Two contributions from Dr Ivan Illich follow. The first, in which he sets out his primary thesis of the medicalization of life, is a section from Dr Illich's book 'Medical Nemesis'. (It is reprinted with the permission of the author and his publishers, Messrs Calder and Boyars.) The second is a transcript of the paper which Dr Illich read at the conference organized by the London Medical Group ...

We present a performance analysis of a scalable parallel data clustering algorithm with deterministic annealing for multicore systems that compares MPI and a new C# messaging runtime library CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) with Windows and Linux and using both threads and processes. We investigate effects of memory bandwidth and fluctuations of run times of loosely synchronized threa...

The western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte) is an economically important pest of corn. One strategy used to manage western corn rootworm is the planting of transgenic corn that produces one or more Cry toxins derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Refuges of non-Bt corn function to delay the development of resistance and the greatest delay in resistance is expected whe...

Blind signatures have proved an essential building block for applications that protect privacy while ensuring unforgeability, i.e., electronic cash and electronic voting. One of the oldest, and most efficient blind signature schemes is the one due to Schnorr that is based on his famous identification scheme. Although it was proposed over twenty years ago, its unforgeability remains an open prob...

Introduction The potential of scoliosis progressing into a clinically significant spinal deformity drives the detection, diagnosis, and treatment decisions for skeletally immature children. In these cases, growth is the potential enemy. In the early stages, the primary concerns may be mainly abnormal physical appearance and diminished self esteem. In more advanced cases, the overriding issues m...

In this position paper, we argue that, with an appropriate operating system structure, energy in mobile computers can be treated and managed as just another resource. In particular, we investigate how energy management could be added to the Nemesis OS which provides detailed and accurate resource accounting capabilities in order to provide Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for all resources t...

Insect-resistant cotton was first introduced commercially in 1996. It is commonly referred to as Bt cotton, because it produces an insecticidal protein from the naturally occurring soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Global adoption of Bt cotton has risen dramatically from 800,000 hectares in its year of introduction in 1996 to 5.7 million hectares (alone and stacked with herbicide-tole...

References 1 Illich I. Medical nemesis. New York: Pantheon, 1975: 4, 35. 2 Mead N, Bower P. Patient-centeredness: a conceptual framework and review of the empirical literature. Soc Sci Med 2000; 51: 1087–110. 3 Tomes N. Patients or health care consumers? Why the history of contested terms matters. In Stevens R, Rosenberg C, Burns, LR, eds. History and health policy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers U...