The impact of the SARS‐CoV‐2 (COVID‐19) pandemic on medical education is well described. Here, we describe an aspect that has received little attention so far, namely the ethical implications of continued bedside teaching. As a team of clinical educators supported by one of our students and an ethicist, we describe this unexpected challenge and how we navigated it in an already existing sea of COVID‐induced issues and uncertainty.

We show the existence of Lorentz invariant Berry phases generated, in the Stueckelberg–Horwitz–Piron manifestly covariant quantum theory (SHP), by a perturbed four dimensional harmonic oscillator. These phases are associated with a fractional perturbation of the azimuthal symmetry of the oscillator. They are computed numerically by using time independent perturbation theory and the definition of the Berry phase generalized to the framework of SHP relativistic quantum theory.

Several key areas in modeling the cardiovascular and respiratory control systems are reviewed and examples are given which reflect the research state of the art in these areas. Attention is given to the interrelated issues of data collection, experimental design, and model application including model development and analysis. Examples are given of current clinical problems which can be examined via modeling, and important issues related to model adaptation to the clinical setting.

As innovations in the field of vascular composite allotransplantation (VCA) progress, whole-eye transplantation (WET) is poised to transition from non-human mammalian models to living human recipients. Present treatment options for vision loss are generally considered suboptimal, and attendant concerns ranging from aesthetics and prosthesis maintenance to social stigma may be mitigated by WET. Potential benefits to WET recipients may also include partial vision restoration, psychosocial benefits related to identity and social integration, improvements in physical comfort and function, and reduced surgical (...) risk associated with a biologic eye compared to a prosthesis. Perioperative and postoperative risks of WET are expected to be comparable to those of facial transplantation (FT), and may be similarly mitigated by immunosuppressive protocols, adequate psychosocial support, and a thorough selection process for both the recipient and donor. To minimize the risks associated with immunosuppressive medications, the first attempts in human recipients will likely be performed in conjunction with a FT. If first-in-human attempts at combined FT-WET prove successful and the biologic eye survives, this opens the door for further advancement in the field of vision restoration by means of a viable surgical option. This analysis integrates recent innovations in WET research with the existing discourse on the ethics of surgical innovation and offers preliminary guidance to VCA programs considering undertaking WET in human recipients. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Nietzsche and the Bachar‐Yerian To Bolt or Not to Be and John Stuart Mill Coda: Taylor and The Path Notes.

The open rhabdoms of the fly's eye enhance absolute sensitivity but to avoid compromising spatial acuity they require precise optical geometry and neural connections.1 This neural superposition system evolved from the ancestral insect eye, which has fused rhabdoms. A recent paper by Zelhof and co‐workers2 shows that the Drosophila gene spacemaker (spam) is necessary for development of open rhabdoms, and suggests that mutants revert to an ancestral state. Here I outline how open rhabdoms and neural superposition may have evolved (...) via nocturnal intermediates, and discuss the implications for the role of spam in insect phylogeny. BioEssays 29: 111–115, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The title of the article refers to the excessive ideological force deployed in Zionism to foster national and religious unity. As a closed and totalizing system, the Zionist enterprise precludes the representation of minority cultures and has yet to provide, if it ever can, an adequate definition of Palestinians, Mizrahim (Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origins) and other minorities – Karaites, Bedouins and Samaritans – much less one of gender sexuality, religion or personhood. Ironically, it was through the (...) contemporization of Hebrew that a distinctive Israeli society was forged, which set the limits of the imagined geography of the body. Modern Hebrew also produced a hierarchy of different literatures, each with its own ideological parameters of inclusion and exclusion. Paradoxically, as I argue, the cacophonous intertextualiy of the Hebrew canon drowns out the voices of minority Jewish writers, who are ‘relegated to constantly repositioning themselves’ within dominant (Ashkenazi) Israeli culture and society. Eli Bachar and Shelly Elkayam are among the Mizrahi poets I introduce here, whose work powerfully illustrates the colonizing aspects of hunger, eating and feeding through the trope of the ma'akhelet, Abraham's sacrificial knife, as a way to rethink intertextuality. (shrink)