One hundred inpatients on an acute hospital elderly care unit and 43 of their relatives were interviewed shortly before hospital discharge. Eighty per cent of elderly patients and their relatives were aware of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Television drama was their main source of information. Patients and relatives overestimated the effectiveness of CPR. Eighty-six per cent of patients were willing to be routinely consulted by doctors about their own CPR status, but relatives were less enthusiastic about routine consultation. Patients' and relatives' (...) views about the appropriateness of CPR did not differ significantly. Seventeen percent of patients did not desire CPR. However, 64 per cent of patients were ultimately willing to follow their doctor's advice about the appropriateness of CPR. The conclusion reached is that mentally competent, elderly patients but not their relatives should be routinely consulted about their own desire for CPR in order to avoid resuscitating patients against their wishes. Further research is required to find out how patients would feel about resuscitation if they were terminally ill or chronically confused, and how carers would feel about resuscitating such patients. (shrink)

The authors reject arguments by Professor Joseph Fletcher (author of Situation Ethics) that in some circumstances parents may be held responsible for producing genetically defective offspring, but offer arguments of their own for the same conclusion. Their arguments could, they suggest, justify `wrongful life' claims by the genetically defective infant against the mother. While researching this paper both authors were postdoctoral fellows in medical ethics in the Program on Human Values and Ethics at the University of Tennessee Center for the (...) Health Sciences. (shrink)

Felix Klein classified geometries by their group structure. It is pointed out that a similar program has been in place for particle physics and canonical quantum mechanics.

I review theories and problems of inconsistencies in the description of higher spin wave equations.

The Dirac generator formalism for relativistic Hamiltonian dynamics is reviewed along with its extension to constraint formalism. In these theories evolution is with respect to a dynamically defined parameter, and thus time evolution involves an eleventh generator. These formulations evade the No-Interaction Theorem. But the incorporation of separability reopens the question, and together with the World Line Condition leads to a second no-interaction theorem for systems of three or more particles. Proofs are omitted, but the results of recent research in (...) this area is highlighted. (shrink)

Wigner time reversal implemented by antiunitary transformations on the wavefunctions is to be refined if we are to deal with systems with internal symmetry. The necessary refinements are formulated. Application to a number of physical problems is made with some unexpected revelations about some popular models.

The superfluid state of fermion-antifermion fields developed in our previous papers is generalized to include higher orbital and spin states. In addition to single-particle excitations, the system is capable of having real and virtual bound or quasibound composite excitations which are akin to bosons of spinJ P equal to0 −, 1−, 2+, etc. These pseudoscalar, vector, and tensor bosons can be massive or massless and provide the vehicles for strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational interactions. The concept that the basic (unmanifest) (...) fermion-antifermion interaction can lead to a multiplicity of manifest interactions seems to provide a basis for a unified field theory. (shrink)

Having known classical wave optics and wave mechanics, can we reverse Schrödinger's path and extend the concept of families of rays of light to provide a new exact rendering of quantum optics including the Bose nature of photons? This question is answered in the affirmative, and the implications of the Bose symmetry for certain nonlocal correlations of the many-ray distribution functions are worked out. The similarities and the differences between classical and quantum wave optics are brought out. The ray-ray Bose (...) correlation is analyzed. The generating functional for the many-ray distribution functions is formulated; and the notion of paraxial illumination for quantum optics is made precise. (shrink)

This book explores the universe and its subsystems from the three lenses of evolutionary (diversifying), developmental (converging), and complex (adaptive) processes at all scales. It draws from prolific experts within the academic disciplines of complexity science, physical science, information and computer science, theoretical and evo-devo biology, cosmology, astrobiology, evolutionary theory, developmental theory, and philosophy. The chapters come from a Satellite Meeting, "Evolution, Development and Complexity" (EDC) hosted at the Conference on Complex Systems, in Cancun, 2017. The contributions will be peer-reviewed (...) and contributors from outside the conference will be invited to submit chapters to ensure full coverage of the topics. This book explores many issues within the field of EDC such as the interaction of evolutionary stochasticity and developmental determinism in biological systems and what they might teach us about these twin processes in other complex systems. This text will appeal to students and researchers within the complex systems and EDC fields.. (shrink)