The lines come from the messenger's speech describing the attack of the Delphians on Neoptolemus, a passage which I have discussed elsewhere in connexion with the tradition of Neoptolemus as inventor of the armed Pyrrhic dance. LSJ seem to be in several minds about the meaning and connexion of some of the words describing the missiles used by the Delphians. S.v. ‘σφαγεύς’, they give ‘sacrificial knife, spit’ uniquely of a word elsewhere meaning ‘slayer, murderer’, etc.. S.v. ‘βουπόρος’, they cite (...) ἀμφωβόλοι σφαγῆς … βουπόροι ‘spitst fit to pierce an ox's throat’—i.e. taking σφαγῆς as gen. sing., rather oddly dependent on βουπόροι. S.v. ‘ἔκλυτος’, they quote this passage, again uniquely, in the sense ‘easy to let go, light, buoyant, of missiles’. This last seems even less likely than Wecklein's ohne Riemen or the Budé's doubles dards sans poignée, which presumably invoke a rather frigid contrast of the true javelins fitted with thongs and the spits, sharp at both ends, which were pressed into service of a similar sort, but of course had to be thrown without this attachment: but these implements could hardly be described as ἔκλυτοι of thongs which they never had at all in the first place!With Murray's punctuation, since a combination of a, b, c τε, d is scarcely credible, σφαγῆς βουπόροι is presumably not to be taken as the description of a separate type of weapon, but as an explanatory appositional phrase with ἀμφώβολοι. This interpretation is found in the schol, ὀβελίσκοι σφάττειν δυνάμενοι and followed by Hermann and Paley. (shrink)

Every healthcare organisation enacts a multitude of policies, but there has been no discussion as to what procedural and substantive requirements a policy writing process should meet in order to achieve good outcomes and to possess sufficient authority for those who are asked to follow it.Using, as an example, the controversy about patient’s refusal of blood transfusions, I argue that a hospital wide policy is preferable to individual decision making, because it ensures autonomy, quality, fairness, and efficiency.Policy writing for morally (...) controversial medical practices needs additional justification compared to policies on standard medical practices and secures legitimate authority for HCO members by meeting five requirements: all parties directed by the policy are represented; the deliberative process encompasses all of the HCO’s obligations; the rationales for the policy are made available; there is a mechanism for criticising, and for evaluating the policy. (shrink)

Bacteria use trans‐translation to rescue stalled ribosomes and target incomplete proteins for proteolysis. Despite similarities between tRNAs and transfer‐messenger RNA (tmRNA), the key molecule for trans‐translation, new structural and biochemical data show important differences between translation and trans‐translation at most steps of the pathways. tmRNA and its binding partner, SmpB, bind in the A site of the ribosome but do not trigger the same movements of nucleotides in the rRNA that are required for codon recognition by tRNA. tmRNA‐SmpB moves (...) from the A site to the P site of the ribosome without subunit rotation to generate hybrid states, and moves from the P site to a site outside the ribosome instead of to the E site. During catalysis, transpeptidation to tmRNA appears to require the ribosomal protein bL27, which is dispensable for translation, suggesting that this protein may be conserved in bacteria due to trans‐translation. These differences provide insights into the fundamental nature of trans‐translation, and provide targets for new antibiotics that may have decrease cross‐reactivity with eukaryotic ribosomes. (shrink)

The quantitative problem of old evidence is the problem of how to measure the degree to which e confirms h for agent A at time t when A regards e as justified at t. Existing attempts to solve this problem have applied the e-difference approach, which compares A's probability for h at t with what probability A would assign h if A did not regard e as justified at t. The quantitative problem has been widely regarded as unsolvable primarily on (...) the grounds that the e-difference approach suffers from intractable problems. Various philosophers have proposed that 'Bayesianism' should be rejected as a research strategy in confirmation theory in part because of the unsolvability of this problem. I develop a version of the e-difference approach which overcomes these problems and possesses various advantages (but also certain limitations). I develop an alternative 'theistic' approach which handles many cases that my development of the e-difference approach does not handle. I conclude with an assessment of the significance of the quantitative problem for Bayesianism and argue that this problem is misunderstood in so far as it is regarded as unsolvable, and in so far as it is regarded as a problem only for Bayesians. (shrink)

Most authors who work with moral status automatically dismiss the possibility that plants are the kinds of entities that have moral status. This dismissal coheres with our intuitions about common-sense morality: if plants do not have moral status then we do not have any direct moral obligations to plant life. An implication of such a view is that any suggestion otherwise commits one to be in favour of an absurd conclusion. However, given the recent literature and empirical evidence on plant (...) minds, there are reasons to accept a different perspective that finds the absurd conclusion plausible. (shrink)

In R. C. Flickinger's (3rd ed. second impression 1929) we read on pp. 171In the iambic trimeters written by Aeschylus a trisyllabic substitution (tribrach, anapaest or dactyl) for the pure disyllabic iambus occurs only once in about twenty-five verses.Tragic Drama of the Greekstrimeters’ lines like.

The healthcare crisis that has developed in the last two decades during China's economic reform has caused healthcare and hospital financing reforms to be largely experienced by patients as a crisis in the patient–healthcare professional relationship (PPR) at the bedside. The nature and magnitude of this crisis were epitomized by the "Harbin Scandal"—an incident that took place in August 2005 in a Harbin teaching hospital in which the family of an elderly patient hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU) for (...) 66 days paid over RMB ¥6 million. The news was publicized globally and ended in the firing of six top hospital administrators including the hospital president and the ICU director. This paper seeks to show that the Chinese healthcare crisis is ultimately linked to a conflict of interests between patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs), which is inherent in the reformed healthcare system of China. Hence the crisis is, at its core, a crisis of fidelity and confidence that must be restored to the PPR. At the "macro" level, it is simplistic to blame the crisis on the failure of the market system, and at the "micro" level, it is naïve to expect that a contractual understanding of the PPR will effectively restore the confidence of patients. This paper will show that the fiduciary relationship and medical professionalism share similar attributes, with fidelity being the core value of both. It concludes that the loss of medical fidelity implies the dissolution of the PPR and the demise of the medical profession and challenges Chinese HCPs to keep their fidelity as a means to both protect their patients’ interests and to preserve their profession's survival. (shrink)

It has frequently been observed that the Prometheus Vinctus shows certain Sophoclean characteristics of rhythm. In order to vary the rhythm of his iambics and to avoid monotony, Sophocles often knits consecutive trimeters closely together by placing at the end of one line some word which looks forward to the next line, and so precludes the reader from stopping for the natural pause after the sixth foot. Sometimes he uses in this way subordinating words which introduce a dependent clause in (...) the next line ; sometimes proclitics or quasi-proclitics. (shrink)

Towards the conclusion of his interesting remarks on the meaning of the Homeric phrase, τ δ' πτερος πλετο μθος, Professor J. A. K. Thomson writes, ‘When a classical author uses the word πτερος it means “wingless” or “featherless” and nothing else,’ and he accordingly rejects Headlam's interpretation of πτερος φτις at Aesch. Ag. 288 together with the same scholar's proposal to read at P. V. 707 πτερος for the unmetrical απνδιος It may be true that the phrase, πτρ τάχει, which (...) Headlam adduced in his note on the Agam. passage in support of his rendering, is not by itself convincing, but there are other considerations which Professor Thomson has, I imagine, overlooked. What follows is not an attempt to demonstrate that πτερος does mean ‘wing-swift’ in Aeschylus, but only to suggest that there is evidence to show that the word could bear that meaning in classical Greek authors, and that Headlam's interpretation and emendation should therefore not be rejected out of hand. (shrink)