Physician-assisted suicide in the States : public opinion, public policy and direct democracy

This research examines the relationships between public opinion, direct democratic elections and physician-assisted suicide policy in the states. Despite public opinion polls that report popular support for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, most states have criminalized the practice. In response, citizen groups have initiated ballot proposals to legalize physician-assisted suicide in California, Washington, Oregon and Michigan. Of these four campaigns, Oregon and Michigan provide the best examples of opposite outcomes. In spite of high public support of physician-assisted suicide, the initiative narrowly passed in Oregon and was overwhelmingly rejected in Michigan. Therefore, this research has analyzed the two campaigns to legalize physician assisted suicide to determine what factors affected the outcome of the initiative elections. Using the campaign in Oregon as a point of comparison, this research answered the question: What factors contributed to the defeat of the initiative to legalize physician assisted suicide in Michigan? In answering this question, four aspects of the campaigns were analyzed in depth: the organizations (campaign fundraising and campaign advertising); the mass media (news editorials and news coverage); the initiatives (initiative length, ballot placement and initiative complexity) and the state electorates. This research concluded that a combination of all four aspects of the campaigns affected their outcomes, as opposed to identifying one specific cause for the failure of the Michigan Proposal or the passage of the Oregon Measure. Specifically, seven factors were identified as most influential on the outcomes: campaign spending, campaign advertising, news editorials, news coverage, ballot length, ballot complexity and state electorates. The factors most likely to have contributed to the defeat of the ballot proposal in Michigan are the following; (1) The outspending by opponents to Proposal B. (2) The overwhelming amount of opposition advertising, which aired without counter advertisements by supporters of Proposal B. (3) All newspaper editorials in opposition to Proposal B. (4) The higher percentage of news coverage of opponents to Proposal B compared to the supporters of the Proposal, and the higher percentage of horserace coverage on Proposal B. (5) The excessive length of the ballot Proposal in Michigan. (6) The high reading level required for comprehension of the Proposal in Michigan. (7) The larger percentage of blacks and regular weekly church attendees, in Michigan: the two groups most opposed to physician-assisted suicide

More than a Linguistic Turn in Philosophy: the Semiotic Programs of Peirce and Cassirer

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Peer Reviewe

‘A passion can only be overcome by a stronger passion’: Philosophical Anthropology before and after Ernst Cassirer

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.‘Philosophical anthropology’ was initiated in the late 1920s as an alternative to abstract philosophical definitions of human nature (‘animal rationale’) and to the exclusively empirical, physical study of anthropology. Philosophical anthropology focused upon what it meant to be a human being. Its founders concentrated upon the situated existence of human beings and their ability to think beyond and to deny even what was actually vitally important to them. For Cassirer, these efforts remained too abstract because they failed to take the breadth of human cultural activity into account. The decisive feature of human life is neither reason nor language. These are derivative from symbolism, not the other way around. Human beings are best described as ‘animal symbolicum’. The error of earlier anthropological conceptions was not that they venerated reason, but that they ignored the body and so separated reason from emotion. The concept of symbolism, as Cassirer conceived it, overcame this dualism. His philosophical anthropology has been vindicated today in many areas of empirical research, but replacing the concept of ‘reason’ with that of ‘symbolism’ was no minor revision to the Western philosophical tradition, and the amplification and application of this new outlook has barely begun.Peer Reviewe

Knowns and Unknowns in Air Traffic Controller Safety Reports: Developing a New Method

Air traffic controllers in the Federal Aviation Administration can submit voluntary safety reports when significant safety concerns and potential safety events are encountered during their everyday operations. We tested two questions: Can safety reports be classified according to whether the risk was known or unknown to the controller or the system; and would classifying reports in this manner yield useful safety information? A sample of 36 reports was assessed using this known-unknown method. 55% of the reports were classified as risks known to the controller but unknown to the system. 17% of the reports were scored as known to both the controller and the system. 14% were classified as unknown to the controller but known to the system, and 14% as unknown to both the controller and the system. Trends, limitations, and next steps are discussed

Dietitians’ Attitudes and Understanding of the Promotion of Grains, Whole Grains, and Ultra-Processed Foods

NOVA is a food-classification system based on four levels of processing, from minimally processed to ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Whole-grain-containing commercial breads and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals are considered ultra-processed within NOVA, despite being considered core foods in the Australian Dietary Guidelines. These food categories contribute the greatest quantities of whole grain in the Australian diet, although consumption is less than half of the 48 g/day daily target intake. Dietitians are key to disseminating messages about nutrition and health; therefore, an accurate understanding of whole grains and the effects of processing is critical to avoid the unnecessary exclusion of nutritionally beneficial foods. The aim was to utilise an online structured questionnaire to investigate dietitians’ attitudes to the promotion of grains and whole grains and understand their level of knowledge about and attitudes towards NOVA and the classification of specific whole-grain foods. Whole-grain foods were perceived positively and are regularly promoted in dietetic practice (n = 150). The dietitians tended not to consider whole-grain breads and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals as excessively processed, although most generally agreed with the classification system based on the extent of processing. If dietitians intend to incorporate NOVA and concepts of UPFs in their counselling advice, the anomalies regarding the categorisation of whole-grain choices and optimum intakes should be addressed

Deep Learning for the Radiographic Detection of periodontal Bone Loss

We applied deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to detect periodontal bone loss (PBL) on panoramic dental radiographs. We synthesized a set of 2001 image segments from panoramic radiographs. Our reference test was the measured % of PBL. A deep feed-forward CNN was trained and validated via 10-times repeated group shuffling. Model architectures and hyperparameters were tuned using grid search. The final model was a seven-layer deep neural network, parameterized by a total number of 4,299,651 weights. For comparison, six dentists assessed the image segments for PBL. Averaged over 10 validation folds the mean (SD) classification accuracy of the CNN was 0.81 (0.02). Mean (SD) sensitivity and specificity were 0.81 (0.04), 0.81 (0.05), respectively. The mean (SD) accuracy of the dentists was 0.76 (0.06), but the CNN was not statistically significant superior compared to the examiners (p = 0.067/t-test). Mean sensitivity and specificity of the dentists was 0.92 (0.02) and 0.63 (0.14), respectively. A CNN trained on a limited amount of radiographic image segments showed at least similar discrimination ability as dentists for assessing PBL on panoramic radiographs. Dentists’ diagnostic efforts when using radiographs may be reduced by applying machine-learning based technologies

Die österreichische Frauenzeitschrift Wienerin als moderne Lebenshilfe

Thema dieser wissenschaftlichen Arbeit ist der Nutzwertjournalismus, der hinsichtlich seiner Nutzwertbeiträge in der österreichischen Frauenzeitschrift Wienerin analysiert wird