The Environmental Burden of the United States' Bitcoin Mining Boom.

Bitcoin mines-massive computing clusters generating cryptocurrency tokens-consume vast amounts of electricity. The amount of fine particle (PM) air pollution created because of their electricity consumption, and its effect on environmental health, is unknown. In this study, we located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution.

Equitable global allocation of monkeypox vaccines.

With the world grappling with continued spread of monkeypox internationally, vaccines play a crucial role in mitigating the harms from infection and preventing spread. However, countries with the greatest need - particularly historically endemic countries with the highest monkeypox case-fatality rates - are not able to acquire scarce vaccines. This is unjust, and requires rectification through equitable allocation of vaccines globally.

Fair domestic allocation of monkeypox virus countermeasures.

Countermeasures for mpox (formerly known as monkeypox), primarily vaccines, have been in limited supply in many countries during outbreaks. Equitable allocation of scarce resources during public health emergencies is a complex challenge. Identifying the objectives and core values for the allocation of mpox countermeasures, using those values to provide guidance for priority groups and prioritisation tiers, and optimising allocation implementation are important.

Can the Research Team-Participant Relationship Ground Ancillary-Care Obligations?

Discussion of medical researcher teams' ancillary-care obligations has long been dominated by partial-entrustment theory, developed in 2004 by the author of this article, in collaboration with Leah Belsky. Critics of the limited scope of the special ancillary-care obligations defended by that theory, however, argue that a better theory would take fuller account of the relationship that develops between individual research participants and members of the research team. Nate W.

Associations between age at first calving and subsequent lactation performance in UK Holstein and Holstein-Friesian dairy cows.

Lactation records from 396,534 pedigree Holstein and Holstein-Friesian primiparous cows from 6,985 UK milk recorded herds, calving for the first time during the period between the 1st of January 2006 and the 31st of December 2008, were examined in order to determine the associations between age at first calving (AFC) and subsequent production, udder health, fertility and survivability parameters. Heifers were grouped by AFC into single month classes ranging from 21 to 42 months. Mixed effects multivariable regression modelling was used for data analysis.

INTELLIGENCE AND TRANSPARENCY IN HEALTH TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT.

Current thinking about the methodology of health technology assessment (HTA) seems to be dominated by two fundamental tensions: [1] between maintaining a tight focus on quality-adjusted life-years and broadening its concern out to pay attention to a broader range of factors, and [2] between thinking of the evaluative dimensions that matter as being objectively important factors or as ones that are ultimately of merely subjective importance. In this study, I will argue that health is a tremendously important all-purpose means to enjoying basic human capabilities, but a mere means, and not an end. The ends to which health is a means are manifold, requiring all those engaged in policy making to exercise intelligence in a continuing effort to identify them and to think through how they interrelate.

Capabilities and the Definition of Health: Comments on Venkatapuram.

Sridhar Venkatapuram's Health Justice argues that health is a 'metacapability' - specifically, as the metacapability of having the ten 'central human capabilities' described by Martha Nussbaum. This cannot be right, as it provides no basis for distinguishing health from education, riches, or love. An amendment correcting this problem is suggested, namely that health is the involuntary, bodily aspect of the metacapability for the central capabilities.

Relying on experts as we reason together.

In various contexts, it is thought to be important that we reason together. For instance, an attractive conception of democracy requires that citizens reach lawmaking decisions by reasoning with one another. Reasoning requires that reasoners survey the considerations that they take to be reasons, proceed by a coherent train of thought, and reach conclusions freely.

Managing incidental findings and research results in genomic research involving biobanks and archived data sets.

Biobanks and archived data sets collecting samples and data have become crucial engines of genetic and genomic research. Unresolved, however, is what responsibilities biobanks should shoulder to manage incidental findings and individual research results of potential health, reproductive, or personal importance to individual contributors (using "biobank" here to refer both to collections of samples and collections of data). This article reports recommendations from a 2-year project funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Secondary researchers' duties to return incidental findings and individual research results: a partial-entrustment account.

Existing attempts to explain why secondary researchers might have any obligation to return findings to the contributors of genetic samples falter because of the lack of any direct interaction between the secondary researchers and the contributors. The partial-entrustment account of these obligations defended here circumvents this problem by explaining how a chain of special responsibilities can be forged even in the absence of any direct interaction.Genet Med 2012:14(4):467-472.

Incidental findings and ancillary-care obligations.

Recent work on incidental findings, concentrating on the difficult problems posed by the ambiguous results often generated by high-tech medicine, has proceeded largely independently from recent work on medical researchers' ancillary-care obligations, the obligations that researchers have to deal with diseases or conditions besides the one(s) under study. This paper contends that the two topics are morally linked, and specifically that a sound understanding of ancillary-care obligations will center them on incidental findings. The paper sets out and defends an understanding of ancillary-care obligations, which is based on the idea that when participants signed up for a study they may -- independently of their beliefs and expectations and of those of the researchers -- be taken to have partially entrusted certain aspects of their health into the researchers' hands.

Gradations of researchers' obligation to provide ancillary care for HIV/AIDS in developing countries.

Three principal factors affect the stringency of medical researchers' obligation to provide antiretroviral treatment to participants in non-HIV/AIDS studies that are conducted in developing countries: (1) the centrality of HIV/AIDS to the study design, (2) the extent of the researcher-participant interaction, and (3) the cost relative to the study budget. I provide a basis for assessing the comparative stringency of the researchers' obligation to provide this type of ancillary care. Practically, given the range of possible responses to study participants' needs, calibrating the researcher's responsibility to provide ancillary care is a useful step in ethical analysis.

Medical researchers' ancillary clinical care responsibilities.

Investigation of participants in clinical trials may identify conditions unrelated to the study. Researchers need guidance on whether they have a duty to treat such conditions