Objectives: To study the attitudes of both medical and non-medical students towards the do-not-resuscitate decision in a university in Hong Kong, and the factors affecting their attitudes.Methods: A questionnaire-based survey conducted in the campus of a university in Hong Kong. Preferences and priorities of participants on cardiopulmonary resuscitation in various situations and case scenarios, experience of death and dying, prior knowledge of DNR and basic demographic data were evaluated.Results: A total of 766 students participated in the study. There were statistically (...) significant differences in their DNR decisions in various situations between medical and non-medical students, clinical and preclinical students, and between students who had previously experienced death and dying and those who had not. A prior knowledge of DNR significantly affected DNR decision, although 66.4% of non-medical students and 18.7% of medical students had never heard of DNR. 74% of participants from both medical and non-medical fields considered the patient’s own wish as the most important factor that the healthcare team should consider when making DNR decisions. Family wishes might not be decisive on the choice of DNR.Conclusions: Students in medical and non-medical fields held different views on DNR. A majority of participants considered the patient’s own wish as most important in DNR decisions. Family wishes were considered less important than the patient’s own wishes. (shrink)

In 2000, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Environmental Health issued a report that explored some of the ways in which “sprawl” impacts public health. The report has generated great interest, and state health officials are beginning to discuss the relationship between land use and public health. The CDC report has also produced a backlash. For example, the Southern California Building Industry Association labeled the report “a ludicrous sham” and argued that the CDC should stick (...) to “fighting physical diseases, not defending political ones.”In retrospect, it is probably unfortunate that this report was funded by an organization called “Sprawl Watch.” “Spraw” is a word that has no clear meaning but is applied to a huge range of issues involving suburban development. (shrink)

Classical science and in fact Post-Newtonian science up till the early twentieth century were mired in a deterministic interpretation of realities. The deterministic hypothesis in science holds that everything in nature has a cause and if one could know the antecedent causes, he could predict the future with certainty. But quantum mechanics holds that sub-atomic particles, though the ultimate materials from which all the complexity of existence in the universe emerges, do not obey deterministic laws, hence, their activities are causally (...) indeterminate and could only be understood with probability. This paper argues that quantum mechanics can not totally be free from determinism, for it has subtly conceded to determinism in holding that the sub-atomic particles are the building blocks of the macro world, and that there is interconnection between entities in the universe, even at the nonmanifest level. The probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics only betray our human limitation of the knowledge of nature, which, I believe still have lots of tricks in our sleeves over mankind. (shrink)

Certain proximities between two distinguished but very dissimilar contemporaries, Quintilian and Tacitus, may be stated. Contemporary they were, though the former, born probably a little before A.D. 40, was older by about twenty years. Both were from outside Rome, Quintilian certainly of provincial, Spanish, origin, Tacitus very probably from one of the Galliae, yet both exemplars of Romanitas.

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the limitations of four major critiques of the work of Leavis made by Kevin Harris. It is argued that (1) Leavis's procedure of working with the concrete and particular and (2) the context within which he worked, dominated by the exponents of modernism, are glossed over by Harris so that Leavis's insights are not given due weight. Furthermore, Harris overlooks the significance of an Aristotelian perspective to Leavis's concern for value and thus underestimates literature's role (...) in furthering our understanding of what it is to flourish. (shrink)

Contemporary reflection on the being and behavior of man has provided a colorful variety of portraits. We are already quite familiar with homo ludens ; homo symbolicus ; homo politicus ; homo sociologicus ; homo viator ; homo loquens ; homo significans ; and "psychological man". The reader of Farley’s recent book, Ecclesial Man, may well expect but another profile of the above referenced proliferating portraits. Fortunately, he will find that this is not the case. "Ecclesial man" is not simply (...) another profile of an already institutionalized portrait, nor is he an eclectic synthesis of a variety of portraits. The inquiry of this present work is directed to the origins of anthropological reflection as they proceed from prereflective involvements within a concretely experienced life-world. (shrink)

The author notes that "it might strike some readers as mildly incredible that Nietzsche incorporated in his writings anything as staid and proper as an ontology or epistemology". At the same time he vigorously denies that there is anything staid about these aspects of Nietzsche’s thought. They do not qualify but underline its thoroughgoing "radicality." Nietzsche’s "theory of knowledge" stands up to scrutiny precisely because Nietzsche is not, as Heidegger and implicitly others would have it, the "last metaphysician.".