Inaugural Debate Section - Debate Editor's Note

[Editor's Note: Maternity, its Value and Sense as Core of the Bioethical Debate on Surrogated Motherhood].

Controversies in cardiovascular medicine revisited.

Over the last decade, the Controversies in Cardiovascular Medicine section has established a position as a popular and frequently downloaded section of Circulation. Controversy is inherent to medicine and other disciplines when a course of action must be taken on the basis of insufficient evidence. Like debates at scientific meetings, published controversies generate considerable interest becau...

Should the Federal Income Tax Be Replaced with a National Sales or Value-added Tax?

[Editor's Note: It appears that the question of changing the federal tax base will be part of the public debate for the foreseeable future. In a Brief that we published in April, Alan Auerbach of UC Berkeley summarized the effects and uncertainties of replacing the federal income tax with a federal flat tax. In the following discussion, Steven Sheffrin of UC Davis reviews several important issu...

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To be an entrepreneurial university nowadays seems to be an attractive, convincing, modern vision for many higher education institutions and their leaders. The article goes through reflections on who will say what to whom when using the expression “entrepreneurial university” and it will show that there are at least four debates about entrepreneurial challenges to universities. The first deb...

The Brain-Games Conundrum: Does Cognitive Training Really Sharpen the Mind?

Editor's Note: Few topics in the world of neuroscience evoke as much debate as the effectiveness of cognitive training. Do you misplace your keys regularly? Forget appointments? Have trouble remembering names? No worries. A host of companies promise to " train " your brain with games designed to stave off mental decline. Regardless of their effectiveness, their advertising has convinced tens of...