Greater Freedom Research Articles

On the Samaritan’s Dilemma, Foreign Aid, and Freedom

This paper presents an extension of the two-period Samaritan’s Dilemma in order to analyze the potential for foreign aid to promote freedom. An example is the United States’ recent opening towards Cuba. It is shown that a donor nation’s dual concern for economic reforms and greater freedoms can exacerbate the Samaritan’s Dilemma, even when economic aid is coupled with targets for freedom. By contrast, a policy that is focused on freedom alone can potentially resolve the Samaritan’s Dilemma. Such a policy requires the donor to temper the degree of altruism that motivates its provision of economic aid to the recipient nation.

Doing Good, Choosing Freely: How Moral Enhancement Can Be Compatible with Individual Freedom.

Moral enhancement has been accused of curtailing human freedoms. In this article, I suggest the opposite: moral enhancement and individual freedom can go hand in hand. The first section defines freedom, enhancement, and morality and argues that only a naturalistic account of morality allows for the concept of enhancement. The second section looks at ways that freedom may be threatened by moral enhancement, especially by the method of implementation, the creation of new externalities, or the limitation of volitional options. I argue that virtue ethics offers the safest model for moral enhancement. The third section describes ways in which moral enhancement can be achieved while maintaining, or even increasing, individual freedom. Such methods include shifting of the moral axis, replacing vicious options with virtuous ones, and increasing the number of volitional options available. The article concludes in the fourth section by arguing that the technology and techniques that allow us moral enhancement are likely to be the same ones that allow greater freedom than we already enjoy.

Party images in Northern Ireland: evidence from a new dataset

ABSTRACTThe literature on belief systems in mass publics shows that survey respondents typically have difficulty in describing their images of political parties; only about half offer a meaningful description of how they see individual parties. This paper investigates what people in Northern Ireland think that parties stand for in their home jurisdiction, in Great Britain and in the Republic of Ireland, using open-ended questions in a survey of 1,008 Northern Ireland residents. Northern Ireland respondents resemble those elsewhere, in that only about half seem able to offer a politically meaningful description of what local parties stand for. Among the more politically sophisticated, the Northern Ireland parties are described in ethnonational terms, the British parties are placed in socio-economic (social class and left-right) categories, but few respondents know how to describe the parties in the Republic of Ireland. There is an intriguing asymmetry in the characterization of Northern Ireland’s unionist and nationalist parties: the DUP emerges as only marginally more ‘hard-line’ than the UUP, whereas a great gulf exists between the SDLP and Sinn Féin, the former being perceived as much more moderate. Notwithstanding high levels of electoral stability in Northern Ireland, our findings show that party supporters vary greatly in their levels of political sophistication, perhaps allowing elites greater freedom of action than if all voters were highly politically informed.

Spatial data analytics of mobility with consumer data

Consumer data arising from the interaction between customers and service providers are becoming ubiquitous. These data are appealing for research because they are frequently collected and quickly released; they cover a wide variety of attitudes, lifestyles and behavioural characteristics; and they are often dynamically replenished and longitudinal. It is demonstrated that consumer data can make important contributions to understanding problems in transport geography and in solving applied problems ranging from migration, infrastructure investment and retail service provision to commuting and individual mobility. However more effective exploitation of these data depends on the construction of bridges to allow greater freedom in the transfer of data from the commercial to the academic sector; it requires development of frameworks for privacy and ethics in the secondary use of personal data; and it is contingent on the emergence of effective strategies for the amelioration of selection bias which impairs the quality of many consumer data sources.

Big Data, exploração ubíqua e propaganda dirigida: novas facetas da indústria cultural

Resumo A emergência da cultura digital a partir do desenvolvimento de novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação levou a críticas ao conceito de indústria cultural elaborado por Horkheimer e Adorno nos anos 1940, definindo a nova configuração a partir da interatividade, comunicação aberta e maior liberdade entre usuários. Entretanto, a um olhar crítico, a nova configuração se revela mais totalitária que a anterior. Todas as ações dos usuários no ambiente digital geram informações que podem ser compiladas e organizadas de acordo com algoritmos matemáticos, configurando o chamado Big Data; essas informações incluem dados sobre preferências, tendências políticas, gênero e perfis de personalidade, e levam a tentativas de vigilância ubíqua e manipulação por meio de propaganda dirigida, sendo política e economicamente muito mais eficaz do que na era da indústria cultural descrita por Adorno. A atualização da teoria crítica da sociedade implica compreender essa nova configuração, suas pretensões e contradições. Nesse sentido, este artigo objetiva tanto atualizar o conceito de indústria cultural, denunciando, assim, as novas formas de manipulação, quanto criticar a ideia de que a liberdade é imanente à Cultura Digital, presente em seus defensores.

Knowing when to step forward, back, or out: An autoethnography of a white researcher in two post-colonial educational contexts

This autoethnography makes use of 10 years of field notes that the author collected while living and working as an educational researcher in Greenland and Hawaii. Using Kaomea’s framework for thinking about when non-Native people should step forward, step back, or step out, the author’s analysis of these field notes indicates that she struggled around knowing her role in these post-colonial communities. The author was hesitant in moving into leadership positions in Greenland because it was only recently decolonized and she feared being perceived as someone interested in usurping qualified Greenlanders to fill important leadership positions. However, in Hawaii, which has had more time to consider its colonial past, the author felt less threatened, which gave her greater freedom to explore opportunities for where she could step forward. The study provides another dimension on white researchers working in post-colonial educational settings, and demonstrates the complexity of navigating post-colonial settings even in circumstances where researchers have personal experience with these power dynamics.

Long-term outcomes after cholecystocolostomy for progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis.

To evaluate the long-term efficacy of cholecystocolostomy surgery for progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis (PFIC). From August 2003 to November 2014, 34 clinically diagnosed children, including 11 with familial intrahepatic cholestasis-1 (FIC1), 13 with bile salt export pump (BSEP) disease, five with low γ-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) disease (levels <100U/L), and five with multidrug resistance class III (MDR3) disease with high GGT (>100U/L), were identified in our center. Data were collected retrospectively from individuals who collectively had 36 surgical operations and two orthotopic liver transplantations (OLT). Serum total bilirubin (0 = 163.54 ± 106.02, 36 months = 23.38 ± 17.66μmol/L) and bile acid (0 = 325.83 ± 153.09, 36 months = 48.36 ± 79.71μmol/L) decreased after cholecystocolostomy in PFIC patients (P < 0.001). All patients experienced decreased severity of pruritus (88.2% vs. 16.1%, P < 0.001) and a greater freedom from growth retardation after cholecystocolostomy (-3.35 vs. -1.03, P < 0.001). Defecation frequency increased in PFIC patients after cholecystocolostomy (P = 0.002). Four patients (three with FIC1 and one with BSEP) experienced recurrence of cholestasis and two underwent reoperation. Two BSEP patients underwent OLT. One patient with BSEP and one patient with MDR3 died due to severe diarrhea and dehydration; one BSEP patient died of intractable constipation. This is the first long-term, large-scale analysis of cholecystocolostomy approaches for PFIC. Approaches single and well tolerated, and generally result in improvement of pruritus and cholestasis.

Efficiency of Generalized Regular [formula omitted]-point grids

Most DFT practitioners use regular grids (Monkhorst-Pack, MP) for integrations in the Brillouin zone. Although regular grids are the natural choice and easy to generate, more general grids whose generating vectors are not merely integer divisions of the reciprocal lattice vectors, are usually more efficient (Wisesa et al., 2016). We demonstrate the efficiency of generalized regular (GR) grids compared to Monkhorst-Pack (MP) and simultaneously commensurate (SC) grids. In the case of metals, for total energy accuracies of one meV/atom, GR grids are 60% faster on average than MP grids and 20% faster than SC grids. GR grids also have greater freedom in choosing the k-point density, enabling the practitioner to achieve a target accuracy with the minimum computational cost.

Minorías prósperas en la economía corsaria literaria

Spanish literature written by captives or about captivity in North Africa distinguished itself from the majority of Spanish Golden Age works because of its positive portrayal of Jews. Not only were these literary representations benevolent, but they were also quite realistic. Like many of their historical counterparts, the literary Jews Brahín (Los cautivos de Argel) and David (Guzmán el Bravo) practiced their religion clandestinely in Spain before moving to the Maghreb, where they enjoyed greater freedoms and privileges, including the ability to legally own Christian slaves. Multiple 17th-century autobiographical accounts from Spanish captives in Algiers and Tunis can serve as historical templates to corroborate the precarious, yet simultaneously prosperous, situation of those two literary Jews. Finally, the similarities found in historical sources and these two North African works challenges the notion of Lope de Vega being unequivocally anti-Jewish.

Design, fabrication, and high-gradient testing of an X -band, traveling-wave accelerating structure milled from copper halves

A prototype 11.994 GHz, traveling-wave accelerating structure for the Compact Linear Collider has been built, using the novel technique of assembling the structure from milled halves. The use of milled halves has many advantages when compared to a structure made from individual disks. These include the potential for a reduction in cost, because there are fewer parts, as well as a greater freedom in choice of joining technology because there are no rf currents across the halves’ joint. Here we present the rf design and fabrication of the prototype structure, followed by the results of the high-power test and post-test surface analysis. During high-power testing the structure reached an unloaded gradient of 100 MV/m at a rf breakdown rate of less than 1.5×10−5 breakdowns/pulse/m with a 200 ns pulse. This structure has been designed for the CLIC testing program but construction from halves can be advantageous in a wide variety of applications.11 MoreReceived 9 February 2018DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.21.061001Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Physical SystemsLinear acceleratorsAccelerators & Beams

Minorías prósperas en la economía corsaria literaria

Spanish literature written by captives or about captivity in North Africa distinguished itself from the majority of Spanish Golden Age works because of its positive portrayal of Jews. Not only were these literary representations benevolent, but they were also quite realistic. Like many of their historical counterparts, the literary Jews Brahín (Los cautivos de Argel) and David (Guzmán el Bravo) practiced their religion clandestinely in Spain before moving to the Maghreb, where they enjoyed greater freedoms and privileges, including the ability to legally own Christian slaves. Multiple seventeenth-century autobiographical accounts from Spanish captives in Algiers and Tunis can serve as historical templates to corroborate the precarious, yet simultaneously prosperous, situation of those two literary Jews. Finally, the similarities found in historical sources and these two North African works challenges the notion of Lope de Vega being unequivocally anti-Jewish.

PROPOSALS FOR THE OPTIMIZATION OF PARTS FOR ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING

Additive manufacturing allows greater freedom and new possibilities for designers. Thus, at the manufacturing stage, additive manufacturing has very few geometrical limitations in comparision with traditional manufacturing process. In that context, the optimization of the designs grows in importance. Both topology and multiobjective optimization are fields of great interest as links between the Computer-Aided Design of pieces and the new additive manutacturing techonologies. But these kind of approaches have problems related to the non continuous work flow during the optimization process. This work exposes an initial aproximation to topology and multi-objective optimization of pieces obtained by 3D printing by using the solvers included on the software Grasshopper, which work through structures designed by graphic computer programming. Then, 3D models of the pieces are analyzed in order to determinate the resistance and service behaviour of the optimized designs, and the pieces are obtained by 3D printing in order to check their printability. Keywords: optimization, additive manutacturing, 3D printing, methodology, simulation

Talking about and Doing Elections: The Shaping of a Local Electoral Field in Western Afghanistan

This paper investigates elections as the construction of a two-faceted field in a semi-urban area in Herat, western Afghanistan. Looking at Afghanistan’s 2014 presidential and provincial council elections, the paper first surveys the elections as a discursive field. It tries to understand what the local people, given their historical and social contexts, said about the elections. The second facet examines the elections as a performative field, attempting to unpack how local actors enacted the elections. The paper shows that an election’s discursive and performative framing needs to be situated in the wider historical and social contexts of a place. It also shows that in a place where there is greater freedom immediately following an oppressive era (for instance, that of the Taliban) and where there is egalitarianism among elites, the election is turned into a lively and unpredictable process where the discourse is marked by polyphony and instability, and the performance is characterized by mobilization of ties on various fronts and by shifting differentiation of local actors on political, generational, gender, and other grounds.

Comparing gender discrimination and inequality in indie and traditional publishing

In traditional publishing, female authors’ titles command nearly half (45%) the price of male authors’ and are underrepresented in more prestigious genres, and books are published by publishing houses, which determined whose books get published, subject classification, and retail price. In the last decade, the growth of digital technologies and sales platforms have enabled unprecedented numbers of authors to bypass publishers to publish and sell books. The rise of indie publishing (aka self-publishing) reflects the growth of the “gig” economy, where the influence of firms has diminished and workers are exposed more directly to external markets. Encompassing the traditional and the gig economy, the book industry illuminates how the gig economy may disrupt, replicate, or transform the gender discrimination mechanisms and inequality found in the traditional economy. In a natural experiment spanning from 2002 to 2012 and including over two million book titles, we compare discrimination mechanisms and inequality in indie and traditional publishing. We find that indie publishing, though more egalitarian, largely replicates traditional publishing’s gender discrimination patterns, showing an unequal distribution of male and female authors by genre (allocative discrimination), devaluation of genres written predominantly by female authors (valuative discrimination), and lower prices within genres for books by female authors (within-job discrimination). However, these discrimination mechanisms are associated with far less price inequality in indie, only 7%, in large part due to the smaller and lower range of prices in indie publishing compared to traditional publishing. We conclude that, with greater freedom, workers in the gig economy may be inclined to greater equality but will largely replicate existing labor market segmentation and the lower valuation of female-typical work and of female workers. Nonetheless, price setting for work may be more similar for workers in the gig economy due to market competition that will compress prices ranges.

Contributing Factors to Migration Growth Among Iranian Students: Drivers of Migration to Malaysia

It is estimated that almost 244 million people have migrated around the world for a variety of complex reasons. For some, (tertiary) education has been the primary motivating factor. Countries that experience a brain drain as a result of migration may suffer a population and cultural loss. Iran is believed to suffer from such a brain drain in their skilled-labour market, otherwise known in many areas as education immigration. This study was undertaken to explore why Iranian students emigrate to Malaysia and what are the most common causes of migration growth that have accompanied this trend. A descriptive analytical research method, cross-sectional in nature, was applied. A sample of 250 Iranian post-graduate and undergraduate students—who were studying in Malaysia—was selected randomly to participate in this study. A self-administered questionnaire was adapted to collect data, which was tested for validity and reliability based on the research scholars’ advice and calculating Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α = 0.90). ‘SPSS’ v. 19.0 was used to analyse the data. The significance level was set at 0.05. In total, 219 questionnaires were completed. The majority of students (73.5%) were male, and most of them (62.1%) belonged to the age group of 25–30 years. Nearly 65% of the students had been living in Malaysia for 3 years or more. Low tuition fees and living costs (68%), exceptional educational technologies at Malaysian universities (54.3%), the existence of international companies in Malaysia (65.3%), easy entry to Malaysian universities (70.3%), high rankings of Malaysian universities in the world (58%) and greater freedom in social interaction for respondents compared to Iran (49.3%) were the most compelling reasons for these students’ emigration to Malaysia. Further analysis revealed that Iranian students’ intention to emigrate to Malaysia was significantly correlated with socio-political factors and religious concerns in Iran, reasonable tuition fees in Malaysia and access to advanced technologies and international cooperation in Malaysia. Other contributing factors included the simple process of obtaining an entry visa and subsequent resident visa or work permits for Malaysia and the high rankings of Malaysian universities among international institutions (P value < 0.001). Concern over the issue of immigration continues to mount confounding and challenging legislators, politicians, community leaders, policy-makers and academics to develop solutions to overcome it. In the case of Iran, authorities are required to focus on the big picture of the immigration process and should explore the extent of the challenges Iranian students face. They need to secure the employment of graduates produced by educational institutions to ensure their country does not continue to experience brain drain. A more unified effort is required to stop the brain drain by establishing high-tech, affordable and accessible universities in Iran and offering more freedom in the areas of politics, social and religious activities.

Freedom and Constraint in Teacher Education: Reflections on Experiences Over Time

Teacher education programs in Australia increasingly comply with new and narrowing accountabilities so that they can be approved by diverse regulatory authorities and accredited. This is an auto-biographical narrative study which draws upon the memories of a teacher educator who contrasts her experience of learning to teach in the early 1980s with her recent experience as a Program Leader working with colleagues to design a new Master of Teaching program. She interviews Professor Bernie Neville who was responsible for the design and implementation of the teacher education program she completed in 1983. He reflects on the principles guiding his practice at a time when greater freedoms were possible. She contrasts this with an interview her colleagues conducted with her during the program accreditation phase and highlights tensions in the current process of program design related to an increasing performance-orientation, greater levels of compliance, and managing an over-crowded curriculum.

FE Modelling of the Seismic Behavior of Wide Beam-Column Joints Strengthened with CFRP Systems

A large share of reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings is provided with wide beams being a type of beam allowing greater freedom in the architectural arrangement of interiors, beyond further advantage due to fewer formworks needed during the construction. Nevertheless, little attention has been devoted to the seismic vulnerability of this kind of framed RC buildings as well as to the study of strengthening systems purposely developed for wide beams and wide beam-column connections. Under these premises, this paper proposes simple strengthening solutions made by Fibre Reinforced Polymers (FRP) systems able to effectively improve seismic capacity through feasible arrangement suitable in case a wide beam is present. On the basis of wide beam-column joints previously tested without strengthening system, detailed nonlinear finite element models were calibrated. Then, an FRP strengthening intervention based on a brand new arrangement was modeled in order to perform additional simulations under seismic actions. This way, the effectiveness of the strengthening intervention was assessed finding out that significant strength and ductility increments were achieved with a relatively simple and cheap strengthening arrangement. Additional research would be desirable in the form of experimental tests on the simulated wide beam-column joints.

A GIScience Perspective on the Uncertainty of Context

Geographers have long sought to understand and explain geographic phenomena through their dependence on the properties of site and situation. Yet the characterization of situation or context is fraught with numerous forms of uncertainty, related to data, the selection of situation variables, the geographic scale and extent of context, and the concept of context itself. Research into the uncertainties of geographic information has advanced substantially over the past three decades. New geographic information system techniques are becoming available that allow greater freedom to hypothesize about scale and extent, and new creative approaches to privacy protection might allow greater access in the future to fine-resolution data.

COOPERATION BETWEEN THE MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION AND LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT BODIES OF THE PERM PROVINCE DURING THE PERIOD “PREPARATORY WORK FOR THE COMPULSORY EDUCATION INTRODUCTION”

Introduction. In the history of education, there is still considerable shortfall of the question on mechanisms realization of the general literacy idea in Russia in the beginning of the last century, which gained its popularity around the world at the turn of the 19–20th centuries. Meanwhile, the stage of preparation for cosmopolitan diffusion of compulsory primary education in the Russian Empire, marked by emergence of the special bill drafted by the Ministry of National Education in 1907, is of great interest to the research of opportunities of interaction of the state institutes and regional local self-government bodies (Zemstvo in the Russian language). The aim of the publication is to show the efficiency of joint activities of local self-government bodies and national administrative bodies with reference to example of the system of primary national education formation during 1908–1913 in the Perm province. Methodology and research methods. The methodological base of the present research is based on: the “center-periphery” conceptual model; methods of the retrospective chronological analysis, synthesis, generalization and interpretation of archival documents. Results and scientific novelty. The methodological perspective of studying the history of primary schools organization in pre-revolutionary Russia is proved. The choice of regional (provincial) scale of this process enables to consider features of the public educational policy at the subcountry level; the center-periphery approach to the discussed subject makes it possible to understand more deeply the essence and purposes of the major educational reform. The assessment of the contents on the introduction of compulsory primary education in the Russian Empire is given; the draft bill established standards, new to educational practice, can be listed as follows: “normal duration of training”, “normal school age”, “normal number of children”, “normal school area” (“normal school radius”) and “normal school kit”. The key value and importance of the document consisted in differentiation of powers: in contrast to the Ministry of National Education, the structures of territorial and municipal government bodies had greater freedom of action and were assigned a leading part to put the idea of a compulsory education (Vseobuch in the Russian language) into reality. Dynamics of statistical data on financial government aid to national education is analysed. Activities of all-imperial and provincial school building funds are characterized. It is proved that the essential growth of public financial recourses against the background of vigorous territorial activity not only led to rapid increase in number of schools, but also turned them from local-regional into ministerial-local ones. The conclusion is drawn that due to close cooperation of the Ministry of National Education with local government bodies, the period 1907– 1913 was a key stage of an institutionalization of the Russian compulsory education during the pre-revolutionary times. Practical significance . The results of the research can be adopted when preparing academic courses on the History and Sociology of Education, as well as the Economics of Knowledge.

Experimental Testing and Design of High Performance Shear Links for Eccentrically Braced Frames

Steel links inside Eccentrically Braced Frames (EBFs) can be classified as either short, intermediate or long. The more commonly used short links yield primarily in shear and dissipate incoming energy inside the web of the link. Advances in shear link research and industry practice, particularly the increased use of bolted links, have allowed greater freedom in the design of the link section, as the section used can be decoupled from the collector beam section. Seven shear link specimens were tested inside a full scale EBF set up, and were subjected to AISC’s 2005 shear link loading protocol. Increasing levels of rotation were applied to links of varied cross-sections and intermediate stiffener spacings. Links with low web aspect ratios performed to a higher rotation than past research would have suggested, and when intermediate stiffeners were removed, they performed to an even higher rotation. Recommendations for design are presented, including a relaxation of the stiffener spacing equations when web aspect ratio criteria are met. A provision is also included to allow greater rotational ductilities in EBF frames with low web aspect shear links.