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Spent coffee grounds are an interesting high volume renewable resource for valorisation. Activation with CaCl2 produces mesoporous carbons with high capacity for removal of MnO42−.

Hume's account of belief is understood to be inspired by allegedly incompatible motivations, one descriptive and expressing Hume's naturalism, the other normative and expressing Hume's epistemological aims. This understanding assumes a particular way in which these elements are distinct: an assumption that I dispute. I suggest that the explanatory-naturalistic aspects of Hume's account of belief are not incompatible with the normative-epistemological aspects. Rather, at least for some central cases of belief formation that Hume discusses at length, S's coming to believe that p can be explained in a way that vindicates S's belief that p.

A standard interpretation of Hume’s naturalism is that it paved the way for a scientistic and ‘disenchanted’ conception of the world. My aim in this paper is to show that this is a restrictive reading of Hume, and it obscures a different and profitable interpretation of what Humean naturalism amounts to. The standard interpretation implies that Hume’s ‘science of human nature’ was a reductive investigation into our psychology. But, as Hume explains, the subject matter of this science is not restricted to introspectively accessible mental content and incorporates our social nature and interpersonal experience. Illuminating the science of human nature has implications for how we understand what Hume means by ‘experience’ and thus how we understand the context of his epistemological investigations. I examine these in turn and argue overall that Hume’s naturalism and his science of man do not simply anticipate a disenchanted conception of the world.

Wittgenstein's contributions to philosophy include numerous remarks that indicate his attitude towards science and, in particular, the relation between science and philosophy. While Wittgenstein's views are not anti-science they do convey a staunch anti-scientism. Naturalism is a view about the relation between science and philosophy, one that privileges the metaphysical and epistemological status of science. Scientism could be construed as an especially strong form of naturalism. Huw Price has drawn a contrast between what he calls object naturalism and subject naturalism. Object naturalism is the view that in some important sense, all there is is the world studied by science. Subject naturalism, in contrast, is not primarily a view about what entities exist, taking the ontology of natural science as its guide and then regarding our practices and discourse in light of that. The author has tried to show that while such a form of understanding is threatened by scientism it need not be so threatened by naturalism.

The Roots of Morality is Maxine Sheets-Johnstone's third book in a trio of Roots… books. The first was the The Roots of Thinking (1990), and the second The Roots of Power: Animate Form and Gendered Bodies (1994). Like her other work, The Roots of Morality makes use of an unusually wide range of sources and philosophical perspectives. The aim of the book is to elucidate 'an understanding of morality grounded in the nature of human nature'. To achieve this, Sheets-Johnstone seeks to examine the 'fundamental realities of human nature' and to articulate a 'foundation- alist morality'—a framework that identifies and explores 'pan-cultural aspects of human existence' (p.1). The book is divided into two parts with the first focused on what is usually considered the 'dark side of human nature'. Topics in this part include power, death, 'real male-male competition' and evil. The book moves in part II to discuss what is usually considered the more 'positive side' of human nature; the chapters focus on empathy, child' sp lay, trust and caring. The book also contains a detailed Prologue in which Sheets-Johnstone examines the challenge of 'grounding' the moral sense by discussing the Humean background to contemporary accounts of sympathy, selfishness and the nature and role of affect more generally. It also frames the culture/nature distinction in terms of mythology and religion, patriarchal symbolism, contemporary Western science and pan-cultural practices of war. The book ends with an Epilogue in which a form of moral naturalism is outlined; one that tries to provide an account of morality which is interdependent with social-psychological approaches to human nature. At over 400 pages long, the book is a sustainedand compellingaccount offundamental andmorally vital aspects of subjectivity, intersubjectivity and human nature. The book advocates and is itself a rare example of genuinely interdisciplinary research. It is relevant to philosophers with interests in a number of areas, as well as psychologists, anthropologists and others. According to Sheets-Johnstone: 'A universal morality must necessarily rest on universal foundations; that is, it must logically derive from what is pan-cultural'

This paper critically evaluates central themes of values-based medicine (VBM). First, I discuss the 'non-descriptivist' conception of value judgments at the heart of VBM. According to it, no inferences can rationally be drawn from factual criteria to value judgments and the inferences that are naturally formed are a matter of human psychology. I argue, however, that it is an essential feature of value judgments that they are themselves subject to normative assessment. This implies an important role for an evaluatively rich notion of psychology. Second, I discuss the role of 'dissensus' in VBM and argue that, although value judgments need not converge, the processes for exploring conflicting values must, themselves, be normatively assessable. Third, I examine how these aspects interact in complex real cases such as the case study of Diane Abbot.

MacIntyre shares with others, such as John McDowell, a broad commitment in moral epistemology to the centrality of tradition and both regard forms of enculturation as conditions of moral knowledge. Although MacIntyre is critical of the thought that moral reasons are available only to those whose experience of the world is conceptually articulated, he is sympathetic to the idea that the development of subjectivity involves the capacity to appreciate external moral demands. This paper critically examines some aspects of MacIntyre’s account of how knowledge is related to tradition, and suggests ways in which the formation of moral subjectivity involves the ability to experience the world.

Patients commonly present to the Emergency Department with sudden onset acute severe headache, but exclusion of significant secondary causes, particularly subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH), is vital. The misdiagnosis of SAH is most likely in patients with a normal neurological examination, and the consequences can be disastrous. A noncontrast computed tomography (CT) brain scan is the initial investigation of choice, and most would recommend that, if negative, this be followed by a lumbar puncture (LP) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis. Many hospitals in the UK have developed Clinical Decision Unit (CDU) pathways to provide a standardized approach to the investigation and management of neurologically normal patients with headache suggestive of SAH.The aims of this study were to describe the prevalence of SAH and to evaluate the performance of CT and LP in a CDU population with sudden onset acute severe headache.A retrospective review of neurologically pristine patients admitted to a CDU pathway for exclusion of SAH was conducted. Structured case notes were reviewed; patient demographics, investigation results and clinical outcomes were recorded in each case.The overall prevalence of SAH in this population was 14/517 (2.7%). A noncontrast CT of the brain had a negative predictive value of 99.8%, reducing the post-test probability of having an angiogram-positive SAH detected by LP and CSF analysis to 0.21% (95% confidence interval 0.04-0.36%).The management of neurologically pristine patients with sudden onset severe headache on a CDU pathway is feasible. In light of the low prevalence of SAH in this population, the decision to follow a negative CT with an LP in all cases needs careful consideration, as CSF results may only rarely confer therapeutic benefit to patients suspected of SAH.

One of the symptoms of trauma is said to be a ‘sense of foreshortened future’. Without further qualification, it is not clear how to interpret this. In this paper, we offer a phenomenological account of what the experience consists of. To do so, we focus on the effects of torture. We describe how traumatic events, especially those that are deliberately inflicted by other people, can lead to a loss of what might be termed ‘trust’ or ‘confidence’ in the world. This undermines the intelligibility of one’s projects, cares and commitments, in a way that amounts to a change in the structure of temporal experience. The paper concludes by briefly addressing the implications of this for how we respond to trauma, as well as offering some remarks on the relationship between trauma and psychosis.

A 65-year-old man developed ocular cicatricial pemphigoid. He was treated with topical and systemic immunosuppressive agents. Three months later, he was found to have metastatic oesophageal carcinoma. To our knowledge, the association of ocular cicatricial pemphigoid and oesphageal carcinoma has not previously been described.

Among the characteristic features of depression is a diminishment in or lack of action and motivation. In this paper, I consider a dominant philosophical account which purports to explain this lack of action or motivation. This approach comes in different versions but a common theme is, I argue, an over reliance on psychologistic assumptions about action–explanation and the nature of motivation. As a corrective I consider an alternative view that gives a prominent place to the body in motivation. Central to the experience of depression are changes to how a person is motivated to act and, also as central, are changes to bodily feelings and capacities. I argue that broadly characterizing motivation in terms of bodily capacities can, in particular, provide a more compelling account of depressive motivational pathology.

Sellars suggests that a characterization of knowledge that underlies the Myth of the Given, in his sense, can be avoided by ‘placing’ knowledge in the space of reasons. The idea that there can be states of awareness the having of which does not presuppose knowledge, learning, or the possession of concepts which at the same time are able to provide justification is not coherent.1 The image of the space of reasons is introduced by Sellars partly as a way to maintain that knowledge can be adequately understood only in a normative context. The context incorporates the sense in which placing episodes or states within it, involves the knower being justified or being able to justify what they say. It is distinctive and contrasts with other ways in which we make things intelligible, including perhaps other states or episodes. According to McDowell, we sometimes make phenomena intelligible by placing them in a network of intrinsically non-rational relations; the kind of relations that unify phenomena as conforming to laws of nature, for instance. The space of reasons, by contrast, is a domain which involves justificatory relations, and is one of the ways in which we make things (ourselves, for instance) intelligible as being sensitive to, asking for, and providing, reasons.

Particularism often incorporates a perceptual model of moral knowledge. McKeever and Ridge suggest that this is partly because moral knowledge is often seemingly unlike rule-governed activities such as following a recipe, and that a natural way of describing our moral experience and the justification of moral judgements is in perceptual terms (McKeever and Ridge, 2006, p.76). We see that Robert is cruel, or that a certain action is kind, just as we see that the tree is there. The thought is that there need be no principles which serve to rationalize our moral perceptions or constitute the basis of inferences to moral knowledge. Rather, moral knowledge is enjoyed through exercising an awareness which does not need to be articulated by invoking principles.1 In a stronger version, such knowledge cannot be articulated in a principled way. The strong version raises an immediate concern: if this sort of bald perceptualism were true, then in what sense can the relevant sort of knowledge be articulated? The worry is that it might be very difficult to make sense of how such knowledge is shared — how it is passed on to children, for example.

Moral particularism is becoming one of the most important topics in contemporary moral theory. Although there are reasons to think that the roots of particularism are very ancient, the position has been placed firmly at the forefront of recent philosophy primarily through the work of Jonathan Dancy (for example, 1993, 2004), who cites as inspiration the writings of John McDowell (Dancy, 1993, p. xii).1 There is no settled way to characterize moral particularism, and this is partly because of the variety of considerations which explicitly support or can be interpreted as endorsing the position. Particularism is sometimes characterized as the source, and sometimes as the consequence, of commitments to theses about the relation between ethics, mind and world and there are an increasing number of nuanced qualifications and distinctions geared to defend or criticize particularism. Despite the wide interest that it now commands, the debate over particularism has recently been described as enjoying a well-earned ‘reputation for obscurity’, and that it ‘has been thought by some to be a refuge for those with patience for the murky’ (Schroeder, 2009, pp. 568, 578).2 However, working through the problems and prospects of particularism need not lead to a dialectic of ever-decreasing circles. In fact, and as I hope to demonstrate, I think the opposite is true.

Although according to moral particularism, principles need not be in themselves metaphysically or rationally dubious, the order of priority between principle and particular runs from the latter to the former. Thus, whatever moral principles exist, they ‘are learnt in and from particular cases’ (Dancy, 1985a, p.151), and it is also suggested that an agent who is in possession of a ‘large list of principles … [could be] at an advantage when coming to a decision in a particular case’ (Dancy, 1985a, p.150). Notwithstanding the admission that principles can be learnt, and it can be a good thing to learn them from the point of view of moral reasoning, the role of principles is nevertheless highly restricted. Recall from Chapter 1 §1.4 that ‘a moral principle amounts to a reminder of the sort of importance that a property can have in suitable circumstances’ (Dancy, 1985a, p.150).

According to the most detailed articulation and defence of moral particularism, it is a metaphysical doctrine about the nature of reasons. This paper addresses aspects of particularist epistemology. In rejecting the existence and efficacy of principles in moral thinking and reasoning particularists typically appeal to a theory of moral knowledge which operates with a ‘perceptual’ metaphor. This is problematic. Holism about valence can give rise to a moral epistemology that is a metaethical variety of atomistic empiricism. To avoid what could be called the Myth of the Moral Given, particularism has made use of a judgement-centred account of moral epistemology. This paper critically examines that account with reference to a proposed analogy between our moral knowledge and our knowledge of similarities.

This paper develops themes addressed in an article by Eric Wiland in the Journal of Medical Ethics 2000;26:466–8, where he aims to contribute to the debate concerning the moral status of abortion, and to emphasise the importance of analogies in moral argument. In the present paper I try to secure more firmly a novel understanding of why analogy is an essential component in the attempt to justify moral beliefs. I seek to show how analogical argument both encapsulates and exercises the notions of rationality and imagination and that the construction, development, and comparison of analogies fundamentally underpins ethical argument. In so doing, it enables us to adopt imaginative and ethically illuminating perspectives but in a manner that does not relinquish any claims to intellectual rigour. I present a critique of a brand of "moral particularism" by showing how it cannot, if construed in a certain way, adequately conceive of how we use analogies and imaginary cases in ethics. Although such a particularism is thus impotent with regard to ethical debate, I show that the wider motivation behind particularism that can be extracted is of clear relevance and importance to medical practitioners.

Thirty patients with first episode disciform keratitis and with no previous steroid exposure were randomly assigned to double blind treatment with 3% acyclovir ointment and 0.1% betamethasone (Betnesol) drops or acyclovir ointment and matching placebo. In the steroid group 14 of the 15 patients healed in a mean time of 21.8 days. In the placebo group eight of the 13 patients healed in a mean time of 34.5 days. The difference in mean healing time between the two groups was significant (p < 0.05). The cumulative rate of healing was also quicker in the steroid group when compared with the placebo group (p < 0.001). Other clinical parameters improved more favourably in the combination treatment group. Four patients, two in either group, experienced a mild transient punctate epitheliopathy, but no other serious adverse effects were noted. There has been no significant difference in the recurrence rate between the two groups after a mean follow-up period of approximately 3 years.

135 patients were entered into a 28-day randomized double-masked multicentre study comparing the efficacy and short-term safety of lodoxamide 0.1% ophthalmic solution (Alomide--Alcon Laboratories), a mast cell stabilizer, with sodium cromoglycate 2% ophthalmic solution (Opticrom--Fisons Pharmaceuticals) in the treatment of allergic eye disease. Patients given lodoxamide 0.1% showed a significantly more rapid and greater improvement in their signs and symptoms of allergic eye disease than patients given sodium cromoglycate 2%. Both treatments were found to be safe, and side-effect profiles were comparable between the two treatment groups, although the overall incidence of side-effects in this study was found to be less frequent in the lodoxamide-treated group.

Fifty patients with corneal dendritic ulceration were randomly entered into a double blind clinical trial comparing BVDU eyedrops with TFT eyedrops. Of those receiving TFT 100% healed in a mean time of 6.7 days, while 92% of those receiving BVDU healed in a mean time of 8.7 days. There was no statistical difference between the two groups in terms of numbers healed, but BVDU was significantly slower in terms of days to heal. After a mean follow-up period of 7.5 months there has been one recurrence in each group.

The main reaction products resulting from the addition of atomic hydrogen to acetylene are shown to be ethylene, 1,3-butadiene, and benzene. The mechanism involves chain reactions of the vinyl and butadienyl radicals, which regenerate atomic hydrogen. Some of the rate parameters are estimated.

The mechanism of reaction of atomic hydrogen with CH3Br has been examined by product analysis in a static system. In a vessel coated with NaOH to remove HBr, quantum yield close to unity are found for C2H6 formation. H + CH3Br → CH3 + HBr, 2CH3 → C2H6. The reaction scheme is modelled by assuming that surface loss is diffusion controlled. The step H + CH3Br → CH4 + Br accounts for less than 5% of the total reaction.