Background: Older, frail patients with multimorbidity are at an especially high risk for disease severity and death from COVID-19. The social restrictions proved challenging for the residents, their relatives, and the care staff. While these restrictions clearly impacted daily life in Norwegian nursing homes, knowledge about how the pandemic influenced nursing practice is sparse. Aim: The aim of the study was to illuminate ethical difficult situations experienced by Norwegian nurses working in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research design and (...) participants: The research design involved semistructured individual interviews conducted with 15 nurses working in 8 nursing homes in 3 health regions in Norway, within both urban and rural areas. Ethical considerations: Oral and written information about the study was provided before the participants gave their written consent. The transcribed interviews were de-identified. The study was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Findings: Four ethical difficult situations were identified: (a) turning the nursing home into a prison; (b) using medication to maintain peace and order; (c) being left alone with the responsibility; and (d) s. impact on decision-making. Conclusions: The nurses’ ethical challenges were intertwined with external factors, such as national and local guidelines, and the nurses’ own internalized factors, which were connected to their subjective professionality. This duality inflicted emotional distress and gave nurses few opportunities to perform nursing in a professionally sound and safe manner. (shrink)

Collaboration requires agents to coordinate their behavior on the fly, sometimes cooperating to solve a single task together and other times dividing it up into sub‐tasks to work on in parallel. Underlying the human ability to collaborate is theory‐of‐mind (ToM), the ability to infer the hidden mental states that drive others to act. Here, we develop Bayesian Delegation, a decentralized multi‐agent learning mechanism with these abilities. Bayesian Delegation enables agents to rapidly infer the hidden intentions of others by inverse planning. (...) We test Bayesian Delegation in a suite of multi‐agent Markov decision processes inspired by cooking problems. On these tasks, agents with Bayesian Delegation coordinate both their high‐level plans (e.g., what sub‐task they should work on) and their low‐level actions (e.g., avoiding getting in each other's way). When matched with partners that act using the same algorithm, Bayesian Delegation outperforms alternatives. Bayesian Delegation is also a capable ad hoc collaborator and successfully coordinates with other agent types even in the absence of prior experience. Finally, in a behavioral experiment, we show that Bayesian Delegation makes inferences similar to human observers about the intent of others. Together, these results argue for the centrality of ToM for successful decentralized multi‐agent collaboration. (shrink)

This paper examines the challenge that psychoanalytic theory cannot be refuted. It does so by considering the theory in its orthodox Freudian form, and in the main branches into which it can be divided ? the theory of Instincts, of Development, of Psychic Structure, of Mental Economics or Defence, and of Symptom Formation. The essential character of the generalizations and concepts of these branches will just be indicated; and we shall ask of each branch whether it is possible to refute (...) it. A considerable amount of scientific enquiry has been done into the concepts and generalizations of psychoanalysis. Relevant examples of these enquiries will be noted; and the question asked whether these scientific studies have in fact done anything to refute or support the various branches of psychoanalytic theory. The general upshot will be that the challenge is both important and a mistake. (shrink)

Anyone who has ever worked with a variety \ of algebras with a reduct in the variety of bounded distributive lattices will know a restricted Priestley duality when they meet one—but until now there has been no abstract definition. Here we provide one. After deriving some basic properties of a restricted Priestley dual category \ of such a variety, we give a characterisation, in terms of \, of finitely generated discriminator subvarieties of \. As an application of our characterisation, we (...) give a new proof of Sankappanavar’s characterisation of finitely generated discriminator varieties of distributive double p-algebras. A substantial portion of the paper is devoted to the application of our results to Cornish algebras. A Cornish algebra is a bounded distributive lattice equipped with a family of unary operations each of which is either an endomorphism or a dual endomorphism of the bounded lattice. They are a natural generalisation of Ockham algebras, which have been extensively studied. We give an external necessary-and-sufficient condition and an easily applied, completely internal, sufficient condition for a finite set of finite Cornish algebras to share a common ternary discriminator term and so generate a discriminator variety. Our results give a characterisation of discriminator varieties of Ockham algebras as a special case, thereby yielding Davey, Nguyen and Pitkethly’s characterisation of quasi-primal Ockham algebras. (shrink)

BackgroundPreprint usage is growing rapidly in the life sciences; however, questions remain on the relative quality of preprints when compared to published articles. An objective dimension of quality that is readily measurable is completeness of reporting, as transparency can improve the reader’s ability to independently interpret data and reproduce findings.MethodsIn this observational study, we initially compared independent samples of articles published in bioRxiv and in PubMed-indexed journals in 2016 using a quality of reporting questionnaire. After that, we performed paired comparisons (...) between preprints from bioRxiv to their own peer-reviewed versions in journals.ResultsPeer-reviewed articles had, on average, higher quality of reporting than preprints, although the difference was small, with absolute differences of 5.0% [95% CI 1.4, 8.6] and 4.7% [95% CI 2.4, 7.0] of reported items in the independent samples and paired sample comparison, respectively. There were larger differences favoring peer-reviewed articles in subjective ratings of how clearly titles and abstracts presented the main findings and how easy it was to locate relevant reporting information. Changes in reporting from preprints to peer-reviewed versions did not correlate with the impact factor of the publication venue or with the time lag from bioRxiv to journal publication.ConclusionsOur results suggest that, on average, publication in a peer-reviewed journal is associated with improvement in quality of reporting. They also show that quality of reporting in preprints in the life sciences is within a similar range as that of peer-reviewed articles, albeit slightly lower on average, supporting the idea that preprints should be considered valid scientific contributions. (shrink)

If one were to find a date for the games put on by Pompey to celebrate the opening of his theatre in 55 B.C., it would be possible to assign a more precise date to the delivery of Cicero's speech in Pisonem than seems to have been done so far. Asconius states quite firmly that the in Pisonem was delivered in the second consulship of Pompey and Crassus, a few days before the lavish games celebrating the opening of Pompey's theatre. (...) Asconius rejects a counter-view that the speech was delivered late in the following year. (shrink)

To describe the content of practice guidelines on euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) and to compare differences between settings and guidelines developed before or after enactment of the euthanasia law in 2002 by means of a content analysis. Most guidelines stated that the attending physician is responsible for the decision to grant or refuse an EAS request. Due care criteria were described in the majority of guidelines, but aspects relevant for assessing these criteria were not always described. Half of the (...) guidelines described the role of the nurse in the performance of euthanasia. Compared with hospital guidelines, nursing home guidelines were more often stricter than the law in excluding patients with dementia (30% vs 4%) and incompetent patients (25% vs 4%). As from 2002, the guidelines were less strict in categorically excluding patients groups (32% vs 64%) and in particular incompetent patients (10% vs 29%). Healthcare institutions should accurately state the boundaries of the law, also when they prefer to set stricter boundaries for their own institution. Only then can guidelines provide adequate support for physicians and nurses in the difficult EAS decision-making process. (shrink)

How good is psychotherapy as a tool of research into human nature? There is an orthodox defence of it as a research tool, which relies on showing that interpretations are true of the patient when they satisfy certain criteria. This defence is examined and rejected. The reply is considered that an interpretation which 'keeps things moving' is true, or an approximation to the truth. This reply is rejected by comparing and contrasting an interpretation in psychotherapy with one from brainwashing sessions. (...) Two suppositions about psychotherapy (which weaken its discovery powers) are deliberately adopted — the suppositions that the material produced is 'perspective' and 'method' dependent. An unorthodox defence of psychotherapy is then offered — by means of a watery sense of 'discover'. This enables us to outline a weak sense in which psychotherapy is a valid enterprise, but one which is still strong enough for research purposes. (shrink)

A number of recent arguments purport to show that imprecise credences are incompatible with accuracy-first epistemology. If correct, this conclusion suggests a conflict between evidential a...

Sections R1 to R3 attempt to take the sting out of hostile commentaries. Sections R4 to R5 engage Berlin and Kay and the World Color Survey to correct the record. Section R6 begins the formulation of a new theory of colour as an engineering project with a technological developmental trajectory. It is recommended that the colour space be abandoned.