The Moral Grounds of Reasonably Mistaken Self-Defense

Some, but not all, of the mistakes a person makes when acting in apparently necessary self-defense are reasonable: we take them not to violate the rights of the apparent aggressor. I argue that this is explained by duties grounded in agents' entitlements to a fair distribution of the risk of suffering unjust harm. I suggest that the content of these duties is filled in by a social signaling norm, and offer some moral constraints on the form such a norm can take

The Language of Mental Illness

This paper surveys some philosophical issues with the language surrounding mental illness, but is especially focused on pejoratives relating to mental illness. I argue that though 'crazy' and similar mental illness-based epithets (MI-epithets) are not best understood as slurs, they do function to isolate, exclude, and marginalize members of the targeted group in ways similar to the harmfulness of slurs more generally. While they do not generally express the hate/contempt characteristic of weaponized uses of slurs, MI-epithets perpetuate epistemic injustice by portraying sufferers of mental illness as deserving minimal credibility. After outlining the ways in which these epithets can cause harm, I examine available legal and social remedies, and suggest that the best path going forward is to pursue a reclamation project rather than aiming to censure the use of MI-epithets

Explaining the Justificatory Asymmetry between Statistical and Individualized Evidence

In some cases, there appears to be an asymmetry in the evidential value of statistical and more individualized evidence. For example, while I may accept that Alex is guilty based on eyewitness testimony that is 80% likely to be accurate, it does not seem permissible to do so based on the fact that 80% of a group that Alex is a member of are guilty. In this paper I suggest that rather than reflecting a deep defect in statistical evidence, this asymmetry might arise from a general constraint on rational inquiry. Plausibly the degree of evidential support needed to justify taking a proposition to be true depends on the stakes of error. While relying on statistical evidence plausibly raises the stakes by introducing new kinds of risk to members of the reference class, paradigmatically `individualized' evidence---evidence tracing back to A's voluntary behavior---can lower the stakes. The net result explains the apparent evidential asymmetry without positing a deep difference in the brute justificatory power of different types of evidence

Strictly speaking

A type of argument occasionally made in metaethics, epistemology and philosophy of science notes that most ordinary uses of some expression fail to satisfy the strictest interpretation of the expression, and concludes that the ordinary assertions are false. This requires there to be a presumption in favour of a strict interpretation of expressions that admit of interpretations at different levels of strictness. We argue that this presumption is unmotivated, and thus the arguments fail

Benchmarking Utility-Scale PV Operational Expenses and Project Lifetimes: Results from a Survey of U.S. Solar Industry Professionals

This paper draws on a survey of solar industry professionals and other sources to clarify trends in the expected useful life and operational expenditure (OpEx) of utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) plants in the United States. Solar project developers, sponsors, long-term owners, and consultants have increased project-life assumptions over time, from an average of ~21.5 years in 2007 to ~32.5 years in 2019. Current assumptions range from 25 years to more than 35 years depending on the organization; 17 out of 19 organizations surveyed or reviewed use 30 years or more. Levelized, lifetime OpEx estimates have declined from an average of ~$35/kWDC-yr for projects built in 2007 to an average of ~$17/kWDC-yr in 2019. Across 13 sources, the range in average lifetime OpEx for projects built in 2019 is broad, from $13 to$25/kWDC-yr. Operations and maintenance (O&M) costs—one component of OpEx—have declined precipitously in recent years, to $5-8/kWDC-yr in many cases. Property taxes and land lease costs are highly variable across sites, but on average are—together—of similar magnitude. Other OpEx line items include security, insurance, and asset management. Given 2007-2009 values for not only project life and OpEx but also other drivers of the levelized cost of energy (LCOE, excluding the investment tax credit), the LCOE for utility-scale PV projects built from 2007 through 2009 averaged$305/MWh. Using 2019 values for all parameters yields an average LCOE of $51/MWh. The decline in LCOE from$305/MWh to $51/MWh was predominantly caused by reductions in up-front expenditures (and, to a much lesser extent, by changes in capacity factors, financing costs, and tax rates), but 9$22/MWh) of the overall decline is due to improvements in project life and OpEx. Project life extensions and OpEx reductions have had similarly sized impacts on LCOE over this period, at $11/MWh each. Had project life and OpEx not improved over the last decade, LCOE in 2019 would have instead been$73/MWh—43% higher. Given the limited quantity and comparability of previously available data on these cost drivers, the data and trends presented here may inform assumptions used by electric system planners, modelers, and analysts. The results may also provide useful benchmarks to the solar industry, helping developers and assets owners compare their expectations for project life and OpEx with those of their peers

Interaction of vascular endothelial cells with CD8+ T-cells in vivo

Transplantation of organs and cells saves and prolongs thousands of lives every year. Surgical techniques were significantly improved but major problems remain, in particular the host’s immune system. Despite advances in immunosuppressive therapies, chronic allograft rejection still occurs which is characterized by intimal thickening in the arteries and the replacement of graft parenchyma, a phenomenon called chronic transplant vasculopathy (CTV). Within three years after transplantation 45% of transplant patients are affected by CTV which leads to the failure of allografts of about 5% each year post transplantation. The reasons for its development and the mechanistic basis inducing CTV are still not clearly understood. In graft versus host disease (GVHD) and vascular rejection of solid organ transplants, vascular endothelial cells (EC) have been recognized as important targets for alloreactive cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTL) and the presence of CTL has been associated with CTV. Therefore, T-cell-mediated immunity and subsequent inflammation appear to be important features of the initiation and progression of CTV. The contribution of EC to CD8+ T-cell activation and therefore their role in the development of chronic vascular rejection is still controversially discussed. For that reason and the fact that after transplantation of vascularised organs EC are the first graft cells encountered by host lymphocytes, the detailed interaction of vascular EC with CD8+ T-cells has been assessed in vivo in the first part of our study, in order to find out whether EC are able to activate or tolerize naive CD8+ T-cells. Using a transgenic mouse model with beta-galactosidase (β-gal) expression confined to the vascular endothelium (Tie2-LacZ mice) and the help of β-gal TCR transgenic CD8+ T-cells (Bg1 mice), the capacity of EC presenting a minor histocompatibility antigen (mhAg) to induce a CD8+ T-cell response was studied. We could show that mhAg presentation on EC was ignored by CD8+ T-cells and was neither sufficient to activate nor to tolerize CD8+ T-cells. Moreover, the mhAg was cross-presented by BM-derived CD11c+ DC and led to spontaneous activation of β-gal-specific CD8+ T-cells in Tie2-LacZ mice. This identifies the priming of mhAg-specific CD8+ T-cells via DC as the critical step in the generation of alloimmune responses. Furthermore, no β-gal-specific CD8+ T-cell activation was induced after transplantation of fully vascularised heart or liver grafts from Tie2-LacZ mice into non-transgenic recipients confirming that CD8+ T-cell responses against mhAg cannot be initiated by EC. In the second part of the study the major aim was to develop an experimental system that facilitates in vivo studies on the interaction of EC with activated CTL in a heart transplantation model. To this end, Tie2-LacZ hearts were heterotopically transplanted into C57BL/6 recipients. Tie2-LacZ hearts were accepted and showed no vascular inflammatory changes or neointima formation until day 100 post transplantation. Repetitive priming with β-gal peptide loaded DC induced a long-term β-gal-specific CTL response resulting in the induction of vascular inflammatory disease with neointima formation and vascular occlusion. Infection with β-gal recombinant mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV-LacZ) however, led to a shorter activation of β-gal-specific CTL and thus to a less significant vascular inflammation in Tie2-LacZ hearts. Taken together, we suggest that it is the prolonged presentation of mhAg within secondary lymphoid organs that is responsible for the activation of EC-specific CTL and that activated CTL recognize thereafter mhAg specifically expressed on EC, leading to the development of chronic vascular rejection