507 research outputs found
Sort by
Is Fatty Liver the Last Nail in The Coffin for Central Pontine Myelinolysis? A Case Report and Literature Review
Get PDFWe report a case of a 45-year-old male admitted with recurrent falls, melaena, abdominal pain, vomiting, deranged electrolytes, and a low heamoglobin. He has a complex past medical history, including a lung abscess, alcohol abuse, a history of falls, cholecystitis, duodenal ulcer, duodenitis, epilepsy, folate deficiency, an ankle fracture, gallstones, a history of anoxic brain injury, and pancreatitis. His medications include lamotrigine, losartan, quetiapine, omeprazole, and venlafaxine MR. The patient's history reveals excessive alcohol intake, malnutrition, and smoking. Ultrasound showed the presence of diffuse fatty liver and gallstones. He developed left-sided weakness, which was not present before. MRI of the head revealed a classic trident appearance in the pons, consistent with post-motor demyelination/pontine myelinolysis. It was noted that a few days prior to the MRI, the patient had been treated for mild hyponatraemia, and 10 days before, he had been noted to have mild hypernatremia. In this case report, we demonstrate how fatty liver can be associated with an increased risk of central pontine myelinolysis (CPM)
Asylum and Historical Memory in Victorian Britain
Get PDFThroughout the nineteenth century Britain famously provided refuge to exiles as diverse as Metternich, Marx and Malatesta, and obtained a reputation as an undiscriminating ‘asylum of nations’. Shaping Victorian Britain’s approach to asylum was not just, as Bernard Porter has observed, a lack of legal restrictions on foreign nationals, but also an increasingly salient awareness of the country’s long history of harbouring refugees. From the 1840s, a series of academic and popular histories, novels, songs, and artworks appeared that emphasised the centuries-long continuity of British asylum and the diversity of its refugee populations, ranging from sixteenth-century Protestants to famous Enlightenment thinkers and the counter-revolutionary émigrés of the 1790s. By the 1890s, historical enquiry on this subject had been regularized by bodies like the Huguenot Society and the Jewish Historical Society. Knowledge of this history fundamentally shaped how Britons reacted to refugee crises in their own times. As exiles arrived following the 1848 revolutions or the pogroms of 1881, supporters of generous asylum policies pointed to the economic and cultural contributions that earlier refugees had made to British society, while more restrictionist voices contended that recent refugees were less deserving of sympathy than those of past centuries. Exiles themselves utilized this awareness of British history to defend their physical refuge, and right to remain politically active, in Britain. This chapter will analyse the development of historical memory of asylum in Victorian Britain and demonstrate the uses to which British and exile actors put it from the 1840s to the 1890s
International Human Rights Obligations and the Influence of Economic Principles on Education Delivery in Nigeria as an E-9 Country
Get PDFThe application by states of economic principles in education has not produced good results in access to education in low-income and less-developed countries. This has prompted UNESCO to designate the countries with substantial problems of access to education and illiteracy as the E-9 countries, which include Nigeria. Nigeria’s status as an E-9 country indicates the existence of considerable problems in education, and where necessary, statistical evidence will be used to elucidate Nigeria’s E-9 status. This article argues that the nature of the laws and policy mechanisms that control education in Nigeria suggests that Nigeria seems to be responding to the contemporaneous demands of global programmes of action in education that are predicated on economic principles and driven by the tides of globalization instead of to the requirements of international human rights law (IHRL)
Bare Trusts and Private Purpose Powers
No full textPrivate purpose powers are crucial to the functioning of non-charitable unincorporated associations and Quistclose trusts—both of which concern bare trusts. However, a sufficient understanding of what a bare trust is, as well as overreaching, reveals a fundamental problem: explaining how these powers overreach the equitable interests. They can do so, it is argued, when characterised as the s32 Trustee Act 1925 power of advancement
An opportunity lost? The declining role of authorised covert human intelligence sources in combating organised crime
Get PDFCombatting organised crime, requires Agencies to deploy a range of collection capabilities to identify community threats, to accurately select and prioritise organised crime targets and to inform operational decision-making. Central to this effort is the ability to identify, recruit and deploy Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS). It is therefore paradoxical that the United Kingdom’s CHIS authorisations have been in steep decline since the enactment of the bespoke Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Scotland Act, 2000). This research seeks to critically discuss as to what are the key factors contributing to this decline. Consequently, this review suggests that the decline in CHIS authorisations are to be found in a complex configuration of factors. Two stand out as significant; i) the impact of resource reduction on CHIS operational capacity and capability, and ii) an emergence of a culture of fear and risk aversion as a constraining factor on CHIS recruitment and use
How medical diagnosticians earn their stripes: Horses, zebras, and divergent thinking
No full textThe acquisition of medical expertise is a rigorous endeavor that involves developing a range of cognitive, technical, and interpersonal skills. While clinical knowledge is routinely tested through written and practical examinations in medical school, benchmarking expertise performance for experienced physicians has proven more challenging. The present article considers the acquisition of medical expertise from candidacy through residency and clinical years. Particular attention is given to the skills that distinguish routine Journeymen medical experts who settle for a lower level of automatic skill from adaptive Experts and Masters, as well as the difficulties in defining the metrics required to distinguish these levels. A model of the physician as both a knowledgeable and creative expert is proposed, drawing from multifactorial models of expertise together with the Four Cs model of creativity at each stage of acquisition. Particular emphasis is placed on divergent thinking, a form of creative problem-solving. The benefits of divergent thinking in medicine are discussed in relation to core cognitive functions supporting the acquisition and maintenance of medical skills, differential diagnosis, cognitive heuristics and biases, and the drive for both personal and social innovation. In particular, a novel argument is put forth for the role of divergent thinking and cognitive flexibility as facilitators of expertise acquisition in the medical field. Recommendations are discussed for the integration of divergent thinking training into the medical selection and training practices to support the development of medical expertise
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Non-proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy in Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Taking Oral Antidiabetic Medications
Get PDFBackground: Non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR) is a significant complication of long-term diabetes in Sudan. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and risk factors of diabetic retinopathy among Sudanese individuals with type 2 diabetes mellitus who are taking oral antidiabetic medication.
Methods: This cross-sectional, facility-based study recruited 196 individuals with type 2 diabetes at the Jabir Abu Eliz Diabetes Health Center in Khartoum State. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire, which patients filled out after providing informed consent. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Logistic regression was performed to predict factors associated with diabetic retinopathy.
Results: The mean age of the patients was 50.1 ± 10.7 years. The prevalence of NPDR was 78 (39.8%). Bivariate analysis revealed that age, education level, and residence (Pvalue < 0.05) were significantly associated with diabetic retinopathy. Additional factors that were significantly associated with diabetic retinopathy included the duration of diabetes, the presence of other comorbidities, HbA1c, and fasting blood glucose in 68 (87.2%) individuals (P-value < 0.05).
Conclusion: The study revealed a prevalence of 39.8% for NPDR in this cohort. A longer duration of diabetes and poor control are the primary risk factors for diabetic retinopathy in Sudan. Further research is necessary to determine whether intensifying therapy or administering insulin may reduce the prevalence of retinopathy
The Transfer of Judges and Judicial Independence
No full textThis article sets the issue of transfer of judges within an international and constitutional framework of judicial independence. It has been more than 10 years since the Kyiv Recommendations on Judicial Independence (Kyiv Recommendations) were published by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which seeks to help countries find an appropriate balance between independence and accountability, whilst protecting judges from broader external and internal pressures. The OSCE/ODIHR have seen practices develop in the region to avoid the recommendations in spirit. Transfer of judges has a legitimate place in court management and professional development, but has also been used to threaten judges who do not comply with political will in individual cases. There are mechanisms, if not properly regulated, that allow judges to be threatened, such as disciplinary transfers, denial of transfers when requested, court reorganization, and case management, amongst others. This article is adapted from an earlier draft thematic paper used to address the gap and revise the Kyiv Recommendations. It found that a number of practices involving transfer of judges were incompatible with the spirit and letter of the Kyiv Recommendations. It is set out in four main parts: The first section sets out the introduction, issues and the methodology of the original project, section two provides an overview of international norms and guidelines, providing a legal framework on the transfer of judges and the case law jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on the transfer of judges. In section three, I shall present the practical operation of how judges are transferred utilising some case studies as examples. The last section will discuss conclusions and recommendations. As such, this article will look at the international norms which allow for transfer of judges, and the procedural guarantees underlying those circumstances, the protection of judicial independence and conclude on how transfers of judges can, under certain circumstances, affect their independence and accountability
When We Were Humans: Never Let Me Go and ALoning
Get PDFKazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go has been the subject of a range of interpretative approaches, from posthuman readings of the clones’ predicament to disabilities studies readings interested in the novel’s relevance to questions of eugenics. The novel, in much the same way as When We Were Orphans, The Buried Giant, and Klara and the Sun, has also prompted heated debate about Ishiguro’s use, or misuse, of genre conventions. Here, engaging with the critical reception of the novel, this article argues that Ishiguro is foremost interested in the function of narrative, and of language, and the ways in which subtly disseminated stories come to form, or more accurately deform, our worlds. Rumors abound in Never Let Me Go, but they acquire through repetition, andthrough desperation, a profound significance in the limited lives of the novel’s subjects
Orchestration of Corporate Social Responsibility in Company Law – Reframing Human Security through Education
Get PDFThe objective of this paper is to argue the fundamental significance of education in addressing notable gaps in the constitutive, performance and evaluation criteria for corporate social responsibility (CSR) and endeavours to showcase the complementarity between education, human security, sustainable human development, and the pursuit of CSR as an ideal normative paradigm. An abstractive approach to studying CSR, which is common with some authors engages with corporate philanthropy, which has not been helpful outside traditional CSR paradigms without looking at key dynamics that can robustly underpin successful CSR. The paper explores the systemic nexus between sustainable development as an educational externality when embedded in CSR, climate change and action competence and how it dovetails into ‘education for sustainable development’.
Methodologically, this paper doctrinally relies on the systematic analysis of written data sources to theoretically explore the central significance, and complementarity between human security, education, and human dignity and how they can orchestrate a holistic CSR paradigm. In 1994, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in formulating the human security doctrine recognised the syncretic correlation between human security, education, and sustainable human development as fundamental elements that should underpin CSR. This paper contends that these are necessary intrinsic components of human dignity as the central factor that justifies a multi-dimensional and proactive approach to CSR.
Despite the criticisms against human security, this paper identifies it as an important concept that could instrumentally orchestrate a model of CSR that uniformly mainstreams sustainable human development and human dignity that leverages education which has routinely and traditionally been seen as a constitutive component of CSR. It reveals how a holistic path to CSR can reinvigorate the central pillars of human security and human dignity using education as a springboard and makes a compelling case for supporting explicit references to education in company law with appropriate human security informed constitutive, performance and evaluation criteria which are absent in existing legally orchestrated CSR