Variance in Bioethics Services: Challenges and Opportunities in Canada with a Focus on In-house vs. Outsourced Health Care Ethics Consultations

Étude de cas / Case studyLes services de bioéthique varient à la fois entre et à l’intérieur des différentes juridictions. Cette étude de cas décrit cette diversité au Canada, notant les défis et les opportunités que cette variance offre.Bioethics services vary within and across many jurisdictions. This case study describes such inconsistencies in Canada, and notes challenges and opportunities related to this variance

Bioethics’ Lack in Relation to Person-Centred User-Driven Health Systems Planning: A Call for Change

La tribune de l'éditeur / Editor's Soapbo

Attitudes of Pre-clinical Medical Students towards Psychiatric Patients Before and After an Early Clinical Experience

Background:  Stigma or negative discriminatory attitudes towards psychiatric patients are common in the general public. These attitudes are also demonstrated by medical practitioners and by medical students, which can lead to medical harm to psychiatric patients. This study aimed to improve attitudes of medical students towards psychiatric patients before their clinical rotations.Methods:  Second year preclinical medical students participated in a brief structured early clinical experience which involved introduction to a psychiatric patient in a hospital/clinic setting or in a community vocational setting. Students were randomized to either setting. Data were collected one week before, one week after, and 3 months after the early clinical experience by administering the Medical Condition Regard Scale.Results:  The students’ attitudes towards psychiatric patients improved, particularly at follow up. Only male student attitudes improved significantly.Conclusion:  Further study is required to understand and improve medical students’ attitudes towards psychiatric patients, perhaps particularly in relation to female students’ attitudes

Never the Twain Shall Meet? Interspecialty Bioethics Education and Practice in Relation to Informed Consent for Surgery-related Anesthesia

The objectives of this research project are: Identify and analyze ethical problems concerning known practices regarding informed consent for surgery-related anesthesia Propose solutions to these problems, with a focus on interspecialty bioethics educatio

The ultraviolet visibility and quantitative morphology of galactic disks at low and high redshift

We used ultraviolet (200 nm) images of the local spiral galaxies M33, M51, M81, M100, M101 to compute morphological parameters of galactic disks at this wavelength : half-light radius $r_{hl}$, surface brightness distributions, asymmetries ($A$) and concentrations ($C_A$). The visibility and the evolution of the morphological parameters are studied as a function of the redshift. The main results are : local spiral galaxies would be hardly observed and classified if projected at high redshifts (z $\ge$ 1) unless a strong luminosity evolution is assumed. Consequently, the non-detection of large galactic disks cannot be used without caution as a constraint on the evolution of galatic disks. Spiral galaxies observed in ultraviolet appear more irregular since the contribution from the young stellar population becomes predominent. When these galaxies are put in a (log $A$ vs. log $C_A$) diagram, they move to the irregul ar sector defined at visible wavelengths. Moreover, the log $A$ parameter is degenerate and cannot be used for an efficient classification of morphological ultraviolet types. The analysis of high redshift galaxies cannot be carried out in a reliable way so far and a multi-wavelength approach is required if one does not want to misinterpret the data.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in A&A on 15 January 200

Intrinsic colors and ages of extremely red elliptical galaxies at high redshift

In order to know the formation epoch of the oldest elliptical galaxies as a function of mass and observed redshift, a statistical analysis for 333 extremely red objects (EROs) classified as old galaxies (OGs) at 0.8<z<2.3 is carried out. Once we get M_V and (B-V) at rest for each galaxy, we calculate the average variation of this intrinsic color with redshift and derive the average age through a synthesis model (the code for the calculation of the age has been made publicly available). The average gradient of the (B-V) color at rest of EROs/OGs is 0.07-0.10 Gyr^{-1} for a fixed luminosity. The stars in these extremely red elliptical galaxies were formed when the Universe was ~2 Gyr old on average. We have not found a significant enough dependence on the observed redshift and stellar mass: dt_{formation}/dt_{observed}=-0.46+/-0.32, dt_{formation}/(d log_10 M_*)=-0.81+/-0.98 Gyr. This fits a scenario in which the stellar formation of the objects that we denominate as EROs-OGs is more intense at higher redshifts, at which the stellar populations of the most massive galaxies form earlier than or at the same time as less massive galaxies.Comment: accepted to be published in A

Red Nuggets at z~1.5: Compact passive galaxies and the formation of the Kormendy Relation

We present the results of NICMOS imaging of a sample of 16 high mass passively evolving galaxies with 1.3<z<2, taken primarily from the Gemini Deep Deep Survey. Around 80% of galaxies in our sample have spectra dominated by stars with ages >1 Gyr. Our rest-frame R-band images show that most of these objects have compact regular morphologies which follow the classical R^1/4 law. These galaxies scatter along a tight sequence in the Kormendy relation. Around one-third of the massive red objects are extraordinarily compact, with effective radii under one kiloparsec. Our NICMOS observations allow the detection of such systems more robustly than is possible with optical (rest-frame UV) data, and while similar systems have been seen at z>2, this is the first time such systems have been detected in a rest-frame optical survey at 1.3<z<2. We refer to these compact galaxies as "red nuggets". Similarly compact massive galaxies are completely absent in the nearby Universe. We introduce a new "stellar mass Kormendy relation" (stellar mass density vs size) which isolates the effects of size evolution from those of luminosity and color evolution. The 1.1 < z < 2 passive galaxies have mass densities that are an order of magnitude larger then early type galaxies today and are comparable to the compact distant red galaxies at 2 < z < 3. We briefly consider mechanisms for size evolution in contemporary models focusing on equal-mass mergers and adiabatic expansion driven by stellar mass loss. Neither of these mechanisms appears able to transform the high-redshift Kormendy relation into its local counterpart. Comment: Accepted version (to appear in ApJ