Bulang He,1,2 Jeffrey M Hamdorf2 1Liver and Kidney Transplant Unit, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Perth, WA, Australia; 2School of Surgery, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia Aims: The aim of this paper was to review the current status of laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant and evaluate its feasibility and safety in comparison with conventional standard "open" kidney transplant. Methods: An electronic search of PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane library database was performed to identify the papers between January 1980 and June (...) 2013 that reported on laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplantation. The terms "laparoscopic kidney/renal transplant" and "robotic kidney/renal transplant " were used. Cross-referencing was also used to find the further publications. Only English language reports were selected and accepted for descriptive analysis. Results: A total of 17 papers and abstracts were retrieved. There were two case-control studies of small volume. High-level evidence comparing the safety and efficacy of laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant with conventional open kidney transplant was not available at the time of this review. Conclusion: The limited published data have suggested that laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant may offer the advantages of less pain, better cosmesis, possible shorter hospital stay, and fewer wound complications, without compromising graft function. Accordingly, some immunosuppressive agents, such as sirolimus, might be able to be commenced earlier, after laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant. The techniques are various at this early stage. A uniformed operative technique may be established in the near future. With refinement of laparoscopic devices, this technique may be widely employed. Further studies will be needed to demonstrate the advantages of laparoscopic/robotic kidney transplant over the conventional open kidney transplant. Keywords: laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgery. (shrink)

Guido de Ruggiero (1888-1948) was perhaps the greatest Italian intellectual historian in the twentieth century. He was a fierce champion of liberalism, an ardent opponent of Fascism, an insightful critic and interpreter of his contemporaries, and a formidable philosopher in his own right. Idealism & Experience: The Philosophy of Guido de Ruggiero comprises eight new critical essays, as well as English translations of five of de Ruggiero's most important shorter writings, which chart the development of his thought between 1914 (...) and 1946. Taken together, these essays reveal the range, richness and philosophical sophistication of de Ruggiero's ideas, enabling Anglophone readers to appreciate their enduring relevance in our own troubled times. (shrink)

Essays on Gilbert, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, van Helmont, and Descartes attempt, at a medium level of complexity, to relate the positions of these men to twentieth century views of the same questions. The stated purpose of the book is the assessment of the role of each man in the "methodological revolution"; although the methods are discussed, little attempt is made to put them into the context necessary for the reader to view them as revolutionary.—J. M. B.

The subtitle of this essay can be misleading; the author devotes only one preliminary chapter and a brief part of another chapter to discussing issues of scientific language and method. The book is primarily an essay in the philosophy of mind. Rosenblueth is a well-known neurophysiologist who has considerable background in the philosophy of science. His purpose is to articulate a general philosophical position that is consistent with the results of science as well as with the attitudes and activities of (...) experimental scientists; and to develop from this basis an answer to the question of how mind and brain are related. He spends four chapters summarizing the biological and neurophysiological research that shows the nature of the correlation between mental and neurophysiological events. He concludes from this that our knowledge of the material world is limited to those structures that can be coded by the afferent fibers. He then articulates four unprovable "postulates" which scientists must assume. One of these is a probabilistic statement of causal determinism. This postulate is the basis for his rejecting the idea that the mind can causally influence the brain through volitions. Moreover, he argues for the converse statement as well; the brain cannot cause conscious events since the latter are mental and not material. But this denial of causal interaction does not lead Rosenblueth to conclude that mind/body dualism must be rejected. He considers and rejects the monist views of Feigl, Russell and Eddington, and thus comes up with a dualist view that denies causal interaction. Although the scientific material cited by Rosenblueth is up to date, he does not consider the current philosophical discussions on the mind/body problem.--J. M. B. (shrink)

This book attempts to prepare the non-philosopher for the study of contemporary philosophical works. After a discussion of the course of science after Copernicus, Mr. Prosch turns to an exposition of, first, the metaphysical and epistemological positions of the British empiricists and Kant and, second, the ethical and political positions of Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Rousseau, and Hegel. His discussion of Marxism, pragmatism, analytical philosophy and existentialism is written from a neutral position. The book may be too technical (...) to serve its purpose, but it is a well-organized and clear attempt.—J. M. B. (shrink)

This book's purpose is the exposition of the inability of natural science to disprove the existence of God. Clark argues that the acceptance of a mechanistic world view based on Newtonian science makes, unjustifiably, a philosophy of science in which science forgets the many idealizations built into its laws' mathematical formulations. The philosophy of science Mr. Clark espouses is Percy Bridgman's operationalism, i.e., the reduction of the meaning of a concept to the operations used to measure it. The separation of (...) the physical world from what the scientist says about it leads Clark to deny that science is cognitive. It is, rather, a way of increasing nature's utility. As such, it may not be used to support any ethical position whatever.—J. M. B. (shrink)

In a series of essays, Miss Rand expounds her "Objectivist Ethics." Man will discover, if he is sufficiently rational, those goals and values which are peculiar to him alone, i.e., those which will enable him to survive, and which require complex thought processes. The result of this search is that the moral man is he who achieves his maximum happiness; relationships, whether economic or emotional, are to be based on trade, and no interests conflict if they are viewed in a (...) properly wide context. The essays are quite readable, although not so arresting as Miss Rand's novels; however, the ethics collapses when it is applied to a populous society whose environment is either agriculturally poor or highly mechanized. Given these conditions, if a man views his interest from the limited standpoint of Objectivism, there is a necessary conflict of interests.—J. M. B. (shrink)

This book is of little interest except to those tracing back the neo-scholastic sources of such figures as Maréchal, Coreth, Rahner, et al. The introductory essay by G. Isaye, supposedly designed to give a summary description of Scheurer's method, is a masterpiece of obscure writing even for those acquainted with neoscholastic jargon. The rest of the volume consists of twelve very desultory essays by Scheurer. In these essays Scheurer struggles to pour the philosophy of the ego à la Kant and (...) his successors into scholastic molds. This synthesis is done in the name of the transcendental method, but what results is historically dubious and philosophically tortured. Though ambiguities abound, Scheurer was ahead of most of his scholastic contemporaries in that he tried to come to grips with Kant and to see in Kant someone more than the malin genie of modern philosophy. Unfortunately, the editor does not date Scheurer's essays and one, therefore, cannot determine whether Scheurer first influenced Maréchal or vice-versa--D. J. M. B. (shrink)

J. M. Shorter; X*—Personal Identity, Personal Relationships, and Criteria, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 71, Issue 1, 1 June 1971, Pages 165–1.

IntroductionTranscranial magnetic stimulation is a consolidated procedure for the treatment of depression, with several meta-analyses demonstrating its efficacy. Theta-burst stimulation is a modification of TMS with similar efficacy and shorter session duration. The geriatric population has many comorbidities and a high prevalence of depression, but few clinical trials are conducted specifically for this age group. TBS could be an option in this population, offering the advantages of few side effects and no pharmacological interactions. Therefore, our aim is to investigate (...) the efficacy of TBS in geriatric depression.Clinical trial registration[https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/], identifier [NCT04842929]. (shrink)

John Locke claimed that: ‘We never finding, nor conceiving it possible, that two things of the same kind should exist in the same place at the same time, we rightly conclude that, whatever exists anywhere at any time excludes all of the same kind, and is there itself alone’. He argued that, otherwise, ‘The notions and names of identity and diversity would be in vain, and there could be no such distinctions of substances or anything else one from another’. More (...) recently Professor D. Wiggins has made a similar claim for similar reasons. I shall maintain that, even if we accept the general outline of the essentialist account of identity given by Wiggins in his book, the claim that two things of the same kind cannot be in the same place at the same time should be rejected, until better reasons are forthcoming. (shrink)

In the first part of the article the author discusses the use of the word 'fact'. In the second he uses his conclusions to "throw light on some of the discussions of the logical atomists." he discusses austin, Russell, And strawson. The author concludes that it a mistake to identify questions of ontology with questions of language, Which arises because of a confusion with the term 'fact'. (staff).

A superconducting transition temperature as high as 100 K was recently discovered in one monolayer FeSe grown on SrTiO3. The discovery ignited efforts to identify the mechanism for the markedly enhanced Tc from its bulk value of 8 K. There are two main views about the origin of the Tc enhancement: interfacial effects and/or excess electrons with strong electron correlation. Here, we report the observation of superconductivity below 20 K in surface electron-doped bulk FeSe. The doped surface layer possesses all (...) the key spectroscopic aspects of the monolayer FeSe on SrTiO3. Without interfacial effects, the surface layer state has a moderate Tc of 20 K with a smaller gap opening of 4.2 meV. Our results show that excess electrons with strong correlation cannot induce the maximum Tc, which in turn reveals the need for interfacial effects to achieve the highest Tc in one monolayer FeSe on SrTiO3. (shrink)

"This book contains ideas to develop interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary views on economy and society. It aims to disseminate heterodox ideas on various subjects related to economics and global society. The book is organised in six parts. Part 1 contains the key lectures of Backhaus on the concept of state sciences and of Klamer on the importance of culture for economics. Parts 2- 6 contain successively contributions in the areas of economic paradigms and theories, population and society, corporate issues, environment, and (...) international relations. Examples of the content are: - the changes of family life cycles due to the rise of non-traditional households; - subjective and objective inflation rates after the introduction of the Euro; - the economics of genetic engineering; - the contribution of foreign direct investment to the economic development of host countries; - the inaccuracy of economic models applied in places characterized by extreme income disparities; - the improvement of political and corporate governance; - evolutionary thinking and emission trading; - freedom and order in the European Union; - the reform of social policy in Europe. The book provides interesting creative multi-disciplinary ideas with respect to various topical issues concerning the contemporary global society. It is highly recommended for economists and social scientists in search of broad views on social science and society.". (shrink)