Strict View Research Articles

A Review of NICE Methods and Processes Across Health Technology Assessment Programmes: Why the Differences and What is the Impact?

Decisions made by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) exert an influence on the allocation of resources within 'fixed' National Health Service budgets. Yet guidance for different types of health interventions is handled via different 'programmes' within NICE, which follow different methods and processes. The objective of this research was to identify differences in the processes and methods of NICE health technology assessment programmes and to explore how these could impact on allocative efficiency within the National Health Service. Data were extracted from the NICE technology appraisal programme, medical technologies guidance, diagnostic assessment programme, highly specialised technologies programme, and clinical guidelines process and methods manuals to undertake a systematic comparison. Five qualitative interviews were carried out with NICE members of staff and committee members to explore the reasons for the differences found. The main differences identified were in the required evidence review period, or lack thereof, mandatory funding status, the provision of a reference case for economic evaluation, the requirement for and the type of economic analysis undertaken, and the decision making criteria used for appraisal. Many of the differences found can be justified on grounds of practicality and relevance to the health technologies under assessment. Nevertheless, from a strict utilitarian view, there are several potential areas of inefficiency that could lead to the misallocation of resources within the National Health Service, although some of these might be eliminated or reduced if an egalitarian view is taken. The challenge is determining where society is willing to trade health gains between different people.

Computation semantics of the functional scientific workflow language Cuneiform

AbstractCuneiform is a minimal functional programming language for large-scale scientific data analysis. Implementing a strict black-box view on external operators and data, it allows the direct embedding of code in a variety of external languages like Python or R, provides data-parallel higher order operators for processing large partitioned data sets, allows conditionals and general recursion, and has a naturally parallelizable evaluation strategy suitable for multi-core servers and distributed execution environments like Hadoop, HTCondor, or distributed Erlang. Cuneiform has been applied in several data-intensive research areas including remote sensing, machine learning, and bioinformatics, all of which critically depend on the flexible assembly of pre-existing tools and libraries written in different languages into complex pipelines. This paper introduces the computation semantics for Cuneiform. It presents Cuneiform's abstract syntax, a simple type system, and the semantics of evaluation. Providing an unambiguous specification of the behavior of Cuneiform eases the implementation of interpreters which we showcase by providing a concise reference implementation in Erlang. The similarity of Cuneiform's syntax to the simply typed lambda calculus puts Cuneiform in perspective and allows a straightforward discussion of its design in the context of functional programming. Moreover, the simple type system allows the deduction of the language's safety up to black-box operators. Last, the formulation of the semantics also permits the verification of compilers to and from other workflow languages.

Désaxations carpiennes adaptatives après fractures de l’extrémité distale du radius

Adaptive carpal malalignment is the consequence of malunion of the distal radius. Since the radial metaphysis and capitate have to be aligned, any disorientation of the radial epiphysis will force the proximal carpal row to adapt, as it is the only mobile element. There are two types of adaptation depending where the compensative occurs: (1) midcarpal – leading to flexion between the lunate and capitate, with the lunate maintaining a normal relationship with the radial epiphysis axis; (2) radiocarpal – combining flexion and dorsal displacement of the lunate relative to the axis of the radial epiphysis, with the midcarpal joint remaining aligned. Clinically, adaptive carpal malalignment is not the first reason for consultation in cases of distal radius malunion. It occurs in cases of moderate deformity with preserved pronation–supination in a young patient who has good mobility. It generates dorsal pain that may be associated with a snapping sensation. The diagnosis requires strict lateral X-ray views. Over time, the wrist becomes stiff but analgesic and is often well tolerated functionally. This type of deformity has not been shown to lead to osteoarthritis. Osteotomy to correct the malunion is the only way to treat adaptive carpal malalignment in active young patients who have a mobile but painful wrist.

The ‘beautiful’ in information: thoughts about visual literacy and aesthetics

Many agencies have promulgated standards for visual literacy. These groups include libraries, museums, computer science and graphic designers. The implementation of these standards tends to be skill-based courses for production. Other, larger questions about visual literacy are eclipsed and the growing number of research areas investigating visual literacy has made a complicated, contradictory literature. The dominant stream of discourse in the humanities emphasizes cultural, historical and social-constructionist perspectives. An alternative perspective, which was dominant until the 1970s, still seems to lead the sciences, a pseudo-objectivist perspective. The theme of this essay is that considering visual literacy from a yet-earlier analysis, that of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of judgment about ‘beauty,’ may lead to a shareable discourse to advance our study about the interpretation of visuals and create a foundation to allow for individual and community-based interpretations, a middle-way between an entirely strict empiricist view and a hyper-relative socially constructed one. This approach may be controversial, but all the more useful to sparking discussion of deeper issues about interpretation and professionals’ advancement in visual literacy.

Bach and God by Michael Marissen

Reviewed by: Bach and God by Michael Marissen Paul Westermeyer Bach and God. By Michael Marissen. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 257pp. Michael Marissen is Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College. One of his teachers was Eric Chafe who discussed J. S. Bach’s Cantata 21 (Tears into Wine, 2015) in a lengthy tome of six [End Page 465] hundred pages. The detail in that book concerns the theological theme that produced the title, but the underlying theme is that Bach’s music requires both a theological/liturgical and a musical understanding. In far fewer words, Marissen argues the same underlying theme, that Bach’s music cannot be understood as aesthetic musical pleasure in which words can be ignored, nor can the importance of words be emphasized to make the notes trivial ornaments. Rather, the music interprets the text. Marissen’s book, however, unlike Chafe’s, is devoted to more than one work. Its detail centers in part on The Musical Offering as homage to God and not “abstract” chamber music or homage to Frederick the Great (7, chapter 7), but this book is primarily about anti-Judaism which here means not mean disagreement, but contempt. Bach, like all of us, had his blind spots. His period, like all periods, had its systems of injustice. The church, though sojourner, participates in and sometimes supports these principalities and powers, denying its own message which is partly why it confesses its unknown sins. Bach was not exempt from these sins. That is the detail Marissen examines. He points out that Bach sinned in against Muslims, Roman Catholics, and Calvinists; and he reflected the anti-Judaism of his time and place. He comes off better than Luther (113), and his St. John Passion comes off better than Handel’s Messiah. (Marissen devoted whole books to those two works [Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St. John Passion, 1998; Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah, 2014]). But Bach is not exempt, at least not in Marissen’s view. In a long footnote (68) he acknowledges those who disagree with him. Marissen divided his book into four parts with seven chapters, each an edited version of an earlier article. Part I discusses basic Lutheranism with two chapters on the musically theological and historically informed readings of Bach’s librettos. Part II takes up anti-Judaism with a chapter on Bach’s Cantata 46 about the destruction of Jerusalem (amazing musical exegesis, but Bach at his “grimmest,” [115]) and one on Bach’s cantatas, the Jews, and the Gospel of John. Part III continues anti-Judaism with two chapters on Bach’s Passion settings. Part IV discusses religious expression in chamber music. Its chapter on the Musical Offering has affinities to Marissen’s [End Page 466] compelling insights in The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, 1995. Although Marissen may press some ambiguities to their breaking point, he notes that Bach’s St. John Passion indicates a greater concern for Christians and their sin than for anti-Judaism (155–157) and that other texts in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion work against Matthew 25:27, “His blood be on us and on our children” (158–59 and 179ff.). What Bach thought, however, whether he even agreed with his librettos (75, n. 26, and 123), or what Marissen believes are not the chief concerns here. (Marissen comes from a strict Dutch Calvinist background and views himself as an agnostic.) This is a careful study, in part a detailed biblical word study, laying out the anti-Judaic perspective of which Bach was a part. For providing us that data we need to be grateful. Paul Westermeyer Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota Copyright © 2016 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc

The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown (review)

Reviewed by: The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown Robin Darling Young, Ian Wood, Susan Wessel, Bernard McGinn, J. Patout Burns, and Peter Brown The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity. By Peter Brown. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Pp. xix, 262. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-674-96758-8. Introduction by Robin Darling Young (The Catholic University of America) The writings of the earliest followers of Jesus contain vivid, if terse, descriptions of an as-yet unseen world to come; their successors in the still-small Christian movement of the early-second century, spreading westward through the Roman world, treasured earlier, Jewish descriptions of the afterlife and continued to elaborate new ideas that were often received through dreams and visions. They frequently held strict views about divine rewards (for the righteous, especially martyrs) and punishments (for the great many wicked). Here Peter Brown shows, in five chapters, how Christian teachings in the Latin-speaking West changed over the course of the centuries—from the mid-second to the late tenth; from Hermas and Tertullian to Julian, bishop of Toledo. Writing in 688, Julian compiled a Prognosticon Futuri Saeculi as a florilegium (Brown calls it a “manual,” p. 4) of earlier teachers’ apparently concordant opinions about the soul’s future after death. But although Julian thought that Christian teachers of his day agreed with the patristic authors, his book inadvertently preserves evidence of deep change—from the early opinion that only some would be saved to the contemporary view that many could be saved with the help of prayers and offerings. This shift in authoritative opinion resulted, Brown wants to argue, from the early idea that the souls of the dead benefited from the prayers of Christians (as did Dinocrates, the brother of St. Perpetua). Yet as the Church grew, it included more and more Christians who were neither thoroughly holy nor completely wicked: the ordinary. Surely the prayers of [End Page 879] righteous Christians would avail for them? Almsgiving began to be directed their way. Increasingly, some of the massive amounts of wealth that came to the Church as it grew and became a licit religion, both as a result of imperial largesse and the donations of wealthy Christians, could be put to use supporting and encouraging prayers for the dead. Purging the sin that impeded a happy afterlife became easier, too, once the practice of confession had begun to spread outside the Irish-influenced monasteries of Gaul, and sins could be ameliorated in advance of death. Thus from the first chapter, in which Brown discusses the solidarity of early Roman Christians and their intercession for their dead such as in the San Sebastiano catacomb, the book proceeds to describe the adoption of an increasingly detailed idea that the imperiled soul could be ransomed. In the second and third chapters, Brown returns to his persistent object of study, St. Augustine, to watch how Hippo’s bishop—pastor of souls as well as controversialist—judiciously treats questions of the future of the dead, including his strongly Christian, but not perfect, mother. He also contrasts Augustine’s conviction that the Church was a corpus permixtum and his related appreciation of almsgiving with Pelagius’s strict view and consequent insistence on the obligation to Christian perfection, through ascetic renunciation. Chapter 4 turns to Gaul, where in the growing monastic influence of the fifth century Christians both gained a more detailed view of the afterlife and benefited from an increased use of penance. Finally, in the fifth chapter, Brown reaches the hortatory preaching of Gregory, bishop of Tours (d. 594), and his detection of the signs of God’s immanent judgment in the state of the poor. But as the epilogue describes, the future of the Christian view of the soul’s ransom developed significantly in the next century—from the influence of Columbanus and the Celts in France that fostered numerous monastic foundations as a place of intercession for their wealthy founders to the numerous visions of heaven and hell as told by pious monks or nuns—visions that confirmed...

Which Metric Is More Appropriate to Evaluate Researchers

Iranian medical universities choose their best researchers in each field annually. The protocols of this process have been modified quite often, but the changes were not fundamental and did not lead to all-inclusive evaluation tools. The recent article in Asia Pacific Journal of Medical Toxicology, which proposes a scoring scale for evaluation of scientist's called 360-degree researcher evaluation (1), not only opens a new window for detailed evaluation of researchers' products and creations, but also provides a basic platform for promoting the research. In community medicine, there is a strict view to primarily address upstream causes of health problems while we look for solutions for downstream ones (2). It seems that this view has been considered in the designing process of this new scale, as for example, some neglected criteria which build capacity for production (upstream causes of low production) are taken into account. We really appreciate the holistic view of the scale, but we believe that following suggestions would help to improve its utility: In science development domain: It seems that the parameter of number of downloads of articles is not an appropriate criterion, because some journals do not report this measure. Besides, its value in scholarly communication is still under debate and it can be easily manipulated by the researcher himself (3). In calculating scores for journal articles, the calculation method is based on dividing factor (IF) by 30. Many journals have low IFs of just 0.1 or 0.2 and this calculation can make too many decimals. However, the good news is that with this method of calculation, there is more emphasis on the design of the study than the IF of the publishing journal. In economic impact domain: The measurement method is based on ranking in institution. As some parameters only receives 1 score at maximum and there may be several staff members in one department, the acquired score for one person may be too small and calculation of the score of several persons by comparing them with each other can be difficult. Cost benefit and cost effectiveness are not two distinct concepts, they are just two different approaches to a unique comparison analysis (4). Therefore, it seems that taking both of them as two different citeria for evaluation of a research will overestimate a single effect in the total score. In societal impact domain: Although, we declare that considering the recommended parameters in this domain for evaluation of research impacts will have enormous effects on guiding the global projects to more efficient ones, these parameters are not clearly and objectively defined. How can somebody, for example, determine the amount of increased life expectancy from a single specific research? It seems that the four-fold score for international versus national conferences is a bit underestimating the value of national ones. Taken together, the proposed scale is a well-designed protocol for considering the most important dimensions of research. However, ensuring the reliability and validity of this tool requires further studies.

Conrad Waddington and the origin of epigenetics.

Denis Noble discusses Conrad Waddington's classic paper, "The genetic assimilation of the bithorax phenotype", published in Evolution in 1956.

Teaching as an exaptation.

We appreciate and endorse Kline's ethological taxonomy and its application. However, the definition of teaching she presents is problematic, as it replaces mentalistic intent with intention on the part of natural selection. We discuss problems with the strict adaptationist view and suggest instead that the five forms of teaching presented in the taxonomy may constitute exaptations rather than adaptations.

An Intentional Tort Theory of Patents

This Article challenges the dogma of U.S. patent law that direct infringement is a strict liability tort. Impermissibly practicing a patented invention does create liability even if the infringer did not intend to infringe or know about the patent. The consensus is that this is a form of strict liability. The flaw in the consensus is that it proves too little, for the same is true of intentional torts: intent to commit the tort is unnecessary, and ignorance of the legal right is no excuse. What is relevant is intent to perform the action that the law deems tortious. So for the tort of patent infringement, the question is whether liability should require that the infringer intended to perform the actions that constitute infringement. The patent statute and the few cases that have broached the question suggest the answer is yes — tortious intent should be necessary. However, patent law currently takes no position on tortious intent. The strict liability view is merely a default. This Article fills that gap by applying ordinary tort principles to patent infringement. The proposed framework offers a powerful policy lever for important issues implicating the notice function of patents, including divided infringement, claim construction, and inherency. This framework also mitigates the effects of patent assertion on risk allocation in the patent system by differentiating among makers, sellers, and users of patented innovation — a distinction that is economically important but has no principled basis in patent doctrine.

Assessment of Fetal Nasal Bone Length and Nasofrontal Angle in the Second Trimester in Normal Indian Pregnancies

AbstractThe authors aimed to establish the reference ranges of fetal nasal bone length (NBL) in the second trimester and evaluate the relationship between fetal NBL and biparietal diameter (BPD) at 17–22 weeks of gestation in the Indian population. The authors also determined the normal ranges of the fetal nasofrontal angle (NFA). Ultrasound examination was done in 486 singleton pregnancies at 17–22 weeks of gestation. The fetal NBL was measured in millimeters in a strict sagittal view of the fetal head. The NFA was also measured in this mid-sagittal profile. The authors present the normal range of fetal NBL. Mean NBL was found to increase linearly with advancing gestation and BPD. The NBL appears to be marginally longer in Indian fetuses than other Asian fetuses. The minimum, maximum, and mean NFA values were 112, 142, and 130 degrees. The authors present the normal range of NBL in the second trimester in the Indian population and identify its linear relationship with gestational age. The normal range varies among races and so a relative percentile is a more reliable screening criterion than an absolute value. The authors present the normal ranges of fetal NFA from 18 to 21 weeks.

NMR-based Structural Analysis of the Complete Rough-type Lipopolysaccharide Isolated from Capnocytophaga canimorsus

We here describe the NMR analysis of an intact lipopolysaccharide (LPS, endotoxin) in water with 1,2-dihexanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine as detergent. When HPLC-purified rough-type LPS of Capnocytophaga canimorsus was prepared, (13)C,(15)N labeling could be avoided. The intact LPS was analyzed by homonuclear ((1)H) and heteronuclear ((1)H,(13)C, and (1)H,(31)P) correlated one- and two-dimensional NMR techniques as well as by mass spectrometry. It consists of a penta-acylated lipid A with an α-linked phosphoethanolamine attached to C-1 of GlcN (I) in the hybrid backbone, lacking the 4'-phosphate. The hydrophilic core oligosaccharide was found to be a complex hexasaccharide with two mannose (Man) and one each of 3-deoxy-d-manno-oct-2-ulosonic acid (Kdo), Gal, GalN, and l-rhamnose residues. Position 4 of Kdo is substituted by phosphoethanolamine, also present in position 6 of the branched Man(I) residue. This rough-type LPS is exceptional in that all three negative phosphate residues are "masked" by positively charged ethanolamine substituents, leading to an overall zero net charge, which has so far not been observed for any other LPS. In biological assays, the corresponding isolated lipid A was found to be endotoxically almost inactive. By contrast, the intact rough-type LPS described here expressed a 20,000-fold increased endotoxicity, indicating that the core oligosaccharide significantly contributes to the endotoxic potency of the whole rough-type C. canimorsus LPS molecule. Based on these findings, the strict view that lipid A alone represents the toxic center of LPS needs to be reassessed.

Compulsory License under Patent Regime: Indian Perspective

Patents in India are granted to encourage the inventions. It secures that patents have worked on a commercial scale. The Act ensures that a monopoly for the import of patented article is not enjoyed by the patentee. It further provides for the compulsory license as a measure that the public need is not overlooked by the patent law. In this article, recent instances of grant and refusal of the compulsory licenses in India are considered and the current views on it are being discussed. Within this frame of analysis, it is proposed that the need to change the Indian view for grant is relevant. Compulsory licenses are becoming a tool for the easy access of generic drugs in the market. Hence India has from the beginning kept the strict view on grant of such compulsory licenses. It’s evident from the current scenario that India has rejected many applications of compulsory licenses. Though it affected various international business companies as the nature of environment required for their development couldn’t be meet with non granting of compulsory license in India, certain positive changes has occurred which is evident from the grant of first compulsory license in India. The article deals with the statutory provisions of compulsory license, international treaties and agreements with regard to compulsory license and the instances of grant of compulsory license thus far.

Age and individual differences in visual working memory deficit induced by overload.

Many studies on working memory have assumed that one can determine an individual's fixed memory capacity. In the current study, we took an individual differences approach to investigate whether visual working memory (VWM) capacity was stable irrespective of the number of to-be-remembered objects and participant age. Younger and older adults performed a change detection task using several objects defined by color. Results showed wide variability in VWM capacity across memory set sizes, age, and individuals. A marked decrease in the number of objects held in VWM was observed in both younger and older adults with low memory capacity, but not among high-capacity individuals, when set size went well beyond the limits of VWM capacity. In addition, a decrease in the number of objects held in VWM was alleviated among low-capacity younger adults by increasing VWM encoding time; however, increasing encoding time did not benefit low-capacity older adults. These findings suggest that low-capacity individuals are likely to show decreases in VWM capacity induced by overload, and aging exacerbates this deficit such that it cannot be recovered by simply increasing encoding time. Overall, our findings challenge the prevailing assumption that VWM capacity is fixed and stable, encouraging a revision to the strict view that VWM capacity is constrained by a fixed number of distinct “slots” in which high-resolution object representations are stored.

PERBEDAAN CORAK PEMAHAMAN AGAMA ANTARA FUNDAMENTALISME DAN LIBERALISME SERTA DAMPAKNYA BAGI TIMBULNYA KONFLIK KEAGAMAAN

<strong>Abstract:</strong><em> Religion shapes its followers’ mind and attitudes. Belief in truth of religion often stimulates religious followers to defend such a truth claim and advocate it beyond their religious fellows. This attitude yields personalization and standardization of religious truth to justify others. This article examines fundamental different ways in understanding religion and the impacts of this to religious conflict and the rise of religious fundamentalism and liberalism. Religious values, missions and the idea of salvation often contradict with local-cultural norms and stir up interreligious horizontal conflicts. This is because followers of religion hold a strict view that only their religion is valid while others are wrong. As a result, conflict occurs inevitably. The conflict ranges from ideologies, ideas to physical violence. It should be noted that all religious schools and thoughts, be they fundamentalism or liberalism, express only a small part and relative truth of religion. Therefore, they should co-operate one another to seek the ultimate truth. Without liberalism, fundamentalism cannot find the truth and without fundamentalism, liberalism may not be unable to find the ultimate truth, God. </em>

Grand challenges in cellular biochemistry: the "next-gen" biochemistry.

It is said that Biochemistry is a young scientific discipline, making its “formal” debut toward the end of the 1900th century (Manchester, 2000), with seminal works by Buchner (1897, Jaenicke, 2007), (Pasteur and Berthelot, 1906), Hill (1898), Embden and Glaessner (1901), Meyerhof (1911), Parnas (1911), Harden (1911), and, of course, Michaelis and Menten (Johnson, 2013; Michaelis and Menten, 2013; Deichmann et al., 2014). These early and important contributions marked the road for future work in the fields of (a) chemical and biochemical structures and associated functions by Sanger (1945), Perutz (1942), Franklin (1950), Watson and Crick (1953), Pauling et al. (1949, 1951), Pauling and Corey (1951), Zuckerkandl and Pauling (1962), Kornberg (1974, 1977), Boyer (1997), Walker et al. (1982), Abrahams et al. (1994); (b) metabolic pathways and regulation by Ochoa and Valdecasas (1929), Krebs and Johnson (1937), Novelli and Lipmann (1947), Fischer et al. (1959), Cori and Cori (1923, 1925), Houssay (1945, 1948), Lehninger (1942, 1945), Caputto et al. (1949), Cardini et al. (1950), Mitchell (1961), Benson and Calvin (1947), Hershko et al. (1980), Hershko and Ciechanover (1992), and (c) contributing to innovative techniques or approaches dedicated to advance basic knowledge (and making our lives easier) with Smith (1982), Winter et al. (1982), Mullis et al. (1986) (ante and post-PCR era) and Shimomura (1979), Chalfie et al. (1994), Heim et al. (1994) (ante and post-green fluorescent protein), Yalow et al. (1964), and Williams et al. (1977), Springer et al. (1979); (d) signaling molecules and signal transduction by Levi-Montalcini and Amprino (1947), Cohen et al. (1954), Sibley et al. (1986), Benovic et al. (1987), Frielle et al. (1987), Fargin et al. (1988). Back in 1896, Buchner's preparation of a “juice” from yeast (Buchner, 1897) is often regarded as the birth of modern biochemistry. However, I tend to digress with this strict view of biochemistry, reasoning that we (as a species) were taking advantage of biochemical principles without having a deep understanding of the underlying molecular processes. For instance, consider Buchner's “juice” or actually wine making. This method, that has at its core the fermentation process one of the key pathways in biochemistry, dating back to around 6000 BC (Chambers and Pretorius, 2010). Refer to the complicated production of fish sauces considered among the most common flavor-enhancing condiments produced and distributed across ancient Roman Empire (Lowe, 2009). Another example comes from the mixture of organic preservatives (i.e., biochemical) used for ancient Egyptian mummification (Buckley and Evershed, 2001). Or think about the effects of diet on health as recognized by Hippocrates (460–377 BC; Caramia, 2006), the arab physician Ibn al-Nafis (Al-Nafis, 13th century) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519; Caramia, 2006) as well as the experimentation with animals and structure—function of human body set by the Medieval Islamic era as early as the 9th century (Abdel-Halim, 2011). This early biochemistry was empirical, done in settings other than laboratories, serving immediate needs, and some passed onto next generations by oral traditions. Then we would reason, are these contributions valuable to the genesis of biochemistry? Should they be dismissed because the microorganisms were not genotyped, the reactions were done in dolia instead of microplates? Then, if we accept these very early facts (and why not experiments?) as part of the genesis of this field, we will need to accept that biochemistry is a long, long (ancient?) journey that has accompanied us since the dawn of civilization. The general field of Biochemistry has grown since then to the point that it has been expanded to various more specific areas of research. For example, Cellular Biochemistry is at the crossroads of Chemistry (Organic, Physical, Analytical, Inorganic, Biological) and Biology (Chemical, Molecular) including studies on biomolecular structures and the mechanism of biochemical reactions, but also on the biological purposes of biochemical phenomena, i.e., metabolic pathways and their control, physiological significance and clinical relevance of topics presented. The regulation includes protein and gene expression analyses as well as protein post-translational modifications, epigenetic controls, metabolite-control systems, and gene-environment interactions as well as cell-cell interactions. This field covers areas from fundamental biochemical principles (e.g., enzymology, macromolecule structures) in cell-free systems to pathways, their regulation, and integration in physiology, and how their disturbance could lead to a number of diseases. While tremendous progress has been achieved, here are some of the aspects that we think needs additional attention in the next upcoming years.

Separation Anxiety? Rethinking the Role of Morality in International Human Rights Lawmaking

The role of the moral obligation of States, or how States ought to behave, in international law is a source of significant controversy. The dominant 20th Century positivist paradigm of international lawmaking gave short shrift to moral obligation. This account of international lawmaking holds that there is a separation between law and morality (“Separation Thesis”), with the latter outside the bounds of international law. Such an approach is defended as necessary to overcome disagreement on conceptions of justice and respect pluralism, given the heterogeneity of the international community. A separation of law and morality is also thought to foster greater predictability regarding the content of law, critical to avoiding fragmentation in a legal regime without an organized settlement system. While many non-positivist international scholars have challenged this understanding of law, positivists have largely adhered to a strict view of the Separation Thesis.

Calibrating Interpretive Incorporation: Constitutional Interpretation and Pregnancy Discrimination Under CEDAW

The success of implementing human rights treaties is often dependent on a country's national laws and local conditions. There is an implementation gap in dualist regimes where courts do not implement human rights treaty provisions because they have not been domesticated by a legislative (or other necessary) incorporating act. Interpretive incorporation is a judicial trend that seeks to mitigate this strict separatist view. This article examines the use of interpretive incorporation in Malaysia to incorporate CEDAW's prohibition against pregnancy discrimination through constitutional interpretation. It calibrates the outcomes of interpretive incorporation based on the status judges effectively give to unincorporated human rights treaties. Finally, the article reflects on some of the continuing local constraints on interpretive incorporation.

The Comparative Method and Law Reform

This 1988 LLM thesis examines law reform, the comparative method, and the combination of these two elements. A broad definition of law reform is adopted, to include law reform by legislators and judges, and proposals for law reform from law reform agencies and from academics. It is explained that the comparative method (commonly referred to as comparative law) is still at an experimental stage, and that no particularly rigid method of comparison has been adopted for the purposes of this thesis. The theory of reception and legal transplants is discussed, from Montesquieu to date. Particular emphasis is placed on the debate as to the need to adapt foreign ideas to suit the needs of the donee's present system. It is argued that Montesquieu's strict views are counterproductive.The use of the comparative method in the preparation of legislation is considered - the role of government departments, parliamentary committees and academics; the choice between codification and special statutes.Law Reform Agencies (LRAs) are discussed at length. Useful data was provided by a survey, conducted for this thesis, which was sent to most of the common-law LRAs in the world. 29 completed questionnaires were returned, from the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, U.S.A., Africa and elsewhere. The common-law LRAs are compared with European ministries of justice.Observations are made on the distinction between lawyers' law and social-policy law, the appointment of non-lawyer members to LRAs, the consultation process, implementation rates and finance of LRAs. A table of LRA budgets and a table of LRA implementation rates are set out. There is a study of the use of the comparative method in LRAs.It is argued that judges have a significant law reforming role, despite their dicta to the contrary.The combination of the comparative method and judicial law reform is then considered, as is the suggestive role of judges in law reform (when judges suggest remedial action to the legislature).

A Policy of Force

The Corfu Channel case was the first decision of the ICJ, and the first to concern the use of force. In it the ICJ took a strict view of the new prohibition of the use of force and warned against a policy of force. This warning seems to have been forgotten by some states and commentators in recent years, but it is as important today as it was in 1949. This paper examines recent attempts by states and writers to justify a wide right to use force - in Kosovo (1999), in the doctrine of revived Security Council authorization to use force against Iraq (2003) and in pre-emptive self-defence. In so doing many of them echo the arguments of the UK in the Corfu Channel case. Such wide justifications for the resort to force can be seen as a policy of force; International law and policy do not support such claims.