There’s something about Mary: The moral value of things <Emphasis Type="Italic">qua</Emphasis> information objects

Luciano Floridi argues that every existing entity is deserving of at least minimal moral respect in virtue of having intrinsic value qua information object. In this essay, I attempt a comprehensive assessment of this important view as well as the arguments Floridi offers in support of it. I conclude both that the arguments are insufficient and that the thesis itself is substantively implausible from the standpoint of ordinary intuitions.     

70-year old female patient with mismatch between hematocrit and hemoglobin values: the effects of cold agglutinin on complete blood count

Introduction:

There are a number of pre-analytical and analytical factors, which cause false results in the complete blood count. The present case identifies cold agglutinins as the cause for the mismatch between hematocrit and hemoglobin values.

Materials and methods:

70-year old female patient had a history of cerebrovascular diseases and rheumatoid arthritis. During routine laboratory examination, the patient had normal leukocyte and platelet counts; however, the hemoglobin (Hb: 105 g/L) and hematocrit (HCT: 0.214 L/L) results were discordant. Hemolysis, lipemia and cold agglutinin were evaluated as possible reasons for the mismatch between hematocrit and hemoglobin values.

Results:

First blood sample was slightly hemolysed. Redrawn sample without hemolysis or lipemia was analyzed but the mismatch became even more distinct (Hb: 104 g/L and HCT: 0.08 L/L). In this sample, the titration of the cold agglutinin was determined and found to be positive at 1:64 dilution ratios. After an incubation of the sample at 37°C for 2 hours, reversibility of agglutination was observed.

Conclusion:

We conclude that cold agglutinins may interfere with the analysis of erythrocyte and erythrocyte-related parameters (HCT, MCV, MCH and MCHC); however, Hb, leukocyte and platelet counts are not affected.     

青少年跳高赛前控制训练的实验研究

为了探讨跳高赛前控制训练这一课题，我们运用运动训练学的基本原理，采用随训跟踪的方法．对其进行了实验探讨，旨在摸索跳高赛前控制训练的一般规律，为青少年跳高的科学化训练积累经验。     

试论高职学院体育师资队伍建设

随着社会和高等教育形势的快速发展，高等职业技术教育成为高等教育的一部分，已成为当前社会关注的一个热点。高职学院要能适应高等教育的要求，适应新的办学模式，全面提高教学质量和办学水平，关键是拥有一支与人才培养目标相一致的数量、质量合格的教师队伍。而目前高职学院体育师资队伍的现状，与高等教育的要求及全面推进学校体育工作深化改革的目标，尚存有较大的差距。因此要针对现状，在加强教师政治思想、德育教育，优化教师知识结构，优化师资队伍结构，提高教学科研能力、水平等几个主要方面，采取积极有效的措施；加强队伍建设，全面提高体育教师的整体素质水平，尽快适应高等教育发展的需要及高校体育教学改革、科学研究的要求。     

Retrieving and classifying instances of source code plagiarism

Automatic detection of source code plagiarism is an important research field for both the commercial software industry and within the research community. Existing methods of plagiarism detection primarily involve exhaustive pairwise document comparison, which does not scale well for large software collections. To achieve scalability, we approach the problem from an information retrieval (IR) perspective. We retrieve a ranked list of candidate documents in response to a pseudo-query representation constructed from each source code document in the collection. The challenge in source code document retrieval is that the standard bag-of-words (BoW) representation model for such documents is likely to result in many false positives being retrieved, because of the use of identical programming language specific constructs and keywords. To address this problem, we make use of an abstract syntax tree (AST) representation of the source code documents. While the IR approach is efficient, it is essentially unsupervised in nature. To further improve its effectiveness, we apply a supervised classifier (pre-trained with features extracted from sample plagiarized source code pairs) on the top ranked retrieved documents. We report experiments on the SOCO-2014 dataset comprising 12K Java source files with almost 1M lines of code. Our experiments confirm that the AST based approach produces significantly better retrieval effectiveness than a standard BoW representation, i.e., the AST based approach is able to identify a higher number of plagiarized source code documents at top ranks in response to a query source code document. The supervised classifier, trained on features extracted from sample plagiarized source code pairs, is shown to effectively filter and thus further improve the ranked list of retrieved candidate plagiarized documents.     

Data Mining to Combat Terrorism and the Roots of Privacy Concerns

Recently, there has been a heavy debate in the US about the government’s use of data mining in its fight against terrorism. Privacy concerns in fact led the Congress to terminate the funding of TIA, a program for advanced information technology to be used in the combat of terrorism. The arguments put forward in this debate, more specifically those found in the main report and minority report by the TAPAC established by the Secretary of Defense to examine the TIA issue, will be analysed to trace the deeper roots of this controversy. This analysis will in turn be used as a test case to examine the adequacy of the usual theoretical frameworks for these kinds of issues, in particular the notion of privacy. Whereas the dominant theoretical framing of the notion of privacy turns around access to information, most of the core arguments in the debate do not fit in this kind of framework. The basic disagreements in the controversy are not about mere access, they involve both access and use. Furthermore, whereas the issue of access by itself refers to a more or less static situation, the real disagreements much more concern the organisational dynamics of the use of information, the mechanisms in the organisation that control these dynamics, and the awareness present within the organisation of the ‘social risks’ these dynamics represent. The bottom line question is whether the assessment of these gives sufficient reason for trust.     

Japanese Conceptions of Privacy: An Intercultural Perspective

This paper deals with intercultural aspects of privacy, particularly with regard to important differences between Japanese and the Western views. This paper is based on our discussions with Rafael Capurro – a dialogue now represented by two separate but closely interrelated articles. The companion paper is broadly focused on the cultural and historical backgrounds of the concepts of privacy and individualism in “Western” worlds; our main theme focuses on different concepts of privacy in Japan and their sources in related aspects of Japanese culture. The interrelationship between our two papers is apparent in our taking up identical or similar topics in each paper. Reading our two papers in conjunction with each other will bring about deeper and broader insights into the diverse values and worldviews of Japan and Western cultures that underlie concepts of privacy that at a surface level appear to be similar     

New paint,new challenges: Conservation of Roy Lichtenstein's outdoor sculpture House I

This paper deals with the conservation of Roy Lichtenstein's outdoor sculpture House I, conducted at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea. Having suffered from direct sunlight for more than a decade, the work presented severe paint fading and chalking. The purpose of the project was to provide the best possible protection by applying a durable paint material, while simultaneously preserving the colored surface that Lichtenstein had intended. A marine paint, which is relatively durable and was also utilized by the artist himself, was selected for the repainting system. An absence of practical experience and knowledge in Korea in relation both to the marine paint and its application led to many difficulties. During the actual application of the new paint, numerous technical problems arose which had to be solved in order to carry out the conservation treatment. To meet this demand, a close adherence to technical practice and an interdisciplinary study were carried out to provide the necessary understanding and compromise.