CONTENT ANALYSIS OF TYPES OF RATIONALITY IN THE CONCEPTS OF MEDICINE OF THE FUTURE

In this article content analysis is used to examine medical students' views on the standards of rationality in medicine of the past, present, and future. The study involved 229 residents of 32 specialties. A quantitative analysis of keywords in views of the future of medicine revealed indicators of all types of rationality. Postmodern ideals of superhealth and immortality became trends in medical futurology even though a tenth of respondents considered them illusory. Young doctors placed the basic tenet of the Hippocratic Oath, "Healing," back among the top keywords for medicine of the future. Faith, authority, dialogue, consent, and self-treatment have lost much of their appeal.

Maternal Fructose Diet-Induced Developmental Programming

Developmental programming of chronic diseases by perinatal exposures/events is the basic tenet of the developmental origins hypothesis of adult disease (DOHaD). With consumption of fructose becoming more common in the diet, the effect of fructose exposure during pregnancy and lactation is of increasing relevance. Human studies have identified a clear effect of fructose consumption on maternal health, but little is known of the direct or indirect effects on offspring. Animal models have been utilized to evaluate this concept and an association between maternal fructose and offspring chronic disease, including hypertension and metabolic syndrome. This review will address the mechanisms of developmental programming by maternal fructose and potential options for intervention.

Banks in India: A Balancing Act Between Profitability, Regulation and NPA

Banks are facing varied issues worldwide. The existing set of performance measures of banks lack a cohesive and concerted approach for adequate fulfilment of the purpose. This study proposes a holistic view of the bank performance, which includes profitability, risk-taking (non-performing asset [NPA]), and regulation. It has been observed that Indian banks fare miserably in this litmus test of comprehensive performance measure. The meanest of the expectation that NPA should be affected by the regulatory mechanism is found surprisingly missing in the Indian banks. The existing literature has not taken a holistic view of bank performance, and therefore, the findings of this study provide enough impetus to all the stakeholders of the banks to respond. Policy makers and regulatory bodies can redirect both the banking governance and regulation so that the basic tenet of comprehensive bank performance expectations, as raised in this study, are met reasonably.

Fallacies in Decision Making From an Asian Perspective

Decision making is integral for organizational success, and for that, the basic tenet is rationality. Yet, no decisions in the workplace are purely rational. Irrational decision-making behaviours are the irrational beliefs of employees. Irrational employee behaviours can cause a billion dollar revenue loss. The purpose of this paper is to study the complex employee phenomenon of workplace irrational decision making and unearth its dimensions. Hence, this study is envisaged as a lived experience using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participation was by 123 employees working in various capacities in Western India through theoretical sampling frame. The results indicate that it is a multidimensional phenomenon, and prominent are religious, pseudo-scientific, and sorcery-based behaviours. Thus, these findings can help the organizations to understand the irrational behaviours of employees and aid managers to recognize the decisions of their employees to mitigate the bias in irrational decisions.

Fallacies in Decision Making From an Asian Perspective

Decision-making is integral for organizational success and for that the basic tenet is rationality. Yet, no decisions in the workplace are purely rational. Irrational decision-making behaviours is the irrational belief of employees. Irrational employee behaviours can cause a billion dollars revenue loss. The purpose of this paper is to study the complex employee phenomenon of workplace irrational decision mak and unearth its dimensions. Hence, this study is envisaged as a lived-in experience using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participation was by hundred and twenty-three (123) employees working in various capacities in western India through theoretical sampling frame. The results indicate that it is a multidimensional phenomenon and prominent are religious, pseudo-scientific and sorcery based behaviours. Thus, these findings can help the organizations to understand the irrational behaviours of employees and aid managers to recognize the decision of their employees to mitigate the bias in irrational decisions.

Mediating actio in distans: Leibniz, Clarke and Newton on the communicability of forces

This article revisits the debate between Leibniz and Clarke to explore conceptual shifts in the use of the term medium. A basic tenet of physics since antiquity says that every act of communication ‐ that is, every transmission of a force from the place of its cause to that of its effect ‐ requires a medium to ensure its interaction. In the context of the Early Modern Period, media were regarded as mediating instances that enabled communication. If these instances were not immediately connected but rather spatially separated from one another ‐ as in the case of gravitation, magnetism or electricity ‐ then there had to be a medium to ensure both the transmission of the force and the causal connection. Although the mediation of the medium took place in an inexplicable way, it seemed to explain one process or another by its mere introduction. The epistemological foundations of communicability ‐ those with which Leibniz, Clarke and Newton were attempting to come to terms ‐ remain relevant to the descriptive language with which we depict our present and its technological condition. Without duration there is no mediation but rather immediacy and simultaneity. Immediacy means that the necessary separation between the two events, the abyss of communication, is negated. Immediacies, like instantaneous actions at a distance, presuppose the difference they are deemed to eradicate.

Part VIII Accountability for Displacement and Refugee Rights Violations, Ch.65 Border Crimes as Crimes against Humanity

This chapter examines border violence as ‘crimes against humanity’. It begins by explaining what it takes to interpret the phrase ‘crimes against humanity’, as it appears in article 7 of the Rome Statute, in light of rules of interpretation articulated in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The chapter then looks at three theories of crimes against humanity. The first follows a basic tenet of Kantian ethics: the charge of crimes against humanity denounces the transformation of humans from ends in themselves to means of governing, or even of eliminating, the lives of others. A second option posits that the key aspect of claims concerning crimes against humanity directed at refugees is that they exert a kind of structural violence: certain kinds of border violence establish a system that extinguishes legal protections for humans, while making such results appear natural. Unlike other cases in which structural violence is rendered transparent to criminal law, contemporary border violence against asylum seekers and refugees can be effectively captured within a criminal law framework. A third interpretive theory suggests that border violence is deleterious towards people’s social lives, as it separates them into hermetic units and prevents interaction and mobility between groups. Proponents of this view may proceed to argue that sealing borders and eliminating the right to asylum is part of a larger plan for solidifying global racial and economic hierarchies: a ‘global apartheid’.

Evaluation of Development Datasets for Hermetia illucens (L.) (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) for Estimating the Time of Placement of Human and Swine Remains in Texas, USA

A basic tenet of forensic entomology is development data of an insect can be used to predict the time of colonization (TOC) by insect specimens collected from remains, and this prediction is related to the time of death and/or time of placement (TOP). However, few datasets have been evaluated to determine their accuracy or precision. The black soldier fly, Hermetia illucens (L.) (Diptera: Stratiomyidae) is recognized as an insect of forensic importance. This study examined the accuracy and precision of several development datasets for the black soldier fly by estimating the TOP of five sets of human and three sets of swine remains in San Marcos and College Station, TX, respectively. Data generated from this study indicate only one of these datasets consistently (time-to-prepupae 52%; time-to-eclosion 75%) produced TOP estimations that occurred within a day of the actual TOP of the remains. It is unknown if the precolonization interval (PreCI) of this species is long, but it has been observed that the species can colonize within 6 d after death. This assumption remains untested by validation studies. Accounting for this PreCI improved accuracy for the time-to-prepupae group, but reduced accuracy in the time-to-eclosion group. The findings presented here highlight a need for detailed, forensic-based development data for the black soldier fly that can reliably and accurately be used in casework. Finally, this study outlines the need for a basic understanding of the timing of resource utilization (i.e., duration of the PreCI) for forensically relevant taxa so that reasonable corrections may be made to TOC as related to minimum postmortem interval (mPMI) estimates.

Human Voice Took Over the Role of Pheromones in Establishing Sexual Orientations

The biology of sexual orientations has intrigued people for generations. Many models have been providing insights to that topic, but there are still unanswered questions. In humans, sexual orientation has a learned component. Humans have to learn cues by which they identify the sex of their mates, and cues of the emotional messages that those mates broadcast. Many of those cues depend on arbitrary societal conventions. The cues are learned automatically and subconsciously during childhood, based on non-sexual experiences. When sexual orientation emerges at puberty, the youngsters cannot tell how and when they have acquired it. A model that deals with those phenomena is presented. A basic tenet of the model is that a sexual orientation is determined by the innate wirings of the brain. The model describes how the brain learns cues for identifying the sex of the mate, and cues for identifying emotional messages that the mate broadcasts. The learning mechanism is conditioning. The unconditioned stimulus is human voice. The unconditioned responses are the triggers of the physical and emotional manifestations of sexual activity. The model suggests that innate connections from auditory detectors of men’s and women’s voice onto brain centers that trigger sexual activities, such as the hypothalamus, determine the sexual orientation that emerges at puberty. Innate connections from those auditory centers to emotional centers, such as the amygdala, determine the learned emotional cues. It is also proposed that during evolution, the roles of the chemosensory system in identifying mates were taken over by the auditory system.

Performance of national COVID-19 ‘symptom checkers’: a comparative case simulation study

ObjectivesIdentifying those individuals requiring medical care is a basic tenet of the pandemic response. Here, we examine the COVID-19 community triage pathways employed by four nations, specifically comparing the safety and efficacy of national online ‘symptom checkers’ used within the triage pathway.MethodsA simulation study was conducted on current, nationwide, patient-led symptom checkers from four countries (Singapore, Japan, USA and UK). 52 cases were simulated to approximate typical COVID-19 presentations (mild, moderate, severe and critical) and COVID-19 mimickers (eg, sepsis and bacterial pneumonia). The same simulations were applied to each of the four country’s symptom checkers, and the recommendations to refer on for medical care or to stay home were recorded and compared.ResultsThe symptom checkers from Singapore and Japan advised onward healthcare contact for the majority of simulations (88% and 77%, respectively). The USA and UK symptom checkers triaged 38% and 44% of cases to healthcare contact, respectively. Both the US and UK symptom checkers consistently failed to identify severe COVID-19, bacterial pneumonia and sepsis, triaging such cases to stay home.ConclusionOur results suggest that whilst ‘symptom checkers’ may be of use to the healthcare COVID-19 response, there is the potential for such patient-led assessment tools to worsen outcomes by delaying appropriate clinical assessment. The key features of the well-performing symptom checkers are discussed.