UCC Journals (Univ. College Cork)
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“What is it that you do again?”: thinking about criminal responsibility
Get PDFI study the intersection between contemporary neuroscience and the theory of criminal responsibility. Hanging around disciplinary intersections like this can be fun: people don’t always look where they are going and if you wait long enough you might witness a crash or two. Casting aside the metaphor, my job begins by identifying the problems and tensions that emerge from the different ways in which we view the world. What might those problems be in the case of neuroscience and criminal responsibility? Well, we can divide it into two classic problems. The first is the problem of competing descriptions. Simplifying somewhat, we can say that neuroscientists describe human behaviour from the bottom-up, beginning with chemical and electrical signals between individual nerve cells and working up to the functional processing that takes place within and between different brain regions. These descriptions are mechanistic, deterministic and reductive. By way of contrast, theorists of ..
Blue biotechnology – drugs from our o ceans
Get PDFFungi are one of the major health concerns in modern life. It is known that up to 20% of patients with blood stream infections in intensive care units are affected by disease producing fungi such as Candida and Aspergillus, sometimes dominating the infections in doses that could be lethal. Patients who are immune-compromised/ immune-suppressed – including the elderly, HIV-infected patients, chemotherapy recipients, and transplant patients - are more prone to fungal infections. There are anti-fungal drugs available, but they are expensive and can have severe side effects such as nephrotoxicity (kidney damage). In addition, a major concern is that fungi such as Candida can become drug-resistant. Therefore there is a pressing need to identify new drugs to treat fungi and the diseases associated with them. Oceans cover about 70% of the earth and it is highly diverse in terms of its wealth – the marine organisms. It has been seen ..
Does cash payment influence a GP’s decision to prescribe antibiotics?
Get PDFAntimicrobial resistance is a major public health concern and one of the primary factors contributing to resistance is the unnecessary use of antimicrobials. Many countries have developed strategies in order to promote the rational use of antibiotics. Ireland is only one of three European countries where outpatient antibiotic use is increasing, at a rate of 3% per year since 2000. The majority of antibiotic prescribing is conducted by General Practitioners (GPs) in the community, and wide variation is known to exist. The volume of antibiotics prescribed that are unnecessary in the community is unknown but it is believed that a number are used to treat minor respiratory tract infections. These conditions such as the common cold, sore throat, acute otitis media and acute bronchitis have no compelling evidence to support the use of antibiotics in their treatment. There are many external (non-clinical) factors that influence a GP’s decision to prescribe, ..
Development and administration of a screening tool for cardiovascular risk assessment in community pharmacy
Get PDFCardiovascular disease (CVD) was the leading cause of death in 2005, causing 17.5 million deaths globally. In Ireland, 2006 figures indicate that CVD was responsible for 43% of all deaths, and 49% of deaths in people aged less than 65 years. It is predicted to remain the largest cause of death for the foreseeable future. It has been estimated that at least 25% of CVD patients have sudden death or non-fatal myocardial infarction without prior symptoms. It is important to try to develop a method for screening these asymptomatic people. If people at high risk of CVD can be identified early then they can be treated to reduce their risk. This will in turn reduce their incidences of cardiovascular instances (heart attack, stroke, etc.) and their burden on the health service. Screening tools are used to identify those people at high risk of developing CVD. These screening tools take a ..
Dutch, the Iron Lady and Latin America. The Anglo-American Special Relationship in Latin America under Reagan and Thatcher
Get PDFMargaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan made a formidable team in the international political environment of the 1980s. Their close working and indeed personal relationship shaped the future of Western European defence, facilitated the eventual fall of Communism, and brought international recognition to the Anglo-American Special Relationship. It was a testimony to a joint commitment to a renewal in transatlantic relations following a lull in the 1970s. Both leaders had vastly different personalities with Mrs. Thatcher often portrayed as Reagan’s proverbial ‘poodle’ in such satirical shows as the infamous Spitting Image. However, in reality the relationship was in many ways led by the British Prime Minister who was willing to assert her considerable influence over her American counterpart at any given opportunity. The relationship ore, was indeed ‘Special’. It went beyond the normal political protocol associated with bilateral cooperation and consultation. It was a relationship that endured many highs and lows ..
Overcoming Challenges in Undertaking Research Interviews during the COVID Pandemic
Get PDFImplementation of Evidence-based Practice (EBP) is essential in ensuring high quality healthcare at minimum cost. Interprofessional collaboration has been identified as an essential element for the successful implementation of EBP. I chose to explore the experiences of advanced nurse and midwife practitioners of interprofessional collaboration when implementing EBP using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), a qualitative research approach which provides detailed examination of personal lived experience. Semi-structured interviews are the most commonly used data collection method in IPA and face-to face interviewing is regarded as the gold standard. I therefore opted to conduct face-to-face interviews with participants from one region in Ireland. Having been granted ethical approval, I began recruitment and undertook one interview. However, the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic resulted in further interviews being suspended and participant recruitment being curtailed. In order to progress my research, I opted to use online interviewing and to extend participant recruitment to two other regions. However, because of the pandemic many ethics committees had temporarily suspended review of applications and I consequently experienced delays in securing the required ethical approval. Despite encountering challenges, I succeeded in interviewing ten participants from a range of practice settings and completed the study. Use of the IPA framework enabled new knowledge and insights about advanced nurse and midwife practitioners’ experiences of interprofessional collaboration to be revealed
The Cosmopolitan Gut Virus crAssphage
Get PDFCrAss-like phages are a diverse group of mostly uncultured bacterial viruses that are highly abundant in the mammalian gut and other habitats. First identified in metagenomic sequences from human faeces in 2014, crAss-like phages were predicted to infect members of the phylum Bacteroidetes. Later work resulted in the isolation of the first cultured representatives, the confirmation of a Podoviridae-like morphology and a proposal to classify uncultured crAss-like phages under a novel taxonomic group. The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has recently acknowledged the creations of a new order Crassvirales, comprising at the moment four new families, ten new subfamilies, 42 new genera and a total of 73 new species. Many unanswered questions remain about this ubiquitous yet enigmatic gut virus which I aim to approach in my research through computational analysis of metagenomic sequences
An Introduction To Monte Carlo-Tree (MC-Tree) Method
No full textThe article aims to introduce concepts in option pricing and risk management. Pricing and risk management is one of the fundamental problems in financial mathematics. Then readers may explore further to understand how to use mathematical models in pricing and risk management. More specifically, our research introduces a new method called Monte Carlo-Tree (MC-Tree), for option pricing and risk management with high accuracy
Diet and Gut Microbiota, Don’t Let Them Break Your Heart!
Get PDFAs rising obesity rates threaten to overwhelm healthcare services, physicians still lack efficacious therapies to halt the cardiovascular complications of the disease. The gut microbiota – a whole community of microorganisms that resides in our intestine – has recently emerged as major player in human health. Crucially, the gut microbes are extremely dependant on our dietary habits, and promote both health and disease. In obese patients, the gut microbiota is found to be profoundly altered, which is believed to promote disease complications including cardiovascular disorders. On the other hand, the preservation of a healthy gut microbiota has protective effects against obesity-related complications, which can be promoted by certain diets. Consequently, understanding the relationship between diet, the gut microbiota, and our body could help physicians to develop new strategies for preventing cardiac diseases in obese patients
Exercise to Combat Respiratory Muscle Wasting in Cancer
Get PDFCachexia is the term used to describe the progressive loss of muscle mass in association with severe disease. The primary resulting alteration observed in cachexia is a shift in the fundamental balance of muscle protein synthesis and muscle protein degradation. One of the diseases most commonly associated with cachexia is cancer, in which the prevalence rate is 50-80%. Furthermore, cachexia is estimated to be responsible for 20% of cancer deaths. Potentially contributing to this mortality rate is the wasting of the respiratory muscles. Despite this, relatively little research has investigated the impact of cancer cachexia on respiratory muscle wasting and dysfunction. Additionally, exercise provides promise in the implementation of a therapeutic intervention aimed at ameliorating the adverse effects of cancer cachexia