Do good people love themselves? On rational self-love in Kant

Kant is frequently read as saying that all self-love is bad and that the virtuous agent is one who suppresses self-love as much as possible. This paper argues that this is mistaken and that the right kind of self-love – what Kant calls rational self-love – plays an important role in a successful moral life. It shows how Kant provides a detailed taxonomy of different kinds of self-love. He contrasts the (practical) incentive of self-love with the (pathological) feeling of it; self-love of benevolence with self-love of delight; and self-absorbed/selfish with rational/moral varieties of each. The paper then argues that, while the Critique of Practical Reason only identifies a self-absorbed variety of self-love of delight, self-conceit, it gains a rational counterpart in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason: “self-contentment.” This is a positive self-love of delight uniquely felt by the morally good person. It is suggested that this shift reflects Kant’s increasing appreciation for the affective dimension of virtuous life: for imperfect human beings the moral law must not only be worth obeying, but worth loving. Thus, while for morally bad agents, self-love and morality inevitably conflict, good agents can and should love themselves

Exact and Approximate Schemes for Robust Optimization Problems with Decision Dependent Information Discovery

Uncertain optimization problems with decision dependent information discovery allow the decision maker to control the timing of information discovery, in contrast to the classic multistage setting where uncertain parameters are revealed sequentially based on a prescribed filtration. This problem class is useful in a wide range of applications, however, its assimilation is partly limited by the lack of efficient solution schemes. In this paper we study two-stage robust optimization problems with decision dependent information discovery where uncertainty appears in the objective function. The contributions of the paper are twofold: (i) we develop an exact solution scheme based on a nested decomposition algorithm, and (ii) we improve upon the existing K-adaptability approximate by strengthening its formulation using techniques from the integer programming literature. Throughout the paper we use the orienteering problem as our working example, a challenging problem from the logistics literature which naturally fits within this framework. The complex structure of the routing recourse problem forms a challenging test bed for the proposed solution schemes, in which we show that exact solution method outperforms at times the K-adaptability approximation, however, the strengthened K-adaptability formulation can provide good quality solutions in larger instances while significantly outperforming existing approximation schemes even in the decision independent information discovery setting. We leverage the effectiveness of the proposed solution schemes and the orienteering problem in a case study from Alrijne hospital in the Netherlands, where we try to improve the collection process of empty medicine delivery crates by co-optimizing sensor placement and routing decisions

Economies of scale in recoverable robust maintenance location routing for rolling stock

We consider the problem of locating maintenance facilities in a railway setting. Different facility sizes can be chosen for each candidate location and for each size there is an associated annual facility costs that can capture economies of scale in facility size. Because of the strategic nature of facility location, the opened facilities should be able to handle the current maintenance demand, but also the demand for any of the scenarios that can occur in the future. These scenarios capture changes such as changes to the line plan and the introduction of new rolling stock types. We allow recovery in the form of opening additional facilities, closing facilities, and increasing the facility size for each scenario. We provide a two-stage robust programming formulation. In the first-stage, we decide where to open what size of facility. In the second-stage, we solve a NP-hard maintenance location routing problem. We reformulate the problem as a mixed integer program that can be used to make an efficient column-and-constraint generation algorithm. To show that our algorithm works on practical sized instances, and to gain managerial insights, we perform a case study with instances from the Netherlands Railways. A counter intuitive insight is that economies of scale only play a limited role and that it is more important to reduce the transportation cost by building many small facilities, rather than a few large ones to profit from economies of scale

Family-friendly working conditions as an advantage in the competition for the next generation of doctors

AbstractMulti-technology platforms with two workspaces are considered to be promising production resources to enable an efficient manufacture of complex workpieces in small lot sizes. However, the advantages in terms of productivity in comparison to multi-technology platforms with a single workspace have not been quantified so far. This paper presents such a quantification approach based on dynamic discrete-event modeling of platforms with one and two workspaces. Slight variations in the configuration setup of the platforms as well as the machining of distinct part spectra are discussed. It is found that the installation of the most frequently applied technology resource in each workspace enhances the productivity of platforms with two workspaces significantly. Therefore, the advantages of multiple workspaces should be elucidated further taking into account acquisition cost and throughput time

Maintenance location routing for rolling stock under line and fleet planning uncertainty

Rolling stock needs regular maintenance in a maintenance facility. Rolling stock from different fleets are routed to maintenance facilities by interchanging the destinations of trains at common stations and by using empty drives. We consider the problem of locating maintenance facilities in a railway network under uncertain or changing line planning, fleet planning, and other uncertain factors. These uncertainties and changes are modeled by a discrete set of scenarios. We show that this new problem is NP-hard and provide a two-stage stochastic programming and a two-stage robust optimization formulation. The second-stage decision is a maintenance routing problem with similarity to a minimum cost-flow problem. We prove that the facility location decisions remain unchanged under a simplified routing problem, and this gives rise to an efficient mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation. This result also allows us to find an efficient decomposition algorithm for the robust formulation based on scenario addition (SA). Computational work shows that our improved MIP formulation can efficiently solve instances of industrial size. SA improves the computational time for the robust formulation even further and can handle larger instances due to more efficient memory usage. Finally, we apply our algorithms on practical instances of the Netherlands Railways and give managerial insights

Sanat yolunda

Muallim İrfan Emin'in Talebe Defteri'nde tefrika edilen Sanat Yolunda adlı romanıTek sayı görülmüştür. Ancak kaynaklarda tefrikanın tamamlandığı bilgisi mevcuttur

К ВОПРОСУ О ПОВРЕЖДЕНИЯХ ТОННЕЛЕЙ ПРИ ЗЕМЛЕТРЯСЕНИЯХ

Землетрясения – это стихийные бедствия, которым подвержены многие районы земного шара. Последствиями землетрясения являются разрушения зданий, плотин, мостов, подземных сооружений. Во многих случаях разрушения приводят к большим человеческим жертвам. Поэтому при строительстве в районах с повышенной сейсмической активностью, каким является республика Узбекистан необходимо создавать сейсмостойкие сооружения

Comparison of systemic trimethoprim-sulfadimethoxine treatment and intrauterine ozone application as possible therapies for bacterial endometritis in equine practice

Bacterial endometritis is one of the major problems in equine reproduction and usually treated with antimicrobial drugs. The study aimed to compare the effects of intrauterine ozone application and systemic antibiotic treatment (trimethoprim-sulfadimethoxine) on intrauterine bacterial growth and possible side effects on the endometrium in a clinical setting. Mares (n = 30) with signs of endometritis (positive uterine bacterial culture and cytological findings) were assigned randomly to different treatments: intrauterine insufflation of an ozone-air-mix (240 ml, 80 μg ozone/ml) twice at a 48 h-interval (Ozone; n = 10), systemic antibiotic therapy with trimethoprim-sulfadimethoxine (30 mg/kg, p.o., twice daily) for 5 days (TMS; n = 10), or intrauterine insufflation of air (240 ml, sterile-filtered) twice at a 48 h-interval (air; n = 10). Endometrial biopsy for histological examination was obtained before the treatment. Histological examination revealed no differences among groups. A control examination, including transrectal ultrasound, bacterial culture, cytological evaluation, and biopsy, was performed 7 days after the last treatment. Overall bacterial growth was reduced in every group after the treatment (p < 0.05), irrespective of the therapy [Ozone: 4/9 (positive culture after treatment/number of mares), TMS: 3/10 and Air: 6/10; p > 0.05]. However, Ozone and TMS (p < 0.05) were more effective in reducing growth of gram-negative bacteria as compared to Air (p > 0.05). No effects on the number of polymorphonuclear granulocytes (cytology) were observed (p > 0.05). In conclusion, trimethoprim-sulfadimethoxine and intrauterine ozone insufflation are safe treatment options for bacterial endometritis in mares but the efficacy of both treatments in reducing bacterial growth did not result in a complete absence of intrauterine bacterial growth