4,277 research outputs found
Include medical ethics in the Research Excellence Framework
The Research Excellence Framework of the Higher Education
Funding Council for England is taking place in 2013, its three
key elements being outputs (65% of the profile), impact (20%),
and “quality of the research environment” (15%). Impact will
be assessed using case studies that “may include any social,
economic or cultural impact or benefit beyond academia that
has taken place during the assessment period.”1
Medical ethics in the UK still does not have its own cognate
assessment panel—for example, bioethics or applied
ethics—unlike in, for example, Australia. Several researchers
in medical ethics have reported to the Institute of Medical Ethics
that during the internal preliminary stage of the Research
Excellence Framework several medical schools have decided
to include only research that entails empirical data gathering.
Thus, conceptual papers and ethical analysis will be excluded.
The arbitrary exclusion of reasoned discussion of medical ethics
issues as a proper subject for medical research unless it is based
on empirical data gathering is conceptually mistaken. “Empirical
ethics” is, of course, a legitimate component of medical ethics
research, but to act as though it is the only legitimate component
suggests, at best, a partial understanding of the nature of ethics
in general and medical ethics in particular. It also mistakenly
places medicine firmly on only one side of the
science/humanities “two cultures” divide instead of in its rightful
place bridging the divide.
Given the emphasis by the General Medical Council on medical
ethics in properly preparing “tomorrow’s doctors,” we urge
medical schools to find a way of using the upcoming Research
Excellence Framework to highlight the expertise residing in
their ethicist colleagues. We are confident that appropriate
assessment will reveal work of high quality that can be shown
to have social and cultural impact and benefit beyond academia,
as required by the framework
Receipt for sale of Gabriel
Receipt for the sale of a boy named Gabriel, for William A. Burnside.https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/lantern-msu/1000/thumbnail.jp
Upper Bounds on Lepton-number Violating Processes
We consider four lepton-number violating (\lv) processes: (a) neutrinoless
double-beta decay (0\nu\beta\beta), (b) Delta L = 2 tau decays, (c) Delta L = 2
rare meson decays and (d) nuclear muon-positron conversion. In the absence of
exotic \lv interactions, the rates for these processes are determined by
effective neutrino masses _{\ell_1\ell_2}, which can be related to the sum
of light neutrino masses, the neutrino mass-squared differences, the neutrino
mixing angles, a Dirac phase and two Majorana phases. We sample the
experimentally allowed ranges of _{\ell_1\ell_2} based on neutrino
oscillation experiments as well as cosmological observations, and obtain a
stringent upper bound _{\ell_1\ell_2} \lsim 0.14 eV. We then calculate the
allowed ranges for _{\ell_1\ell_2} from the experimental rates of direct
searches for the above Delta L = 2 processes. Comparing our calculated rates
with the currently or soon available data, we find that only the
experiment may be able to probe _{ee} with a sensitivity
comparable to the current bound. Muon-positron conversion is next in
sensitivity, while the limits of direct searches for the other Delta L = 2
processes are several orders of magnitude weaker than the current bounds on
_{\ell_1\ell_2}. Any positive signal in those direct searches would indicate
new contributions to the \lv interactions beyond those from three light
Majorana neutrinos.Comment: 20 pages, revtex4, 2 figures (5 files), Version published in Physical
Review
NASA Space applications of high-temperature superconductors
The application of superconducting technology in space has been limited by the requirement of cooling to near liquid helium temperatures. The only means of obtaining these temperatures has been with cryogenic fluids which severely limit mission lifetime. The development of materials with superconducting transition temperatures above 77 K has made superconducting technology more attractive and feasible for employment in aerospace systems. Here, potential applications of high temperature superconducting technology in cryocoolers, remote sensing, communications, and power systems are discussed
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