After the war is over: the role of General Sir Arthur Currie in the development of academic medicine in Canada

Canadian universities faced a challenge with the return of a large cohort of battle-hardened students and faculty from the First World War. General Sir Arthur Currie, considered one of the few successful generals of the war, returned to a welcome of silence in Canada. McGill University exploited the opportunity to recruit him as its president. Currie oversaw a campaign of building construction and faculty development at McGill that also had a significant effect on the rest of Canada. Through his fostering of the Montreal Neurological Institute and the recruitment of Dr. Wilder Penfield, Currie facilitated the development of multidisciplinary medicine, which integrates clinical care with research — an aspiration still held by specialty medicine in Canada today

Recognition and property in Hegel and the early Marx

The article attempts to show, first, that for Hegel the role of property is to enable persons both to objectify their freedom and to properly express their recognition of each other as free, and second, that the Marx of 1844 uses fundamentally similar ideas in his exposition of communist society. For him the role of ‘true property’ is to enable individuals both to objectify their essential human powers and their individuality, and to express their recognition of each other as fellow human beings with needs, or their ‘human recognition’. Marx further uses these ideas to condemn the society of private property and market exchange as characterised by ‘estranged’ forms of property and recognition. He therefore uses a structure of ideas which Hegel had used to justify the institutions of private property and market exchange in order to condemn those same institutions. It is concluded that Marx’s adoption from Hegel of the idea that property as the means of self-objectification and of expressed recognition, leaves his vision of communism open to the charge that in it, just as in market society, the relations between human beings are mediated by things

Which wavenumbers determine the thermodynamic stability of soft matter quasicrystals?

For soft matter to form quasicrystals an important ingredient is to have two characteristic lengthscales in the interparticle interactions. To be more precise, for stable quasicrystals, periodic modulations of the local density distribution with two particular wavenumbers should be favored, and the ratio of these wavenumbers should be close to certain special values. So, for simple models, the answer to the title question is that only these two ingredients are needed. However, for more realistic models, where in principle all wavenumbers can be involved, other wavenumbers are also important, specifically those of the second and higher reciprocal lattice vectors. We identify features in the particle pair interaction potentials which can suppress or encourage density modes with wavenumbers associated with one of the regular crystalline orderings that compete with quasicrystals, enabling either the enhancement or suppression of quasicrystals in a generic class of systems

Forces, Friction and Fractionation: Denis Walsh’s Organism, Agency and Evolution.

In Denis Walsh’s Organisms, Agency, and Evolution, he argues that new developments in the science of biology motivate a radical change to our metaphysical picture of life: what he calls ‘Situated Darwinism’. The central claim is that we should take the biological world to be at base about organisms, and organisms in a fundamentally teleological sense. We critically examine Walsh’s arguments and suggest further developments

Cause of Death Affects Racial Classification on Death Certificates

Recent research suggests racial classification is responsive to social stereotypes, but how this affects racial classification in national vital statistics is unknown. This study examines whether cause of death influences racial classification on death certificates. We analyze the racial classifications from a nationally representative sample of death certificates and subsequent interviews with the decedents' next of kin and find notable discrepancies between the two racial classifications by cause of death. Cirrhosis decedents are more likely to be recorded as American Indian on their death certificates, and homicide victims are more likely to be recorded as Black; these results remain net of controls for followback survey racial classification, indicating that the relationship we reveal is not simply a restatement of the fact that these causes of death are more prevalent among certain groups. Our findings suggest that seemingly non-racial characteristics, such as cause of death, affect how people are racially perceived by others and thus shape U.S. official statistics

Innovation in immediate neonatal care: development of the Bedside Assessment, Stabilisation and Initial Cardiorespiratory Support (BASICS) trolley

OBJECTIVE: Babies receive oxygen through their umbilical cord while in the uterus and for a few minutes after birth. Currently, if the baby is not breathing well at birth, the cord is cut so as to transfer the newborn to a resuscitation unit. We sought to develop a mobile resuscitation trolley on which newly born babies can be resuscitated while still receiving oxygenated blood and the 'placental transfusion' through the umbilical cord. This would also prevent separation of the mother and baby in the first minutes after birth. DESIGN: Multidisciplinary iterative product development. SETTING: Clinical Engineering Department of a University Teaching Hospital. METHODS: Following an initial design meeting, a series of prototypes were developed. At each stage, the prototype was reviewed by a team of experts in the laboratory and in the hospital delivery suite to determine ease of use and fitness for purpose. A commercial company was identified to collaborate on the trolley's development and secure marking with the Conformite Europeenne mark, allowing the trolley to be introduced into clinical practice. RESULTS: The trolley is a small mobile resuscitation unit based on the concept of an overbed hospital table. It can be manoeuvred to within 50 cm of the mother's pelvis so that the umbilical cord can remain intact during resuscitation, irrespective of whether the baby is born naturally, by instrumental delivery or by caesarean section. Warmth for the newborn comes from a heated mattress and the trolley has the facility to provide suction, oxygen and air. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first mobile resuscitation device designed specifically to facilitate newborn resuscitation at the bedside and with an intact cord. The next step is to assess its safety, its acceptability to clinicians and parents, and to determine whether it allows resuscitation with an intact cord

Media awards for responsible reporting of suicide: Experiences from Australia, Belgium and Denmark

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Media awards to encourage responsible reporting of suicide have been introduced in several countries, including Australia, Belgium and Denmark.</p> <p>Aims</p> <p>This study aimed to examine the experiences of Australian, Belgian and Danish award recipients in preparing stories on suicide, and consider the impacts of the awards for these recipients and for media professionals more broadly.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>We conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with the majority (14 out of 15) of past recipients of the awards in the three countries of interest.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Media awards appear to show promise as a method of reinforcing national and international media guidelines on reporting suicide. The recipients of awards were proud to have had their achievements recognized in this way, and had developed a heightened awareness of the issues inherent in reporting suicide. Although relatively few had prepared subsequent stories on suicide, a number had been given opportunities to provide advice to other media professionals about how best to approach this sensitive topic. Recipients viewed the awards as an important means by which good quality reporting can be rewarded, and a springboard for raising community awareness about suicide.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The experience from Australia, Belgium and Denmark suggests that media awards which recognize responsible reporting of suicide are extremely worthwhile.</p

A theory of scaling for community-based fisheries management

AbstractCommunity-based approaches to fisheries management has emerged as a mainstream strategy to govern dispersed, diverse and dynamic small scale fisheries. However, amplifying local community led sustainability outcomes remains an enduring challenge. We seek to fill a theoretical gap in the conceptualization of ‘scaling up community-based fisheries management’. We draw on literature of agriculture innovations to provide a framework that takes into account process-driven and structural change occurring across multiple levels of governance, as well as different phases of scaling. We hypothesize that successful scaling requires engagement with all aspects of a governing regime, coalescing a range of actors, and therefore, is an enterprise that is larger than its parts. To demonstrate where the framework offers value, we illustrate the development of community-based fisheries management in Vanuatu according to the framework’s main scaling dimensions.</jats:p