Creatively operationalizing Claude Lévi-Strauss’ predicament that food is good to think with, I initiate a methodological conceptualization of food by exploring the ways in which it is apt to study Sri Lankan domestic and collective village life. Food is approached as an assemblage that is an emergent resultant of heterogeneous aspects with which it is deeply entangled and by way of which it turns into a potent agent shaping life. More specifically, I explore the vibrancy of these different components that (...) co-create the overall soundscape of food that as such becomes the conductor of Sri Lankan life. Food shapes domestic life by way of its preparation and consumption, and through its cultivation also conducts the collective rhythms at the village level. The conceptualization of food as an assemblage seeks to develop it as a methodology that opens up for a holistic integration and interdisciplinary collaboration. (shrink)

This paper draws on an in-depth phenomenological analysis of some interviews taken from volunteers, inviting them to reflect on their lived experiences of meaningfulness in the context of volunteering and citizenship. It is found that while some testimonies reinforce the standard conceptions of meaningfulness, other testimonies vary from it. The main challenge of this contribution consists in phenomenologically describing this alternative picture of meaningfulness, depicted as the event of witnessing. In a final part, the authors consider how volunteering is at (...) times especially prone to further experiences of witnessing. (shrink)

Background A team-based approach has been advocated for advance care planning in nursing homes. While nurses are often put forward to take the lead, it is not clear to what extent other professions could be involved as well. Objectives To examine to what extent engagement in advance care planning practices, knowledge and self-efficacy differ between nurses, care assistants and allied care staff in nursing homes. Design Survey study. Participants/setting The study involved a purposive sample of 14 nursing homes in Flanders, (...) Belgium. Nurses, care assistants and allied care staff completed a survey. Ethical considerations The study was approved by the University Hospital of Brussels, as part of a cluster randomized controlled trial. Results One hundred ninety-six nurses, 319 care assistants and 169 allied staff participated. After adjusting for confounders, nurses were significantly more likely than care assistants to have carried out advance care planning conversations and documented advance care planning ; differences not found between allied staff and care assistants. Advance care planning knowledge total scores differed significantly, with nurses ; 95% confidence interval 0.08–0.17; p < 0.001) and allied staff scoring higher than care assistants. We found no significant differences regarding self-efficacy. Discussion While nursing home nurses conducted more advance care planning conversations and documentation than allied care staff and care assistants, these two professional groups may be a valuable support to nurses in conducting advance care planning, if provided with additional training. Conclusions Allied care staff and care assistants, if trained appropriately, can be involved more strongly in advance care planning to enhance relational and individual autonomy of nursing home residents, alongside nurses. Future research to improve and implement advance care planning should consider this finding at the intervention development stage. (shrink)

The Royal Dutch Medical Association recently completed a researchproject aimed at investigating how guidelines for `appropriatemedical care' should be construed. The project took as a startingpoint that explicit attention should be given to ethical andpolitical considerations in addition to data about costs andeffectiveness. In the project, two research groups set out todesign guidelines and cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) for twocircumscribed medical areas (angina pectoris and majordepression). Our third group was responsible for the normativeanalysis. We undertook an explorative, qualitative pilot study ofthe (...) normative considerations that played a role in constructingthe guidelines and CEAs, and simultaneously interviewedspecialists about the normative considerations that guided theirdiagnostic and treatment decisions. Explicating normativeconsiderations, we argue, is important democratically: the issuesat stake should not be left to decision analysts and guidelinedevelopers to decide. Moreover, it is a necessary condition for asuccessful implementation of such tools: those who draw uponthese tools will only accept them when they can recognizethemselves in the considerations implied. Empirical normativeanalysis, we argue, is a crucial tool in developing guidelinesfor appropriate medical care. (shrink)

The credit policy of the«Communal Bank» is based on objective criteria in order to respect local autonomy. The financial results of the consolidation are difficult to determine. Several factors could have influenced the present state of municipal finances : the consolidation being done in a period of economic difficulties, the crisis of the public finances, the reform of the Municipal Fund, and the transformation of the Centers for Public Assistance into Public Centers for Social Welf are. The consolidations did not (...) generale any savings, but it al,so did not cause an alarming increase of expenses. With respect to budget balancing, the amalgamated municipalities should do better than the non-amalgamated municipalities. To keep the increase of expenses low in comparison with the revenues, the municipalities had to make cuts in several sectors.As to the current fniancial situation in the three regions, the municipalities of the Brussels regon are in a very painful situation ; in Flanders, the number of municipalities with deficits is higher than in Wallonia, but the deficits in W allonia are bigger. To stop this negative evolution one must strive for balanced budgets and reshape them into reliable instruments. (shrink)

Raphaël Van Daele L’expression chinoise ziran 自然 s’entend aussi bien à propos de la « nature », cette région de l’être dont l’émergence et les processus ne relèvent pas de la volonté ou de l’action humaine, qu’à propos d’un certain type d’agir humain. Le geste expert de l’artiste est l’exemple privilégié d’un tel agir. Loin de nuire à la cohérence de cette notion, le fait que celle-ci soit mobilisée dans le discours théorique sur l’art autant que dans le discours sur (...) la nature témoigne d’un lien organique qui, dans la pensée chinoise, unit différents domaines de la réflexion. Le présent article propose d’esquisser une lecture philosophique de la notion de ziran. Pour ce faire, nous explorerons le rôle joué par ziran dans l’oeuvre esthétique de Cai Yong 蔡邕 (133-192) et dans la pensée de Guo Xiang 郭象 († 312). (shrink)

In this comment on Johan Von Essen’s contribution on the meaning of volunteering we make some remarks about Von Essen’s starting point, which reveals a particular perspective on meaningfulness, namely that people perceive reality as meaningful when their actions and the things they encounter are part of a meaningful whole. By introducing another perspective on meaningfulness, namely that the shattering of a meaningful whole is full of meaning, we question if practices of volunteering which occur in face-to-face situations—and thus outside (...) the public realm—can be fully captured by the five predicates that make up the phenomenological structure of volunteering. (shrink)

Food and life are intimately entangled. To grasp the underlying complexity of this seemingly simple statement, this article first introduces the approach to food/eating as an assemblage enacted by various heterogeneous components, and further develops it by engaging with actor network theory and material semiotics. Thereafter the focus turns to ‘entanglement’, as inspired by quantum physics, to elicit the basic dynamics of the entanglement of food and more-than-human beings, conceived of as involving mutual and differential becomings within and among assemblages. (...) The article illustrates these entangled becomings by drawing upon examples from Sri Lanka, which in an intercultural philosophical fashion serve to establish an articulation (in the sense of a connection) between the proposed abstract approach to food and some basic premises of Buddhism and Ayurveda, a South Asian health system. Overall, the article crafts a conceptual toolbox and performs ontological groundwork wherein food and human beings as entangled assemblages provide a productive, refined, and sensitive research apparatus for the intimate study of more-than-human life and organization while also spurring novel theorizations through food/eating. (shrink)

The essay describes with great clarity the situation of publishing in the XVI-XVII Centuries, focussing on several important examples of Flemish books.

Le présent livre est audacieux et marque, à n’en pas douter, une avancée pour les recherches sur la pensée de Damascius. Tiré de la thèse de doctorat de l’auteur, le livre interroge le concept de causalité comme procession dans le Traité des premiers principes (De principiis) de Damascius. Pelin entend se distancier de ce qu’il estime être une tendance dominante des études damascéennes (p. 32-33) : plutôt que de lire le De principiis dans une perspective épistémologique et d’y voir une (...) enquêt... (shrink)

This article presents the attitudes of nurses towards three issues concerning their role in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The study was conducted in the Netherlands between January 2001 and August 2004. The results show that less than half (45%) of nurses would be willing to serve on committees reviewing cases of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. More than half of the nurses (58.2%) (...) found it too far-reaching to oblige physicians to consult a nurse in the decision-making process. The majority of the nurses stated that preparing euthanatics (62.9%) and inserting an infusion needle to administer the euthanatics (54.1%) should not be accepted as nursing tasks. The findings are discussed in the context of common practices and policies in the Netherlands, and a recommendation is made not to include these three issues in new regulations on the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

Editorial: Concepts of Animal Welfare Content Type Journal Article Pages 93-103 DOI 10.1007/s10441-011-9134-0 Authors Kristin Hagen, Europäische Akademie zur Erforschung von Folgen wissenschaftlich-technischer Entwicklungen Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler GmbH, Wilhelmstr. 56, 53474 Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany Ruud Van den Bos, Behavioural Neuroscience, Animals in Science and Society, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Utrecht University, Yalelaan 2, 3584 CM Utrecht, The Netherlands Tjard de Cock Buning, Department of Biology and Society (ATHENA Institute), Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences, Vrije (...) Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1087, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands Journal Acta Biotheoretica Online ISSN 1572-8358 Print ISSN 0001-5342 Journal Volume Volume 59 Journal Issue Volume 59, Number 2. (shrink)

This article presents the attitudes of nurses towards three issues concerning their role in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The study was conducted in the Netherlands between January 2001 and August 2004. The results show that less than half of nurses would be willing to serve on committees reviewing cases of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. More than half of the nurses found it (...) too far-reaching to oblige physicians to consult a nurse in the decision-making process. The majority of the nurses stated that preparing euthanatics and inserting an infusion needle to administer the euthanatics should not be accepted as nursing tasks. The findings are discussed in the context of common practices and policies in the Netherlands, and a recommendation is made not to include these three issues in new regulations on the role of nurses in euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. (shrink)

Recent developments in agriculture have stirred up interest in the concept of “sustainable” farming systems. Still it is difficult to determine the extent to which certain agricultural practices can be considered sustainable or not. Aiming at identifying the necessary attributes with respect to sustainability in Dutch dairy farming in the beginning of the third millennium, we first compiled a list of attributes referring to all farming activities with their related side effects with respect to economic, internal social, external social, and (...) ecological sustainability. A wide range of people (i.e., experts and stakeholders) were consulted to contribute to our list of attributes. Our consultation showed that only one attribute was selected for economic and internal social sustainability: profitability and working conditions, respectively. The list for external social sustainability contained 19 attributes and the list for ecological sustainability contained 15 attributes. To assess their relative importance, the same experts and stakeholders ranked the attributes for external social and ecological sustainability by using a questionnaire. The most important attributes for external social sustainability were food safety, animal health, animal welfare, landscape quality, and cattle grazing. For ecological sustainability they were eutrophication, groundwater pollution, dehydration of the soil, acidification, and biodiversity. The present method for identifying and ranking attributes is universal and, therefore, can be used for other agricultural sectors, for other countries, and for other time periods. (shrink)

This article discusses whether ecology represents an alternative type of natural science, that is normatively committed. Central questions are: -- how man and human action are integrated into the subject matter of ecology; -- whether evaluative concepts like 'health' are incorporated into the conceptual structure of ecology; and -- whether ecology transcends the image of natural knowledge as control of nature. It is concluded that all hypotheses of ecology being inherently judgmental in character must be rejected.

A symmetric network consists of a set of positions and a set of bilateral links between these positions. For every symmetric network we define a cooperative transferable utility game that measures the “power” of each coalition of positions in the network. Applying the Shapley value to this game yields a network power measure, the β-measure, which reflects the power of the individual positions in the network. Applying this power distribution method iteratively yields a limit distribution, which turns out to be (...) proportional to the well-known degree measure. We compare the β-measure and degree measure by providing characterizations, which differ only in the normalization that is used. (shrink)

In this paper a framework to study consciousness in animals is proposed which is based on a hierarchical organizational feedback model of the central nervous system, the separation of a given mental state into two components, i.e. an invariant part, and a variant part, which are separately related to the organization of the central nervous system, i.e. 'a neural network' and 'momentary active connections within the neural network determined by in- and output of this neural network' respectively, and phylogeny based (...) on the invariant part or the presence of a neural network. Consciousness is defined as a property of neural networks of self-organizing systems dedicated to dealing with rapidly changing environments affording flexibility of behavioural patterning. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a study into the role of Dutch nurses in the alleviation of pain and symptoms with a life-shortening intention, conducted as part of a study into the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions. A questionnaire survey was carried out using a population of 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The response rate was 82.0%; 78.1% were suitable for analysis. The results show that in about half of (...) the cases nurses were involved in the decision making by the physician and that nurses were frequently involved in administering the medication. The authors' conclusion is that alleviation of pain and symptoms with a life-shortening intention represents a `grey' area, in which physicians and nurses act on the basis of personal ethical norms rather than legal rules, professional guidelines or shared moral values. (shrink)

This article reports the findings of a study into the role of Dutch nurses in the alleviation of pain and symptoms with a life-shortening intention, conducted as part of a study into the role of nurses in medical end-of-life decisions. A questionnaire survey was carried out using a population of 1509 nurses who were employed in hospitals, home care organizations and nursing homes. The response rate was 82.0%; 78.1% (1179) were suitable for analysis. The results show that in about half (...) of the cases (55.8%) nurses were involved in the decision making by the physician and that nurses were frequently (81.5%) involved in administering the medication. The authors' conclusion is that alleviation of pain and symptoms with a life-shortening intention represents a `grey' area, in which physicians and nurses act on the basis of personal ethical norms rather than legal rules, professional guidelines or shared moral values. (shrink)

Transcranial direct current stimulation over the contralateral primary motor cortex of the target muscle has been described to enhance corticospinal excitability, as measured with transcranial magnetic stimulation. Recently, tDCS targeting the brain regions functionally connected to the contralateral primary motor cortex was reported to enhance corticospinal excitability more than conventional tDCS. We compared the effects of motor network tDCS, 2 mA conventional tDCS, and sham tDCS on corticospinal excitability in 21 healthy participants in a randomized, single-blind within-subject study design. We (...) applied tDCS for 12 min and measured corticospinal excitability with TMS before tDCS and at 0, 15, 30, 45, and 60 min after tDCS. Statistical analysis showed that neither motor network tDCS nor conventional tDCS significantly increased corticospinal excitability relative to sham stimulation. Furthermore, the results did not provide evidence for superiority of motor network tDCS over conventional tDCS. Motor network tDCS seems equally susceptible to the sources of intersubject and intrasubject variability previously observed in response to conventional tDCS. (shrink)