Moving Bioethics Toward Its Better Self: a sociologist's perspective.

The value and belief questions with which bioethics deals have social, cultural, moral, and societal implications that are not confined to certain spheres of biology and medicine, health and illness, and the delivery of medical care. And yet, throughout its history, the field has continued to be focused on a narrow array of medically associated phenomena to which it has applied a limited set of ethical precepts that originate in Western and American philosophical thought. It has done so in an intellectual atmosphere that has not been characterized by vigorous debate. This paper reflects on these attributes of bioethics, offers some suggestions about how it might expand its topical, ethical, cross-cultural, and international orbit, and invites participants in the field to bring this about through a self-critical process.

Deciphering the surgeons' stories.

Twelve narratives written by surgeons on ethical decision-making are analyzed in this commentary. Several major themes in their narratives are discussed: the preponderance of end-of-life issues; the struggle to be inclusively empathetic, even under emotionally alienating circumstances; social justice; and the disagreement among colleagues about how to deal with patients in situations of medical uncertainty. The commentary not only discusses the areas of stress that the surgeons identify in their accounts. It also highlights phenomena and themes that are missing from them, and calls for more work to be done gathering stories from surgeons to explore and explain the "gaps" in this narrative collection.

Mentoring new faculty in a department of psychiatry.

A formalized mentoring program was developed in response to several problems experienced by new faculty in a department of psychiatry. Goals of the program were to facilitate socialization/orientation to academic psychiatry, facilitate and improve functioning of faculty, and increase retention of new faculty members. A 36-item questionnaire and a program evaluation form were developed to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Significant differences were found for the overall mean of all pre- vs. postmeasures and the sum of the items related to facilitation of socialization/orientation to academic psychiatry. Mentors and mentees evaluated the program as worthwhile and would recommend it to other faculty members.

Random phase data masks: fabrication tolerances and advantages of four phase level masks.

An analysis is presented of the intensity variations in the Fourier transform plane resulting from the use of a bilevel random phase mask for holographic data recording as suggested by Burckhardt. To maintain a fixed ratio of peak intensities between in-phase amplitude components and out-of-phase components for an imperfect phase mask, the permissible error in the phase shift varies as 1/N, where N is the number of apertures in the data mask. A factor of 2(1/2) reduction in the rms intensity fluctuations in both the Fourier transform plane where the hologram is recorded and in the retrieved image may be obtained by using four levels of phase shift. No further improvement is obtained with additional levels.