Three separate churches erected in Constantinople were all dedicated to the wisdom of Christ and erected on the same site one after the other. These churches were built between 360 and 537 AD by three different emperors: Constantius II, Theodosius the Younger, and Justinian I. The first two churches were consumed in flames after relatively short lives, but the final and greatest church still stands today, despite a history of extensive damage. This final edifice is the main focus of this (...) paper, owing to its 1500 year longevity and unprecedented architecture. If the entire History of Justinian's church is to considered, it is inaccurate to refer to it as a “church,” because although it remained a church for the first 900 years after its audacious construction, it was later converted into a mosque. Today it is a museum, in remembrance of its long history. (24). (shrink)

The Gnostic World is an outstanding guide to Gnosticism, designed as a collection of critical studies by experts to both widen and deepen study in Gnostic movements and strands of speculation as a discrete "World" of human socio-spiritual life from the distant past until today. An international team of contributors examines these manifestations in a variety of contexts, from the ancient pre-Christian to the contemporary. The volume considers the intersection of Gnosticism with Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Indic practices and beliefs, (...) and also with such new religious movements as Theosophy, Scientology, Western Sufism, and the Nation of Islam. This illustrated handbook will be an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and researchers of Gnostic doctrine and history. (shrink)

Patient safety has only recently been subjected to wide-spread systematic study. Healthcare differs from other high risk industries in being more diverse and multi-contextual, and less certain and regulated. Also many patient safety problems are low-frequency events associated with many, varied contributing factors. The subject of this paper is the epistemology of patient safety (the science of the method of finding out about patient safety). Patient safety research is considered here on the background of a risk management framework which requires (...) researchers to: • Understand the context - as a subset of healthcare quality, services and systems research, with technical and human behavioural (cultural) components and a range of external and internal organisational influences, a wide range of research disciplines is necessary • Identify the risks - identify the things that go wrong and the frequency and nature of different types of incidents from sources such as medical record review, observational studies, audit, incident and medico-legal reports • Analyse the risks - deconstruct the things that go wrong, identifying contributing factors and trying to detect trends and patterns in contributing factors, detection, mitigation factors, ameliorating factors and actions taken to reduce risk • Evaluate the risks - decide on priorities, identifying preventive and corrective strategies and judging the risk- and cost-benefit of potential corrective strategies such as standardisation or simplification of a process or device • Manage the risk - evaluate and scope preventive and/or corrective strategies and then implement these, or place the problem on a risk register pending solution, or accept that what is needed is unaffordable • Communicate and consult - use interactive sessions, audit, on-going feedback, reminders and patient mediated prompts • Monitor and review the state of the problem - get baseline trends and patterns so that changes can be tracked and properly attributed to an intervention A hierarchy of levels of evidence has been proposed for clinical research and we argue that insufficient weighting has been given to lower ranked levels of research and to qualitative research, although critical interpretive synthesis is now gaining acceptance in mainstream thinking (e.g. by the Cochrane Collaboration). Fundamental challenges remain including how to grasp the elusive concept of patient safety, how to quantify, characterise and cost the problems, how to judge the extent to which harm can be attributed to errors, violations or system failures, how to identify contributing factors and the extent to which they can be implicated, how to judge whether incidents or their precursors are preventable, how to generate strong evidence to make healthcare safer and how to translate research into practice. Future directions include addressing the mundane as well as rare, dramatic events, and developing further research in non-hospital settings and in developing countries. In summary, a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, using information from all available data sources and combining retrospective, real time and prospective study designs, is necessary to address some of the more difficult patient safety problems. (shrink)

This long-awaited new edition contains eight of the dialogues of Plato, and is the first in a new five-volume complete edition of his works in the OCT series.

In a recent publication of four new inscriptions from Larisa in Thessaly, Kostas Gallis has revealed the helpful presence of a Syrian astrologer in that area of Greece toward the middle of the second century B.C. . In honouring this man the Larisaeans identify him, in one of the new texts, as 'αντíπατροσ 'αντιπτρον 'ιεροπολíτησ τσ ∑ελευκíδοσ, πεπλιτ*ogr;γ7rho;αημνοσ [δ] ν 'ομολíω υπρχων χαλδαοσ στρονóμοσ, νδημν τμν ρò ρρóνων. The Chaldaean astrologer Antipater is accordingly a native of Syrian Hierapolis who acquired (...) the citizenship of Homolion, in the area of Thessalian Magnesia. He evidently spent considerable time in Larisa. (shrink)

In a recent publication of four new inscriptions from Larisa in Thessaly, Kostas Gallis has revealed the helpful presence of a Syrian astrologer in that area of Greece toward the middle of the second century B.C.. In honouring this man the Larisaeans identify him, in one of the new texts, as 'αντíπατροσ 'αντιπτρον 'ιεροπολíτησ τσ ∑ελευκíδοσ, πεπλιτ*ogr;γ7rho;αημνοσ [δ] ν 'ομολíω υπρχων χαλδαοσ στρονóμοσ, νδημν τμν ρò ρρóνων. The Chaldaean astrologer Antipater is accordingly a native of Syrian Hierapolis who acquired the (...) citizenship of Homolion, in the area of Thessalian Magnesia. He evidently spent considerable time in Larisa. (shrink)

There is an increasing body of research on what kind of ethical challenges health care professionals experience regarding the quality of care. In the Netherlands the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate is responsible for monitoring and regulating the quality of health care. No research exists on what kind of ethical challenges inspectors experience during the regulation process itself. In a pilot study we used moral case deliberation as method in order to reflect upon inspectors’ ethical challenges. The objective of this paper (...) is to give an overview of the ethical challenges which health care inspectors encounter in their daily work. A thematic qualitative analysis was performed on cases that were collected from health care inspectors in a moral case deliberation pilot study. Eight themes were identified in health care regulation. These can be divided in two categories: work content and internal collaboration. The work of the health care inspectorate is morally loaded and our recommendation is that some form of ethics support is provided for health care inspectors. (shrink)