8,903 research outputs found
A Defense of Scalar Utilitarianism
Scalar Utilitarianism eschews foundational notions of rightness and wrongness in favor of evaluative comparisons of outcomes. I defend Scalar Utilitarianism from two critiques, the first against an argument for the thesis that Utilitarianism's commitments are fundamentally evaluative, and the second that Scalar Utilitarianism does not issue demands or sufficiently guide action. These defenses suggest a variety of more plausible Scalar Utilitarian interpretations, and I argue for a version that best represents a moral theory founded on evaluative notions, and offers better answers to demandingness concerns than does the ordinary Scalar Utilitarian response. If Utilitarians seek reasonable development and explanation of their basic commitments, they may wish to reconsider Scalar Utilitarianism
Eliminating Social Homelessness: Providing a Home to Grow
Middle school students who belong to marginalized identity groups often experience alienation and isolation. These feelings are compounded for multi-marginalized students who experience social homelessness–a term Harrison (2015) uses to describe students who appear to be accepted in one or more social categories but, because of his or her competing identities, is unable to fully participate in the life of the social group without hiding a part of his or her identity. In addition to this internalized struggle, emerging research indicates that socially homeless students are at an increased risk for bullying and academic failure. Inspired by the need to build homes for students experiencing social homelessness and our professional experiences with student alienation and underachievement, we created a school-wide house system to promote healthy peer relationships for middle grades students. This essay details the motivation and processes behind creating a school-wide house system that promotes a growth mindset and fosters a positive school culture that is inclusive of all students
“…Take up thy Bed, and Vote” Measuring the Relationship between Voting Behaviour and Indicators of Health
Individuals experiencing poor health are less likely to vote at election time, despite being the ones most affected by health policies implemented by the successful party. This paper investigates the relationship between health and voter turnout and political party choice in the 1979, 1987 and 1997 British general elections using the National Child Development Study (NCDS). It finds that poor health is associated with lower turnout, as the perceived costs of voting, such as the physical and mental effort involved, are greater than the perceived benefits, which are derived from the policy implications of the election outcome. In addition, the subset of unhealthy individuals who do vote at election time generally support Labour, as such voters are more likely to utilise the NHS and hence support parties that advocate public provision of health services. Given the low participation rates of the unhealthy, a political party which formulates an attractive policy package aimed at such potential voters could therefore mobilise a previously untapped source of the electorate.Health Status, Voter Turnout, Political Party Choice
Political Interest, Cognitive Ability and Personality - Determinants of Voter Turnout in Britain
This paper uses longitudinal data from the National Cohort Development Study (NCDS) to investigate the determinants of voter turnout in the 1997 British General Election. It introduces measures of cognitive ability and personality into models of electoral participation and finds that firstly, their inclusion reduces the impact of education and secondly, that standard turnout models may be biased by the inclusion of the much used “interest in politics” measure. A bivariate probit model of turnout and interest then shows that individuals with high ability, an aggressive personality and a sense of civic duty are more likely to both turn out to vote and to have an interest in politics.Turnout, Education, Ability, Personality
Two-message quantum interactive proofs and the quantum separability problem
Suppose that a polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit, described as a
sequence of local unitary interactions followed by a partial trace, generates a
quantum state shared between two parties. One might then wonder, does this
quantum circuit produce a state that is separable or entangled? Here, we give
evidence that it is computationally hard to decide the answer to this question,
even if one has access to the power of quantum computation. We begin by
exhibiting a two-message quantum interactive proof system that can decide the
answer to a promise version of the question. We then prove that the promise
problem is hard for the class of promise problems with "quantum statistical
zero knowledge" (QSZK) proof systems by demonstrating a polynomial-time Karp
reduction from the QSZK-complete promise problem "quantum state
distinguishability" to our quantum separability problem. By exploiting Knill's
efficient encoding of a matrix description of a state into a description of a
circuit to generate the state, we can show that our promise problem is NP-hard
with respect to Cook reductions. Thus, the quantum separability problem (as
phrased above) constitutes the first nontrivial promise problem decidable by a
two-message quantum interactive proof system while being hard for both NP and
QSZK. We also consider a variant of the problem, in which a given
polynomial-time mixed-state quantum circuit accepts a quantum state as input,
and the question is to decide if there is an input to this circuit which makes
its output separable across some bipartite cut. We prove that this problem is a
complete promise problem for the class QIP of problems decidable by quantum
interactive proof systems. Finally, we show that a two-message quantum
interactive proof system can also decide a multipartite generalization of the
quantum separability problem.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures; v2: technical improvements and new result for
the multipartite quantum separability problem; v3: minor changes to address
referee comments, accepted for presentation at the 2013 IEEE Conference on
Computational Complexity; v4: changed problem names; v5: updated references
and added a paragraph to the conclusion to connect with prior work on
separability testin
Returns to basic skills in Central and Eastern Europe - a semi-parametric approach
This paper uses semi-parametric econometric techniques to investigate the relationship between basic skills and earning in three post-communist countries - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia using the IALS dataset. While the large increases in the returns to education in the new market economies has been well documented in the literature, no study to date has examined the impact of basic skills and schooling on income. Estimating a Mincer human capital model we find that including a measure of basic skills reduces the returns to education. In addition, using a partial linear model in which log earnings is linear in schooling, but is an arbitrary function of basic skills, we find that this relationship is not well described by the common assumption of linearity at the tails of the distribution.Earnings, Education, Basic skills, Transition
Modelling the impact of the recession on greenhouse gases from agriculture in Ireland
working paperThe effects of the recession of 2009 have been felt across the economy of
Ireland. The rapid contraction in economic activity has had its effect on greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions as well. It is possible to model the recession’s effect on
agricultural GHG in the FAPRI-Ireland GHG model using the latest international
commodity price projections from Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute
(FAPRI). The FAPRI-Ireland GHG model creates projections of future levels of Irish
agricultural activity and then uses a mix of national and default emissions factors to
convert this activity to estimates of annual GHG emissions from now to 2020. Our
model is shocked using post-downturn commodity price projections for a selection of
exogenous prices. The changes to these international commodity prices reflect the
international market response to the downturn, and as such they have an impact on the
level of GHG emitted by the agricultural sector in Ireland. This analysis finds that,
despite the depth and breadth of the recession, the impact on GHG emissions from
Irish agriculture has been muted. The impact of the shock is to reduce the projected
annual emissions from the sector by only 0.14 Mt by 2020. This compares to the 2.97
Mt reduction in annual emissions which the sector would have to achieve if, for
example, a reduction target of 20 percent on 2005 levels were to be imposed
- …