The Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG) is a specialised body that advises the Health Research Authority (HRA) and the Secretary of State for Health on requests for access to confidential information, in the absence of informed consent from its owners. Its primary role is to oversee the safe use of such information and to counsel the governing bodies mentioned above as to whether such use is appropriate or inappropriate. Researchers who seek access to England or Wales-based confidential data, for medical purposes (...) that are in the interest of the public, are typically required to submit an application to this body. However, it is not always clear to researchers whether requests for access to patient data fit within the remit of the CAG or a Trust’s local information governance team. This commentary will, therefore, explore the role of the CAG and reflect on how best to support researchers with this question. (shrink)

Production and comprehension have long been viewed as inseparable components of language. The study of vision, by contrast, has centered almost exclusively on comprehension. Here we investigate drawing—the most basic form of visual production. How do we convey concepts in visual form, and how does refining this skill, in turn, affect recognition? We developed an online platform for collecting large amounts of drawing and recognition data, and applied a deep convolutional neural network model of visual cortex trained only on natural (...) images to explore the hypothesis that drawing recruits the same abstract feature representations that support natural visual object recognition. Consistent with this hypothesis, higher layers of this model captured the abstract features of both drawings and natural images most important for recognition, and people learning to produce more recognizable drawings of objects exhibited enhanced recognition of those objects. These findings could explain why drawing is so effective for communicating visual concepts, they suggest novel approaches for evaluating and refining conceptual knowledge, and they highlight the potential of deep networks for understanding human learning. (shrink)

Utopian literature is fascinating but impossible to summarize. Of course it is easy to see where its charm lies. We enjoy the “play” aspect of the Utopian convention, the common certainty— essential to both the author's intentions and the reader's pleasure—that we are dealing with a supposition described as a fact. In a Utopian text, we enjoy the power we have of imagining, and especially formulating, another overall framework for human experience—a framework which is specifically defined as being different and (...) described as if it had concrete existence. This is the underlying attraction of a mode of expression which permits the author to talk of serious things in the protected and detached manner permitted by play. Why, then, are summaries of utopias so disappointing? Why does a re-transmitted utopia convey only the idea of an insipid world and an arbitrary creation? Why is it so hard to write about works of this type? (shrink)

The impetus to revisit the issues involved in readings of Genesis 2-3 came from Deborah Rooke’s article in Feminist Theology published in 2007, and in particular follows a presentation at an ‘Afternoon of Theology’ at a girls’ secondary school, where the author provided a response to the challenge set by the history of interpretation and the subsequent cultural assumptions of the meaning of the Garden of Eden narrative. The discussion proceeds partly through narrative retelling, partly through a critical commentary and (...) partly through an Eve/snake dialogue. (shrink)

Choisir un livre, c'est en exclure beaucoup d'autres, contribuer à circonscrire le cercle lumineux de l'attention, participer à une aventure dont l'enjeu est la survie; vivre dans les lettres, ce n'est pas s'installer dans un patrimoine mais l'inventer, faire du soleil et de la place, inséparablement. Rééditer ce livre dans une édition de poche, ce n'est pas seulement faire en sorte qu'il soit de nouveau disponible; c'est en prolonger le rayonnement mais aussi le déplacer, l'inscrire autrement dans l'aventure de la (...) survie. Dans sa première vie, La Mémoire des œuvres s'est imposé à quelques-uns comme un bréviaire. Écrit pour tous et pour chacun, il demande et appelle l'amitié d'un plus large public, c'est un livre ami de la mémoire, qui aide à penser et qui aide à vivre, à habiter plus librement le séjour des livres. (shrink)

Proposer une oeuvre nouvelle, developper une idee neuve ou une vision personnelle differente, c'est dire autre chose. Mais c'est aussi dire quelque chose qui n'est pas radicalement inoui et sans connexion. Impacts, emprunts, initiatives, traditions ou ruptures: ces relations d'influence traversent la vie des idees et des oeuvres, leurs rapports entre elles, leurs caracteres de famille, et ce qui les rend chacune distincte. Invention et memoire vont ensemble. Leur liaison et leur ecart organisent ce qu'il y a d'autonome et d'unique (...) dans un point de vue novateur, et ce qu'il y a de commun et de partage. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage est une réédition numérique d’un livre paru au XXe siècle, désormais indisponible dans son format d’origine.

Toute oeuvre veut tenir l'attention, la diriger et produire de l'effet. Mais l'attention et l'effet ne sont pas les memes selon que l'oeuvre en dit plus ou en dit moins c'est-a-dire selon sa densite. Le developpe ou le concis, l'emphatique ou l'elude, le riche ou l'austere ne produisent pas les memes intensites. En explorant les variations de la densite litteraire, on retrouve directement des enjeux essentiels. Que vise l'ideal du complet face a l'ideal du pur? Comment la litterature se rapporte-t-elle (...) au langage ordinaire? Quel peut etre le minimum artistique qui subsiste au bord du silence? Comment comprendre l'echec de la lecture, l'interet perdu et l'ennui? (shrink)

In his early work, the philosopher Stanley Cavell offers a sustained engagement with the threat of epistemological scepticism, shaped by the intuition that although (as the late Wittgenstein shows) ordinary language use is the practice within which alone meaning is possible (and which can thus not be further analysed or rationalised), it is also a basic human inclination to wish to escape the limitations of the ‘ordinary’. This, for Cavell, is the root of scepticism. Scepticism, on this view, thus appears (...) not primarily as an epistemological but as an (injurious) moral stance, which cannot be refuted but must be continually confronted and overcome. Vis-à-vis scepticism, ‘acknowledgement’ is the practice-based recognition of the world and other people in their continuing elusiveness, which ineluctably involves risk, but just so is the only way of knowing that is appropriate to and honours the (finite) human condition. One problematic aspect of this (very fertile) approach is that Cavell’s secular viewpoint makes it difficult for him to say both why the desire for a ‘beyond’ arises in the first place, and why its expression as denial is morally wrong (rather than merely misguided). His approach thus invites a theological ‘supplementation’ which grounds the human condition in an original and real relation to God that is meant to draw the believer, through Christ, into the divine life itself. Such a reinterpretation both elucidates the concepts of scepticism and acknowledgement, and makes these concepts available for a theological outlook that is able to accommodate Cavell’s profound insights into ‘the human’. (shrink)

Confirming multisite studies presents an ongoing challenge for researchers based in England. Those wishing to set up a multisite study must undergo local Research & Development review, in addition...

E-Z Reader is a highly successful model of eye-movement control, employing the notion of a serial-sequential attentional spotlight switched from word to word. Evidence of parallel processing of words in text calls this notion into question. Modifications to the model to accommodate this evidence are possible but will not address the fundamental objection that reading should not be seen as “surrogate listening.”.

Avian Flu Pandemic – Flight of the Healthcare Worker? Content Type Journal Article Pages 365-385 DOI 10.1007/s10730-009-9114-9 Authors Robert B. Shabanowitz, Geisinger Medical Center, Dept. of OB/GYN 100 North Academy Avenue Danville PA 17822-2920 USA Judith E. Reardon, Geisinger Medical Center Center for Health Research 100 North Academy Avenue Danville PA 17822-3003 USA Journal HEC Forum Online ISSN 1572-8498 Print ISSN 0956-2737 Journal Volume Volume 21 Journal Issue Volume 21, Number 4.

I analyze a number of the quantum no-signalling proofs (Ghirardi et al. 1980, Bussey 1982, Jordan 1983, Shimony 1985, Redhead 1987, Eberhard and Ross 1989, Sherer and Busch 1993). These purport to show that the EPR correlations cannot be exploited for transmitting signals, i.e., are not causal. First, I show that these proofs can be mathematically unified; they are disguised versions of a single theorem. Second, I argue that these proofs are circular. The essential theorem relies upon the tensor product (...) representation for combined systems, which has no physical basis in the von Neumann axioms. Historically, the construction of this representation scheme by von Neumann and Weyl built no-signalling assumptions into the quantum theory. Signalling between the wings of the EPR-Bell experiments is unlikely but is not ruled out empirically by the class of proofs considered. (shrink)

In this article we study the development of the mathematical theorem, now known as the T Couple, and discuss the difference between its plane and spherical applications.