An effectiveness assessment on access criteria for advance fertility treatment funded by the National Health Service, UK, in people who need help to procreate identified serious ethical issues associated with these criteria. The new draft National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence guidelines on fertility treatment that aims to expand the eligible group of patients is deemed inadequate on the basis that the right to found a family should be accorded to all. Assisted reproductive techniques aim to satisfy a basic (...) human need and therefore should be routine part of the National Health Service. (shrink)

The feasibility of posthumous reproduction when the surviving partner is female has brought to light many ethical, moral, social, and legal issues. This review aims to summarize these issues and to assist clinicians who may be faced with such requests. A question list, used for health technologies assessment, was utilized in a question-answer approach as the review methodology. Of the 1,208 publications identified through a comprehensive literature search in biomedical, psychological, and ethical databases, 31 articles included arguments related to one (...) or more questions from the predefined question set. Key stakeholders identified include the deceased, the requesting party, the resultant child, the physician, and society. Key ethical issues relevant to posthumous reproduction include the four traditional pillars of medical ethics—autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice—as well as the stakeholders’ rights and sociocultural attitudes. The ethical framework formulated by these issues has been incorporated in a clinical ethics decision-making tool that could prove useful to clinicians and decision makers. (shrink)

Previous research on whether source memory is enhanced for emotionally valenced sources yielded inconclusive results. To identify potential boundary conditions, we tested whether encoding instructions that promote affective versus different types of non-affective item-source-processing foster versus hamper source-valence effects. In both experiments, we used neutral words as items superimposed on emotional (positive & negative) or neutral pictures as sources. Source pictures were selected based on valence and arousal ratings collected in a pre-study such that only valence varied across sources. Source (...) memory was measured via multinomial modelling. In Experiment 1, we applied an affective, item-focused orienting task (OT; i.e. word-pleasantness ratings) during item-source encoding and found enhanced source memory for emotionally valenced (positive & negative) compared to neutral sources. In Experiment 2, we systematically manipulated encoding instructions and again found enhanced source memory for emotionally valenced sources with an affective OT. No such effects occurred in the non-affective conditions, where participants were instructed to integrate item and source (item-source-fit judgments), to focus on the item (living-non-living judgments), or to encode the items only, respectively. With intentional item encoding, however, source memory was surprisingly better for positive than negative sources. We conclude that source-valence effects might unfold only under affective processing. (shrink)

Journal Name: Philologus Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper contributes to the textual criticism of Achilles Tatius’ novel Leucippe and Clitophon by proposing a number of alterations to the text of the most recent edition of the complete novel (Les Belles Lettres) (Paris, 1991).

Un édifice mis au jour à Plytra (Laconie) présente une superposition de trois pavements réalisés à l’aide de diverses techniques (mosaïque d’éclats de pierre de chant, d’éclats de pierre polychromes, opus tessellatum), ainsi qu’un pavement en opus figlinum et tesselles irrégulières. Leur décor est comparable aux mosaïques de Sparte et de Gytheion, cités proches de Plytra. La publication de ces pavements est l’occasion d’étudier la variété des techniques employées par les mosaïstes dans le sud du Péloponnèse durant l’époque hellénistique et (...) l’époque impériale. Si ces techniques ne sont pas inconnues dans le reste de la Grèce, l’emploi d’éclats polychromes et/ou de tesselles irrégulières pour la réalisation de décors géométriques, végétaux mais aussi figurés, semble caractéristique des ateliers du Péloponnèse. (shrink)