Delegating and Distributing Morality: Can We Inscribe Privacy Protection in a Machine?

This paper addresses the question of delegation of morality to a machine, through a consideration of whether or not non-humans can be considered to be moral. The aspect of morality under consideration here is protection of privacy. The topic is introduced through two cases where there was a failure in sharing and retaining personal data protected by UK data protection law, with tragic consequences. In some sense this can be regarded as a failure in the process of delegating morality to a computer database. In the UK, the issues that these cases raise have resulted in legislation designed to protect children which allows for the creation of a huge database for children. Paradoxically, we have the situation where we failed to use digital data in enforcing the law to protect children, yet we may now rely heavily on digital technologies to care for children. I draw on the work of Floridi, Sanders, Collins, Kusch, Latour and Akrich, a spectrum of work stretching from philosophy to sociology of technology and the “seamless web” or “actor–network” approach to studies of technology. Intentionality is considered, but not deemed necessary for meaningful moral behaviour. Floridi’s and Sanders’ concept of “distributed morality” accords with the network of agency characterized by actor–network approaches. The paper concludes that enfranchizing non-humans, in the shape of computer databases of personal data, as moral agents is not necessarily problematic but a balance of delegation of morality must be made between human and non-human actors

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections

The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology first opened its doors in 1915, and since then has attracted visitors from all over the world as well as providing valuable teaching resources. Named after its founder, the pioneering archaeologist Flinders Petrie, the Museum holds more than 80,000 objects and is one of the largest and finest collections of Egyptian and Sudanese archaeology in the world. Richly illustrated and engagingly written, the book moves back and forth between recent history and the ancient past, between objects and people. Experts discuss the discovery, history and care of key objects in the collections such as the Koptos lions and Roman era panel portraits. The rich and varied history of the Petrie Museum is revealed by the secrets that sit on its shelves

Mapping deprivation in the East Midlands - implications for policy

This paper summarises the findings from a GIS mapping analysis of deprivation at the small area level in the East Midlands using the Indices of Deprivation 2004 and identifies implications for policy in order to inform the development of the 2006 Regional Economic Strategy

Spinor-Vector Duality in Heterotic String Orbifolds

The three generation heterotic-string models in the free fermionic formulation are among the most realistic string vacua constructed to date, which motivated their detailed investigation. The classification of free fermion heterotic string vacua has revealed a duality under the exchange of spinor and vector representations of the SO(10) GUT symmetry over the space of models. We demonstrate the existence of the spinor-vector duality using orbifold techniques, and elaborate on the relation of these vacua to free fermionic models.Comment: 20 pages. v2 minor corrections. Version to appear on JHEP. v3 misprints correcte

Requirements of time management tools for outpatient physiotherapy practice

The effects of electronic appointment booking systems on the time management activities of health professionals have received little attention to date. We report on time management practices in three outpatient physiotherapy departments with different paper and electronic systems. The study has identified a set of time management activities and associated social behaviours common to physiotherapy departments. The convenience, flexibility and expressive nature of paper diary systems is of significant value to users, whilst the clarity and superior database functionality of electronic systems are valued by staff using this medium. The study highlights several potential barriers to the effective deployment of electronic booking systems in physiotherapy departments, including poor resource and training provision, concerns regarding restrictive diary control measures, the continued reliance on burdensome duplication procedures and the need to coordinate multiple information artefacts, which need to be addressed if such technology is to be successfully designed and deployed. Copyright © 2005 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

Control of a wrist joint motion simulator: a phantom study

The presence of muscle redundancy and co-activation of agonist-antagonist pairs in vivo makes the optimization of the load distribution between muscles in physiologic joint simulators vital. This optimization is usually achieved by employing different control strategies based on position and/or force feedback. A muscle activated physiologic wrist simulator was developed to test and iteratively refine such control strategies on a functional replica of a human arm. Motions of the wrist were recreated by applying tensile loads using electromechanical actuators. Load cells were used to monitor the force applied by each muscle and an optical motion capture system was used to track joint angles of the wrist in real-time. Four control strategies were evaluated based on their kinematic error, repeatability and ability to vary co-contraction. With kinematic errors of less than 1.5°, the ability to vary co-contraction, and without the need for predefined antagonistic forces or muscle force ratios, novel control strategies – hybrid control and cascade control – were preferred over standard control strategies – position control and force control. Muscle forces obtained from hybrid and cascade control corresponded well with in vivo EMG data and muscle force data from other wrist simulators in the literature. The decoupling of the wrist axes combined with the robustness of the control strategies resulted in complex motions, like dart thrower’s motion and circumduction, being accurate and repeatable. Thus, two novel strategies with repeatable kinematics and physiologically relevant muscle forces are introduced for the control of joint simulators

Understanding “influence”: An exploratory study of academics’ process of knowledge construction through iterative and interactive information seeking

The motivation for this study is to better understand the searching and sensemaking processes undertaken to solve exploratory tasks for which people lack pre-existing frames. To investigate people’s strategies for that type of task, we focused on “influence” tasks because, although they appear to be unfamiliar, they arise in much academic discourse, at least tacitly. This qualitative study reports the process undertaken by academics of different levels of seniority to complete exploratory search tasks that involved identifying influential members of their academic community and “rising stars, ” and to identify similar roles in an unfamiliar academic community. 11 think-aloud sessions followed by semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the role of specific and general domain expertise in the process of information seeking and knowledge construction. Academics defined and completed the task through an iterative and interactive process of seeking and sensemaking, during which they constructed an understanding of their communities and determined qualities of “being influential”. Elements of the Data/Frame Theory of Sensemaking (Klein et al., 2007) were used as sensitising theoretical constructs. The study shows that both external and internal knowledge resources are essential to define a starting point or frame, make and support decisions, and experience satisfaction. Ill-defined or non-existent initial frames may cause unsubstantial or arbitrary decisions, and feelings of uncertainty and lack of confidence

An integer programming Model for the Hospitals/Residents Problem with Couples

The Hospitals/Residents problem with Couples (hrc) is a generalisation of the classical Hospitals/Residents problem (hr) that is important in practical applications because it models the case where couples submit joint preference lists over pairs of (typically geographically close) hospitals. In this paper we give a new NP-completeness result for the problem of deciding whether a stable matching exists, in highly restricted instances of hrc. Further, we present an Integer Programming (IP) model for hrc and extend it the case where preference lists can include ties. Further, we describe an empirical study of an IP model for HRC and its extension to the case where preference lists can include ties. This model was applied to randomly generated instances and also real-world instances arising from previous matching runs of the Scottish Foundation Allocation Scheme, used to allocate junior doctors to hospitals in Scotland