Conservation Laws and Interactionist Dualism

The Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that since (1) every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and (2) cases of causal overdetermination are rare, it follows that if (3) mental events cause physical events as frequently as they seem to, then (4) mental events must be physical in nature. In defence of (1), it is sometimes said that (1) is supported if not entailed by conservation laws. Against this, I argue that conservation laws do not lend sufficient support to (1) to render its denial ‘unscientific’, and that those who accept (3) and deny (4) may consequently respond to the Exclusion Argument by denying (1) without thereby setting themselves at odds with current science. I also argue that conservation laws are compatible with (3) and the negation of (4), and that one can therefore accept conservation laws and (3) while denying both (1) and (4)

Should we pay for ecosystem service outputs, inputs or both?

Payments for ecosystem service outputs have recently become a popular policy prescription for a range of agri-environmental schemes. The focus of this paper is on the choice of contract instruments to incentivise the provision of ecosystem service outputs from farms. The farmer is better informed than the regulator in terms of hidden information about costs and hidden-actions relating to effort. The results show that with perfect information, the regulator can contract equivalently on inputs or outputs. With hidden information, input-based contracts are more cost effective at reducing the informational rent related to adverse selection than output-based contracts. Mixed contracts are also cost-effective, especially where one input is not observable. Such contracts allow the regulator to target variables that are “costly-to-fake” as opposed to those prone to moral hazard such as effort. Further results are given for fixed price contracts and input-based contracts with moral hazard. The model is extended to include a discussion of repeated contracting and the scope that exists for the regulator to benefit from information revealed by the initial choice of contract. The models are applied to a case study of contracting with farmers to protect high biodiversity native vegetation that also provides socially-valuable ecosystem services

Palliative care, double effect and the law in Australia

Care and decision-making at the end of life that promotes comfort and dignity is widely endorsed by public policy and the law. In ethical analysis of palliative care interventions that are argued potentially to hasten death, these may be deemed to be ethically permissible by the application of the doctrine of double effect, if the doctor’s intention is to relieve pain and not cause death. In part because of the significance of ethics in the development of law in the medical sphere, this doctrine is also likely to be recognized as part of Australia’s common law, although hitherto there have been no cases concerning palliative care brought before a court in Australia to test this. Three Australian States have, nonetheless, created legislative defences that are different from the common law with the intent of clarifying the law, promoting palliative care, and distinguishing it from euthanasia. However, these defences have the potential to provide less protection for doctors administering palliative care. In addition to requiring a doctor to have an appropriate intent, the defences insist on adherence to particular medical practice standards and perhaps require patient consent. Doctors providing end-of-life care in these States need to be aware of these legislative changes. Acting in accordance with the common law doctrine of double effect may not provide legal protection. Similar changes are likely to occur in other States and Territories as there is a trend towards enacting legislative defences that deal with the provision of palliative care

Interveners or Interferers: Intervention in Decisions to Withhold and Withdraw Life-Sustaining Medical Treatment

This article considers intervention in proceedings about withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment. Since the early 1990s, there have been a number of important decisions, both in Australia and overseas, about whether life-sustaining treatment should be withheld or withdrawn from an adult who no longer has capacity to make the decision for himself or herself. In almost all of these decisions, intervention by a non-party to the matter has been an issue. This article explores the rules of intervention in applications to appear as a party and as amicus curiae, and considers those rules in the context of decisions to withhold and withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment. The relevant cases are examined as are the advantages and disadvantages of intervention in these circumstances. The article concludes by suggesting a model for intervention that strikes the appropriate balance between ensuring all relevant issues are placed before the court while still respecting the intensely private nature of a decision to withhold or withdraw a life-sustaining measure in any given case

The legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life sustaining treatment: Part 3 (Victoria)

This is the final article in a series of three that examines the legal role of medical professionals in decisions to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment from adults who lack capacity. This article considers the position in Victoria. A review of the law in this State reveals that medical professionals play significant legal roles in these decisions. However, the law is problematic in a number of respects and this is likely to impede medical professionals’ legal knowledge in this area. The article examines the level of training that medical professionals receive on issues such as refusal of treatment certificates and substitute decision-making, and the available empirical evidence as to the state of medical professionals’ knowledge of the law at the end of life. It concludes that there are gaps in legal knowledge and that law reform is needed in Victoria. The article also draws together themes from the series as a whole, including conclusions about the need for more and better medical education and about law reform generally

Silencing dissent: Palestine solidarity under attack

Students at Palestine Technical University in the Occupied West Bank face an unusual challenge in pursuit of their studies: the Israeli military has built a training facility on campus. The university may be the only one in the world where an occupying army has not only built a firing range on campus, but also regularly shoots and detains student protesters; in one six week period recently, some 350 Palestinian students were injured by the Israeli army

Genomic insights into sex determination evolution in yam, an important staple food crop

Reductions in the cost of next generation sequencing and expertise required for whole genome assembly and annotation permits improvement of existing assemblies of industrially important models (Chinese hamster ovary cell line - CHO) and sequencing neglected agronomically important species, such as yam. Applying these new technologies, we have produced an improved reference for the CHO lineage, CHO-K1, and generated draft assemblies and annotations for three yam species. Yam is an important staple crop of great cultural and socioeconomic significance to Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, South Pacific and Asia. I explored the evolutionary history of sex determination in dioecious Dioscorea species, a rare trait found in only 5-6% of angiosperms. We identified the most socio-economically important species, guinea yam (D. rotundata) to be female heterogametic (ZW), and confirmed the related basal species, oni-dokoro (D. tokoro), to be male heterogametic (XY). It is exciting to observe both ZW and XY sex determination systems in Dioscorea, as this indicates turnover of sex determination systems. There has been little study to date comparing plant species in the same genus with different sex determination systems, making Dioscorea a unique opportunity to investigate the turnover of sex determination. Through comparison of these two species, and generation of a draft reference for D. alata, I have begun to elucidate the ancestral state of sex within the genus. Generation of these genomic resources in yam and study of the evolution of sex determination, will assist with breeding programmes that will improve this important staple food crop. Finally, these findings will assist with future studies that aim to improve our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of recombination and speciation in plants

Parthenocissus quinquefolia (L.) Planch.

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/herbarium_specimens_byname/19811/thumbnail.jp