Intentional Transmission Research Articles

A system dynamics model for intentional transmission of HIV/AIDS using cross impact analysis

The system dynamics approach is a holistic way of solving problems in real-time scenarios. This is a powerful methodology and computer simulation modeling technique for framing, understanding, and discussing complex issues and problems. System dynamics modeling and simulation is often the background of a systemic thinking approach and has become a management and organizational development paradigm. This paper proposes a system dynamics approach for modeling the phenomenon of intentional transmission of HIV/AIDS by non-disclosure. The model is built using the Cross Impact Analysis (CIA) method of relating entities and attributes relevant to the risky conduct of HIV+ individuals in any given community. The proposed model uses a hypothetical cross impact matrix that relates pairs of attributes. The factors that impact non-disclosure are identified by simulating the model through dynamic difference equations. After the simulation results are reviewed, two policies are introduced and tested in order to observe the progress in the system state.

Discrimination of Those Livining with HIV and AIDS in Ireland

John Williams POZ Ireland The protection of persons with HIV or AIDS in Ireland is confined to isolated measures of limited scope. HIV and AIDS discrimination occurs in issues of: Confidentiality, Financial & Insurance, Employment, Medical, Education and Social. Confidentiality: Breaches in confidentiality are thought necessary to protect the HIV positive person, to protect another individual or to protect the welfare of society. The Medical Council's Guide to ethical Behaviour and Fitness to Practice sections 46.02 and 46.03 allow for breaches in confidentiality. 46.02: Should it appear that the welfare of other health care workers may be properly considered to be endangered, the Council would not consider it to be unethical if those who might be at risk of infection, whilst treating the patient, were to be informed of the risk to themselves. 46.03: In the exceptional circumstances of spouses or other partners being at risk, the need to disclose the position to them might be more pressing, but here again the doctor should urgently seek the patient's consent to disclosure. If this is refused, the doctor may, given the circumstances of the case, consider it a duty to inform the spouse or other partner. If breaches in confidentiality are to be considered, that decision must be made: with a full enquiry into the situation by an expert review panel and not by a single doctor or other health care provider with the person's full permission allowing the HIV person access to legal advice While any intentional transmission of HI V is staunchly repudiated, any right a doctor may consider he/she has to inform another party of that patient's HIV status, and to be able to make that decision alone is too volatile a position to safely adopt.

Criminalising HIV transmission: punishment without protection

Allegations of the reckless or intentional transmission of HIV raise challenging questions about how states can best address a disease which is transmitted primarily through behaviours that both states and community “police” in different ways. This paper argues that in the rare cases in which someone engages in specific behaviour with the intent to infect another person with HIV, existing laws such as laws against battery are sufficient to allow for the application of the criminal law. It discusses three key points: the potential consequences of new laws criminalising the transmission of HIV, why vague laws criminalising the knowing transmission of HIV fail to meet key requirements of criminal law and are an abuse of the state’s policing power, and thirdly, the growing inclusion of such laws within sexual offences legislation. Laws criminalising the transmission of HIV risk bringing within the scope of legal sanction people living with HIV who are acting in ways that do not merit punishment and may as a result of prosecution face adverse human rights consequences.

身障者用パソコン入力のための注視点検出機能付きＨＭＤ

Physically handicapped people such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, who can move only their eyes, have difficulty transmitting their intentions to the surrounding people. As an intention transmission device that a user can operate using eye movements, we experimentally produced a head-mounted display (HMD) with the eye gaze detection function. Conventional HMDs of this type are large, and the eye-gaze calibration procedure must be repeated if a user moves relative to the HMD. To solve these problems, the methodology for eye-gaze detection, and the optical systems to detect eye gaze and to present the displayed image have been improved and are described in this paper. The experimental results show that the developed HMD can maintain precise eye gaze detection even if the relative position between the finder and the eye changes.

A Wearable Biomechatronic Interface for Controlling Robots with Voluntary Foot Movements

This paper presents an experimental investigation on a novel interface for high level control of mechatronic systems, by exploiting voluntary user's foot movements. Based on a biomechanical analysis of the foot anatomy and joint kinematics, a sensory system is designed for detecting pressure variations on selected areas of the insole, obtained from four different foot movements that can be purposively controlled by the person. A prototype is developed that integrates four sensitive areas, battery, and electronics into a wearable insole; electronics are used for data acquisition and wireless transmission, in order to have a stand-alone device. The prototype foot interface is experimentally tested in the control of a prosthetic hand, as a model of a typical device that can be effectively operated by foot movements. Experimental trials were conducted with ten able-bodied subjects and the results confirmed the usability and effectiveness of the foot interface in terms of correct and prompt transmission of the user's intention to the controlled device. Comparative experimental trials were performed with electromyography (EMG)-based control of the same prosthesis, which represents the most advanced interface currently available in clinical implants for amputees. The comparative results showed a significant decrease in required adaptation and learning from the user's side

2P1-A32 人工物から人間への意図伝達における人間の心理的姿勢の影響

2P1-A32 人工物から人間への意図伝達における人間の心理的姿勢の影響

Human twelve-month-olds point cooperatively to share interest with and helpfully provide information for a communicative partner

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.

New Considerations in Infectious Disease Outbreaks: The Threat of Genetically Modified Microbes

Genetically altered microbes are used widely in the conduct of scientific study and have facilitated the development of new medical therapies, preventive strategies, and diagnostic tools. Unfortunately, such organisms may also cause infectious disease outbreaks as a result of accidental or intentional transmission to humans. The unique microbial properties of genetically altered pathogens and the clinical symptoms exhibited by persons infected with them may impede the usual diagnostic and clinical evaluations or preventive strategies. Practicing physicians and clinicians at microbiology laboratories, who would be the first to observe such infections, must consider the broad clinical possibilities of illnesses caused by deliberately altered microorganisms and the potential difficulty in confirming a diagnosis.

PERCEPTIONS OF HIV RISKS AND PREVENTION STRATEGIES BY RURAL AND SMALL CITY AFRICAN AMERICANS WHO USE COCAINE: VIEWS FROM THE INSIDE

HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects African Americans, yet knowledge gaps exist regarding their views of risks and effective prevention strategies. This focus group study of rural and small city African Americans who use drugs sought to assess these perceptions. Common views of HIV risks included drug use, physical appearance as an indicator of HIV status, intentional transmission, having multiple partners, unprotected sex, bisexuality, and unfounded trust. Trading sex for drugs and unprotected sex when high were seen as drug use/HIV risk links, while HIV education and condom use were identified as ways to decrease risk. Perceptions of effective strategies included community-based programs, gender specific groups, providing food or other incentives, and making the program fun. Healthcare professionals and parents were viewed as the best people to promote HIV prevention. Based on the findings, effective intervention for this target group should encompass ethnocentric community-based strategies that focus on HIV education, condom use skills, and drug risk reduction.

Human twelve-month-olds point cooperatively to share interest with and helpfully provide information for a communicative partner

This paper investigates infant pointing at 12 months. Three recent experimental studies from our lab are reported and contrasted with existing accounts on infant communicative and social-cognitive abilities. The new results show that infant pointing at 12 months already is a communicative act which involves the intentional transmission of information to share interest with, or provide information for other persons. It is argued that infant pointing is an inherently social and cooperative act which is used to share psychological relations between interlocutors and environment, repairs misunderstandings in proto-conversational turn-taking, and helps others by providing information. Infant pointing builds on an understanding of others as persons with attentional states and attitudes. Findings do not support lean accounts on early infant pointing which posit that it is initially non-communicative, does not serve the function of indicating, or is purely self-centered. It is suggested to investigate the emergence of reference and the motivation to jointly engage with others also before pointing has emerged.

지화 인식을 위한 동영상 처리에 관한 연구

본 논문에서는 흑백 CCD 카메라를 이용하여 청각 장애인의 의사전달 수단인 지화 동작을 동영상으로 입력받아 인식하여, 편집 가능한 텍스트 문서로 변환하는 시스템을 구현하였다. 일련의 입력 영상들 중에서 흐린 영상과 선명한 영상의 구분은 영상의 잔상을 이용하였고, 촬영된 연속 영상들의 배열로부터 문자 자소를 구하고, 오토마타를 적용하여 완성된 문자를 문서 편집기에 출력시켰다. 획득된 선명한 영상 데이터 중 변화가 심한 손목 부분을 제거한 후, 최대 원형 이동법을 이용하여 손의 무게 중심점을 구하고, 원형 패턴 벡터 알고리즘을 적용하여 지화 해석에 필요한 손을 인식하였다. 손 중심으로부터 거리 스펙트럼을 이용하여 지화 인식에 사용되는 손 모양의 특징 벡터를 추출하고, 퍼지 추론을 적용하여 표준 패턴과 입력 패턴의 특징벡터를 비교, 지화 동작을 인식하였다. In this paper, we realized a system that receives the dynamic images of finger languages, which is the method of intention transmission of the hearing disabled person, using the white and black CCD camera, and that recognizes the images and converts them to the editable text document. We use the afterimage to draw a sharp line between indistinct images and clear images from a series of inputted images, and get the character alphabet from the away of continuous images and output the accomplished character to the word editor by applying the automata theory. After the system removes the varied wrist part from the data of clean image, it gets the controid point of hand by the maximum circular movement method and recognizes the hand that is necessary to analyze the finger languages by applying the circular pattern vector algorithm. The system abstracts the characteristic vectors of the hand using the distance spectrum from the center of the hand and it compares the characteristic vector of inputted pattern from the standard pattern by applying the fuzzy inference and recognizes the movement of finger languages.

Transmission of Human Intention by Impulsive Sound

We discuss a basic human-machine interface for transmitting human intention to a machine via impulsive sound, using wavelet analysis to determine whether impulsive sound is recognized. We found that tapping transmits indicates human intention to a machine, if we choose an appropriate analysis wavelet and its scaling parameter. We found that Daubechies wavelet function parameters were feasible for our purpose at N=3 (order) and j=8 (scaling parameter). This interface should prove useful for orders in regular work and emergency stoppage.

2111 設計情報・設計意図情報を扱うための統合モデルについて

2111 設計情報・設計意図情報を扱うための統合モデルについて

Accounting for unprotected sex: stories of agency and acceptability

Based on the idea that risks are knowable, calculable and preventable, dominant social scientific and health promotion discourses foster an image of individual risk control and responsibility. The presentation of the self is a moral enterprise. Accounts of unprotected sex by HIV positive people who have the potential to transmit HIV to their sexual partners can be particularly morally charged. Drawing on 73 depth qualitative interviews with HIV positive people and their sexual partners, this paper explores how the interview accounts of unprotected sex can illuminate the way in which the self is presented within the context of situated norms of risk acceptability and moral responsibility. We identify two forms of account: stories of agency; and stories of acceptability. Stories of agency tend to deny agency and abdicate individual responsibility given the circumstances, and were also a key feature of accounts in which the sexual partners of HIV positive people were placed at risk of HIV transmission. Categories of appeal included the denial of agency as a consequence of: risk calculus and condom accidents; alcohol and drug effects; powerlessness and coercion; and forces of nature. By contrast, stories of acceptability tend to justify unprotected sex as acceptable. Categories of appeal included: HIV positive concordance; and commitment in relationships. Other forms of justification included: alter responsibility; and intentional HIV transmission. We conclude that accounts of risk management are risk managed. We call for greater attention by social scientists to the way in which accounts are constructed, and in particular, to ‘anti-rational’ forms of explanation within accounts.

AIDS and Criminal Justice

▪ Abstract This article reviews scholarship at the intersection of anthropology, criminal justice, and AIDS. Street ethnography is presented in a political and historical context, focusing on the distinctive ways that anthropologists have contributed to discussions of illegal drug and sex markets in poor urban neighborhoods. The review also considers subjects that may be explored by anthropologists in the future, including imprisonment as an institutional HIV risk factor that intensifies individual behavioral risk and the criminalization of intentional HIV transmission. This research area raises critical questions about how culture and law shape viral risk.

Ignorance is bliss? HIV and moral duties and legal duties to forewarn

In 1997, a court in Cyprus jailed Pavlos Georgiou for fifteen months for knowingly infecting a British woman, Janet Pink, with HIV-1 through unprotected sexual intercourse. Pink met Georgiou in...

Gesture recognition using an acceleration sensor and its application to musical performance control

It is understood that nonverbal means of communication are more important than verbal communication in the transmission of intention or emotion. Gestures using body or hand are typical nonverbal means of communication. Human intention or emotion appears to be expressed to a greater extent by the force applied to the body than by the position of the hand. The authors noted that the force acting during motion can be sensed as an acceleration and therefore attempted recognition of gestures with a three-dimensional acceleration sensor. In the experiments using this system, the changes of the acceleration, the rotational force, and the directional distribution of the acceleration are determined from the sequential three-dimensional acceleration data, as features of the motion. By examining the extent of matching to standard patterns, ten kinds of gestures can be discriminated with a nearly 100 percent recognition rate. A real-time music control system is also constructed by applying the proposed method. Compared to the conventional methods using image processing or the data gloves, in the new system the delay in tempo detection is shorter and the mechanism is simpler. The system gives a clue to the design of flexible and sensitive man-machine interfaces based on gesture. © 1997 Scripta Technica, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 80(5): 9–17, 1997

Sacred Deviance and AIDS in a North American Buddhist Community*

This essay presents a community AIDS narrative concerning an alleged case of intentional HIV transmission between spiritual teacher and student. Analysis focuses on the relation between legal and popular representation of criminal intent, the denial of AIDS risk, and the neighborhood of belief. In this framework, alternative application of traditional criminal law and HIV‐specific penal statutes are considered as both prosecution strategies and opportunities for public spectacle.

High resolution SETI: Experiences and prospects

Megachannel spectroscopy with sub-Hertz resolution constitutes an attractive strategy for a microwave search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), assuming the transmission of a narrowband radiofrequency beacon. Such resolution matches the properties of the interstellar medium, and the necessary Doppler corrections provide a high degree of interference rejection. We have constructed a frequency-agile receiver with an FFT-based 8 megachannel digital spectrum analyzer, on-line signal recognition, and multithreshold archiving. We are using it to conduct a meridian transit search of the northern sky at the Harvard-Smithsonian 26-m antenna, with a second identical system scheduled to begin observations in Argentina this month. Successive 400 kHz spectra, at 0.05 Hz resolution, are searched for features characteristic of an intentional narrowband beacon transmission. These spectra are centered on guessable frequencies (such as λ21 cm), referenced successively to the local standard of rest, the galactic barycenter, and the cosmic blackbody rest frame. This search has rejected interference admirably, but is greatly limited both in total frequency coverage and sensitivity to signals other than carriers. We summarize five years of high resolution SETI at Harvard, in the context of answering the questions “How useful is narrowband SETI, how serious are its limitations, what can be done to circumvent them, and in what direction should SETI evolve?” Increasingly powerful signal processing hardware, combined with ever-higher memory densities, are particularly relevant, permitting the construction of compact and affordable gigachannel spectrum analyzers covering hundreds of megahertz of instantaneous bandwidth.

Ultranarrowband searches for extraterrestrial intelligence with dedicated signal-processing hardware

Multichannel spectroscopy with millihertz resolution constitutes an attractive strategy for a microwave search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), assuming the transmission of a narrowband radiofrequency beacon. Such resolution matches the properties of the interstellar medium, and the necessary receiver Doppler corrections provide a high degree of interference rejection. We have constructed a frequency-agile swept receiver with an 8,388,608-channel spectrum analyzer, on-line signal recognition, and multithreshold archiving. A search of 250 Sun-like stars at 1.4 and 2.8 GHz has been carried out with the Arecibo 305-m antenna, and a meridian transit search of the northern sky is in progress at the Harvard-Smithsonian 26-m antenna. Successive spectra of 400 kHz at 0.05 Hz resolution are searched for features characteristics of an intentional narrowband beacon transmission. These spectra are centered on guessable (“magic”) frequencies (such as the 21-cm hydrogen hyperfine line), referenced successively to the local standard of rest, the galactic barycenter, and the cosmic blackbody rest frame.