A Defence of the Asymmetry in Population Ethics

Res Publica ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-157
Author(s):  
Per Algander
2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-454
Author(s):  
Dean Spears

AbstractPopulation ethics is widely considered to be exceptionally important and exceptionally difficult. One key source of difficulty is the conflict between certain moral intuitions and analytical results identifying requirements for rational (in the sense of complete and transitive) social choice over possible populations. One prominent such intuition is the Asymmetry, which jointly proposes that the fact that a possible child’s quality of life would be bad is a normative reason not to create the child, but the fact that a child’s quality of life would be good is not a reason to create the child. This paper reports a set of questionnaire experiments about the Asymmetry in the spirit of economists’ empirical social choice. Few survey respondents show support for the Asymmetry; instead respondents report that expectations of a good quality of life are relevant. Each experiment shows evidence (among at least some participants) of dual-process moral reasoning, in which cognitive reflection is statistically associated with reporting expected good quality of life to be normatively relevant. The paper discusses possible implications of these results for the economics of population-sensitive social welfare and for the conflict between moral mathematics and population intuition.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 3171-3183
Author(s):  
Gyula Vincze

Our objective is to generalize the Weaver-Astumian (WA) and Kaune (KA) models of thermal noise limit to the case ofcellular membrane resistivity asymmetry. The asymmetry of resistivity causes different effects in the two models. In the KAmodel, asymmetry decreases the characteristic field strength of the thermal limit over and increases it below the breakingfrequency (10  m), while asymmetry decreases the spectral field strength of the thermal noise limit at all frequencies.We show that asymmetry does not change the character of the models, showing the absence of thermal noise limit at highand low frequencies in WA and KA models, respectively.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis Artiukhin ◽  
Patrick Eschenbach ◽  
Johannes Neugebauer

We present a computational analysis of the asymmetry in reaction center models of photosystem I, photosystem II, and bacteria from <i>Synechococcus elongatus</i>, <i>Thermococcus vulcanus</i>, and <i>Rhodobacter sphaeroides</i>, respectively. The recently developed FDE-diab methodology [J. Chem. Phys., 148 (2018), 214104] allowed us to effectively avoid the spin-density overdelocalization error characteristic for standard Kohn–Sham Density Functional Theory and to reliably calculate spin-density distributions and electronic couplings for a number of molecular systems ranging from dimeric models in vacuum to large protein including up to about 2000 atoms. The calculated spin densities showed a good agreement with available experimental results and were used to validate reaction center models reported in the literature. We demonstrated that the applied theoretical approach is very sensitive to changes in molecular structures and relative orientation of molecules. This makes FDE-diab a valuable tool for electronic structure calculations of large photosynthetic models effectively complementing the existing experimental techniques.


2018 ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
V. Kuzminkov ◽  
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Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
O. I. Admakin ◽  
I. A. Solop ◽  
A. D. Oksentyuk

Relevance. The narrowing of the maxilla is one of the most common pathologies in orthodontics. Recent studies show that the narrowing is always asymmetric which is connected to the rotation of the maxilla. To choose the treatment correctly one need a calculation that reveals the asymmetry, which is impossible with using standard indexes.Purpose – to compare efficiency of indexes of Pont and Korkhause with the Kernott's method in patients with narrowing of the maxilla.Materials and methods. The study involved 35 children aged from 8 to 12 years old undergoing dental treatment in the University Children's Clinical Hospital of the First Moscow State Medical University with no comorbidities. For every patient a gypsum model was prepared and after that to carry out the biometrical calculation. In this study two indexes were used: Pont's index and Korkhause's; using this standard analysis the narrowing of the maxilla was revealed. After using Pont's Index and Korkhaus analysis all the models were calculated by the method of Kernott with Kernott's dynamic pentagon.Results. As a result of the analysis of the control diagnostic models a narrowing of the maxilla in 69% of cases (n = 24) was revealed in all cases, the deviation of the size of the dentition was asymmetric. Thus, 65% of the surveyed models showed a narrowing on the right. This narrowing was of a different severity and averaged 15 control models.Conclusions. This shows that for the biometrics of diagnostic models it is necessary to use methods that allow to estimate the width of the dentition rows on the left and on the right separately. To correct the asymmetric narrowing of the dentition, it is preferable to use non-classical expanding devices that act equally on the left and right sides separetly.


2020 ◽  
pp. 113-118
Author(s):  
M. G. Shishkin

The article considers the reasons for the formation of asymmetry in the subjects of the Russian Federation. The research is focused on the relations between the Russian Federation and its subjects during the formation of the modern Russian state. This period, according to the author, covers the period from the introduction of the “perestroika” policy in the USSR to the beginning of the 2000s. The author studies the works of domestic and foreign experts on the stated issues. The author believes that the asymmetry of the subjects of the Russian Federation is based on an uneven distribution of economic benefits. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that the author’s conclusions are a synthesis of not only formal legal, but also applied and analytical economic research.


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