Can Counter-Terrorist Internment Ever be Legitimate?

Can viruses ever be useful?

M ost of the terms used for computer viruses arc metaphors: they have a largely medical origin, and are seductive if not literally sexy. The very real worries WC have about AIDS, for example, no doubt colour the way we talk about computer viruses. At the extreme, abstractly viruses arc clearly just algorithms, and like any other algorithm they arc good for some things and not good for others. T...

Burst Imaging—Can It Ever Be Useful in the Clinic?

Burst is an ultra-rapid imaging sequence that works by excitation of magnetization using a series of regularly spaced, low flip-angle pulses, applied at the same time as a gradient in the read direction. In the original concept, this gradient is constant, and multiple echoes are refocused under a constant-read gradient. This article brings together the previous literature on the subject, placin...

Can hospital mortality comparisons ever be fit for purpose?

Can snails ever be effective and safe biocontrol agents ?

The use of snails as biocontrol agents against other snails and against aquatic weeds is reviewed, evaluating their success and their impacts on non-target organisms. The predatory snail Euglandina rosea (and other species), although widely used against Achatina fulica (the giant African land snail) on Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, has not been shown to control A. fulica but has seriously i...

Commentary: Can 'many weak' instruments ever be 'strong'?

Investigations into the aetiology of common complex diseases based on observational data should make use of any opportunity to reduce bias due to unobserved confounding. In this context, it has become popular to exploit instrumental variable (IV) methods via Mendelian randomization but the key to success lies in finding suitable genetic instruments. Genome-wide association studies are increasin...