Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein as Being-in-the-world suggests a natural relation to environmental philosophy. Among environmentalists, however, closer inspection must raise alarm, both since Heidegger’s approach is in some senses inescapably anthropocentric and since Dasein discovers its environment through its usability, serviceability, and accessibility. Yet Heidegger does not simply adopt a traditionally modern, instrumental view. The conditions under which the environment appears imply neither that the environment consists only of tools, nor that what is true of the parts is also true (...) of the whole, nor that an orientation to use—where appropriate—precludes any other orientation. Heidegger’s anthropocentric commitments thus do not rule out the possibility of a non-instrumental perspective on the natural world. (shrink)

Wana Manitpisitkul1, Sabrina Lee2, Matthew Cooper31Department of Pharmacy, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore, MD, USA; 2Solid Organ Transplant Program, University of Utah Health Care, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 3Department of Surgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA: Addition of mycophenolate mofetil to calcineurin-based immunosuppressive therapy has led to a significant improvement in graft survival and reduction of acute rejection in renal transplant recipients. However, in clinical practice, MMF dose reduction, interruption, or discontinuation due to hematological (...) and gastrointestinal side-effects occurred in up to 50% of the patients. Large retrospective analyses have demonstrated that patients requiring MMF dose manipulation due to adverse events experienced a higher rate of rejection and graft loss. Enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium was developed with the goal of improving upper GI side-effects. Here, we review the efficacy and safety of EC-MPS in de novo kidney transplant recipient, and in stable renal transplant patients who were converted from MMF. The changes in GI-related adverse events using patient-reported outcome instruments are also reviewed.Keywords: enteric-coated mycophenolate sodium, mycophenolate mofetil, kidney transplant, efficacy, gastrointestinal tolerability. (shrink)

As I had rejected en bloc references to Bacchanalia as indications of date, it was a mere chance which led me, after the above had left my hands, to look up Cas. 980 ‘ nunc Bacchae nullae ludunt,’ quoted in Schanz, R. Lit.3, p. 78. As this affords an excellent opportunity of testing my conclusions, perhaps a word or two will not be out of place.

Libertarians such as J.R. Lucas have abandoned traditional Christian doctrines because they cannot reconcile them with the freedom of the will. Traditional Christian thinkers such as Augustine have repudiated libertarianism because they cannot reconcile it with the dogmas of the Faith. In Free Will and the Christian Faith, W.S. Anglin demonstrates that free will and traditional Christianity are ineed compatible. He examines, and solves, puzzles about the relationships between free will and omnipotence, omniscience, and God's goodness, using the idea of (...) free will to answer the question of why God allows evil, and presenting arguments that link free will to eternal life and to the nature of revelation. Topics covered include the meaning of life, the soul and Lesbegue measure, and strategies for discerning the voice of God. (shrink)

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)

It is not my purpose to discuss the authorship of this work; I shall only say that I do not believe it was written by Quintus Cicero. The question of authorship cannot be brought into a discussion of the problems raised by the text, because, even if it were the product of Quintus' pen, it would obviously be unjustified to apply to Quintus the same canons of Latinity as can be applied to his brother.

In two shocking articles that appeared in 1968 and 1974, Garrett Hardin argued that the population explosion was producing a “tragedy of the commons.” Since we lack an effective method of sharing common resources, the strong incentive for individuals to appropriate them selfishly would soon lead to their collapse. To mitigate this danger, Hardin proposed a “lifeboat ethic”: less populated and -polluted Western countries should deny food aid to developing nations, where it would save lives only to increase population pressure, (...) and they should close their borders to immigration to prevent their lifeboats from becoming overcrowded and going down with the rest. This paper challenges and complicates Hardin’s account of the tragedy. While there is something right about his view, its vulnerability to a series of empirical challenges reflects its conceptual limitations. I argue that we need to develop a broadly ethical and arguably religious solution to the twin challenges of population growth and pollution. If the liberal commitment to negative freedom is, ironically, largely responsible for our current ecological bind, our only hope of escape is to build bridges between traditions in search of a thicker sense of ethicopolitical obligation. (shrink)

Heidegger affirmed traditional technology, but was opposed to science-based modern technology, in which everything (including man) is considered to be a mere “resource”. This opposition was expressed in the form of deep questioning and a suspicion of superficial evaluation, because the true nature of things was often concealed, though disclosed at times. Ways in which engineers should question technology are proposed, highlighting some of the hazards and injustices associated with technology and also its subtle sociological and psychological influences. The demands (...) of engineering ethics and the use of metaphor in design are other ways in which a narrowly rationalistic technological outlook can be confronted. (shrink)

Emile Durkheim is widely lauded as one of the founding fathers of modern Sociology and for his substantial contribution to the sociology of education. This set brings some of his most important writings on the subject together for the first time.

We define two types of convergence for observables on a quantum logic which we call M-weak and uniform M-weak convergence. These convergence modes correspond to weak convergence of probability measures. They are motivated by the idea that two (in general unbounded) observables are “close” if bounded functions of them are “close.” We show that M-weak and uniform M-weak convergence generalize strong resolvent and norm resolvent convergence for self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space. Also, these types of convergence strengthen the weak (...) operator convergence and operator norm convergence of bounded self-adjoint operators on a Hilbert space. Finally, we consider spectral perturbation by showing that the spectra of approximating observables approach the spectrum of the limit in a certain sense. (shrink)