"We've got a problem!" women and prenatal diagnosis

This feminist qualitative research addresses the lack of women's voices in the ethical debates surrounding prenatal diagnosis (PD). The conclusions reached challenge current ethical debates around PD programmes which, through the exclusion of groups intimately affected by PD, remain partial and inadequate.

Early breast cancer identification : Which way to go? Microarray or image based computer aided diagnosis!

The goal of this research is to develop a computer aided diagnostic (CAD) system that can detect breast cancer in the early stage by using microarray and image data. We verified the performance of six well known classification algorithms with various performance matrices. Although we do not suggest a unique classifier algorithm for a CAD system, we do identify a number of algorithms whose performance is very promising. The algorithms performance was validated by 3 images dataset; two have been used for the first time in this experiment. Multidimensional image filtering is adopted for the final data extraction. The image data classification performance is compared with microarray data. Results suggest the most effective means of breast cancer identification in the early stage is a hybrid approach.

Robust functional estimation and fault diagnosis for complex uncertain systems

System monitoring and fault diagnosis capabilities are the most important aspects in improving safety and reliability of automatic control systems. This research proposed new methodologies on fault diagnosis and estimation for complex uncertain systems. As a result of this research, complex industrial plants can now be more effectively controlled.

Bipolar missed states : the diagnosis and clinical salience of bipolar mixed states

Objective: To explore diagnostic and treatment issues concerning bipolar mixed states.

Method: Bipolar mixed states are described and concerns about diagnostic and treatment difficulties are summarized and discussed.

Result: Mixed states can present with equal admixtures of depressive or manic symptoms, or more commonly one component predominates. There is fair consensus, although little data, regarding the management of manic mixed states. However depressive mixed states are far more complex both in terms of recognition and management. People suffering from mixed states characteristically present with complaints of depression.

Conclusions: The boundaries between depressive mixed states and agitated depression are vague, yet carry substantial therapeutic implications. Bipolar mixed states are often difficult to treat, and tend to take much longer to settle than either pure mania or depression.  Furthermore there is data that treatment with antidepressants can worsen the course of mixed states. Hence missed diagnoses can potentially have negative clinical implications.  Therefore in this paper the clinical presentation, diagnosis and therapy of mixed states is reviewed with a view to improving management.

Financial crisis, Social pathologies and 'generalised perversion' : questioning Zizek's diagnosis of the times

Slavoj Zizek's work has been highly influential in the formulation of an emerging consensus among Lacanian social researchers, that we live in a society of generalised perversion whose initial fruits are the corrosion of democracy and the recent financial crisis. This position rests upon a notion of modern subjectivity that connects ‘commodity fetishism’ with clinical perversion in a pathological configuration, so that social theoretical identification of crisis tendencies, evaluative language about moral problems and diagnostic categories from the Lacanian clinic can be combined in a single figure. In this article, we question the series of conceptual links that constitute this position, tracing them from Zizek’s critique in his short work on the global financial crisis and his broader restatement of this analysis in the recent Living in the End Times, through the moment of his announcement of the notion of ‘generalised perversion’ in The Ticklish Subject, all the way back to fundamental propositions outlined in his earliest work. Our argument progresses through three claims. First, we show in the evolution of this position that it leads Zizek to equivocate in his diagnosis of contemporary society between two mutually exclusive categories (‘psychosis’ and ‘perversion’), indicating an antinomy in his work that is resolved in favour of ‘generalised perversion’ on empirical, not logical, grounds. Secondly, we offer a critical resolution of the antinomy through a critique of what we argue is Zizek’s mistaken over-extension of psychoanalytic reason beyond its legitimate scope of application. Finally, we point to some of the political implications of the way that Zizek speculatively resolves his logical difficulties, by analysing the consequences of his claim that generalised social perversion - the problem to be solved - involves a dethroning of the communal ego ideal. A communitarian streak, implicit in the potential conflation of moral denunciation with psychoanalytic diagnosis that the rhetoric of ‘perversion’ invokes, runs through Zizek’s work on capitalism, we propose in conclusion.