“Donnez-moi une place”: an introduction to the theological ethics of France Quéré

David Sinclair first presented this reflection on the writing of the French ethicist France Quéré (1936–95) at the inaugural meeting of the Church of Scotland’s Church and Society Council in order to demonstrate the kind of thinking that would be necessary when approaching the kinds of ethical issues facing the Council. Prominent in the French protestant community as a patristic theologian, Quéré’s subsequent work on the family, the place of women in society, and disability issues led to her becoming a member of the French National Consultative Ethics Committee. This paper picks out some of the key themes from her writing during this period: human rights and the quest for justice; suffering and death; love and sex; and drug addiction, as well as outlining her engagement with reception theory.Publisher PD

PeerPigeon: A Web Application to Support Generalised Peer Review

Peer Review (also known as Peer Assessment) is an important technique in learning, but can be difficult to support through e-learning due to the complexity and variety of peer review processes. In this paper we present PeerPigeon, a Web 2.0 style application that supports generalised Peer Review by using a canonical model of Peer Review based on a Peer Review Pattern consisting of Peer Review Cycles, each defined in terms of Peer Review Transforms. We also demonstrate how PeerPigeon makes use of a Domain Specific Language based on Ruby to define these plans, and thus cope with the irreducible complexity of the flow of documents around a peer network

Revisiting the environmental subsidy in the presence of an eco-industry

NASubvention environnementale;Taxe pigouvienne;Eco-industrie

Environmental regulation and the eco-industry

Cet article ré-examine la réglementation environnementale, sous l'hypothèse additionnelle que les technologies et services de dépollution sont fournis par une industrie de l'environnement en concurrence imparfaite. On montre que chaque instrument de réglementation (taxes et quotas sur les émissions; normes obligatoires; accords volontaires) possède un impact spécifique sur l'élasticité-prix de la demande de biens et services environnementaux et, par voie de conséquence, sur le pouvoir de marché des éco-entreprises et les coûts assumés par les pollueurs. Il s'ensuit, par exemple, qu'une taxe optimale sur les émissions polluantes devra dépasser le coût social marginal de la pollution, tandis qu'une approche volontaire à la réduction de la pollution ne pourra fonctionner que si la participation de l'éco-industrie (et non seulement des seuls pollueurs) est acquise.

Environmental Regulation and the Eco-industry

This paper re-examines environmental regulation, under the assumption that pollution abatement technologies and services are provided by an imperfectly competitive environment industry. It is shown that each regulatory instrument (emission taxes and quotas; design standards; and voluntary agreements) has a specific impact on the price-elasticity of the polluters’ demand for abatement services, hence on the market power of the eco-industry and the resulting cost of abatement. This implies that the optimal pollution tax will be higher than the marginal cost of pollution damage, while a voluntary approach to pollution abatement may fail unless the eco-industry itself is properly regulated. Cet article reconsidère la réglementation environnementale, sous l'hypothèse que les technologies et services de réduction de la pollution sont offerts par des entreprises spécialisées formant un oligopole. On y montre que chaque approche réglementaire (taxes et quotas sur les émissions polluantes, normes techniques, ou approches volontaires) a un impact particulier sur l'élasticité-prix de la demande de services en dépollution, donc sur le pouvoir de marché de l'éco-industrie et les coûts de réduction de la pollution. Ceci entraîne, entre autres, qu'une taxe optimale sur les émissions devrait être supérieure au coût marginal des dommages associés à celles-ci, tandis qu'une approche volontaire de réduction des émissions polluantes peut se révéler inopérante si les pratiques de marché de l'éco-industrie ne sont pas elles-mêmes correctement réglementées.pollution regulation, end-of-pipe pollution abatement, environment industry, régulation de la pollution, réduction en bout de chaîne de la pollution, industries environnementales

Environmental Regulationand the Eco-Industry

This paper re-examines environmental regulation, under the assumption that pollution abatement technologies and services are provided by an imperfectly competitive environment industry. It is shown that each regulatory instrument (emission taxes and quotas; design standards; and voluntary agreements) has a specific impact on the price-elasticity of the polluters’ demand for abatement services, hence on the market power of the eco-industry and the resulting cost of abatement. This implies that the optimal pollution tax will be higher than the marginal social cost of pollution, while a voluntary approach to pollution abatement may fail unless the eco-industry itself is willing to participate.Pollution regulation, End-of-pipe pollution abatement, Environment industry

Patch DCT vs LeNet

This paper compares the performance of a NN taking the output of a DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) of an image patch with leNet for classifying MNIST hand written digits. The basis functions underlying the DCT bear a passing resemblance to some of the learned basis function of the Visual Transformer but are an order of magnitude faster to apply.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figures, appendix for pytorch code defn. Paper argues basis functions are close to as good as convolution nets and that learning custom basis function on large datasets is just pissing away electricit