Arbitrary Standards Research Articles

A Critical Review of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Thoughts on the Sin of Pride and Its Relevance to Korean Society

This study aims to explore the meaning of pride in Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man, as well as its relevance to Korean society. Niebuhr presents the pride of power, knowledge, and virtue as causes of various conflicts in American society. His thoughts are helpful to apply for an understanding of the underlying issues concerning Korean society. Niebuhr asserts that the pride of power, prompted by a sense of insecurity, causes economic injustice in society, since it seeks an even greater gain in order to guarantee their security, inevitably at the expense of others. Niebuhr also points out that the pride of knowledge causes a cultural imperialism by a majority group over the minority groups. He then argues that moral pride is revealed in all “self-righteous” judgments, in which the other is condemned because he fails to conform to the arbitrary standards of the self. Niebuhr stresses that self-righteousness has been one of the major causes for racial, national, religious, and social struggles in history. In Korean society, the pride of power exists among the plutocrats who possess many companies in various economic fields. In addition to economic problems, there is also an issue of intellectual pride. This is expressed in the attitude of native Koreans towards international laborers. But just as America faces tension with its immigrant population, so does Korea not always fairly treat those who arrive enamored by its seemingly prosperous economy. One more problem with which Korean society struggles is moral pride. The exclusive attitude of Christianity towards other religions is shown among Korean Protestants. It is necessary for the Korean Protestant church to cooperate with other religions in order to resolve social issues. Niebuhr’s analysis, however, is not alone sufficient to provide a solution to social problems, given the lack of practicality in motivating believers for moral practice. The reason is that Niebuhr does not emphasize the work of the Spirit to motivate believers. He seems to simply say that faith in Christ is enough. This has been criticized by some scholars. An examination of the narrative of the superintendent of a railroad company in In His Steps supports my thesis. In addition, I have discussed the current influence of Min Joong theology on Korean society as a case study. In sum, personal spiritual growth cannot be disregarded in a discussion of Christian social ethics, since motivation from Jesus is crucial in the moment of an ethical decision, and this is not alone derived from knowing or believing him but from following him through an intimate relationship.

Performance measures in dialysis facilities: what is the goal?

As the care of patients gets more focused and directed by predetermined standards of care, physicians must not lose sight of the primary focus of their treatment goal-maximizing the quality of life of each patient. Physicians must recognize the uniqueness of each individual's experience and make every effort to understand the domains that are of concern to each patient. In addition, physicians must make sure that this focus is not obscured by the setting of arbitrary standards and targets that lend themselves to easy assessments and reporting by simple laboratory measures or computer-generated data. Finally, physicians must focus on modifying and tailoring treatment to maximize each patient's health-related quality of life.

Can cycle day 7 FSH concentration during controlled ovarian stimulation be used to guide FSH dosing for in vitro fertilization?

BackgroundWhen stimulating a patient with poor ovarian response for IVF, the maximal dose of gonadotropins injected is often determined by arbitrary standards rather than a measured response. The purpose of this study was to determine if serum FSH concentration during an IVF stimulation cycle reflects follicular utilization of FSH and whether serum FSH values may inform dose adjustments of exogenous FSH.MethodsIn this retrospective cross sectional study we studied 155 consecutive IVF cycles stimulated only with recombinant human FSH. We only included long GnRH agonist protocols in which endogenous FSH levels were suppressed. We correlated the serum concentration of cycle day (CD) 7 FSH with the number of oocytes retrieved, cleaving embryos and pregnancy rate.ResultsWe found that a CD7 FSH concentration above 22 IU/L was associated with poor response regardless of the daily dose of FSH injected and a lower pregnancy rate.ConclusionsWe concluded that CD7 FSH concentration during stimulation could be used to guide FSH dosing in poor responders. If the CD7 FSH concentration is above 22 IU/L increasing the dose of FSH in an attempt to recruit more growing follicles is unlikely to be successful.

Uprooting music education pedagogies and curricula: Becoming-musician and the Deleuzian refrain

Based on the British choralism movement of the nineteenth century, the historical legacy of music education in Canada and the US is one of social control. By the twentieth century, North American music educators used choral singing and music listening to teach music literacy skills to groups assumed to be in need of ‘improvement’: the working class, immigrants, and school-age children. Deploying so-called good music to improve moral character and instill national pride, their goal was to create docile citizens content with their place in society and committed to hard work. Exclusions, stereotyping, and arbitrary standards in music education still construct acceptable musics and musical behaviours along lines of race, gender, class, and sexuality that support the status quo and maintain social order. Uprooting music education practices from these manifestations of the Deleuzian refrain that constrains the profession opens spaces for transformative musical and educational potentialities.

The Element of Surprise

Seven years old and wise far beyond their years, my brother Tommy and cousin Mickey once hatched a remarkable and outlandish plan for taking over the I had been watching them for a few minutes as they huddled around the kitchen table. One minute, their heads were close together, whispering strategies and adding details to the large paper with what appeared to be schematic drawings of red lines and arrows. The next minute, their arms waved wildly making grand swooping motions. When it was finally too much for me to bear, I ambled over to the table and pulled up a chair. So, what you guys working on, I asked innocently. The boys paused a moment and looked up at me. Tommy slapped his hands on the drawings. Mickey responded, Oh, just a plan to take over the world. My brother smiled proudly, affirming with a bobble-head nod. At 11, I had heard some crazy plans out of these two clowns, but this, I thought, was way over the edge even for them. Since I had assumed responsibility for introducing them to a little thing called reality, I pushed forward. OK. You two planning to take over the Just you? I asked. Yes, we have it all worked out, Mickey said. We going to use two helicopters. I should have known better, but I asked, Would you mind telling me how you plan to accomplish this? They paused and looked at me with what I interpreted as pity for my low IQ. We're counting heavily on the element of they said. The element of surprise. Well, it certainly would be a surprise, I agreed. And you know, there days I wonder if maybe they could have pulled it off if they'd actually had access to helicopters, and their feet could have reached the floor pedals. Surprise as a weapon This encounter was my introduction to the element of surprise as a strategic weapon. Over time, I've seen this weapon used to create panic and to slide some pretty remarkable craziness into schools--No Child Left Behind being one example. This year, I got two more of these surprises. One from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ); the other from the Kentucky Education Professional Standards Board. One day last summer I sat almost comatose working on one of many reports required by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) as part of its upcoming accreditation visit to Berea College. When the little bell announcing a new e-mail chimed, I was grateful for an excuse to escape the mind-numbing reports if only for a second or two. Reading the e-mail, I was surprised I had not heard the steady thwap, thwap, thwap of helicopter blades circling above me. The e-mail from NCTQ announced it had paired with U.S. News & World Report to rate teacher education programs. NCTQ's purpose was clear, or so the e-mail claimed. The ratings are meant to help aspiring teachers identify programs that will best prepare them for the classroom, aid school districts in knowing where they should target their new hire efforts, and assist education leaders and policy makers in evaluating best and worst practices. They offer no definitions of what they mean by best and worst practices or programs or how I might find out what arbitrary standards they've set. My head dropped into my hands and then onto my keyboard. As it fell, I heard a string of expletives from a voice I later realized was my own. There I sat, giving up my whole summer for the second year in a row to get ready for accreditation only to hear that there would be still another agency to accommodate. …

Comment on de Brantes, Rastogi, and Painter: Reducing Avoidable Complications in Patients with Chronic Diseases: ThePrometheusApproach

Since the Institute of Medicine's publications (1999, 2001) that highlighted major deficiencies in the quality of health care in the United States, extensive efforts have been made to improve patient care. Legislation was passed that requires reporting of compliance with national performance measures (Public Law 109–171, 2006), guidelines were developed by specialty societies to provide clinical direction (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality 2011) and pay-for-performance programs were underwritten by hospitals and insurers (Lindenauer et al. 2007). There is little evidence to suggest that these initiatives substantially improved the overall quality of patient care. Meanwhile, health care costs continue to spiral out of control, threatening the stability and welfare of our entire economy. HSR's December Theme Issue on Payment Reform addresses “an area that will undoubtedly be of critical importance as the nation gears up to implement one of the largest American health reform initiatives in history” (Fraser, Encinosa, and Baker 2010). In this issue, de Brantes, Rastogi, and Painter (2010) attempt to demonstrate that the recently developed Prometheus payment system can make a substantial, relatively painless contribution to quality improvement and cost containment by creating strong financial incentives for health care providers to reduce costly potentially avoidable complications (PACs). Although implementation of the Prometheus payment system in several pilot sites was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in February 2008 (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2011), analyses presented in this paper utilized only historical data from a large claims data set and projections by other investigators. Based on the assumption that a prototypical practice achieved target complication rates, the authors projected a net gain of “close to U.S.$20,000” for this practice if the Prometheus payment system were employed. While not a clinically achievable end-point, the authors identify that the elimination of all PACs from this prototypical practice would have a “total calculated margin opportunity for the practice [that] is close to U.S.$600,000.” From their analysis of this single prototypical practice, the authors concluded that “the incentives in the Prometheus Payment appear to create the impetus for reduction in PACs.” In their abstract, they extended their findings to suggest that “total costs associated to the six chronic conditions studied could decrease by 3.8 percent” as a result of nationwide adoption of Prometheus payment reform. A careful examination of this paper calls all of these conclusions into question. It also exposes several unintended consequences that are likely to undermine efforts to address the current health care crisis in the United States. These unintended consequences arise from an acceptance of three fallacies: the fallacy of the prototypical practice, the fallacy of arbitrary standards, and the fallacy of something for nothing.

The impact of fresh produce specifications on the Australian food and nutrition system: a case study of the north Queensland banana industry

To use the north Queensland banana industry as a case study to examine the extent to which cosmetic standards set by retailers influence the amount of edible waste generated on-farm and the effect of this on the sustainability of the Australian food and nutrition system. Waste audits were performed on-farm at a banana packing shed to quantify the amount of fruit discarded due to cosmetic imperfections. These data, together with production records provided by the Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries and interviews with growers, were used to inform a nutritional analysis, a life cycle assessment and an economic analysis to quantify nutritional, environmental and economic impacts. North Queensland, Australia Banana farms and packing shed.ResultBetween 10 and 30 % of the north Queensland banana crop is discarded on-farm. Of this, 78 % was found to be due to cosmetic imperfections, which equates to an industry total of 37 000 tonnes per annum. This waste represents a loss of 137 billion kilojoules with accompanying macro- and micronutrients. The life cycle assessment indicated that approximately 16 300 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, 11·2 gigalitres of virtual water as well as other natural resources are embodied in the waste. There is an industry-wide, economic loss of approximately $AU 26·9 million per annum. The majority of on-farm banana waste is caused by arbitrary cosmetic standards set by retailers, resulting in significant nutritional, environmental and economic losses. Public health nutritionists have a role to play across the entire food chain to minimize the impacts of waste on the food system.

Aid Accountability and Participatory Approaches in Post-Disaster Housing Reconstruction

Abstract In the last decade, housing has become one of the most prominent and best funded sectors in large-scale post-disaster reconstruction efforts. This has especially been the case in Asian developing countries where both official and private aid helped finance a significant amount of the housing reconstruction. Despite the emphasis upon community involvement, inclusive and participatory processes for housing reconstruction by international non-governmental organizations, recent experiences show that such ideas often do not readily translate in practice on the ground. This paper analyses the necessary conditions for successful involvement by local beneficiaries in rebuilding their homes following natural disasters. The analysis is situated within the context of community recovery, and the trade-off between centralized donor planning, and community driven initiatives, using primary and secondary data collected from post-tsunami Aceh, Indonesia. The paper also discusses how various stakeholders (including recipient government and donors) evaluate and make use of the practical capacities of affected persons and communities to be involved in planning, building and monitoring processes in the housing sector. Our research focused on the level and types of roles played by the aid beneficiaries in the housing reconstruction process in Aceh. In spite of considerable rhetoric about participation and inclusive reconstruction accompanying the post-tsunami reconstruction by various donors, a number of systemic barriers created considerable distance between beneficiaries and NGOs in Aceh in the housing sector. The drive for efficiency and need to produce tangible results quickly, mixed with the sheer number of stakeholders and resources involved, created a largely top-down environment in which decisions were centralized, and arbitrary standards imposed. This was exacerbated by an extensive chain of sub-contractors, a large supply of lower-cost imported labor, and highlighted the importance of local political affiliations, leading to weak accountability and reduced aid effectiveness.

Lavender, Menaced: Lesbianism, Obscenity Law, and the Feminist Antipornography Movement

This article examines the means by which obscenity law, as an instrument of heteronormativity, operated against depictions of lesbianism in the post-World War II United States. As persistent obscenity charges served to reify the conflation of lesbianism and obscenity, bolstering an already operative antigay framework, judicial rulings repeatedly ratified this equation, holding depictions of lesbianism to arbitrary and anomalous legal standards that insured its continued stigmatization. After an analysis of case law and the legal targeting of lesbian imagery, the article goes on to argue that this hitherto unexamined story provides a crucial backdrop for understanding lesbian responses to the feminist antipornography movement that emerged in the 1970s, as lesbians often proved resistant to a movement whose discourse frequently resonated with earlier legal language utilized in the suppression of lesbian imagery.

Measurement of wheat germ agglutinin binding with a fluorescence microscope

Signal intensity in fluorescence microscopy is often measured relative to arbitrary standards. We propose a calibration method based on a solution of the same fluorophore, whose binding to cells needs to be quantified. The method utilizes the low sensitivity of intensity to the object distance in wide-field imaging of uniform materials. Liquid layers of slowly varying depth were prepared by immersing a spherical lens into a drop of a fluorophore placed on a slide. Flatfield-corrected images of the contact and surrounding areas showed linear dependence of the gray level on the depth of fluorescent liquid. This allowed conversion of the measured intensity into the number of molecules per unit area. The method was applied to different cell types stained by WGA-Alexa 488 and WGA-TRITC. Consistent results were obtained by comparing microscopy with flow cytometry, comparing imaging through different objectives and comparing different WGA conjugates. Reproducibility of calibration was within 97% when low magnification was used. Fluorescence of free and bound WGA was found to be different, however, and therefore precise measurement of the number of cell-bound molecules was problematic in this particular system. We conclude that the method achieves reliable measurement of cellular staining in the units of soluble fluorophore. For probes whose fluorescent properties are unaffected by binding, quantification of staining in true molecular units should be possible.

Do 'Off-Site' Adult Businesses Have Secondary Effects? Legal Doctrine, Social Theory, and Empirical Results

Expressive activities that occur inside adult entertainment businesses are protected under the First Amendment. Ordinances aimed at regulating adult businesses must be motivated by a legitimate concern for the businesses' potential adverse secondary effects, including ambient noise, blight, and crime. To demonstrate that its motives are legitimate, the government must collect and weigh secondary effects evidence prior to enacting an ordinance. The courts have set a low evidentiary threshold for the government. The government can rely on secondary effects studies conducted in other places, for example, and on evidence that fails to satisfy arbitrary standards of rigor. The courts require that the government's evidence be relevant and reliable, however, and this requirement opens the door to Constitutional challenges. Recently, stores that sell sexually-explicit merchandise strictly for off-premise use have challenged the relevance of the government's secondary effects evidence to off-site adult businesses. The typical challenge argues (1) that off-site adult businesses are a distinct business model; (2) that no study has reported secondary effects for off-site adult businesses; and (3) that common sense dictates that off-site adult stores could not generate secondary effects. In 2002, agreeing with this argument, a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel struck down a San Antonio ordinance regulating off-site adult businesses. In the wake the 5th Circuit's Encore Videos decision, off-site adult businesses have used the same argument to challenge government ordinances throughout the U.S. In some cases, courts have agreed with the argument. In other cases, to avoid litigation, governments have agreed not to enforce regulations against off-site adult businesses. If the argument can be adapted to other adult business models, the Constitutionality of all adult business regulations are questioned. In this essay, we examine the legal, logical, and empirical bases of the argument used by off-site adult businesses to challenge the Constitutionality of ordinances. After describing the evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court's secondary effects doctrine, we apply the routine activity theory of crime to the off-site adult business model. Criminological theory predicts that all adult business models, including the off-site model, will have secondary effects. To test the theory, we report the results of a case study of an off-site adult business. Like other adult business models, this off-site store has large, significant crime-related secondary effect. Finally, we discuss the legal implications of the case study findings.

Efficiencies of Balance

Arbitrary measures of efficiency unsettle the dichotomy between engineering efficiency and efficiency in more popular forms: this dichotomy runs through the literature on the progressive era USA. Arbitrary efficiency standards were developed late in the progressive era for use in cases where ideal or theoretical efficiency could not be calculated. Arbitrary standards mediated between technical efficiency and efficiency's other forms, and illustrate important similarities between them. Examples of technical efficiency from Engineering Magazine, a prominent engineering journal, and of personal efficiency from the Independent, a prominent general interest journal of reform, reveal a common emphasis on efficiency as a tool of balance. In both, efficiency was a tool to help guarantee regularity, stability, and reliability, and used similar techniques of control, including continual surveillance and adjustment and deference to outside authority. Arbitrary measures of efficiency crossed the boundaries between the technical and personal, and underscore a shared foundation in their reliance on expertise.

Atrazine Sorption Kinetics In A Characterized Soil: Predictive Calculations

The use and risks of agricultural pesticides will continue. It is proposed here that better control and possibly some prevention of environmental and health problems should replace the arbitrary standards and post- event monitoring that are still current practice. Mathematical models have been developed for atrazine in a characterized soil from outside Ottawa, Ontario. Experimental data obtained bythe on line HPLC microextraction method were used for the development of the models. The labile sorption sites were treated as a reactant and the number of sites per gram of soil was used to define stoichiometry. This allowed a second-order kinetics integral rate law to be used for sorption from solution onto labile sorption sites, and a first order kinetics integral rate law to be used for bound residue formation. An experimental check and error analyses indicate that the type of model can be used for predictive calculations. The physical meaning of the distribution coefficient K(D) is also considered. The model suggests some practical implications for leaching through soil and for transport by storm runoff. The type of model would be best used for providing input data for fate and transport hydrology models.

What’s new in the other journals?

What’s new in the other journals?

Scientifically Debased Research on Learning, 1854–2006

By its emphasis on arbitrary standards and misleading systems of accountability, the No Child Left Behind Act has had deleterious effects on classroom practice, teacher education, and even educational research. The new constraints on educational research, driven by a logic of randomized field tests, are part of a larger and more invidious international managerialism that subordinates individual biographies to state‐based bureaucratic control.

Parental authority, patient's best interest and refusal of resuscitation at borderline gestational age

Potential conflict exists when parents refuse a medical intervention for their child that the physician feels obligated to provide. For the anticipated delivery of a preterm newborn, this conflict might exist if the parents refuse resuscitation. At borderline viability, most neonatologists are likely to respect the parents' wishes. However, there will be some gestational age threshold above which the physician will feel compelled to resuscitate despite parental refusal, and will be ethically justified in doing so. The location of that threshold should be determined by the application of sound ethical reasoning, rather than relying on habit or arbitrary standards. That reasoning should include an honest assessment of the benefits and burdens to the child, short-term and long-term, of attempted resuscitation, made in light of relevant mortality and morbidity data. However, a rational analysis will also require consideration of whether the patient's best interest standard should be strictly applied, or whether the interests of others, such as family members, should also be taken into account.

Monitoring of Petroleum-Related Environmental Contamination Using Fluorescence Fingerprinting

Petroleum and its refined products are considered the most complex contaminants frequently impacting the environment in significant quantities. They have heterogeneous chemical composition and alterations occur during environmental weathering. No single analytical method exists to characterize the petroleum-related environmental contamination. For monitoring, the analytical approaches include gravimetric, spectrometric and chromatographic methods having significant differences in their selectivity, sensitivity and cost-effectiveness. Recording fluorescence fingerprints of the cyclohexane extracts of the water, suspended solids, sediment or soil samples and applying appropriate statistical evaluation (e.g. by correlating the concatenated emission spectra of the fingerprints of the samples with arbitrary standards (e.g. petroleum products)), provides a powerful, cost-effective analytical tool for characterization of the type of oil pollution and detecting the most harmful aromatic components of the petroleum contaminated matrix. For monitoring purposes, the level of the contamination can be expressed as the equivalent concentration of an appropriate characteristic standard, based on the fluorescence intensities at the relevant characteristic wavelengths. These procedures are demonstrated in the monitoring of petroleum-related pollution in the water and suspended sediment in the Danube river basin

The Evolutionary Psychology of Facial Beauty

What makes a face attractive and why do we have the preferences we do? Emergence of preferences early in development and cross-cultural agreement on attractiveness challenge a long-held view that our preferences reflect arbitrary standards of beauty set by cultures. Averageness, symmetry, and sexual dimorphism are good candidates for biologically based standards of beauty. A critical review and meta-analyses indicate that all three are attractive in both male and female faces and across cultures. Theorists have proposed that face preferences may be adaptations for mate choice because attractive traits signal important aspects of mate quality, such as health. Others have argued that they may simply be by-products of the way brains process information. Although often presented as alternatives, I argue that both kinds of selection pressures may have shaped our perceptions of facial beauty.

A critical assessment of the impact of the European Union Tissues and Cells Directive (2004) on laboratory practices in assisted conception

The European Union's Tissues and Cells Directive (2004) establishes an extensive framework of standards for all tissue banks throughout the EU. This article considers how the requirements of the Directive might be expected to achieve the stated goals of promoting the safety of assisted conception treatments and/or facilitating the achievement of higher success rates. While there will certainly be some significant costs to implementing these systems, there are substantial benefits and returns, for example, quality improvement and risk minimization. However, there are grave problems with the feasibility, effectiveness, and probable adverse impacts of applying arbitrary clean room air quality standards to assisted conception facilities, especially IVF laboratories. This is likely to have negligible impact on the already low risks of both culture contamination and operator infection, but would severely compromise the ability to maintain gametes and embryos under optimum environmental conditions. Proper consideration must therefore be given to the particular circumstances that affect reproductive tissues (indeed, the same is true for all areas of tissue banking), to ensure that the final technical regulations are founded upon realistic expectations based on objective evidence from process-based systems. The creation of the highest quality embryos, and healthy children, must always remain the primary focus of assisted conception treatment.

Drugs and human memory (part 2). Clinical, theoretical, and methodologic issues.

Drugs and human memory (part 2). Clinical, theoretical, and methodologic issues.