Deliberative Perfectionism: Why We Can and Should Talk about the Good

In contemporary political theory, perfectionists believe that the state should promote substantive conceptions of the good through its legislation. Supporters of neutrality, instead, claim that the state should refrain from doing so. In this article I analyse perfectionism in relation to Jürgen Habermas’ theory of discourse and deliberative politics (1996) and critique Habermas’ distinction between ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’ discourses (1984, 1990). By relating Habermas’ theory to George Sher’s account of perfectionism (1997), I argue that we can establish the meta-ethical grounds for a model of deliberation encompassing ethical matters (that is, questions concerning the good life) not confined to the limits of specific communities. I conclude by arguing that ethical deliberation is not only feasible but also desirable. Given the fact of ethical pluralism, and in order to show respect towards their fellow citizens, political perfectionists ought to be ready to show how their ethical claims (which they want to see translated into state policy) relate to deeper meta-ethical human goals on which we can ideally find a consensus through deliberation.

Wearable inkjet-printed antenna performance for medical applications at 868/915 MHz

The use of biosensors attached to the body for health monitoring is now readily accepted, and the merits of such systems and their potential impact on healthcare receive much attention. Wearable medical systems used in clinical applications to monitor vital signs must be comfortable to wear, yet have robust performance to ensure reliable communications links. Additionally, and vital to the success of these innovations, is that these solutions are disposable to avoid risk of patient infection and this means that they must be ultra-low cost. Antennas optimized for printing using conductive inks offer new exciting advances in making a truly disposable solution.

Do mirrors reflect reality in agonistic encounters? A test of mutual cooperation in displays

Animals frequently engage in mutual displays that may allow or at least help decisions about the outcome of agonistic encounters with mutual benefit to the opponents. In fish these often involve lateral displays, with previous studies finding evidence of population-level lateralization with a marked preference for showing the right side and using the right eye. Because both opponents tend to show this preference a head to tail configuration is formed and is used extensively during the display phase. Here we tested the significance of these lateral displays by comparing displays to a mirror with those to a real opponent behind a transparent barrier. The frequency of displays was lower to a mirror but the individual displays were of greater duration indicating a slower pace of the interaction with a mirror. This suggests that fish respond to initiatives of real opponents but as mirror images do not initiate moves the focal fish only moves when it is ready to change position. However, lateralization was still found with mirrors, indicating that the right-side bias is a feature of the individual and not of the interaction between opponents. We discuss implications for ideas about the evolution of mutual cooperation and information exchange in contests, as well as the utility of the use of mirrors in the study of aggression in fish.

Losses of bioactive polyacetylenes during minimal processing of carrots

Vegetables of the Apiaceae plant family such as carrots, parsnip, celery and parsley,contain in minor quantities, a group of bioactive aliphatic C17-polyacetylenes (falcarinol,falcarindiol, falcarindiol-3- acetate). Recent studies have highlighted important biologicalfunctions in vitro and in vivo (animal studies) although the beneficial effect in humannutrition attributable to an increased in polyacetylenes diet are yet to be confirmed(Lund, 1990).Carrots not only contain relatively high polyacetylene content but also form a significantpart of many countries dietary habits. Carrots are also present in some ready-to-eat foodssuch as chilled freshly prepared salads, as part of the increasingly popular minimallyprocessed foods. Whereas the effect of conventional processing (boiling, vacuum processing) on the levels of polyacetylenes has been relatively well studied, the effect of minimal mechanical operations such as “peeling”, “mechanical cutting” and “chlorine washing” remains unknown.

Attitudes of students, parents, and teachers toward glasses use in rural China.

OBJECTIVE:

To use focus groups to understand barriers to glasses use among children in rural China.

METHODS:

Separate focus groups were conducted between December 17, 2007, and August 5, 2008, for the following 3 groups at each of 3 schools in rural China: children aged 14 to 18 years with myopia of less than -0.5 diopters in both eyes, those children's parents, and those children's teachers. Participants were also asked to rank their responses to questions about glasses use. The focus group transcripts were coded independently by 2 investigators using qualitative data management software.

RESULTS:

Respondents of all 3 types indicated that glasses purchase and wear should be delayed in children with early myopia and might be harmful to the eyes. Parents and students reported being uncertain about children's actual myopia status and whether glasses should be worn. Parents ranked their most common reason for not buying glasses as being "too busy with work," whereas "too expensive" ranked low. Inconvenience was ranked as an important reason for not wearing glasses among all 3 student groups. "Accuracy of lens power" was the first-ranked requirement for glasses among all student groups, whereas "new and attractive styles" was ranked last by all. All 3 types of respondents believed that wearing glasses or failing to wear them might worsen myopia.

CONCLUSIONS:

Educational programs are needed to address significant knowledge gaps in families and schools about glasses use in rural China. Cost and the need for attractive styles may not be significant barriers to use in this setting, raising the possibility of paying for such programs through cost recovery.

Validation of a high-throughput immunobead array technique for multiplex detection of three foodborne pathogens in chicken products

This study rigorously evaluated a previously developed immunobead array method to simultaneously detect three important foodborne pathogens, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella spp., for its actual application in routine food testing. Due to the limitation of the detection limit of the developed method, an enrichment step was included in this study by using Campylobacter Enrichment Broth for C. jejuni and Universal Pre-enrichment Broth for L. monocytogenes and Salmonella spp.. The findings show that the immunobead array method was capable of detecting as low as 1 CFU of the pathogens spiked in the culture media after being cultured for 24 hours for all three pathogens. The immunobead array method was further evaluated for its pathogen detection capabilities in ready-to-eat (RTE) and ready-to-cook (RTC) chicken samples and proven to be able to detect as low as 1 CFU of the pathogens spiked in the food samples after being cultured for 24 hours in the case of Salmonella spp., and L. monocytogenes and 48 hours in the case of C. jejuni. The method was subsequently validated with three types of chicken products (RTE, n=30; RTC, n=20; raw chicken, n=20) and was found to give the same results as the conventional plating method. Our findings demonstrated that the previously developed immunobead array method could be used for actual food testing with minimal enrichment period of only 52 hours, whereas the conventional ISO protocols for the same pathogens take 90-144 hours. The immunobead array was therefore an inexpensive, rapid and simple method for the food testing.

Food fraud and consumers' choices in the wake of the horsemeat scandal

Purpose – In 2012, the European food industry was hit by a food fraud: horsemeat was found in
pre-prepared foods, without any declaration on the package. This is commonly referred to as the
“horsemeat scandal”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ preferences across
Europe for a selected ready meal, ready to heat (RTH) fresh lasagne, to consider whether the effects of
potential food frauds on consumers’ choices can be mitigated by introducing enhanced standards of
RTH products.
Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was administered to 4,598 consumers of RTH
lasagne in six European countries (Republic of Ireland, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Norway),
applying discrete choice experiments to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay for enhanced food
safety standards and highlight differences between countries.
Findings – Many similarities across countries emerged, as well as some differences. Consumers in
Europe are highly concerned with the authenticity of the meat in ready meals and strongly prefer to
know that ingredients are nationally sourced. Strong regional differences in price premiums exist for
enhanced food safety standards.
Originality/value – This research adds relevant insights in the analysis of consumers’ reaction to
food fraud, providing practical guidelines on the most appropriate practices that producers should
adopt and on the information to reduce food risk perception among consumers. This would prove
beneficial for the food processing industry and the European Union. The survey is based on a
representative sample of European consumers making this the largest cross-country study of this kind.

Dynamically mechanical and nano-impact (fatigue) analysis of touch screen thin films deposited on polyethylene terephthalate substrate

Nano-scale touch screen thin film have not been thoroughly investigated in terms of dynamic impact analysis under various strain rates. This research is focused on two different thin films, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) film and Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) film, deposited on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) substrate for the standard touch screen panels. Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) was performed on the ZnO film coated PET substrates. Nano-impact (fatigue) testing was performed on ITO film coated PET substrates. Other analysis includes hardness and the elastic modulus measurements, atomic force microscopy (AFM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) of the film surface.
Ten delta of DMA is described as the ratio of loss modulus (viscous properties) and storage modulus (elastic properties) of the material and its peak against time identifies the glass transition temperature (Tg). Thus, in essence the Tg recognizes changes from glassy to rubber state of the material and for our sample ZnO film, Tg was found as 388.3 K. The DMA results also showed that the Ten delta curve for Tg increases monotonically in the viscoelastic state (before Tg) and decreases sharply in the rubber state (after Tg) until recrystallization of ZnO takes place. This led to an interpretation that enhanced ductility can be achieved by negating the strength of the material.
For the nano-impact testing using the ITO coated PET, the damage started with the crack initiation and propagation. The interpretation of the nano-impact results depended on the characteristics of the loading history. Under the nano-impact loading, the surface structure of ITO film suffered from several forms of failure damages that range from deformation to catastrophic failures. It is concluded that in such type of application, the films should have low residual stress to prevent deformation, good adhesive strength, durable and good resistance to wear.

Weaning from ventilation

Aims/purpose: Getting off the ventilator is an important patient-centred outcome for patients with acute respiratory failure. It signifies an improvement in patient condition, enables easier communication, reduces fear and anxiety and consequently a reduced requirement for sedatives. Weaning from ventilation therefore is a core ICU nursing task that is addressed in this presentation.
Presentation description: There are different schools of thought on when ventilator weaning begins including: (a) from intubation with titration of support; and (b) only when the patient’s condition improves. There are also different schools of thought on how to wean including gradual reductions in ventilator support to: (a) a low level consistent with extubation; or (b) to a level to attempt a spontaneous breathing trial followed by extubation if successful. Regardless of the approach, what is patient-relevant is the need to determine early when the patient may be ‘ready’ to discontinue ventilation. This time point can be assessed using simple criteria and should involve all ICU staff to the level of their experience. This presentation challenges the notion that only senior nurses or nurses with a ‘weaning course’ should be involved in the weaning process and proposes opportunities for engaging nurses with all levels of experience.
Conclusion: An ICU nursing taskforce that is focused and engaged in determining patient readiness for weaning can make a strong contribution to patient-relevant outcomes.

Person Re-Identification using Deep Convnets with Multi-task Learning

Person re-identification involves recognizing a person across non-overlapping camera views, with different pose, illumination, and camera characteristics. We propose to tackle this problem by training a deep convolutional network to represent a person’s appearance as a low-dimensional feature vector that is invariant to common appearance variations encountered in the re-identification problem. Specifically, a Siamese-network architecture is used to train a feature extraction network using pairs of similar and dissimilar images. We show that use of a novel multi-task learning objective is crucial for regularizing the network parameters in order to prevent over-fitting due to the small size the training dataset. We complement the verification task, which is at the heart of re-identification, by training the network to jointly perform verification, identification, and to recognise attributes related to the clothing and pose of the person in each image. Additionally, we show that our proposed approach performs well even in the challenging cross-dataset scenario, which may better reflect real-world expected performance. 

The ones that come ready made:The identification and use of Sus tusks as tools at prehistoric cave sites in Malaysia

Evidence for osseous technologies has featured in excavation reports from Southeast Asia for almost a century and from archaeological deposits as old as 43,000 years BP. However, in contrast to the significance that is placed on this technology in other parts of the world, until recently, Southeast Asian assemblages have drawn only very limited attention. Concentrating on evidence from Malaysia, the current paper examines one element of this inventory of tools: the deliberate modification of pig canines and the means by which such alteration can be distinguished from patterns of natural tooth wear. Particular attention is paid to the bearded pig (Sus barbatus), as it is one of the two species of wild boar in Malaysia whose tusks are most likely to have been used by prehistoric toolmakers. Reference is also made to wider, regional ethnographic examples of known tusk implements and their accredited uses to further assist in the identification process. Distinguishing criteria for worked tusk are formulated according to the type and extent of modification. These criteria are then applied to archaeological specimens recovered from two prehistoric cave sites in Malaysia, Gua Bintong and Niah Cave.

Self-refraction, ready-made glasses and quality of life among rural myopic Chinese children: a non-inferiority randomized trial.

PURPOSE: To study, for the first time, the effect of wearing ready-made glasses and glasses with power determined by self-refraction on children's quality of life. METHODS: This is a randomized, double-masked non-inferiority trial. Children in grades 7 and 8 (age 12-15 years) in nine Chinese secondary schools, with presenting visual acuity (VA) ≤6/12 improved with refraction to ≥6/7.5 bilaterally, refractive error ≤-1.0 D and <2.0 D of anisometropia and astigmatism bilaterally, were randomized to receive ready-made spectacles (RM) or identical-appearing spectacles with power determined by: subjective cycloplegic retinoscopy by a university optometrist (U), a rural refractionist (R) or non-cycloplegic self-refraction (SR). Main study outcome was global score on the National Eye Institute Refractive Error Quality of Life-42 (NEI-RQL-42) after 2 months of wearing study glasses, comparing other groups with the U group, adjusting for baseline score. RESULTS: Only one child (0.18%) was excluded for anisometropia or astigmatism. A total of 426 eligible subjects (mean age 14.2 years, 84.5% without glasses at baseline) were allocated to U [103 (24.2%)], RM [113 (26.5%)], R [108 (25.4%)] and SR [102 (23.9%)] groups, respectively. Baseline and endline score data were available for 398 (93.4%) of subjects. In multiple regression models adjusting for baseline score, older age (p = 0.003) and baseline spectacle wear (p = 0.016), but not study group assignment, were significantly associated with lower final score. CONCLUSION: Quality of life wearing ready-mades or glasses based on self-refraction did not differ from that with cycloplegic refraction by an experienced optometrist in this non-inferiority trial.