Cui Bono Research Articles

Cui bono? Comments on cost-benefit analysis in ultrasound diagnosis

Despite the low costs of a single examination, the overall expenses for ultrasonography are exceptionally high (1.4 billion DM in 1993), not counting the costs of further examinations because of unclear findings. The advantages of sonography are that it is harmless and yields diagnostically important results. Its clinical benefit is beyond doubt in the case of acute clinical symptoms, but unclear for staging and followup of malignant tumors. It has been shown to be efficient in screening for renal and prostatic cancer. Here, the costs for sonographic screening appear to be potentially outweighed by the reduction in treatment expenses. However, the cost of sonographic examinations can sometimes be avoided: sonography should not be used if there is no clear indication or if the examiner is not really qualified or the equipment is insufficient. There is a conflict of interest when the referring physician performs to sonography himself, leading to unnecessary examinations. To limit costs it would be potentially helpful if sonographic examinations are only performed when the indications are valid. The education of the examining physicians must be improved, better equipment must be used, scanners can be shared, and patients can be referred to colleagues who are more experienced in sonography. The currently reformed reimbursement scheme is of little value because it does not permit a qualified, thorough, cost-efficient examination.

NAFTA: Results after one year

Increasing efforts at “regionalisation” can be observed worldwide, initiated particularly by the successes of the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and also through the foundation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). What expectations are involved in such amalgamations, what problems arise and how can future opportunities be assessed, briefly: cui bono? The following paper analyses these questions with the help of experiences and information gained by NAFTA and attempts to answer them.

Educational Reform: Who Benefits

This article uses the Blau and Scott concept of cui bono to describe who has benefitted from the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) enacted in April, 1990. Rank and file participants are defined as the certified and classified staff; owners or managers of the organization become the administration, school district/board, and legislature; the clients become the students and the public-at-large becomes the general citizens of the state. The analysis reviews the curriculum, governance, and finance initiatives in the reform.

Mothers' Egg‐pooling and Aposematic Offspring's Gregariousness: Cui bono?

Recently Sillén‐Tullberg & Leimar (1988) modelled a general explanation for the evolution of gregariousness in prey organisms that live exposed, have no means of escape when discovered by a predator, and are small in relation to a potential predator (who thus can sample many prey individuals in one encounter). The model predicts that gregarious prey organisms of that type ought to be distasteful, and that the evolution of gregariousness will be favoured by aposematic coloration facilitating avoidance learning in a predator.Obviously, any protective power of grouping depends on group size. According to the Sillén‐Tullberg & Leimar model, (1) “members of small groups may have a higher rate of death from predation than solitary individuals, but above a certain minimum group size, group members do better than solitary individuals; … as group size increases above the minimum value, group members suffer fewer and fewer deaths from predation”. They benefit from the “decreased risk of predator attack on any particular individual”, called dilution effect. (2) “The more prey specimens that the predator needs to sample during avoidance learning, the larger an aggregation needs to be in order for gregariousness to be advantageous”. It is further explained that (3) selection resulting from predation favours increase in group size until it “acts like a predator‐satiation mechanism”.

The Philosophy In Christianity: Arius and Athanasius

Cui bono? Cherchez la femme! These ancient maxims offer counsel to the investigator of an unsolved murder or some inexplicable pattern of behaviour. They advise the pursuit of what has come more recently to be known as a form of lateral thinking. The puzzle may not best be solved by an intensification of the examination of the immediate data. The primary clue may lie out of sight somewhere further back. Financial advantage or sexual attraction, which does not show up as a feature of the immediate situation, may be the hidden motive of the traditionally male agent's actions. When that is recognized, the otherwise inexplicable phenomena may become intelligible.

Curriculum change and contextual realities in South African education: cui bono?

All planned change efforts imply a commitment to a certain view of reality, and acceptance of certain modes of realizing ends. Those assumptions constitute the conscious or unconscious bases for selecting specific courses of action and thus precede all tactical decisions. To the extent that change agents cannot identify those basic assumptions and their implications, they cannot explore the full range of effective strategies for change. (Crowfoot and Chesler 1974)

David's Rise to Power and the Death of Abner: An Analysis of 1 Samuel XXVI 14-16 and Its Redaction-Critical Implications

According to the American transcendentalist philosopher, H. D. Thoreau, Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.' In an article inJSOT in November of 1978, my colleague N. P. Lemche attempted to apply the cui bono maxim of Roman law to the History of David's Rise to Power (HDR).2 Lemche was able by a process of consistent scepticism to raise considerable doubts concerning David's innocence in connexion with, among other things, the deaths of Saul and his general

Cui bono?: White students in a desegregating high school

Cui bono?: White students in a desegregating high school

The Value Orientations of Finnish Sport Leaders

This paper reports findings from a recent survey based on the national sample of 1666 Finnish sport leaders with particular reference to the preferences of values defined in terms of cui bono—for whom/what—according to the modified Blau- Scott formulation. These preferences of value orientations, considered as source of norms for the leadership behavior in sport organizations, are also related to other ideological conceptions of sport leaders, e.g. to the normative conceptions of "the right way" to practise sport, to the national priorities of sport events, to the concepts of democracy and the role of sport audience. In the correlational analysis two fundamental ideological orientations to sport were induced: the hu man-centered vs. society-centered type of orientations.

Problems Historical and Numismatic in the Reign of Augustus

THIS is not a book on which one can easily pass judgment. It is inspired by a coin in the possession of one of the author's colleagues in California, which purports to be an Augustan denarius but which, the author frankly admits, could quite possibly be spurious. However, if it is not a counterfeit, the coin might throw considerable light on certain problems of Augustus' reign: e.g., the status of the tresviri monetales (without, however, any reference being made to their usually patrician connections), the alleged monopoly by Lugdunum of the minting of all the Empire's gold and silver, or the uncertainty surrounding the disloyalty of Cn. Cinna. With immense learning and ingenuity and a very laboured style, the author shows what the possible implications of this possibly fake coin are, and no one can read what he has to say without acquiring a very healthy respect for his scholarship in the process. But the present reviewer feels inclined to mutter illud Cassianum: cui bono?. Professor Smith obviously had a lot of fun with his study, and one reader at least had a lot of fun following his closely reasoned argument. But, as the author himself disarmingly agrees, a coin that may be false seems to be a pretty fragile foundation on which to base far-reaching conclusions.

A Little Classics is a Dangerous Thing

It is a strange fact that, despite the spread of education and the great number of cultural vade meca in the hands of the public nowadays, there should still be found so many ignorami among the hoi polloi. Too often you will hear people saying ‘octopuses’ when they should, of course, have said ‘octopi’: and we fear that to use the forms ‘platypi’ and ‘rhino-ceri’ is only to incur the reproach of pedantry. The times are out of joint: we worship at the shrine of universal education, but this ideal is the very antipode of the actual fact. Slipshod and inaccurate utterance pervades every strata of society. In particular, exactness and precision in classical quotation, instead of being regarded as the desideratae and, we may almost say, the necessary sine quae non of polite intercourse, are only laughed at as ridiculous refinements. Cui bono?, ‘for what good?’, is the false standard applied to mere elegancies of style. If faults are noticed at all, they are dismissed as trivial lapsi linguae.How is this lamentable situation to be improved? The classical teacher is, no doubt, partly responsible; he can plead no alibum in the matter. But he can effect little improvement by himself. He is no dictator, whose cujus is mightier than any quorum of democratic committeemen. We, the enlightened, must therefore band ourselves together and form a militant Society for Purer Latin. We must begin at Jerusalem and purge ourselves first. Let us pay our own final adieux to these errors and say, each and all of us, our several valia to inelegant solecisms.

The Evolution of Fugue

Cui bono ! may have been the exclamation of some on reading the title of this paper. We already know, they might say, from Spitta, that Bach was considerably indebted to his predecessors; we are content to leave the study of their works to evolutionists and examiners. To any such I would make answer thus: In order fully to appreciate the works of a great composer you must know at least something of what those who preceded him accomplished; and the greater those predecessors, the greater one's admiration for the man who not only assimilated what was best in them, but who rose to higher eminence. Surely acquaintanceship with the best symphonic work of Haydn and Mozart intensifies one's appreciation of Beethoven's symphonies. To such argument it may, however, be opposed that Haydn and Mozart were geniuses; that though Beethoven surpassed them he did not cast them into oblivion, whereas Bach practically put an extinguisher on his predecessors. But for a long time Bach himself, just as much as his predecessors, was neglected, ignored by the majority of musicians. He was resuscitated in the nineteenth century by Nägeli, Wesley, Mendelssohn, and others; and various publications or reprints of early publications of the works of his predecessors (Sweelinck, Scheidt, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude) appear from time to time in Germany. The predecessors of Bach are as important in the history of the development of fugue, as Haydn and Mozart in that of the symphony.

The Long Period Weather Forecasts of India

IN days when the cui bono of everything connected with scientific research is subjected to the glare of criticism by a public which is frequently too busy to analyse or understand the laborious methods by which accurate knowledge is attained, the Meteorological Service of India poses as a happy exception to that of many other scientific departments in being able to demonstrate its practical utility by the success, not merely of its everyday routine forecasts, but by its unique initiation and development of seasonal or long-period forecasts of the alternate monsoons.

HAS PROGRESS BEEN MADE IN THE MEDICINAL TREATMENT OF TYPHOID FEVER?Read in the Section of Practice of Medicine, Materia Medica and Physiology, at the Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, at Nashville, Tenn., May, 1890.

ABSTRACT Almost semi-annually the medical public is treated to announcements of new remedies that are either infallible cures for, or at least very largely diminish the death-rate in many diseases, most notably, continued fevers. At once the enthusiasts rush into the field of experience and soon medical journals teem with reports of successes, beyond expectation from every quarter. These reports grow less and less favorable. The roseate hue disappears, and soon opposite reports begin to fill the pages of the same journals and finally the pendulum swings to its furthest point and begins to return.The result is a few advocates of the theory remain; but the large majority, disappointed, return to their old modes of treatment. The question naturally arises : Cui bono? Does good result from such experimental work ? I answer promptly, Yes. Again and again a new and plausible theory is advanced to take the same course just outlined,

The Literature of Botany

WE have here two books of unequal importance which nevertheless have so much in common that they may fitly be noticed together. Both are produced by the same author, and under the auspices of the same Society—a Society, by the way, which has not escaped severe criticism of the cui bono order, but which goes far towards justifying its raison d'etre by the publication of works like those now to be considered. The “Guide to the Literature of Botany” was issued about a year since, but has not been noticed in these pages; so that the appearance of the later work furnishes an opportunity for some reference to the former. Guide to the Literature of Botany. Being a Classified Selection of Botanical Works, including nearly 6000 titles not given in Pritzel's “Thesaurus.” By Benjamin Daydon Jackson., Secretary to the Linnean Society. Pp. xl. 626. (London: published for the Index Society by Longmans, Green and Co., and Dulau and Co., 1881.) Vegetable Technology. A Contribution towards a Bibliography of Economic Botany, with a comprehensive Subject index. Pp. xii., 355. (Same Author and Publishers, 1882.)

The German and Swedish Expeditions to the Arctic Regions

ENGLAND seems ready to resign the position she once held as chief of all the competitors in Arctic exploration. Our flag has been carried within 7(1/2 degrees of the North Pole; our seamen have forced from the ice-bound straits which lie to the north of America the secret of the North-Western Passage; and from the days of Scoresby until those of Franklin we have been foremost in scientific researches within the dreary Arctic wastes. But now the answer to all who would emulate the deeds of a Parry or a Ross, a Beecher or a Franklin, is the stereotyped cui bono. A business account of the probable gains of an Arctic journey must be rendered before England will send men or ships to the Polar seas.