Les unités de soins intensifs psychiatriques (USIP) : expériences françaises et internationales

Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU) propose a secure setting for patients with acute behavior disturbances who can not be managed in psychiatric general wards. Physical violence acts against patients or hospital staff, substance abuse, non-compliance for care and treatment, intensity of symptoms or absconding are frequent motives for admission. Patients are compulsorily detained in secure conditions. They are admitted from psychiatric facilities of a health area or by agreement between hospitals. Multidisciplinary working in psychiatric intensive care is essential, delivered by qualified staff. Care and treatment must be centered on the patient, multidisciplinary, intensive, comprehensive with an immediacy of response to critical situations. As length of stay should not exceed 2 months in duration, interface and liaison with original services of patients are important issues. In France, PICU exist notably at Cadillac, Lyon, Paris, Nice, Eygurande, Montpellier, Pau and Prémontré. These facilities appear as a missing level, an interesting alternative in mental health care system, between psychiatric general wards and maximum security hospitals. This paper reports the creation of a National Association of PICU in France, the existence of national minimum standards and international experiences.     

Scientific Self-Regulation—So Good, How Can it Fail?

To be a functional alternative to government regulation, self-regulation of science must be credible to both scientists and the public, accountable, ethical, and effective. According to some, serious problems continue in research ethics in the United States despite a rich history of proposed self-regulatory standards and oversight devices. Successful efforts at self-regulation in stem cell research contrast with unsuccessful efforts in research ethics, particularly conflicts of interest. Part of the cause for a lack of success in self-regulation is fragmented, disconnected oversight, and failure to embody genuine scientific and public consensus. To be accountable, credible and effective, self-regulation must be inclusive and multidisciplinary, publicly engaged, sufficiently disinterested, operationally integrated with institutional goals, and must implement a genuine consensus among scientists and the public. The mechanisms of self-regulation must be sufficiently broad in their oversight, and interconnected with other institutional forces and actors, that they do not create fragmented solutions.

An analysis of immediate serial recall performance in a macaque

There has been considerable research into the ability of nonhuman primates to process sequential information, a topic that is of interest in part because of the extensive involvement of sequence processing in human language use. Surprisingly, no previous study has unambiguously tested the ability of nonhuman primates to encode and immediately reproduce a novel temporal sequence of perceptual events, the ability tapped in the immediate serial recall (ISR) task extensively studied in humans. We report here the performance of a rhesus macaque on a spatial ISR task, closely resembling tasks widely used in human memory research. Detailed analysis of the monkey’s recall performance indicates a number of important parallels with human ISR, consistent with the idea that a single mechanism for short-term serial order memory may be shared across species.     

Trust and Influence in Combat: An Interdependence Model

Two studies tested an interdependence model of trust development and the links between trust and influence in the in extremis environment of combat, and a non-combat replication. Structural equation modeling was used to test the model. Results from both studies suggested that a modified interdependence model provided a plausible explanation for how leaders may earn subordinate trust, through fostering the establishment of cooperative interdependence and being perceived as credible. Credibility was demonstrated through both competence and good character, and organizational structures that were in place contributed to trust by encouraging leaders to behave cooperatively toward group members. Most importantly, the level of trust subordinates had in their leaders determined the amount of leader influence subordinates accepted.     

How Many Casualties Are Too Many? Proportional Reasoning in the Valuation of Military and Civilian Lives1

People frequently judge saved lives as less valuable and deaths more acceptable when they are characterized as small fractions of larger “at‐risk” groups. Two studies with U.S. college students demonstrated this effect in judgments concerning acceptable numbers of U.S. military and Middle Eastern civilian casualties. At the beginning of the current U.S.–Iraq conflict ( Study 1 ), priming cost–benefit reasoning produced greater proportional devaluation for Iraqi civilian than for U.S. military lives. In a hypothetical armed intervention in Iran to halt weapons development ( Study 2 ), women but not men showed greater proportional devaluation for U.S. military than for Iranian civilian lives. In both studies, proportional reasoners were willing to accept more casualties. Implications for public perceptions and attitudes are discussed.     

What is the Good/ Good of the FORM of the GOOD?

‘Good’ is nothing specific but is transcendentally or generally applied over specific, and specified, ‘categories’. These ‘categories’ may be seen—at least for the purposes of this note—as under Platonic Forms. The rule that instances under a category or form need a Form to be under is valid. It may be tautological: but this is OK for rules. Not being specific, however, ‘good’ neither needs nor can have a specifying Form. So, on these grounds, the Form of the Good is otious. Any rule of the kind, ‘Everything needs a Form, so good needs a Form of the Good’ is mistaken, in that good is not a kind, but a transcendental. To give a Form to the transcendental ‘good’ is a mistake: it is a Rylian category mistake. And the Form of the Good either does no work, or works unprofitably in any but an aesthetic sense.     

Antonello da Messina: l’ opera completa

Antonello da Messina’s Annunciation with the Blessèd Virgin sola breaks with iconic convention, so inviting new interpretations of the theme. The Rome exhibition of 2006 allowed one to compare Antonello with van Eyck: Antonello seemed pre-modern. This review discusses three important essays on the Annunciation (see the last three keywords). All three perceptive essays raise theological and phenomenological issues directly related to the almost unique iconic representation which Antonello gives us.     

On what it is to be in a quandary

A number of serious problems are raised against Crispin Wright’s quandary conception of vagueness. Two alternative conceptions of the quandary view are proposed instead. The first conception retains Wright’s thesis that, for all one knows, a verdict concerning a borderline case constitutes knowledge. However a further problem is seen to beset this conception. The second conception, in response to this further problem, does not enjoin the thesis that, for all one knows, a verdict concerning a borderline case constitutes knowledge. The result is a much simpler and more plausible version of the quandary view.