A role for doctors in assisted dying? An analysis of legal regulations and medical professional positions in six European countries

An extensive debate about assisted suicide and euthanasia has been taking place in westernized countries during the last twenty years. Traditionally, the medical profession has maintained a clear distance from euthanasia and assisted suicide, but this distance can no longer be justified by simply referring to the law. This paper analyses the legal and, in particular, medical professional positions with respect to the doctor’s role in assisted dying in certain Western European countries (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom) and discusses their implications for doctors

The Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism: development and application among British Pagans

This article builds on the tradition of attitudinal measures of religiosity established by Leslie Francis and colleagues with the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity (and reflected in the Sahin-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Islam, the Katz-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism, and the Santosh-Francis Scale of Attitude toward Hinduism) by introducing a new measure to assess the attitudinal disposition of Pagans. A battery of items was completed by 75 members of a Pagan Summer Camp. These items were reduced to produce a 21-item scale that measured aspects of Paganism concerned with: the God/Goddess, worshipping, prayer, and coven. The scale recorded an alpha coefficient of 0.93. Construct validity of the Williams Scale of Attitude toward Paganism was demonstrated by the clear association with measures of participation in private rituals

Effective theory for wall-antiwall system

We propose a useful method for deriving the effective theory for a system where BPS and anti-BPS domain walls coexist. Our method respects an approximately preserved SUSY near each wall. Due to the finite width of the walls, SUSY breaking terms arise at tree-level, which are exponentially suppressed. A practical approximation using the BPS wall solutions is also discussed. We show that a tachyonic mode appears in the matter sector if the corresponding mode function has a broader profile than the wall width.Comment: LaTeX file, 30 page, 5 eps figures, references adde

Domestic Rivalry and Export Performance: Theory and Evidence from International Airline Markets

The much-studied relationship between domestic rivalry and export performance consists of those supporting a national-champion rationale, and those supporting a rivalry rationale. While the empirical literature generally supports the positive effects of domestic rivalry, the national-champion rationale actually rests on firmer theoretical ground. We address this inconsistency by providing a theoretical framework that illustrates three paths via which domestic rivalry translates into enhanced international exports. Furthermore, empirical tests on the world airline industry elicit the existence of one particular path - an enhanced firm performance effect - that connects domestic rivalry with improved international exports

Enabling a High Throughput Real Time Data Pipeline for a Large Radio Telescope Array with GPUs

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a next-generation radio telescope currently under construction in the remote Western Australia Outback. Raw data will be generated continuously at 5GiB/s, grouped into 8s cadences. This high throughput motivates the development of on-site, real time processing and reduction in preference to archiving, transport and off-line processing. Each batch of 8s data must be completely reduced before the next batch arrives. Maintaining real time operation will require a sustained performance of around 2.5TFLOP/s (including convolutions, FFTs, interpolations and matrix multiplications). We describe a scalable heterogeneous computing pipeline implementation, exploiting both the high computing density and FLOP-per-Watt ratio of modern GPUs. The architecture is highly parallel within and across nodes, with all major processing elements performed by GPUs. Necessary scatter-gather operations along the pipeline are loosely synchronized between the nodes hosting the GPUs. The MWA will be a frontier scientific instrument and a pathfinder for planned peta- and exascale facilities.Comment: Version accepted by Comp. Phys. Com

High CIP2A levels correlate with an antiapoptotic phenotype that can be overcome by targeting BCL-XL in chronic myeloid leukemia.

Cancerous inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) is a predictive biomarker of disease progression in many malignancies, including imatinib-treated chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Although high CIP2A levels correlate with disease progression in CML, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain elusive. In a screen of diagnostic chronic phase samples from patients with high and low CIP2A protein levels, high CIP2A levels correlate with an antiapoptotic phenotype, characterized by downregulation of proapoptotic BCL-2 family members, including BIM, PUMA and HRK, and upregulation of the antiapoptotic protein BCL-XL. These results suggest that the poor prognosis of patients with high CIP2A levels is due to an antiapoptotic phenotype. Disrupting this antiapoptotic phenotype by inhibition of BCL-XL via RNA interference or A-1331852, a novel, potent and BCL-XL-selective inhibitor, resulted in extensive apoptosis either alone or in combination with imatinib, dasatinib or nilotinib, both in cell lines and in primary CD34(+) cells from patients with high levels of CIP2A. These results demonstrate that BCL-XL is the major antiapoptotic survival protein and may be a novel therapeutic target in CML

Collapse of the last Eurasian Ice Sheet in the North Sea modulated by combined processes of ice flow, surface melt, and marine ice sheet instabilities

The record of the confluence and collapse of the British‐Irish Ice Sheet and the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet is obscured by the North Sea, hindering reconstructions of the glacial dynamics of this sector of the Eurasian Ice Sheet complex during the last glacial cycle. Previous numerical simulations of the deglaciation of the North Sea have also struggled to capture the confluence and separation of the British‐Irish and Fennoscandian Ice Sheets. We ran an ensemble of 70 experiments simulating the deglaciation of the North Sea between 23 and 18 ka BP using the BISICLES ice sheet model. A novel suite of quantitative model‐data comparison tools was used to identify plausible simulations of deglaciation that match empirical data for ice flow, margin position, and retreat ages, allowing comparisons to large amounts of empirical data. In ensemble members that best match the empirical data, the North Sea deglaciates through the collapse of the marine‐based Norwegian Channel Ice Stream, unzipping the confluence between the British‐Irish Ice Sheet and the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet. Thinning of the Norwegian Channel Ice Stream causes surface temperature feedbacks, rapid grounding line retreat, and ice stream acceleration, further driving separation of the British‐Irish and the Fennoscandian Ice Sheets. These simulations of the North Sea deglaciation conform with the majority of empirical evidence, and therefore provide physically plausible insights that are consistent with reconstructions based on the empirical evidence, and permit a quantitative comparison between model and data

A newly recognised 1860–1840 Ma tectono-magmatic domain in the North Australia Craton: Insights from the Tennant Region, East Tennant area, and the Murphy Inlier

New U-Pb monazite ages from amphibolite-facies metasedimentary rocks from the Tennant Region, Murphy Inlier and intervening East Tennant area, together with existing data, reveal the presence of an 1860–1840 Ma tectono-magmatic domain over 600 km long towards the centre of the North Australian Craton. In-situ ion probe U-Pb dating of biotite-hosted monazite in amphibolite-facies schist in the Tennant Region yielded an age of 1858 ± 7 Ma, which is attributed to north–south shortening (D1) at 1860–1855 Ma. Existing data indicate that D1 was associated with east–west trending, upright folds and mostly low-grade, regional metamorphism (M1) in the Tennant Region and the Murphy Inlier. The D1 event preceded voluminous and widespread felsic magmatism between 1855 and 1845 Ma. This included the emplacement of the Tennant Creek Supersuite, as well as the Yungkulungu Formation and equivalent stratigraphy, in the Tennant Region and in East Tennant, and the Nicholson Granite and Cliffdale Volcanics in the Murphy Inlier. Newly determined monazite ages from amphibolite-facies schist from the East Tennant area and the Murphy Inlier constrain a second episode of deformation and metamorphism (D2/M2) to ~ 1845 Ma, coincident with the cessation of widespread magmatism. D2 is characterised by regional southeast to northeast trending shear zones. Phase equilibria modelling reveals that peak pressure–temperature (P–T) conditions during M2 in the East Tennant area were 2.8–3.3 kbar and 655–680 ◦C, indicating an extremely high apparent geothermal gradient (>190 ◦C/kbar) that was likely influenced by the preceding magmatism. Existing data indicate that D2 also affected the Tennant Region, where it coincided with significant Cu-Au-Bi mineralisation, albeit at significantly lower P–T conditions (sub-greenschist facies) than in the East Tennant area. The development of the 1860–1840 Ma tectono-magmatic domain, extending from west of the Tennant Region to east of the Murphy Inlier, marks an intermediate step in the migration of tectonism in the North Australia Craton, from the Arnhem Province in the north at 1880–1860 Ma to the Aileron and Tanami provinces in the south by ca. 1830 Ma.A.D. Clark, L.J. Morrissey, M.P. Doublier, N. Kositcin, A. Schofield, R.G. Skirro

Broad activation of the ubiquitin-proteasome system by Parkin is critical for mitophagy

Parkin, an E3 ubiquitin ligase implicated in Parkinson's disease, promotes degradation of dysfunctional mitochondria by autophagy. Using proteomic and cellular approaches, we show that upon translocation to mitochondria, Parkin activates the ubiquitin–proteasome system (UPS) for widespread degradation of outer membrane proteins. This is evidenced by an increase in K48-linked polyubiquitin on mitochondria, recruitment of the 26S proteasome and rapid degradation of multiple outer membrane proteins. The degradation of proteins by the UPS occurs independently of the autophagy pathway, and inhibition of the 26S proteasome completely abrogates Parkin-mediated mitophagy in HeLa, SH-SY5Y and mouse cells. Although the mitofusins Mfn1 and Mfn2 are rapid degradation targets of Parkin, we find that degradation of additional targets is essential for mitophagy. These results indicate that remodeling of the mitochondrial outer membrane proteome is important for mitophagy, and reveal a causal link between the UPS and autophagy, the major pathways for degradation of intracellular substrates

SUSY GUT Model Building

I discuss an evolution of SUSY GUT model building, starting with the construction of 4d GUTs, to orbifold GUTs and finally to orbifold GUTs within the heterotic string. This evolution is an attempt to obtain realistic string models, perhaps relevant for the LHC. This review is in memory of the sudden loss of Julius Wess, a leader in the field, who will be sorely missed.Comment: 24 pages, 14 figures, lectures given at PiTP 2008, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, to be published in the European Physical Journal