A geographically stratified cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2002 to investigate household-level factors associated with use of mosquito control measures and self-reported malaria in Malindi, Kenya. A total of 629 households were surveyed. Logistic regressions were used to analyse the data. Half of all households (51%) reported all occupants using an insecticide-treated bed net and at least one additional mosquito control measure such as insecticides or removal of standing water. Forty-nine per cent reported a history of malaria in (...) the household. Of the thirteen household factors analysed, low (OR=0·23, CI 0·11, 0·48) and medium (OR=0·50, CI 0·29, 0·86) education, mudcoral (OR=0·0·39, CI 0·24, 0·66) and mud block–plaster (OR=0·47, CI 0·25, 0·87) wall types, farming (OR=1·38, CI 1·01, 1·90) and travel to rural areas (OR=0·48, CI 0·26, 0·91) were significantly associated with the use of mosquito control, while controlling for other covariates in the model. History of reported malaria was not associated with the use of mosquito control (OR=1·22, CI 0·79, 1·88). Of the thirteen covariates analysed in the second model, only two household factors were associated with history of malaria: being located in the well-drained stratum (OR=0·49, CI 0·26, 0·96) and being bitten while in the house (OR=1·22, CI 0·19, 0·49). These results suggest that high socioeconomic status is associated with increased household-level mosquito control use, although household-level control may not be enough, as many people are exposed to biting mosquitoes while away from the house and in areas that are more likely to harbour mosquitoes. (shrink)

English: Effective altruism has focused on moral efficiency, i.e. the ratio of the resources used (money, time ...) to the moral benefit achieved, in addition to the extent of our moral commitment, and has called for the maximum efficiency of moral commitment. This raises two questions, among others, which are the subject of this paper: 1. How does one calculate moral efficiency? 2. Is maximum moral efficiency the right moral decision-making criterion? In the article, efficiency calculations of donations for two (...) charitable projects are presented in detail (question 1): distribution of mosquito nets in malaria areas in sub-Saharan Africa and maintenance of a children's village in Guatemala. The result is that the children's village project is clearly less efficient. Should it therefore be abandoned, although it seems to be a very useful project (question 2)? (shrink)

Consider a health policy issue like child car seats in the U.S., mosquito netting in the third world, preschool education for poor children, or the immunization of immigrants. Imagine that for this issue there were many good studies over several decades, including some recent studies. Imagine that after controlling for many factors, these studies usually found that variations in spending or usage were significantly, substantially, and positively related to variations in health. Furthermore, imagine this result was confirmed by a (...) thirty year old randomized experiment. (shrink)

βρυχεδανς : πολυφγος, ο δ μακρς. For μακρς read μργος. ζγγος· τν μελισσν χος, κα τν μοων. L. and S. translate literally, ‘humming of bees, etc.’; but to buzz or hum is not a common property of insects, it is peculiar to a few. For τν μοων I suggest τν μυιν. ζγγος refers especially to the buzz, or ‘ping’, of a mosquito , LL. zanzara; cf. Cassiodorus ‘Ciniphes genus est culicum, fixis aculeis permolestum, quas vulgus consuevit vocare zinzalas’; and (...) in the Appendix, De Wit adds: ‘zinzala; parva musca, id est culex; unde zinzalarium, conopeum ad eas arcendas, Gloss. Ugut. ’—i.e. a mosquito-net. Culex, by the way, is an interesting and a homely word; we lack mosquitoes in Scotland, but we know the angry bite of a ‘horse-fly’ and call it a ‘cleg’. (shrink)

This is an appendix to the article "Wie effizient sollten Altruisten handeln?" ("How Efficient Should Altruists Act?") The appendix provides detailed moral efficiency calculations for two charitable projects: a children's home in Guatemala for neglected children versus malaria prevention by distributing mosquito nets in malaria areas in sub-Saharan Africa. The exact method of efficiency calculation is explained and applied. At least prima facie, the malaria prophylaxis project is clearly more efficient.

Jeff Bernard was a distinguished semiotician, always au courant with the main accomplishments in the field. Although Jeff himself had specialized in socio-semiotics, his architectural training and his artistic youth had lent him a really open mind, able to comprehend almost everything.Jeff Bernard was also an excellent administrator. He and Gloria organized countless international conferences, most of them based in Vienna (at the Institute for Socio-Semiotic Studies Jeff was the director of ), but also in other places in Austria, Germany, (...) Italy. All of them were a success. Jeff ran the ISSS almost single-handed. He edited books (he published three of mine, among many, many others), anthologies, semiotic journals. He knew how to raise funding, of which the whole semiotic community benefitted. In 2003, he acted as my “impresario”, as he jokingly said, and organized a lecturing tour through Central Europe for me.Jeff was also a wonderful host; he considered his guests as part of the family and treated them accordingly. Many were the times when he picked me up from one Viennese railway station or the other, or when he drove me there, when I stopped in Vienna, to or from other places. It was owing to Jeff and Gloria that I discovered Grinzig, Baden, and various other cozy places in and around Vienna. Last but not least, it was also due to Jeff and Gloria that I discovered the charm of many Viennese restaurants.Jeff was kind and generous, elegant and discreet. He helped quite a lot of semioticians to forward their careers, and more important still, he did it unobtrusively. Jeff was also a likeable person, with an entertaining conversation and a fine sense of humor.“I am a Feminist”, Jeff once said. (For the sake of historical accuracy, it was in September 1997, round a dinner table at the Early-Fall School of Semiotics, thenheld in Bankya, Bulgaria). And he further expanded: “Otherwise, we couldn’t be living with Gloria. And my life would be pretty difficult, virtually surrounded as I am by so many professional women. But they all think I am a Feminist, and they are happy to work for my benefit. So I sit at my desk in Vienna, and my women colleagues from all over the world send me contributions for this and that, come over to participate in conferences, etc. It pays being a Feminist”.“Ich bin ein Berliner”, said Jeff on another occasion. For historical accuracy, it was in September 2003, during the conference celebrating his 60th birthday, in answer to a remark made by Roland Posner. It seemed a humorous statement, and everybody smiled. But I think this was true in spirit. These few lines, as well as (I suppose) those written by other colleagues who have contributed to the present issue, are meant to illustrate this self-definition. Jeff had always sympathized with the less privileged people everywhere. (shrink)

Voor de taalgebruiker spreekt taal vanzelf, maar de taalonderzoeker staat voor raadsels. Woordvormen lijken in niets op hun betekenis. En taalconstructies lijken onlogisch in elkaar te zitten. Toch kunnen we in een enkele zin onze bedoelingen tot in de subtielste nuances duidelijk maken. We hebben geen toegang tot het bewustzijn van de Ander maar kunnen desondanks gedachten met elkaar uitwisselen. We kunnen de werkelijkheid met elkaar bespreken en fictieve werelden met elkaar delen alsof ze toch ergens buiten onszelf bestaan. De (...) taalgebruiker heeft er allemaal geen moeite mee. In De magie van taal brengt Net Koene stap voor stap in kaart wat zich in ons hoofd afspeelt wanneer we naar de Ander luisteren. Ze isoleert taalvormen, woorden, constructies, toonhoogte- en ritmekenmerken die we als informatief herkennen in wat de Ander zegt. Ze laat zien hoe al die vormen systematisch hun eigen bijdrage leveren aan onze voorstelling van waar de Ander het over heeft. De auteur toont deze processen vanuit een denkbeeldig alwetend perspectief, in dit boek Omega genoemd. Binnen dit theoretische kader legt ze per hypothese verband tussen wat in het bewustzijn opkomt en de machinerie van het brein: hoe vormt de wereld van onze zintuigen zich, hoe komt ons voorstellingsvermogen tot stand, hoe transformeert de zintuiglijke wereld in een bespreekbare wereld? En vooral: hoe werkt het dat we de inhoud van ons bewustzijn op dat van de Ander kunnen afstemmen? (shrink)

Feminist critiques of the social sciences are based on the assumption that because the social sciences were developed for the most part by white, middle-class, Western men, the perspectives of women were ignored. This book offers an approach for integrating gender-related content into the social work curriculum. The distinguished contributors discuss the shortcoming of dominant knowledge, address the pressing need for a gender-integrated curriculum, consider the pedagogies consistent with the implementation of an integrate curriculum, address specific areas in social work (...) education, assessing content, and assumptions, and discuss strategic issues for the implementation of curricular knowledge. (shrink)

This article traces the relationship between neoliberal thought and neural networks through the work of Friedrich Hayek, Donald O. Hebb, and Frank Rosenblatt. For all three, networked systems could accomplish acts of evolution, change, and learning impossible for individual neurons or subjects—minds, machines, and economies could therefore all autonomously evolve and adapt without government. These three figures, I argue, were also symptoms of a broader reconceptualization of reason, decision making, and “freedom” in relation to the state and technology that occurred (...) throughout the 1950s–1970s. I also argue that this genealogy of decision-making underpins contemporary relations between machine learning, reactionary politics, and neoliberal economics. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic heavily influenced human life by constricting human social activity. Following the spread of the pandemic, humans did not have a choice but to change their lifestyles. There has been much change in the field of education, which has led to schools hosting online classes as an alternative to face-to-face classes. However, the concentration level is lowered in the online learning class, and the student’s learning rate decreases. We devise a framework for recognizing and estimating students’ concentration levels (...) to help lecturers. Previous studies have a limitation in that they classified attention levels using only discrete states. Due to the partial information from discrete states, the concentration levels could not be recognized well. This research aims to estimate more subtle levels as specified states by using a minimum amount of body movement data. The deep neural network is used to continuously recognize the human concentration model, and the concentration levels can be predicted and estimated by the Kalman filter. Using our framework, we successfully extracted the concentration levels, which can aid lecturers and can be expanded to other areas. To implement the framework, we recruited participants to take online classes. Data were collected and preprocessed using pose points, and an accuracy of 90.62 % was calculated by predicting the concentration level using the framework. Furthermore, the concentration level was approximated based on the Kalman filter. We found that webcams can be used to quantitatively measure student concentration when conducting online classes. Our framework is a great help for instructors to measure concentration levels, which can increase the learning efficiency. As a future work of this study, if emotion data and skin thermal data are comprehensively considered, a student’s concentration level can be measured more precisely. (shrink)

This monograph looks at causal nets from a philosophical point of view. The author shows that one can build a general philosophical theory of causation on the basis of the causal nets framework that can be fruitfully used to shed new light on philosophical issues. Coverage includes both a theoretical as well as application-oriented approach to the subject. The author first counters David Hume’s challenge about whether causation is something ontologically real. The idea behind this is that good (...) metaphysical concepts should behave analogously to good theoretical concepts in scientific theories. In the process, the author offers support for the theory of causal nets as indeed being a correct theory of causation. Next, the book offers an application-oriented approach to the subject. The author shows that causal nets can investigate philosophical issues related to causation. He does this by means of two exemplary applications. The first consists of an evaluation of Jim Woodward’s interventionist theory of causation. The second offers a contribution to the new mechanist debate. Introductory chapters outline all the formal basics required. This helps make the book useful for those who are not familiar with causal nets, but interested in causation or in tools for the investigation of philosophical issues related to causation. (shrink)

ASP.net is one of the most widely used languages in web developing of its many advantages, so there are many lessons that explain its basics, so it should be an intelligent tutoring system that offers lessons and exercises for this language.why tutoring system? Simply because it is one-one teacher, adapts with all the individual differences of students, begins gradually with students from easier to harder level, save time for teacher and student, the student is not ashamed to make mistakes, and (...) more. Therefore, in this paper, we describe the design of an Intelligent Tutoring System for teaching ASP.net to help students learn ASP.net easily and smoothly. Tutor provides beginner level in ASP.net. Finally, we evaluated our tutor and the results were excellent by students and teacher. (shrink)

The enactive approach aims at providing a unified account of perceptual experiences in terms of bodily activities. Most enactive arguments come from the analysis of visual experiences, but there is one domain of consciousness where the enactive theses seem to be less controversial, namely, bodily experiences. After drawing the agenda for an enactive view of tactile experiences, I shall highlight the difficulties that it has to face, both conceptual and empirical.

Bayes nets are a powerful tool for researchers in statistics and artificial intelligence. This chapter demonstrates that they are also of much use for philosophers and psychologists interested in (Bayesian) rationality. To do so, we outline the general methodology of Bayes nets modeling in rationality research and illustrate it with several examples from the philosophy and psychology of reasoning and argumentation. Along the way, we discuss the normative foundations of Bayes nets modeling and address some of the (...) methodological problems it raises. (shrink)

Mosquito-borne diseases take a tremendous toll on human populations, especially in developing nations. In the last decade, scientists have developed mosquitoes that have been genetically modified to prevent transmission of mosquito-borne diseases, and field trials have been conducted. Some mosquitoes have been rendered infertile, some have been equipped with a vaccine they transmit to humans, and some have been designed to resist diseases. This article focuses on ethical issues raised by field trials of disease-resistant, genetically modified mosquitoes. Some (...) of these issues include: protecting the public and the environment from harm, balancing benefits and risks, collaborating with the local community, avoiding exploitation, and safeguarding the rights and welfare of research subjects. One of the most difficult problems involves protecting the welfare of community members who will be impacted by the release of mosquitoes but who are not enrolled in the study as research subjects. To address this concern, field trials should take place only when the targeted disease is a significant public health problem in an isolated area, the benefits of the trial for the community are likely to outweigh the risks, community leaders approve of the trial, and there are measures in place to protect the welfare of un-enrolled community members, such as informing the community about the study and offering free treatment to people who contract mosquito-borne diseases. Since the justification of any field trial depends on a careful examination of the scientific and ethical issues, proposed studies should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Officials must understand why and how the public lost confidence in the federal government’s ability to manage financial turmoil. Officials outsourced to private parties responsibility for monitoring and policing the safety-net exposures that were bound to be generated by weaknesses in the securitization process. When the adverse consequences of this imprudent arrangement first emerged, officials claimed for months that the difficulties that short-funded, highly leveraged firms were facing in rolling over debt reflected only a shortage of aggregate liquidity and not (...) individual-firm shortages of economic capital. Then, in September 2008, the president and other officials created an unwise sense of urgency that delays in implementation show to have been greatly exaggerated.That authorities and financiers violated common-law duties of loyalty, competence, and care they owe to taxpayers indicates a massive incentive breakdown in industry and government. Taxpayers deserve a thorough-going reorientation of: (1) how regulatory agencies report on their regulatory performance and back-room interactions with Congress and the Treasury, and (2) the contract structures and performance measures used by the financial industry and its government overseers. (shrink)

Everyday activities, like putting flowers on a grave or traveling across country, can lead to the spread of mosquitoes, some of which may transmit disease-causing viruses or parasites. This paper discusses deforestation, wetland restoration, travel and trade from the perspective of the effects these activities have on mosquito population.

Mosquito-borne diseases represent a significant global disease burden, and recent outbreaks of such diseases have led to calls to reduce mosquito populations. Furthermore, advances in ‘gene-drive’ technology have raised the prospect of eradicating certain species of mosquito via genetic modification. This technology has attracted a great deal of media attention, and the idea of using gene-drive technology to eradicate mosquitoes has been met with criticism in the public domain. In this paper, I shall dispel two moral objections (...) that have been raised in the public domain against the use of gene-drive technologies to eradicate mosquitoes. The first objection invokes the concept of the ‘sanctity of life’ in order to claim that we should not drive an animal to extinction. In response, I follow Peter Singer in raising doubts about general appeals to the sanctity of life, and argue that neither individual mosquitoes nor mosquitoes species considered holistically are appropriately described as bearing a significant degree of moral status. The second objection claims that seeking to eradicate mosquitoes amounts to displaying unacceptable degrees of hubris. Although I argue that this objection also fails, I conclude by claiming that it raises the important point that we need to acquire more empirical data about, inter alia, the likely effects of mosquito eradication on the ecosystem, and the likelihood of gene-drive technology successfully eradicating the intended mosquito species, in order to adequately inform our moral analysis of gene-drive technologies in this context. (shrink)

Genetically engineered (GE) insects, such as the GE OX513A Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, have been designed to suppress their wild-type populations so as to reduce the transmission of vector-borne diseases in humans. Apart from the ecological and epidemiological uncertainties associated with this approach, such biotechnological approaches may be used by individual governments or the global community of nations to avoid addressing the underlying structural, systemic causes of those infections... We discuss here key ethical questions raised by the use of GE mosquitoes, (...) with the aim of fostering discussion between the public, researchers, policy makers, healthcare organizations, and regulatory agencies at the local, national, and international levels. We affect that goal by outlining a procedural approach to decision-making about the use of the “biotechnology” that goes beyond “community engagement.” The protocol we advocate for entails informed deliberations and decision-making at the community level. It is designed to ensure that the voices of the marginalized and vulnerable groups that would be disproportionately affected by the decision are heard during the community-wide discussions. Moreover, we make the case that the values embedded in the risk assessment should be identified so that the community can make an informed decision about the use of GE insects. In addition, we advocate for the involvement of a variety of actors whose responsibility would be to ensure that the community has the opportunity to make an informed decision based on deliberations about the use of the “biotechnology.”. (shrink)

Bayesian nets are widely used in artificial intelligence as a calculus for causal reasoning, enabling machines to make predictions, perform diagnoses, take decisions and even to discover causal relationships. This book, aimed at researchers and graduate students in computer science, mathematics and philosophy, brings together two important research topics: how to automate reasoning in artificial intelligence, and the nature of causality and probability in philosophy.

The paper displays the similarity between the theory of probabilistic causation developed by Glymour et al. since 1983 and mine developed since 1976: the core of both is that causal graphs are Bayesian nets. The similarity extends to the treatment of actions or interventions in the two theories. But there is also a crucial difference. Glymour et al. take causal dependencies as primitive and argue them to behave like Bayesian nets under wide circumstances. By contrast, I argue the (...) behavior of Bayesian nets to be ultimately the defining characteristic of causal dependence. (shrink)

The relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (RQM) has received a growing interest since its first formulation in 1996. Usually presented as an interpretational layer over the usual quantum mechanics formalism, it appears as a philosophical perspective without proper mathematical counterparts. This state of affairs has direct consequences on the scientific debate on RQM which still suffers from misunderstandings and imprecise statements. In an attempt to clarify those debates, the present paper proposes a radical reformulation of the mathematical framework of quantum (...) mechanics which is relational from the start: fact-nets. The core idea is that all statements about the world, facts, are binary entities involving two systems that can be symmetrically thought of as observed and observer. We initiate a study of the fact-nets formalism and outline how it can shed new relational light on some familiar quantum features. (shrink)