Should assisted dying be legalised?

When an individual facing intractable pain is given an estimate of a few months to live, does hastening death become a viable and legitimate alternative for willing patients? Has the time come for physicians to do away with the traditional notion of healthcare as maintaining or improving physical and mental health, and instead accept their own limitations by facilitating death when requested? The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge held the 2013 Varsity Medical Debate on the motion “This House Would Legalise Assisted Dying”. This article summarises the key arguments developed over the course of the debate. We will explore how assisted dying can affect both the patient and doctor; the nature of consent and limits of autonomy; the effects on society; the viability of a proposed model; and, perhaps most importantly, the potential need for the practice within our current medico-legal framework.     

Religion Benefiting Brain Tumour Patients: A Qualitative Study

As the focus on modern neurosurgery has shifted to the realm of technological advancement, some patients and their loved ones still hold a strong faith in their religion to guide them through the process. This study aimed to determine whether religion as a coping mechanism was beneficial for patients before, during and after craniotomy. Qualitative case study methodology was used. Interviews were conducted with randomly selected 36 adult patients who underwent surgery for a benign or malignant brain tumour. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed, and the data subjected to thematic analysis. Four overarching themes emerged from the data: (1) religion significantly benefited neurosurgical patients; (2) neurosurgical patients did not require a dedicated religious room in the hospital; (3) neurosurgical patients required religious resources such as leaders and/or groups; and (4) patients were not in favour of their physician engaging in the religious ritual. Most patients found religion to be an effective coping mechanism, offering them strength, comfort, and hope through the surgery. The findings from this study emphasize the need for including a “religious time-out” before and after surgery and the inclusion of religious leaders/groups for those in favour to ensure quality care and patient satisfaction.     

Differentiating between child protection and family support in the Canadian child welfare system's response to intimate partner violence,corporal punishment,and child neglect

Rates of reported child maltreatment nearly doubled in Canada over the period 1998–2003, an increase that reflects growing awareness of the harmful effects of an expanding array of parental behaviors, including corporal punishment, lack of supervision, and exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). Some of these situations may benefit from voluntary family support programs outside of the child welfare system. Analyzing a sample of 11,807 investigations, this paper compares cases where the sole concern is exposure to IPV, or hitting a child, or neglect, or other forms of investigated maltreatment. Situations where exposure to IPV or potentially abusive hitting were the sole reason for investigation presented with fewer risk factors and were less likely to lead to ongoing child welfare interventions compared to other maltreatment investigations. While situations involving alleged neglect presented a higher risk profile and elicited a more intensive child welfare response than did exposure to IPV or hitting, opportunities for alternative services were nevertheless identified. The study also found that visible minority families were overrepresented in cases involving hitting and that Aboriginal families were overrepresented in cases involving neglect. Overall the findings support the development of alternative response programs in Canada.     

“Filling-in” colour in natural scenes

Our subjective experience of the world as being in full colour across the entire visual field is at odds with the highly fovea-biased distribution of cones in the retina. It is unclear how this percept of “pan-field colour” comes about. We use novel stimuli—“colour chimeras”—to demonstrate a related visual phenomenon in which observers perceive rich colour throughout images with large achromatic regions. This percept appears to critically depend on natural scene statistics. By separately manipulating chromatic and structural content in such images, we demonstrate that both the spatial distribution of colour and the presence of recognizable scene structure contribute to the experience of pan-field colour in these stimuli. Our results suggest that this percept is unlikely to be due to a low-level colour spreading process. Instead, we suggest that mechanisms dependent on natural scenes’ chromatic and luminance statistics provide the basis for the phenomenon.     

Learned prediction affects body perception

Learning to recognize objects appears to depend critically on extended observation of appearance over time. Specifically, temporal association between dissimilar views of an object has been proposed as a tool for learning invariant representations for recognition. We examined heretofore untested aspects of the temporal association hypothesis using a familiar dynamic object, the human body. Specifically, we examined the role of appearance prediction (temporal asymmetry) in temporal association. In our task, observers performed a change detection task using upright and inverted images of a walking body either with or without previous exposure to a motion stimulus depicting an upright walker. Observers who were exposed to the dynamic stimulus were further divided into two groups dependent on whether the observed motion depicted forward or backward walking. We find that the effect of the motion stimulus on sensitivity is highly dependent on whether the observed motion is consistent with past experience.     

Modeling Growth in Latent Variables Using a Piecewise Function

Latent growth curve models with piecewise functions for continuous repeated measures data have become increasingly popular and versatile tools for investigating individual behavior that exhibits distinct phases of development in observed variables. As an extension of this framework, this research study considers a piecewise function for describing segmented change of a latent construct over time where the latent construct is itself measured by multiple indicators gathered at each measurement occasion. The time of transition from one phase to another is not known a priori and thus is a parameter to be estimated. Utility of the model is highlighted in 2 ways. First, a small Monte Carlo simulation is executed to show the ability of the model to recover true (known) growth parameters, including the location of the point of transition (or knot), under different manipulated conditions. Second, an empirical example using longitudinal reading data is fitted via maximum likelihood and results discussed. Mplus (Version 6.1) code is provided in Appendix C to aid in making this class of models accessible to practitioners.     

ROLE OF SOCIAL VALUES IN INDIAN ORGANIZATIONS

The transplant of the western form of industrial organizations in India was expected to bring a radical shift from a dependency and personalized to a contractual work relationship, from a steeply hierarchical to a reasonably egalitarian authority structure, ascribed to occupational bases of identity formation. The shift did not occur to the extent it was expected. Instead, technological requirements and job demands at many places were unduly compromised with the socio-cultural factors leading to soft management style which proved to be dysfunctional. At other places, the same socio-cultural factors helped develop a synergetic work culture where workers and managers worked together for higher productivity and greater viability. The critical factor which made the difference was the establishment of work as the master value. The other social values played a facilitating role in establishing and realizing the work values.     

Ecocultural Factors in Cognitive Style Among Children From Hills and Plains of Nepal

The predictive value of the ecocultural model in the development of cognitive style was examined among the two cultural groups of Gurungs and Brahmins residing in contrasting ecologies of the hills and plains of Nepal. Acculturative influence of formal schooling was also analyzed. Story–Pictorial EFT (S–P EFT) for measuring cognitive style was administered to 240 children of 6–8 years divided into eight equal sub-groups according to two types of ecologies, two cultures and two levels of education. A 2 × 2 × 2 ANOVA revealed significant main effects of ecology and schooling. Effect of culture was not significant, but it played a significant role in conjunction with ecology. Findings are discussed in the light of relative functional utility of disembedding/analytical skill for the inhabitants of hills and plains.