Background Empirical studies of surrogate decision-making tend to assume that surrogates should make only a 'substituted judgement'—that is, judge what the patient would want if they were mentally competent. Objectives To explore what people want in a surrogate decision-maker whom they themselves select and to test the assumption that people want their chosen surrogate to make only a substituted judgement. Methods 30 undergraduate students were recruited. They were presented with a hypothetical scenario about their expected loss of mental capacity in (...) the future and asked to answer some questions about their choice of surrogate. These data were analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. Results Most respondents talked about choosing someone who was caring and competent in certain ways, giving interesting evidence for their judgements. Surprisingly few highlighted how well they thought their chosen surrogate knew their preferences and would be able to make a substituted judgement. Moreover, few specified that their chosen surrogate had similar attitudes and values to their own and so would make a similar decision to theirs in the circumstances presented. Some respondents also referred to the social role of their chosen surrogate or the social dynamics of their situation which influenced their choices, as well as to ideas of reciprocity and characteristics of honesty and loyalty. Conclusion In the event that they lose mental capacity, many people will not select a surrogate to decide about medical treatments on their behalf solely on the basis that they expect their surrogate to make a substituted judgement. (shrink)

Owing to unique features of their design, cluster randomized trials complicate the interpretation of standard ethics guidelines. The recently published Ottawa statement on the ethical design and conduct of cluster randomized trials provides researchers and research ethics committees with detailed guidance on the design, conduct, and review of cluster trials. The Ottawa statement sets out 15 recommendations, including guidance on the justification of study design, the need for research ethics committee review, the identification of research participants, obtaining informed consent, the (...) role of gatekeepers in protecting cluster interests, the assessment of benefits and harms, and the protection of vulnerable participants. (shrink)

Loop regions in proteins have traditionally been described as ‘random coil’, although they are known to adopt well‐defined conformations in most globular proteins. In this contribution we summarize the results of detailed analysis of the structures and sequences of these loop regions in proteins of known three‐dimensional structure. We also describe how these results can be used as an aid to protein design, modification and modelling.

Following his retirement from teaching in 1972 J. M. Bocheński entered into a creative phase of his scholarly career characterized by, among other things, a marked shift to ‘naturalism’ to the detriment of philosophical ‘speculation’ of any kind (comprising much of classical metaphysics, ‘world views’, ‘ideologies, ‘moralizing’—for him so many nefarious ‘superstitions’). During this period he examined issues which bear on the human condition in a way that was at once constructive and critical—constructive by virtue of the logical analyses of (...) such concepts as authority, critical by dint of his refusal to take seriously any so-called ‘anthropocentric’/‘humanist’ thinking attempting to secure a special standing for ‘Man’ in the world. These attitudes come to expression in his last work devoted to worldly wisdom, the practical rationality required to ensure a long and happy life. I examine, first, some of the background of this work, with an eye to the naturalism it is based on, provide a schematic overview of the contents of the study, and concentrate on a couple of key issues related to the question as Bocheński understood it. The salient issue concerns his insistence that whatever else it may be the wisdom that is conducive to the long and happy life is not to be confused, conceptually, with any sort of morality: worldly wisdom and the categorical commands of morality stand in no essential relation to each other and may indeed be contradictory … to the detriment of morality, according to Bocheński. Throughout, but especially in the concluding section, I express some doubts about the cogency of this position. (shrink)

Alan William Raitt, a Fellow of the British Academy, went up to Magdalen College at the University of Oxford from King Edward's Grammar School in Morpeth, in 1948. He progressed from being an undergraduate there to graduate student, Fellow by Examination, Fellow, Tutor, and Senior Tutor, as well as serving the college as a distinguished Vice-President from 1983 to 1985. Raitt had by then already been named in 1976 Special Lecturer in French Literature for the university and, three years later, (...) University Reader. In 1992 he received the accolade of an ad hominem Chair. Raitt had a gift for friendship; one of his greatest friends was Pierre Castex. His reputation as an international authority on nineteenth-century French literature is second to none. Unlike some British and American scholars, Raitt is widely read and admired by the French themselves, and his name figures prominently in all bibliographies devoted to Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and Gustave Flaubert. Despite his many commitments, both in Oxford and in the sphere of French studies generally, he remained a consistently prolific scholar. (shrink)

In this study, we propose and test a model of the effects of organizational ethical culture and organizational architecture on the perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers. This study also examines the relationship between organizational ethical culture and moral acceptability judgment, hypothesizing that moral acceptability judgment is an important stage in the ethical decision-making process. Based on a field study in one of the largest financial institutions in Europe, we found that organizational ethical culture was significantly related to the (...) perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers and to the moral acceptability judgment of this type of unethical behavior. No support was found for the claim that features of organizational architecture are associated with the perceived frequency of unethical behavior towards customers. This is the first study to document the differential effects of organizational architecture and organizational ethical culture on perceived unethical behavior of employees towards customers, in wholesale banking. Implications for managers and future research are discussed. (shrink)

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court made its first major pronouncement on the evaluation of scientific evidence, calling on judges to act as gatekeepers for scientific knowledge and validity, despite lack of scientific training among judges. Daubert offers the science studies community a case study for examining how judges engage in boundary-work and construct scientific validity. In constructing scientific validity under Daubert, judges must evaluate the scientific method behind a particular scientific claim, and will look (...) to the parties' experts and the relevant scientific community for assistance. To combat the oft-cited problem of the battle of the experts, judges may be tempted to obtain assistance from court-appointed neutral experts, an inquisitorial system in the civil law tradition of many European countries. The judicial evaluation of scientific evidence, the resulting construction of scientific validity, and the push for a greater use of court-appointed experts reveal judges' desire to segregate "objective" scientific facts from aspects of the legal process that are infused with adversaries' values. Yet the scientific and judicial construction of validity mixes empirical results and research methods with the personal, political, and institutional values of judges and scientists. (shrink)

We have investigated the emotional profile of dreams and the relationship between dream emotion and cognition using a form that specifically asked subjects to identify emotions within their dreams. Two hundred dream reports were collected from 20 subjects, each of whom produced 10 reports. Compared to previous studies, our method yielded a 10-fold increase in the amount of emotion reported. Anxiety/fear was reported most frequently, followed, in order, by joy/elation, anger, sadness, shame/guilt, and, least frequently, affection/eroticism. Unexpectedly, there was no (...) significant difference in the profiles of emotion reported by men and women. When the reports were scored for bizarreness, a significant correlation was found between the occurrence of bizarreness and major shifts in emotion. These results support the conclusion that dreaming is a mental state whose general emotional features are widely shared across individuals and strongly linked to cognitive features within individual dreams. (shrink)

The focus of this study was to analyze the content, distribution, and comparative genome relationships of 996 chromosome bin-mapped expressed sequence tags accounting for 2266 restriction fragments on the homoeologous group 3 chromosomes of hexaploid wheat. Of these loci, 634, 884, and 748 were mapped on chromosomes 3A, 3B, and 3D, respectively. The individual chromosome bin maps revealed bins with a high density of mapped ESTs in the distal region and bins of low density in the proximal region of the (...) chromosome arms, with the exception of 3DS and 3DL. These distributions were more localized on the higher-resolution group 3 consensus map with intermediate regions of high-mapped-EST density on both chromosome arms. Gene ontology classification of mapped ESTs was not significantly different for homoeologous group 3 chromosomes compared to the other groups. A combined analysis of the individual bin maps using 537 of the mapped ESTs revealed rearrangements between the group 3 chromosomes. Approximately 232 of the consensus mapped ESTs matched sequences on rice chromosome 1 and revealed large- and small-scale differences in gene order. Of the group 3 mapped EST unigenes ∼21 and 32% matched the Arabidopsis coding regions and proteins, respectively, but no chromosome-level gene order conservation was detected. (shrink)