Recent data indicate that under a specific posthypnotic suggestion to circumvent reading, highly suggestible subjects successfully eliminated the Stroop interference effect. The present study examined whether an optical explanation could account for this finding. Using cyclopentolate hydrochloride eye drops to pharmacologically prevent visual accommodation in all subjects, behavioral Stroop data were collected from six highly hypnotizables and six less suggestibles using an optical setup that guaranteed either sharply focused or blurred vision. The highly suggestibles performed the Stroop task when naturally (...) vigilant, under posthypnotic suggestion not to read, and while visually blurred; the less suggestibles ran naturally vigilant, while looking away, and while visually blurred. Although visual accommodation was precluded for all subjects, posthypnotic suggestion effectively eliminated Stroop interference and was comparable to looking away in controls. These data strengthen the view that Stroop interference is neither robust nor inevitable and support the hypothesis that posthypnotic suggestion may exert a top-down influence on neural processing. (shrink)

R K Elliott; Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 135–153, https:/.

R K Elliott; Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 135–153, https:/.

For those to whom John Bowring's name means anything, the most likely association with it is the complex and question-begging term ‘Benthamite’. Contemporaries certainly used the term, particularly when they wanted to suggest that his actions were narrowly ideological or theoretical. But to some of Bowring's contemporaries another association served hostile intent almost as well: his Unitarianism.

In a masked priming experimental paradigm, we studied a possible subliminal perception effect on a semantic selection task. To gauge the degree to which subjects solved the SST consciously, they subsequently reported their level of confidence of having made a correct response. This was done on each trial, and the subjects used individually constructed category rating scales to do so, in order to achieve a more sensitive measurement of which trials were influenced by conscious processes. During the construction of these (...) individual rating scales, subjects verbally reported their experiences after each trial. The present study failed to find evidence of performance above chance level when subjects themselves reported to be at chance level. In fact, performance closely covaried with subjects' confidence ratings. About half of the subjects reported they would sometimes experience a 'feeling of knowing' the correct response to the SST, despite being unaware of the specific identity of the prime. From this, we observe the methodological point that in order to demonstrate subliminal perception in a masked priming paradigm with a semantic selection task it is not enough to demonstrate a lack of conscious visual perception of the prime, since a vague, yet conscious, FOK experience can be used by subjects to solve the task. (shrink)

Rita Bottino,1 Santosh Nagaraju,2 Vikas Satyananda,2 Hidetaka Hara,2 Martin Wijkstrom,2 Massimo Trucco,1 David KC Cooper2 1Institute of Cellular Therapeutics, Allegheny Health Network, 2Thomas E Starzl Transplantation Institute, Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA: Diabetes mellitus is increasing worldwide. Type 1 diabetes can be treated successfully by islet allotransplantation, the results of which are steadily improving. However, the number of islets that can be obtained from deceased human donors will never be sufficient to cure more than a very (...) small percentage of patients who might benefit from transplantation. Although there are some differences in glucose metabolism between pigs and humans, the use of pigs could provide an unlimited supply of islets, and the insulin produced would undoubtedly control glucose levels. Transplantation of islets into the portal vein results in islets residing in the liver; however, an early inflammatory response and rejection remain problematic, even when the recipient is receiving immunosuppressive therapy. In the long term, immunosuppressive drugs may exhibit toxicities to patients and specifically harm the islet cells. In contrast, encapsulation techniques provide islets with a physical barrier that prevents antibodies binding to the islet graft while still allowing insulin to be released into the recipient's circulation; in theory, patients receiving encapsulated grafts might not require exogenous immunosuppressive therapy. Nonhuman primates with encapsulated pig islet transplants have remained insulin-independent for several weeks, but long-term efficacy remains uncertain. Furthermore, techniques are now available to knock out genes from the pig and/or insert human genes, thus rendering the antigenic structure of pigs closer to that of humans, and providing protection from the human immune response. Islet transplantation from genetically engineered pigs has been followed by insulin independence in a small number of nonhuman primates for greater than 1 year. Neonatal islets have some advantages over adult islets in that they are easier to isolate and culture, and have the ability to proliferate during the first few months after transplantation. In 2009, the International Xenotransplantation Association set up a group to encourage and advise on clinical trials of pig islet xenotransplantation; this group's guidelines are discussed. Clinical trials of encapsulated pig islets are already under way. Keywords: diabetes, islets, pancreatic, pig, xenotransplantation. (shrink)

R.K. Elliott's essays on aesthetics put forward a number of common themes that together constitute a unified approach to aesthetics. Throughout his writing, Elliott combines analytic rigour with sympathy for ideas in continental philosophy. This book, the first to gather together Elliott's key essays, powerfully illuminates the unifying role of imagination and the aesthetic in human experience.

Contributed articles presented at the National Seminar on Language and Mind held at Hyderabad in 2004.

Decompressive craniectomy is a technically straightforward procedure whereby a large section of the cranium is temporarily removed in cases where the intracranial pressure is dangerously high. While its use has been described for a number of conditions, it is increasingly used in the context of severe head injury. As the use of the procedure increases, a significant number of patients may survive a severe head injury who otherwise would have died. Unfortunately some of these patients will be left severely disabled; (...) a condition likened to the RUB, an acronym for the Risk of Unacceptable Badness. Until recently it has been difficult to predict this outcome, however an accurate prediction model has been developed and this has been applied to a large cohort of patients in Western Australia. It is possible to compare the predicted outcome with the observed outcome at 18 months within this cohort. By using predicted and observed outcome data this paper considers the ethical implications in three cases of differing severity of head injury in view of the fact that it is possible to calculate the RUB for each case. (shrink)

Objective To assess parental permission for a neonate's research participation using the MacArthur competence assessment tool for clinical research (MacCAT-CR), specifically testing the components of understanding, appreciation, reasoning and choice. Study Design Quantitative interviews using study-specific MacCAT-CR tools. Hypothesis Parents of critically ill newborns would produce comparable MacCAT-CR scores to healthy adult controls despite the emotional stress of an infant with critical heart disease or the urgency of surgery. Parents of infants diagnosed prenatally would have higher MacCAT-CR scores than parents (...) of infants diagnosed postnatally. There would be no difference in MacCAT-CR scores between parents with respect to gender or whether they did or did not permit research participation. Participants Parents of neonates undergoing cardiac surgery who had made decisions about research participation before their neonate's surgery. Methods The MacCAT-CR. Results 35 parents (18 mothers; 17 fathers) of 24 neonates completed 55 interviews for one or more of three studies. Total scores: magnetic resonance imaging (mean 36.6, SD 7.71), genetics (mean 38.8, SD 3.44), heart rate variability (mean 37.7, SD 3.30). Parents generally scored higher than published subject populations and were comparable to published control populations with some exceptions. Conclusions The MacCAT-CR can be used to assess parental permission for neonatal research participation. Despite the stress of a critically ill neonate requiring surgery, parents were able to understand study-specific information and make informed decisions to permit their neonate's participation. (shrink)

The study of the interrelationship between ethnomedicinal knowledge and socio-cultural values needs to be studied mainly for the simple reason that culture is not only the ethical imperative for development, it is also the condition of its sustainability; for their exists a symbiotic relationship between habitats and cultures. The traditional communities around Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary of Uttarakhand state in India have a rich local health care tradition, which has been in practice for the past hundreds of years. The present study (...) documents the Ethnomedicinal uses of 54 medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) along with their botanical and vernacular names, family, habit, habitat, threat status, collection season, purpose of collection, quantity, conservation practices, market potential and part(s) used in traditional health care system. The documented species belonging to 38 families have been used to cure more than 47 different kinds of ailments. These MAPs collected from the wild in a particular season and used as per the method prescribed by traditional herbal healers (Vaidyas) that provide effective results. Perception of local people during field trips based on socio-demographic characters showed them to prefer herbal system of treatments and they understood the status of traditional health care systems in the region. The study reveals that approximately 70 % population of the study area depend on herbal systems of treatments and preferred to visit Vaidyas for curing a variety of ailments because the traditional system of medicine is one of the most important prevailing systems in the region where modern health care facilities are rare or in very poor conditions. The organic cultivation practices of selected MAPs were demonstrated to rural inhabitants through capacity building training program and participatory action research framework approaches for sustainability and enhancement of livelihood security. A series of workshops and village level meetings on traditional health care systems were organized and forming/registered a strong association of Vaidyas for making their traditional system of health care more practical and effective. The study emphasizes the potentials of the ethnomedicinal research, conservation practices, socio-cultural and religious ethics for promoting traditional plants based treatments and also the need to document the indigenous knowledge for scientific validation before its industrial application. (shrink)

The World Medical Association’s revised Declaration of Helsinki endorses the view that all trial participants in every country are entitled to the worldwide best standard of care. In this paper the authors show that this requirement has been rejected by every national and international committee that has examined this issue. They argue that the consensus view now holds that it is ethically permissible, in some circumstances, to provide research participants less than the worldwide best care. Finally, the authors show that (...) there is also consensus regarding the broad conditions under which this is acceptable. (shrink)