Transableism, Disability and Paternalism in Public Health Ethics: Taxonomies, identity Disorders and Persistent Unexplained Physical Symptoms

Transableism is a term which refers to moving between states of being able and disabled by choice rather than by happenstance. Insofar as this may imply a choice to become dependent, claims upon the healthcare system are likely to result. In this piece we aim to explore some ethical and legal implications of such claims. In order to do so, we draw upon current debates over the place of autonomy, beneficence and paternalism in public health ethics, the taxonomy of disability and the status of persistent unexplained physical symptoms (henceforth, PUPS). We suggest that transableism represents a useful construct which may contribute towards resolution of ongoing difficulties within public health ethics and theories of disability. In addition, we believe that it holds promise for the understanding of a significant proportion of patients presenting PUPS. We focus upon identity disorders, particularly in relation to what is currently termed Body Integrity Identity Disorder (henceforth, BIID), where sufferers report a subjective conviction that one or more of their limbs are superfluous, requesting medical assistance to remove the offending limb[s], repair the results of attempts at their self-removal or to provide prostheses and other assistance after removal. We have considered BIID elsewhere in relation to consent, capacity and the doctor/patient relationship (Mackenzie and Cox, 2005). One of us has also explored how the definition of addiction as a chronic relapsing disease within public health governance enables cycles of transitions between the rigours of rational liberal citizenship and the shriven status of the sick (Mackenzie, 2006). Since a central aim in this piece is evaluate the place of transableism within public health ethics, we will begin by considering the latter as a discursive context for the arguments which follow

Voltage and current spectra for matrix power converters

Matrix power converters are used for transforming one alternating-current power supply to another, with different peak voltage and frequency. There are three input lines, with sinusoidally varying voltages which are 120◦ out of phase one from another, and the output is to be delivered as a similar three-phase supply. The matrix converter switches rapidly, to connect each output line in sequence to each of the input lines in an attempt to synthesize the prescribed output voltages. The switching is carried out at high frequency and it is of practical importance to know the frequency spectra of the output voltages and of the input and output currents. We determine in this paper these spectra using a new method, which has significant advantages over the prior default method (a multiple Fourier series technique), leading to a considerably more direct calculation. In particular, the determination of the input current spectrum is feasible here, whereas it would be a significantly more daunting procedure using the prior method instead

Towards Active Citizens : Landscape, Nationalism and Politics in 20th Century British and Australian Children's Literature.

This paper compares and contrasts different approaches to the landscape as heritage as expressed by selected writers for children. This paper contrasts some English attitudes and values in writers in the 20th century, selected for their particular concern for landscape issues and certainly not homogenous. This is contrasted with the political sensitivities brought about by colonialism in Australia, in particular about portrayal of Aborigines and use of their stories in publications for children, stories which focus on their intimate relationship with their heritage landscape. Stories encourage children to be environmental activists and hold the promise of inclusion and social equity

Visual units and confusion modelling for automatic lip-reading

Automatic lip-reading (ALR) is a challenging task because the visual speech signal is known to be missing some important information, such as voicing. We propose an approach to ALR that acknowledges that this information is missing but assumes that it is substituted or deleted in a systematic way that can be modelled. We describe a system that learns such a model and then incorporates it into decoding, which is realised as a cascade of weighted finite-state transducers. Our results show a small but statistically significant improvement in recognition accuracy. We also investigate the issue of suitable visual units for ALR, and show that visemes are sub-optimal, not but because they introduce lexical ambiguity, but because the reduction in modelling units entailed by their use reduces accuracy

Barking Up the Right Tree: Are Small Groups Rational Agents?

Both mainstream economics and its critics have focused on models of individual rational agents even though most important decisions are made by small groups. Little systematic work has been done to study the behavior of small groups as decision-making agents in markets and other strategic games. This may limit the relevance of both economics and its critics to the objective of developing an understanding of how most important decisions are made. In order to gain some insight into this issue, this paper compares group and individual economic behavior. The objective of the research is to learn whether there are systematic differences between decisions made by groups and individual agents in market environments characterized by risky outcomes. A quantitative measure of deviation from minimallyrational decisions is used to compare group and individual behavior in common value auctions.

Spatial scales of cirrus cloud properties

Research in studying the spatial scales of the cirrus, used data collected during the flight legs of the NCAR Sabreliner aircraft on four days during the FIRE Cirrus IFO to study the spatial scales of the cirrus, and will concentrate on the scales of horizontal wind. The spatial scales of the cloud features can be described by power spectra (or spectral density graphs) and cumulative variance graphs. The cumulative variance graphs were created by first using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to create variance spectra. The variances were then summed in a cumulative fashion from the largest scalelengths (wavelengths) to the smallest. No detrending was done to the original data, and no smoothing or averaging was done to the spectral points. All the spectral points were included. This means that the values of the first five to ten spectral points of the large scalelengths should only be considered to be qualitatively correct. The cumulative variance at smaller scalelengths should be correct because a more accurate representation of the variance at the larger scalelengths should only redistribute the energy amongst the larger scalelengths

Some calculations on the ground and lowest-triplet state of the helium isoelectronic sequence with the nucleus in motion

The method described in the preceding paper for the solution of two-electron atoms, which was used to calculate the 1 1S and 2 3S states of helium and heliumlike atoms within the fixed-nucleus approximation, has been applied to the case where all three particles are in relative motion. The solutions in the present case automatically include the effects of the mass polarization term and are compared with the results obtained for the term by using first-order perturbation theory with the fixed-nucleus wave functions. The input data for a particular atom consist of the atomic number, as before, but now the corresponding mass of the nucleus must be given also. Nonrelativistic energies with the nuclear mass included in the calculation have been obtained for the 1 1S and 2 3S states for Z ranging from 1 to 10. The energy with the nucleus in motion can be expressed only to eight significant figures (SF's) given the accuracy with which the relevant physical constants are known at present. All the results given here are computed as if these constants were known to ten SF's so that errors not incurred due to rounding. Convergence of the energies to ten SF's for both the singlet and triplet state was reached with a matrix of size 444 for Z values from 2 to 10. Convergence for the H- ion was a little slower

Two-dimensional Stokes flow driven by elliptical paddles

A fast and accurate numerical technique is developed for solving the biharmonic equation in a multiply connected domain, in two dimensions. We apply the technique to the computation of slow viscous flow (Stokes flow) driven by multiple stirring rods. Previously, the technique has been restricted to stirring rods of circular cross section; we show here how the prior method fails for noncircular rods and how it may be adapted to accommodate general rod cross sections, provided only that for each there exists a conformal mapping to a circle. Corresponding simulations of the flow are described, and their stirring properties and energy requirements are discussed briefly. In particular the method allows an accurate calculation of the flow when flat paddles are used to stir a fluid chaotically

The Semantic Web as a Semantic Soup

The Semantic Web is currently best known for adding metadata to web pages to allow computers to 'understand' what they contain. This idea has been applied to people by the Friend of a Friend project which builds up a network of who people know through their descriptions placed on web pages in RDF. It is here proposed to use RDF to describe a person and to have their RDF document follow them around the Internet. The proposed technique, dubbed Semantic Cookies, will be implemented by storing a user's RDF in a cookie on their own computer through the browser. This paper considers the concept of Semantic Cookies and investigates how far existing technology can be pushed to accommodate the idea