Commentaries on the ethics of Covid lockdowns nearly all focus on offering substantive guidance to policy‐makers. Lockdowns, however, raise many ethical questions that admit of a range of reasonable ...answers. In such cases, policy‐making in a liberal democracy ought to be sensitive to which reasonable views the public actually holds—a topic existing bioethical work on lockdowns has not explored in detail. In this essay, I identify several important questions connected to the kind of influence the public ought to have on lockdown decision‐making, including how policy‐makers ought to handle misinformed or morally suspect viewpoints, and how policy‐makers ought to respond to minority viewpoints. I argue that questions like this, concerning the appropriate influence of the public on decision‐making, will be central to the field of bioethics as it increasingly focuses on policy and population‐level issues and therefore ought to be priorities for future work.
Many philosophers of science have argued that social and ethical values have a significant role to play in core parts of the scientific process. This naturally suggests the following question: when ...such value choices need to be made, which or whose values should be used? A common answer to this question turns to democratic values—the values of the public or its representatives. I argue that this imposes amorally significant burden on certain scientists, effectively requiring them to advocate for policy positions they strongly disagree with. I conclude by discussing under what conditions this burden might be justified.
Many urban projects have shown that there is a lack of exchanges between the different communal actors. Inhabitants are poorly informed about urban development and are not included in it. In managing ...current challenges in urban development, a balance must be struck between common sense approaches and local needs. Therefore, the active participation of target groups is an important prerequisite for the success and sustainability of projects and programs. To address this gap in urban development in the city of Piura, Peru, an urban vision was developed along with many Piurans. A discursive space was created that invites to formulate ideas about urban development with which it is possible to collect, value and promote local knowledge of the citizen about places, challenges and opportunities of urban planning as well as their creativity to achieve the empowerment of the population and boost new bottom-up activities. Based on 600 ideas, a first version of the urban vision was developed. The vision is meant to serve as a participatory counterpart to the official plans of the city: a constructive contribution to the discussion, which reveals the weaknesses of public programs and shows the power in the ideas of citizens.
When disability-adjusted life years are used to measure the burden of disease on a population in a time interval, they can be calculated in several different ways: from an incidence, pure prevalence, ...or hybrid perspective. I show that these calculation methods are not equivalent and discuss some of the formal difficulties each method faces. I show that if we don't discount the value of future health, there is a sense in which the choice of calculation method is a mere question of accounting. Such questions can be important, but they don't raise deep theoretical concerns. If we do discount, however, choice of calculation method can change the relative burden attributed to different conditions over time. I conclude by recommending that studies involving disability-adjusted life years be explicit in noting what calculation method is being employed and in explaining why that calculation method has been chosen.
Introduction
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is an appropriate training modality to improve endurance and therefore contributes to physical performance. This review investigates the effect of ...HIIT on functional performance in cancer patients. We reviewed the relative peak oxygen uptake (relV̇O
2PEAK
) and meta-analytical compared HIIT with moderate intensity continuous training (MICT). Furthermore, we took various training parameters under consideration.
Methods
A systematic literature search was conducted in Scopus, PubMed, and Cochrane Library databases. For the review, we included randomized controlled trials containing HIIT with cancer patients. From this, we filtered interventions with additional MICT for the meta-analysis. Outcomes of interest were various functional performance assessments and V̇O
2MAX
.
Results
The research yielded 584 records which fit the inclusion criteria, of which 31 studies with
n
=1555 patients (57.4±8.6 years) could be included in the overall review and 8 studies in the meta-analysis (
n
=268, 59.11±5.11 years) regarding relV̇O
2PEAK
. Different functional outcomes were found, of which walking distance (+8.63±6.91% meters in 6-min walk test) and mobility (+2.7cm in sit and reach test) improved significantly due to HIIT. In terms of relV̇O
2PEAK
, the performance of cancer patients was improved by HIIT (10.68±6.48%) and MICT (7.4±4.29%). HIIT can be favored to increase relV̇O
2PEAK
(SMD 0.37; 95% CI 0.09–0.65;
I
2
=0%;
p
=0.009). Effect sizes for relV̇O
2PEAK
improvements correlate moderately with total training volume (Spearman’s ρ=0.49;
p
=0.03), whereas percentage increases do not (Spearman’s ρ=0.24;
p
=0.14).
Conclusion
Functional and physical outcomes were positively altered by different HIIT protocols and forms of implementation, whereas a tendency toward more effectiveness of HIIT vs. MICT was found for relV̇O
2PEAK
. Future studies should include functional parameters more often, to finally allow a comparison between both training protocols in this regard.
Is consistency overrated? Schroeder, S Andrew
Journal of medical ethics,
03/2018, Volume:
44, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
If the API captures these dual goals and weights them in a way that reflects the relative importance we place on them, it serves its purpose and is an effective tool. i I think something similar is ...happening with the DALY. ii With respect to any individual, it seems natural to describe us as having two health-related goals: to help her avoid undesirable morbidities and to keep her alive (or, to keep her from 'dropping out' of the population). Comprehensive systematic analysis of global epidemiology: definitions, methods, simplification of DALYs, and Comparative Results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. In 2012, the Global Burden of Disease Study adopted the hybrid prevalence-incidence calculation method that I prefer, suggesting its authors agree. 3 iii: Murray alternately describes DALYs as true measures of health loss, or of the burden of disease. 2 3 There are independent reasons to reject the former view, and the latter strikes me as vague enough to be interpretable in many ways, including as an index. iv:
Abstract
Although global change clearly influences species invasion, the exact mechanisms by which global change either intensifies or limits invasive spread remain elusive. Global change can affect ...invasion directly by altering abiotic conditions, as well as indirectly by altering the abundance and composition of interacting species. Here we examine the relative impacts of direct effects of saltwater intrusion and indirect effects via microbial interactions on the expansion of a model invasive plant species,
Phragmites australis
, in freshwater marshes of coastal Louisiana. Using a mesocosm experiment, we found that overall salinity strongly increases invasion, but the direction and magnitude of direct and indirect effects were context dependent. Indirect effects of salinity, via alterations in soil microbial composition, increased invasive performance when grown in monoculture and decreased native performance in native-only communities. However, when
P. australis
and natives were grown together, microbial indirect effects were not important; rather the salinity treatment increased
P. australis
invasion through reduction of native plant growth. Results suggest that salinity-induced alteration of soil microbes will increase susceptibility of native communities to invasion and promote
P. australis
monoculture expansion in later stages of invasion; whereas non-microbial effects of salinity are more important in early stages of invasion when
P. australis
is competing with native species. More broadly, these results underscore the importance of considering microbially-mediated indirect effects of global change in investigating the long-term outcomes of plant species interactions.
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