The Ethics of Medical Data Donation

This open access book presents an ethical approach to utilizing personal medical data. It features essays that combine academic argument with practical application of ethical principles. The contributors are experts in ethics and law. They address the challenges in the re-use of medical data of the deceased on a voluntary basis. This pioneering study looks at the many factors involved when individuals and organizations wish to share information for research, policy-making, and humanitarian purposes. Today, it is easy to donate blood or even organs, but it is virtually impossible to donate one’s own medical data. This is seen as ethically unacceptable. Yet, data donation can greatly benefit the welfare of our societies. This collection provides timely interdisciplinary research on biomedical big data. Topics include the ethics of data donation, the legal and regulatory challenges, and the current and future collaborations. Readers will learn about the ethical and regulatory challenges associated with medical data donations. They will also better understand the special nature of using deceased data for research purposes with regard to ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. In addition, the contributors identify the key governance issues of such a scheme. The essays also look at what we can learn in terms of best practice from existing medical data schemes

The Ethics of Medical Data Donation

This open access book presents an ethical approach to utilizing personal medical data. It features essays that combine academic argument with practical application of ethical principles. The contributors are experts in ethics and law. They address the challenges in the re-use of medical data of the deceased on a voluntary basis. This pioneering study looks at the many factors involved when individuals and organizations wish to share information for research, policy-making, and humanitarian purposes. Today, it is easy to donate blood or even organs, but it is virtually impossible to donate one’s own medical data. This is seen as ethically unacceptable. Yet, data donation can greatly benefit the welfare of our societies. This collection provides timely interdisciplinary research on biomedical big data. Topics include the ethics of data donation, the legal and regulatory challenges, and the current and future collaborations. Readers will learn about the ethical and regulatory challenges associated with medical data donations. They will also better understand the special nature of using deceased data for research purposes with regard to ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. In addition, the contributors identify the key governance issues of such a scheme. The essays also look at what we can learn in terms of best practice from existing medical data schemes

Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature

Many of Britain’s best known romances, such as the stories of Tristan, King Horn, Havelok, Guy of Warwick, and Bevis of Hampton, were first recorded in Anglo-Norman verse and later revised into Middle English versions. Setting these English and French texts in conversation with one another illuminates the impact of the Norman Conquest on Britain's linguistic, literary, and social history. These romances form a distinctively "insular" body of works, closely related to one another and to their situation in England. Chapters 1 and 2: Romances of English heroes assess the political ideas sustaining the shift from feudal toward national organization. Chapter 3: Pious romances counter the church's vision of irreconcilable opposition between worldly ambitions and devotion to God. Chapters 4 and 5: Romances concerned with courtliness question the hermetic elevation and spiritual refinement of conventional “courtoisie.

The articulation of protest in Marguerite Porete's 'The mirror of simple souls'

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of MA at the University of the Witwatersrand. February 2015The focus of the thesis is on the counter-cultural comments and formulations in the medieval text The Mirror of Simple Souls by Frenchwoman Marguerite Porete, who suffered execution at the stake in 1310. The thesis demonstrates how in the past and into the current reading world the text can be seen as a form of literary protest/activism. The theoretical energies for the thesis draw from accounts of the medieval female experience, and the analysis is part empirical, part Marxist-feminist and part deconstructive. The broader context explores what literary protest/activism could have meant in medieval contexts and the gender strategies that were employed. The verbal texture of the book receives sustained attention as do the power relations between the dramatis personae, and the interplay between author and translator and (un)intended audience/reader(s) is explored, particularly shifts between presumed laity and expert theological influences and audiences

Development of near real time and cumulative GIC proxy indices.

Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Geomagnetic storms are phenomena which can give rise to geomagnetically induced currents (GICs), which have an adverse effect on technology in that they can cause anomalous low frequency currents that damage critical infrastructure. The problems with quantifying the damage in the absence of accurate GIC data (which can show the level of damage) are twofold, namely, for near real-time applications and the other for long-term applications respectively. Since GIC data is not easily available due to power utilities either not having measuring devices or not allowing its dissemination readily, other methods of quantifying damage as unambiguously as possible using data from more attainable sources such as local magnetometer stations, are necessary improvements that can be made. Attempts are made in this work, using an algorithm similar to that of Wintoft et al. [1], to address these problems via the creation of two GIC proxies to, in the case of near-real time applications, track damage, and in the long-term case, by combining ideas from Yu and Ridley [2] as well as Lotz and Danskin [3], to indicate damage incurred during storms. Using these algorithms, results are acquired by making use of Pearson’s correlation and graphical methods, although the data set is too small to draw statistically significant conclusions. The results from the short-term index show that the index works well with the best indicators of shortterm behaviour available as well as GIC data from power stations in South Africa. The results from the long-term index corroborates with the literature, in that damage done in long, yet less intense events can can be as significant as damage done by short-term, yet highly intense events, as reported by Lotz and Danskin [3].Glossary is on page vii

Rolle, Hilton and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing: the divine as freedom in middle English contemplative writings

The thesis argues that the leading male-authored contemplative writings composed in England in the fourteenth century mediated many aspects of contemporary ideology, including the most conservative, but that their mediation of new social paradigms renders them liminal texts. The key contention is that the writings' social and historical creativity stems from their centring on the divine. The thesis rejects Marxist and post-structuralist constructions of the divine as the peak and ultimate determinant of an unjust social system. It does, however, adopt both Irigaray's concept of the divine as a feminist strategy, and the Shaivite conception of the divine as the ultimate source of freedom and creativity. Other theories and models applied to the texts in the course of discussion include post-structuralist and Shaivite conceptions of language and of the "reality" produced by discourse, insights into the binary foundations of language and experience developed by Cixous and Kristeva, theories of logos in relation to "feminine" poetic excess, Bynum's views on mediaeval constructions of gender, Volosinov's stylistic theory, theories of utopia and play, and Gnosticism as a model of marginality. The thesis adopts the minute reading practices proposed by David Aers, as a strategy for uncovering the writings' synchronic engagement with contemporary -historical circumstances, which are outlined in preliminary chapters. A purpose of the thesis is to counter the current critical trend to merge the writings diachronically with preceding literary and ecclesiastical traditions, by emphasising their production by the ideology of their period. The basis of discussion is a detailed examination and analysis of all the known works by each of the chosen authors. Rolle's writings and The Cloud of Unknowing and its companion texts are dealt with in the order required by the argument, but Section Two considers Hilton's whole canon in chronological order of composition