This text attempts to set forth as accurate a picture as possible of the present state of biomedical ethics in Canada, along with recommendations as to how it can be improved. It also shows how far the goal of expanding the field of biomedical ethics is to provide major improvements in the quality of health care in Canada.

The actuarial profession has a long history of providing critical expertise to society. The services delivered are some of the most complex and mysterious to outsiders of all professions but little has been written about the professional responsibilities of actuaries in the academic literature beyond that of the profession itself. This paper makes the case that the issues surrounding professional independence of actuaries are, in principle, similar to those that faced the audit profession before the scandals and resultant regulatory changes (...) early this century. It is argued that, despite the position taken by the actuarial profession and management, the status quo raises genuine concerns about conflicts of interest and independence and that the risks that arise are of sufficient magnitude that they should at least be the subject of a full debate. (shrink)

The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by isolating the key trademark of intelligent causes: specified events of small probability. Just about anything that happens is highly improbable, but when a highly improbable event is also specified (i.e., conforms to an independently given pattern) undirected natural causes lose their explanatory power. Design inferences can be found in a range of scientific pursuits from forensic science to research into the origins of life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

The monk Rodulfus Glaber is best known for his Five Books of Histories, a major source for events in the first half of the eleventh century, and valuable above all for revealing the mental furniture of an eleventh-century monk - for his account of the millennium, of relics genuine and false, of church-building, and visions of saints and demons. This edition, the first since 1866, presents the only critical text of the Histories, accompanied by a complete translation and a full (...) historical commentary. Glaber also wrote a Life of his mentor, St William of Dijon, the renowned monastic reformer. The Life is reprinted after the Histories, again with translation and notes. The evidence for Glaber's life, and the value of his work are discussed in a Historical Introduction. (shrink)

The monk Rodulfus Glaber is best known for his Five Books of Histories, a major source for events in the first half of the eleventh century, and valuable above all for revealing the mental furniture of an eleventh-century monk - for his account of the millennium, of relics genuine and false, of church-building, and visions of saints and demons. This edition, the first since 1866, presents the only critical text of the Histories, accompanied by a complete translation and a full (...) historical commentary. Glaber also wrote a Life of his mentor, St William of Dijon, the renowned monastic reformer. The Life is reprinted after the Histories, again with translation and notes. The evidence for Glaber's life, and the value of his work are discussed in a Historical Introduction. (shrink)

Studies of change detection suggest that people tend to overestimate their ability to detect visual changes. In a recent laboratory study of change detection and human intention, Beck et al., found that individuals have an inadequate understanding that intention can improve change detection performance and that its importance increases with scene complexity. We note that these findings may be specific to unfamiliar situations such as those generated routinely in studies of change detection. In two questionnaire studies, we demonstrate that when (...) participants consider real world scenarios such as driving, people are well aware that the intention to detect changes improves detection performance, especially in complex scenes. We suggest several reasons why change detection findings like Beck et al.’s do not generalize to real world situations. More broadly, we suggest a possible way to bridge the gap between lab and life. (shrink)

Studies of change blindness indicate that more intentional monitoring of changes is necessary to successfully detect changes as scene complexity increases. However, there have been conflicting reports as to whether people are aware of this relation between intention and successful change detection as scene complexity increases. Here we continue our dialogue with [Beck, M. R., Levin, D. T., & Angelone, B. . Change blindness blindness: Beliefs about the roles of intention and scene complexity in change detection. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, (...) 31–51; Beck, M. R., Levin, D. T., & Angelone, B. . Metacognitive errors in change detection: Lab and life converge. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 58–62] by reporting two experiments that show participants do in fact intuit that more intentional monitoring is needed to detect changes as scene complexity increases. We also discuss how this dialogue illustrates the need for psychological studies to be grounded in measurements taken from real world situations rather than laboratory experiments or questionnaires. (shrink)

Collagen is the most abundant vertebrate protein and forms a stable fibrous architecture in connective tissues, such as bone, cartilage, skin and tendon. Much recent research has been directed towards an understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in the synthesis and degradation of collagen, because a change in the normal balance, or an increased destruction of collagen, can cause loss of function of specialized tissues. This short review attempts to summarize present knowledge about the proteolytic destruction of collagen (...) and the exciting new work on the factors that are emerging as important controlling agents. An understanding of the regulatory processes is yielding some important clues regarding the levels at which they can fail in pathological conditions and we speculate about evolving strategies for preventing uncontrolled resorption. (shrink)

Any decision by a company regarding the use of profits to pay tax, remuneration or shareholder returns has ethical implications. Sharing Profits reviews high-profile ethical issues facing companies in how profits are used, and proposes a framework for understanding the ethical implications of decisions.

This paper compares the recently proposed Robust Full Computational Tree Logic to model robustness in concurrent systems with other computational tree logic -based logics. RoCTL* extends CTL* with the addition of the operators Obligatory and Robustly, which quantify over failure-free paths and paths with one more failure respectively. This paper focuses on examining the succinctness and expressiveness of RoCTL* by presenting translations to and from RoCTL*. The core result of this paper is to show that RoCTL* is expressively equivalent to (...) CTL* but is non-elementarily more succinct. That is, RoCTL* does not add any expressive power over CTL*, but can represent some properties using vastly reduced formulae. We present a translation from RoCTL* into CTL* that preserves truth but may result in non-elementary growth in the length of the translated formula, as each nested Robustly operator may result in an extra exponential blowup. However, we show that this translation is optimal in the sense th.. (shrink)

The extant clinical literature indicates profound problems in the assessment, monitoring, and documentation of care in long-term care facilities. The lack of adequate resources to accommodate higher staff-to-resident ratios adds additional urgency to the goal of identifying more costeffective mechanisms to provide care oversight. The ever expanding array of electronic monitoring technologies in the clinical research arena demands a conceptual and pragmatic framework for the resolution of ethical tensions inherent in the use of such innovative tools. CareMedia is a project (...) that explores the utility of video, audio and sensor technologies as a continuous real-time assessment and outcomes measurement tool. In this paper, the authors describe the seminal ethical challenges encountered during the implementation phase of this project, namely privacy and confidentiality protection, and the strategies employed to resolve the ethical tensions by applying principles of the interest theory of rights. (shrink)

This book taps the best American thinkers to answer the essential American question: How do we sustain our experiment in government of, by, and for the people? Authored by an extraordinary and politically diverse roster of public officials, scholars, and educators, these chapters describe our nation's civic education problem, assess its causes, offer an agenda for reform, and explain the high stakes at risk if we fail.

This essay is an elaboration on some central themes and arguments from my recent book, Chronopathologies: Time and Politics in Deleuze, Derrida, Phenomenology and Analytic Philosophy (Rowman and Littlefield 2012). There is hence an element of generality to this essay that the book itself is better able to justify. But a short programmatic piece has its own virtues, especially for those of us who are time poor (which is pretty much everyone in contemporary academia). Moreover, it adds a dimension to (...) the above book by more explicitly situating it in relation to what is an emerging view in some recent scholarship (such as John McCumber, Len Lawlor, David Hoy, and before this Liz Grosz) that time is central to the identity of continental philosophy, as well as considering some of the work that in different ways contests this kind of interpretation of the identity of continental philosophy (e.g. Simon Glendinning, and, tacitly, Paul Redding). In continuing to side with the former over the latter, I will also develop my argument that time is one of the most significant factors in the divided house that I think contemporary philosophy remains, and I conclude by offering a series of negative prescriptions regarding how we might better avoid particular chronopathologies, or time-sicknesses, that are endemic to these philosophical trajectories, and that are also present (to greater and lesser degrees) in the majority of individual philosophers standardly labelled analytic and continental. To the extent that such sicknesses are at least partly inevitable, akin to a transcendental illusion, this paper consists in a call to be more attentive to this tendency, and to the methodological, metaphilosophical, and ethico-political consequences that follow from them. (shrink)

Near-death experiences offer a glimpse not only into the nature of death but also into the meaning of life. They are not only useful tools to aid in the human quest to understand death but are also deeply meaningful, transformative experiences for the people who have them. In a unique contribution to the growing and popular literature on the subject, philosophers John Martin Fischer and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin examine prominent near-death experiences, such as those of Pam Reynolds, Eben Alexander (...) and Colton Burpo. They combine their investigations with critiques of the narratives' analysis by those who take them to show that our minds are immaterial and heaven is for real. In contrast, the authors provide a blueprint for a science-based explanation. Focusing on the question of whether near-death experiences provide evidence that consciousness is separable from our brains and bodies, Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin give a naturalistic account of the profound meaning and transformative effects that these experiences engender in many. This book takes the reality of near-death experiences seriously. But it also shows that understanding them through the tools of science is completely compatible with acknowledging their profound meaning. (shrink)