The nature of disasters and their challenges to healthcare ethics

Disasters are exceptional events that cause damages on a scale that result in widespread unmet human needs that are critical and urgent. The exceptional circumstances in disasters may render established ethical norms of healthcare practice inapplicable or inappropriate. Healthcare professionals who work in disasters are faced with choices that have direct impacts on the life, death, and suffering of both disaster victims, and themselves. Some choices faced may be dilemmatic choices between competing irreconcilable moral principles. Whilst some choices reflect uncertainty as to how to realise moral precepts. In these situations, there is an appeal for guidance that is fitted to the circumstances found within disasters. Appealing to codes of professional conduct and ethics is problematic as many codes are either silent on the difficulties encountered in disasters, or overly demanding through the use of imperative language. Considering the relative weakness of published codes, universal principles of first do no harm and do good are offered as guiding principles. However, in disasters opportunities exist for harming through nondoing, creating the possibility that as aid is rendered to some, harm is occasioned to others. When considering doing good in disasters, maximising aggregate benefit is the established ethical framework employed. However, this framework’s foundational assumptions of aggregation of benefits and harms, commensurability of different ends, and the privileging of the greater number are open to critique. Thus, the principles of first do no harm and do good are problematic in disaster settings. Virtue ethics is proposed as a novel response to the difficulties faced by healthcare professionals in disasters. Virtue ethics provides an account of the healthcare professional as one who must choose with wisdom, courage and integrity in exceptional circumstances. Further, virtue ethics provides an understanding of how it is possible to act well in the tragic circumstances found within disasters

The Acute Effects of Static Stretching or Foam Rolling on Range of Motion and 1RM Hamstring Muscular Strength

The purpose of this study was to compare the acute effects of static stretching or foam rolling on range of motion and 1RM hamstring strength. Even though static stretching has been the main method for increasing flexibility, it has also been associated with reductions in strength gains. Foam rolling is a form of self-myofascial release which facilitates restricted fascia. Ten college students participated in this study. Five participants were in the Static Stretching Group, and five participants were in the Foam Rolling Group. Participants met on two separate days. On day one, the Modified Sit and Reach Box was used for all participants to access their range of motion. The Iso-lateral kneeling Leg Curl machine was used to determine the 10RM for hamstring strength for every participant so that they could be evenly matched into the Static Stretching Group or the Foam Rolling Group. On day two the Static Stretching Group performed five minutes of intense stretching and five minutes of cycling before the final testing of their range of motion and 1RM hamstring strength. The Foam Rolling Group performed five minutes of intense foam rolling before the final testing of their range of motion and 1RM were performed. The data collected indicate that there were significant improvements in range of motion for both the Static Stretching Group and the Foam Rolling Group. However, the 1RM hamstring strength for both the Static Stretching Group and the Foam Rolling Group did not significantly change from pretest to posttest. In conclusion, flexibility increased for both groups, but isotonic muscular strength was unaffected by acute static stretching or foam rolling

Evolution of Rules in a Common Law System: Differential Litigation of the Fee Tail and Other Perpetuities

This paper presents a variation on the Rubin-Priest theory of the evolution of common law rules toward efficiency. It offers the fee tail and similar restraints on alienation as examples of how inefficient rules can lead to inefficient uses of land, which cause owners to seek the help of courts in freeing their lands from the inefficient constraints. In other words, there is a feedback loop that provides courts with opportunities to overturn inefficient common law rules. We should expect this common law drift toward efficiency to be stronger for property rules than for tort rules. Because efficient property rules are important to a healthy economy, the common law process may have an internal advantage in its external competition with other legal systems

Evaluation of Wellhead Protection Area Delineation Methods, Applied to the Municipal Well Field at Elmore, Ottawa County, Ohio

Author Institution: Department of Geology, Bowling Green State UniversityThis study evaluates several different delineation methods that are used for Wellhead Protection programs, as mandated by the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1986. The municipal well field for the village of Elmore utilizes the regional aquifer (Silurian Lockport Dolomite, a dense, extensively fractured carbonate) which is overlain by a leaky confining layer (glacial till). Drilling records and water surface elevations from 444 water wells within a region 330 km2 surrounding the well field were used to generate maps of the potentiometric surface, bedrock elevation and surficial layer thickness. In addition, field observations were made of the aquifer from local rock quarries for porosity types, percent porosity, fracture density, and fracture orientation. The data suggest that groundwater flow is directed northward, toward Lake Erie, and that recharge occurs through the leaky confining layer. Three groundwater flow models were used, an analytical (GPTRAC), semi-analytical (CAPZONE) and finite difference (MODFLOW) model. The three models predicted zones of influence that were generally the same size, however they differed in shape and asymmetry due either to implicit model assumptions or different model calculations for transmissivity and recharge. A sensitivity analysis identified aquifer transmissivity, porosity, and anisotropy as the critical variables in determining which model is appropriate to use in a Wellhead Protection Area delineation and in improving the accuracy of such a model

Can R CrB stars form from the merger of two helium white dwarfs?

Due to orbital decay by gravitational-wave radiation, some close-binary helium white dwarfs are expected to merge within a Hubble time. The immediate merger products are believed to be helium-rich sdO stars, essentially helium main-sequence stars. We present new evolution calculations for these post-merger stars beyond the core helium-burning phase. The most massive He-sdO's develop a strong helium-burning shell and evolve to become helium-rich giants. We include nucleosynthesis calculations following the merger of $0.4 \rm M_{\odot}$ helium white-dwarf pairs with metallicities $Z = 0.0001, 0.004, 0.008$ and 0.02. The surface chemistries of the resulting giants are in partial agreement with the observed abundances of R Coronae Borealis and extreme helium stars. Such stars might represent a third, albeit rare, evolution channel for the latter, in addition to the CO+He white dwarf merger and the very-late thermal pulse channels proposed previously. We confirm a recent suggestion that lithium seen in R\,CrB stars could form naturally during the hot phase of a merger in the presence of \iso{3}{He} from the donor white dwarf.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS letter

The onset of photoionization in Sakurai's Object (V4334 Sgr)

We investigate the reheating of the very late thermal pulse (VLTP) object V4334 Sgr (Sakurai's Object) using radio observations from the Very Large Array, and optical spectra obtained with the Very Large Telescope. We find a sudden rise of the radio flux at 5 and 8 GHz - from <= 90 micro-Jy and 80 +/- 30 micro-Jy in February 2005 to 320 micro-Jy and 280 micro-Jy in June 2006. Optical line emission is also evolving, but the emission lines are fading. The optical line emission and early radio flux are attributed to a fast shock (and not photoionization as was reported earlier) which occurred around 1998. The fading is due to post-shock cooling and recombination. The recent rapid increase in radio flux is evidence for the onset of photoionization of carbon starting around 2005. The current results indicate an increase in the stellar temperature to 12 kK in 2006. The mass ejected in the VLTP eruption is M_ej >= 1e-4 Msol, but could be as high as 1e-2 Msol, depending mainly on the distance and the clumping factor of the outflow. We derive a distance between 1.8 and 5 kpc. A high mass loss could expose the helium layer and yield abundances compatible with those of [WC] and PG1159 stars.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; accepted for publication in A&A letter

Moyo Vol. V N 1

Fiden, Dan. Advice to a Young Country Leaving Home for the First Time . 3. Fiden, Dan. ...God Save the Drag Queen . 4. Bryan, Mark Evans. Denison University\u27s Public Restrooms...An Insider\u27s Guide . 9. Jeffery, Jill. Denison University\u27s Public Restrooms...An Insider\u27s Guide . 9. Huffman, Kent. Industrial Nation: Soon I discovered This Rock Thing Was There... . 12 Fray, Randy. A Randy For All Seasons . 13. Fiden, Dan. A Gun Lesson . 16. Jeffery, Jill. A Gun Lesson . 16. Nichols, William. The Things We Leave Out of Job Applications . 20. Husenits, Joel. Denison Post-Grad Unemployment Report . 22