All health care systems face problems of justice and efficiency related to setting priorities for allocating a limited pool of resources to a population. Because many of the central issues are the same in all systems, the United States and other countries can learn from the successes and failures of countries that have explicitly addressed the question of health care priorities. We review explicit priority setting efforts in Norway, Sweden, Israel, the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the (...) state of Oregon in the US. The approaches used can be divided into those centered on outlining principles versus those that define practices. In order to establish the main lessons from their experiences we consider the process each country used, criteria to judge the success of these efforts, which approaches seem to have met these criteria, and using their successes and failures as a guide, how to proceed in setting priorities. We demonstrate that there is little evidence that establishment of a values framework for priority setting has had any effect on health policy, nor is there evidence that priority setting exercises have led to the envisaged ideal of an open and participatory public involvement in decision making. (shrink)

Despite increased general awareness of suicide in U.S. adult correctional facilities as well as the availability of research and correctional standards that advocate increased attention and services to potentially suicidal inmates, prevention efforts within correctional facilities remain piecemeal and inmate suicide continues to be a serious public health problem. A robotic state of mind excuse, that inmate suicide is not preventable, impedes prevention efforts. In the following discussion, the key ingredients to comprehensive suicide prevention programming are offered to dispel these (...) obstacles.Suicide is a leading cause of death in jails across the United States, with well over 400 inmates taking their lives each year. In some urban jail facilities, deaths related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome slightly outnumber deaths by suicide. The rate of suicide in county jails is estimated to be approximately nine times greater than that of the general population. Overall, most jail suicide victims are young white males who have been arrested for nonviolent offenses and were intoxicated when arrested. (shrink)

Despite increased general awareness of suicide in U.S. adult correctional facilities as well as the availability of research and correctional standards that advocate increased attention and services to potentially suicidal inmates, prevention efforts within correctional facilities remain piecemeal and inmate suicide continues to be a serious public health problem. A robotic state of mind excuse, that inmate suicide is not preventable, impedes prevention efforts. In the following discussion, the key ingredients to comprehensive suicide prevention programming are offered to dispel these (...) obstacles.Suicide is a leading cause of death in jails across the United States, with well over 400 inmates taking their lives each year. In some urban jail facilities, deaths related to acquired immune deficiency syndrome slightly outnumber deaths by suicide. The rate of suicide in county jails is estimated to be approximately nine times greater than that of the general population. Overall, most jail suicide victims are young white males who have been arrested for nonviolent offenses and were intoxicated when arrested. (shrink)

It has been suggested that focusing on procedures when setting priorities for health care avoids the conflicts that arise when attempting to agree on principles. A prominent example of this approach is “accountability for reasonableness.” We will argue that the same problem arises with procedural accounts; reasonable people will disagree about central elements in the process. We consider the procedural condition of appeal process and three examples of conflicts over coverage decisions: a patients’ rights law in Norway, health technologies coverage (...) recommendations in the UK, and care withheld by HMOs in the US. In each case a process is at the center of controversy, illustrating the difficulties in establishing procedures that are widely accepted as legitimate. Further work must be done in developing procedural frameworks. (shrink)

Cook et al. argue that mirror neurons originate from associative learning processes, without evolutionary influence from social-cognitive mechanisms. We disagree with this claim and present arguments based upon cross-species comparisons, EEG findings, and developmental neuroscience that the evolution of mirror neurons is most likely driven simultaneously and interactively by evolutionarily adaptive psychological mechanisms and lower-level biological mechanisms that support them.

The target article discusses a model of how brain circuits mediate social behaviors such as imitation and mindreading. Hurley suggests potential mechanisms for development of shared circuits. We propose that empirical studies can be designed to differentiate the influence of genetic and learning-based factors on the development of shared circuits. We use the mirror neuron system as a model system.

There is public support in the United States and Europe for accounting for animal welfare in national policies on food and agriculture. Although an emerging body of research has measured animals’ capacity to suffer, there has been no specific attempt to analyze how this information is interpreted by the public or how exactly it should be reflected in policy. The aim of this study was to quantify Americans’ preferences about farming methods and the suffering they impose on different species to (...) generate a metric for weighing the trade-offs between different approaches of promoting animal welfare. A survey of 502 residents of the United States was implemented using the online platform Mechanical Turk. Using respondent data, we developed the species-adjusted measure of suffering-years, an analogue of the disability-adjusted life year, to calculate the suffering endured under different farming conditions by cattle, pigs, and chickens, the three most commonly consumed animals. Nearly one-third of respondents reported that they believed animal suffering should be taken into account to a degree equal to or above human suffering. The 2016 suffering burden in the United States according to two tested conditions was approximately 66 million SAMYs for pigs, 156 million SAMYs for cattle, and 1.3 billion SAMYs for chickens. This calculation lends early guidance for efforts to reduce animal suffering, demonstrating that to address the highest burden policymakers should focus first on improving conditions for chickens. (shrink)

Even as it skirts mainstream contemporary culture, pornography remains a social taboo; there still exist strong biases both in favor and against it. With chapters addressing imagination, gender, power relationships, truth claims, aesthetics, and both pro and anti-porn slants, this book presents a balanced view of pornography in modern society.

Isidore Etymologiae Vol. II. Books XI-XX.

Phillips & Singer's compelling presentation is weakest in its demonstration of commonalities between sensory plasticity and higher forms of learning and behavior. We propose that available data on schizophrenia can provide such evidence, because of the presence of impairments in a number of functions central to their model, and strong relationships between these dysfunctions and behavior.

"A splendidly illuminating book." —The New York Times Like it or not, George W. Bush has launched a revolution in American foreign policy. He has redefined how America engages the world, shedding the constraints that friends, allies, and international institutions once imposed on its freedom of action. In America Unbound, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay caution that the Bush revolution comes with serious risks–and, at some point, we may find that America’s friends and allies will refuse to follow his (...) lead, leaving the U.S. unable to achieve its goals. This edition has been extensively revised and updated to include major policy changes and developments since the book’s original publication. (shrink)

Over a whole range of challenges, the world is essentially undergoverned. New institutions are needed that recognize how much the world has changed and that mobilize those states most capable of meeting the dangers we confront.

Since Teuffel's Römische Literatur mentions s.v. Varius the famous entry in the Monte Cassino MS. incipit thvestes varii, but ignores its occurrence in a Benevento MS. , it may be well to give some account of the latter codex. For I read with amusement a recent article in this journal in which the writer severely censured Mr. Garrod's ignorance of the entry in Paris 7530, but revealed his own ignorance by assuming that it was the scribe of the Paris MS. (...) who had the lost tragedy of Varius before him. (shrink)

Lvcilivs 11191 is preserved for us in Isid. Etym. XIX, iv, 10, where, amongst the articles of a ship's equipment, the plummet of Herodotus is mentioned, with this illustration from Lucilius:Hunc catapiratem puer eodem deforet unctum,plumbi paucillum rudus linique mataxam.

The abbreviation-symbols of the Romans, found in ancient uncial MSS., may be roughly divided into three classes: Those peculiar to juristic writing, e.g. R.P. ‘res priuata’ , Q.D.R.A. ‘qua de re agitur.’ They are properly called ‘notae iuris.’ They abound in the famous Verona MS. of Gaius. A few used in histories, etc., e.g. R.P. 'respublica' , Q. ‘Quintus’ . Valerius Probus, who compiled a manual of ancient Notae, calls this class ‘notae publicae’. They appear in such MSS. as the (...) codex Puteanus of Livy ; and since they have been transferred into modern editions of the Latin historians, etc., no one is at a loss to interpret them nowadays, although they puzzled mediaeval scribes. Symbols of ordinary words of frequent occurrence in any type of literature, e.g. Q. ‘que.’ It is this class which is the subject of this article. (shrink)

Amph. prol. 90–91. In the Amphitruo Plautus runs great risk of giving oflence by bringing Jupiter on the stage. In the prologue he conciliates the audience by saying that this Jupiter is no god but a mere actor. : 26 sqq. Etenim ille quois hue iussu uenio Iuppiter Non minu' quam uostrum quiuis formidat malum: Humana matre natus, humano patre, Mirari non est aequom sibi si praetimet.

In the 'nineties the Celtic philologist, Whitley Stokes, told us in Common-room, that he once awoke muttering an incomplete stanza: Like an ogress making progress Through the spare-ribs of a child. Could anyone complete it for him ? A former Newdigate prizeman, after reflexion, produced this: Stern endeavour will be ever By some welcome find beguiled, Like an ogress making progress Through the spare-ribs of a child.

Mrs. Dall, in her article A Seventh-Century English Edition of Virgil , shows that Virgil glosses taken from marginalia in the same MS. of the poems often preserve something of their original coherence in the two kindred glossaries, Affatim and the Second Amplonian, in spite of all the reshuffling of these two collections. Thus a small group of Virgil items appears in Affatim on p. 491 of Goetz's apograph : Carecta, Crateras, etc. The second last of this ‘Virgil cluster’ is (...) Cada: vasa vinaria. It appears also in Ampl. II. Ca[t]da: vas vinaria, and in Ampl. I. Cada: vasa vinaria, and is apparently taken , ultimately or immediately, from a marginal annotation on Aen. 1, 195 ‘uina bonus quae deinde cadis onerarat Acestes’ for in the Virgil Glossary printed by Goetz in C.G.L. IV. 427–470 we find Cadis: vasis vinariis. (shrink)

The line is preserved in a passage of Consentius ‘De Barbarismis et Metaplasmis’ : sicut Lucilius ‘ore corupto’; dempsit enim unam litteram per metaplasmum, r; et Ennius ‘huic statuam,’ etc.

Charisivs, in his chapter on Adverbs, cites for Hispane a line of Ennius' Annals : Hispane, non Romane memoretis loqui me. Professor Norden , the apostle of Combinations-forschung, combines this fact with another fact mentioned by Livy , the celebre per Hispaniam responsum of a Spanish town to a Roman embassy. But why does he ignore a third fact which must be brought into any combination that can be convincing—the quotation of this line of Ennius by Festus in a paragraph (...) which apparently deals with Graeco-Roman affinities ? (shrink)