43618 research outputs found
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Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg: Frontier AI + Virtual Biology To Solve All Diseases
No full texthttps://epublications.marquette.edu/zuckerberg_files_videos/1475/thumbnail.jp
(WP 2025-03) Ethics \u3cem\u3ein\u3c/em\u3e economics - not ethics \u3cem\u3eand\u3c/em\u3e economics: Guidance for researchers
No full textThis paper, originally a presentation at the 2024 World Congress of Social Economics Summer School at University of Massachusetts-Boston, discusses how ethical values can be incorporated in empirical research. It identifies mainstream economics’ barriers to doing this, and shows they produce a view of the relationship between ethics and economics that excludes ethics from economics. Mainstream economics sees this relationship as interdisciplinary – an ethics and economics. I argue it should be seen as multidisciplinary – an ethics in economics. The mainstream regards ethical values as subjective assuming that there are no facts about ethical values. But there is considerable factual evidence about what people’s ethical values are. One influential source I review is the decades of accumulated survey research in the World Values Survey. The paper then discusses two ways researchers can incorporate evidence about values in their empirical work. First, drawing from Stratification economics, it shows how we can identify ethical values overlooked by the mainstream in discriminatory employment settings, and how this can stimulate search for new data and lead to new theoretical hypotheses. Second, it shows how experiments-based research can identify ethical values people employ in different market settings, in this example, those used to determine how people are willing to ration health care. The paper concludes with brief discussion of how, for a multidisciplinary ethics in economics, ethics can affect future economics
Image Reconstruction Method to Separate Simultaneous Encoded Slices with In-Plane and Through-Plane Acceleration in FMRI
No full textFMRI has been a safe medical imaging tool to study brain function by observing the spatial and temporal changes in brain metabolism in recent decades. To capture brain functionality more efficiently, efforts have been made to accelerate the number of images acquired per unit of time that create each volume image, without losing full anatomical structure. The Simultaneous Multi-Slice (SMS) technique provides a reconstruction method where multiple slices are aliased and acquired concurrently. The Through-Plane Acceleration (TPA) method is one of the SMS techniques that can reduce data acquisition time in proportion to the number of aliased images acquired per unit of time. Other image acquisition acceleration techniques, such as the In-Plane Acceleration (IPA) method, focus on reducing the total image scan time by skipping partial lines in the frequency domain (k-space), resulting in a “fold-up” artifact after inverse Fourier transform. To un-alias and un-fold the acquired images, the Sensitivity Encoding (SENSE) and the GeneRalized Autocalibrating Partial Parallel Acquisition (GRAPPA) techniques can be utilized but still have their drawbacks. Due to the short physical distance and high similarity in coil sensitivity information between the aliased voxels, a singular matrix problem arises in the design matrix, and the influence of the geometry factor (g-factor) increases. To manually increase the distance and the difference in coil sensitivity information between the aliased images, the Controlled Aliasing in Parallel Imaging (CAIPI) and view angle tilting (VAT) techniques achieve slice-wise image shift by applying different radiofrequency pulse sequences. In this dissertation, multi-direction image shift techniques are incorporated with the multi-coil separation of parallel encoded complex-valued slices (mSPECS) technique in a Bayesian approach. The TPA and IPA techniques are integrated with Hadamard phase encoding and a novel 2D Hadamard phase encoding technique. A bootstrapping technique and an artificial aliasing of calibration images are applied to enhance the condition of the design matrix. Through the investigation of the novel SMS techniques on both simulation and experimental fMRI dataset, our model significantly reduces total image scan time while preserving and detecting task signal effectively
Use of Wastewater Grit and Milorganite Chaff in Concrete
No full textWastewater grit is a major byproduct from preliminary municipal wastewater treatment. Chaff is a collection of dried biosolids generated as a waste product from Milorganite® fertilizer production. Because landfilling is a costly and unsustainable method, the development of technologies for diverting grit from landfills to a useful product by tapping grit’s inherent values (e.g., sand and gravel) are of great interest. Chaff, consisting of fibers, provides a potential source for bolstering concrete tensile strength through internal means. This research has proposed a concept of grit and chaff additive-based concrete, an expansion of the grit-assisted patch material developed (GAP) in previous Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) sponsored projects. Calcium oxide, a main component in cement, with a high pH value, could efficiently inactivate pathogens in raw grit and keep it stable in the long term. Each additive group was found to be pathogen-free while maintaining acceptable concrete compressive strength. In this project, fresh and hardened concrete properties (e.g., slump, air content, compressive strength, and tensile strength) were tested after adding each additive to concrete mixes at differing percentages. It was found that the properties of fresh and hardened concrete were maintained with low loadings of both grit and chaff, while properties decreased with higher loadings. The consistency of each additive in terms of its properties (e.g., water content, absorption) was a cause for concern in affecting the properties of each mix, though this could be mitigated in a variety of ways. Grit and chaff affected the color of concrete in minute ways, shifting the general color slightly – though this change is only noticeable at further inspection and loses any noticeable difference after exposure to the environment. It was found that none of the additive groups harbored any amount of pathogenic substance, both by observational test and numerical test methods. This shows that there is no concern for potentially harmful materials being introduced through the implementation of grit or chaff in concrete, maintaining the safety of the public and those who work with the material. The specimens with regular and epoxy steel rebar were exposed to an outdoor environment for five months beginning in July and continuing until testing in December. The section of regular rebar outside of concrete corroded at similar level across all specimens, while the exposed portion of all epoxy coated bars remained corrosion free. There were no obvious signs of corrosion on the internal portion of rebar within all concrete types. Therefore, it can be concluded that grit and chaff in concrete do not cause additional corrosion in rebar compared to normal concrete given a similar exposure and time period. Although additional design and care are required to maintain similar characteristics of fresh and hardened concrete to those of normal concrete, grit and chaff-based concrete absorbs the social cost of wastewater byproduct contamination and has the potential to save municipalities large amounts of operating costs on previously necessary landfill costs while also contributing to the protection of the environment at large
