Nanotube Films as Sticky as a Gecko’s Foot

Geckos are lizards with animpressive capacity towalk upside down on al-most any surface, using just the at-tractive forces created by their feetto hold on. Borrowing the miracu-lous mechanism of the creature’sfeet, CAS researchers have suc-c e e d e d i n p r o d u c i n gsuperhydrophobic nanotube filmsnoted for their high adhesion.How can geckos run upsidedown on polished glass? Some thinkthat the creature has suction cups ontheir feet, others say it is due to elec-trostatic attraction, and…     

Preserving a combat commander’s moral agency: The Vincennes Incident as a Chinese Room

We argue that a command and control system can undermine a commander’s moral agency if it causes him/her to process information in a purely syntactic manner, or if it precludes him/her from ascertaining the truth of that information. Our case is based on the resemblance between a commander’s circumstances and the protagonist in Searle’s Chinese Room, together with a careful reading of Aristotle’s notions of ‘compulsory’ and ‘ignorance’. We further substantiate our case by considering the Vincennes Incident, when the crew of a warship mistakenly shot down a civilian airliner. To support a combat commander’s moral agency, designers should strive for systems that help commanders and command teams to think and manipulate information at the level of meaning. ‘Down conversions’ of information from meaning to symbols must be adequately recovered by ‘up conversions’, and commanders must be able to check that their sensors are working and are being used correctly. Meanwhile ethicists should establish a mechanism that tracks the potential moral implications of choices in a system’s design and intended operation. Finally we highlight a gap in normative ethics, in that we have ways to deny moral agency, but not to affirm it.     

What’s mine is mine; what’s yours is mine: private ownership of ICTs as a threat to transparency

In the face of ubiquitous information communication technology, the presence of blogs, personal websites, and public message boards give the illusion of uncensored criticism and discussion of the ethical implications of business activities. However, little attention has been paid to the limitations on free speech posed by the control of access to the Internet by private entities, enabling them to censor content that is deemed critical of corporate or public policy. The premise of this research is that transparency alone will not achieve the desired results if ICT is used in a one way system, controlled by the provider of information. Stakeholders must have an avenue using the same technology to respond to and interact with the information. We propose a model that imposes on corporations a public trust, requiring these gatekeepers of communication technology to preserve individual rights to criticism and review.     

Make strategic deployment for China’s IC industry ahead of time

According to the long-wave theory, the world economy saw a four-phase development driven respectively by industrial engines, namely, te xt il e, ir on an d ste el , ele ct ri cit y pow er a nd petrochemicals, and car-making during the two centu- ries from…     

Rotary inverted pendulum with magnetically external perturbations as a source of the pendulum’s base navigation commands

The main objective of this paper is to drive a rotary inverted pendulum by following a desired navigation instruction. This navigation is commanded by the user through a new electromagnetic device which is allowed to perturb the pendulum from its upright position. This apparatus consists of an electronic magnetic driving circuit to introduce commands and realized via two operated magnetic coils. So, the external programmed magnetic perturbation can be seen as external commandments. Therefore, the control problem statement is solved via a modified regulation control implementation, to maintain the pendulum on its upright position and giving free manipulation of the base of the rotary inverted pendulum. Hence, by using the corresponding H_∞-linear matrix inequality technique, a static state controller is designed and tested experimentally so supporting our findings.