623 research outputs found
The Ethics of an Unlicensed Medical Practitioner
For option A of this assignment, the prompt is that Harry, a manufacturer of medical equipment and an avid reader of medical textbooks, has developed a program that will allow its users to self-diagnose and self-treat their ailments, without a doctor’s help. Harry wants to sell his program to “ordinary folk” as a replacement for consulting licensed medical practitioners. An important point here is that Harry is not licensed to practice medicine and has only read books on the subject. The posed question is whether or not his program should be published (from an ethical standpoint—not necessarily a profit-driven one).
In this paper, I will propose a solution to this ethical question and offer a set of value-based reasons why that solution should be taken. After that, I will give a counterargument and explain why the counterargument would not be ethical compared to my first solution. From there, I will support my solution using three different ethical frameworks: an ethics of purpose, an ethics of principle, and an ethics of consequence
Polygenic risk for schizophrenia and season of birth within the UK Biobank cohort
Background:
There is strong evidence that people born in winter and in spring have a small increased risk of schizophrenia. As this ‘season of birth’ effect underpins some of the most influential hypotheses concerning potentially modifiable risk exposures, it is important to exclude other possible explanations for the phenomenon.
Methods:
Here we sought to determine whether the season of birth effect reflects gene-environment confounding rather than a pathogenic process indexing environmental exposure. We directly measured, in 136 538 participants from the UK Biobank (UKBB), the burdens of common schizophrenia risk alleles and of copy number variants known to increase the risk for the disorder, and tested whether these were correlated with a season of birth.
Results:
Neither genetic measure was associated with season or month of birth within the UKBB sample.
Conclusions:
As our study was highly powered to detect small effects, we conclude that the season of birth effect in schizophrenia reflects a true pathogenic effect of environmental exposure
New cases of dementia are rising in elderly populations in Wales, UK
Dementia is one of the most common diseases in elderly populations, and older populations are one of the fastest growing groups globally. Consequently, the number of people developing and living with dementia is likely to grow. Using longitudinal medical records from Wales, UK between 1999 and 2018, diagnoses of overall dementia and common subtypes were combined with demographic data to assess numbers of new and existing cases per year. Data extraction resulted in 161,186 diagnoses from 116,645 individuals. Mean age at diagnosis of dementia increased over this period, resulting in fewer younger people with the disease. New cases of dementia have risen, as has the number of people living with dementia. Individuals with dementia are also living longer, even accounting for their older age. This may present a challenge for healthcare systems as the number of elderly people living with dementia is expected to continue to grow
Genetic liability to schizophrenia is negatively associated with educational attainment in UK Biobank
Resonant tunnelling features in the transport spectroscopy of quantum dots
We present a review of features due to resonant tunnelling in transport
spectroscopy experiments on quantum dots and single donors. The review covers
features attributable to intrinsic properties of the dot as well as extrinsic
effects, with a focus on the most common operating conditions. We describe
several phenomena that can lead to apparently identical signatures in a bias
spectroscopy measurement, with the aim of providing experimental methods to
distinguish between their different physical origins. The correct
classification of the resonant tunnelling features is an essential requirement
to understand the details of the confining potential or predict the performance
of the dot for quantum information processing.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures. Short review article submitted to
Nanotechnology, special issue on 'Quantum Science and Technology at the
Nanoscale
Architecture for high-sensitivity single-shot readout and control of the electron spin of individual donors in silicon
We describe a method to control and detect in single-shot the electron spin
state of an individual donor in silicon with greatly enhanced sensitivity. A
silicon-based Single-Electron Transistor (SET) allows for spin-dependent
tunneling of the donor electron directly into the SET island during the
read-out phase. Simulations show that the charge transfer signals are typically
\Delta q > 0.2 e - over an order of magnitude larger than achievable with
metallic SETs on the SiO2 surface. A complete spin-based qubit structure is
obtained by adding a local Electron Spin Resonance line for coherent spin
control. This architecture is ideally suited to demonstrate and study the
coherent properties of donor electron spins, but can be expanded and integrated
with classical control electronics in the context of scale-up.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
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