Long-term monitoring of Vermont's forest soils: early trends and efforts to address innate variability.

Long-term monitoring of forest soils is necessary to understand the effects of continued environmental change, including climate change, atmospheric deposition of metals, and, in many regions, recovery from acidic precipitation. A monitoring program was initiated in 2002 at five protected forest sites, primarily Spodosol soils, in Vermont, northeastern USA. Every 5 years, ten soil pits were sampled from random subplots in a 50 × 50-m plot at each site.

Postcolonial theory and Canada's health care professions: bridging the gap.

In recent years there have been several calls in professional and academic journals for healthcare personnel in Canada to raise the profile of postcolonial theory as a theoretical and explanatory framework for their practice with Indigenous people. In this paper I explore some of the challenges that are likely to confront those healthcare personnel in engaging with postcolonial theory in a training context. I consider these challenges in relation to three areas of conflict.

Cultural Rights and First Nations Health Care in Canada.

In this paper, I apply Kymlicka's theory of cultural rights to the health care of Canada's First Nations, within the framework of human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples, as formulated by the United Nations. I extend Kymlicka's concept of cultural rights into a specific right to culturally appropriate health care, and I consider how this right can be categorized. I also explore how far the Canadian state recognizes a right to health care in general and to culturally appropriate health care in particular; and whether it has instituted a statutory or constitutional right in these areas.

The Osseointegration Group of Australia Accelerated Protocol (OGAAP-1) for two-stage osseointegrated reconstruction of amputated limbs.

Aims: This study describes the Osseointegration Group of Australia's Accelerated Protocol two-stage strategy (OGAAP-1) for the osseointegrated reconstruction of amputated limbs.

Patients And Methods: We report clinical outcomes in 50 unilateral trans-femoral amputees with a mean age of 49.4 years (24 to 73), with a minimum one-year follow-up.

First Nations health care and the Canadian covenant.

In this paper I explore the relationship between the Canadian state and Canada's First Nations, in the context of the Canadian health care system. I argue that Canada's provision of health care to its citizens can be best understood morally in terms of a covenant, but that the covenant fails to meet the needs of indigenous peoples. I consider three ways of changing the relationship and obligations linking Canada's First Nations and the Canadian state, with regard to health care- assimilation, accommodation and separation.

Social justice and the Canadian Nurses Association: justifying equity.

This paper considers the social justice initiative of the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA). It focuses mainly on the two editions of the CNA's discussion document on social justice, and particularly on its emphasis on the principle of equity. The paper considers whether a coherent justification can be made for the CNA's espousal of equity, and the discussion focuses in turn on the principle of equity itself and on the CNA's position in relation to equity.

Vulnerability of Fraser River sockeye salmon to climate change: a life cycle perspective using expert judgments.

Fraser River sockeye salmon have been the basis for a major commercial fishery shared by Canada and the United States, and an important cultural foundation for many aboriginal groups; they are also of huge ecological significance throughout the Fraser Basin. The potential for altered aquatic habitat and temperature regimes due to climate change is an important concern for Fraser River sockeye salmon. This paper characterizes the vulnerability of Fraser River sockeye salmon to future climate change using an approach that is novel on three counts.

Evidence, ethics and inclusion: a broader base for NICE.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (hereafter NICE) was created in 1998 to give guidance on which treatments should be provided by the British National Health Service, and to whom. So it has a crucial role as an agent of distributive justice. In this paper I argue that it is failing to adequately explain and justify its decisions in the public arena, particularly in terms of distributive justice; and that this weakens its legitimacy, to the detriment of the National Health Service as a whole.

Health professionals: how much employee loyalty should we expect in a privatising system?

In recent years UK government policy has been drawing private companies into the operation of the British National Health Service as providers of health care. Hitherto the National Health Service has been the main employer of health care practitioners, but this may change as a result of this development. There is an issue as to whether professional health care practitioners owe the same moral commitment to an employer in the private sector as they would owe to an employer that is part of the state-run National Health Service.

Psychotherapy and distributive justice: a Rawlsian analysis.

In this paper I outline an approach to the distribution of resources between psychotherapy modalities in the context of the UK's health care system, using recent discussions of Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy as a way of highlighting resourcing issues. My main goal is to offer an approach that is just, and that accommodates the diversity of different schools of psychotherapy. In order to do this I draw extensively on the theories of Justice and of Political Liberalism developed by the late John Rawls, and adapt these to the particular requirements of psychotherapy resourcing.

A fair range of choice: justifying maximum patient choice in the British National Health Service.

In this paper I put forward an ethical argument for the provision of extensive patient choice by the British National Health Service. I base this argument on traditional liberal rights to freedom of choice, on a welfare right to health care, and on a view of health as values-based. I argue that choice, to be ethically sustainable on this basis, must be values-based and rational.

From 'public service' to artificial insemination: animal breeding science and reproductive research in early twentieth-century Britain.

Artificial insemination (AI) was the first conceptive technology to be widely used in agriculture. Whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century all cows in England and Wales were mated to bulls, by the end of the 1950s 60% conceived through artificial insemination. By then a national network of 'cattle breeding centres' brought AI within the reach of every farmer.

How well do members of the public deal with a distributive justice problem in health care?

Objectives: There is some debate about the appropriateness of involving the general public in decisions concerning the prioritising and rationing of health care resources. Doubt has been expressed about the public's ability to deal with these issues in a fair and rational way without taking refuge in ready-made official ideologies. This study considers the quality of discussion achieved by members of the public on this issue in terms of their ability to recognise the validity of conflicting arguments, to cope with the shifting positions created by these conflicts, and to avoid opting for simplistic ready-made solutions.

Ethical issues in the feeding of patients suffering from dementia: a focus group study of hospital staff responses to conflicting principles.

Feeding difficulties in older patients who are suffering from dementia present problems with balancing conflicting ethical principles. They have been considered by several writers in recent years, and the views of nursing and care staff have been studied in different contexts. The present study used focus groups to explore the way in which nursing and care staff in a National Health Service trust deal with conflict between ethical principles in this area.

Principles of distributive justice used by members of the general public in the allocation of donor liver grafts for transplantation: a qualitative study.

Objective: To investigate the nature of public preferences in the allocation of donor liver grafts for transplantation.

Design: A qualitative study based upon the transcripts of four focus groups.

Setting: Derby, Derbyshire, UK.

Nurses and whistleblowing: the ethical issues.

Whistleblowing - the public exposure of organizational wrongdoing - presents practical and ethical dilemma for nurses, and needs to be seen as part of a spectrum of increasingly confrontative actions against miscreant organizations by their employees. The ethics of whistleblowing can only be understood in relation to its moral purpose, whether that is to achieve a good outcome (a consequentialist view) or fulfil a duty (a deontological view). The consequentialist perspective is unable on its own to resolve problems arising from the balance of good and harm resulting from the act of whistleblowing (where considerable harm might be caused) or of responsibility for that harm.

Corporate moral responsibility in health care.

The question of corporate moral responsibility--of whether it makes sense to hold an organisation corporately morally responsible for its actions, rather than holding responsible the individuals who contributed to that action--has been debated over a number of years in the business ethics literature. However, it has had little attention in the world of health care ethics. Health care in the United Kingdom (UK) is becoming an increasingly corporate responsibility, so the issue is increasingly relevant in the health care context, and it is worth considering whether the specific nature of health care raises special questions around corporate moral responsibility.

Nursing by agreement: a contractarian perspective on nursing ethics.

Contractarianism has primarily been a political theory. A good argument can be made for its application to individual and professional ethics. A contractarian perspective on nursing ethics not only provides useful insights into the central relationship in nursing--the nurse and the patient--but also allows understanding of that relationship in the context of other relationships involving the nurse, the nursing profession, and the health care organization.

The targeting of phospholipid liposomes to bacteria.

Phospholipid liposomes have been prepared from phospholipid mixtures including dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine/phosphatidylinositol (DPPC/PI) and DPPC/dipalmitoylphosphatidylglycerol (DPPC/DPPG) mixtures and targeted to adsorbed biofilms of the skin-associated bacteria Staphylococcus epidermidis and Proteus vulgaris and the oral bacterium Streptococcus sanguis. The effects of time, liposome concentration and density of bacteria in the biofilm have been studied in detail for Staphylococcus epidermidis. The targeting (as assessed by the apparent monolayer coverage of the biofilms by liposomes) to the biofilms was found to be sensitive to the mol% of PI and DPPG in the liposomes and optimum levels of PI were found for targeting to each bacterium.

Caring: a new framework for analysis.

The increased attention given to the concept of care within the nursing literature must be considered in the light of the relatively superficial consideration given to the same concept within the educational curriculum. This article offers possible explanations for such brief consideration before discussing the development of a new framework for analysis of care.

Caring: a new framework for analysis.

The increased attention given to the concept of care within the nursing literature must be considered in the light of the relatively superficial consideration given to the same concept within the educational curriculum. This article offers possible explanations for such brief consideration before discussing the development of a new framework for analysis of care.

Ethics, agency and empowerment in nurse education.

The ethical demands of professional nursing practice are considered, and the concept of Agency is offered as a potentially useful part of the nurses conceptual equipment for such practice. The pressures of working in large organisations are suggested to be inimical to a sense of Agency, and it is also suggested that some of the academic disciplines involved in nurse education are offering an ambiguous view of the issue of Agency. The discipline of Ethics, while also ambiguous on this issue, is presented as offering useful ways of exploring that ambiguity.

Monoclonal antibodies against the capsular K antigen of Escherichia coli (O9:K30(A):H12): characterisation and use in analysis of K antigen organisation on the cell surface.

Monoclonal antibodies were produced against the capsular antigen of Escherichia coli serotype K(A)30, using a mouse hybridoma system. The antibodies also recognised the chemically identical capsular polysaccharide produced by Klebsiella K20. Chemical modification of the K30 polysaccharide indicated that the glucuronic acid residues found in the E.