The Right to Treatment: Judicial Realism - Judicial Initiative [Note]

The moral right of mental patients to adequate care and treatment has long been recognized in our society. Legal recognition of the same right is still in the nascent stage of development. Subsequent comments in this section suggest constitutional bases and analogies for the right. For purposes of this comment it is assumed that an adequate legal foundation has been established by case law and responsible commentary for recognizing a legally enforceable right to care and treatment

Products Liability - Bad Blood - Strict Liability

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has held that an administrator of a decedent who died of hepatitis allegedly as a result of a transfusion with contaminated blood may maintain a cause of action against a hospital for breach of implied warranties of merchantibility and fitness. Hoffman v. Misericordia Hospital of Philadelphia, 439 Pa. 501, 267 A.2d 867 (1970). Margaret Sullivan entered Misericordia Hospital on May 2, 1967 for the birth of a child. Postnatal complications developed requiring that she receive transfusions of whole blood. The transfused blood was supplied partially by the hospital from its own reserves and partially by the Red Cross. As a result of the transfusions, Mrs. Sullivan contracted serum hepatitis and died. The administrator of her estate brought an implied warranty action against the hospital seeking damages for death

Falstaff's wedding, a comedy. Being a sequel to the second part of the play of King Henry the Fourth. Written in imitation of Shakespeare, by Mr. Kenrick

3 p. l., 83 p. ; 21 cm. Dramatis personae include Pistol, Bardolph, Nym, Justice Shallow and other characters mainly from Henry IV and V

Evolution of leaf-form in land plants linked to atmospheric CO2 decline in the Late Palaeozoic era

The widespread appearance of megaphyll leaves, with their branched veins and planate form, did not occur until the close of the Devonian period at about 360 Myr ago. This happened about 40 Myr after simple leafless vascular plants first colonized the land in the Late Silurian/Early Devonian, but the reason for the slow emergence of this common feature of present-day plants is presently unresolved. Here we show, in a series of quantitative analyses using fossil leaf characters and biophysical principles, that the delay was causally linked with a 90% drop in atmospheric pCO2 during the Late Palaeozoic era. In contrast to simulations for a typical Early Devonian land plant, possessing few stomata on leafless stems, those for a planate leaf with the same stomatal characteristics indicate that it would have suffered lethal overheating, because of greater interception of solar energy and low transpiration. When planate leaves first appeared in the Late Devonian and subsequently diversified in the Carboniferous period, they possessed substantially higher stomatal densities. This observation is consistent with the effects of the pCO2 on stomatal development and suggests that the evolution of planate leaves could only have occurred after an increase in stomatal density, allowing higher transpiration rates that were sufficient to maintain cool and viable leaf temperatures

The timescale of early land plant evolution

Establishing the timescale of early land plant evolution is essential for testing hypotheses on the coevolution of land plants and Earth's System. The sparseness of early land plant megafossils and stratigraphic controls on their distribution make the fossil record an unreliable guide, leaving only the molecular clock. However, the application of molecular clock methodology is challenged by the current impasse in attempts to resolve the evolutionary relationships among the living bryophytes and tracheophytes. Here, we establish a timescale for early land plant evolution that integrates over topological uncertainty by exploring the impact of competing hypotheses on bryophyte-tracheophyte relationships, among other variables, on divergence time estimation. We codify 37 fossil calibrations for Viridiplantae following best practice. We apply these calibrations in a Bayesian relaxed molecular clock analysis of a phylogenomic dataset encompassing the diversity of Embryophyta and their relatives within Viridiplantae. Topology and dataset sizes have little impact on age estimates, with greater differences among alternative clock models and calibration strategies. For all analyses, a Cambrian origin of Embryophyta is recovered with highest probability. The estimated ages for crown tracheophytes range from Late Ordovician to late Silurian. This timescale implies an early establishment of terrestrial ecosystems by land plants that is in close accord with recent estimates for the origin of terrestrial animal lineages. Biogeochemical models that are constrained by the fossil record of early land plants, or attempt to explain their impact, must consider the implications of a much earlier, middle Cambrian-Early Ordovician, origin

The origin and early evolution of vascular plant shoots and leaves

The morphology of plant fossils from the Rhynie chert has generated longstanding questions about vascular plant shoot and leaf evolution, for instance, which morphologies were ancestral within land plants, when did vascular plants first arise and did leaves have multiple evolutionary origins? Recent advances combining insights from molecular phylogeny, palaeobotany and evo-devo research address these questions and suggest the sequence of morphological innovation during vascular plant shoot and leaf evolution. The evidence pinpoints testable developmental and genetic hypotheses relating to the origin of branching and indeterminate shoot architectures prior to the evolution of leaves, and demonstrates underestimation of polyphyly in the evolution of leaves from branching forms in ‘telome theory’ hypotheses of leaf evolution. This review discusses fossil, developmental and genetic evidence relating to the evolution of vascular plant shoots and leaves in a phylogenetic framework. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The Rhynie chert: our earliest terrestrial ecosystem revisited’

High potential for weathering and climate effects of non-vascular vegetation in the Late Ordovician

It has been hypothesized that predecessors of today’s bryophytes significantly increased global chemical weathering in the Late Ordovician, thus reducing atmospheric CO2 concentration and contributing to climate cooling and an interval of glaciations. Studies that try to quantify the enhancement of weathering by non-vascular vegetation, however, are usually limited to small areas and low numbers of species, which hampers extrapolating to the global scale and to past climatic conditions. Here we present a spatially explicit modelling approach to simulate global weathering by non-vascular vegetation in the Late Ordovician. We estimate a potential global weathering flux of 2.8 (km3 rock) yr−1, defined here as volume of primary minerals affected by chemical transformation. This is around three times larger than today’s global chemical weathering flux. Moreover, we find that simulated weathering is highly sensitive to atmospheric CO2 concentration. This implies a strong negative feedback between weathering by non-vascular vegetation and Ordovician climate

Deducing transport properties of mobile vacancies from perovskite solar cell characteristics

The absorber layers in perovskite solar cells possess a high concentration of mobile ion vacancies. These vacancies undertake thermally activated hops between neighboring lattice sites. The mobile vacancy concentration N 0 is much higher and the activation energy E A for ion hops is much lower than is seen in most other semiconductors due to the inherent softness of perovskite materials. The timescale at which the internal electric field changes due to ion motion is determined by the vacancy diffusion coefficient D v and is similar to the timescale on which the external bias changes by a significant fraction of the open-circuit voltage at typical scan rates. Therefore, hysteresis is often observed in which the shape of the current-voltage, J-V, characteristic depends on the direction of the voltage sweep. There is also evidence that this defect migration plays a role in degradation. By employing a charge transport model of coupled ion-electron conduction in a perovskite solar cell, we show that E A for the ion species responsible for hysteresis can be obtained directly from measurements of the temperature variation of the scan-rate dependence of the short-circuit current and of the hysteresis factor H. This argument is validated by comparing E A deduced from measured J-V curves for four solar cell structures with density functional theory calculations. In two of these structures, the perovskite is MAPbI 3, where MA is methylammonium, CH 3 NH 3; the hole transport layer (HTL) is spiro (spiro-OMeTAD, 2,2 ′,7,7 ′- tetrakis[N,N-di(4-methoxyphenyl) amino]-9,9 ′-spirobifluorene) and the electron transport layer (ETL) is TiO 2 or SnO 2. For the third and fourth structures, the perovskite layer is FAPbI 3, where FA is formamidinium, HC (NH 2) 2, or MAPbBr 3, and in both cases, the HTL is spiro and the ETL is SnO 2. For all four structures, the hole and electron extracting electrodes are Au and fluorine doped tin oxide, respectively. We also use our model to predict how the scan rate dependence of the power conversion efficiency varies with E A, N 0, and parameters determining free charge recombination. </p

Fundamental social motives measured across forty-two cultures in two waves

How does psychology vary across human societies? The fundamental social motives framework adopts an evolutionary approach to capture the broad range of human social goals within a taxonomy of ancestrally recurring threats and opportunities. These motives—self-protection, disease avoidance, affiliation, status, mate acquisition, mate retention, and kin care—are high in fitness relevance and everyday salience, yet understudied cross-culturally. Here, we gathered data on these motives in 41 countries (N=15,885) in two cross-sectional waves, including 19 countries (N=11,095) for which data were gathered in both waves. Wave 1 was collected from 2016 through mid-2019 (32 countries, N=9353; 3537 male, 5574 female; Mage=24.58, SD=8.07). Wave 2 was collected from May through October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic (N=6532; 2194 male, 4165 female; Mage=28.82, SD=11.49). These data can be used to assess differences and similarities in people’s fundamental social motives both across and within cultures, at different time points, and in relation to other commonly studied cultural indicators and outcomes

The necessities and luxuries of mate preferences: Testing the tradeoffs

Social exchange and evolutionary models of mate selection incorporate economic assumptions but have not considered a key distinction between necessities and luxuries. This distinction can clarify an apparent paradox: Status and attractiveness, though emphasized by many researchers, are not typically rated highly by research participants. Three studies supported the hypothesis that women and men first ensure sufficient levels of necessities in potential mates before considering many other characteristics rated as more important in prior surveys. In Studies 1 and 2, participants designed ideal long-term mates, purchasing various characteristics with 3 different budgets. Study 3 used a mate-screening paradigm and showed that people inquire 1st about hypothesized necessities. Physical attractiveness was a necessity to men, status and resources were necessities to women, and kindness and intelligence were necessities to both. Relationship researchers adopting social exchange and evolutionary perspectives have used economic principles (e.g., Hatfield, Utne, &amp; Traupmann, 1979; Kenrick, Groth, Trost, &amp; Sadalla, 1993). However, a key distinction from economics has been omitted—necessities versus luxuries (e.g., Varian, 1984). Though peopl