externally validated models

Mortality prediction models support identifying older adults with short life expectancy for whom clinical care may need modifications. We systematically reviewed validations of mortality prediction models in older adults with up to three years of follow-up. We included 36 studies reporting 74 validations of 64 unique models. Model applicability was fair but validation risk of bias was mostly high, with 67·7% not reporting calibration. Morbidities were used as predictors by 70·0% of models, most commonly cardiovascular diseases. For 1-year prediction, 31/46 models had acceptable discrimination, but only one had excellent performance. Models with &gt;20 predictors were more likely to have acceptable discrimination (risk ratio (RR) versus &lt;10 predictors 1·68, 95%CI 1·06–2·66), as were models including sex (RR 1·75, 95%CI 1·12–2·73) or predicting risk during comprehensive geriatric assessment (RR 1·86, 95%CI 1·12–3·07). There is a need for derivation and validation of better-performing mortality prediction models in older people.Keywords: Aged; Mortality; Risk; Validation Study; Systematic Review<br/

Is the TriNetX Database a Good Tool for Investigation of Real-World Management of Von Hippel–Lindau?

Von Hippel–Lindau (vHL) is a hereditary disease characterized by the development of benign and malignant tumors across multiple organ systems. It is seen in approximately 1 in 36,000 live births. Given that vHL is a rare disease, studies that seek to characterize vHL are often hampered by small sample sizes. The TriNetX database, which contains data from over 100 million patients, may offer the ability to define and describe a large number of vHL patients. The primary objectives of this study were to describe the prevalence of vHL-associated conditions and investigate clinical outcomes using TriNetX. The secondary objective was to compare the results of this analysis to what has been reported in the published vHL literature. TriNetX was queried to establish a cohort of patients with a diagnosis of vHL. This cohort was then used to define the prevalence of the following conditions: reproductive organ (epididymal and broad ligament) cystadenomas, renal cell carcinoma (RCC), pheochromocytomas, endolymphatic sac tumors (ESLTs), central nervous system (CNS) and retinal hemangioblastomas, and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (pNETs). A total of 1232 patients in TriNetX had a recorded diagnosis of vHL. Of this, 34 (6.0% of males) patients had epididymal cystadenoma, 21 (3.4% of females) had broad ligament cystadenoma, 352 (28.6%) had RCC, 251 (20.4%) had pheochromocytoma, &lt;10 had ELST, 171 (13.9%) had CNS hemangioblastoma, 34 (2.8%) had pNETs, and 66 (5.4%) had retinal hemangioma. Compared to the existing literature, vHL and associated conditions are underdiagnosed in TriNetX, suggesting its limited use in studying this disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 subphenotypes and differential treatment response to convalescent plasma in critically ill adults: secondary analyses of a randomized clinical trial

Purpose Benefit from convalescent plasma therapy for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been inconsistent in randomized clinical trials (RCTs) involving critically ill patients. As COVID-19 patients are immunologically heterogeneous, we hypothesized that immunologically similar COVID-19 subphenotypes may differ in their treatment responses to convalescent plasma and explain inconsistent findings between RCTs . Methods We tested this hypothesis in a substudy involving 1239 patients, by measuring 26 biomarkers (cytokines, chemokines, endothelial biomarkers) within the randomized, embedded, multifactorial, adaptive platform trial for community-acquired pneumonia (REMAP-CAP) that assigned 2097 critically ill COVID-19 patients to either high-titer convalescent plasma or usual care. Primary outcome was organ support free days at 21 days (OSFD-21) . Results Unsupervised analyses identified three subphenotypes/endotypes. In contrast to the more homogeneous subphenotype-2 (N = 128 patients, 10.3%; with elevated type i and type ii effector immune responses) and subphenotype-3 (N = 241, 19.5%; with exaggerated inflammation), the subphenotype-1 had variable biomarker patterns (N = 870 patients, 70.2%). Subphenotypes-2, and -3 had worse outcomes, and subphenotype-1 had better outcomes with convalescent plasma therapy compared with usual care (median (IQR). OSFD-21 in convalescent plasma vs usual care was 0 (− 1, 21) vs 10 (− 1, to 21) in subphenotype-2; 1.5 (− 1, 21) vs 12 (− 1, to 21) in suphenotype-3, and 0 (− 1, 21) vs 0 (− 1, to 21) in subphenotype-1 (test for between-subphenotype differences in treatment effects p = 0.008). Conclusions We reported three COVID-19 subphenotypes, among critically ill adults, with differential treatment effects to ABO-compatible convalescent plasma therapy. Differences in subphenotype prevalence between RCT populations probably explain inconsistent results with COVID-19 immunotherapies