The Conflict of Rights in the Moral Community

This thesis will delve into the moral arguments regarding abortion. I will argue that abortion is morally permissible until the fetus reaches consciousness. Once the fetus has gained consciousness, it has the capacity to develop and become an autonomous person and therefore joins the moral community and has rights. Autonomy is important, and the respect for autonomy must be extended to conscious fetuses. Individual autonomy is a person\u27s capacity to make decisions for themselves and about live their life according to reasons and motives that are free from external forces (Christman, 2020). Autonomous agency is necessary for equal political standing (Christman, 2020). When an individual lacks autonomy, like a fetus, it allows for paternalism to come into play (Christman, 2020). Paternalistic action is performed with the intent of promoting another\u27s good but occurs against the other\u27s will or without the other\u27s consent (Christman, 2020). This is what allows the government to make rules and regulations regarding abortion. Additionally, I will argue that there are some instances after consciousness, where abortion is still morally permissible. They are in the event that the mother\u27s life is in danger and when the fetus will not be able to join the moral community. Finally, I will explain how the current laws are problematic and provide how they should be drafted to reflect this point of view

Disclosure of Depression in Primary Care: A Qualitative Study of Women’s Perceptions

Background Health care providers are better able to diagnose depression and initiate treatment when patients disclose symptoms. However, many women are reluctant to disclose depressive symptoms. Little is known about the experience of disclosing depression symptoms in primary care among racially and ethnically diverse women across the life course. We qualitatively explore experiences of disclosure of depressive symptoms to primary care providers among self-identified African American, Hispanic and non-Hispanic White women. Methods Twenty-four women with depression were recruited for open-ended interviews. We recorded, transcribed, and coded interviews using inductive content analysis. Findings Two distinct domains emerged: participant factors that hinder and facilitate disclosure and provider cues that encourage and dissuade discussing depression. Participants described perceptions about primary care not being the appropriate place, fear of not having a choice in treatment decisions, and the emotional cost of retelling as impediments to disclosure; perceiving an increased likelihood of getting help was described as a facilitator. Women identified provider behaviors of asking about depression and showing concern as facilitators, and provider time constraints as a barrier to disclosure. Conclusions Women perceive that primary care is not the appropriate place to disclose depression symptoms. Increased public education about behavioral health management in primary care, as well as more robust integration of the two, is needed. Efforts to improve depression disclosure in primary care must also encompass systematic use of depression screening tools and implementation of targeted interventions to cultivate provider empathy

Tips for Using Photovoice in Evaluation of Extension Programs

Photovoice is a technique in which a facilitator guides a participant to produce a photograph and accompanying caption that reflects the participant\u27s unique views regarding a topic. The photovoice process is designed to be used with a wide range of audiences. This article describes ways Extension educators can incorporate photovoice into the evaluation of Extension programs and identifies issues they should consider when doing so

Representations of Visual and Emotional Perception in Two Solo Oboe Works by Alyssa Morris

42 pagesAlyssa Morris is an award winning oboist and composer with two recent solo oboe works that highlight contrasting musical representations of different forms of perception. In the first piece, Collision Etudes, two movements utilize a musical translation of synesthetic perception based on the color wheel of Alexander Scriabin according to the color palettes by artists Joan Mitchell and Alma Thomas. For the second piece, Ruminations, Morris notated musical representations of her own perceptions of the strenuous emotions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This work examines these two pieces closely, highlighting the uses of sensory and emotional perception through compositional similarities and differences in performing each work

Vermonters’ Opinions on Low-Dose CT Lung Cancer Screening

Introduction: Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death among men and women in Vermont and the United States. Smoking increases the risk of lung cancer—nearly 90% of lung cancer is due to smoking. Frequently, lung cancers do not present clinically until they are advanced stage and therefore prognosis is poor. However, if detected early lung cancers are more operable and patients have better outcomes. In December 2013 the US Preventive Services Task Force released new guidelines for lung cancer screening among current and former smokers ages 55 to 80. It is recommended that current and former (within 15 years of quitting) smokers of 30 pack years receive an annual low-dose CT scan. The objective of this project was to assess the level of knowledge and attitudes towards lung cancer screening with low-dose CT scanning among Vermonters in the Burlington area.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1205/thumbnail.jp

Exploring Corporate Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Building Capacity for Employee Engagement in Workplace Wellness Initiatives

Engaging employees with chronic conditions as partners in designing, implementing, and evaluating workplace wellness activities is a promising approach for optimizing the impact of workplace health promotion programs. Yet, there is a need for information on how employees are engaged in this process. We conducted a process evaluation of activities of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research for Employees (PCORE) project formed around building capacity for employee engagement in wellness initiatives. Individual interviews were conducted with the 11 project stakeholders to explore perspectives of the project\u27s participatory process and activities. Thematic categories emerging in the analysis were (1) Commitment and support, (2) Understanding purpose and roles, (3) Role of employees in wellness programming, and (4) Communication during meetings. This process evaluation provides insights from a model of stakeholder engagement in the corporate setting. Creating an environment that supports meaningfully engaging employees as partners in co-creating workplace wellness initiatives requires effectively addressing the unique aspects of the U.S. corporate culture such as the emphasis on productivity and the prevalent traditional top-down organizational structures

Online Radicalization and Voluntary Belief

I discuss voluntary belief in the context of a phenomenon unique to our current political moment: self- brainwashing. Using the very public QAnon movement as a case study, I argue that, although the conditions in which QAnon beliefs are formed is highly similar to those that produce false confessions, the QAnon believer and not the false confessor is morally and epistemically responsible because the former’s beliefs are voluntary: belief is voluntary when the believer has both the capacity and the opportunity to revise their belief. I conclude that this voluntariness is because of the uniquely distributed, Internet-based nature of QAnon

PUBA: Privacy-Preserving User-Data Bookkeeping and Analytics

In this paper we propose Privacy-preserving User-data Bookkeeping & Analytics (PUBA), a building block destined to enable the implementation of business models (e.g., targeted advertising) and regulations (e.g., fraud detection) requiring user-data analysis in a privacy-preserving way. In PUBA, users keep an unlinkable but authenticated cryptographic logbook containing their historic data on their device. This logbook can only be updated by the operator while its content is not revealed. Users can take part in a privacy-preserving analytics computation, where it is ensured that their logbook is up-to-date and authentic while the potentially secret analytics function is verified to be privacy-friendly. Taking constrained devices into account, users may also outsource analytic computations (to a potentially malicious proxy not colluding with the operator).We model our novel building block in the Universal Composability framework and provide a practical protocol instantiation. To demonstrate the flexibility of PUBA, we sketch instantiations of privacy-preserving fraud detection and targeted advertising, although it could be used in many more scenarios, e.g. data analytics for multi-modal transportation systems. We implemented our bookkeeping protocols and an exemplary outsourced analytics computation based on logistic regression using the MP-SPDZ MPC framework. Performance evaluations using a smartphone as user device and more powerful hardware for operator and proxy suggest that PUBA for smaller logbooks can indeed be practical