Despite the adversity presented by COVID-19 pandemic, it also pushed for experimenting with innovative strategies for community engagement. The Community Research Advisory Council (C-RAC) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), is an initiative to promote community engagement in research. COVID-19 rendered it impossible for C-RAC to conduct its meetings all of which have historically been in person. We describe the experience of advancing the work of the C-RAC during COVID-19 using digital and virtual strategies. Since March 2020, C-RAC transitioned from in person to virtual meetings. The needs assessment was conducted among C-RAC members, and individualized solutions provided for a successful virtual engagement. The usual working schedule was altered to respond to COVID-19 and promote community engaged research. Attendance to C-RAC meetings before and after the transition to virtual operation increased from 69% to 76% among C-RAC members from the community. In addition, the C-RAC launched new initiatives and in eighteen months since January 2020, it conducted 50 highly rated research reviews for 20 research teams. The experience of the C-RAC demonstrates that when community needs are assessed and addressed, and technical support is provided, digital strategies can lead to greater community collaborations.

This research communication reports the results from questionnaires used to identify the impact of recent research into the disinfection of cattle foot-trimming equipment to prevent bovine digital dermatitis (BDD) transmission on (a) biosecurity knowledge and (b) hygiene practice of foot health professionals. An initial questionnaire found that more than half of participating farmers, veterinary surgeons and commercial foot-trimmers were not considering hand or hoof-knife hygiene in their working practices. The following year, after the release of a foot-trimming hygiene protocol and a comprehensive knowledge exchange programme by the University of Liverpool, a second survey showed 35/80 (43.8%) farmers, veterinary surgeons and commercial foot-trimmers sampled considered they were now more aware of the risk of spreading BDD during foot- trimming. Furthermore, 36/80 (45.0%) had enhanced their hygiene practice in the last year, impacting an estimated 1383 farms and 5130 cows trimmed each week. Participants who reported having seen both the foot-trimming hygiene protocol we developed with AHDB Dairy and other articles about foot-trimming hygiene in the farming and veterinary press, were significantly more likely to have changed their working practices. Difficulties accessing water and cleaning facilities on farms were identified as the greatest barrier to improving biosecurity practices. Participants' preferred priority for future research was continued collection of evidence for the importance and efficacy of good foot-trimming hygiene practices.

From the perspectives of coverage and reimbursement, heart transplantation has been a serious concern of policymakers in the U.S. since 1980, the year it was decided that a comprehensive study was required before the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the federal agency responsible for the administration of the Medicare program, would be able to decide the status of the procedure (14;15;30;35). It was well acknowledged that the issues surrounding this decision were complex and that initial attempts to resolve the underlying coverage issue seemed to be too narrowly construed. It was at this time that the late Patricia Roberts Harris, then Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), declared that DHHS would require new technologies to pass muster on the basis of their “social consequences” before “financing their wide distribution” (30). In a very special sense, although not appreciated at the time, a new era of health care technology assessment was ushered in, as Harris proclaimed that the then-conceived study of heart transplantation should serve as the “prototype” of technology assessment.

NASA has been developing very high temperature semiconductor integrated circuits for use in the hot sections of aircraft engines and for Venus exploration. This paper reports on long-term 500 °C electrical operation of prototype 6H-SiC integrated circuits based on epitaxial 6H-SiC junction field effect transistors (JFETs). As of this writing, some devices have surpassed 4000 hours of continuous 500 °C electrical operation in oxidizing air atmosphere with minimal change in relevant electrical parameters.

We investigate local strong rationality (LSR) in a one-step-forward-looking univariate model with memory one. Eductive arguments are used to determine when common knowledge (CK) that the solution is near some perfect-foresight path is sufficient to trigger complete coordination on that path (i.e., the path is LSR). Coordination of expectations is shown to depend on three factors: the nature of the CK initial beliefs, the degree of structural heterogeneity, and the information structure. Our sufficient conditions for LSR precisely reflect these features and provide basic consistent justifications for the choice of the saddle-path solution.

The title speaks for itself: This special issue focuses attention on dynamical models in which expectations matter and in which expectational coordination is not taken for granted. This is a subject that has generated a lot of research in the past 20 years; the sample of papers presented here is witness to the present activity and the ongoing progress of our understanding. Here, as in previous research, the rational expectations construct remains the anchor of the analysis of expectational coordination, but it is subject to the additional critical scrutiny for which the present state of our knowledge calls more and more.

As organ transplantation procedures become accepted as standard medical practice, it is anticipated that the frequency of liability claims against transplant care providers will increase. This article examines current statutory and common law analyses of malpractice issues in transplantation, with particular attention given to issues of informed consent as they arise both for the organ donor and donee.

The February 1985 issue of Law, Medicine & Health Care published excerpts from the Report of the Massachusetts Task Force on Organ Transplantation, along with a report by its chairman, Professor George Annas, and commentary by a number of esteemed scholars and practitioners who were generally complimentary of both the approach and substance of the work of the Task Force. We have thoroughly reviewed the Task Force Report and feel it necessary to take strong exception to a number of points, both procedural and substantive, raised there. In general, we are concerned that the Task Force Report perpetuates and reinforces a number of serious misconceptions about the issues surrounding transplantation that, in turn, lead to conclusions that are both inaccurate and misleading. This situation is most unfortunate be cause the complexities of the issues raised by transplantation require care ful scrutiny, especially where there are empirical data that clearly call into question these often strongly held predispositions. In the following sections we point out what we feel are the major shortcomings of the Massachusetts effort.