Comprehending disclosure: must patients understand the risks they run?

It is well known that competent patients must be told about the risks of proposed medical procedures. This paper argues that recent professional guidelines and the law of negligence now take matters further by requiring doctors to take reasonable steps in an attempt to ensure that patients understand the risks they are being invited to run, so facilitating meaningful choices and the opportunity to give a properly informed consent.     

Who made the disclosure? Recorded discussions between children and caretakers suspecting child abuse

Within investigations of suspected child abuse, the child's account is often at the core of the judicial process. When analysing the child's account, it is therefore important to consider how parents may have discussed the suspected abuse prior to the official investigation. However, no studies up to the present time have investigated discussions in real cases where parents suspect that their children have been abused. We analysed a sample (N = 19) of recorded conversations between parents and their children, delivered to the police as evidence for alleged physical or sexual abuse. Analyses of the questions used and the information provided in the discussions showed that the parent's strategies when questioning their children were extremely leading and that in the majority of the cases, all new information was provided by the parents. In spite of this, the parents deemed the recorded conversations as records of the children's accounts. While the sample was small and likely to be unrepresentative of child abuse suspicions in general, the findings have important practical implications. The results indicate that when planning an interview in a case where the alleged abuse relies on what a child allegedly has told a parent, particular caution should be taken when referring to these conversations.     

Grace,gold, or glory? Exploring incentives for invention disclosure in the university context

What motivates university scientists to identify practical applications for their research results and consider having them patent-protected? A wealth of research points towards a complex blend of factors, including organizational antecedents, social norms and personal-level expectations. Few studies, however, have attempted to investigate the effect of concrete incentives from the perspective of individual scientists’ decision-making. In this paper, we operationalize the propensity to patent and commercialize research results as the intention to submit an invention disclosure filing. We use scenario-based conjoint analysis to capture university scientists’ preference structures for different incentive policies. Results indicate that direct and indirect financial incentives are dominant drivers. In addition, a grace period that would allow for patenting and publishing in parallel and the inclusion of patents in academic performance assessments are worth considering, whereas the specific setup of the technology transfer organization and public recognition of achievements in form of an award appear to have limited effect. However, preferences for incentives and hence their effectiveness vary significantly across academic disciplines and ranks as well as with scientists’ working experience, patenting experience and research orientation. On this basis, we can derive more qualified recommendations for incentive system design.     

Public disclosure: Sex offenders' perceptions of the pilot scheme in England. Compliance,legitimacy and living a “Good Life”

Abstract

In 2008–09 four police forces in England piloted a scheme requiring disclosure of information about registered sex offenders (RSOs) to members of the public meeting certain eligibility criteria. Drawing upon data gathered during the evaluation of the pilot, this paper explores the offenders' perceptions of the scheme. In particular, the paper explores RSOs' perceptions of fairness and legitimacy of public disclosure and how these may impact upon their compliance. The RSO interviews also provided limited but informative evidence on the ways in which RSOs manage their lives in the community, and the potential for public disclosure to both hinder and reinforce the living of a “Good Life”.     

Trisomy 21 disclosure using STR and SNP markers typed by MiSeq FGx™ Forensic Genomics System

The presence of a tri-allelic pattern at a single locus in a multiplex short tandem repeat (STR) profile is a rarely observable event. Generally, based on peak height measured by the capillary electrophoresis (CE) method and combination of alleles, the tri-allelic pattern is distinguishable into two predominant types: type 1 and 2, which are caused, respectively, by somatic mutations and chromosomal rearrangements. When tri-allelic patterns at more than one STR located on the same chromosome are detected, there is a reasonable suspicion of a trisomy due to an extra copy of a chromosome. Therefore, information on the type of three-band pattern is usually limited to STRs localized on the same chromosome included in the forensic kit in use and sometimes in insufficient numbers to classify this event correctly. The opportunity to extend this evaluation to additional markers, such as SNPs detectable using NGS, has not yet been explored. In this study, using the ForenSeq™ DNA Signature Prep kit, two cases of autosomal aneuploidy were revealed on chromosome 21, relying not only on STRs assessment but also extending the analysis to the five identity-informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (iiSNPs) localized on chromosome 21.     

W and the design of the na

e browse background and design navigational maps properly in VE and WWW for reducing cognitive burden and improving 搃mmersion?in VE.virtual environments, www, hypertext, disorientation0心理科学进展Journal of Developments In Psychology76-82B845F102;1;E;FF102_1;沈昉000     

Agamben’s Grammar of the Secret Under the Sign of the Law

This paper suggests that a grammar of the secret forms a concept in Agamben’s work, a gap that grounds the enigma of sovereignty. Between the Indo-European *krei, *se, and *per themes, the secret is etymologically linked to the logics of separation and potentiality that together enable the pliant and emergent structure of sovereignty. Sovereignty’s logic of separation meets the logic of relation in the form of abandonment: the point at which division has exhausted itself and reaches an indivisible element, bare life, the exception separated from the form of life and captured in a separate sphere. The arcanum imperii of sovereignty and the cipher of bare life are held together in the relation of the ban as the twin secrets of biopower, maintained by the potentiality of law that works itself as a concealed, inscrutable force. But the ‘real’ secret of sovereignty, I suggest, is its dialectical reversibility, the point at which the concept of the secret is met by its own immanent unworking by the critic and scribe under the *krei theme, and subject to abandonment through the work of profanation; here, different species of the secret are thrown against one another, one order undoing the other. The secret founded upon the sacred is displaced by Agamben’s critical orientation toward the immanent: what is immanent is both potential and hiddenness.     

Merger—the name of the FE game

In the Australian legal environment today the overwhelming importance of laws made by Parliament is obvious, yet many first year law programmes pay insufficient attention to the coordinated teaching of statutory interpretation (SI). This project formed part of a collaborative initiative between an educational developer and the coordinator of legal research methods (LRM) to introduce statutory interpretation into a first year unit of study. Our study used a qualitative research framework – a questionnaire was administered to students at two intervals throughout the first semester. In Week 3, 160 students participated in the questionnaire and at Week 4, a keystone module on statutory interpretation using a building block approach was introduced in LRM. Since the nature of assessment in LRM is largely reflection, this unit lent itself well to investigating the language and literacy challenges of statutory interpretation, in particular, to students monitoring their own progress in this regard. The overall aim of the project was to establish a framework for students to build on their knowledge and understanding of statutory interpretation throughout their undergraduate studies, and in the interests of improved learning and teaching outcomes, for staff to be able to document the changes in student thinking. This paper focuses on the preliminary stage of our investigation into the language and literacy challenges involved in introducing statutory interpretation into a first year unit of study.

I know of only one authority which might justify the suggested method of construction. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

(Alice Through the Looking Glass, c. vi.)

After all this long discussion, the question is whether the words “If a man has” can mean “If a man thinks he has.” I am of opinion that they cannot, and that the case should be decided accordingly.

(Lord Atkin in Liversidge v Anderson [1942] AC 206)     

Why Do the Finns Trust the Police?

Ideological trends in the criminal policy of the Nordic countries since the 1960s are analysed. Although criminal policy in these countries is not unified, one can argue for the existence of a 'Scandinavian criminal policy' characterized by several common features concerning historical tradition, intensive cooperation and a similar approach to crime prevention and control. The following trends and characteristics are examined in some detail: the cycle from criticism of the treatment ideology to a reappraisal of the role of the criminal justice system and the function of penal sanctions; the differentiation of criminal policy strategies (e.g. social and situational crime prevention, cost-benefit thinking, criminal law policy, sanctions policy). Discernible tendencies towards more unified or, at least, more harmonized criminal policies on the international and European level are also examined. Active participation in this developmental process is encouraged to ensure that the fundamental principles of Scandinavian criminal policy are properly utilized.     

National parliaments and the European Union: part of the problem or part of the solution to the democratic deficit in the European constitutional settlement?

European integration is as much an opportunity as a threat to national parliaments. The view that national parliaments have been the main losers in the process is not substantiated by empirical evidence. National parliaments have adapted their structures and procedures to keep pace with the increasing scope of integration. This process has included strengthening the constitutional powers of parliaments in some of the member states. The recognition in the Nice and Laeken declarations that national parliaments have an important role in enhancing the democratic legitimacy of the Union and the key provisions of the draft protocols on the role of national parliaments and subsidiarity adopted by the Convention on the Future of Europe will ensure that national parliaments have the opportunity and the means, if they so choose, to be closely involved in Union affairs. Constitutional change at the Union level is likely to trigger normative and procedural change in the member states.