Method of statistical filtering

Minimal formula for bounding the cross correlation between a random forcing function and the state error when this correlation is unknown is used in optimal linear filter theory applications. Use of the bound results in overestimation of the estimation-error covariance

Report of the committee on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

Journal ArticleIn 1994 the Board of the American Association of Suicidology selected a Committee on Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. It was asked to review the issues emerging in the growing controversy concerning euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, palliative care, and the medical treatment of dying patients. Having discussed the issues together after extensively reviewing published materials, the committee now submits this report

What are the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide?

Journal ArticleIN the Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill decisions rejecting a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court allowed each state to decide whether to legalize the intervention.1 In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization.2 Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients. 3-6 Although we do not agree with each other about the ethics or optimal social policy regarding physician- assisted suicide and euthanasia, we do agree that the claims of cost savings distort the debate. Within the limits of available data, we offer an assessment of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician- assisted suicide, demonstrating that the savings can be predicted to be very small - less than 0.1 percent of both total health care spending in the United States and an individual managed-care plan's budget

What are the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide?

Journal ArticleQuill decisions rejecting a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Supreme Court allowed each state to decide whether to legalize the intervention. In state legislatures rather than courtrooms, factual claims about the probable extent and implications of permitting physician-assisted suicide assume a preeminent role in the debate about legalization. Particularly sensitive in these discussions will be the issue of the potential cost savings from legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and how the savings might influence decision making by health care institutions, physicians, families, and terminally ill patients

Future directions for river carbon biogeochemistry observations

Rivers carry large quantities of carbon and form an important link between terrestrial, marine and atmospheric biogeochemical cycles, yet our observations of river carbon are severely limited. Here we provide a blueprint to build a global River Observation System that would improve our ability to observe and predict changes in this crucial piece of the global carbon cycle

Scott Ames: a man giving up on himself

Journal ArticleThe tragic story of Scott Ames raises a fundamental question concerning involuntary commitment of patients when suicide seems likely. What right has a physician ever to interfere when apatient proposes to take his own life? Under ordinary cirucmstances one argues that because of depression, or some other mental illness, the patient's judgment is impaited, so that intervention to prevent suicide is reasonable and ethical, given the high probability that once the illness is treated, the patient will no longer want to kill himself, and will be glad he was prevented from it. Over some years of clinical experience I have observed that there is a greater reluctance among clinicians to stop a suicide attempt when the patient is already dying, and when the death the patient faces promises to be a harrowing one. There is a tendency in these circumstances no to interfere, for a variety of reasons, some reasonable and some hot

Court Review: Volume 40, Issue 1 - Children as Witnesses: What We Hear Them Say May Not Be What They Mean

Children present a special challenge when they become participants in the legal system. Jean Piaget said that the work of a child is to play. That is the basis for most interactions between children and adults. The child plays and the consequences of that play are unimportant to adult affairs—that is, unless the child is under the age of 6 or 7 and is required to serve as a witness. In that situation the consequences of what the child says or chooses not to say can be truly significant. The special challenge for adults hearing the child’s testimony is to accurately infer what the child means from the words that are used. Entertaining the possibility that the child could intend to convey a meaning different from—and even opposite to—what a legally trained listener would mean using the same words is crucial to maximizing the value of the child’s testimony

Microprogram scheme for automatic recovery from computer error

Microprogram scheme enables computer to recover from failure in one of its two central processing units during time duration of instruction in which failure occurs. Microprogram advantages include - /1/ built-in interpretive capability, /2/ selection of processing interrupts by priority, and /3/ economical use of bootstrap sequence

Modeling the coupled dynamics of stream metabolism and microbial biomass

Estimating and interpreting ecosystem metabolism remains an important challenge in stream ecology. Here, we propose a novel approach to model, estimate, and predict multiseasonal patterns of stream metabolism (gross primary production [GPP] and ecosystem respiration [ER]) at the reach scale leveraging on increasingly available long-term, high-frequency measurements of dissolved oxygen (DO). The model uses DO measurements to estimate the parameters of a simple ecosystem model describing the underlying dynamics of stream autotrophic and heterotrophic microbial biomass. The model has been applied to four reaches within the Ybbs river network, Austria. Even if microbial biomasses are not observed, that is, they are treated as latent variables, results show that by accounting for the temporal dynamics of biomass, the model reproduces variability in metabolic fluxes that is not explained by fluctuations of light, temperature, and resources. The model is particularly data-demanding: to estimate the 11 parameters used in this formulation, it requires sufficiently long, for example, annual, time series, and significant scouring events. On the other hand, the approach has the potential to separate ER into its autotrophic and heterotrophic components, estimate a richer set of ecosystem carbon fluxes (i.e., carbon uptake, loss, and scouring), extrapolate metabolism estimates for periods when DO measurements are unavailable, and predict how ecosystem metabolism would respond to variations of the driving forces. The model is seen as a building block to develop tools to fully appreciate multiseasonal patterns of metabolic activity in river networks and to provide reliable estimations of carbon fluxes from land to ocean

The Metabolic Regimes at the Scale of an Entire Stream Network Unveiled Through Sensor Data and Machine Learning

Streams and rivers form dense networks that drain the terrestrial landscape and are relevant for biodiversity dynamics, ecosystem functioning, and transport and transformation of carbon. Yet, resolving in both space and time gross primary production (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER) and net ecosystem production (NEP) at the scale of entire stream networks has been elusive so far. Here, combining Random Forest (RF) with time series of sensor data in 12 reach sites, we predicted annual regimes of GPP, ER, and NEP in 292 individual stream reaches and disclosed properties emerging from the network they form. We further predicted available light and thermal regimes for the entire network and expanded the library of stream metabolism predictors. We found that the annual network-scale metabolism was heterotrophic yet with a clear peak of autotrophy in spring. In agreement with the River Continuum Concept, small headwaters and larger downstream reaches contributed 16% and 60%, respectively, to the annual network-scale GPP. Our results suggest that ER rather than GPP drives the metabolic stability at the network scale, which is likely attributable to the buffering function of the streambed for ER, while GPP is more susceptible to flow-induced disturbance and fluctuations in light availability. Furthermore, we found large terrestrial subsidies fueling ER, pointing to an unexpectedly high network-scale level of heterotrophy, otherwise masked by simply considering reach-scale NEP estimations. Our machine learning approach sheds new light on the spatiotemporal dynamics of ecosystem metabolism at the network scale, which is a prerequisite to integrate aquatic and terrestrial carbon cycling at relevant scales