Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 1, Page 28-31, January/February 2022.

This volume celebrates the various facets of Alan Turing (1912–1954), the British mathematician and computing pioneer, widely considered as the father of computer science. It is aimed at the general reader, with additional notes and references for those who wish to explore the life and work of Turing more deeply. -/- The book is divided into eight parts, covering different aspects of Turing’s life and work. -/- Part I presents various biographical aspects of Turing, some from a personal point of (...) view. -/- Part II presents Turing’s universal machine (now known as a Turing machine), which provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about computation. His 1936 paper on this subject is widely seen as providing the starting point for the field of theoretical computer science. -/- Part III presents Turing’s working on codebreaking during World War II. While the War was a disastrous interlude for many, for Turing it provided a nationally important outlet for his creative genius. It is not an overstatement to say that without Turing, the War would probably have lasted longer, and may even have been lost by the Allies. The sensitive nature of Turning’s wartime work meant that much of this has been revealed only relatively recently. -/- Part IV presents Turing’s post-War work on computing, both at the National Physical Laboratory and at the University of Manchester. He made contributions to both hardware design, through the ACE computer at the NPL, and software, especially at Manchester. Part V covers Turing’s contribution to machine intelligence (now known as Artificial Intelligence or AI). Although Turing did not coin the term, he can be considered a founder of this field which is still active today, authoring a seminal paper in 1950. -/- Part VI covers morphogenesis, Turing’s last major scientific contribution, on the generation of seemingly random patterns in biology and on the mathematics behind such patterns. Interest in this area has increased rapidly in recent times in the field of bioinformatics, with Turing’s 1952 paper on this subject being frequently cited. -/- Part VII presents some of Turing’s mathematical influences and achievements. Turing was remarkably free of external influences, with few co-authors – Max Newman was an exception and acted as a mathematical mentor in both Cambridge and Manchester. -/- Part VIII considers Turing in a wider context, including his influence and legacy to science and in the public consciousness. -/- Reflecting Turing’s wide influence, the book includes contributions by authors from a wide variety of backgrounds. Contemporaries provide reminiscences, while there are perspectives by philosophers, mathematicians, computer scientists, historians of science, and museum curators. Some of the contributors gave presentations at Turing Centenary meetings in 2012 in Bletchley Park, King’s College Cambridge, and Oxford University, and several of the chapters in this volume are based on those presentations – some through transcription of the original talks, especially for Turing’s contemporaries, now aged in their 90s. Sadly, some contributors died before the publication of this book, hence its dedication to them. -/- For those interested in personal recollections, Chapters 2, 3, 11, 12, 16, 17, and 36 will be of interest. For philosophical aspects of Turing’s work, see Chapters 6, 7, 26–31, and 41. Mathematical perspectives can be found in Chapters 35 and 37–39. Historical perspectives can be found in Chapters 4, 8, 9, 10, 13–15, 18, 19, 21–25, 34, and 40. With respect to Turing’s body of work, the treatment in Parts II–VI is broadly chronological. We have attempted to be comprehensive with respect to all the important aspects of Turing’s achievements, and the book can be read cover to cover, or the chapters can be tackled individually if desired. There are cross-references between chapters where appropriate, and some chapters will inevitably overlap. -/- We hope that you enjoy this volume as part of your library and that you will dip into it whenever you wish to enter the multifaceted world of Alan Turing. (shrink)

Media reports of the health hazards posed by nano-sized particles have turned a white hot spotlight on the risks of nanotechnology. Worried about the risks posed to workers producing nano-materials, the Washington Post has labeled nanotechnology a “seat-of-the-pants occupational health experiment.” This article examines our emerging knowledge base about the hazards of two types of exposure: inhalation of NSPs and topical application of products containing NSPs. It argues that a clear-eyed evaluation of the benefits and risks of nanotechnology is made (...) extremely difficult by the marriage of a complex science with a venture capitalist-like hype. It then suggests that, absent additional statutory authority, governmental regulators cannot readily address the risks posed by these products. This regulatory inaction leaves a significant role for the private insurance market, a role that regulators should support in tangible ways outlined in the article. (shrink)

Nanotechnology is a subject about which we know less than we should, but probably more than we think we do at first glance. Like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's “known unknowns,” we have learned enough to know what we should be concerned with. Glimmers of risk cropped up recently when German authorities recalled a bathroom cleansing product, “MagicNano,” that purported to contain nanosized particles and was on the market for only three days. More than one hundred people suffered severe respiratory problems (...) – six of whom were hospitalized with pulmonary edema. Although a subsequent analysis of MagicNano found that the nanoliquid ingredient morphed in the production into “supersized” particles, the recall nonetheless turned a white hot spotlight on the risk of NSPs. Latching onto the risks posed to workers producing materials using nanotechnology, the Washington Post has labeled nanotechnology a “seat-of-thepants occupational health experiment.”. (shrink)

This article teases out the relationship between family form and the state's social safety nets around healthcare, showing the deep unfairness of measuring social safety nets by whether a couple marries. By continuing to tie healthcare benefits to specific family structures, we perpetuate the “galloping” inequality marking America today.This article concludes that, whatever happens with the thousands of benefits given to married couples in other domains, social policy should move beyond marriage with respect to healthcare. Delinking support for healthcare coverage (...) and services from family form is just, better assists struggling families, and is in our collective self-interest. (shrink)

This Essay examines the elegantly simple idea that consent to medical treatment or participation in human research must be “informed” to be valid. It does so by using as a case study the controversial clinical research trial known as the Surfactant, Positive Pressure, and Oxygenation Randomized Trial. The Essay begins by charting, through case law and the adoption of the common rule, the evolution of duties to secure fully informed consent in both research and treatment. The Essay then utilizes the (...) SUPPORT study, which sought to pinpoint the level of saturated oxygen that should be provided to extremely low birth weight infants to demonstrate modern complexities and shortcomings of the duty to secure informed consent. This Essay shows how the duty is measured by foreseeability of risks and benefits in human research and why federal regulators believed the tradeoffs in risk and benefits from differing oxygen levels administered in the support study were foreseeable. It then explores the contours of the duty to secure informed consent when applied to researchers who also serve as treating physicians, highlighting how common law duties differ in jurisdictions that apply the professional standard and those that apply the patient-centered material risk standard. This Essay provides new insight into what the law must do to make real the notion that [e]very human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his body.”. (shrink)

From Ancient Greek times, music has been seen as a mathematical art, and the relationship between mathematics and music has fascinated generations. This collection of wide ranging, comprehensive and fully-illustrated papers, authored by leading scholars, presents the link between these two subjects in a lucid manner that is suitable for students of both subjects, as well as the general reader with an interest in music. Physical, theoretical, physiological, acoustic, compositional, and analytical relationships between mathematics and music are unfolded and explored (...) with focus on tuning and temperament, the mathematics of sound, bell-ringing and modern compositional techniques. (shrink)

State laws dictating “informed consent” about surgical and chemical abortions sometimes ensnare emergency contraceptives, as the science surrounding EC shows. Courts evaluating mandated disclosures gravitate to professional norms rather than the information most women would value: basic factual information about EC so that they can decide for themselves whether to use these drugs.

In his deliciously funny book, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles, Professor David Hyman argues that Medicare corrupts our most base impulses. It urges us, for example, to grab for more than our fair share of benefits while offering providers “the prospect of staggering amounts of money – even as…actuaries were promising Congress that the Medicare program would be easily affordable.” Modeled on C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Professor Hyman's satirical examination of Medicare takes the form of a memo to Satan from an (...) underling demon in the Department of Illness and Satanic Services, reporting on the success of Satan's diabolical plot to corrupt humanity. Sprinkled with political cartoons, absurd stories of Medicare's over-the-top fraud enforcement efforts, and a historical account of Medicare's genesis, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles gives us a well-researched and easy-to-read primer on the biggest pot of gold in medicine. (shrink)

In his deliciously funny book, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles, Professor David Hyman argues that Medicare corrupts our most base impulses. It urges us, for example, to grab for more than our fair share of benefits while offering providers “the prospect of staggering amounts of money – even as…actuaries were promising Congress that the Medicare program would be easily affordable.” Modeled on C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Professor Hyman's satirical examination of Medicare takes the form of a memo to Satan from an (...) underling demon in the Department of Illness and Satanic Services, reporting on the success of Satan's diabolical plot to corrupt humanity. Sprinkled with political cartoons, absurd stories of Medicare's over-the-top fraud enforcement efforts, and a historical account of Medicare's genesis, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles gives us a well-researched and easy-to-read primer on the biggest pot of gold in medicine. (shrink)

In his deliciously funny book, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles, Professor David Hyman argues that Medicare corrupts our most base impulses. It urges us, for example, to grab for more than our fair share of benefits while offering providers “the prospect of staggering amounts of money – even as…actuaries were promising Congress that the Medicare program would be easily affordable.” Modeled on C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Professor Hyman's satirical examination of Medicare takes the form of a memo to Satan from an (...) underling demon in the Department of Illness and Satanic Services, reporting on the success of Satan's diabolical plot to corrupt humanity. Sprinkled with political cartoons, absurd stories of Medicare's over-the-top fraud enforcement efforts, and a historical account of Medicare's genesis, Medicare Meets Mephistopheles gives us a well-researched and easy-to-read primer on the biggest pot of gold in medicine. (shrink)

Illustrated by critically examining a range of architectural journalism, from an article by artist Paul Nash in 'The Architectural Review', 1940, to an early project by contemporary French architects Lacaton et Vassal published in the journal '2G' in 2001, to recent photography by Hisao Suzuki published in the journal 'El Croquis', this book brings a radical and detailed analysis of the architectural media. It addresses issues of architectural criticism, architectural photography and the role of journal editors, and argues that the (...) architectural media is a site of contestation and ambiguity regarding the role of critical and speculative thinking. The book highlights moments where a different type of critical voice emerges within the architectural media, indicating the possibility of a more progressive engagement with the media as a platform for critical thinking about architecture. 0The study is underpinned by theory about utopian thinking/discourse, primarily from the work of the French semiotician and art theorist Louis Marin and the American Marxist critic Fredric Jameson. Through this, it builds a fresh theoretical approach to the architectural media and begins to reveal a hitherto unexplored dimension of ‘latent’ or ‘unconscious’ discourse within the media portrait of architecture. Following Jameson’s charting of the role of the utopian imagination in the modern and post-modern periods, the book suggests that genuine utopian thinking has undergone comprehensive suppression in our current times and that the task of theory is to now to detect its presence and explore its meaning within new forms and sites of cultural production. (shrink)

Although the incidence and composition of HECs has been well characterized, little is known about how HECs assess their performance. In order to describe the incidence of HEC self-evaluation, the methods HECs use to evaluate their performance, and the characteristics of HECs that influence self-evaluation, we surveyed the readers ofHospital Ethics. 290 HECs in 45 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and three Canadian provinces, completed questionnaires. Of the 241 HECs included in the data analysis, 97.9% had performed (...) some self-evaluation. Responding committees largely made formative rather than summative evaluations and appeared to evaluate performance in light of their own objectives rather than basing assessments on specific structural, process, and outcome measures of quality. Responding committees used certain evaluation criteria more extensively than others — among these, the number of participants and staff knowledge of the service provided — with the choice of criteria differing with the function being evaluated. Eight characteristics of HECs influenced the probability of self-evaluation, including age, number of beds and meetings, the existence of a mission statement, and a budget. The presence of certain characteristics made HECs six times more likely to evaluate their performance than HECs without the characteristic. (shrink)