917 research outputs found
Nudges and other moral technologies in the context of power: Assigning and accepting responsibility
Strawson argues that we should understand moral responsibility in terms of our practices of holding responsible and taking responsibility. The former covers what is commonly referred to as backward-looking responsibility , while the latter covers what is commonly referred to as forward-looking responsibility . We consider new technologies and interventions that facilitate assignment of responsibility. Assigning responsibility is best understood as the second- or third-personal analogue of taking responsibility. It establishes forward-looking responsibility. But unlike taking responsibility, it establishes forward-looking responsibility in someone else. When such assignments are accepted, they function in such a way that those to whom responsibility has been assigned face the same obligations and are susceptible to the same reactive attitudes as someone who takes responsibility. One family of interventions interests us in particular: nudges. We contend that many instances of nudging tacitly assign responsibility to nudgees for actions, values, and relationships that they might not otherwise have taken responsibility for. To the extent that nudgees tacitly accept such assignments, they become responsible for upholding norms that would otherwise have fallen under the purview of other actors. While this may be empowering in some cases, it can also function in such a way that it burdens people with more responsibility that they can (reasonably be expected to) manage
Identification of signaling pathways in early mammary gland development by mouse genetics
The mammary gland develops as an appendage of the ectoderm. The prenatal stage of mammary development is hormone independent and is regulated by sequential and reciprocal signaling between the epithelium and the mesenchyme. A number of recent studies using human and mouse genetics, in particular targeted gene deletion and transgenic expression, have identified some of the signals that control specific steps in development. This process involves cell specification and proliferation, reciprocal tissue interactions and cell migration. Since some of these events are recapitulated during tumorigenesis, an understanding of these signaling pathways may contribute to the development of targeted therapies and novel drugs
A Diabetes Psychosocial Profile
An educational needs assessment instrument for individuals with diabetes has been developed at the Michigan Diabetes Research and Training Center. Responses to the 110-item questionnaire provide subscores on con structs labeled "Control Problems, " "Psychosocial Impact," "Barriers to Compliance, " "Benefits of Regimen, " "Regimen Complexity," and "Risk of Complications." Com bined with demographic and clinical information, these scores form a com prehensive summary of the patient's attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, and knowledge in relation to diabetes. This summary is in the form of an individ ualized graphic profile that highlights possible prob lem areas to be consid ered when developing patient education and management plans.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68817/2/10.1177_014572178601200210.pd
Lightweight Interactions for Reciprocal Cooperation in a Social Network Game
The construction of reciprocal relationships requires cooperative
interactions during the initial meetings. However, cooperative behavior with
strangers is risky because the strangers may be exploiters. In this study, we
show that people increase the likelihood of cooperativeness of strangers by
using lightweight non-risky interactions in risky situations based on the
analysis of a social network game (SNG). They can construct reciprocal
relationships in this manner. The interactions involve low-cost signaling
because they are not generated at any cost to the senders and recipients.
Theoretical studies show that low-cost signals are not guaranteed to be
reliable because the low-cost signals from senders can lie at any time.
However, people used low-cost signals to construct reciprocal relationships in
an SNG, which suggests the existence of mechanisms for generating reliable,
low-cost signals in human evolution.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
A simulation scenario based mixed integer programming approach to airline reserve crew scheduling under uncertainty
The environment in which airlines operate is uncertain for many reasons, for example due to the effects of weather, traffic or crew unavailability (due to delay or sickness). This work focuses on airline reserve crew scheduling under crew absence uncertainty and delay for an airline operating a single hub and spoke network. Reserve crew can be used to cover absent crew or delayed connecting crew. A fixed number of reserve crew are available for scheduling and each requires a daily standby duty start time. This work proposes a mixed integer programming approach to scheduling the airlineâs reserve crew. A simulation of the airlineâs operations with stochastic journey time and crew absence inputs (without reserve crew) is used to generate input disruption scenarios for the mixed integer programming simulation scenario model (MIPSSM) formulation. Each disruption scenario corresponds to a record of all of the disruptions that may occur on the day of operation which are solvable by using reserve crew. A set of disruption scenarios form the input of the MIPSSM formulation, which has the objective of finding the reserve crew schedule that minimises the overall level of disruption over the set of input scenarios. Additionally, modifications of the MIPSSM are explored, a heuristic solution approach and a reserve use policy derived from the MIPSSM are introduced. A heuristic based on the proposed MIPSSM outperforms a range of alternative approaches. The heuristic solution approach suggests that including the right disruption scenarios is as important as the quantity of disruption scenarios that are added to the MIPSSM. An investigation into what makes a good set of scenarios is also presented
Eikonal methods applied to gravitational scattering amplitudes
We apply factorization and eikonal methods from gauge theories to scattering
amplitudes in gravity. We hypothesize that these amplitudes factor into an
IR-divergent soft function and an IR-finite hard function, with the former
given by the expectation value of a product of gravitational Wilson line
operators. Using this approach, we show that the IR-divergent part of the
n-graviton scattering amplitude is given by the exponential of the one-loop IR
divergence, as originally discovered by Weinberg, with no additional subleading
IR-divergent contributions in dimensional regularization.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures; v2: title change and minor rewording (published
version); v3: typos corrected in eqs.(3.2),(4.1
Towards the âultimate earthquake-proofâ building: Development of an integrated low-damage system
The 2010â2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence has highlighted the
severe mismatch between societal expectations over the reality of seismic performance
of modern buildings. A paradigm shift in performance-based design criteria
and objectives towards damage-control or low-damage design philosophy and
technologies is urgently required. The increased awareness by the general public,
tenants, building owners, territorial authorities as well as (re)insurers, of the severe
socio-economic impacts of moderate-strong earthquakes in terms of damage/dollars/
downtime, has indeed stimulated and facilitated the wider acceptance and
implementation of cost-efficient damage-control (or low-damage) technologies.
The âbarâ has been raised significantly with the request to fast-track the development
of what the wider general public would hope, and somehow expect, to live
in, i.e. an âearthquake-proofâ building system, capable of sustaining the shaking of
a severe earthquake basically unscathed.
The paper provides an overview of recent advances through extensive research,
carried out at the University of Canterbury in the past decade towards the development
of a low-damage building system as a whole, within an integrated
performance-based framework, including the skeleton of the superstructure, the
non-structural components and the interaction with the soil/foundation system.
Examples of real on site-applications of such technology in New Zealand, using
concrete, timber (engineered wood), steel or a combination of these materials, and
featuring some of the latest innovative technical solutions developed in the laboratory
are presented as examples of successful transfer of performance-based seismic
design approach and advanced technology from theory to practice
Graviton emission in Einstein-Hilbert gravity
The five-point amplitude for the scattering of two distinct scalars with the
emission of one graviton in the final state is calculated in exact kinematics
for Einstein-Hilbert gravity. The result, which satisfies the Steinmann
relations, is expressed in Sudakov variables, finding that it corresponds to
the sum of two gauge invariant contributions written in terms of a new two
scalar - two graviton effective vertex. A similar calculation is carried out in
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) for the scattering of two distinct quarks with one
extra gluon in the final state. The effective vertices which appear in both
cases are then evaluated in the multi-Regge limit reproducing the well-known
result obtained by Lipatov where the Einstein-Hilbert graviton emission vertex
can be written as the product of two QCD gluon emission vertices, up to
corrections to preserve the Steinmann relations.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX, feynmf. v2: typos corrected, reference added. Final
version to appear in Journal of High Energy Physic
Clustering and Alignment of Polymorphic Sequences for HLA-DRB1 Genotyping
Located on Chromosome 6p21, classical human leukocyte antigen genes are highly polymorphic. HLA alleles associate with a variety of phenotypes, such as narcolepsy, autoimmunity, as well as immunologic response to infectious disease. Moreover, high resolution genotyping of these loci is critical to achieving long-term survival of allogeneic transplants. Development of methods to obtain high resolution analysis of HLA genotypes will lead to improved understanding of how select alleles contribute to human health and disease risk. Genomic DNAs were obtained from a cohort of n = 383 subjects recruited as part of an Ulcerative Colitis study and analyzed for HLA-DRB1. HLA genotypes were determined using sequence specific oligonucleotide probes and by next-generation sequencing using the Roche/454 GSFLX instrument. The Clustering and Alignment of Polymorphic Sequences (CAPSeq) software application was developed to analyze next-generation sequencing data. The application generates HLA sequence specific 6-digit genotype information from next-generation sequencing data using MUMmer to align sequences and the R package diffusionMap to classify sequences into their respective allelic groups. The incorporation of Bootstrap Aggregating, Bagging to aid in sorting of sequences into allele classes resulted in improved genotyping accuracy. Using Bagging iterations equal to 60, the genotyping results obtained using CAPSeq when compared with sequence specific oligonucleotide probe characterized 4-digit genotypes exhibited high rates of concordance, matching at 759 out of 766 (99.1%) alleles. © 2013 Ringquist et al
- âŠ