Corporate donations, the best interest of the company and the proper purpose doctrine

Corporate philanthropy is illegitimate spending by powerful corporate elite of someone else’s money; an attempt to bypass democratic allocation of taxes; philanthropy by individuals is laudable, but not by corporations.

Just as I wouldn’t want you to implement your personal judgments by writing checks on my bank account for charities of your choice, I feel it inappropriate to write checks on your corporate ‘bank account’ for the charities of my choice.

The pleasure and pain of donations

Deakin University is only 25 years old but already has a library collection of over 1 million volumes thanks, in part, to judicious seeking and acceptance of donations. This paper provides a case study of how the University has been able to quickly establish teaching and research level collections for new disciplines as well as build breadth and depth in areas already covered by the collection. Donations of formed collections, in particular, have enabled the University to build a research reputation in a number of specialist areas and to make important links with its local communities. The benefits of donations are highlighted, as are the problems that come with being offered gifts of information resources.

Conditioned taste aversion reduces fox depredation on model eggs on beaches

Context:  Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) is induced by an association of a food item with a negative experience, such as illness, which causes animals to avoid subsequent consumption of that particular food item. Inducing CTA may help reduce depredation rates of threatened fauna where predator population control is undesirable, impractical or unsuccessful.

Aims:  We investigated whether CTA could be induced among foxes (Vulpes vulpes) to model eggs which mimicked those of the threatened hooded plover (Thinornis rubricollis).

Methods:   Model eggs treated with a potential CTA-inducing chemical (sodium carbonate) and control eggs free of the agent were exposed to fox depredation for 28 days to simulate a hooded plover incubation period. To investigate whether CTA would persist in wild foxes, we implemented a part-time agent treatment (an initial 14 day exposure period of model eggs with the CTA agent followed by a second 14 day period when model eggs were free of the agent).

Key results:  Similar intervals to the first depredation event were found for all model eggs regardless of treatment. After the first depredation event by foxes, the rate and likelihood of fox depredation was significantly lower in treated eggs than in control eggs. The likelihood or rate of depredation across the three treatments did not differ between the first and second periods.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that during an exposure period of at least 28 days, CTA can be induced in wild foxes to eggs on beaches. Our results also suggest that 14 days may be insufficient time for wild foxes to develop a lasting CTA to familiar food items such as eggs.

Implications:  Treatment of eggs with a CTA-inducing chemical may present a viable alternative to traditional predator control techniques for hooded plovers, as well as other ground-nesting birds, provided that an extended exposure to the CTAinducing agent occurs.

Well-conditioned configurations of fault-tolerant manipulators

Fault-tolerant motion of redundant manipulators can be obtained by joint velocity reconfiguration. For fault-tolerant manipulators, it is beneficial to determine the configurations that can tolerate the locked-joint failures with a minimum relative joint velocity jump, because the manipulator can rapidly reconfigure itself to tolerate the fault. This paper uses the properties of the condition numbers to introduce those optimal configurations for serial manipulators. The relationship between the manipulator's locked-joint failures and the condition number of the Jacobian matrix is indicated by using a matrix perturbation methodology. Then, it is observed that the condition number provides an upper bound of the required relative joint velocity change for recovering the faults which leads to define the optimal fault-tolerant configuration from the minimization of the condition number. The optimization problem to obtain the minimum condition number is converted to three standard Eigen value optimization problems. A solution is for selected optimization problem is presented. Finally, in order to obtain the optimal fault-tolerant configuration, the proposed method is applied to a 4-DoF planar manipulator.

Ability of predator odour exposure to elicit conditioned versus sensitised post traumatic stress disorder-like behaviours, and forebrain ΔFosB expression, in rats

At present, exposure of a rodent to the odour of a predator is one of the most common animal models of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Despite this, the model remains incompletely characterized, particularly in regard to within subject assessment of major PTSD-like behaviours. In an attempt to redress this situation, we have extensively characterized the two broad categories of behaviour that are considered to characterize PTSD, that is sensitized behaviours such as social withdrawal and hypervigilance and conditioned behaviours such as avoidance of trauma linked cues. Specifically, we determined the presence and duration of both conditioned and sensitized behaviours, in the same cohort of animals, after three exposures to predator odour. Conditioned fear was assessed on the basis of inhibition of locomotor activity upon return to context 2, 7, 14, 21, and 28 days after the last odour exposure session. To assess the impact on sensitization behaviours, we monitored acoustic startle responses and social interaction behaviour 4, 9, 16, 23, and 30 days after the last exposure session. In addition to examining the behavioural consequences associated with odour exposure, we also determined the key brain regions that were activated using ΔFosB immunohistochemistry. Our results show that the two groups of behaviours thought to characterize PTSD (conditioned and sensitized) do not travel together in the predator odour model, with clear evidence of enduring changes in conditioned fear but little evidence of changes in social interaction or acoustic startle. With regard to associated patterns of activity in the brain, we observed that odour-exposed animals exhibited significantly higher numbers of FosB-positive nuclei in only the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a finding that can be viewed as being consistent with the observed behavioural changes.

Individual differences predict susceptibility to conditioned fear arising from psychosocial trauma

Background : Classical Pavlovian fear conditioning has been widely used in preclinical studies to gain insights into anxiety-related disorders. In this study we examined whether pre-existing behavioral differences, and/or behavioral differences displayed during fear induction, predict the severity of the conditioned fear response that can develop after an episode of psychosocial conflict.

Methods : Prior to conditioning, male rats (intruders) were behaviorally assessed using the novel environment exploration and defensive burying tests. These animals were subsequently placed in the territory of an older male (resident) that invariably attacked the intruder.

Results : Upon return to this territory 24 h later, intruders moved less than controls and produced more distress vocalizations, indicating conditioned fear to context. Additionally, analyses revealed that both pre-existing behavioral differences, and the animal’s response during social conflict, predicted the magnitude of the subsequent conditioned fear response. Specifically, animals that engaged in higher levels of novel environment exploration, that exhibited a greater number of defensive burying behaviors, and that demonstrated higher levels of fighting and guarding during social conflict, displayed less evidence of conditioned fear.

Conclusion : These findings show that the behavioral variability existent within a normal outbred population can predict the magnitude of the conditioned fear response.

Strain differences in coping behaviour, novelty seeking behaviour, and susceptibility to socially conditioned fear : a comparison between Wistar and Sprague Dawley rats

The aim of the current study was to generate socially conditioned fear in two different strains of rat (Wistar, W and Sprague Dawley, SD) using social conflict, in order to investigate whether the magnitude of the conditioned fear responses in each strain was related to behaviour exhibited prior to or during fear induction (i.e. social conflict). On day one of the study, all intruders were assessed for exploratory activity in a novel environment. Twenty four hours following the novel environment test the locomotor activity of the intruders was assessed, while they underwent a single familiarisation exposure to the arena in which the conflict was subsequently to occur in. Twenty-four hours following familiarisation, intruders underwent either a 10 min social conflict or sham conflict session. One day later we examined the response of the intruders when they were returned to the vacant resident's cage. Upon return to the conflict context, we examined the intruder's ultrasonic distress vocalisations and the extent to which locomotor activity was inhibited. We found that W rats displayed significantly more immobility (i.e. conditioned fear) upon return to context than did SD rats (p < 0.05). Importantly, we observed that the differences in the two strains behaviour upon return to context appeared to be related to their quite different patterns of coping behaviour. The results of the current study indicate that preclinical between-strain comparisons potentially have much to offer in regard to understanding the basis of resilience to social stress.

Nonorthogonal approximate joint diagonalization with well-conditioned diagonalizers

To make the results reasonable, existing joint diagonalization algorithms have imposed a variety of constraints on diagonalizers. Actually, those constraints can be imposed uniformly by minimizing the condition number of diagonalizers. Motivated by this, the approximate joint diagonalization problem is reviewed as a multiobjective optimization problem for the first time. Based on this, a new algorithm for nonorthogonal joint diagonalization is developed. The new algorithm yields diagonalizers which not only minimize the diagonalization error but also have as small condition numbers as possible. Meanwhile, degenerate solutions are avoided strictly. Besides, the new algorithm imposes few restrictions on the target set of matrices to be diagonalized, which makes it widely applicable. Primary results on convergence are presented and we also show that, for exactly jointly diagonalizable sets, no local minima exist and the solutions are unique under mild conditions. Extensive numerical simulations illustrate the performance of the algorithm and provide comparison with other leading diagonalization methods. The practical use of our algorithm is shown for blind source separation (BSS) problems, especially when ill-conditioned mixing matrices are involved.

A second-order blind equalization method robust to ill-conditioned SIMO FIR channels

This paper deals with blind equalization of single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) finite-impulse-response (FIR) channels driven by i.i.d. signal, by exploiting the second-order statistics (SOS) of the channel outputs. Usually, SOS-based blind equalization is carried out via two stages. In Stage 1, the SIMO FIR channel is estimated using a blind identification method, such as the recently developed truncated transfer matrix (TTM) method. In Stage 2, an equalizer is derived from the estimate of the channel to recover the source signal. However, this type of two-stage approach does not give satisfactory blind equalization result if the channel is ill-conditioned, which is often encountered in practical applications. In this paper, we first show that the TTM method does not work in some situations. Then, we propose a novel SOS-based blind equalization method which can directly estimate the equalizer without knowing the channel impulse responses. The proposed method can obtain the desired equalizer even in the case that the channel is ill-conditioned. The performance of our method is illustrated by numerical simulations and compared with four benchmark methods. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

Statement of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group regarding payments to families of deceased organ donors

Governmental and private programs that pay next of kin who give permission for the removal of their deceased relative's organs for transplantation exist in a number of countries. Such payments, which may be given to the relatives or paid directly for funeral expenses or hospital bills unrelated to being a donor, aim to increase the rate of donation. The Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group-in alignment with the World Health Organization Guiding Principles and the Council of Europe Convention Against Trafficking in Human Organs-has adopted a new policy statement opposing such practices.Payment programs are unwise because they produce a lower rate of donations than in countries with voluntary, unpaid programs; associate deceased donation with being poor and marginal in society; undermine public trust in the determination of death; and raise doubts about fair allocation of organs. Most important, allowing families to receive money for donation from a deceased person, who is at no risk of harm, will make it impossible to sustain prohibitions on paying living donors, who are at risk.Payment programs are also unethical. Tying coverage for funeral expenses or healthcare costs to a family allowing organs to be procured is exploitative, not "charitable." Using payment to overcome reluctance to donate based on cultural or religious beliefs especially offends principles of liberty and dignity. Finally, while it is appropriate to make donation "financially neutral"-by reimbursing the added medical costs of evaluating and maintaining a patient as a potential donor-such reimbursement may never be conditioned on a family agreeing to donate.

Michael Polanyi, tacit cognitive relativist

Celebrated as a theorist of science, and a source of stimulating ideas for theologians and philosophers of religion, Michael Polanyi explicitly denied cognitive relativism. Yet cognitive relativism, this paper suggests, is implied by Polanyi's account of conceptual frameworks and intellectual controversies.

In 'The Stability of Beliefs' (1952) Polanyi understands conceptual frameworks (science, psychoanalysis, Azande witchcraft, Marxism) as embedded in, and as expressed in the use of, their own languages. The language-with-theory limits the range of discussable subjects, interprets relevant facts in its own terms, permits only certain questions to be asked, with answers to these questions serving to confirm the framework.

In Polanyi's masterwork, Personal Knowledge (1958), these ideas inform his discussion of controversies over scientific frameworks and frameworks vying to become part of science. In each controversy, frameworks are logically disconnected, Polanyi foreshadowing the incommensurability thesis

I argue that Polanyi's ideas satisfy recognised criteria of cognitive relativism. Perception is undetermined by objects and conditioned by language. Empirical propositions, in Polanyi's view, are accepted as true only within a conceptual framework. Polanyi regards supporters of logically disconnected frameworks as thinking differently, living in different worlds, speaking different languages and as experiencing communication failure. There is no framework-independent argument or evidence to distinguish any framework as the best available approximation to the truth. Frameworks are logically disconnected and incommensurable.

Cause related marketing: can the arts afford not to participate?

Cause related marketing is a new way for for-profit organizations to increase their sales while appearing to enhance their focus on social responsibility. The key for private-sector organizations is to build partnerships with a worthy, notable cause and for them to promote that cause in a carefully structured commercial venture designed to enhance both organizations' financial viability. Over the last 2 decades the focus has shifted from the worthy cause of the arts, to issues of health and social need. The answer proposed in this paper is to broaden the definition of worthy cause to include needy non-profit arts and thus, return cause related marketing to its roots. This paper identifies the direction of rapid change in attitudes to arts marketing in just over 2 decades and indicates the possibilities of participating in cause related marketing activities as a result of this change.

Preliminary study on the use of synthetic substrate for juvenile stage production of the yabby, Cherax destructor (Clark) (Decapoda: Parastacidae)

Juvenile Cherax destructor (commonly called the yabby) (mean weight 48.3 mg) were cultured intensively (stocking density 360/m²) under controlled conditions for 48 days. The animals were provided with a combination of food (high protein pellets and/or natural feed organisms attached to a conditioned synthetic substrate) and refuge. Fastest growth and highest yield was recorded when both pellets and the conditioned synthetic material were provided. Although the yabbies sheltered in the synthetic substrate, it did not increase survival. Juvenile yabbies (< 200 mg) were able to graze on small organisms attached to the synthetic material but this ability appeared to decline as the yabbies grew to a larger size. The use of artificial substrates in the intensive nursery phase production of juvenile freshwater crayfish is discussed.

Innovation in construction : experiences from a hypocaust system in Australia

Introducing new technologies poses a particular challenge to the players involved in a project. For a successful low energy building, a new design process is required and players must assume new and additional responsibilities. Hypocaust systems, where conditioned or non-conditioned air is passed through ducts within the concrete floor or ceiling of a building prior to its delivery to the rooms, are starting to appear in new buildings in Australia. This paper describes the lessons learned from the early experiences with a hypocaust system, installed in a new building in Melbourne. It concludes that a more cooperative process among all those involved in introducing and using a new 'technology' is essential if the problems described are to be avoided or at least minimized.