Drug Safety Communications are used by the Food and Drug Administration to inform health care providers, patients, caregivers, and the general public about safety issues related to FDA-approved drugs. To assess patient knowledge of the messaging contained in DSCs related to the sleep aids zolpidem and eszopiclone, we conducted a large, cross-sectional patient survey of 1,982 commercially insured patients selected by stratified random sampling from the Optum Research Database who had filled at least two prescriptions for either zolpidem or eszopiclone (...) between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Among the 594 respondents, two-thirds reported hearing generally about drug safety information prior to starting a new drug, with the remaining one-third “rarely” or “never” hearing such information. Providers and pharmacists were primary sources of drug safety information. Two-thirds of zolpidem users and half of eszopiclone users reported having heard about the related DSC messages, ability to accurately identify the major factual messages was limited. Respondents reacted to new drug safety information about their sleep aids by reporting that they would want to learn about alternative ways to help them sleep and seek out more information about the safety of their specific sleeping pill. Opportunities may exist for the FDA to work with providers and pharmacies to help ensure the DSC information is more widely received and is more fully understood by those taking the affected medications. (shrink)

The 2014 Varsity Medical Ethics debate convened upon the motion: “This house believes that genetic information should not be commoditised”. This annual debate between students from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, now in its sixth year, provided the starting point for arguments on the subject. The present article brings together and extends many of the arguments put forward during the debate. We explore the circumstances under which genetic material should be considered patentable, the possible effects of this on the (...) research and development of novel therapeutics, and the need for clear guidelines within this rapidly developing field. (shrink)

We present a new road map for research on “How the Brain Got Language” that adopts an EvoDevoSocio perspective and highlights comparative neuroprimatology – the comparative study of brain, behavior and communication in extant monkeys and great apes – as providing a key grounding for hypotheses on the last common ancestor of humans and monkeys and chimpanzees and the processes which guided the evolution LCA-m → LCA-c → protohumans → H. sapiens. Such research constrains and is constrained by analysis of (...) the subsequent, primarily cultural, evolution of H. sapiens which yielded cultures involving the rich use of language. (shrink)

This book brings out the essentials of Hinduism as expounded in the Vedas, the main Upanisads, the Munusamhita, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the minor Upanisads, the Puranas, the Bhdgavat Gita and the other Gitas. It traces the development of Saivism, Saktaism, Vaisnavism, and the other minor cults in the minor Upanisads, the main Puranas, the Bhdgavat Gita, the Bhagavat Gita, the siva Gita, the Devi Gita, and the other Gitas, and expounds their theoretical and practical teachings. It traces the evolution (...) of pure monism (Advaitavada), which permeates the religious literature of the Hindus. It elavorately deals with the triple method of disinterested works, devotion and integral knowledge for the realization of the Absolute Spirit or God. It deals with the ethical teachings of Hinduism as expounded in the non-philosophical religious literature, which are catholic, humanitarian and universal, and which constitute the inner core of religious life. The book tries to give an objective treatment of the inner thoughts of Hinduism stripped of its cumborous and outworn symbolism based on the original texts. So the ideas are expressed m simple philosophical. Language, which is not unintelligible to the lay man. If it can remove some misconceptions about Hinduism and help some readers enter into its sprits, the author's labour will have been amply repaid. (shrink)

In examining Ennead VI 4[22], we find Plotinus in conflict with modern, i.e., Cartesian or Kantian, assumptions about the relation of soul and body and the identification of the self with the subject. Curiously, his images and exposition are more in tune with Twentieth Century notions such as wave and field. With these as keys, we are in a position to unlock the subtlety of Plotinus' analysis of the way soul and body are present together, with sensation structured through the (...) body and judgment coming from the soul. The problem of the self concerns not only the unity of the self in terms of body and soul, but also how the self is constituted in relation to other selves, both keeping its individuality and sharing its experiences at the same time. (shrink)

Among Plato's works, the Statesman is usually seen as transitional between the Republic and the Laws. This book argues that the dialogue deserves a special place of its own. Whereas Plato is usually thought of as defending unchanging knowledge, Dr Lane demonstrates how, by placing change at the heart of political affairs, Plato reconceives the link between knowledge and authority. The statesman is shown to master the timing of affairs of state, and to use this expertise in managing the conflict (...) of opposed civic factions. To this political argument corresponds a methodological approach which is seen to rely not only on the familiar method of 'division', but equally on the unfamiliar centrality of the use of 'example'. The demonstration that method and politics are interrelated transforms our understanding of the Statesman and its fellow dialogues. (shrink)

t. 1. A-D -- t. 2. E-M -- t. 3. N-S -- t.4. T-I︠A︡.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held, in Murrey v. United States ), that claims for a physician's failure to obtain a patient's informed consent are not barred by the Federal Tort Claims Act as a species of misrepresentation. The court further held that the claim was not barred by the failure to include the issue of informed consent in the administrative claim. This decision reduces the burden on plaintiffs to state every cognizable claim consistent with (...) the facts in an administrative proceeding; the failure to do so would prevent them from raising the claim in court.The patient, Thomas Murrey, a sixty-eight-year-old U.S. veteran, sought treatment at a Veteran's Administration hospital in North Chicago, Illinois. VA doctors diagnosed him with prostate cancer, and advised him to undergo surgery to remove his entire prostate. (shrink)

Quantal penetration through a (stationary) one-dimensional potential barrier is considered as a time evolution of an initially prepared wave packet. The large-time asymptotics of the process is concerned. Locality of the potential imposes certain analytical properties of the interaction amplitudes in the energy representation. The results are presented in terms of development of the phase-space (Wigner's) quasi-distribution. The phase-space evolution kernel is constructed, and it is shown that in the presence of a positive potential no part of the distribution is (...) transported faster than the free particle. For the case of a small initial momentum uncertainty, the deformation of the coordinate density is considered, including a possible advance of its maximum, which would not mean any noncausal signal transport. (shrink)

In Pure Inductive Logic, the rational principle of Predicate Exchangeability states that permuting the predicates in a given language L and replacing each occurrence of a predicate in an L-sentence phi according to this permutation should not change our belief in the truth of phi. In this paper we study when a prior probability function w on a purely unary language L satisfying Predicate Exchangeability also satisfies the principle of Unary Language Invariance.

The present paradigm on management of diversity in global business is not very much interested in integrating diversity or in creating unity in diversity. The main aim of corporate diversity management strategies is to harness the diversity for sustaining or enhancing organizational effectiveness. This is an absolutely legitimate aim for business. However, there can also be deeper and broader perspectives on diversity management, which can be pursued simultaneously with the present paradigm in a mutually complementing manner. One of them could (...) be the evolutionary paradigm which views the multinational and multicultural global business as a representative slice of humanity and an evolutionary laboratory for forging the psychological and spiritual unity of mankind. The aim of this evolutionary approach is to forge an inner fraternity of consciousness which embraces and harmonizes diversity in a creative spiritual synthesis, which, according to this view, is one of the ultimate goals of human and terrestrial evolution. This article examines the issue of diversity management in global business in this psychological, spiritual and evolutionary perspective. (shrink)