Technoethics

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter B. Heller
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Computer Ethics ◽  
Ethical Decisions ◽  
First Case ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

Technoethics relates to the impact of ethics in technology, technological change, and technological advances and their applications. This is true both in established fields such as bioethics or computer ethics or engineering ethics but also in new areas of research such as neuroethics. As pioneering breakthroughs are made in, say, extending life or robotization, novel questions arise regarding the rightness or wrongness of keeping terminal cases alive even at the expense of such trade-offs as making life possible for premature or defective babies in the first case or replacing workers in the second. Some of these agonizing dilemmas are treated in the paper highlighting the ambivalence and difficulty – and corresponding controversy – in reaching ethical decisions in technological applications.

Some Historical Roots of the Field of Human-Computer Interaction

2002 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 636-640
Author(s):  
Richard W. Pew ◽  
Principal Scientist
Keyword(s):  
Human Computer Interaction ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Personal Computer ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Time Sharing ◽  
Technology Changes ◽  
Vannevar Bush ◽  
Small Set ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

The paper will discuss two major themes. A new field, is often initially championed by a small set of visionaries. There are many individuals who qualify as HCI visionaries. I will mention the impact of only three, Vannevar Bush, J.C.R. Licklider, and Douglas Englebart. Second, while considerable progress has been made in understanding what makes computers hard to use and in developing methodologies that support making them easier to use, the pace of technological change has been so rapid that just when we think we have a handle on it, the technology changes and we have a new set of problems. I will touch on several eras: the batch processing era, the time-sharing era, the personal computer era, the internet era, and the handheld-wireless era that is merging into the ubiquitous computing era.

Health Reform and Technological Change: Shifting Hospitalization Patterns for Four Procedures in Manitoba

2000 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth-Ann Soodeen ◽  
Leslie L. Roos ◽  
Sandra Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Hernia Repair ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Health Reform ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Reform Initiatives ◽  
Readmission Rates ◽  
Health Reforms ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Hospital Stays ◽  
The Impact

This study used Manitoba data from 1991 to 1996 to assess the effects of health reforms and technological advances on hospitalization patterns, patient mortality, and readmission rates. Cholecystectomy and hernia repair served as indicators of response to both new technology and health reforms, while appendectomy and hysterectomy helped gauge the impact of health reforms alone. Neither the introduction of new technology (i.e. laparoscopy) nor the health reform initiatives (i.e. shorter hospital stays) adversely affected surgical volumes, postsurgical mortality, or postsurgical readmissions.

scholarly journals Coronavirus: Where Has All the Health Economics Gone?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cam Donaldson ◽  
Craig Mitton
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Health Economics ◽  
Health System ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
System Capacity ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
National Productivity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to unfold there is an untold number of trade-offs being made in every country around the globe. The experience in the United Kingdom and Canada to date has not seen much uptake of health economics methods. We provide some thoughts on how this could take place, specifically in three areas. Firstly, this can involve understanding the impact of lockdown policies on national productivity. Secondly, there is great importance in studying trade-offs with respect to enhancing health system capacity and the impact of the mix of private-public financing. Finally, there are key trade-offs that will continue to be made both in terms of access to testing and ventilators which would benefit greatly from economic appraisal. In short, health economics could – and we would argue most certainly should – play a much more prominent role in policy-making as it relates to the current as well as future pandemics.

Impact of Generational Commonality of Short Life Cycle Products in Manufacturing and Remanufacturing Processes

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinju Kim ◽  
Harrison M. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Utilization Rate ◽  
Short Life ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
Technological Obsolescence ◽  
New Generation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Short Life Cycle Products

Abstract Short life cycle products are frequently replaced and discarded, even though they are resource-intensive products. Technological advances and rapid changes in demand have led manufacturers to develop their innovative next-generation products quickly, which not only enables multiple generations to coexist in the market but also speeds up the technological obsolescence of products. Diversity of collected end-of-life (EoL) and rapid technological obsolescence make the effective recovery of EoL products difficult. The low utilization rate of EoL products causes serious environmental problems such as e-waste and waste of natural resources. To deal with the conflict between the technical evolution of products and the promotion of social benefits in solving environmental problems, this paper focuses on the impact of generational commonality effects on the overall production process including manufacturing and remanufacturing. Generational commonality leads to an increase in the efficiency of manufacturing due to reducing related costs. Additionally, from the remanufacturing perspective, the interchangeability between generations can help collect the EoL products needed for remanufacturing. On the other hand, it causes a weakening of the level of performance and technology evolution between generations that significantly affect the demand for short life cycle products. Therefore, this study identifies these trade-offs of generational commonality levels in both manufacturing and remanufacturing based on a quantitative approach. This study finds how different pricing strategies, production plans, and recovery costs are based on the designs of a new generation with a different degree of generational commonality.

Technoethics

2014 ◽  
pp. 77-95
Author(s):  
Peter Heller
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
Ethical Aspects ◽  
Automobile Engineering ◽  
Ethical Argument ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Military Engineering ◽  
The Impact

Technoethics relates to the impact of ethics in technology and technological change in biological, medical, military, engineering, and other applications. Accordingly, new questions arise about the moral right and wrong of corresponding technological issues. These, in turn, generate novel trade-offs, many of them controversial, involving the desirable versus undesirable ethical aspects of the new invention or innovation from a moral viewpoint. The discussion in this chapter suggests that frequently much can be said on both sides of an ethical argument and that therefore, at times, agonizing decisions must be made about which side has the greater moral merit based on numerous variables. The minicases sprinkled throughout the text and the longer automobile engineering case at the end are used as illustrations.

scholarly journals Assisting software architects in architectural decision-making using Quark

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ameller ◽  
Xavier Franch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Software Architectures ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Usual Approach ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Architectural Decision ◽  
Architectural Knowledge ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) and constraints are among the principal drivers of architectural decision-making. NFRs are improved or damaged by architectural decisions (ADs), while constraints directly include or exclude parts of the architecture (e.g., logical components or technologies). We may determine the impact of an AD, or which parts of the architecture are affected by a constraint, but at the end it is hard to know if we are respecting the NFRs and the imposed constraints with all the ADs made. In the usual approach, architects use their own experience to produce software architectures that comply with the NFRs and imposed constraints, but at the end, especially for crucial decisions, the architect has to deal with complex trade-offs between NFRs and juggle with possible incompatibilities raised by the imposed constraints. In this paper we present Quark, a method to assist software architects in architectural decision-making, and the conceptualization of the relationship between NFRs and ADs defined in Arteon, an ontology to represent and manage architectural knowledge. Finally, we provide an overview of the Quark and Arteon implementation, the ArchiTech tool.

scholarly journals The Impact of Digitalisation on Human Resources Development

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Ardelin LUMI
Keyword(s):  
Human Resources ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Training And Development ◽  
Human Resources Development ◽  
Recruitment Process ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Made In

The paper is a summary of the studies conducted by several authors on the impact of digitalisation on human resource management. In the paper the filtering is done by classifying the authors according to the data and results. The first division presents a general summary of the positive and negative aspects of Digitalisation in HRM processes. The second section talks about the impact of digitalisation on the recruitment process, its impact on the recruitment process, the changes which happened in the improvement aspects. The latest part emphasizes the impact of digitalisation on the training and development process, on the importance of digitalisation in training in this case in the hotels’ sector. The literature used in the paper is mainly taken from prestigious journals to increase the quality of the paper, as well as geographical filtering of the works which has been done in this relation, taking works by authors from different countries. Digitalisation is one of the essential processes of technological change, changes that affected every HRM process. The drastic changes made in human resources have created and accelerated many other changes in HR processes. Most authors point out that digitalisation and technological developments have created an ever-changing era, some of them emphasize the importance of digitalisation at work, and some others think that the HRM course has changed completely. Russian authors discuss the impact of the Digitalisation process on employees by discussing the aspect of negative sides. Nevertheless, all the authors agree that digitalisation and technological change are inevitable and that investing in this aspect is indisputable. As the world rotates, everything is in motion.

Is technological change a devourer of jobs?

2017 ◽  
pp. 111-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Kapeliushnikov
Keyword(s):  
Technological Change ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Employment Growth ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Employment Effects ◽  
Technological Unemployment ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Task Sets ◽  
The Impact

The paper provides a critical analysis of the idea of technological unemployment. The overview of the existing literature on the employment effects of technological change shows that on the micro-level there exists strong and positive relationship between innovations and employment growth in firms; on the sectoral level this correlation becomes ambiguous; on the macro-level the impact of new technologies seems to be positive or neutral. This implies that fears of explosive growth of technological unemployment in the foreseeable future are exaggerated. Our analysis further suggests that new technologies affect mostly the structure of employment rather than its level. Additionally we argue that automation and digitalisation would change mostly task sets within particular occupations rather than distribution of workers by occupations.

Impact of hydroxychloroquin/azithromycin protocol on COVID-19 case-fatality rate reduction in Algeria. (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Youssef Kada
Keyword(s):  
Case Fatality Rate ◽  
Doubling Time ◽  
Case Fatality ◽  
World Health ◽  
Fatality Rate ◽  
Therapeutic Protocol ◽  
First Case ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
At Home

BACKGROUND Covid-19 is an emerging infectious disease like viral zoonosis caused by new coronavirus SARS CoV 2. On December 31, 2019, Wuhan Municipal Health Commission in Hubei province (China) reported cases of pneumonia, the origin of which is a new coronavirus. Rapidly extendable around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) declares it pandemic on March 11, 2020. This pandemic reaches Algeria on February 25, 2020, date on which the Algerian minister of health, announced the first case of Covid-19, a foreign citizen. From March 1, a cluster is formed in Blida and becomes the epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic in Algeria, its total quarantine is established on March 24, 2020, it will be smoothly alleviated on April 24. A therapeutic protocol based on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was put in place on March 23, for complicated cases, it was extended to all the cases confirmed on April 06. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquin/azithromycin protocol in Algeria, in particular after its extension to all patients diagnosed COVID-19 positive on RT-PCR test. We were able to illustrate this fact graphically, but not to prove it statistically because the design of our study, indeed in the 7 days which followed generalization of therapeutic protocol, case fatality rate decrease and doubling time increase, thus confirming the impact of wide and early prescription of hydroxychloroquin/azithromycin protocol. METHODS We have analyzed the data collected from press releases and follow-ups published daily by the Ministry of Health, we have studied the possible correlations of these data with certain events or decisions having a possible impact on their development, such as confinement at home and its reduction, the prescription of hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination for serious patients and its extension to all positive COVID subjects. Results are presented in graphics, the data collection was closed on 31/05/2020. RESULTS Covid-19 pandemic spreads from February 25, 2020, when a foreign citizen is tested positive, on March 1 a cluster is formed in the city of Blida where sixteen members of the same family are infected during a wedding party. Wilaya of Blida becomes the epicentre of coronavirus epidemic in Algeria and lockdown measures taken, while the number of national cases diagnosed begins to increases In any event, the association of early containment measures combined with a generalized initial treatment for all positive cases, whatever their degree of severity, will have contributed to a reduction in the fatality rate of COVID 19 and a slowing down of its doubling time. CONCLUSIONS In Algeria, the rapid combination of rigorous containment measure at home and early generalized treatment with hydroxychloroquin have demonstrated their effectiveness in terms of morbidity and mortality, the classic measures of social distancing and hygiene will make it possible to perpetuate these results by reducing viral transmission, the only unknown, the reopening procedure which can only be started after being surrounded by precautions aimed at ensuring the understanding of the population. CLINICALTRIAL Algeria, Covid-19, pandemic, hydroxychloroquin, azithromycin, case fatality rate

scholarly journals Carbon Dynamics in the Northeastern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau from 1990 to 2030 Using Landsat Land Use/Cover Change Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingye Li ◽  
Jian Gong ◽  
Jean-Michel Guldmann ◽  
Shicheng Li ◽  
Jie Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Carbon Storage ◽  
Sharp Decrease ◽  
Total Carbon ◽  
Qinghai Lake ◽  
Lake Basin ◽  
Ecosystem Carbon ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Impact

Land use/cover change (LUCC) has an important impact on the terrestrial carbon cycle. The spatial distribution of regional carbon reserves can provide the scientific basis for the management of ecosystem carbon storage and the formulation of ecological and environmental policies. This paper proposes a method combining the CA-based FLUS model and the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model to assess the temporal and spatial changes in ecosystem carbon storage due to land-use changes over 1990–2015 in the Qinghai Lake Basin (QLB). Furthermore, future ecosystem carbon storage is simulated and evaluated over 2020–2030 under three scenarios of natural growth (NG), cropland protection (CP), and ecological protection (EP). The long-term spatial variations in carbon storage in the QLB are discussed. The results show that: (1) Carbon storage in the QLB decreased at first (1990–2000) and increased later (2000–2010), with total carbon storage increasing by 1.60 Tg C (Teragram: a unit of mass equal to 1012 g). From 2010 to 2015, carbon storage displayed a downward trend, with a sharp decrease in wetlands and croplands as the main cause; (2) Under the NG scenario, carbon reserves decrease by 0.69 Tg C over 2020–2030. These reserves increase significantly by 6.77 Tg C and 7.54 Tg C under the CP and EP scenarios, respectively, thus promoting the benign development of the regional ecological environment. This study improves our understanding on the impact of land-use change on carbon storage for the QLB in the northeastern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP).

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