Energy without Conscience

'In Energy without Conscience' David McDermott Hughes investigates why climate change has yet to be seen as a moral issue. He examines the forces that render the use of fossil fuels ordinary and therefore exempt from ethical evaluation. Hughes centers his analysis on Trinidad and Tobago, which is the world's oldest petro-state, having drilled the first continuously producing oil well in 1866. Marrying historical research with interviews with Trinidadian petroleum scientists, policymakers, technicians, and managers, he draws parallels between Trinidad's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave labor energy economy and its contemporary oil industry. Hughes shows how both forms of energy rely upon a complicity that absolves producers and consumers from acknowledging the immoral nature of each. He passionately argues that like slavery, producing oil is a moral choice and that oil is at its most dangerous when it is accepted as an ordinary part of everyday life

The Bitsy Spacecraft Kernel: Reducing Nanosatellite Mission Cost in the MSFC Future-X Program through Miniaturized Technologies

A team led by AeroAstro Incorporated was selected under the Future-X program to fly an experiment in late 2000 to demonstrate key elements of reducing space mission cost utilizing Bitsy™ Spacecraft Kernel technology. The Small Payload Access to Space Experiment (SPASE) is funded through the Future-X program, and is to be launched in late 2000 using the Space Shuttle. The mission will also carry a small microgravity payload. The entire first mission, including space and ground systems and launch interfaces, will cost under $2M. The recurring cost for follow-on microgravity spacecraft will be under$1M. Achieving on-orbit science missions with a cost comparable or below that of suborbital flights is made possible by: 1. Creation of a standardized core of spacecraft capabilities, not a standard bus, based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies, which the science team uses to manage spacecraft functions (patent pending); 2. Miniaturization, which both reduces recurring costs (fabrication and parts) and makes a minimal demand on launch vehicle services with very high reliability. The spacecraft “kernel”, as opposed to bus, does not have a traditional division into discrete subsystems, but rather manages power, thermal control, ACDS, C&DH, and communications in a package of a few kilograms. Its small size, light weight, and unique extensible architecture enables a variety of customizations to be added as needed to greatly expand the range of achievable missions. These added capabilities include modest in-space propulsion, which enables missions including those requiring large V for spacecraft inspection, orbit initialization or station keeping, or achieving unusual or energetic orbits without requiring very expensive launch capability. While Bitsy™ technology enables flying significant science, communications, and remote sensing missions with total mass of 10-60 kg forcosts similar to suborbital flights, there is in principle no limit to the size or complexity of payloads it can accommodate. The spacecraft program currently underway will demonstrate the capabilities provided by the combination of miniaturization and nanospacecraft architectures. It will perform a flight demonstration of the spacecraft, ground station, and flight operations control software offering standard interfaces to payloads and to launch systems, to be launched in late 2000 on the Shuttle Hitchhiker accommodation. The Bitsy™ kernel concept, progress to date on the SPASE mission, and the fundamental design and architecture decisions for each will be discussed in this paper

PonyGE2: Grammatical Evolution in Python

Grammatical Evolution (GE) is a population-based evolutionary algorithm, where a formal grammar is used in the genotype to phenotype mapping process. PonyGE2 is an open source implementation of GE in Python, developed at UCD's Natural Computing Research and Applications group. It is intended as an advertisement and a starting-point for those new to GE, a reference for students and researchers, a rapid-prototyping medium for our own experiments, and a Python workout. As well as providing the characteristic genotype to phenotype mapping of GE, a search algorithm engine is also provided. A number of sample problems and tutorials on how to use and adapt PonyGE2 have been developed.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the 2017 GECCO Workshop on Evolutionary Computation Software Systems (EvoSoft

Energy without Conscience

'In Energy without Conscience' David McDermott Hughes investigates why climate change has yet to be seen as a moral issue. He examines the forces that render the use of fossil fuels ordinary and therefore exempt from ethical evaluation. Hughes centers his analysis on Trinidad and Tobago, which is the world's oldest petro-state, having drilled the first continuously producing oil well in 1866. Marrying historical research with interviews with Trinidadian petroleum scientists, policymakers, technicians, and managers, he draws parallels between Trinidad's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave labor energy economy and its contemporary oil industry. Hughes shows how both forms of energy rely upon a complicity that absolves producers and consumers from acknowledging the immoral nature of each. He passionately argues that like slavery, producing oil is a moral choice and that oil is at its most dangerous when it is accepted as an ordinary part of everyday life

Energy without Conscience

'In Energy without Conscience' David McDermott Hughes investigates why climate change has yet to be seen as a moral issue. He examines the forces that render the use of fossil fuels ordinary and therefore exempt from ethical evaluation. Hughes centers his analysis on Trinidad and Tobago, which is the world's oldest petro-state, having drilled the first continuously producing oil well in 1866. Marrying historical research with interviews with Trinidadian petroleum scientists, policymakers, technicians, and managers, he draws parallels between Trinidad's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave labor energy economy and its contemporary oil industry. Hughes shows how both forms of energy rely upon a complicity that absolves producers and consumers from acknowledging the immoral nature of each. He passionately argues that like slavery, producing oil is a moral choice and that oil is at its most dangerous when it is accepted as an ordinary part of everyday life

The Causal Role of Attentional Bias in a Cognitive Component of Depression

Cognitive theories have, for years, postulated the causal role of attentional biases in depression and low self-esteem. However, this assumption has been based predominantly on correlational findings. With the advent of attentional bias modification techniques (Mathews & MacLeod, 2002), it became possible to modify attentional bias experimentally. The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether negative attentional biases are trainable and causally linked to changes in important characteristics of depression, namely self-esteem. Participants completed negative attentional training and a stress induction task. Consistent with the diathesis-stress model, a combination of negative attentional biases and stress resulted in changes in self-esteem, which was used as an indicator of depression. The effects on self-esteem were specific to the type of stimuli used. These findings have important implications for our understanding of self-esteem, cognitive models of depression, and for the future of cognitive bias modification research in self-esteem and depression