Technical Controls Research Articles

The milk marketing board—Its origins and functions: Part II—Technical services and controls

In the second and final paper, information is given on the extremely wide range of services provided by this producers' organisation to enhance the dairy farmers' returns from the national markets for milk and dairy products. The profit-making and marketing roles of the Board's commercial enterprises—liquid milk dairies, manufacturing creameries and transport fleets—are examined in some detail. The Board's policies in controlling milk quality and in making the major contribution to national advertising and promotion of the various home markets are explained in depth. An account of the considerable range of MMB on-farm services provided for milk producers is included. The paper concludes with a brief reference to the producers' power to dismantle, if desired, this unique example of a producer controlled and producer financed milk marketing organisation serving commercial dairy interests and consumers to the ultimate benefit of the dairy farmers whose creation it is. The fact that such a major agricultural marketing organisation is currently under review by the European Economic Community adds to the topicality of the paper.

Frozen lymphocyte pools as technical and reference controls for lymphocyte transformation.

Healthy individuals' peripheral blood lymphocytes show wide ranges of response to mitogens and allogeneic lymphocytes. When individuals' lymphocytes are pooled together, the responses of the pool are equivalent to the means of the responses of the lymphocytes which comprise the pool. Pooled lymphocytes retain their responsiveness when stored frozen, and may be used as standard responding cells in lymphocyte transformation tests, but are not suitable controls for antigen-induced lymphocyte transformation.

NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND THE INDIAN EXPLOSION

Abstract : India's detonation of a nuclear device beneath the surface of the Rajasthan Desert on 18 May 1974 was a shot heard around the world. Now that more than a year has passed, we can attempt at least a tentative assessment of the significance of the Indian nuclear explosion, as it affects both India and the international problem of checking the further proliferation of nuclear weapons. The most immediately apparent significance of the Indian nuclear explosion was to mark the failure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to exercise an entirely effective political restraint over the will of non-nuclear-weapon states to develop nuclear weapons. Admittedly, India had not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and indeed had criticized the treaty as discriminatory on the grounds that it allows states which already possess nuclear weapons to retain them while denying others the right to exploit nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Nonetheless, the hope existed that the widespread support of the treaty (at that time 83 ratifications, and 23 signatories which had not yet ratified) would constitute a norm of behavior which would be followed not only by the parties to the treaty but by other nations as well. India's action in exploding a nuclear device ran counter to Article II of the treaty which provides that non-nuclear-weapon states undertake not to manufacture nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. No failure or violation of technical controls was involved. The plutonium for the explosion was derived from the Canadian-assisted research reactor at Trombay. It was not a reactor operating under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards; what failed, or rather was subject to misinterpretation by both sides, was a basically unpoliced gentleman's agreement between India and Canada.

Asymptomatic occlusion of an internal carotid artery in a hospital population: determined by directional Doppler ophthalmosonometry.

Reversal of blood flow in an ophthalmic artery as determined by directional Doppler ultrasound (OSM) was present in nine (3%) of 310 patients over 50 years of age who did not have complaints, diagnoses or examination findings suggesting disease of the central nervous system, and was present in nine (12%) of 73 patients with neurological disease selected as technical controls. Twenty-two of the control patients had four-vessel angiography. Five with OSM evidence of reversal of flow had functional occlusion of the appropriate internal carotid artery, and 17 without reversal did not. This study presents evidence that occlusion of an internal carotid artery frequently occurs without producing recognizable clinical dysfunction.

Cytogenetics of fifty patients with primary amenorrhea

This investigation represents a cytogenetic study of 50 women with primary amenorrhea and 50 women of known fertility. The latter served primarily as technical controls for buccal smear and chromosome analyses. Nineteen of 50 patients with primary amenorrhea were found to have a chromosome abnormality. These included: nine with a 45,X constitution; two 45,X/46,XX/47,XXX; one 45,X/46,X,i(Xq); one 46,X,i(Xq); and one 46,XXq−. There were two patients with a translocation between two C group chromosomes; one was 46,XX,t(10q+; 12q−) and the other 46,X,t(Xq−; 12q+). Three “women” had a 46,XY constitution. The incidence of the various causes of primary amenorrhea, cytogenetic and others, is discussed.

Regional Automated Data‐processing System for Blood Banks

There is significant advantage to be gained through a regional system for automatic data‐processing for blood banks. To achieve maximum savings there must be close cooperation between facilities, and the supply and demand problem must be monitored closely. The cost of operating a system allocated to inventory control must be justifiable but, if savings equal cost, the benefits of knowing the location of needed blood and of reducing commercial purchases also must be considered. The BIMACS system is modular and can be adapted to many computer configurations. Prototypes include inventory control, donor files, rare donor files, invoicing and billing, payroll, and special reports useful for administration, technical controls, and research. The protoype system will be installed June 1970. Details and documentation probably will be available November 1970.

Autonomy and Morality in DRM and Anti-Circumvention Law

Digital rights management technology, or DRM, provides self-enforcing technical exclusion from pre-determined uses of informational works. Such technical exclusion may supplement or even supplant intellectual property laws. The deployment of DRM has been subsidized by laws prohibiting both disabling of technical controls and assisting others to disable technical controls. To date the public debate over deployment of DRM, has been almost entirely dominated by utilitarian arguments regarding the social costs and benefits of this technology. In this paper, we examine the moral propriety of laws endorsing and encouraging the deployment of DRM. We argue that a deontological analysis, focusing on the autonomy of information users, deserves consideration. Because DRM shifts the determination of information use from users to producers, users are denied the choice whether to engage in use or misuse of the technically protected work. State sponsorship of DRM in effect treats information users as moral incompetents, incapable of deciding the proper use of information products. This analysis militates in favor of legal penalties that recognize and encourage the exercise of autonomous choice, even by punishment of blameworthy choices, rather than the encouragement of technology that limits the autonomous choices of information users.

Autonomy and Morality in DRM and Anti-Circumvention Law

Digital rights management technology, or DRM, provides self-enforcing technical exclusion from pre-determined uses of informational works. Such technical exclusion may supplement or even supplant intellectual property laws. The deployment of DRM has been subsidized by laws prohibiting both disabling of technical controls and assisting others to disable technical controls. To date the public debate over deployment of DRM, has been almost entirely dominated by utilitarian arguments regarding the social costs and benefits of this technology. In this paper, we examine the moral propriety of laws endorsing and encouraging the deployment of DRM. We argue that a deontological analysis, focusing on the autonomy of information users, deserves consideration. Because DRM shifts the determination of information use from users to producers, users are denied the choice whether to engage in use or misuse of the technically protected work. State sponsorship of DRM in effect treats information users as moral incompetents, incapable of deciding the proper use of information products. This analysis militates in favor of legal penalties that recognize and encourage the exercise of autonomous choice, even by punishment of blameworthy choices, rather than the encouragement of technology that limits the autonomous choices of information users.

Great Independent: The Lincoln Telephone Company, 1903–1908

It was not in the nature of the local American entrepreneur to concede to monopolistic power. Technical competence, good controls, and appeals to local pride were potent weapons in the struggle of a small company to succeed in the face of competition with the giant Bell system.

Radio's Redefinitions of Voice Sounds

This is the third paper reporting researches carried on for more than thirty years in the arts and sciences pertaining to the human voice. The author's training in the arts has synchronized with developments in the sciences as they advanced from telephone to microphone to “talking pictures” the latter focuses instantly on the need in speech for those recognized technical and tonal standards previously associated solely with music. The magnifying effect of the microphone revealed coincidences in the source sounds of each that, in turn, revealed coincidences in their single natural source with those musical pipes of which it is the prototype. Preceding papers described essential redefinitions of physical-functional conditions in terms of a “voice pipe,” its natural “singing sound,” the technical controls underlying the sequence of sounds with which it “speaks.” A rare recording of these ideals in an unchanged but fully developed boy-voice will be presented. Thus, the Helmholtz theory that “the sensations can be explained on the basis of the laws of physics” arrives at Eddington's figure of speech for physiology of voice can be “explained away” in physics of music by the psychology involved.