The Continuing Allure of cure : a response to Alex Broadbent’s “prediction, understanding, and medicine”

Abstract: In “Prediction, Understanding and Medicine” Alex Broadbent rejects the curative thesis, the view that the core medical competence is to cure, in favour of his predictive thesis that the main intellectual medical competence is to explain and the main practical medical competence is to predict. Broadbent thinks his account explains the phenomenon of multiple consultation, which is the fact that people persist in consulting alternative medical traditions despite having access to mainstream medicine. I argue that Broadbent’s explanation of multiple consultation makes sense only from the perspective of patients who migrate from mainstream to alternative consultation. His explanation is not as convincing when we consider alternative‐to‐mainstream migration. I also provide an argument against Broadbent’s view that prediction is medicine’s main practical competence and argue that when it comes to explaining most cases of multiple consultation the curative thesis provides a more convincing explanation than the predictive thesis

Applying microtonality to pop songwriting: A study of microtones in pop music

While temperament and expanded tunings have not been widely adopted by pop and rock musicians historically speaking, there has recently been an increased interest in microtones from modern artists and in online discussion. For this project I compose and create a portfolio of music exploring the use of microtones as a songwriter. By pairing microtonality with pop/rock/electronica music I aim to improve and explore the balance between innovation and accessibility within my own music. The accompanying text outlines current issues and limitations of solely using equal temperament in songwriting while also highlighting notable examples of microtonal techniques in relevant music across numerous styles. Additionally, the text analyses each song created for this project and discusses the various microtonal techniques used therein

Advancing the Philosophy of Medicine: Towards New Topics and Sources

The first part of a symposium devoted to Alex Broadbent's essay titled ‘Prediction, Understanding and Medicine’, this article notes the under-development of a variety of issues in the philosophy of medicine that transcend bioethics and the long-standing debates about the nature of health/illness and of evidence-based medicine. It also indicates the importance of drawing on non-Western, and particularly African, traditions in addressing these largely metaphysical and epistemological matters

Electrical characterization of top-gated molybdenum disulfide field-effect-transistors with high-k dielectrics

High quality HfO2 and Al2O3 substrates are fabricated in order to study their impact on top-gate MoS2 transistors. Compared with top-gate MoS2 FETs on a SiO2 substrate, the field effect mobility decreased for devices on HfO2 substrates but substantially increased for devices on Al2O3 substrates, possibly due to substrate surface roughness. A forming gas anneal is found to enhance device performance due to a reduction in charge trap density of the high-k substrates. The major improvements in device performance are ascribed to the forming gas anneal. Top-gate devices built upon Al2O3 substrates exhibit a near-ideal subthreshold swing (SS) of ~ 69 mV/dec and a ~ 10 × increase in field effect mobility, indicating a positive influence on top-gate device performance even without any backside bias

Whooping crane use of riverine stopover sites

Migratory birds like endangered whooping cranes (Grus americana) require suitable nocturnal roost sites during twice annual migrations. Whooping cranes primarily roost in shallow surface water wetlands, ponds, and rivers. All these features have been greatly impacted by human activities, which present threats to the continued recovery of the species. A portion of one such river, the central Platte River, has been identified as critical habitat for the survival of the endangered whooping crane. Management intervention is now underway to rehabilitate habitat form and function on the central Platte River to increase use and thereby contribute to the survival of whooping cranes. The goal of our analyses was to develop habitat selection models that could be used to direct riverine habitat management activities (i.e., channel widening, tree removal, flow augmentation, etc.) along the central Platte River and throughout the species’ range. As such, we focused our analyses on two robust sets of whooping crane observations and habitat metrics the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program (Program or PRRIP) and other such organizations could influence. This included channel characteristics such as total channel width, the width of channel unobstructed by dense vegetation, and distance of forest from the edge of the channel and flow-related metrics like wetted width and unit discharge (flow volume per linear meter of wetted channel width) that could be influenced by flow augmentation or reductions during migration. We used 17 years of systematic monitoring data in a discrete-choice framework to evaluate the influence these various metrics have on the relative probability of whooping crane use and found the width of channel unobstructed by dense vegetation and distance to the nearest forest were the best predictors of whooping crane use. Secondly, we used telemetry data obtained from a sample of 38 birds of all ages over the course of seven years, 2010–2016, to evaluate whooping crane use of riverine habitat within the North-central Great Plains, USA. For this second analysis, we focused on the two metrics found to be important predictors of whooping crane use along the central Platte River, unobstructed channel width and distance to nearest forest or wooded area. Our findings indicate resource managers, such as the Program, have the potential to influence whooping crane use of the central Platte River through removal of in-channel vegetation to increase the unobstructed width of narrow channels and through removal of trees along the bank line to increase unforested corridor widths. Results of both analyses also indicated that increases in relative probability of use by whooping cranes did not appreciably increase with unobstructed views 200 m wide and unforested corridor widths that were 330 m. Therefore, managing riverine sites for channels widths \u3e200 m and removing trees beyond 165 m from the channel’s edge would increase costs associated with implementing management actions such as channel and bank-line disking, removing trees, augmenting flow, etc. without necessarily realizing an additional appreciable increase in use by migrating whooping cranes

Relatively low-temperature processing and its impact on device performance and reliability

Non-silicon, large-area/flexible electronics for the internet of things (IoT) has acquired substantial attention in recent years. Key electron devices to enable this technology include metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), where ultra-thin and/or low-dimensional (i.e., 2D to a few layers) semiconductor materials may be required, like those found in thin-film transistors (TFTs) and transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) FETs [1,2]. Whether TFT or TMDFET, a relatively low-temperature process commensurate with large-area/flex applications to enable large (i.e., greater than 300 mm) and/or flexible substrate fabrication is required. Furthermore, TMD materials may be implemented as the channel semiconductor to function as an ultra-thin body to mitigate short channel effects and extend further scaling as the future progresses in CMOS scaling. In addition, the gate dielectric insulator is another vital component of any MOSFET that requires investigation as part of the MOS stack in these types of transistors. Lastly, semiconductor materials mentioned herein do not have a universally accepted way to introduce dopants to form sources and drains. Thus, metal-semiconductor contacts are employed where the interface region of the contact plays a critical role in determining the conductivity/resistivity of the contact. Moreover, how the metal-semiconductor interface are formed also impacts the quality of the contact. Therefore, exploration of low-temperature processing, interfaces, and their impact on device performance and reliability will be critical to eventual implementation in future technologies. To ascertain the impact of low-temperature fabrication and critical interfaces, several process approaches and electrical characterization methods were employed [1-6]. In one case, for a TMD FET contact study, an oxygen plasma exposure in the contact region on MoS2 (a TMD material) is done prior to titanium deposition. The results demonstrate that contaminants and photoresist residue that still reside after development can noticeably impact electrical performance (Fig. 1). The O2 plasma removes the residue present at the surface of MoS2 without the use of a high temperature anneal, and subsequently improves the device performance significantly (Fig. 1) [1]. In another case, for a MOS-based TFT study, an investigation of low-temperature (\u3e 115°C) deposited zinc-based semiconductors was executed (Fig. 2). For ZnO and IGZO, saturation mobilities of 14.4 and 8.4 cm2/V-s, along with threshold voltages of 2.2 V and 2.0 V were obtained, respectively, demonstrating robust devices that also have an on/off ratio \u3e 108, with IOFF lower than 10-12 A. Furthermore, a hot carrier stress methodology demonstrated threshold voltage (VTH) shifts of 0.4 V and 1.8 V for ZnO and IGZO, respectively, after stress (Fig. 2) [2]. Continued research is required to ascertain the electrically active defects responsible for the VTH shift. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Probing interface defects in top-gated MoS2 transistors with impedance spectroscopy

The electronic properties of the HfO2/MoS2 interface were investigated using multifrequency capacitance–voltage (C–V) and current–voltage characterization of top-gated MoS2 metal–oxide–semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs). The analysis was performed on few layer (5–10) MoS2 MOSFETs fabricated using photolithographic patterning with 13 and 8 nm HfO2 gate oxide layers formed by atomic layer deposition after in-situ UV-O3 surface functionalization. The impedance response of the HfO2/MoS2 gate stack indicates the existence of specific defects at the interface, which exhibited either a frequency-dependent distortion similar to conventional Si MOSFETs with unpassivated silicon dangling bonds or a frequency dispersion over the entire voltage range corresponding to depletion of the HfO2/MoS2 surface, consistent with interface traps distributed over a range of energy levels. The interface defects density (Dit) was extracted from the C–V responses by the high–low frequency and the multiple-frequency extraction methods, where a Dit peak value of 1.2 × 1013 cm–2 eV–1 was extracted for a device (7-layer MoS2 and 13 nm HfO2) exhibiting a behavior approximating to a single trap response. The MoS2 MOSFET with 4-layer MoS2 and 8 nm HfO2 gave Dit values ranging from 2 × 1011 to 2 × 1013 cm–2 eV–1 across the energy range corresponding to depletion near the HfO2/MoS2 interface. The gate current was below 10–7 A/cm2 across the full bias sweep for both samples indicating continuous HfO2 films resulting from the combined UV ozone and HfO2 deposition process. The results demonstrated that impedance spectroscopy applied to relatively simple top-gated transistor test structures provides an approach to investigate electrically active defects at the HfO2/MoS2 interface and should be applicable to alternative TMD materials, surface treatments, and gate oxides as an interface defect metrology tool in the development of TMD-based MOSFETs