Leroy and colleagues report on the accuracy of the Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation Prognostic Model ('ProVent') in a cohort study of patients ventilated for at least 21 days in one of three hospitals in the north of France. This study is noteworthy because it is the first to describe the performance of the ProVent model both outside the US and in a community hospital-based setting.

As U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins stated in recent testimony to Congress, “Our nation has never witnessed a time of greater promise for advances in medicine.” Researchers are moving closer to developing a universal flu vaccine, cancer immunotherapy (harnessing the immune system to attack tumor cells) is on the horizon, and the public/private BRAIN initiative w...

Bjorn T. Ramberg’s book focuses on Davidson’s work in the philosophy of language, published between 1984 and the appearance of the book. Recent papers provide the focus for an overview of Davidson’s philosophy of language and its relations to broader debates and influences. Still, the reader is warned: the author “cannot claim” that the book “is in every detail a faithful representation or deve...

This chapter describes how an artiicial device, able to produce acoustic signals from articulatory motion, can learn to speak, i.e. coordinate its articulatory movements in such a way that it utters meaningful sequences of sounds belonging to a given language. This complex learning procedure, accomplished within a few years by the human child, is simulated in four major steps: (a) a babbling ph...

On this day, 10th October 1791, 200 years ago, two men boarded the coach in Dublin at 10.30 am. Few could have imagined the carnage which would result from their trip to Belfast. The two men were Theobald Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell. Wolfe Tone is the most famous name in Irish history. He was the son of a Protestant coach builder in Dublin and his ambition was to join the army. His father oDo...

"Listen to the complaint of the patient, however tiresome or irrelevant that may seem. He will eventually tell you what is the matter with him.... It is usually better in terms ofboth care and time to allow the flow to come to a natural halt from exhaustion of either the speaker or the material." The first half of this advice (from an experienced advocate and judge in medicolegal cases and a he...

today. Dr. Solzbacher received I n doctorate in political and economic sci ciice from Cologne tin v er-.il \ . G I T many, and al though only t w e n t y six yearo l d he has addressed au diences in Europe aggrega t ing 50,000 people. It is his belief thai war might he abedished by p r o m o t i n g fr iendship amoi iM the youth of the nations of the wor ld , and in defense of this theory, lie ...

Richard Buckminster Fuller, described by some as a visionary and others as a crackpot, and by himself as a "fairly low average man," will be the last speaker in the 1973-74 President's L e c t u r e Series. The renowned engineer, architect, and philosopher will discuss "Humans in the Universe" at 8pm Tuesday, March 19, in the Rice Memorial Center Grand Hall. He will be introduced by David A. Cr...