I didn’t think it could (would) happen to me

My radical prostatectomy: it will never happen to me--but could it?

"You never told me that could happen!" Consent and litigation: how to avoid it.

It certainly can seem that whenever something goes wrong, patients want to sue the individual concerned. If they cannot show that the doctor was negligent in the procedure that was performed, they often claim that “you never told me that could happen”. To help avoid litigation in this area, three factors should be considered: (1) What you tell the patient; (2) How you tell them; and (3) What yo...

Two-way thermodynamics: Could it really happen?

In previous publications I have suggested that opposite thermodynamic arrows of time could coexist in our universe. This letter responds to the comments of H. D. Zeh (previous letter in this journal). In 2002 a conference took place in Bielefeld, entitled, " The direction of time: The role of reversibil-ity/irreversibility in the study of nature " [1]. In my presentation I spoke about recent wo...

“I Thought You Would Show Me How to Do It" - Studying and Supporting PIM Strategy Changes

This article presents an unexplored perspective in personal information management (PIM): PIM strategy changes. In the first part of the paper, we introduce a naturalistic study we conducted in order to explore how people manage their information and how their strategies evolve. We propose a model for characterizing PIM strategy changes based on their cause, scope and action. Further, we presen...

“I never expected that it would happen, coming to ask me such questions”:Ethical aspects of asking children about violence in resource poor settings

BACKGROUND International epidemiological research into violence against children is increasing in scope and frequency, but little has been written about practical management of the ethical aspects of conducting such research in low and middle-income countries. In this paper, we describe our study procedures and reflect on our experiences conducting a survey of more than 3,700 primary school chi...