Virtue and austerity

Virtue ethics is often proposed as a third way in health-care ethics, that while consequentialism and deontology focus on action guidelines, virtue focuses on character; all three aim to help agents discern morally right action although virtue seems to have least to contribute to political issues, such as austerity. I claim: (1) This is a bad way to characterize virtue ethics. The 20th century renaissance of virtue ethics was first proposed as a response to the difficulty of making sense of ‘moral rightness’ outside a religious context. For Aristotle the right action is that which is practically best; that means best for the agent in order to live a flourishing life.There are no moral considerations besides this. (2) Properly characterized, virtue ethics can contribute to discussion of austerity. A criticism of virtue ethics is that fixed characteristics seem a bad idea in ever-changing environments; perhaps we should be generous in prosperity, selfish in austerity. Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that people indeed do change with their environment. However, I argue that virtues concern fixed values not fixed behaviour; the values underlying virtue allow for different behaviour in different circumstances: in austerity, virtues still give the agent the best chance of flourishing. Two questions arise. (a) In austere environments might not injustice help an individual flourish by, say, obtaining material goods? No, because unjust acts undermine the type of society the agent needs for flourishing. (b) What good is virtue to those lacking the other means to flourish? The notion of degrees of flourishing shows that most people would benefit somewhat from virtue. However, in extreme circumstances virtue might harm rather than benefit the agent: such circumstances are to be avoided; virtue ethics thus has a political agenda to enable flourishing. This requires justice, a fortiori when in austerity

Managerial Work in a Practice-Embodying Institution - The role of calling, the virtue of constancy

What can be learned from a small scale study of managerial work in a highly marginal and under-researched working community? This paper uses the ‘goods-virtues-practices-institutions’ framework to examine the managerial work of owner-directors of traditional circuses. Inspired by MacIntyre’s arguments for the necessity of a narrative understanding of the virtues, interviews explored how British and Irish circus directors accounted for their working lives. A purposive sample was used to select subjects who had owned and managed traditional touring circuses for at least 15 years, a period in which the economic and reputational fortunes of traditional circuses have suffered badly. This sample enabled the research to examine the self-understanding of people who had, at least on the face of it, exhibited the virtue of constancy. The research contributes to our understanding of the role of the virtues in organizations by presenting evidence of an intimate relationship between the virtue of constancy and a ‘calling’ work orientation. This enhances our understanding of the virtues that are required if management is exercised as a domain-related practice

Murdoch and the End of Ideology

Iris Murdoch had a lifelong interest in politics and she reflected upon the nature of ideology throughout her career. What she had to say on the subject developed during her career and relates to general academic discussions on the nature of ideology. At the outset of her career she was a committed socialist. She recognised that political ideology was in retreat after the Second World War but sought to contribute to socialist ideology. Later in her career she became sceptical of radical utopian ideologies, including socialism and developed a theory of politics that prioritised safeguarding individual liberty and security. However, she imagined that political thought would continue to develop and offer new possibilities and so she did not call for the end of ideology but continued to value political ideas

Biochemical markers in bronchial carcinoma.

A total of 107 patients with bronchial carcinoma have been studied for the presence of potential circulating tumour markers which might be used as indicators of recurrence after primary treatment. Plasma carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels were estimated in every patient and, after a preliminary hormone screening study, plasma calcitonin (CT) and parathyroid hormone (PTH) levels were assayed in 66 patients. Oat-cell tumours proved to be of particular interest in that CEA levels greater than 40 microgram/l were measured (initially or subsequently) in 40.6 percent and CT levels were elevated in 75 percent. Longitudinal studies point towards the possible use of elevated marker levels as guides to therapy when all other features of recurrent disease are lacking. It is clear that no ideal tumour marker exists for bronchial carcinoma but in an individual case an abnormal level of one or more marker substances may provide a valuable aid to treatment

Electron mobility in surface- and buried- channel flatband In_0.53Ga_0.47As MOSFETs with ALD Al₂O₃ gate dielectric.

In this paper, we investigate the scaling potential of flatband III-V MOSFETs by comparing the mobility of surface and buried In<sub>0.53</sub>Ga<sub>0.47</sub>As channel devices employing an Atomic Layer Deposited (ALD) Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> gate dielectric and a delta-doped InGaAs/InAlAs/InP heterostructure. Peak electron mobilities of 4300 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s and 6600 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s at a carrier density of 3×1012 cm<sup>-2</sup> for the surface and buried channel structures respectively were determined. In contrast to similarly scaled inversion-channel devices, we find that mobility in surface channel flatband structures does not drop rapidly with electron density, but rather high mobility is maintained up to carrier concentrations around 4x10<sup>12</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup> before slowly dropping to around 2000 cm<sup>2</sup>/V·s at 1x10M<sup>13</sup> cm<sup>-2</sup>. We believe these to be world leading metrics for this material system and an important development in informing the III-V MOSFET device architecture selection process for future low power, highly scaled CM

Characterization of potential larval habitats for Anopheles mosquitoes in relation to urban land-use in Malindi, Kenya

BACKGROUND: This study characterized Anopheles mosquito larval habitats in relation to ecological attributes about the habitat and community-level drainage potential, and investigated whether agricultural activities within or around urban households increased the probability of water body occurrence. Malindi, a city on the coast of Kenya, was mapped using global positioning system (GPS) technology, and a geographic information system (GIS) was used to overlay a measured grid, which served as a sampling frame. Grid cells were stratified according to the level of drainage in the area, and 50 cells were randomly selected for the study. Cross-sectional household and entomological surveys were conducted during November and December 2002 within the 50 grid cells. Chi-square analysis was used to test whether water bodies differed fundamentally between well and poorly drained areas, and multi-level logistic regression was used to test whether household-level agricultural activity increased the probability of water body occurrence in the grid cell. RESULTS: Interviews were conducted with one adult in 629 households. A total of 29 water bodies were identified within the sampled areas. This study found that characteristics of water bodies were fundamentally the same in well and poorly drained areas. This study also demonstrated that household-level urban agriculture was not associated with the occurrence of water bodies in the grid cell, after controlling for potential confounders associated with distance to the city center, drainage, access to resources, and population density. CONCLUSIONS: Household-level urban agricultural activity may be less important than the other types of human perturbation in terms of mosquito larval habitat creation. The fact that many larvae were coming from few sites, and few sites in general were found under relatively dry conditions suggests that mosquito habitat reduction is a reasonable and attainable goal in Malindi

Pathfinder cells provide a novel therapeutic intervention for acute kidney injury

Pathfinder cells (PCs) are a novel class of adult-derived cells that facilitate functional repair of host tissue. We used rat PCs to demonstrate that they enable the functional mitigation of ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury in a mouse model of renal damage. Female C57BL/6 mice were subjected to 30 min of renal ischemia and treated with intravenous (i.v.) injection of saline (control) or male rat pancreas-derived PCs in blinded experimentation. Kidney function was assessed 14 days after treatment by measuring serum creatinine (SC) levels. Kidney tissue was assessed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) for markers of cellular damage, proliferation, and senescence (TUNEL, Ki67, p16ink4a, p21). Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) was performed to determine the presence of any rat (i.e., pathfinder) cells in the mouse tissue. PC-treated animals demonstrated superior renal function at day 14 post-I/R, in comparison to saline-treated controls, as measured by SC levels (0.13 mg/dL vs. 0.23 mg/dL, p<0.001). PC-treated kidney tissue expressed significantly lower levels of p16ink4a in comparison to the control group (p=0.009). FISH analysis demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of repaired kidney tissue was mouse in origin. Rat PCs were only detected at a frequency of 0.02%. These data confirm that PCs have the ability to mitigate functional damage to kidney tissue following I/R injury. Kidneys of PC-treated animals showed evidence of improved function and reduced expression of damage markers. The PCs appear to act in a paracrine fashion, stimulating the host tissue to recover functionally, rather than by differentiating into renal cells. This study demonstrates that pancreatic-derived PCs from the adult rat can enable functional repair of renal damage in mice. It validates the use of PCs to regenerate damaged tissues and also offers a novel therapeutic intervention for repair of solid organ damage in situ

An augmented reality interface for visualising and interacting with virtual content

In this paper, a novel AR interface is proposed that provides generic solutions to the tasks involved in augmenting simultaneously different types of virtual information and processing of tracking data for natural interaction. Participants within the system can experience a real-time mixture of 3D objects, static video, images, textual information and 3D sound with the real environment. The userfriendly AR interface can achieve maximum interaction using simple but effective forms of collaboration based on the combinations of humancomputer interaction techniques. To prove the feasibility of the interface, the use of indoor AR techniques are employed to construct innovative applications and demonstrate examples from heritage to learning systems. Finally, an initial evaluation of the AR interface including some initial results is presented

Evaluating Study Procedure Training Methods for a Remote Daily Diary Study of Sexual Minority Women

Background: Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods can be used to remotely assess physical and mental health in daily life for hard-to-reach, marginalized, and geographically dispersed populations in the U.S., such as sexual minority women (e.g., lesbian, bisexual). However, EMA studies are often complex, and engaging participants from afar can be a challenge. This study experimentally examined whether adding videos to written recruitment materials would improve consent rates, reduce dropout rates, and improve survey completion rates for an online daily diary study. Methods: As part of a 2-week study of same-sex female couples\u27 health, 376 women ages 18-35 were recruited from across the U.S. using a market research firm. Couples were randomized to an introductory information condition (written + video materials or written-only materials) prior to informed consent. Results: Overall, 97.1% of eligible women reviewed introductory materials and of these 96.7% consented; consent rates did not differ by condition (written + video: 97.1%, written-only: 97.1%). Dropout rates were low (5.4%) and survey completion rates were high (90.4% of surveys completed); there were no group differences for study dropout (written + video: 3.6%, written-only: 7.0%) or survey completion (written + video: 92.5%, written-only: 88.4%). Data from women randomized to receive videos indicated more than half (53.3%) did not watch any of the five videos in full. However, among those who viewed the videos, time spent watching videos, watching more videos in full, and watching at least one video in full were each positive associated with survey completion rates. Conclusions: In summary, we had high consent rates, low dropout rates, and high survey completion rates regardless of video instructions. Although sexual minority women can be hard to reach, our potential participants appeared highly motivated to take part in research, and thus video recruitment materials were not necessary to improve participation. Future experimental research to maximize EMA study design and implementation could be important for populations less inclined to participate in EMA studies, or who are less familiar with research