In this paper, we explicitly point out the reasons why Special Relativity must be considered as the source of electron deep orbits, and dominates their behavior. We show that the cause is the quadratic form of the relativistic expression of energy, and this clearly appears when we explicitly develop the relativistic Schrödinger equation and compare it with the non-relativistic one.

A major concern of public health authorities is to also encourage adults to be exposed to enriched environments during the pandemic lockdown, as was recently the case worldwide during the COVID-19 outbreak. Games for adults that require physical activity, known as exergames, offer opportunities here. In particular, the output of the gaming industry nowadays offers computer games with extended reality which combines real and virtual environments and refers to human-machine interactions generated by computers and wearable technologies. For example, playing the (...) game in front of a computer screen while standing or walking on a force plate or treadmill allows the user to react to certain infrastructural changes and obstacles within the virtual environment. Recent developments, optimization, and minimizations in wearable technology have produced wireless headsets and sensors that allow for unrestricted whole-body movement. This makes the virtual experience more immersive and provides the opportunity for greater engagement than traditional exercise. Currently, XR serves as an umbrella term for current immersive technologies as well as future realities that enhance the experience with features that produce new controllable environments. Overall, these technology-enhanced exergames challenge the adult user and modify the experience by increasing sensory stimulation and creating an environment where virtual and real elements interact. As a therapy, exergames can potentially create new environments and visualizations that may be more ecologically valid and thus simulate real activities of daily living that can be trained. Furthermore, by adding telemedicine features to the exergame, progress over time can be closely monitored and feedback provided, offering future opportunities for cognitive-motor assessment. To more optimally serve and challenge adults both physically and cognitively over time in future lockdowns, there is a need to provide long-term remote training and feedback. Particularly related to activities of daily living that create opportunities for effective and lasting rehabilitation for elderly and sufferers from chronic non-communicable diseases. The aim of the current review is to envision the remote training and monitoring of physical and cognitive aspects for adults with limited mobility, through the implementation of concurrent telehealth and exergame features using XR and wireless sensor technologies. (shrink)

Ethics committees are the most important practical instrument of clinical ethics in Belgium and fulfil three tasks: the ethical review of experimental protocols, advising on the ethical aspects of healthcare practice, and ethics consultation. In this article the authors examine the current situation of ethics committees in Belgium from the perspective of clinical ethics. Firstly, the most important steps which thus far have been taken in Belgium are examined. Secondly, recent opinion by the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics with regard (...) to ethics committees is presented and the activities of Belgian ethics committees are discussed. Finally, the option to bring research ethics and clinical ethics under the roof of just one committee is criticised using a pragmatic and a methodological argument. Concomitantly, the authors build an argument in favour of the further development of ethics consultation. (shrink)

Belgium and the Netherlands are the first countries in the world that have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide. Since September 23, 2002, Belgian physicians can perform an act of euthanasia without at the same time performing a criminal act. In the Netherlands, the act on euthanasia went into force already on April 1, 2002. This special issue of Ethical Perspectives on ‘Euthanasia in the Low Countries’ offers a forum for critical dialogue on the different aspects of this new legal situation (...) in Belgium and the Netherlands.First, the legal situation will be introduced. In his contribution, Herman Nys makes a careful comparison of both laws. In spite of the fact that Belgium and the Netherlands are the first countries in the world that legalized euthanasia, the differences between the Belgian and Dutch law are fundamental. As Nys indicates, the scope of the Dutch law is more specified since it explicitly includes physician-assisted suicide while it remains unclear whether the Belgian act is also applicable in cases of assisted suicide. There are also fundamental differences regarding the persons regulated by the law, the health condition of the patient, the obligations of the physician with respect to the request and the health status of the patient, and the notification procedure.However, not only are there fundamental differences between Belgium and the Netherlands on the level of the law. Also the public debate and the values underlying the the debate show dissimilarities. In the Netherlands this debate took more than twenty years and the subsequent law on euthanasia reflected an existing medical practice. In Belgium, on the contrary, the parliament came to vote on the euthanasia law after only half a decade of debate. In our contribution , we identify the right to autonomy understood as ‘self-possession’ as the central value in the Belgian debate. Guy Widdershoven asserts that the moral basis of euthanasia in the Netherlands is different. He argues that the Dutch debate — and by now Dutch practice — cannot be reduced to the "principlist canon of autonomy and beneficence". Instead, the values of responsibility, deliberation and care are claimed to be central to Dutch euthanasia practice.In his contribution, Daniel Sulmasy offers an exhaustive analysis of the notion of dignity that constantly arises in the debate on euthanasia. For Christian churches and Catholic healthcare institutions, the recent legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide is at least challenging. Jan Jans describes the way in which the main Christian churches in Belgium and the Netherlands engaged in the debate and reacted to the eventual legalization. Chris Gastmans presents the view of the Flemish Association of Catholic Healthcare Institutions.Law-making with respect to euthanasia is one thing. Bringing the law into practice is somewhat different. The question arises to what extent the new legal situation will bear upon the medical practice. Particularly, the responses of physicians are difficult to assess in advance. Physicians face the dilemma to report or not to report. They can take up their responsibility and report their practices of euthanasia, thereby exposing themselves to critical examination and possibly criminal prosecution. On the other hand, the physician can opt for safety and decide not to report his involvement in one of his patients’ euthanasia. In the latter case, the introduction of new legislation would have missed the mark. To this day, the only available data with regard to physicians’ reactions to an established legal framework wherein euthanasia is legalized come from the Netherlands. In his contribution, Albert Klijn presents the reactions of Dutch physicians to the new legal situation in their country and, particularly, the performance of their duty to report cases of euthanasia. Since the vote on the law in 2000 and the establishment of ‘regional review committees for termination of life on request and assisted suicide’ in 2001, the reports of euthanasia have declined. Klijn considers two possible explanations. On the one hand, there is insecurity about how the newly established regional review committees will evaluate physician' reports. On the other hand, the increased investment in research on palliative care and the availability of palliative sedation are held responsible for the drop in reported cases.This very interesting suggestion by Klijn needs further clarification. Therefore, the meaning of palliative care and the possibility of palliative sedation are elaborated in the contribution of Bert Broeckaert and Rien Janssens.With this special issue on ‘Euthanasia in the Low Countries’ we hope to have answered the numerous requests for further information on the Belgian and Dutch situation. Data, clarification and critical review may shed more light on the development of a practice, which some still consider as non-medical behaviour. This issue may therefore also function as a catalyst for further medical, ethical and legal debate. (shrink)

Belgium is the second country in the world that decriminalized euthanasia. On May 28, 2002 the Belgian Parliament approved the bill on euthanasia. With this approval, the political majority in the Belgian Parliament took a momentous decision concerning how we as a society deal with life and death.For many, euthanasia holds a promise. They take euthanasia literally as the ‘good death’. Others identify the recourse to euthanasia as a symptom of a ‘culture of death’. Given the importance of legislation on (...) euthanasia, an ethical reflection on the rationale and course of the Belgian debate on euthanasia urges itself.It is the aim of this contribution to shed light on the Belgian debate on euthanasia from an ethical perspective. The focus is thus rather on the arguments underlying the debate and their ethical assessment which implies the clarification of the values involved and the options made in the eventual legislation.To understand how and why the Belgian debate evolved as it did resulting in the final vote on the law on euthanasia, two reports of the Belgian Federal Advisory Committee on Bioethics are cardinal: the Advice n° 1 concerning the Desirability of Legislation on Euthanasia and the Advice n° 9 concerning the Termination of Life of Incompetent Patients .These two reports expressed the opinions and moral viewpoints present in Belgian society. After the presentation of the two reports and their underlying axiology we will examine what their relationship is with the eventual law on euthanasia which was the tailpiece of five years of public and political debate.In this examination, the pivotal question will be whether the legislature has succeeded in doing justice to the different moral viewpoints and the tendencies to a moral consensus that were formulated in the two reports. (shrink)

The current debate on euthanasia in the Lowlands is a perfect examplification of the predominance of the principle of respect for autonomy in present-day medical-ethical decisionmaking. The aim of this article is the exploration of the more fundamental philosophical issues concerning the current status of autonomy in medical ethics. The starting point for this exploration is an analysis of the principle of respect for autonomy. The authors argue that the view on autonomy in contemporary bioethical discussions is more related to (...) the Millian understanding of autonomy rather than to Kant’s conception of respect for autonomy. The uncompromising veneration of personal autonomy and the subsequent view on the human self as unencumbered is placed under critique because this portrayal of the human person is rather unreal especially in medical-ethical decisionmaking where the fragility of human life is at stake. Furthermore, extending the claims of autonomy risks to undermine the public sphere. The defence of the principle of autonomy is taken on by the quality-of-life ethic that values human life because of its qualities. Being capable of making autonomous decisions is one of this main qualities. By this, the quality-of-life approach runs counter to an idea that is deeply ingrained in medicine, viz. the sanctity of human life that holds both the inviolability and the equal value of human life. These two approaches can, however, be integrated in Christian ethics by adopting a view on quality-of-life judgements in which the proportionality of benefits and burdens has a pivotal function. To conclude this article, the authors argue for a non-absolutist account of autonomy based on two modes of decentrement of the human self: the fundamental passivity at the core of the human person and the intersubjectivity of the human existence. (shrink)

Because of their responsibilities for providing high-quality care, at times when they are continuously confronted with inherent professional and ethical challenges, nurses should meet high ethical standards of practice and conduct. Contrary to other countries, where codes of ethics for nurses are formulated to support those standards and to guide nurses’ professional practice, Belgian nurses do not have a formal code of ethics. Nevertheless, professional ethics is recognized as an important aspect in legal and other professional documents. The aim of (...) this article is to illustrate that codes of ethics are not the only professional documents reflecting nurses’ values, norms and responsibilities. Other documents can also set out professional nursing ethics, and as such replace codes of ethics. (shrink)

Health care systems have four objectives: (1) the provision of the best possible care for all; while (2) guaranteeing equal access to health care; (3) maintaining freedom of choice for health care providers and patients; and (4) controlling the costs. In an ideal world with abundant resources the realization of these objectives would pose no significant problems. However, any actual health care system will need a trade-off between the different objectives because resources are limited. In Setting Limits Fairly, Norman Daniels (...) and James Sabin investigate how limits can be set in the allocation of health care resources. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to clarify both the role of nurses in ethics meetings and the way in which ethics meetings can function as a catalyst for good nursing care. The thoughts presented are practice based; they arose from our practical experiences as nurses and ethicists with ethics meetings in health care organizations in Belgium. Our reflections are written from the perspective of the nurse in the field who is participating in (inter)professional ethical dialogue. First, the difficulties that (...) nurses experience while participating in ethics meetings are described. Then the possibilities for support of nurses in their ethical responsibility are explored. (shrink)

Open theists argue that God's relationship to time, as conceived in classical theism, is erroneous. They explain that it is contradictory for an atemporal being to act in a temporal universe, including experiencing its temporal successions. Contrary to the atemporalists, redemptive history has shown that God interacts with humans in time. This relational nature of God nullifies the classical notion of God as timelessly eternal. Therefore, it lacks a philosophical and theological basis. Because God is in time, He does not (...) know all future contingencies and, therefore, changes. This study examines open theism's appropriation of the A and B theories of time to the divine-human relationship. The study argues that divine temporality does not solve the tension of divine-human relationships, especially in relation to the future. Further, historical divine temporality does not negate the fact of divine atemporality. It mainly stems from God's choice to create temporal creatures and His relationship with them. Furthermore, if it is not logically and metaphysically contradictory for an omnipresent being to act in space, then it follows that an atemporal being can act in time. Whether time is understood from the metric or psychological point of view, it does not transcend God, and therefore, the limitation it places on human creatures with respect to the future does not apply to God. Lastly, although a few philosophers reject the notion of eternity as timelessly eternal, the doctrine has a philosophical and theological basis in the Scripture. (shrink)

Despite drives’ importance for Nietzsche’s explanation of individuals’ values, controversies persist over how to interpret Nietzsche’s attribution of normative capacities to the drives themselves. On one reading, drives evaluate their aims and recognize the normative authority of other drives’ aims. On another, drives’ normative properties reduce to nonnormative, causal properties. Neither approach is satisfying. The former commits Nietzsche to the homuncular fallacy by granting drives complex cognitive capacities. The latter reading either commits Nietzsche to the naturalistic fallacy, having him derive (...) normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or eliminates normativity from his thought altogether. In response to this impasse, this article advances a Leibniz-informed interpretation of Nietzsche’s drive psychology. By construing the normative and efficient causal orders as parallel modes of explanation distinguished by one’s perspective, a Leibniz-informed reading captures the benefits of extant interpretations while avoiding their drawbacks. (shrink)

David Chalmers appears to assume that we can meaningfully discuss what goes on in human heads without paying any attention to the words in which we couch our statements. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that the initial problem is that of metalanguage: if we want to say something clear and valid about us humans, we must think about ourselves outside conceptual English created by one particular history and culture and try to think from a global, panhuman point of (...) view. This means that instead of relying on untranslatable English words such as 'consciousness' and 'experience' we must try to rely on panhuman concepts expressed in cross-translatable words such as THINK, KNOW, and FEEL (Wierzbicka, 2018). The paper argues that after 'a hundred years of consciousness studies' it is time to try to say something about us (humans), about how we think and how we differ from cats and bats, in words that are clear, stable, and human rather than parochially English. (shrink)

Background: Only data of published study results are available to the scientific community for further use such as informing future research and synthesis of available evidence. If study results are reported selectively, reporting bias and distortion of summarised estimates of effect or harm of treatments can occur. The publication and citation of results of clinical research conducted in Germany was studied.Methods: The protocols of clinical research projects submitted to the research ethics committee of the University of Freiburg in 2000 were (...) analysed. Published full articles in several databases were searched and investigators contacted. Data on study and publication characteristics were extracted from protocols and corresponding publications.Results: 299 study protocols were included. The most frequent study design was randomised controlled trial , followed by uncontrolled studies , laboratory studies and non-randomised studies . 182 were multicentre studies including 97 international collaborations. 152 of 299 had commercial funding and 46 non-commercial funding. 109 of the 225 completed protocols corresponded to at least one full publication ; the publication rate was 48%. 168 of 210 identified publications were cited in articles indexed in the ISI Web of Science. The median was 11 citations per publication .Conclusions: Results of German clinical research projects conducted are largely underreported. Barriers to successful publication need to be identified and appropriate measures taken. Close monitoring of projects until publication and adequate support provided to investigators may help remedy the prevailing underreporting of research. (shrink)

Robert Veatch has proposed a model of the doctor-patient relationship that has as its foundation the sharing of values between the doctor and the patient. This paper uses qualitative research conducted with six doctors involved in the long term, specialised care of HIV positive patients in South Australia to explore the practical application of Veatch’s value sharing model in that setting. The research found that the doctors in this study linked “values” with sexual identity such that they defined value sharing, (...) in part, as a shared set of values and beliefs about sexual identity and practices. They voluntarily identified themselves as either homosexual or heterosexual and they regarded the relation between their own sexual identity and that of their patients as important for the provision of quality care. None of the doctors thought that value sharing, in the way they defined it, was essential to the clinical relationship, but the homosexual doctors attributed a greater degree of importance to it than their heterosexual colleagues. (shrink)

The growing gap between demands and resources is putting immense pressure on all government spending in Sweden. The gap is especially apparent in care and services for elderly people in light of the rapid aging of the population. The article considers the decisions and priorities concerning resource allocation in the welfare sector in general and in elderly care in particular. The aim is to describe the political and administrative setting and to provide a conceptual structure that outlines the nature of (...) the problem. Various levels of decision making are identified and discussed in the context of political accountability. Current transitions in elderly care are described with respect to service provision, marketisation, coverage rates, and eligibility standards. Basic principles of distribution are highlighted in order to clarify some central concepts of efficiency and justice, and a number of strategies for actual prioritising are identified. The article concludes with an endorsement of more conscious decisions in resource allocation. Existing knowledge and information concerning the effects of various strategies must be utilised, and the values and assumptions used for setting priorities must be made explicit. (shrink)

In recent years attention to the philosophical and literary production of P. A. Florenskii has become commonplace. The thinker's intellectual legacy is very great. In September 1919, Florenskii wrote a prospectus for a collection of his own writings, which would have amounted to nineteen volumes. The collection was not published, for a number of reasons; nonetheless, many of the philosopher's works did come out during his lifetime. Florenskii's writing, published in small editions and scattered among various journals, are still quite (...) inaccessible to readers. (shrink)