Free, Regulated, or Prohibited Speech?

This chapter considers whether legal restrictions on pornography that are compatible with liberalism can be defended and if so, in what form. The chapter aims to show the following. First, in disentangling what different feminist and liberal views are committed to, we can see that the supposedly firm opposition between feminist proregulation and liberal antiregulation positions is not so firm after all. Instead, there is much common ground between allegedly opposing sides. Second, some pornography regulations are permissible, even within a liberal framework and on paternalistic grounds. Third, although we have grounds to regulate pornography, criminalizing pornography production, distribution and consumption is the wrong response to pornography’s problems.

Biomedical waste management awareness in public and private hospitals in a district of North India

Background: For proper disposal of bio-medical waste, introduction of laws only is not sufficient enough but the development of healthcare system that creates awareness and promote effective enforcement of existing BMW management guidelines among all healthcare personnel assumes primary importance. This study was planned to assess the biomedical waste management awareness among paramedical and auxiliary personnel in public and private hospitals in Meerut city.Methods: A cross sectional observational study was carried out in 384 paramedical and sanitary staff of three government and three private hospitals of Meerut from November 2015 to October 2016. Information was collected on predesigned and pretested semi structured questionnaire. Scoring was done on the basis of response to each of the question awarding 1 mark to correct response and zero mark to wrong response. Score obtained between 0-5, 6-10 and 11-15 were labelled as poor, average and good knowledge respectively.Results: In the present study 68.7% (264) of studied paramedical and auxiliary staff was untrained in both public and private hospitals. However, the higher percentage of untrained staff was observed in public hospitals as compared to private hospitals for any category of staff. In public hospitals 28.1% nurses, 25.0% technicians, 15.0% ward boys/aaya, 29.7% sweepers had gone through training for Bio medical waste disposal as compared to 37.5%, 41.7%, 30.0% and 39.1% respectively in private hospitals.Conclusions: The overall awareness was found maximum among nurses as compared to technicians, ward boys/aaya and sweepers. On comparing the percentage of correct responses and scoring in public and private hospital workers, the paramedical and auxiliary staff of private hospitals had higher percentage of correct responses for most of questions. Intensive training programme at regular time interval should be done repeatedly to train and retrain all the staff, which may include question raising and problem solving approach.

How the Progressives Became the Tea Party’s Mortal Enemy

This chapter first traces the roots of the stylized history of Progressivism's role in American liberalism found in the pronouncements of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party to a small cadre of conservatives grouped around the Claremont Institute, with the political philosopher Charles Kesler at its center. It explains how the ideas of these political thinkers spread through the conservative movement, with particular attention to the Heritage Foundation as a central node of the network, and how it came to be available when the opportunity for wider dissemination opened. The second section examines how this critique exploded into broader circulation within the conservative movement. The third section investigates why the attack on Progressivism was so avidly embraced by Tea Party conservatives at this precise time, how it provided a coherent story of America and, with that, the emotional energy needed to mobilize an already historically inflected movement. The fourth section discusses how this fundamentalist perspective on the nation's history, and on President Obama's place in it, has more than its share of outright lunacy. The wilder versions of antiprogressivism advanced by Beck and the less cautious scholars who influenced him have obscured and overtaken a more nuanced critique within conservatism, one that liberals would do well to take seriously. The wrong response to Tea Party fundamentalism is to respond in kind and simply hunker down in an alternative belief system.

Mandatory Voting: The Wrong Response to Low Voter Turnout

The trend of declining voter turnout across the western world has led some in Canada to call for mandatory voting. Australia is often cited as a successful example of compulsory voting in a Westminster system. While the aim to increase voter turnout is noble, there are many non-coercive methods of improving democracy and voter turnout that Canada ought to adapt before resorting to mandatory voting. Assessed methods include electoral reform, lowering the voting age, and instituting online voting; all are non-coercive ways to improve public satisfaction with the political process in Canada. Additionally, mandatory voting reduces Canadians’ ability to abstain from participating in the political system should they choose to do so which could have important philosophical implications. Furthermore,voter turnout data for Australia does not take into account important differences between registered voter turnout and voting age population turnout. Importantly, when analyzed these numbers indicate that compulsory voting in Australia is not as successful as many believe. Despite its ostensible attraction as a clear way to increase voter turnout, a legal requirement to vote is not a panacea to the issues of political distrust, dissatisfaction, and disengagement in Canada that are the root causes of low voter turnout.

Artificial Neural Network Application in Optimal Coordination of Directional Overcurrent Protective Relays in Electrical Mesh Distribution Network

Directional Overcurrent relays (DOCR) applications in meshed distribution networks (MDN), eliminate short circuit fault current due to the topographical nature of the system. Effective and reliable coordination’s between primary and secondary relay pairs ensures effective coordination achievement. Otherwise, the risk of safety of lives and installations may be compromised alongside with system instability. This paper proposes an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) approach of optimizing the system operation response time of all DOCR within the network to address miscoordination problem due to wrong response time among adjacent DOCRs to the same fault. A modelled series of DOCRs in a simulated IEEE 8-bus test system in DigSilent Power Factory with extracted data from three phase short circuit fault analysis adapted in training a custom ANN. Hence, an improved optimized time is produced from the network output to eliminate miscoordination among the DOCRs.