Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes A Voice at the Table: An Integrated Model for Pastoral Care in Aged Mental Health, written by Rosemary Kelleher with Olga Yastrubetskaya, describes a practical model for integrating pastoral care practitioners into multidisciplinary teams within aged mental health services. While highlighting the importance of spiritual care within healthcare, the book also emphasises the need for pastoral care practitioners to have the essential skills and knowledge vital to being significant members of the multidisciplinary team. This article (...) offers a concise review of a most valuable resource. (shrink)

During the seventies, the Belgian-Zairese relations are characterized by a series of crises and reconciliations.Many facts had an important effect on those relations : the « Zairianisation » of foreign, especially Belgian, companies; President Mobutu's request for economic aid; the Shaba-invasion of 1977; the presence of Zaïrese opponents in Belgium and the hostility against Kinshasa and especially against President Mobutu from the part of particular Belgian circles.All these facts make it very difficult to Belgium to draw a coherent policy in (...) this case. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Christine Bryden is a survivor of dementia and has been a passionate advocate for persons with dementia for more than 20 years. She has written 4 books. Her latest 2 books - Before I Forget and Nothing About Us, Without us! - give an insider's perspective into the lived experience of a person with dementia. This article provides a review of these 2 books which detail Christine Bryden's life story, and in doing so, highlight some (...) of the key messages expressed by the author. These key messages include examining the various misconceptions about persons with dementia, the required care for persons with dementia, as well as the need for building a dementia-friendly society. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Advance care planning is a significant and important process of end-of-life care. It provides the opportunity for persons to express their medical treatment preferences prior to losing the capacity to decide for themselves. It also allows for the appointment of substituted decision maker to make medical decisions for persons who have lost capacity. Whilst advance care planning can be beneficial when it is used effectively, the legislative framework surrounding advance care planning is complex and confusing. (...) This brief article will summarise advance care planning, its current legislative framework in Victoria and how proposed recommendations offered by the Inquiry into end of life choices may simplify advance care planning. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Victoria's new Mental Health Act 2014 came into operation on 1st July 2014. Corresponding with international standards, the new Act aims to strengthen the human rights of persons with mental illness. This is supported by the inclusion of a recovery framework which promotes a collaborative treatment approach, procedures that reduce the duration of compulsory treatment, as well as better mental health service oversight and safeguards. This article analyses and highlights these reforms from a human rights (...) perspective. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Atul Gawande's book Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine, and What Matters in the End, draws upon both anecdotal stories and literary sources to highlight the importance of honest discussions as the end of life approaches. These discussions are particularly significant for older persons and terminally ill patients. Gawande believes that these discussions could be facilitated by more in-depth and focussed communication between the healthcare professional and the patient. Respecting the patient's values and priorities, and promoting a (...) sense of wellbeing and dignity are critical for quality care. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes The Internet has made seeking for health information easy and convenient. This information provides medical knowledge which has the potential to empower both patients and health professionals. However, It is concerning that patients may attempt to use this type of information for self-diagnostic purposes, particularly those who are unfamiliar with medical terminology. Understanding web- based information effectively is most important to enable appropriate and informed healthcare decisions. Consequently, a new role for health professionals is indicated, (...) requiring them to become familiar with the health information available on the Internet, to direct patients to reliable sources, and to assist them in understanding and interpreting web-based health information. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Negative portrayals of older persons in Australian culture have led to ageist attitudes and behaviours towards them. For the older person, this can result in self-deprecation, which in turn leads to poorer health, diminished wellbeing, and reduced mental ability. It can also negatively affect an older person's motivation to be an active member of society, resulting in a sense of isolation. Ageism also disregards the positive economic and social contributions that older persons make to the (...) wider community. Drawing on both secular and Catholic viewpoints, this article seeks to recognise, challenge, and move to overcome ageism and age discrimination in Australia. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes The widespread over-consumption of alcohol in Australia has shaped its high tolerance to drinking culture. Australia has a complex socio-cultural relationship with alcohol and it is challenging to reduce high alcohol intake when it is so ingrained in our society. The substantial harms associated with over-consumption not only affect the drinker, but also impact upon the wider community. This article discusses the available evidence about the health and social harms for individuals that may result from (...) an over-consumption of alcohol and how these impact on society. More so, it discusses how effective alcohol policy strategies such as decreasing the availability of alcohol, increasing its price as well as promoting public awareness of the associated risks may help to reduce these harms. (shrink)

Simonet, Emanuel Nicolas Cortes Victoria's new Powers of Attorney Act 2014 came into operation on 1 September 2015. Following recommendations by the Victorian Parliament Law Reform Committee, changes have been introduced in the new Act to simplify the process of making an enduring power of attorney. Reforms include the addition of a section on capacity, the introduction of a supportive attorney role distinct from the enduring power of attorney role, and the enhancement of safeguards. This article analyses how the (...) new Powers of Attorney Act 2014 empowers persons with impaired decision-making capacity and also strengthens the mechanisms which protect them from abuse. (shrink)

This article seeks to offer a socially and politically situated analysis of the disenchantment produced by sociological research categorised as critical. It offers a step-by-step comparison of how a study on voluntary work (that produced disenchantment for some, truism for others) was received. It also gives weight to the fact that a research process can also lead to the politicisation of research. The article sheds light on two arguments for the autonomy of engagement that lies at the heart of the (...) critique of a critique: one concerning the autonomy of the actors’ “citizen engagement” and of their relation to work, and the other concerning the autonomy of the researcher’s work and its “commitments”, generally presented as “research neutrality”. This reflexive attention to the effects of the research investigation not only on others but also on the author of the research ultimately questions the social and political scope of the “conception of hostile worlds” inscribed in the “doctrine of separated spheres” of work and commitment that, in the present case, concerns both the object and the practice of research. (shrink)

Motor inhibitory control, the ability to suppress unwanted actions, has been previously shown to rely on domain-general IC processes that are involved in a wide range of IC tasks. Nevertheless, the existence of effector-specific regions and activation patterns that would differentiate manual vs. oculomotor response inhibition remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the brain dynamics supporting these two response effectors with the same IC task paradigm. We examined the behavioral performance and electrophysiological activity in a group of healthy young (...) people with a Go/NoGo task using the index finger for the manual modality and the eyes for the oculomotor modality. By computing topographic analysis of variance, we found significant differences between topographies of scalp recorded potentials of the two response effectors between 250 and 325 ms post-stimulus onset. The source estimations localized this effect within the left precuneus, a part of the superior parietal lobule, showing stronger activity in the oculomotor modality than in the manual modality. Behaviorally, we found a significant positive correlation in response time between the two modalities. Our collective results revealed that while domain-general IC processes would be engaged across different response effectors in the same IC task, effector-specific activation patterns exist. In this case, the stronger activation of the left precuneus likely accounts for the increased demand for visual attentional processes in the oculomotor Go/NoGo task. (shrink)

In the Peruvian Amazon, tobacco (Nicotiana rustica) is considered a master plant and is the main curing tool of local healers. Among its several medicinal uses, we find drinking tobacco juice with the purpose of purging in order to heal on a physical, mental, and spiritual level. This specific practice is part of the addiction treatment protocol developed at Takiwasi Center. The goal of this investigation was to focus on the effects of the tobacco purge as reported by therapists at (...) Takiwasi and to elaborate its relevance within the context of addiction treatment. In order to obtain information on this topic, we performed research fieldwork based on a participant-observation approach, and retrospective data analysis on information from interviews conducted by psychotherapists with patients. As alleged effects of the tobacco purge, therapists reported that patients experienced feelings of mental clarity with the greatest frequency (n = 80), followed by noteworthy physical effects including discomfort and intoxication (n = 63). An effect on sleep and dreams was also common (n = 36) and many found the experience directly related to addiction treatment and the desire to consume substances (n = 20). (shrink)

Metagenomics is a culture‐ and PCR‐independent approach that is now widely exploited for directly studying microbial evolution, microbial ecology, and developing biotechnologies. Observations and discoveries are critically dependent on DNA extraction methods, sequencing technologies, and bioinformatics tools. The potential pitfalls need to be understood and, to some degree, mastered if the resulting data are to survive scrutiny. In particular, methodological variations appear to affect results from different ecosystems differently, thus increasing the risk of biological and ecological misinterpretation. Part of the (...) difficulty is derived from the lack of knowledge concerning the true microbial diversity and because no approach can guarantee accessing microorganisms in the same proportion in which they exist in the environment. However, the variation between different approaches (e.g. DNA extraction techniques, sequence annotation systems) can be used to evaluate whether observations are meaningful. These methodological variations can be integrated into the error analysis before comparing microbial communities. (shrink)

Progress in medicine and the subsequent extension of health coverage has meant that health expenditure has increased sharply in Western countries. In the United States, this rise was precipitated in the 1980s, compounded by an increase in drug consumption which prompted the government to re-examine its financial support to care delivery, most notably in hospital care and emergencies services. In California for example, 50 emergency service providers were closed between 1990 and 2000, and nine in 1999–2000 alone. In that State, (...) only 355 hospitals (out of 568) have maintained emergency services departments (Darves, WebMB, 2001). Reforming hospital Emergency Department (ED) operations requires caution not only because the media pay a lot of attention to ED operations, but also because it raises ethical issues: this became more apparent with the enactment of the EMTALA which stipulates that federally funded hospitals are required to give emergency aid in order to “stabilize” a patient suffering from an “emergency medical condition” before discharging or transferring that patient to another facility. While in essence the law aims to preserve patient access to care, physicians assert that the EMTALA leads to more patients seeking care for non-urgent conditions in EDs (GAO, Report to Congressional Committees, 2001), leading to overcrowding, delayed care for patients with true emergency needs, and forcing hospitals to divert ambulances to other facilities resulting in further delays in urgent care. Also, fewer physicians are willing to be on-call in emergency departments because the EMTALA law requires on-call physicians to provide uncompensated care. Thus there is a need to find a balance between appropriate care to be provided to ED patients, and low costs since uncompensated care is not covered by state or federal funds. This concerns, first and foremost, hospitals that provide a greater amount of uncompensated care (e.g. hospitals serving communities with a higher population of illegal immigrants). Looking at the intrinsic causes of high ED costs, the paper first explains why costs of care provided in EDs are high, and look at a major cause of high ED costs: overcrowding and ED users’ characteristics. This is followed by a discussion on a much-debated factor: the use of EDs for non-emergency conditions, a practice which has often been accused of disproportionately raising costs. We look at various mechanisms used either to divert or prevent the patient from using ED: these include triage services; and the role of HMOs in the ED chain of care: though the US government has increasingly relied on Managed Care organizations to contain costs (e.g. Medicaid and Medicare Managed Care), do HMOs make a difference when it comes to ED costs? Of particular interest is the family physician acting as a gatekeeper, and the legislation that was enacted to protect those who bypass the referral system. We then look at the other end of the ED chain (i.e. the recipient): the financial responsibility of ED users has increased. Alternative providers such as walk-in clinics are increasingly common. EDs also attempt to reengineer their operations to curb costs. While the data are mostly applicable to a private health care system (e.g. the US), the article, using a critical assessment of the existing literature, has implications for other EDs generally, wherever they operate, since every ED faces similar funding problems. (shrink)

This research aims to examine the concept of haecceity conceived by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari - which has started from the notion given to the concept in A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2 (Mille Plateau: capitalisme et schizophrénie 2, 1980). To illustrate this concept the philosophers turned to literature, and more specifically the Proustian literature. They affirm that the haecceity concept has found in the episode with the small group (la petite bande) of girls in the seaside (...) town of Balbec - the novel by Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu, 1913-1927) ¬- its best translation: "What's a girl, what is a group of girls? Proust at least show us and for all that their individuation, collective or singular, proceeds not by subjectivity but by haecceity, pure haecceity" (A Thousand Plateaus - Capitalism and Schizophrenia 2. Translation and foreword by Brian Massumi, Minnesota Press, 1987: 271). According to the Deleuzian thought, the fundamental question of haecceity concept is concentrated in its own definition: an individuation devoid of subjectivity, foreshadowing an individual who doesn't belong to individuation anymore, but it does to singularization. This non-subjectivated affirmation is part of an innovative philosophical proposal which has its own conceptual vocabulary: haecceity will exist in a new space (not extensive), where there's no distinction between the beginning or the end; the middle is where haecceity (formed by lines and not by points) will present itself as a rhizome. This mode of impersonal individuation reveals itself as a cartography that is made by forces - longitude - and intensities - latitude. Taking the group of girls as such a composition of forces moving, we will extract Albertine Simonet from it. She has the synonym of a group, and being adopted as an intercessor, she will leave the "group by group". The trajectory of this poetic and psychosocial entity (where the concept of haecceity originates from), will support us in the examination of the mode of existence of haecceity. (shrink)

Normally the Belgian foreign policy is not an explosive matter for public debate. However during 1979 the attitude and decisions of Minister Simonet concerning the Nato-demands for production and installation of 464 Cruise- and 108 Pershing-missiles were strongly criticized. Mainly his socialist friends of the «Socialistische Partij», the «Volksunie» and also important pressure groups as «Pax Christi» disapproved the positive attitude of Minister Simonet vis-à-vis the Nato-demands. A climax was reacted during a protest-meeting in the streets of Brussels (...) on December 9, 1979 and during the debate in the Belgian Parliament. It resulted in a declaration by the Belgian Prime Minister Martens on December 12, who agreed that the Belgian Government should ask for a delay of 6 months. Among other items of Belgian foreign policy examined in this article one can notice the evolution of the position of the Belgian Government in European Affairs and in the Middle East problems. Finally, the author broadens his survey to the more fundamental question of the meaning of the foreign policy of small countries. (shrink)

Following a previous article published in Biological Theory, in this study we present a mathematical theory for a science of qualities as directly perceived by living organisms, and based on morphological patterns. We address a range of qualitative phenomena as observables of a psychological system seen as an impredicative system. The starting point of our study is the notion that perceptual phenomena are projections of underlying invariants, objects that remain unchanged when transformations of a certain class under consideration are applied. (...) The study develops with the observables, the entailed total order and metric, whence the algebra and the geometry of such a science, presenting a formal phenomenological model for phenomena that are not rigidly Euclidean. We show how non-Euclidean perception can have many useful Euclidean formalizations, as well as locally-homeomorphic-to-Euclidean-space models. The mathematical models we provide are tested on the basis of results from experimental psychology, in particular from the field of color, time, and space perception. (shrink)

J'ai dit en ce livre l'essentiel de ma pensée, et je serais heureux de connattre ceux qui l'acceptent comme ceux qui, en s'y opposaml, la confirment sans le vouloir 2.

This paper offers a new concept of the firm that aims at balancing the corporate economic, social, and environmental responsibilities and goes beyond the stakeholder approach. It intends to provide a conceptual and operationalizable basis to fairly assess corporate conduct from both inside and outside the companies. To a large extent these different responsibilities may overlap and reinforce each other. However, if they conflict, they should be clearly evaluated for their own sake and in terms of wealth creation. Only then (...) can a balanced approach be realized. Section 1 briefly discusses some general aspects of the relationship between concepts and measurement. In Section 2, a concept of the firm is developed that is based on the notion of responsibility and balances economic, social and environmental responsibilities. According to these concepts, different ways of measuring corporate planning and performance are examined in Section 3, followed up by a summary and conclusions. (shrink)

I have enjoyed my six years as editor of this journal. I was pleased to be able to bring the journal to Purdue University Press and learn how to produce a first-rate academic journal. From the early days of choosing a cover design, to supervising my graduate assistant Jiwon Kim as she expertly sought indexing services, to acquiring an ISSN number, to being lucky to convince David Granger to become the book review editor and, with the next issue, editor, I (...) have been fortunate to work with excellent colleagues. I particularly want to thank the staff at Purdue University Press, especially its former director, Thomas Bacher, who agreed to publish the journal in 2004. Tom later moved the management of the journal's .. (shrink)

Aṣṭāvakragītā, Hindu philosophical work; retold.