Attitudes of Tennessee physicians towards euthanasia and assisted death

Euthanasia and physician assisted death have been a source of debate since the time of Hippocrates. The debate has become a paramount issue in the last decade, however, little is known about physician\u27s attitudes toward these parties and what, if any, role the physician should have when a terminally-ill patient requests death. Although there have been may studies of euthanasia and physician assisted death (PAD) in the United States, there is no data on physicians in practicing in Tennessee. A stratified random sample of 1,117 physieians was drawn from the Tennessee Licensing Bureau in the specialties of internal medicine, oncology, family practice, general practice and general surgery, the five specialties most likely to receive such a request. A thirty item instrument seeking information which included demographics, attitudes toward euthanasia and PAD, basis for those attitudes, responses to possible legalization, willingness to participate in euthanasia / PAD, situations where euthanasia / PAD may be appropriate, patient autonomy, and views on restrictions and safeguards that might be a part of future legislation, was mailed in January 2001. Only fully completed instruments were used to obtain data and SPSS software was utilized for data analysis. Logistic regression was used to investigate the independent variables of age, sex and religious influence. The replies of both those for and against euthanasia / PAD were analyzed to investigate situations where euthanasia / PAD may be appropriate, patient autonomy and the role of the physician to relieve pain and suffering, and which restrictions and safeguards thought to be important. Tennessee physicians are highly polarized over the issues of euthanasia and assisted death. A slight majority, forty four percent, did not believe in euthanasia or assisted death and would oppose legalization. Of the physicians supporting euthanasia / PAD, only twenty five percent would administer a lethal overdose and less than a third would counsel or prescribe medication for an overdose. Attitudes were influenced by three primary factors: ethics, religious influence and the role of the physician to relieve pain and suffering. Regardless of their overall position, the majority of physicians agreed on basic restrictions and safeguards to prevent abuse(s) and protect vulnerable patients

Outreach: What Works?

This paper reports on an environmental scan of outreach activities conducted at the University of Houston Libraries in 2007 and the changes to outreach which have taken place in the intervening five years. The authors found that the development of long-term relationships and customized communication was essential to successful outreach

A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for ROS using Ontological Semantics

This paper presents a novel ontology-driven software engineering approach for the development of industrial robotics control software. It introduces the ReApp architecture that synthesizes model-driven engineering with semantic technologies to facilitate the development and reuse of ROS-based components and applications. In ReApp, we show how different ontological classification systems for hardware, software, and capabilities help developers in discovering suitable software components for their tasks and in applying them correctly. The proposed model-driven tooling enables developers to work at higher abstraction levels and fosters automatic code generation. It is underpinned by ontologies to minimize discontinuities in the development workflow, with an integrated development environment presenting a seamless interface to the user. First results show the viability and synergy of the selected approach when searching for or developing software with reuse in mind.Comment: Presented at DSLRob 2015 (arXiv:1601.00877), Stefan Zander, Georg Heppner, Georg Neugschwandtner, Ramez Awad, Marc Essinger and Nadia Ahmed: A Model-Driven Engineering Approach for ROS using Ontological Semantic

A reconfiguração da indústria da Música na Era Digital

Na capa de sua edição de fevereiro de 2003, a revista americana Wired pintava um quadro no mínimo alarmante ao fazer a junção marota da ilustração de um zepelim em chamas (do primeiro disco da banda inglesa Led Zeppelin, um dos mais célebres dinossauros do rock) com o slogan do gigante da computação Apple, que então apregoava uma nova relação do consumidor com a música na era digital (“Rip, mix, burn” -- anunciando que, dali em diante, todo mundo iria poder gravar -- “queimar” -- discos só com as faixas que desejasse)

Desenvolvimento de porta-amostras com controle de temperatura para medidas de espectroscopia Raman

O presente trabalho de conclusão de curso foi dedicado à pesquisa, desenvolvimento, fabricação e avaliação via testes de desempenho de um porta-amostras com controle de temperatura. Foi implementado um algoritmo de controlo proporcional-integral-derivativo (PID) com o uso de placa de desenvolvimento Arduino UNO, resistência de cartucho e termopar como sistema de controle por feedback negativo. Esse acessório busca suprir uma demanda do Laboratório de Altas Pressões e Materiais Avançados (LAPMA) em relação a capacidade investigativa da técnica de espectroscopia Raman em função da temperatura do material. Os resultados obtidos foram compatíveis com as necessidades de aplicação do laboratório. O dispositivo se mostrou capaz de atingir e manter as temperaturas de interesse com precisão de +/- 1 ºC com flutuação de 0,5 ºC. As constantes de ganho foram definidas pela metodologia trial and error. Este projeto foi desenvolvido sob licença GPL-v3 e pode ser replicado, modificado e comercializado segundo os termos descritos em "GNU General Public License", integralmente sem garantia. O dispositivo se encontra em posse do LAPMA/IF e sob a responsabilidade do professor orientador deste trabalho, Prof. Fabrício Faita. A documentação e códigos desenvolvidos estão disponíveis on-line no GIT do Centro de Tecnologia Acadêmica (CTA).This work was dedicated to the research, development, manufacture and evaluation via performance tests of a temperature-controlled sample holder. A proportional-integrative-derivative control algorithm was implemented in an Arduino UNO development board and a cartridge resistance and thermocouple composed the negative feedback control system. This accessory aims to furnish the demand of the Advanced Materials and High-Pressure Laboratory (LAPMA) in relation to its research capabilities through Raman spectroscopy technique. The results obtained were compatible with Lab’s application needs. The device was able to reach and maintain the temperatures of interest with precision of +/- 1 ºC with 0,5 ºC fluctuation. The gain constants were obtained through trial-and-error methodology. This work was developed under GLP-v3 license and can be redistributed, modified and commercialized under the terms of the GNU General Public License, without any warranty. The device is located in LAPMA’s facilities under Fabricio Faita’s responsibility. All documentation and codes are available online at the GIT of the Center of Academic Technology

Partitioning Abiotic and Biotic Contributions to Community Variation

It is well known that both environmental factors and species interactions structure ecological com- munities. To study community composition responses to environmental gradients, ordination and regression techniques are typically employed; however, for studying species interactions, methods primarily rely on analyzing patterns of presence/absence. Each of these types of analyses are carried out independently because there is a lack of unified statistical methods for simultaneous analysis of biotic and abiotic factors influencing community composition. This thesis presents a unified method that enables the removal of environmentally explained variation from species responses so that ap- parent species interactions are not masked or augmented by the abiotic responses, thus partitioning the abiotic/biotic factors.To achieve a unified method, first, species responses to environmental gradients are removed via a multivariate regression procedure. Second, the residual responses, void of environmentally explained variation, are tested for species interactions using a null model. Third, communities identified with significant interactions are summarized by the average pairwise covariation among the member species. The method can be used to test hypotheses about species interactions when environmental gradients are present and it may be used to calculate percentages of variation explained due to abiotic, biotic and unexplained factors. Via a sensitivity analysis, I demonstrate that sufficient detection (95%) and false positive rates (5%) can be achieved under particular site-species ratios, number of environmental gradients, and covariation-to-noise ratios. My method can guarantee a sufficient average false positive rate (5%) for communities with > 60 samples, up to 500 species and influenced by up to 4 environmental gradients

At the Center of Things: How an Academic Library Built a Bridge between Art and Science on Campus

The University of Houston Libraries sponsored an interdisciplinary event for students, faculty, and the public, titled the Artists’ Health and Wellness Colloquium and Resource Fair. Aspiring and working artists were instructed in how to maintain good health and to avoid overstressing their bodies as they practice their art. Scholars presented both historical and trending perspectives on the intersection of art and health science. The event was held in order to facilitate learning in two key research areas and to demonstrate the library\u27s ability to bridge disparate disciplines and forge new partnerships with multiple academic units simultaneously. This article presents planning strategies for librarians who seek to partner with dissimilar campus entities as part of event planning