The Role of Compassion in Medical Ethics and Its Reintegration in Modern Practice

Compassion has been an integral part of medical ethics since its origins, but as medicine progressed, compassion slowly disappeared from practice. The development of any industry results from many complex factors, but the decline of compassion in medicine can be largely attributed to the evolution of technology and role of medical ethics committees. Change is not always negative, but in this case, medicine neglected one of its foundational principles. This is seen by analyzing the history and progression of medical ethics and its four pillars. Plato and Aristotle defined justice in Greek philosophy, Hippocrates used the concept of non-maleficence in his oaths, the philosophy of John Gregory and Kant brought autonomy into a medical context, and the work of Thomas Percival sought to view medicine a beneficent undertaking. These critical principles were summarized by Joseph Fletcher. Each of these individuals also acknowledged the great role compassion played in medical practice. However, as the medical field developed, its reliance on compassion was in part replaced by a thirst for progress and acting ethics committees. Medicine needs compassion because it was built on compassion. It is not simply an ideal drawn from philosophers, it is a necessity for the wellness of both patients and practitioners

Modular Groups of Quantum Fields in Thermal States

For a quantum field in a thermal equilibrium state we discuss the group generated by time translations and the modular action associated with an algebra invariant under half-sided translations. The modular flows associated with the algebras of the forward light cone and a space-like wedge admit a simple geometric description in two dimensional models that factorize in light-cone coordinates. At large distances from the domain boundary compared to the inverse temperature the flow pattern is essentially the same as time translations, whereas the zero temperature results are approximately reproduced close to the edge of the wedge and the apex of the cone. Associated with each domain there is also a one parameter group with a positive generator, for which the thermal state is a ground state. Formally, this may be regarded as a certain converse of the Unruh-effect.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figure

Particle Weights and their Disintegration I

The notion of Wigner particles is attached to irreducible unitary representations of the Poincare group, characterized by parameters m and s of mass and spin, respectively. However, the Lorentz symmetry is broken in theories with long-range interactions, rendering this approach inapplicable (infraparticle problem). A unified treatment of both particles and infraparticles via the concept of particle weights can be given within the framework of Local Quantum Physics. They arise as temporal limits of physical states in the vacuum sector and describe the asymptotic particle content. In this paper their definition and characteristic properties are worked out in detail. The existence of the temporal limits is established by use of suitably defined seminorms which are also essential in proving the characteristic features of particle weights.Comment: 33 pages, amslatex, mathptm, minor corrections including numbering schem

The effect of additional observations on a previous least squares estimate

Additional observations effect on previous least squares estimat

Polarization-Free Generators and the S-Matrix

Polarization-free generators, i.e. ``interacting'' Heisenberg operators which are localized in wedge-shaped regions of Minkowski space and generate single particle states from the vacuum, are a novel tool in the analysis and synthesis of two-dimensional integrable quantum field theories. In the present article, the status of these generators is analyzed in a general setting. It is shown that such operators exist in any theory and in any number of spacetime dimensions. But in more than two dimensions they have rather delicate domain properties in the presence of interaction. If, for example, they are defined and temperate on a translation-invariant, dense domain, then the underlying theory yields only trivial scattering. In two-dimensional theories, these domain properties are consistent with non-trivial interaction, but they exclude particle production. Thus the range of applications of polarization-free generators seems to be limited to the realm of two-dimensional theories.Comment: Dedicated to the memory of Harry Lehmann, 19 pages; revised version (proof of Lemma 3.4 corrected

The isotopic composition of methane in the stratosphere : high-altitude balloon sample measurements

The isotopic composition of stratospheric methane has been determined on a large suite of air samples from stratospheric balloon flights covering subtropical to polar latitudes and a time period of 16 yr. 154 samples were analyzed for δC and 119 samples for δD, increasing the previously published dataset for balloon borne samples by an order of magnitude, and more than doubling the total available stratospheric data (including aircraft samples) published to date. The samples also cover a large range in mixing ratio from tropospheric values near 1800 ppb down to only 250 ppb, and the strong isotope fractionation processes accordingly increase the isotopic composition up to δ13C=−14‰ and δD= +190‰, the largest enrichments observed for atmospheric CH4 so far. When analyzing and comparing kinetic isotope effects (KIEs) derived from single balloon profiles, it is necessary to take into account the residence time in the stratosphere in combination with the observed mixing ratio and isotope trends in the troposphere, and the range of isotope values covered by the individual profile. Temporal isotope trends can also be determined in the stratosphere and compare reasonably well with the tropospheric trends. The effects of chemical and dynamical processes on the isotopic composition of CH4 in the stratosphere are discussed in detail. Different ways to interpret the data in terms of the relative fractions of the three important sink mechanisms (reaction with OH, O(1D)) and Cl, respectively), and their limitations, are investigated. The classical approach of using global mean KIE values can be strongly biased when profiles with different minimum mixing ratios are compared. Approaches for more local KIE investigations are suggested. It is shown that any approach for a formal sink partitioning from the measured data severely underestimates the fraction removed by OH, which is likely due to the insensitivity of the measurements to the kinetic fractionation in the lower stratosphere. Attempts can be made to correct for the lower stratospheric sink bias, but full quantitative interpretation of the CH4 isotope data in terms of the three sink reactions requires a global model

Classification of subsystems for graded-local nets with trivial superselection structure

We classify Haag-dual Poincar\'e covariant subsystems \B\subset \F of a graded-local net \F on 4D Minkowski spacetime which satisfies standard assumptions and has trivial superselection structure. The result applies to the canonical field net \F_\A of a net \A of local observables satisfying natural assumptions. As a consequence, provided that it has no nontrivial internal symmetries, such an observable net \A is generated by (the abstract versions of) the local energy-momentum tensor density and the observable local gauge currents which appear in the algebraic formulation of the quantum Noether theorem. Moreover, for a net \A of local observables as above, we also classify the Poincar\'e covariant local extensions \B \supset \A which preserve the dynamics.Comment: 38 pages, LaTe