Shaming Citizens: An Ethical Framework for Correcting Citizen Vices

This paper answers the question—can citizens be shamed in a manner that is morally justifiable—by forwarding a theory of just shaming. Shaming has a divisive history in political theory. The volumes of work on both sides seems to point at a moral dilemma: shame looks to be a helpful social practice, yet it engenders unignorable negative consequences. In this paper, however, I argue that shaming in politics must be analyzed more in terms of when and how shaming is morally permissible. Shaming, employed in moments of citizen vice only, has to potential to reform citizen conduct. Furthermore, approaching shaming as more of a dialogue than a punishment can make citizens more amenable to change. Like with “just war” and other non-ideal theories, this paper accepts that politics may permit practices that are normally considered immoral—like shaming—in the pursuit of justice. From here, Eric Beerbohm’s citizen ethics and Iris Marion Young’s “five faces” typology help construct the norm that just shaming will utilize: citizen excellence, or the combatting social oppression actively. Employing this norm, I establish two sets of questions (inspired by just war theory) that will constitute the framework of just shaming. The first, jus ad shaming, asks under what circumstances can citizens be shamed. The second, jus in shaming, asks how someone must act when shaming citizens. From these questions, I construct three conditions—the complicity, activation, and mesomensch conditions—and two guidelines—intent and reciprocity—that delineate how just shaming must be conducted

Aspects of the pseudo Chiral Magnetic Effect in 2D Weyl-Dirac Matter

A connection is established between the continuum limit of the low-energy tight-binding description of graphene immersed in an in-plane magnetic field and the Chiral Magnetic Effect in Quantum Chromodynamics. A combination of mass gaps that explicitly breaks the equivalence of the Dirac cones, favoring an imbalance of pseudo-chiralities, is the essential ingredient to generate a non-dissipative electric current along the external field. Currents, number densities and condensates generated from this setup are investigated for different hierarchies of the energy scales involved.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Several text improvements. Accepted for publication in European Physical Journal

Application of Principal Component Analysis to Image Compression

In this chapter, an introduction to the basics of principal component analysis (PCA) is given, aimed at presenting PCA applications to image compression. Here, concepts of linear algebra used in PCA are introduced, and PCA theoretical foundations are explained in connection with those concepts. Next, an image is compressed by using different principal components, and concepts such as image dimension reduction and image reconstruction quality are explained. Also, using the almost periodicity of the first principal component, a quality comparative analysis of a compressed image using two and eight principal components is carried out. Finally, a novel construction of principal components by periodicity of principal components has been included, in order to reduce the computational cost for their calculation, although decreasing the accuracy

Differential detection of impact site versus rotational site injury by magnetic resonance imaging and microglial morphology in an unrestrained mild closed head injury model.

Seventy-five percent of all traumatic brain injuries are mild and do not cause readily visible abnormalities on routine medical imaging making it difficult to predict which individuals will develop unwanted clinical sequelae. Microglia are brain-resident macrophages and early responders to brain insults. Their activation is associated with changes in morphology or expression of phenotypic markers including P2Y12 and major histocompatibility complex class II. Using a murine model of unrestrained mild closed head injury (mCHI), we used microglia as reporters of acute brain injury at sites of impact versus sites experiencing rotational stress 24 h post-mCHI. Consistent with mild injury, a modest 20% reduction in P2Y12 expression was detected by quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) analysis but only in the impacted region of the cortex. Furthermore, neither an influx of blood-derived immune cells nor changes in microglial expression of CD45, TREM1, TREM2, major histocompatibility complex class II or CD40 were detected. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), small reductions in T2 weighted values were observed but only near the area of impact and without overt tissue damage (blood deposition, edema). Microglial morphology was quantified without cryosectioning artifacts using ScaleA(2) clarified brains from CX3CR1-green fluorescence protein (GFP) mice. The cortex rostral to the mCHI impact site receives greater rotational stress but neither MRI nor molecular markers of microglial activation showed significant changes from shams in this region. However, microglia in this rostral region did display signs of morphologic activation equivalent to that observed in severe CHI. Thus, mCHI-triggered rotational stress is sufficient to cause injuries undetectable by routine MRI that could result in altered microglial surveillance of brain homeostasis. Acute changes in microglial morphology reveal brain responses to unrestrained mild traumatic brain injury In areas subjected to rotational stress distant from impact site In the absence of detectable changes in standard molecular indicators of brain damage, inflammation or microglial activation. That might result in decreased surveillance of brain function and increased susceptibility to subsequent brain insults

A geometrical view of scalar modulation instability in optical fibers

Full models of scalar modulation instability (MI) in optical fibers available in the literature usually involve complex formulations. In this paper, we present a novel approach to the analysis of MI in optical fibers by means of a simple geometrical description in the power vs. frequency plane. This formulation allows to relate the shape of the MI gain to any arbitrary dispersion profile of the medium, thus providing a simple insight. As a result, we derive a straightforward explanation of the non-trivial dependence of the cutoff power on high-order dispersion and derive explicitly the power that maximizes the gain. Our approach puts forth a tool to synthesize a desired MI gain with the potential application to a number of parametric-amplification and supercontinuum-generation devices whose initial-stage dynamics rely upon modulation instability.Fil: Hernandez, Santiago Martin. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Fierens, Pablo Ignacio. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Bonetti, Juan Ignacio. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Sánchez, Alfredo Daniel. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; ArgentinaFil: Grosz, Diego Fernando. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentin