Ethischer Konsum vs. Konsumreduktion: Inwieweit lenkt Fair Trade vom Problem des Überkonsums ab?

This essay explores the alleged trade-off between reducing overconsumption and promoting ethical consumption, especially in the form of Fair Trade. While Fair Trade is primarily concerned with promoting greater equity in international trade, it does not address problems of ecological exhaustion through overconsumption. Furthermore, Fair Trade could promote increased consumption by inducing false consciousness among consumers. In this context, I propose an integrative approach of trying to address these two problems simultaneously by changing the social patterns of consumption, instead of interpreting them as diametrically opposed. Awareness is the first step in inducing a behavioural change. On an individual level, Fair Trade is fairly successful at creating sensational feedback processes, which increase the awareness for the social and environmental implications of individual consumer behaviour. Moreover, on an aggregate level, Fair Trade changes social patterns of consumption to promote ethical consideration in the context of consumer decision-making. Although Fair Trade is not primarily concerned with the level of consumption, it can help bring forth a change in consumption patterns in order to reduce overconsumption.Dieser Beitrag untersucht einen möglichen Trade-off zwischen der Verringerung von übermäßigem Konsum und der Förderung von ethischem Konsum, insbesondere in Form von Fair Trade. Durch das Bewerben fair gehandelter Waren wird Konsument/inn/en suggeriert, dass sie durch zusätzlichen Konsum Gutes tun. Somit könnten Konsument/inn/en zu übermäßigem Konsum animiert werden. Das Argument des Beitrages ist, dass Fair Trade durch die Betonung einer ethischen Dimension des Konsumguts Bewusstsein für ökologische und soziale Auswirkungen von Konsum und so auch für das Problem des übermäßigen Konsums schaffen kann. Dieses Bewusstsein ist ein erster Schritt, um eine Änderung der Konsummuster herbeizuführen. Auf individueller Ebene versucht Fair Trade den Feedback-Prozess zwischen Konsument/inn/en und Produzent/inn/en herzustellen und damit die ökologischen und sozialen Auswirkungen des Konsumaktes sichtbar zu machen. Auch auf kollektiver Ebene nutzt Fair Trade soziale Konsummuster erfolgreich, um ethischen Konsum zu fördern. Durch einen zusätzlichen Fokus auf die Verringerung der Konsumintensität kann Fair Trade zu der für eine Reduktion des Konsums dringend benötigten Veränderung des Konsumverhaltens beitragen

Leveraging Text-to-Scene Generation for Language Elicitation and Documentation

Text-to-scene generation systems take input in the form of a natural language text and output a 3D scene illustrating the meaning of that text. A major benefit of text-to-scene generation is that it allows users to create custom 3D scenes without requiring them to have a background in 3D graphics or knowledge of specialized software packages. This contributes to making text-to-scene useful in scenarios from creative applications to education. The primary goal of this thesis is to explore how we can use text-to-scene generation in a new way: as a tool to facilitate the elicitation and formal documentation of language. In particular, we use text-to-scene generation (a) to assist field linguists studying endangered languages; (b) to provide a cross-linguistic framework for formally modeling spatial language; and (c) to collect language data using crowdsourcing. As a side effect of these goals, we also explore the problem of multilingual text-to-scene generation, that is, systems for generating 3D scenes from languages other than English. The contributions of this thesis are the following. First, we develop a novel tool suite (the WordsEye Linguistics Tools, or WELT) that uses the WordsEye text-to-scene system to assist field linguists with eliciting and documenting endangered languages. WELT allows linguists to create custom elicitation materials and to document semantics in a formal way. We test WELT with two endangered languages, Nahuatl and Arrernte. Second, we explore the question of how to learn a syntactic parser for WELT. We show that an incremental learning method using a small number of annotated dependency structures can produce reasonably accurate results. We demonstrate that using a parser trained in this way can significantly decrease the time it takes an annotator to label a new sentence with dependency information. Third, we develop a framework that generates 3D scenes from spatial and graphical semantic primitives. We incorporate this system into the WELT tools for creating custom elicitation materials, allowing users to directly manipulate the underlying semantics of a generated scene. Fourth, we introduce a deep semantic representation of spatial relations and use this to create a new resource, SpatialNet, which formally declares the lexical semantics of spatial relations for a language. We demonstrate how SpatialNet can be used to support multilingual text-to-scene generation. Finally, we show how WordsEye and the semantic resources it provides can be used to facilitate elicitation of language using crowdsourcing

Organic Diode and Other Circuit Element Creation Through Variations of Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)Synthesis

Fabricating semiconductor junction diodes can be costly in price and time. It typically involves long turn around time from the foundry, which requires precise machines and a clean room environment to prevent contamination from air born materials. This intensive process of fabricating diodes, means the cost will increase as the machines to process the semiconductor material need to become more precise. The proposed solution to the problem of cost and time is to create a printing system that is capable of printing diodes and circuits on various substrates. The experiments described in this thesis investigate the possible diode material, Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), a polymer in aqueous dispersion. Variation in experiments with the weight ratios for the chemicals used for synthesis of this polymer are used as a benchmark to find the optimum weight ratios for the Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) synthesis, to create an asymmetric rectifying diode, using continuous ink jet printing technology

Dyslipidaemia in children on renal replacement therapy

Background Information on lipid abnormalities in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) mainly originates from adult patients and small paediatric studies. We describe the prevalence of dyslipidaemia, and potential determinants associated with lipid measures in a large cohort of paediatric ESRD patients. Methods In the ESPN/ERA-EDTA registry, lipid measurements were available for 976 patients aged 2-17 years from 19 different countries from the year 2000 onwards. Dyslipidaemia was defined as triglycerides >100 mg/dL (2-9 years) or >130 mg/dL (9-17 years), high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol 145 mg/dL. Missing data were supplemented using multiple imputation. Results The prevalence of dyslipidaemia was 85.1% in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients, 76.1% in haemodialysis (HD) patients and 55.5% among renal allograft recipients. Both low and high body mass index (BMI) were associated with a less favourable lipid profile. Younger age was associated with a worse lipid profile among PD patients. HDL levels significantly improved after transplantation, whereas no significant improvements were found for triglyceride and non-HDL levels. In transplant recipients, use of cyclosporin was associated with significantly higher non-HDL and HDL levels than tacrolimus usage (P 90 mL/min/1.73 m2 (P < 0.0001). Conclusions Dyslipidaemia is common among paediatric ESRD patients in Europe. Young age and PD treatment are associated with worse lipid profiles. Although lipid levels generally improve after transplantation, dyslipidaemia may persist due to decreased graft function, high BMI or to the use of certain immunosuppressant

Corporate social innovation as a driver of performance and welfare

Social innovation is booming as a political buzzword. However, the concept still lacks scientific analysis, a common epistemology and a clear-cut definition. This thesis takes a step towards a better theoretical and conceptual understanding of corporate social innovation by detaching the concept from the government and NPO sector. It suggests defining social innovation by its social means and social ends. The term "social" not only refers to the non-material nature of innovation and its social process that modifies social practices, behaviour and relationships, but also relates to the achievement of socially desirable ends. The means and ends for corporate social innovation are further analysed in three case studies on carsharing, Fair Trade and diversity management of a multi-ethnic workforce. The analysis also shows that for-profit companies not only play an important role in the advancement of social innovations, but also that social innovations constitute a business opportunity. Moreover, the characteristics of (corporate) social innovations offer our society and economy the dynamics to adapt to social challenges in a complex environment

Outcomes of renal replacement therapy in boys with prune belly syndrome : findings from the ESPN/ERA-EDTA Registry

As outcome data for prune belly syndrome (PBS) complicated by end-stage renal disease are scarce, we analyzed characteristics and outcomes of children with PBS using the European Society for Pediatric Nephrology/European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ESPN/ERA-EDTA) Registry data. Data were available for 88 male PBS patients aged <20 years who started renal replacement therapy (RRT) between 1990 and 2013 in 35 European countries. Patient characteristics, survival, and transplantation outcomes were compared with those of male patients requiring RRT due to congenital obstructive uropathy (COU) and renal hypoplasia or dysplasia (RHD). Median age at onset of RRT in PBS was lower [7.0; interquartile range (IQR) 0.9-12.2 years] than in COU (9.6; IQR: 3.0-14.1 years) and RHD (9.4; IQR: 2.7-14.2 years). Unadjusted 10-year patient survival was 85% for PBS, 94% for COU, and 91% for RHD. After adjustment for country, period, and age, PBS mortality was similar to that of RHD but higher compared with COU [hazard ratio (HR) 1.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03-3.74]. Seventy-four PBS patients (84%) received a first kidney transplant after a median time on dialysis of 8.4 (IQR 0.0-21.1) months. Outcomes with respect to time on dialysis before transplantation, chance of receiving a first transplant within 2 years after commencing RRT, and death-censored, adjusted risk of graft loss were similar for all groups. This study in the largest cohort of male patients with PBS receiving RRT to date demonstrates that outcomes are comparable with other congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract, except for a slightly higher mortality risk compared with patients with COU.Peer reviewe

Finding Emotion in Image Descriptions

In this paper, we approach the problem of classifying emotion in image descriptions. A method is proposed to perform 6-way emotion classification and is tested against two labeled datasets: a corpus of blog posts mined from LiveJournal and a corpus of descriptive texts of computer generated scenes. We perform feature selection using the mRMR technique and then use a multi-class linear predictor to classify posts among the Ekman Big Six emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust). We find that TFIDF scores on lexical features and LIWC scores are much more helpful in emotion classification than using scores calculated from existing sentiment dictionaries, and that our proposed method performs significantly better than a baseline classifier that chooses the majority class. On the blog posts, we achieve 40% accuracy, and on the corpus of image descriptions, we achieve up to 63% accuracy