Ambient assisted living technologies can provide assistance and support to persons with dementia. They might allow them the possibility of living at home for longer whilst maintaining their comfort and security as well as offering a way towards reducing the huge economic and personal costs forecast as the incidence of dementia increases worldwide over coming decades. However, the development, introduction and use of AAL technologies also trigger serious ethical issues. This paper is a systematic literature review of the on-going scholarly (...) debate about these issues. More specifically, we look at the ethical issues involved in research and development, clinical experimentation, and clinical application of AAL technologies for people with dementia and related stakeholders. In the discussion we focus on: the value of the goals of AAL technologies, the special vulnerability of persons with dementia in their private homes, the complex question of informed consent for the usage of AAL technologies. (shrink)

The eighteenth century saw the publication of many scientific and technical dictionaries, particularly in France, one of the most important being P. J. Macquer's Dictionnaire de chymie. Both the original text of 1766 and the revised and enlarged version of 1778 were translated into several languages, sometimes with authoritative notes and additions by the translators. No mere list of definitions, Macquer's work contained long articles that made it a comprehensive treatise on chemistry, and it set the pattern for many subsequent (...) chemical dictionaries. We have endeavoured to give an account of the circumstances in which the various editions, reprints and translations were published, and we add detailed bibliographical descriptions of them. Bibliographical purists consider that all the copies of a book printed from the same setting of type constitute an ‘edition’, and that there is a new edition when all or most of the type has been reset. However, Macquer described his revised and expanded text of 1778 as the ‘second edition’ and this designation has been adopted by subsequent writers, even though the original text was reprinted several times from different settings of type before 1778. In order to avoid confusion we therefore refer to all versions of the 1766 and 1778 editions as ‘issues’, ‘printings’ or ‘reprints’ of the first and second edition respectively. (shrink)

Autonomy seems to be a core issue for lifelogging technology as it can influence our understanding as well as our personal freedom but a comprehensive discussion on the effect of it on the autonomy of the lifelogger and others affected seems still missing in the current academic debate. In this article we provide a preliminary inquiry into this topic. First, the concept of lifelogging will be briefly clarified. In a lifelog, different data sources are combined in an archive that can (...) be used to retrieve information about the lifelogger and the environment in which the lifelogger is situated. Second, we will discuss the effect of lifelogs on an element of autonomy, namely understanding. Lifelogs can both advance understanding as well as hinder it. Information of lifelogs is the result of social processes that can bias information and can be used to manipulate lifeloggers. Third, we will discuss another aspect of autonomy, namely being free from controlling influences. Also on this level the effect of lifelogs is ambiguous. Fourth, we will discuss the conditions under which prospective lifelogger become lifeloggers. By discussing both the effect of lifelogs on autonomy as well as joining the community of lifeloggers we aim to show the many ways in which lifelogs can compromise and advance autonomy. Fifth, some recommendations are provided that aim to address the above mentioned concerns. (shrink)

SINCE the publication in 1952 of Douglas McKie's Antoine Lavoisier, the standard biography which is of great value to all students of eighteenth-century science, there has been a steady increase in knowledge of most aspects of Lavoisier's life and work. This survey will be concerned ,mainly with monographs and papers in scientific and historical journals, but several important books may first be noted.

In scientific circles in Paris and London large burning lenses were used in the eighteenth century as a means of reaching very high temperatures. However, their great expense proved to be unjustified, for chemists found that even in good weather they did not give reproducible results. This paper is concerned only with chemical applications of the lenses, and not with theoretical discussions of the means of eliminating aberration or calculating the temperatures attained.

In 1768 H. B. de Saussure studied chemistry with Baumé in Paris, and subsequently, using precise quantitative methods, he analysed minerals collected during his alpine journeys. He began to use the blowpipe in 1784, and later adapted it so that with a microscope and micrometer he could examine the effects of high temperatures on minute specimens of minerals. Analyses of air carried out with a portable eudiometer convinced him that air from alpine valleys contained more oxygen, and was therefore healthier, (...) than air from either mountain tops or plains. In 1788 he accepted the antiphlogistic theory after reading the annotated French translation of Kirwan's Essay on Phlogiston; he announced his conversion in a letter to the translator, Madame Lavoisier, whose reply is discussed and published here for the first time. (shrink)

In a lifelog, data from various sources are combined to form a record from which one can retrieve information about oneself and the environment in which one is situated. It could be considered similar to an automated biography. Lifelog technology is still at an early stage of development. However, the history of lifelogs so far shows a clear academic, corporate and governmental interest. Therefore, a thorough inquiry into the ethical aspects of lifelogs could prove beneficial to the responsible development of (...) this field. This article maps the main ethically relevant challenges and opportunities associated with the further development of lifelog technologies as discussed in the scholarly literature. By identifying challenges and opportunities in the current debate, we were able to identify other challenges and opportunities left unmentioned. Some of these challenges are partly explained by a blind spot in the current debate. Whilst the current debate focuses mainly on lifelogs held by individuals, lifelogs held by governmental institutions and corporations pose idiosyncratic ethical concerns as well. We have provided a brief taxonomy of lifelog technology to show the variety in uses for lifelogs. In addition, we provided a general approach to alleviate the ethical challenges identified in the critical analysis. (shrink)

In this paper, I will examine John Smeaton’s contribution to the vis viva controversy in Britain, focusing on how the hybridization of science, technology, and industry helped to establish vis viva, or mechanic power, as a measure of motive force. Smeaton, embodying the ‘hybrid expert’ who combined theoretical knowledge and practical knowhow, demonstrated that the notion of vis viva possessed a greater explanatory power than momentum, because it could be used to explain the difference in efficiency between overshot (...) and undershot waterwheels. Smeaton’s conclusions were correct since waterwheel efficiency was already measured in terms that were proportional to vis viva, not momentum, as a result of the industrial applications of waterwheel technology, which favored measuring efficiency by the product of mass and vertical displacement. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the loss of motive force in the inelastic collision driving the undershot wheel began to be seen as equivalent to the expenditure of labor in the manufacture of commodities, further underlining how strictly scientific conclusions about motive force could have their origin in industrial practices. (shrink)

The history of the dyestuffs industry during the period 1775–1860 is interesting for three reasons. In the first place it was in connection with the manufacture of synthetic dyestuffs, begun in 1856, that the industrial research laboratory and the organization scientist first unmistakably appeared in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Secondly, there are the enigmas of W. H. Perkin, the man who discovered and manufactured the first coal-tar colours, but who retired somewhat abruptly from the industry in 1874: (...) just after the synthesis of alizarine. Thirdly, the dyestuffs industry was in intimate association with the textile industries which had for a long time been subject to frequent radical scientific and technological innovation. Among the most important of these we may mention John Smeaton's classic paper of 1759 on the maximum work obtainable from a given fall of water: a problem important not only for the abstract science of mechanics, but also for the design of waterwheels—the main source of power for the early textile mills. (The waterwheel was not, during the eighteenth century, the epitome of the quaint and picturesque: it was in the van of scientific and technical progress.) Again, the textile industries were quick to employ the Watt rotative engine; previously a two cylinder Newcomen engine had been tried out. Bleaching powders, based on Scheele's discovery of chlorine and its properties, were rapidly adopted: in this context one cannot help contrasting the indifference of medical science to Davy's early suggestion of using nitrous oxide as an anaesthetic; or Faraday's comment in 1818 on the anaesthetic power of sulphuric ether. The textile industries saw, over this period, a rapid succession of new machines, the pace of invention being so hot that in 1832 Charles Babbage reported that machines became obsolete long before they wore out. A Salford cotton mill was the first industrial establishment to use gas lighting: James Thomson, calico printer, introduced gas lighting to the town of Clitheroe when he installed it in his works. And there were many other important technical and scientific innovations. It was to supply these industries, so well accustomed to change, that the synthetic coal-tar dyestuffs were introduced from 1856 onwards. It is interesting that, so far as we can see, the appearance of these synthetic dyestuffs was the last in the series of major innovations in the textiles and related industries: at least until recent times. (shrink)