Vacunagate: Was it possible to morally justify the Peruvian case?

This article studies the Vacunagate: a scandal during the early-2021 in Peru due to irregular inoculation of the Sinopharm candidate vaccine against COVID-19 during its experimental stage. We analyze the morality of this case in order to elucidate the public discussion on the conduct and supervision of clinical trials within the context of a Pandemic. We evaluate whether two actions were morally justifiable: (1) the use of a vaccine outside of a clinical trial, and (2) prioritizing some groups in that unusual allocation. These groups are (i) research staff of the clinical trial, (ii) public health officials leading the fight against the Pandemic, (iii) human acquaintances of the first two groups, and (iv) others. As this article is on applied ethics, it follows its methodology: we define the moral, or philosophical, framework and its later applied to the case. The ethical framework for our analysis will be constituted by two kinds of moral principles: democratic and utilitarians. First, we address two principles common to contemporary democracies: equal value for all human beings and the necessary public deliberation on issues of common interest. Second, without contradicting these democratic principles, we assess the actions under the application of utilitarian reasoning. Finally, based on the WHO MEURI Guide and the mentioned ethical framework, we describe the missing conditions under which both actions could have been morally justified.El artículo analiza el Vacunagate: escándalo suscitado en el Perú a inicios de 2021 por la inoculación de la vacuna Sinopharm cuando aún se encontraba en fase experimental. Se analiza la moralidad del caso para iluminar la discusión pública sobre políticas de conducción y supervisión de ensayos clínicos en un contexto de pandemia. Se evalúa si eran moralmente justificables dos acciones: primero, la utilización de la candidata a vacuna por fuera de un ensayo clínico y, segundo, priorizar algunos grupos en aquella inusual inoculación. Tales grupos son (i) el personal de investigación del ensayo clínico, (ii) los funcionarios de la salud pública que dirigían la lucha contra la pandemia, (iii) el entorno humano inmediato de los dos grupos anteriores y (iv) otros. El artículo corresponde a la ética aplicada por lo que sigue su metodología: se define el marco moral o filosófico que, luego, se aplica al caso en cuestión. Aquel marco ético para el análisis lo constituyen dos tipos de principios morales: democráticos y utilitaristas. Primero, se abordan dos principios comunes a las democracias contemporáneas: el igual valor de los seres humanos y la necesaria deliberación pública sobre asuntos de interés común. Segundo, y sin contradecir aquellos principios democráticos, se evalúan las acciones bajo la aplicación de un razonamiento utilitarista. Finalmente, con base en la guía MEURI de la OMS y en el marco ético señalado, se describen las condiciones faltantes bajo las cuáles ambas acciones pudieron haber sido moralmente justificables

Reactive probabilistic programming

International audienceSynchronous modeling is at the heart of programming languages like Lustre, Esterel, or SCADE used routinely for implementing safety critical control software, e.g., fly-bywire and engine control in planes. However, to date these languages have had limited modern support for modeling uncertainty-probabilistic aspects of the software's environment or behavior-even though modeling uncertainty is a primary activity when designing a control system. In this paper we present ProbZelus the first synchronous probabilistic programming language. ProbZelus conservatively provides the facilities of a synchronous language to write control software, with probabilistic constructs to model uncertainties and perform inference-in-the-loop. We present the design and implementation of the language. We propose a measure-theoretic semantics of probabilistic stream functions and a simple type discipline to separate deterministic and probabilistic expressions. We demonstrate a semantics-preserving compilation into a first-order functional language that lends itself to a simple presentation of inference algorithms for streaming models. We also redesign the delayed sampling inference algorithm to provide efficient streaming inference. Together with an evaluation on several reactive applications, our results demonstrate that ProbZelus enables the design of reactive probabilistic applications and efficient, bounded memory inference

Theory-Indexed Moral Contextualism

One way to understand the nature of our moral disagreements is to study the meaning of moral discourse. Nonetheless, Metaethical Theories that account for these disagreements face important challenges. For instance, if our theory of moral terms assigns them a reference too specifically related to a contextual parameter, we might be ruling out the substantiality of moral disagreements (e.g., while ‘To eat people is wrong’ is plausibly true relative to our culture, it’d be false for a community of cannibals). This paper (1) explores the theoretical room for a contextualist account of moral terms that models the substantiality of moral disagreements; (2) sketches the characterization of the contextual parameter these terms’ meaning is sensitive to; and (3) shows the tools this account has to avoid reducing moral disagreements to merely linguistic ones

Vacunagate: ¿Era posible justificar moralmente el caso peruano?

El artículo analiza el Vacunagate: escándalo suscitado en el Perú a inicios de 2021 por la inoculación de la vacuna Sinopharm cuando aún se encontraba en fase experimental. Se analiza la moralidad del caso para iluminar la discusión pública sobre políticas de conducción y supervisión de ensayos clínicos en un contexto de pandemia. Se evalúa si eran moralmente justificables dos acciones: primero, la utilización de la candidata a vacuna por fuera de un ensayo clínico y, segundo, priorizar algunos grupos en aquella inusual inoculación. Tales grupos son (i) el personal de investigación del ensayo clínico, (ii) los funcionarios de la salud pública que dirigían la lucha contra la pandemia, (iii) el entorno humano inmediato de los dos grupos anteriores y (iv) otros. El artículo corresponde a la ética aplicada por lo que sigue su metodología: se define el marco moral o filosófico que, luego, se aplica al caso en cuestión. Aquel marco ético para el análisis lo constituyen dos tipos de principios morales: democráticos y utilitaristas. Primero, se abordan dos principios comunes a las democracias contemporáneas: el igual valor de los seres humanos y la necesaria deliberación pública sobre asuntos de interés común. Segundo, y sin contradecir aquellos principios democráticos, se evalúan las acciones bajo la aplicación de un razonamiento utilitarista. Finalmente, con base en la guía MEURI de la OMS y en el marco ético señalado, se describen las condiciones faltantes bajo las cuáles ambas acciones pudieron haber sido moralmente justificables.</jats:p

Pain's Pyro Spectacle, Japan & China

No. 2.Copyright deposit; Pain's Pyro Spectacle Co.; August 15, 1895

Pain's Storming of Vicksburgh [sic]

Copyright deposit; Pain's Pyro Spectacle Co.; July 16, 1893

Development and characterization of a novel multifunctional film based on wheat filter flour incorporated with carvacrol: Antibacterial, antifungal, and insecticidal potentials

Wheat filter flour is a by-product derived from the modern wheat milling process. In this study, the influence of plasticizer type (glycerol (G) and sorbitol (S)) and content (25, 35, and 45 g/100 g polymer) on the wheat filter flour-based film was evaluated. Regardless of plasticizer type, increasing the plasticizer content enhanced moisture content, water solubility, and water vapor permeability of film samples. The S-plasticized films presented the greatest tensile strength and the lowest EAB%. The scanning electron microscope observations confirmed the uniform structure of G-plasticized film. Moreover, antimicrobial and physico-mechanical properties of G-plasticized (25%) film were evaluated at the presence of carvacrol (5 and 10 g/100 g polymer). The considerable improvement was achieved in water affinity (14.2%) and flexibility (8.6%) by incorporating 10% carvacrol in G-plasticized films. The greatest inhibitory properties of active wheat filter flour films were observed against Aspergillus niger. By increasing the carvacrol concentration in film-forming solution, the inhibitory activity against Listeria monocytogenes and Escherichia coli in the liquid food model system was increased by 90.3% and 66.95%, respectively. Moreover, the active wheat filter flour-based film released a considerable insecticidal activity against Sitophilus granarius and Tribolium confusum. This work offers a novel utilization of wheat filter flour as an inexpensive blend polymer to manufacture multifunctional active film, which provides a promising approach for pest management besides enhancing the safety of products. </jats:p