Autonomy concept

Much speculation has taken place around the design of fuel-cell vehicles and how radical changes can take place with differing architecture. For instance, in Scientific American, GM discusses its autonomy concept and a drivable prototype called Hy-wire [1], A rough schematic of this concept is presented in Figure 10.4. 

Planned orders and other information are sent from the ERP system to a scheduling system via an interface. The scheduling system has its own database and a number of different automatic and interactive scheduling functions. Scheduling results are sent back to the superior system via an interface at the end of the scheduling process. This loose integration respects the hierarchical concept and the autonomy of the planners. 

The technology concepts first introduced in Autonomy and then Hy-wire have become more authentic in the Sequel which demonstrates the vision that fuel cells are the ultimate answer. GM, along with others, has been working at reinventing the auto. GM developed its AUTOnomy and Hy-wire concept cars. Now, with the fuel cell Sequel, GM has been able to double the range and half the 0-60 mph acceleration of these cars in less than three years. 

The notion of imparting its own rules draws an equivalence between biological autonomy and auto referentiality (Varela et al, 1991 Varela, 2000). In turn, auto-referentiality is related to the concept of operational closure. This is a process of circular and reflexive interdependency, whose primary effect is its own production. Operational closure must not be viewed as a lack of contact with the environment -as already stressed, any living system must be seen as an open system. The relation between autopoiesis, autonomy, and self referentiality is treated in the specialized literature, see for example Marks-Tarlow et al. (2001) and Weber (2002). 

The theory of autopoiesis is based on the observation of the actual behavior of a living cell. As such, it is not an abstract theoretical model for life - there are many of these - but a deductive analysis of life as it is on Earth. It is in a way a picture of the blue-print of cellular life, and it is fascinating to see how many concepts related to the process of life - emergence, homeostasis, biological autonomy, interactions with the environment, cognition, evolutionary drift, etc. - pour forth from this analysis in a coherent way. 

The reality of family has changed significantly in recent decades. The concept of parental autonomy, grounded in the assumption that parents raise their own children in nuclear families, is no longer to be taken for granted. According almost absolute deference to parental... 

Although discussed in detail elsewhere in this book, the two ethical principles guiding informed consent are those of autonomy and equipoise. Autonomy is the concept that the patient is an individual that is under no duress, whether subtle or obvious, actual or inferred, and is competent to make a choice according to his or her free will. Clinical trials conducted on persons in custody, or on subordinate soldiers, may both be violations of the patient s autonomy. Equipoise is the concept that the investigator, and those sponsoring the trial, are truly uncertain as to the outcome of the study in practical terms, this is a guarantee to the patient that an unreasonable hazard cannot result from unfavorable randomization because the treatment options are not known to be unequally hazardous. 

In the case of studies in incompetent adults, again most Ethical Committees will accept a legal guardian or custodian in lieu of the patient himself or herself, provided that there is sufficient evidence that the custodian has a bona fide and independent interest in the patient s welfare. Again, forms of concurrence can be employed when possible. The ordering of a patient s participation in a clinical trial by a Court Order would usually be a form of duress and could thus violate the concept of autonomy described above. 

Henry Beecher (1904—1976) discussed12 the key concepts in human research of consent and autonomy, and the inherent difficulties in achieving these. People in positions of dependency may be termed vulnerable groups these can include minors, prisoners, employees and family members. Conversely, Beecher established that there is no duty to participate in clinical research - an example in which public or societal good cannot outweigh personal risk. 

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