This study is based on how politicians’ standars were represented in the debate about assisted reproduction of single women and surrogacy in Sweden. And also which arguments the politicians performed on both issues. The study was based on the protocol 2011/12:91 from the parliamentary debate in Sweden. The aim of the study was to examine political standards is identified according to parenting and family in the assisted reproduction and surrogacy debate. The empirical material has been analyzed through social constructivism as a theory and standard critical perspective related to normality. Argument analysis was used as a method to identify pro et contra arguments on the issues. Two theses from the protocol 2011/12:91 was identified and analyzed. The first thesis was "Every child has a right to have both a mother and a father" and the second thesis was, "Every human should have an opportunity to have children". Pro arguments to the first thesis was that a child has a right to know its genetic origin and to be nursed by both its parents as far as possible. They meant that the traditional family constellation with a mother and a father is a good family to raise a child within. Contra arguments in this issue also meant that the child has a right to know its genetic origin, and therefore should get this right in Sweden to reduce the risk that mothers get infertility treatment abroad with a donor that is anonymous. Additional contra arguments in this thesis was that the most important thing for a child is to grow up in a family with love and care, regardless of family constellation. Pro arguments to the last thesis, "Every human should have an opportunity to have children" was that it is a biological instinct to reproduce and politicians should therefore not stand in the way by prohibiting single women to get assisted reproduction. Contra argument to this thesis was that parenting is an impossible question to fairness. They meant that if you do not have the physical ability to have children, society should not help you with this matter. They also meant that if we legislate surrogacy in Sweden it is a big risk that women become a commodity in the matter. And this risk outweigh parents’ desire to have children.

This thesis explores some of the different ways in which people anticipate their dying in the U.K. Through an ethnographic exploration of an arts initiative, a social movement, a legal case, and a new law, this thesis asks the question: how do people seek to gain recognition for their dying in the 21st Century? It is argued here that this recognition is deemed important because it is the last opportunity for people’s unique identity, as they perceive it, to be reflected back at them in the faces of those who witness their dying and who stand alongside them. This witnessing is often performed in public spaces, for example: a hospice day centre; in the media spotlight; at a right-to-die conference; or in a court of law, and it is in these places where people hope that their individualised dying self will be authenticated. This thesis focuses on what happens in these public spaces and asks whether recognition is always possible. It concludes by suggesting that there are some things which are perhaps too private, too particular, and too uncertain to be recognised or authenticated in the way in which people might wish. Section One of this thesis focuses on the activities of an arts charity which works in hospices in the U.K. and tries to elicit testimony from dying patients. Section Two focuses on the right-to-die movement: its history, politics, and the activists which bring it to life. Section Three focuses on the legal regulation of death through careful examination of a legal challenge and a new law which both involve people making anticipatory decisions about how they wish to die. As this thesis shows, people’s dying testimony can take many different forms (artistic, legal, bureaucratic), and it can be represented in terms of suffering or transcendence. But the overwhelming desire of the people who feature in this thesis is to have the particularity of their lives, which is mirrored in the particularity of their deaths, publicly recognised.

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Shakespeare's second tetralogy, while in the process of exposing the divine-right and the Machiavellian theories, also shows how the divine-right order breaks down and paves the way for practical Machiavellianism.

Communications-related investigatory powers are ostensibly regulated within the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000, under the descriptive headings: 'interception of communications'; 'acquisition and disclosure of communications data' and 'investigation of data protected by encryption'. The scope, legality and extent of these hitherto infrequently examined powers experienced increased scrutiny following the controversial 2013 disclosures of fugitive United States National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, scrutiny generally founded on subjective conceptions of 'privacy', 'intrusiveness' or 'security'. This research however, adopts 'communications' as its conceptual common denominator. It comprehensively explores the separate politico-legal evolution of RIPA's communications-related investigatory powers, whilst identifying and critically analysing alternative statutory provisions that permit circumvention of RIPA's purported human rights-centric integrity. The detailed chronology provides conclusive evidence that current UK Secretaries of State and their executive agencies possess virtually unlimited communications-related information acquisition powers bequeathed by their predecessors. Perhaps more importantly, its simultaneous exposure of an executive culture of secrecy and deference to the UK's intelligence community assists in explaining why any fettering of the current powers will be so difficult to achieve. Drawing from Intelligence Studies, Information Science and Computer Science, this research logically deconstructs RIPA's communications-related powers, finding them more accurately describable as narrowly defined techniques facilitating the acquisition of communications-related data. Consequently, RIPA fails to envisage or regulate all types of acquisition, such as that obtained extra-jurisdictionally or via Computer Network Exploitation, thus partially legitimizing the status quo. The research also examines RIPA's seemingly all-encompassing definition of 'communication', finding it under-utilised, in that communications from the mind into electronic storage ('expression-related data') are not included. Consequently, the boundaries between 'communication', 'expression' and 'property,' and between RIPA's powers and those enabling Computer Network Exploitation are currently unnecessarily complicated. It concludes by recommending the enactment of a single statute regulating all investigative expression-related data acquisition.

Thesis advisor: Alan Rogers / It was not until relatively recently in United States history that the right to counsel for the accused, embodied in the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, was interpreted as a government responsibility. When the Supreme Court of the United States announced in 1963 that the states had to provide attorneys to indigent defendants in most serious criminal cases, state and local governments struggled to fund and coordinate the effort. Simultaneously, a legal services movement had reemerged for the civil legal needs of poor populations. This thesis provides a history of the progress of legal representation in both the criminal and civil contexts in Boston, Massachusetts from 1963 to 1983. It documents and examines the role of the state legislature, the Supreme Judicial Court, the Boston Bar Association, and gives special emphasis to the indispensable contributions by national entities and federally-funded legal service providers. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History Honors Program. / Discipline: History.

The Government of Thailand decided recently to introduce a legal system for the protection of plant variety right (PVR) in order to meet its commitment under the TRIPs agreement (part of the WTO agreement) to protect new varieties of plants. Having taken this significant decision - although in reality the decision was probably little more than a formality because of the TRIPs commitment - the government must assess the likely impact of PVR on public and private interests in Thailand and, in the light of that assessment, construct a PVR system suited to the country's particular needs (so far as these can be envisaged). The likely impact of the government's decision and the choice to be made constitute the backbone of this thesis as well as its prime focus. A PVR system is intended primarily to promote invention and innovation in the field of plant breeding. Whether the availability of PVR in Thailand will achieve those objectives cannot be said at this point. Studies carried out in countries with mature PVR systems claim, despite the lack of any solid evidence on which to found the claims, that PVR systems have certain positive or beneficial effects, for example more varieties giving higher yields and better adapted to growing conditions. On the other hand, some commentators believe that these benefits result from other factors, in particular technological advances (for example, improvements in cultivation and management of commercial crops). This thesis concludes that the availability or grant of PVR in Thailand will not have any radical impact on public and private interests there. At present, plant breeding and seed production are carried out by public and private sectors. Available data on seed production and consumption indicate the need for more investment in plant breeding and seed production, particularly in the private sector. A PVR system is unlikely to encourage breeders or producers to invest more because the availability of PVR is not a vital determinant in investment decisions. Fortunately. as far as can be seen at present, a PVR system is unlikely to have negative effects, e. g. seed price rises, obstacles to technological development or environmental dangers. In considering the most appropriate system, the major factors to be assessed are economic impact, existing political commitment, and practicality. The government should adopt the system established by the 1978 UPOV Convention, in preference to the 1991 Convention, because the earlier Convention is the more appropriate for Thailand's developmental needs.

The quickest change-point detection problems with sampling right constraints are considered. Specially, an observer sequentially takes observations from a random sequence, whose distribution will change at an unknown time. Based on the observation sequence, the observer wants to identify the change-point as quickly as possible. Unlike the classic quickest detection problem in which the observer can take an observation at each time slot, we impose a causal sampling right constraint to the observer. In particular, sampling rights are consumed when the observer takes an observation and are replenished randomly by a stochastic process. The observer cannot take observations if there is no sampling right left. The causal sampling right constraint is motivated by several practical applications. For example, in the application of sensor network for monitoring the abrupt change of its ambient environment, the sensor can only take observations if it has energy left in its battery. With this additional constraint, we design and analyze the optimal detection and sampling right allocation strategies to minimize the detection delay under various problem setups. As one of our main contributions, a greedy sampling right allocation strategy, by which the observer spends sampling rights in taking observations as long as there are sampling rights left, is proposed. This strategy possesses a low complexity structure, and leads to simple but (asymptotically) optimal detection algorithms for the problems under consideration. Specially, our main results include: 1) Non-Bayesian quickest change-point detection: we consider non-Bayesian quickest detection problem with stochastic sampling right constraint. Two criteria, namely the algorithm level average run length (ARL) and the system level ARL, are proposed to control the false alarm rate. We show that the greedy sampling right allocation strategy combined with the cumulative sum (CUSUM) algorithm is optimal for Lorden's setup with the algorithm level ARL constraint and is asymptotically optimal for both Lorden's and Pollak's setups with the system level ARL constraint. 2) Bayesian quickest change-point detection: both limited sampling right constraint and stochastic sampling right constraint are considered in the Bayesian quickest detection problem. The limited sampling right constraint can be viewed as a special case of the stochastic sampling right constraint with a zero sampling right replenishing rate. The optimal solutions are derived for both sampling right constraints. However, the structure of the optimal solutions are rather complex. For the problem with the limited sampling right constraint, we provide asymptotic upper and lower bounds for the detection delay. For the problem with the stochastic sampling right constraint, we show that the greedy sampling right allocation strategy combined with Shiryaev's detection rule is asymptotically optimal. 3) Quickest change-point detection with unknown post-change parameters: we extend previous results to the quickest detection problem with unknown post-change parameters. Both non-Bayesian and Bayesian setups with stochastic sampling right constraints are considered. For the non-Bayesian problem, we show that the greedy sampling right allocation strategy combined with the M-CUSUM algorithm is asymptotically optimal. For the Bayesian setups, we show that the greedy sampling right allocation strategy combined with the proposed M-Shiryaev algorithm is asymptotically optimal.

Chronic lung diseases are often complicated with pulmonary hypertension (PH). This can lead to disability and poor prognosis. Oxidative stress has been implicated in the development of PH and right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH).A possible new way to treat lung disease related pulmonary hypertension is allopurinol (a xanthine oxidase inhibitor) which decreases both uric acid and oxidative stress. We hypothesised that allopurinol could regress RVH in patients with pulmonary hypertension associated with chronic lung disease (PH-CLD).In a double-blind, randomised controlled clinical trial, 72 patients with PH-CLD (93% diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 17% with interstitial lung disease) were randomised to receive either allopurinol 300 mg twice daily or placebo for twelve months. The primary outcome was the mean change in right ventricular mass (RVM) as assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI) at twelve months. The secondary outcomes were the change in other cardiac parameters measured by CMRI, St George's Respiratory Questionnaire, Short Form 36, spirometry and six-minute walk test (6MWT).The mean age was 71 years, the mean FEV1 was 60% with mean resting SaO2 of 96%. After 12 months, there was no significant change in RVM. There were also no significant changes in other cardiac parameters measured on CMRI, quality of life questionnaires, spirometry and 6MWT. Post-hoc subgroup analysis showed that allopurinol reduced RVM (allopurinol -6.16 g vs placebo 0.75 g, p = 0.02) in COPD patients with more severe airflow limitation. Patients with higher NT-proBNP (> 489 pg/ml) had a greater improvement in left ventricular ejection fraction with allopurinol 5.12 vs placebo -1.62, p = 0.02.In summary, allopurinol had no overall impact but reduced RV mass in COPD patients with more severe airflow limitation. Further studies are warranted to assess the longer term impact of allopurinol in more severe COPD.

The following work is an effort to better understand commonwealths by exploring the circumstances, rights, and desires of those who found them or recognize their authority. While it is apparent that mankind’s affairs are governed largely by commonwealths or similar bodies, the reasons that men have for establishing them and the rights upon which their authority is established can be more difficult to grasp. In this work, differing perspectives on the condition of men in nature, the rights they naturally possess, and the primary desires that motivate them are considered in hopes of determining a commonwealth’s purpose. Visions and definitions of commonwealths given by the same philosophers are then reviewed and compared with one another to determine the ways that their respective views on man and his condition mold the arrangements they put forth. Better understanding the relationship between men, their circumstances, and the governments they create could be of great value to those trying to determine why existing commonwealths have taken their present forms. Such insight would also clarify which attributes of a commonwealth are most essential to ensuring that it accomplishes the purposes for which it was established.