Rigorous View Research Articles

Configurational Paths of Preconditions to Transformational Leadership Among Core Hospital Leaders: A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis.

Transformational leadership among core hospital leaders boosts medical organizations' competitiveness, adaptability, and sustainability, which is jointly affected by individual, organizational and environmental factors. This study aims to unpack its configurational framework and propose strategies to strengthen core hospital leaders' transformational leadership. Data were collected from an online questionnaire among 31 core hospital leaders. The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) was used to explore the causal mechanism of high-level transformational leadership. We enrich this mechanism by professional background, critical thinking, initiative spirit, family-work conflict, job satisfaction, subordinates' followership, and work pressure. Result shows initiative spirit is the only necessary condition (consistency=0.911) for the formation of high-level transformational leadership among core hospital leaders. Three configurations are the sufficient conditions that lead to high-level transformational leadership among core hospital leaders with two different professional backgrounds (overall solution consistency= 0.952). Core hospital leaders' initiative spirit is an indispensable condition for improving high-level transformational leadership, emphasizing the necessity for core leaders to be proactive in order to develop such leadership. Besides, the study also uncovered three configurations are the sufficient conditions for core hospital leaders with diverse professional backgrounds to achieve high-level transformational leadership. This finding offers significant insights into hospital management practices, suggesting that core hospital leaders' work should be managed in a personalized manner based on their professional backgrounds, thereby fostering favorable conditions conducive to the development of their high-level transformational leadership capabilities. Furthermore, the central insight of this study is that the formation of high-level transformational leadership contingent upon the collaboration of professional background, critical thinking, initiative spirit, family-work conflict, job satisfaction, subordinates' followership, and work pressure, contributing to a holistic and more rigorous view for the development of transformational leadership.

An Eddy-Current Testing Method for Measuring the Thickness of Metallic Plates

Thickness measurements of metallic plates are mandatory in many industrial scenarios. Methods based on Eddy Current Testing (ECT) are ideal for fast and accurate online contact–less thickness measurements, making them very attractive in the Industry 4.0 scenario. This contribution is focused on a specific and robust ECT technique proposed in the past by the scientific community. The main limitation is its applicability to thin materials only, where the thickness of the material is much smaller than the overall size of the ECT probe. Extending the range of applicability to thicker materials, introduces a progressive and severe degradation of the measurement accuracy. In this paper, we analyse the theoretical foundation of this method with an entirely original approach based on the celebrated Buckingham’s π theorem. In doing this, we draw the complete theoretical picture of the method, providing a simple, clear and rigorous view of its performance and intrinsic limitations. Moreover, we propose two solutions, one analytical and the other iterative, to accurately estimate the thickness of materials from thin to thick values. Finally, a numerical analysis combined with an experimental campaign confirms the effectiveness of the proposed solutions making the method suitable for industrial and other applications.

Lüge und Fake News

Abstract Fake news and conspiracy theories are current problems that are increasingly influencing political and social processes. In particular, whether and how legal action should be taken against them, for example, on internet platforms and social networks, is a matter of current debate. Philosophers already discussed the legal relevance of truthfulness at the Enlightenment, where the basis of modern legal systems was drafted. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, argued for an unconditional duty of truthfulness, which is why he has been accused of a rigorous view even today. I will present a less rigorous interpretation, in which lies are always ethically reprehensible but can only be prosecuted if they violate an external legal good. That means, based on Kant’s Philosophy, fake news cannot be forbidden in general. However, fake news that inevitably leads to legal damage must be prosecuted, such as inciting violence or giving bad medical advice.

Psychological Differences between Radicalized and non-Radicalized Muslim Prisoners: A Qualitative Analysis of their Frame Alignment

Abstract Do radicalized Muslim prisoners differ from non-radicalized Muslim prisoners with regard to Kruglanski’s (2004) quest for significance (QFS), need for (cognitive) closure (NFC), and their frame alignment regarding ideological and religious issues? To answer this research question N = 26 male inmates from Bavarian prisons were interviewed. The radicalized prisoners or extremists (n = 13) had been identified as Salafi or Jihadi adherents by the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bayerischer Verfassungsschutz) and therefore had a security note. The comparison group were non-radicalized Muslim inmates (n = 13); the vast majority had a migration background. The audio files of the interviews were transcribed and Mayring’s (2010) qualitative content analysis was applied. The obtained interview material was analyzed twice (each time with a different focus) for psychological differences and characteristics between the two groups of Muslim prisoners. In the first analysis, the interviews were investigated with regard to conspiracy theories, dualistic conception of the world, political sensitivity, collective and individual victimization and religious rigidity. Extremists exhibited a stronger frame alignment with respect to general conspiracy theories, dualistic conception of the world, collective victimization, and political sensitivity. Results also substantiate the idea that extremists exhibit more rigid religious behaviors than non-extremist Muslim prisoners. Contrary to our expectations, the two groups did not differ in various biographical features, for example whether they grew up in a family that actively practiced their religion. In the second analysis, we found that although the overall pattern regarding QFS turned out as expected, the radicalized inmates did not achieve higher values than their non-radicalized counterparts. However, we obtained substantial differences for subcategories of QFS. The extremist prisoners reported more norm violations as a trigger for QFS and more opportunities for gaining significance than non-extremists. This was also true for non-legitimate as well as non-criminal opportunities to gain significance. There was a substantial difference between extremists and non-extremists regarding the overall NFC characteristics. Radicalized prisoners tend to avoid ambiguous situations or uncertainty, they prefer clear, structured processes and firm beliefs. The results suggest that it is possible to differentiate non-radicalized from radicalized Muslims as they showed less quest for significance, less need for closure, less political sensitivity and a less rigorous view on religion.

Organization of <em>Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works</em>

Organization of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works Cliff Eisen (bio) I. Keyboard Music (18 vols.) 1. “Prussian” and “Württemberg” Sonatas 2. Sonatas with Varied Reprises 3. “Probestücke,” “Leichte” and “Damen” Sonatas 4. “Kenner und Liebhaber” Collections (2 parts) 5. Miscellaneous Sonatas from Prints (2 parts) 6. Sonatas from Manuscript Sources (5 parts) 7. Variations 8. Miscellaneous Keyboard Works (2 parts) 9. Organ Works 10. Arrangements of Orchestral Works (2 parts) II. Chamber Music (7 vols.) 1. Solo Sonatas 2. Trio Sonatas (2 parts) 3. Keyboard Trios (2 parts) 4. Accompanied Sonatas 5. Quartets and Miscellaneous Chamber Music III. Orchestral Music (29 vols.) 1. Berlin Symphonies 2. Six Symphonies for Baron van Swieten 3. Orchester-Sinfonien mit zwölf obligaten Stimmen 4. Flute Concertos (2 parts) 5. Oboe Concertos 6. Violoncello Concertos 7. Keyboard Concertos from Prints 8. Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato 9. Keyboard Concertos from Manuscript Sources (15 parts) 10. Concertos for Two Keyboards 11. Keyboard Sonatinas from Prints 12. Keyboard Sonatinas from Manuscript Sources (2 parts) 13. Sonatinas for Two Keyboards [End Page 80] IV. Oratorios and Passions (24 vols.) 1. Die Israeliten in der Wüste 2. Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu 3. Passions-Cantate 4. Passions according to St. Matthew (6 parts) 5. Passions according to St. Mark (5 parts) 6. Passions according to St. Luke (5 parts) 7. Passions according to St. John (5 parts) V. Choral Music (20 vols.) 1. Magnificat (2 parts) 2. Quartalstücke (6 parts) 3. Einführungsmusiken (5 parts) 4. Bürgercapitainsmusiken 5. Works for Special Occasions (2 parts) 6. Miscellaneous Sacred Works (4 parts) VI. Songs and Vocal Chamber Music (4 vols.) 1. Gellert Songs 2. Cramer and Sturm Songs 3. Miscellaneous Songs 4. Arias and Chamber Cantatas VII. Theoretical Works (3 vols.) 1. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen I 2. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen II 3. Commentary to the Versuch VIII. Supplement (10 vols.) 1. Miscellanea Musica 2. The Polyhymnia Portfolio 3. Librettos (3 parts) 4. Portrait Collection (2 parts) 5. Historical Catalogues 6. Sources and Scribes 7. Indices Total estimated volumes: 115 Detailed contents of individual volumes, plus the introductions of published volumes and librettos for vocal works, can be found at www.cpebach.org. [End Page 81] Reviews Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works (Los Altos, CA: Packard Humanities Institute, 2005–). If any collected works edition of a composer deserves the description “monumental,” it is surely Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, a joint undertaking of Harvard University, the Bach-Archiv Leipzig, and the Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, sponsored by the Packard Humanities Institute. Begun in 1998, the edition includes not only Bach’s music, but also facsimiles; free downloads of parts and ancillary material not always included in complete editions, such as a fascinating catalogue of Bach’s portrait collection, reconstructed by Annette Richards; and an excellent new edition of Bach’s Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, edited and with commentary by Tobias Plebuch. To be sure, the C. P. E. Bach edition stands on the shoulders of other eighteenth-century monumental editions, including the Joseph Haydn Werke and the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe. But it surpasses these in its rigorous view of the sources, its thoughtful editorial philosophy and policies, the quality of the editing and the volumes’ forewords, and its broad view of Bach as a composer working within the context of particular locales at particular times or for particular—and sometimes diverse—audiences. It has the advantage, too, of having been undertaken only after many of the philological basics for dealing with eighteenth-century music have been more or less settled through the work of scholars like Wolfgang Plath, Alan Tyson, and Georg Feder, and after some vigorous debates concerning performance practice as well as the importance of the cultural context to a composer’s life and works. Finally, unlike the Mozart edition in particular, it has benefited from the recent recovery of sources previously thought to have been lost, especially, in 1999, the archives of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin, which includes some unique copies of Bach’s...

The Allegiance of Vladislav Felitisianovich

The purpose of this presentation is to examine how Vladislav Khodasevich establishes his cosmopolitan position on the future of Russian Emigre literature in his final work Nekropol (1939). I aim to focus particularly on how his internal display of Jewishness in Nekropol serves as a critical mode to understand his cosmopolitan views towards art creation. Khodasevich, in his homage to his closest literary companions Samuil Kissin (Muni) and Mikhail Gershenzon, firmly demonstrates how Khodasevich’s cosmopolitan, rigorous views towards art creation were established through his Inorodtsy as a Polish Jew in Moscow, the use of Muni’s tragic death as a form of art creation through his use of trauma, and his tribute to universally-loved Gershenzon in instiling Khodasevich the necessity of artistic philosophies and public involvement in literary survival. With the combination of the factors above, Khodasevich’s views on artistic creation are completed during his emigre years, having his positive, rigorous approach to the future of Russian Emigre literature beyond its Oblomovism-like state during 1930s France. By allowing his readers an under-the-depth understanding of factors that developed Khodasevich’s cosmopolitan stances in Nekropol, Khodasevich’s tribute demonstrates the importance of linking the world of historical fields within Slavic studies, allowing a multidimensional understanding of both Jewish history and Russian literature in both Silver Age and under emigration.

La Piratería en el Pacífico y su relación con el Tribunal de la Santa Inquisición de Lima

Abstract: The historical validity of the Tribunal of the Holy Office has been strongly linked to the distortions of the so-called Black Legend, which was the propagandistic element more used by the rival powers of Spain in order to discredit it not only in the political but also religious sphere. The effects of the aforementioned propaganda can be experienced until today, with special strength on popular culture, where historical and documentary veracity gives way to the much more attractive accounts of fanaticism, obscurantism and oppression without measure. What was the true role played by the Holy Office within Spanish domains in America? How did defending the Catholic Faith become related to the political ambitions of the Crypto-Jews and Protestants? What was the role played by the relationship between piracy and religious zeal in such political framework? This article intends to address these three issues and offer a much more rigorous view of one of the most remembered cultural phenomena related to the colonial period.

A comparison of LMC and SDL complexity measures on binomial distributions

The concept of complexity has been widely discussed in the last forty years, with a lot of thinking contributions coming from all areas of the human knowledge, including Philosophy, Linguistics, History, Biology, Physics, Chemistry and many others, with mathematicians trying to give a rigorous view of it. In this sense, thermodynamics meets information theory and, by using the entropy definition, López-Ruiz, Mancini and Calbet proposed a definition for complexity that is referred as LMC measure. Shiner, Davison and Landsberg, by slightly changing the LMC definition, proposed the SDL measure and the both, LMC and SDL, are satisfactory to measure complexity for a lot of problems. Here, SDL and LMC measures are applied to the case of a binomial probability distribution, trying to clarify how the length of the data set implies complexity and how the success probability of the repeated trials determines how complex the whole set is.

Bioinformatics/Medical Informatics in Traditional Medicine and Integrative Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and integrative medicine are key components of the cultural heritage from Eastern Asia with thousands-of-years history in research and healthcare delivery. Traditional oriental medicine contributes significantly to the prosperity of Chinese and Eastern Asian culture. After the introduction of western biomedicine to Asia, traditional medicine still plays an important role in the healthcare system of many Asian countries and integrated with the mainstream medical treatments as a new track of healthcare named as integrative medicine. With the current trend of globalization, traditional medicine and integrative medicine are receiving gradual acceptance in the Western world. As a result, studies on traditional medicine attract more and more attention from researchers with various knowledge backgrounds and technologies. Medical informatics is a new interdisciplinary branch in medical science when computer science and information technology are combined with research of health science. The application of medical informatics that has extended to the studies of traditional medicine and other therapies of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The special issue supported by this journal provides a forum for traditional and integrative medical researchers and practitioners to share and exchange their new ideas on using computer science and information technology to explore and solve problems in healthcare. It is proposed with the Fifth International Workshop on Information Technology for Chinese Medicine (ITCM 2014) in Guangzhou, China, on 12 to 14 December 2014. The workshop is in conjunction with the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM'14), which was held in Belfast, UK, on 2 to 5 November 2014. Professor Xusheng Liu, Professor Honglai Zhang, and Professor Guozheng Li cochaired the workshop. The conference invited top experts from the US, UK, Australia, and Hong Kong to present their inspiring research outcomes and prospect the future of traditional and integrative medicine. However, numerous scientists and researchers were unable to introduce their excellent idea due to time limit of the workshop. The ITCM 2014 received about 100 submissions. All papers were anonymously reviewed by members of the IEEE conference organization committee. The accepted papers were published in the Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine Workshops (IEEE-BIBMW) (ISBN 978-1-4799-1309-1). Just a few excellent papers were later invited to submit the extension version to the special issue alongside external submissions for consideration of publishing. This special issue has received 37 submissions. All papers have gone through rigorous view, and only 10 of them (27%) are finally accepted for publication. This special issue reflects the up-to-date progress in applications of information technology to traditional and integrative medicine. The papers are categorized to represent the four aspects of medical informatics research of the discipline. In the paper entitled “Standardization of Syndrome Differentiation Defined by Traditional Chinese Medicine in Operative Breast Cancer: A Modified Delphi Study,” Q. Guo and Q. Chen present their research on TCM syndromes. Five papers are selected to demonstrate the research progress in disease diagnosis and treatment. G.-X. Shi et al. report a clinical study on vascular dementia. Z. Chen presents a new mathematics method to explore the classical theory of five elements in TCM in his work “Researches on Mathematical Relationship of Five Elements of Containing Notes and Fibonacci Sequence Modulo 5.” In “Syndrome Differentiation Analysis on MARS500 Data of Traditional Chinese Medicine,” Y.-Z. Li et al. succeed to use MARS500 to process the data of traditional medicine. The paper entitled “Detecting Disease in Radiographs with Intuitive Confidence” by S. Jaeger introduces the new idea to use informatics method to detect disease. Three papers are about information processing of traditional medicine. The paper entitled “Patterns Exploration on Patterns of Empirical Herbal Formula of Chinese Medicine by Association Rules” by L. Huang et al. used association rules to retrieve patterns from classical traditional medical formula. B. Zhang et al. proposed a bioinformatics approach to explore the latent patterns from conventional formula Shuang-Huang-Lian in their work “Using Bioinformatics Approach to Explore the Pharmacological Mechanisms of Multiple Ingredients in Shuang-Huang-Lian.” The paper entitled “Pulse-Diagnosis Signals Analysis of Fatty Liver Disease and Cirrhosis Patients by Using Machine Learning” by N. Wang et al. introduces new data mining method to process diagnostic data of liver disease. Finally, the paper entitled “An Ensemble Learning Based Framework for Traditional Chinese Medicine Data Analysis with ICD-10 Labels” by G. Zhang et al. and the paper entitled “ISMAC: An Intelligent System for Customized Clinical Case Management and Analysis” introduce the applications of machine learning to electronic data analysis of traditional medicine.

Dissection of Porphyrin-Induced Conformational Dynamics in the Heme Biosynthesis Enzyme Ferrochelatase

Human ferrochelatase (EC 4.99.1.1) catalyzes the insertion ferrous iron into protoporphyrin IX as the last step in heme biosynthesis, an essential process to most organisms given the vast intracellular functions of heme. Even with multiple ferrochelatase structures available, the exact mechanism for iron insertion into porphyrin is still a matter for debate. It is clear, however, that conformational dynamics are important for porphyrin substrate binding, initial chelation of iron, insertion of iron into the macrocycle, and release of protoheme IX. In this work we characterize conformational and dynamic changes in ferrochelatase associated with porphyrin binding using the substrate mesoporphyrin (MPIX) and backbone amide hydrogen/deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). In general, regions surrounding the active site become more ordered from direct or indirect interactions with the porphyrin. Our results indicate that the lower lip of the active site mouth is preorganized for efficient porphyrin binding, with little changes in backbone dynamics. The upper lip region has the most significant change in HDX behavior as it closes the active site. This movement excludes solvent from the porphyrin pocket, but leads to increased solvent access in other areas. A water lined path to the active site was observed, which may be the elusive iron channel with final insertion via the M76/R164/Y165 side of the porphyrin. These results provide a rigorous view of the ferrochelatase mechanism through the inclusion of dynamic information, reveal new structural areas for functional investigation, and offer new insight into a potential iron channel to the active site.

Drug Development in the Era of Personalized Oncology: From Population-Based Trials to Enrichment and Prescreening Strategies

Recent advances in tumor biology and human genetics along with the development of drugs for specific targets hold promise for an era of personalized oncology treatment. Routine use of modern technologies, such as large-scale genome sequencing, will help to unravel the specific biology of each tumor. Adding a rigorous genomic view could determine key genetic events, critical dependencies, and stratification of patients in early clinical trials. Integrating biomarker development into the early testing of novel agents might provide clinically relevant therapeutic opportunities for patients with advanced-stage cancer and also accelerate the drug-approval process. After recent success stories of therapies targeting driver molecular aberrations in genetically defined tumor subtypes, innovative clinical trials based on a strong biologic hypothesis are expected to bring further excitement to the field. In this article, we describe a new trend in biomarker-driven early drug development using enrichment and prescreening strategies. Technical and logistical obstacles that may hinder progress of this approach will be discussed, along with ethical and economic concerns.

Tortifying Employment Discrimination

Although Title VII is often described as a “statutory tort,” that label has, until recently, been mostly metaphorical. In Staub v. Proctor Hospital Corp., however, the Supreme Court took an important first step in incorporating concepts from tort law into the antidiscrimination statutes. Although Staub received some attention as a “cat’s paw” (or subordinate bias) liability decision, it will have broader significance for two reasons. First, the Court explicitly adopted tort law’s definition of “intent” for statutory discrimination cases, thus raising a threshold question of the what it means to “intend to discriminate.” This Article suggests that, rather than widening the notion of discriminatory intent, which Staub at first blush seems to do, the opinion actually adds another layer to the plaintiff’s burden – for liability, the decision-maker must now both have the requisite wrongful motivation and either desire a resulting “adverse employment action” or believe that such an action is substantially certain to occur. Second, and perhaps more important, Staub for the first time imported the concept of proximate cause into the antidiscrimination context from its usual home in negligence law. Such a transplant is especially remarkable because proximate cause was unnecessary for resolving the case before the Court. The only purpose of adding a proximate cause requirement is to limit liability short of the full reach of but-for causation, and limiting employer liability tracks what the Court has done in other areas of federal statutory law. In those areas, the Court has not only applied proximate cause to intentional conduct (a phenomenon largely foreign to tort law from which the Court is theoretically borrowing) but has also adopted a more rigorous view of what proximate cause requires. Rather than looking only to the foreseeability of the plaintiff or the harm, which is the majority approach in the negligence arena, the Court has articulated a policy-driven perspective that allows it to restrict liability in the name of applying traditional tort doctrine. After exploring these issues, the Article argues that Staub’s deployment of proximate cause in the discrimination area may have been intended to set the stage for a later effort to narrow the reach of Title VII and the other discrimination statutes by finding that “cognitive bias” does not proximately cause a resulting adverse employment action. While there is a spirited debate about whether Title VII bars adverse employment actions resulting from such bias, Staub may have set the stage for resolving that controversy by marking the path for a holding that only conscious bias can proximately cause an adverse employment action.

Implementing process views in the web service environment

Web service and business process technologies are widely adopted to facilitate business automation and collaboration. Given the complexity of business processes, it is a sought-after feature to show a business process with different views to cater for the diverse interests, authority levels, etc., of different users. Aiming to implement such flexible process views in the Web service environment, this paper presents a novel framework named FlexView to support view abstraction and concretisation of WS-BPEL processes. In the FlexView framework, a rigorous view model is proposed to specify the dependency and correlation between structural components of process views with emphasis on the characteristics of WS-BPEL, and a set of rules are defined to guarantee the structural consistency between process views during transformations. A set of algorithms are developed to shift the abstraction and concretisation operations to the operational level. A prototype is also implemented for the proof-of-concept purpose.

Turning the Tide?

A strip search case originating in Arizona reached its conclusion at the Supreme Court this summer and earned substantial coverage in the popular press. However, educators who rely on such reports for their information may need this more complete view to understand the impact of this decision. Enforcing the district's no-drug policy, administrators in the Safford Unified School District, Arizona, investigated one middle school student's possession of prescription-strength Ibuprofen. The policy prohibited student possession of prescription-strength Ibuprofen unless the student had official permission to carry the drug at school. Their investigation first led to a female student who had more of these pills and who identified her friend Savana as the source. They did not ask her where Savana might be hiding the pills. After questioning Savana, who denied having any pills, the assistant principal searched Savana's backpack and outer clothing to no avail. He then instructed his administrative assistant and the school nurse, who both were females, to search Savana in the nurse's office. Ultimately, they had her pull her bra out and to the side and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. They did not find any pills. On June 25, 2009, the Supreme Court issued its decision, which amounted to two rulings: 1) the strip search violated the Fourth Amendment because there were no reasons to suspect the drugs presented a danger or were concealed in her underwear, and 2) the school official who ordered the search was entitled to qualified immunity from liability because there is reason to question the clarity with which the right was established. Eight of the nine members of the Court voted in favor of the first ruling; only Justice Thomas dissented. For the second ruling, seven justices, including Justice Thomas, agreed; Justices Ginsburg and Stevens dissented, viewing the first ruling as clearly settled. They all agreed that the pole star was the Court's 1985 decision in New Jersey v. T.L.O., which established a two-pronged standard: 1) reasonable suspicion for initiating the search, and 2) a multifactor test, including the nature of the infraction, for its scope. Obviously, student advocates are touting the Safford decision as a resounding victory under the Fourth Amendment specifically and the Constitution more generally. Scholars wonder whether this decision represents the next turning point in the tide, which had previously shifted first in students' favor in Tinker and then back in the districts' direction in T.L.O. (1) At this point, my cautious conclusion is that Safford represents a slowing but not stopping of the previous judicial trend for the following reasons. First, although the vote for the primary ruling was almost unanimous rather than closely divided, the majority did not increase the standard under T.L.O. but, instead, effectively conflated its two prongs for strip searches. Declining narrow boundaries for strip searches, the majority considered any search similar to what happened to Savana after the search of her outer clothing and belongings as categorically distinct, requiring distinct elements of justification. More specifically, the school officials' suspicion was not reasonable in light of the intrusive scope of the search. Thus, although intrusiveness looms large as a factor, the standard is not probable cause. Moreover, the ruling in favor of Savana does not extend to the first search; the majority made clear that the search of her backpack and outer clothing was not excessively intrusive and, thus, met the relatively relaxed view of reasonable suspicion. Second, the almost as strongly supported second ruling exhibited continuation of deference to school officials. Although Safford clearly settles the more rigorous view of reasonable suspicion for any sort of strip search for future cases, the 7-to-2 ruling in favor of qualified immunity of the individual school defendant2 reaffirmed the traditional deference doctrine generally, and specifically it clarified: [W]e mean to cast no ill reflection on the assistant principal, for the record raised no doubt that his motive throughout was to eliminate drugs from his school and protect students. …

Biologism is Behavior: A Commentary on Wong and Wyatt and Midkiff

In response to Wong (2006) and Wyatt and Midkiff (2006), we argue that behaviors related to biologism—i.e., believing that biological explanations are more explanatory than they really are—and other aspects of biological psychiatry are susceptible to behavior analysis, and we explore the possibility of such an analysis with special attention to the interests of clinicians and clinical researchers. We also propose that behavior analysis, biology, and science in general may best be served by the adoption and promotion of a more philosophically and scientifically rigorous view of the interaction between biological and behavioral factors. Such a view would promote rational integration rather than opposition of theoretical systems.

Reconciling Two Views of Cryptography (The Computational Soundness of Formal Encryption)

Two distinct, rigorous views of cryptography have developed over the years, in two mostly separate communities. One of the views relies on a simple but effective formal approach; the other, on a detailed computational model that considers issues of complexity and probability. There is an uncomfortable and interesting gap between these two approaches to cryptography. This paper starts to bridge the gap, by providing a computational justification for a formal treatment of encryption.

Citalopram and the Curate’s Egg in Geriatric Depression

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Letter to the EditorFull AccessCitalopram and the Curate’s Egg in Geriatric DepressionBERNARD J. CARROLL, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., F.R.C.Psych., BERNARD J. CARROLLSearch for more papers by this author, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., F.R.C.Psych., Carmel, Calif.Published Online:1 Sep 2005https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.9.1762AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail To the Editor:Bishop: I see you have a bad egg.Curate: Oh, no, my lord, parts of it are excellent.The report by Steven P. Roose, M.D., and colleagues on the treatment of old-old depressed patients with citalopram (1) concluded that medication was not more effective than placebo. In this multicenter study, there was a major effect of study site on response and remission rates to both placebo and active drug. Attempting to put the best face on the results, the authors suggested that more severely depressed patients tended to have a higher remission rate with medication. They also underscored the perspective that the placebo condition in such a trial “is not remotely close to a ‘no-treatment’ condition” (p. 2057).Overall, the trial highlights the present sorry state of research into antidepressant efficacy. A more rigorous view of the data by site suggests that the trial lacked ecological validity. When rates of response and remission are higher for placebo than for active drug at six of nine sites (the authors’ Figure 2), the pooled analysis becomes an exercise in futility. Moreover, the faintly encouraging secondary analyses lacked a sound base in any primary effect, and they were not corrected for multiple comparisons. These concerns are compounded by the multivariate statistical approach, which inflated the practical significance of the secondary analyses.For instance, in a secondary analysis, the authors reported a significantly higher rate of response (p=0.04) to citalopram versus placebo in the high-severity group (defined by an initial Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score >24). Not only was this “significant” finding not subjected to Bonferroni correction, it did not hold up when the analysis was conducted on the primary outcome data (χ2=3.07, df=1, p<0.08).Although inflating the trend for citalopram to be more effective in the high-severity group, the authors failed to point out that the low-severity group, in which there was absolutely no suggestion of a drug effect, constituted 61% of the sample. Their data comport with the recent recommendation from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in Britain that “antidepressants should not be used for the initial treatment of mild depression because the risk-benefit ratio is poor” (2).As to the authors’ anodyne discussion of the perspective that placebo treatment in a clinical trial amounts to far more than no treatment, the point is so well known that it does not bear tedious repetition and elaboration. It is also irrelevant to the primary objective of the study, which was to determine whether the use of citalopram is associated with added therapeutic value beyond what can be achieved by the attentive clinical interest provided to all patients.

Reconciling Two Views of Cryptography (The Computational Soundness of Formal Encryption)*

Two distinct, rigorous views of cryptography have developed over the years, in two mostly separate communities. One of the views relies on a simple but effective formal approach; the other, on a de...

Complexity, communication between cells, and identifying the functional components of living systems: some observations.

The concept of 'complexity' has become very important in theoretical biology. It is a many faceted concept and too new and ill defined to have a universally accepted meaning. This review examines the development of this concept from the point of view of its usefulness as a criteria for the study of living systems to see what it has to offer as a new approach. In particular, one definition of complexity has been put forth which has the necessary precision and rigor to be considered as a useful categorization of systems, especially as it pertains to those we call 'living'. This definition, due to Robert Rosen, has been developed in a number of works and involves some deep new concepts about the way we view systems. In particular, it focuses on the way we view the world and actually practice science through the use of the modelling relation. This mathematical object models the process by which we assign meaning to the world we perceive. By using the modelling relation, it is possible to identify the subjective nature of our practices and deal with this issue explicitly. By so doing, it becomes clear that our notion of complexity and especially its most popular manifestations, is in large part a product of the historical processes which lead to the present state of scientific epistemology. In particular, it is a reaction to the reductionist/mechanistic view of nature which can be termed the 'Newtonian Paradigm'. This approach to epistemology has dominated for so that its use as a model has become implicit in most of what we do in and out of science. The alternative to this approach is examined and related to the special definition of complexity given by Rosen. Some historical examples are used to emphasize the dependence of our view of what is complex in a popular sense on the ever changing state of our knowledge. The role of some popular concepts such as chaotic dynamics are examined in this context. The fields of artificial life and related areas are also viewed from the perspective of this rigorous view of complexity and found lacking. The notion that in some way life exists 'at the edge of chaos' is examined from the perspective of the second law of thermodynamics given by Schneider and Kay. Finally, the casual elements in complex systems are explored in relation to complexity. Rosen has shown that a clear difference in causal relations exists between complex and simple systems and that this difference leads to a uniquely useful definition of what we mean by 'living'. Rosen makes it very clear that the class of systems which are complex is a much larger class than those which we call living. For that reason, the focus of this review will be on complexity as a stepping stone towards the deeper question of what makes a system alive.

Extension and Application of a Local, Minimum Aliasing Method to Multidimensional Problems in Limited-Area Domains

Abstract The minimal aliasing local spectral (LS) method is a numerical technique that embodies features of both finite-difference (FD) and spectral transform (ST) methods. Anderson first described this method in the context of the one-dimensional advection-diffusion equation. In the current paper, we describe the extension of the LS method to multidimensions. First, we review the one-dimensional version of the LS method from a more rigorous view. In addition, we describe interpolation, differentiation, and dealiasing fitters for the LS method based on Lagrange polynomials. Without the dealiasing filters, this version of the LS method collapses to a standard high-order Taylor series FD scheme. When filter lengths span the integration domain and the dealiasing stage is retained, the LS method becomes an ST method, as described by Anderson. Issues concerning the implementation of the LS method in multidimensions are also discussed. These issues include the form of the high-resolution grid, the implementatio...