The shallow ecology of public reason liberalism

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective

The shallow ecology of public reason liberalism

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective

MISER: Mise-En-Scène Region Support for Staging Narrative Actions in Interactive Storytelling

The recent increase in interest in Interactive Storytelling systems, spurred on by the emergence of affordable virtual reality technology, has brought with it a need to address the way in which narrative content is visualized through the complex staging of multiple narrative agents' behaviors within virtual story worlds. In this work we address the challenge of automating several aspects of staging the activities of a population of narrative agents and their interactions, where agents can have differing levels of narrative relevance within the situated narrative actions. Our solution defines an approach that integrates the use of multiple dynamic regions within a virtual story world, specified via a semantic representation that is able to support the staging of narrative actions through the behaviors of the primary and background agents' that are involved. This encompasses both the mechanics of dealing with the narrative discourse level as well as the interaction with the narrative generation layer to account for any dynamic modifications of the virtual story world. We refer to this approach as mise-en-scène region (miser) support. In this paper, we describe our approach and its integration as part of a fully implemented Interactive Storytelling system. We illustrate the work through detailed examples of short narrative instantiations. We present the results of our evaluation which clearly demonstrate the potential of the miser approach, as well as its scalability

Mise-En-Scène of Narrative Actions in Interactive Storytelling (Demonstration).

In this Interactive Storytelling (IS) work, we provide a framework for automating several aspects of staging the activities of a population of narrative agents and their interactions. Narrative agents can have differing levels of narrative relevance within the situated narrative actions which are visualised within a 3D real-time virtual world. The solution we propose here offers a framework for integrating the use of multiple dynamic regions within the 3D story world defined through a semantic representation that is able to support the staging of narrative actions through the behaviours of the primary and background agents’ involved. This includes both the mechanics of dealing with the narrative discourse level as well as the interaction with the narrative generation layer to account for any dynamic modifications of the 3D story world. We refer to this approach as MISE-en-scène Region support (MISER) and are providing here details of the demonstration application which users will be able to interact with

Adverse Interaction Between a Left Ventricular Assist Device and an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73346/1/j.1540-8167.2007.00805.x.pd

Benchmark Framework for Virtual Students’ Behaviours

This paper demonstrates the integration and evaluation of different atmosphere models into Virtual Reality (VR) training for teacher education. We developed three behaviour models to simulate different levels of class discipline. We evaluated their performances using a combination of objective and subjective measurements. Our initial results suggest that the more believable and distinguishable classroom atmospheres are produced by creating more consistent behaviours across virtual students. Our results confirm the importance of similar behaviours to elicit a particular atmosphere

Discovery of a mammalian splice variant of myostatin that stimulates myogenesis

Myostatin plays a fundamental role in regulating the size of skeletal muscles. To date, only a single myostatin gene and no splice variants have been identified in mammals. Here we describe the splicing of a cryptic intron that removes the coding sequence for the receptor binding moiety of sheep myostatin. The deduced polypeptide sequence of the myostatin splice variant (MSV) contains a 256 amino acid N-terminal domain, which is common to myostatin, and a unique C-terminus of 65 amino acids. Western immunoblotting demonstrated that MSV mRNA is translated into protein, which is present in skeletal muscles. To determine the biological role of MSV, we developed an MSV over-expressing C2C12 myoblast line and showed that it proliferated faster than that of the control line in association with an increased abundance of the CDK2/Cyclin E complex in the nucleus. Recombinant protein made for the novel C-terminus of MSV also stimulated myoblast proliferation and bound to myostatin with high affinity as determined by surface plasmon resonance assay. Therefore, we postulated that MSV functions as a binding protein and antagonist of myostatin. Consistent with our postulate, myostatin protein was co-immunoprecipitated from skeletal muscle extracts with an MSV-specific antibody. MSV over-expression in C2C12 myoblasts blocked myostatin-induced Smad2/3-dependent signaling, thereby confirming that MSV antagonizes the canonical myostatin pathway. Furthermore, MSV over expression increased the abundance of MyoD, Myogenin and MRF4 proteins (P,0.05), which indicates that MSV stimulates myogenesis through the induction of myogenic regulatory factors. To help elucidate a possible role in vivo, we observed that MSV protein was more abundant during early post-natal muscle development, while myostatin remained unchanged, which suggests that MSV may promote the growth of skeletal muscles. We conclude that MSV represents a unique example of intra-genic regulation in which a splice variant directly antagonizes the biological activity of the canonical gene product