Cryptocurrency with a Conscience: Using Artificial Intelligence to Develop Money that Advances Human Ethical Values

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are offering new avenues for economic empowerment to individuals around the world. However, they also provide a powerful tool that facilitates criminal activities such as human trafficking and illegal weapons sales that cause great harm to individuals and communities. Cryptocurrency advocates have argued that the ethical dimensions of cryptocurrency are not qualitatively new, insofar as money has always been understood as a passive instrument that lacks ethical values and can be used for good or ill purposes. In this paper, we challenge such a presumption that money must be ‘value-neutral.’ Building on advances in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and machine ethics, we argue that it is possible to design artificially intelligent cryptocurrencies that are not ethically neutral but which autonomously regulate their own use in a way that reflects the ethical values of particular human beings – or even entire human societies. We propose a technological framework for such cryptocurrencies and then analyse the legal, ethical, and economic implications of their use. Finally, we suggest that the development of cryptocurrencies possessing ethical as well as monetary value can provide human beings with a new economic means of positively influencing the ethos and values of their societies

California Voting and Suburbanization Patterns: Implications for Transit Policy, MTI Report 12-05

Public transit is an environmentally friendly transportation mode that usually focuses on transporting people within and to the city center. However, over the last 60 years, population and employment has been suburbanizing. As the median voter lives further from the city center, and thus enjoys fewer benefits from accessing public transit, does this reduce such a voter’s propensity to support public investment in public transit improvements? We analyze voting patterns on 20 transit-related ballot propositions from state-wide elections in California between 1990 and 2010. Controlling for demographic, socio-economic and political ideological factors, we focus on the role of suburbanization as a possible causal factor in determining public support for public transit investment. The results provide a rich picture of the attitudes towards transportation policy among California voters, and will help policy makers to better understand citizen preferences and to better predict how future trends will shift support towards or against transit. Finally, we suggest ways policy makers can use urban land markets to increase support for trans

Managing the Ethical Dimensions of Brain-Computer Interfaces in eHealth: An SDLC-based Approach

A growing range of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies is being employed for purposes of therapy and human augmentation. While much thought has been given to the ethical implications of such technologies at the ‘macro’ level of social policy and ‘micro’ level of individual users, little attention has been given to the unique ethical issues that arise during the process of incorporating BCIs into eHealth ecosystems. In this text a conceptual framework is developed that enables the operators of eHealth ecosystems to manage the ethical components of such processes in a more comprehensive and systematic way than has previously been possible. The framework’s first axis defines five ethical dimensions that must be successfully addressed by eHealth ecosystems: 1) beneficence; 2) consent; 3) privacy; 4) equity; and 5) liability. The second axis describes five stages of the systems development life cycle (SDLC) process whereby new technology is incorporated into an eHealth ecosystem: 1) analysis and planning; 2) design, development, and acquisition; 3) integration and activation; 4) operation and maintenance; and 5) disposal. Known ethical issues relating to the deployment of BCIs are mapped onto this matrix in order to demonstrate how it can be employed by the managers of eHealth ecosystems as a tool for fulfilling ethical requirements established by regulatory standards or stakeholders’ expectations. Beyond its immediate application in the case of BCIs, we suggest that this framework may also be utilized beneficially when incorporating other innovative forms of information and communications technology (ICT) into eHealth ecosystems

Search for invisible Higgs boson production with the CMS detector at the LHC

Results are presented for the search for invisible Higgs boson production using the full LHC dataset corresponding to integrated luminosity of 5.1 fb^-1 and 19.6 fb^-1 of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s)= 7 TeV and 8 TeV (respectively) collected by the CMS detector. The invisible Higgs is searched for in final states of missing transverse energy, with two leptons from a recoiling Z boson. No significant excess is found beyond standard model predictions, and limits are obtained on the branching fraction of the Higgs boson to invisible particles.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, DPF 2013, The Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Particles and Fields, Santa Cruz, California, August 13-17, 201

Book Review Essay: The Mature Phase: Four Generations of Scholarship on Colonial Mesoamerica and New Spain

This essay reviews the following works: Native Wills from the Colonial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World. Edited by Mark Christensen and Jonathan Truitt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 276. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781607814160. Strange Lands and Different Peoples: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Guatemala. By W. George Lovell, Christopher H. Lutz, with Wendy Kramer and William R. Swezey. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 339.$34.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780806143903. Indians and the Political Economy of Colonial Central America, 1670–1810. By Robert W. Patch. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 284. $36.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780806144009. The Mixtecs of Oaxaca: Ancient Times to the Present. By Ronald Spores and Andrew K. Balkansky. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. xvi + 328.$45.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780806143811. Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico. Edited by Javier Villa-Flores and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 257. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780826354624

Six-state review

Year-to-date revenues for the first four months of FY2003 were above their FY2002 level in most New England states. Hit hard by dramatically diminished tax receipts and/or increased spending pressures, all six states closed FY2002 with deficits that had to be eliminated by end-of-the-year fiscal measures. The improved revenue collections for the first four months of FY2003 were welcome. General revenues were up in Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Sales tax receipts, driven in large part by car purchases induced by manufacturers' offers of zero percent financing, were up in Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont; meals and rooms tax receipts were up in New Hampshire. Personal income tax collections were mixed; although higher in Maine and Vermont, they were down slightly in Rhode Island and sharply in Connecticut and Massachusetts.Deficit financing - New England ; Revenue