I argue that contemporary liberal theory cannot give a general justification for the institution or practice of punishment, i.e., a justification that would hold across a broad range of reasonably realistic conditions. I examine the general justifications offered by three prominent contemporary liberal theorists and show how their justifications fail in light of the possibility of an alternativ...

Motivated thinking leads people to perceive similarity between the self and ingroups, but under some conditions, people may recognize that personal beliefs are misaligned with the beliefs of ingroups. In two focal experiments and two replications, we find evidence that perceived belief similarity moderates ingroup favoritism. As part of a charity donation task, participants donated money to a c...

The effect of dosage of continuous venovenous hemodiafiltration (CVVHDF) on survival in patients with acute renal failure (ARF) is unknown. In this study, 200 critically ill patients with ARF were randomly assigned to receive CVVHDF with prefilter replacement fluid at an effluent rate of either 35 ml/kg per h (high dosage) or 20 ml/kg per h (standard dosage). The primary study outcome, survival...

in order to avoid using cytotoxic drugs and to minimize prednisolone side effects in frequent relapsing or steroid-dependent idiopathic nephrotic syndrome, 35 patients, 3 to 15 (mean= 8.1) years of age, were studied. while in remission for at least 6 weeks, the dose of prednisolone was reduced to 0.1-0.37 (mean= 0.23) mg/kg/day as a single dose for 12 to 72 (mean= 27.6) months. it was followed ...

To clarify advantages of unilateral electrode placement as an optimisation technique for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression, aims were to meta-analyse unilateral ECT effects on cognitive performance relative to: (1) bitemporal electrode placement, (2) electrical dosage, and (3) time interval between final treatment and cognitive reassessment. Relevant electronic databases were syste...

OBJECTIVE To review the findings and discuss the implications of transfusion strategies in stable critically ill children. DESIGN A critical appraisal of the article "Transfusion strategies for patients in pediatric intensive care units" by Lacroix J, Hebert PC, Hutchison, et al, published in the N Engl J Med in 2007 with literature review. FINDINGS In this prospective, randomized, controll...

This paper examines the morality of schemes of payment to live donors/sellers of organs for transplantation. Following empirical and historical evidence, it is argued that consent to sell organs is substantially different from consent to ordinary business transactions and that legalization of exchanges of organs with financial benefits deviates significantly from the scope of liberal toleration...

Hintikka’s semantic game for classical logic is generalized to the family of all finite valued matrices. This in turn serves as a springboard for developing game semantics for all propositional formulas with respect to arbitrary finite non-deterministic matrices. In this approach a new concept of non-deterministic valuation, called ‘liberal valuation’, emerges that augments the usually employed...