Teaching ethics pervasively or in discrete modules?

This paper responds to the debate over whether ethics is better taught in one or more discrete modules or pervasively throughout the law degree programme. It surveys the existing literature and looks at recent developments in different countries where attempts have been made to achieve the goals established by Deborah Rhode in her concept of a ‘continuing method’. Finally, it concludes with a list of citations which will direct readers to further useful argument and analysis

Why teach legal ethics on undergraduate law degrees?

There is a considerable debate as to whether legal ethics should be taught on undergraduate law degrees in the UK. This is a contribution to that debate which argues for such a development. It presents a series of arguments about the desirability of doing so, both from the perspective of preparing students for entry into the legal profession and from that of ensuring a critical, liberal education in law. It enters into the debate about what it is we might seek to achieve in ethics teaching. The article presents a variety of approaches to how students might learn legal ethics, drawn from a number of countries and giving references to publications which provide more detail and insight. It concludes with a link to a new international database and forum designed to assist colleagues in these developments

Arguments for exception in US security discourse

In his influential State of Exception, Giorgio Agamben proposes that, even in apparently liberal western democracies, the state will routinely use the contingency of national emergency to suspend civil liberties and justify expansion of military and police powers. We investigated rhetorical strategies deployed in the web pages of US security agencies, created or reformed in the aftermath of the 9/11 events, to determine whether they present argumentation conforming to Agamben’s model. To expose rhetorical content, we examined strategies operating at two levels within our corpus. Argument schemes and underlying warrants were identified through close examination of systematically selected core documents. Semantic fields establishing themes of threat and danger were also explored, using automatic corpus tools to expose patterns of lexical selection established across the whole corpus. The study recovered evidence of rhetoric broadly consistent with the logic predicted by State of Exception theory, but also presented nuanced findings whose interpretation required careful re-appraisal of core ideas within Agamben’s work

Demographic and psychological variables affecting test subject evaluations of ride quality

Ride-quality experiments similar in objectives, design, and procedure were conducted, one using the U.S. Air Force Total In-Flight Simulator and the other using the Langley Passenger Ride Quality Apparatus to provide the motion environments. Large samples (80 or more per experiment) of test subjects were recruited from the Tidewater Virginia area and asked to rate the comfort (on a 7-point scale) of random aircraft motion typical of that encountered during STOL flights. Test subject characteristics of age, sex, and previous flying history (number of previous airplane flights) were studied in a two by three by three factorial design. Correlations were computed between one dependent measure, the subject's mean comfort rating, and various demographic characteristics, attitudinal variables, and the scores on Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. An effect of sex was found in one of the studies. Males made higher (more uncomfortable) ratings of the ride than females. Age and number of previous flights were not significantly related to comfort ratings. No significant interactions between the variables of age, sex, or previous number of flights were observed

Segmenting root systems in X-ray computed tomography images using level sets

The segmentation of plant roots from soil and other growing media in X-ray computed tomography images is needed to effectively study the root system architecture without excavation. However, segmentation is a challenging problem in this context because the root and non-root regions share similar features. In this paper, we describe a method based on level sets and specifically adapted for this segmentation problem. In particular, we deal with the issues of using a level sets approach on large image volumes for root segmentation, and track active regions of the front using an occupancy grid. This method allows for straightforward modifications to a narrow-band algorithm such that excessive forward and backward movements of the front can be avoided, distance map computations in a narrow band context can be done in linear time through modification of Meijster et al.'s distance transform algorithm, and regions of the image volume are iteratively used to estimate distributions for root versus non-root classes. Results are shown of three plant species of different maturity levels, grown in three different media. Our method compares favorably to a state-of-the-art method for root segmentation in X-ray CT image volumes.Comment: 11 page