Report of the committee on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

Journal ArticleIn 1994 the Board of the American Association of Suicidology selected a Committee on Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. It was asked to review the issues emerging in the growing controversy concerning euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, palliative care, and the medical treatment of dying patients. Having discussed the issues together after extensively reviewing published materials, the committee now submits this report

What are the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide?

Journal ArticleQuill decisions rejecting a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court allowed each state to decide whether to legalize the intervention. In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization. Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients

Future directions for river carbon biogeochemistry observations

Rivers carry large quantities of carbon and form an important link between terrestrial, marine and atmospheric biogeochemical cycles, yet our observations of river carbon are severely limited. Here we provide a blueprint to build a global River Observation System that would improve our ability to observe and predict changes in this crucial piece of the global carbon cycle

Court Review: Volume 40, Issue 1 - Children as Witnesses: What We Hear Them Say May Not Be What They Mean

Children present a special challenge when they become participants in the legal system. Jean Piaget said that the work of a child is to play. That is the basis for most interactions between children and adults. The child plays and the consequences of that play are unimportant to adult affairs—that is, unless the child is under the age of 6 or 7 and is required to serve as a witness. In that situation the consequences of what the child says or chooses not to say can be truly significant. The special challenge for adults hearing the child’s testimony is to accurately infer what the child means from the words that are used. Entertaining the possibility that the child could intend to convey a meaning different from—and even opposite to—what a legally trained listener would mean using the same words is crucial to maximizing the value of the child’s testimony

Microprogram scheme for automatic recovery from computer error

Microprogram scheme enables computer to recover from failure in one of its two central processing units during time duration of instruction in which failure occurs. Microprogram advantages include - /1/ built-in interpretive capability, /2/ selection of processing interrupts by priority, and /3/ economical use of bootstrap sequence

The Metabolic Regimes at the Scale of an Entire Stream Network Unveiled Through Sensor Data and Machine Learning

Streams and rivers form dense networks that drain the terrestrial landscape and are relevant for biodiversity dynamics, ecosystem functioning, and transport and transformation of carbon. Yet, resolving in both space and time gross primary production (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER) and net ecosystem production (NEP) at the scale of entire stream networks has been elusive so far. Here, combining Random Forest (RF) with time series of sensor data in 12 reach sites, we predicted annual regimes of GPP, ER, and NEP in 292 individual stream reaches and disclosed properties emerging from the network they form. We further predicted available light and thermal regimes for the entire network and expanded the library of stream metabolism predictors. We found that the annual network-scale metabolism was heterotrophic yet with a clear peak of autotrophy in spring. In agreement with the River Continuum Concept, small headwaters and larger downstream reaches contributed 16% and 60%, respectively, to the annual network-scale GPP. Our results suggest that ER rather than GPP drives the metabolic stability at the network scale, which is likely attributable to the buffering function of the streambed for ER, while GPP is more susceptible to flow-induced disturbance and fluctuations in light availability. Furthermore, we found large terrestrial subsidies fueling ER, pointing to an unexpectedly high network-scale level of heterotrophy, otherwise masked by simply considering reach-scale NEP estimations. Our machine learning approach sheds new light on the spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem metabolism at the network scale, which is a prerequisite to integrate aquatic and terrestrial carbon cycling at relevant scales

Regional hydrology controls stream microbial biofilms: evidence from a glacial catchment

International audienceGlaciers are highly responsive to global warming and important agents of landscape heterogeneity. While it is well established that glacial ablation and snowmelt regulate stream discharge, linkage among streams and streamwater hydrogeochemistry, the controls of these factors on stream microbial biofilms remain insufficiently understood. We investigated glacial (metakryal, hypokryal), groundwater-fed (krenal) and snow-fed (rhithral) streams ? all of them representative for alpine stream networks ? and present evidence that these hydrologic and hydrogeochemical factors differentially affect sediment microbial biofilms. Average microbial biomass and bacterial carbon production were low in the glacial streams, whereas bacterial cell size, biomass, and carbon production were higher in the tributaries, most notably in the krenal stream. Whole-cell in situ fluorescence hybridization revealed reduced detection rates of the Eubacteria and higher abundance of ?-Proteobacteria in the glacial stream, a pattern that most probably reflects the trophic status of this ecosystem. Our data suggest low flow during the onset of snowmelt and autumn as a short period (hot moment) of favorable environmental conditions with pulsed inputs of allochthonous nitrate and dissolved organic carbon, and with disproportional high microbial growth. Krenal and rhithral streams with more constant and favorable environments serve as possible sources of microbes and organic matter to the main glacial channel during periods (e.g. snowmelt) of elevated hydrologic linkage among streams. Ice and snow dynamics have a crucial impact on microbial biofilms, and we thus need better understanding of the microbial ecology and enhanced consideration of critical hydrological episodes in future models predicting alpine stream communities