Thick Concepts and Variability

Some philosophers hold that so-called "thick" terms and concepts in ethics (such as 'cruel,' 'selfish,' 'courageous,' and 'generous') are contextually variable with respect to the valence (positive or negative) of the evaluations that they may be used to convey. Some of these philosophers use this variability claim to argue that thick terms and concepts are not inherently evaluative in meaning; rather their use conveys evaluations as a broadly pragmatic matter. I argue that one sort of putative examples of contextual variability in evaluative valence that are found in the literature fail to support the variability claim and that another sort of putative examples are open to a wide range of explanations that have different implications for the relationship between thick terms and concepts and evaluation. I conclude that considerations of contextual variability fail to settle whether thick terms and concepts are inherently evaluative in meaning. In closing I suggest a more promising line of research

Predicting mobile advertising response using consumer colocation networks

Building on results from economics and consumer behavior, the authors theorize that consumers' movement patterns are informative of their product preferences, and this study proposes that marketers monetize this information using dynamic networks that capture colocation events (when consumers appear at the same place at approximately the same time). To support this theory, the authors study mobile advertising response in a panel of 217 subscribers. The data set spans three months during which participants were sent mobile coupons from retailers in various product categories through a smartphone application. The data contain coupon conversions, demographic and psychographic information, and information on the hourly GPS location of participants and on their social ties in the form of referrals. The authors find a significant positive relationship between colocated consumers' response to coupons in the same product category. In addition, they show that incorporating consumers' location information can increase the accuracy of predicting the most likely conversions by 19%. These findings have important practical implications for marketers engaging in the fast-growing location-based mobile advertising industry

Pre-term pre-labour rupture of membranes and the role of amniocentesis

Pre-labour premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) is defined as rupture of membranes more than 1 hour prior to the onset of labour at <37 weeks gestation. PPROM occurs in approximately 3% of pregnancies and is responsible for a third of all preterm births. Once membranes are ruptured prolonging the pregnancy has no maternal physical advantage but fetal morbidity and mortality are improved daily at early gestations: 19% of those infants born <25 weeks develop cerebral palsy (CP) and 28% have severe motor disability. Those infants born extremely pre term (<28 weeks) cost the public sector £75835 (95% CI £27906–145508) per live birth not to mention the emotional cost to the family. To prolong gestation is therefore the suggested goal: however how and why might we delay birth in those at risk

Shapelessness in context

Many philosophers believe that the extensions of evaluative terms and concepts aren't unified under non-evaluative similarity relations and that this "shapelessness thesis" (ST) has significant metaethical implications regarding non-cognitivism, ethical naturalism, moral particularism, thick concepts and more. ST is typically offered as an explanation of why evaluative classifications appear to "outrun" classifications specifiable in independently intelligible non-evaluative terms. This paper argues that both ST and the outrunning point used to motivate it can be explained on the basis of more general factors that have nothing in particular to do with being evaluative. Insofar as ST is plausible, a wide variety of non-evaluative terms will also be such that the extension of a term T isn't unified under similarity relations specifiable in purely T-free terms. If so, there is no reason to expect ST to carry the sorts of metaethical implications that get attributed to it. I also show that my main argument is robust across certain complications that are raised by the context-sensitivity of many evaluative terms but have so far been ignored in discussions of ST and related matters

Measurement of environmental tobacco smoke exposure among adults with asthma.

Because the morbidity and mortality from adult asthma have been increasing, the identification of modifiable environmental exposures that exacerbate asthma has become a priority. Limited evidence suggests that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) may adversely affect adults with asthma. To study the effects of ETS better, we developed a survey instrument to measure ETS exposure in a cohort of adults with asthma living in northern California, where public indoor smoking is limited. To validate this survey instrument, we used a passive badge monitor that measures actual exposure to ambient nicotine, a direct and specific measure of ETS. In this validation study, we recruited 50 subjects from an ongoing longitudinal asthma cohort study who had a positive screening question for ETS exposure or potential exposure. Each subject wore a passive nicotine badge monitor for 7 days. After the personal monitoring period, we readministered the ETS exposure survey instrument. Based on the survey, self-reported total ETS exposure duration ranged from 0 to 70 hr during the previous 7 days. Based on the upper-range boundary, bars or nightclubs (55 hr) and the home (50 hr) were the sites associated with greatest maximal self-reported exposure. As measured by the personal nicotine badge monitors, the overall median 7-day nicotine concentration was 0.03 microg/m(3) (25th-75th interquartile range 0-3.69 microg/m(3)). Measured nicotine concentrations were highest among persons who reported home exposure (median 0.61 microg/m(3)), followed by work exposure (0.03 microg/m(3)), other (outdoor) exposure (0.025 microg/m(3)), and no exposure (0 microg/m(3); p = 0.03). The Spearman rank correlation coefficient between self-reported ETS exposure duration and directly measured personal nicotine concentration during the same 7-day period was 0.47, supporting the survey's validity (p = 0.0006). Compared to persons with no measured exposure, lower-level [odds ratio (OR) 1.9; 95% confidence interval (CI), 0.4-8.8] and higher-level ETS exposures (OR 6.8; 95% CI, 1.4-32.3) were associated with increased risk of respiratory symptoms. A brief, validated survey instrument can be used to assess ETS exposure among adults with asthma, even with low levels of exposure. This instrument could be a valuable tool for studying the effect of ETS exposure on adult asthma health outcomes

Subfreezing operation of polymer electrolyte fuel cells: Ice formation and cell performance loss

In this work, we investigate the cold-start operation of polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) through high-resolution neutron radiography, experimental testing, theoretical evaluation, and comparison with model prediction. Ice formation location, voltage evolution, and loss of the electro-catalyst surface area (ECSA) are examined. A dimensionless parameter , characterizing the spatial variation of the reaction rate across the cathode catalyst layer, is discussed at subfreezing temperature using newly determined membrane ionic conductivity. The evaluation identifies the operating range that the reaction rate can be treated uniform across the catalyst layer, in which the model is valid. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Isolation and characterization of a light chain variable region gene for human rheumatoid factors.

Previously, we isolated a Vk gene (Humkv325) from a human placenta that encodes RF light chains bearing the PSL2 and PSL3 CRI markers. Here we report the isolation and characterization of a second human Vk gene (Humkv328) that can be used for RF synthesis. This Vk gene probably encodes at least two 6B6.6 CRI+ RF light chains (Les and Pom) from unrelated subjects, and thus may be related to the light chain-associated 6B6.6 CRI

Improving High Resolution Histology Image Classification with Deep Spatial Fusion Network

Histology imaging is an essential diagnosis method to finalize the grade and stage of cancer of different tissues, especially for breast cancer diagnosis. Specialists often disagree on the final diagnosis on biopsy tissue due to the complex morphological variety. Although convolutional neural networks (CNN) have advantages in extracting discriminative features in image classification, directly training a CNN on high resolution histology images is computationally infeasible currently. Besides, inconsistent discriminative features often distribute over the whole histology image, which incurs challenges in patch-based CNN classification method. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture for automatic classification of high resolution histology images. First, an adapted residual network is employed to explore hierarchical features without attenuation. Second, we develop a robust deep fusion network to utilize the spatial relationship between patches and learn to correct the prediction bias generated from inconsistent discriminative feature distribution. The proposed method is evaluated using 10-fold cross-validation on 400 high resolution breast histology images with balanced labels and reports 95% accuracy on 4-class classification and 98.5% accuracy, 99.6% AUC on 2-class classification (carcinoma and non-carcinoma), which substantially outperforms previous methods and close to pathologist performance.Comment: 8 pages, MICCAI workshop preceeding

Risk factors for hospitalization among adults with asthma: the influence of sociodemographic factors and asthma severity.

BackgroundThe morbidity and mortality from asthma have markedly increased since the late 1970s. The hospitalization rate, an important marker of asthma severity, remains substantial.MethodsIn adults with health care access, we prospectively studied 242 with asthma, aged 18-50 years, recruited from a random sample of allergy and pulmonary physician practices in Northern California to identify risk factors for subsequent hospitalization.ResultsThirty-nine subjects (16%) reported hospitalization for asthma during the 18-month follow-up period. On controlling for asthma severity in multiple logistic regression analysis, non-white race (odds ratio [OR], 3.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1-8.8) and lower income (OR, 1.1 per $10,000 decrement; 95$10,000 decrement; 95% CI, 1.02-1.4).ConclusionIn adult asthmatics with access to health care, non-white race, low income, and greater asthma severity were associated with a higher risk of hospitalization. Targeted interventions applied to high-risk asthma patients may reduce asthma morbidity and mortality

Nonlinear effects on migration of charged spherical rigid/soft particle in an unbounded electrolyte solution

This paper was presented at the 3rd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2011), which was held at the Makedonia Palace Hotel, Thessaloniki in Greece. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute.In this paper we have studied the migration of a colloidal particle under the influence of an external electric field in an electrolyte solution. The colloidal particle is considered to be rigid or a composite particle. The composite particle, the "soft particle", consist an inner hard core coated with a concentric porous layer containing uniformly distributed fixed charges. Situations in which the particle translates along the direction of the imposed electric field with electrophoretic velocity as well as velocity higher than that, is considered. The nonlinear electrokinetic motion and forces experienced by the particle is evaluated through solving the Navier-Stokes, Nernst-Planck and Poisson equations. A pressure correction based iterative algorithm is adopted for the numerical computations. The effect of nonlinear inertial terms in Navier-Stokes equations on the polarization of the EDL and ion distribution near the particle is analyzed. The dependence of hydrodynamic drag and electrostatic force experienced by the particle under several flow conditions is studied. Our results show that as the particle velocity rises from its electrophoretic velocity the hydrodynamic drag gradually approaches the Stokes drag and the electric force diminishes. At large translational speed of the particle, the net charge distribution around the particle is governed by both diffusion and advection mechanisms