Background Self-prescribing and prescribing to personal contacts is explicitly discouraged by General Medical Council guidelines. Aims This study examines how widespread the practice of self-prescribing and prescribing to personal contacts is. Methods A 16-item questionnaire was distributed via an online forum comprising 4445 young medical doctors (representing 20% of all Irish registered doctors), which asked respondents about previous prescribing to themselves, their families, friends and colleagues, including the class of medication prescribed. Demographic details were collected including medical grade and specialty. (...) Results A total of 729 responses were obtained, the majority of which were from young non-consultant hospital doctors from a range of specialties. Two-thirds of respondents had self-prescribed, over 70% had prescribed to family, and nearly 60% had prescribed to a friend or colleague. Older doctors were more likely to self-prescribe (χ 2=17.51, p<0.001). Interns being less likely to self-prescribe was not unexpected (χ 2=69.55, p<0.001), while general practitioners (GPs) and paediatricians were more likely to self-prescribe (χ 2=13.33, p<0.001; χ 2=11.35, p<0.001). GPs, paediatricians and hospital medicine specialties were more likely to prescribe to family (χ 2=5.19, p<0.05; χ 2=8.38, p<0.05; χ 2=6.17, p<0.05) and surgeons were more likely to prescribe to friends (χ 2=15.87, p<0.001). Some 3% to 7% who had self-prescribed had prescribed an opiate, benzodiazepine or psychotropic medication. Male doctors, anaesthetists and surgeons were more likely to self-prescribe opioids (χ 2=7.82, p<0.01; χ 2=7.31, p<0.01; χ 2=4.91, p<0.05), while those in hospital medicine were more likely to self-prescribe psychotropic medications (χ 2=5.47, p<0.05). Conclusion Prescribing outside the traditional doctor-patient relationship is widespread despite clear professional guidance advising against it. (shrink)

Love has been long lauded for its salvific potential in U.S. anti-racist rhetoric. Yet, what does it mean to speak or act in love’s name to redress racism? Turning to the work of the North American public intellectual and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971), this essay explores his contribution to normative theory on love’s role in the work of racial justice. Niebuhr was a staunch supporter of civil rights, and many prominent figures of the movement such as James Cone, Jesse Jackson, (...) Martin Luther King Jr., J. Deotis Roberts and Cornel West drew on his theology. Indeed, Niebuhr underscores love’s promise and perils in politics, and its potential to respond to racism via the work of critique, compassion, and coercion. Engaging with Niebuhr’s theology on love and justice, then, not only helps us recover a rich realist resource on racism, but also an ethic of realism as antiracism. (shrink)

The redshift-distance modulus relation, the Hubble Diagram, derived from Cosmological General Relativity has been extended to arbitrarily large redshifts. Numerical methods were employed and a density function was found that results in a valid solution of the field equations at all redshifts. The extension has been compared to 302 type Ia supernova data as well as to 69 Gamma-ray burst data. The latter however do not truly represent a ‘standard candle’ as the derived distance moduli are not independent of the (...) cosmology used. Nevertheless the analysis shows a good fit can be achieved without the need to assume the existence of dark matter. The Carmelian theory is also shown to describe a universe that is always spatially flat. This results from the underlying assumption of the energy density of a cosmological constant ΩΛ=1, the result of vacuum energy. The curvature of the universe is described by a spacevelocity metric where the energy content of the curvature at any epoch is ΩK=ΩΛ−Ω=1−Ω, where Ω is the matter density of the universe. Hence the total density is always ΩK+Ω=1. (shrink)

The velocity of the Hubble expansion has been added to General Relativity by Moshe Carmeli and this resulted in new equations of motion for the expanding universe. For the first time the observational magnitude–redshift data derived from the high-z supernova teams has been analysed in the framework of the Carmeli theory and the fit to that theory is achieved without the inclusion of any dark matter. Best fits to the data yield an averaged matter density for the universe at the (...) present epoch Ωm ≈ 0.021, which falls well within the measured values of the baryonic matter density. And the best estimate of ΩΛ+ Ωm ≈ 1.021 at the present epoch. The analysis also clearly distinguishes that the Hubble expansion of the universe is speed-limited. (shrink)

La importancia de la esperanza en la vida de las personas es reconocida portodos; sin embargo, el tema ha sido trabajado casi exclusivamente porteólogos. El artículo intenta encontrar, mediante el análisis de los aportes deKant, Maree! y Bloch, un vocabulario que nos permita comprender laesperanza en términos filosóficos; es un ejercicio reflexivo de spes quaerensintellectum y, a la vez, de intellectus quaerens spem.

The 1987 Goiânia accident remains arguably one of the most devastating orphan sources accidents, and yet it seems to have resulted in little impact on public perceptions of risk regarding the wider nuclear industry. Nuclear power, on the other hand, remains a controversial sector of the nuclear industry. It operates within the shadow of accidents such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, both of which resulted in panic and clear damage to trust in the nuclear industry. But the Goiânia accident, (...) which occurred just a year after Chernobyl and had a significantly more devastating physical impact than Three Mile Island, is seldom discussed in comparison. By mainly analyzing surveys from Brazil, the nation in which the Goiânia accident occurred, and the United States, the relationship between trust and perceptions of risk, and how they are reflected in the impact of radiological accidents, can be effectively discussed. This, combined with additional factors such as the effectiveness of radiation warning symbols, demonstrates why the Goiânia accident had such a minor impact on public perceptions of risk in comparison to accidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. From this, how to combat negative perceptions of risk regarding specifically nuclear power can be considered. (shrink)

This paper corrects the explanation given by Oliveira and Hartnett, Found. Phys. Lett. 19(6), 519–535, 2006 for the luminosity distance in Cosmological General Relativity. The mathematical expression for the luminosity distance used in that paper is correct but the explanation in Eqs. (22) and (23) is flawed. Expressions for the angular size and surface brightness of sources are also derived. Finally some comment is made about the calculations of χ2 values in that paper compared with an earlier paper, Found. (...) Phys. 36(6), 839–861, 2006. (shrink)