Boston Medical Center/Boston University Medical Campus recently reduced certain requirements for human subjects research where this could be done without adversely affecting the rights and welfare of participants, in anticipation of changes in the Final Common Rule. Modifications affected exempt and expedited categories, approval periods, ceding review, Quality Improvement/Quality Assessment activities, and some requirements for pregnant women, prisoners, and children. This case study may assist other institutions in responding to the Final Common Rule.

Two firm points in the chronology of Antiphon's speeches are VI περ το χορευτο in 419/81 and the Defence in 411/02. Speech V περ τσ 'Hρδου is now generally dated between these two; only the vaguest attempts have been made to date I κατ τσ μητρυασ; there is no general agreement on either the date or the authorship of the Tetralogies. The main purpose of this paper is to adduce linguistic as well as external evidence for the dating of V (...) in the neighbourhood of 414 and to show grounds for dating I between VI and V. Its secondary purpose is to apply some of the results gained in this inquiry to the fragments and the Tetralogies. (shrink)

The average male–female performance difference in the three sports of track athletics, swimming and time trial cycling are examined between the years 1948 and 1976. During this period females have gradually come to participate in a much larger number of events, particularly those of longer duration. In each of these three sports, women's performances in relation to men's have more or less continuously improved and it appears that if the changes between 1948 and 1976 are maintained, average female performance will (...) equal that of males for all events currently competed in by both sexes in these sports at some time during the next century. Estimates as to when, precisely, this will occur vary somewhat according to the basis on which the calculations are made. The other main change evident during these years is that in all three sports women's performances relative to men's for events of long duration have become as good or better than their relative performance at events of short duration. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Radical Constructivism and Radical Constructedness: Luhmann’s Sociology of Semantics, Organizations, and Self-Organization” by Loet Leydesdorff. > Upshot: Leydesdorff emphasises the uncertainties involved in the communication of meaning. Luhmann posited three types of media, each of which reduces one type of communicative improbability. The theory of cultural evolution supports Leydesdorff’s emphasis on the uncertainty of communication, and agrees that different media are needed for communication within and across social boundaries. But it highlights the distinction between (...) media and the symbolic codes that give them structure; and it raises the question whether Luhmann’s symbolically generalized communication media are really media at all. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the ethical challenges in home mechanical ventilation based on a secondary analysis of qualitative empirical data. The data included perceptions of healthcare professionals in hospitals and community health services and family members of children and adults using home mechanical ventilation. The findings show that a number of ethical challenges, or dilemmas, arise at all levels in the course of treatment: deciding who should be offered home mechanical ventilation, respect for patient and family (...) wishes, quality of life, dignity and equal access to home mechanical ventilation. Other challenges were the impacts home mechanical ventilation had on the patient, the family, the healthcare services and the allocation of resources. A better and broader understanding of these issues is crucial in order to improve the quality of care for both patient and family and assist healthcare professionals involved in home mechanical ventilation to make decisions for the good of the patient and his or her family. (shrink)

Lorsque la science-fiction devient chaque jour davantage réalité, lorsque les métavers collectifs et individuels esquissent de façon de plus en plus nette la place qu'ils auront demain dans nos vies, lorsque la part toujours plus grande de robot en nous semble donner raison aux plus folles idées du transhumanisme, lorsque la littérature elle-même fait la part (trop) belle à l'égo et au moi, sommes-nous entrés déjà, sans le savoir encore, dans l'ère de l'humain augmenté?"--Page 4 of cover.

Against Barnett (2012), I argue that the theory I advance in DeRose 2010 is best construed as one on which ‘"were"ed-up’ future-directed conditionals like ‘If the house were not to be painted, it would soon look quite shabby’ are, in ways important to how they function in deliberation, different in literal content from their ‘straightforward’ counterparts like ‘If the house is not painted, it will soon look quite shabby’. I also defend my way of classifying future-directed conditionals against an attack (...) by Barnett by defending a standard (among philosophers) approach to the basic structure of some conditionals. Finally, I counter Barnett’s charge that by using the concept of deliberation in my account of the meaning of future-directed conditionals, I put an implausibly demanding constraint on what it takes to understand such sentences. (shrink)

A distinction between basic archetypes of urban form was made by Bruno Fortier: the accumulation city as opposed to the creation city. These archetypes derive from archaeology - being based on the Roman and the Egyptian city - but are interpreted as morphological paradigms, as a set of assumptions and underpinnings determining spatial planning and design. The creation city is described as expression of modernity - the paradigmatic origins of which can be traced back to Descartes’ ideas on the city (...) - analysed as an ontology of destruction, among other things. A conceptual framework connecting the creation city to modernity is presented by interpreting Fortier’s archetypes through the anthropological work of W.T. Jones. Influenced by postmodern cultural analysis and architectural discourse, the paradigmatic importance of the accumulation city seems to increase. It is argued that interest in the accumulation city is related to a discord which is characteristic of modernity but which seems to be denied by the urbanistic modernism of the 20th century. Methodologically, we argue that modernism should be seen as part of a post-paradigmatic phase of modernity rather than as an expression of modernity at its zenith. It is argued that the discord of modernism should not lead to a discussion of modernism and postmodernism as contrary paradigms, but that the understanding of the city oscillates dialectically between these two paradigms. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty enjoys a special place among contemporary French bourgeois philosophers and aestheticians. Statements by Sartre, Camus, Hyppolite, Dufrenne, Ricoeur, Geroux, Lévi-Strauss, and others show that they experienced in one way or another the influence of this philosopher. For example, all French phenomenologists and existentialists recognize that Merleau-Ponty was the first to take up and pursue, on French soil, the elaboration of the ideas of Husserlian phenomenology and German existentialism. One cannot fail to note that various kinds of antidialectical and (...) metaphysical notions have come into being under the direct and powerful influence of Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)