Japan's dilemma with the definition of death

Japan is unusual among industrialized countries in its reluctance to use brain criteria to determine death and harvest transplant organs. This results from public distrust of the medical profession due to an earlier incident, and from concern that technological interventions will threaten religious and cultural traditions surrounding death and dying. Public acceptance is growing, however, as medical professional groups and universities develop brain criteria, and as pressure from patients who could benefit from a transplant, as well as from foreign countries, increases.     

应激和免疫:脑和免疫系统间关系的综述

在临床和实验研究文献中有大量的关于应激原影响免疫功能的描述性研究。虽然所观察到的改变与感染,新生物和自身免疫疾病的发病、病程和结果有关,但它们间是怎样的关系并不很清楚。尽管并不怀疑应激可能影响不同的免疫反应,但应激是通过什么机制改变淋巴和脊髓细胞的功能的,以及这些细胞为什么对应激的调节物质是敏感的,一直是模糊不清的。现在这些情况迅速改变了,有证据表明免疫系统对应激的敏感性并非偶然。在脑和免疫系统间存在着相互调制的作用。     

次协调逻辑研究之一:辩证法的对立统一原理

次协调逻辑(para-consistent logic)是那些把有意义的不协调理论形式化的逻辑。另一方面,辩证逻辑是把建立在黑格尔、马克思及其后继者提出的观念、原则之上的理论形式化的逻辑。这样的学科与次协调逻辑是相互交叉的。     

Containing violence

The use of behavior modification techniques to control criminal violence has been condemned as a violation of human rights because it destroys the possibility of moral choice, an important component of personality. Beehler examines the conditioning used on Alex in Anthony Burgess's book and film A Clockwork Orange and concludes that Alex was left still capable of moral choice except where acts of violence were involved. He argues that behavior modification to control violence is preferable to imprisonment, psychosurgery, or electronic surveillance, and counters objections that its use destroys autonomy, violates privacy and trust, and depersonalizes offenders.     

Truth telling and terminal illness: A Jewish view

The focus of this paper is a Jewish view of truth telling and the dilemma of revealing to a terminal patient his imminent demise. Directions are given to physicians, medical personnel, and children of the patient on how to deal with truth telling. Attitudes reflected in Jewish thought suggest that the welfare of the patient is primary, and any information that will upset his psychological state is clearly prohibited. Physicians may not reveal to patients their terminal state. Children and family are obligated to withhold information of a patient's terminal state, even if the latter demands to be told. Hope is seen as a central feature of truth telling even during the period of confession. This view contrasts with the liberal attitude of truth telling in some Western countries, where it is the patient's right to know of his imminent demise.     

Human performance on conjunctive fixed-interval fixed-ratio schedules

Eighteen young adults performed a lever-pulling task for money. Subjects were initially exposed to a fixed-interval 80-second schedule and subsequently to one of three conjunctive schedules in which the added fixed-ratio requirement was set at either 10, 80, or 120 responses. Three fixed-interval response patterns emerged: high constant rate, intermediate rate, or low rate, with most subjects displaying the last. Conjunctive performance was related to the subjects' prior fixed-interval patterns and the conjunctive ratio requirements. Low-rate subjects tended to optimize reinforcement (maximum reinforcers for minimum responses) on conjunctive schedules. Response rate was directly related to ratio requirements. Subjects' performance closely corresponded to their verbal statements of the contingencies.     

Graphics for three-term contingencies

A source of confusion in the general readership regarding the relationship of operant to S-R psychology is traced to the use of graphics in the behavioral literature. A case is made for supplementing traditional linear notation systems with triangular graphics to illustrate three-term contingencies. Constructing discriminative stimuli in this fashion makes the distinction between operant and S-R formulations more conspicuous and reveals more comprehensive relationships for an extended radical behaviorism.     

Prior context and the perception of lexically ambiguous sentences

The perceptual complexity of lexically ambiguous and unambiguous sentences was compared in three experiments. In Experiment 1, the report of ambiguous words from rapidly presented ambiguous sentences was worse than the report of corresponding unambiguous words from unambiguous sentences. Results of Experiment 2 showed that the effect was not reduced by the presence of prior biasing context within the sentence. Experiment 3 repeated the finding with a sentence meaning classification task. It was concluded that both meanings of a lexically ambiguous sentence must be computed, even when prior context makes one meaning more plausible than the other.