Patient-centeredness can be considered a popular, and at the same time “fuzzy”, concept. Scientists have proposed different definitions and models. The present article studies scientific publications that discuss the meaning of patient-centeredness to identify different “discourses” of patient-centeredness. Three discourses are presented; the first is labelled as “caring for patients”, the second as “empowering patients” and the third as “being responsive”. Each of these discourses has different things to say about the why of patient-centeredness; the patient’s identity; the role of (...) the healthcare professional; responsibilities for medical decision-making, and the role of health information. This article compares and contrasts the discourses in ways that allow us to see differences that matter for practitioners in healthcare. On the basis of a relational constructionist philosophy, it is argued that discursive diversity is both an inevitable and a potentially valuable aspect of conversations in healthcare. We are therefore invited to center the challenge of dealing with diversity in productive ways. This article ends with a discussion of the practical implications of the discourse analysis for projects that aim to make healthcare more patient-centered. Debates on patient-centered “Health Information Exchange” are used to explain the need for a recognition of different discourses of patient-centeredness and a reflexive stance towards them. (shrink)

This essay will discuss how the Theory of Communicative Action incorporates the systemic complexification process and the Systems and Life World duality. Part of this process will be carried out with the discussion of communicative action, as a space for dialogue between people seeking understanding. The process of new forms of understanding and construction of knowledge is possible through the integrative structure of the lifeworld, such as semantic dimension, social space, and historical time. However, there is the other side, the (...) Systems, where the manifestations of crisis and disturbances, the pathologies of society, which in cultural reproduction appear as a loss of meaning of culture, loss of legitimacy of society and in personality, there is a crisis of belonging. (shrink)

The Description Logic Handbook covers all aspects of the research in the field of knowledge representation. Written by some of the most prominent researchers in the field, and covering the basic technical material and implementational aspects, it is both a unique reference and a self-study guide.

Basically, the connection of two many-sorted theories is obtained by taking their disjoint union, and then connecting the two parts through connection functions that must behave like homomorphisms on the shared signature. We determine conditions under which decidability of the validity of universal formulae in the component theories transfers to their connection. In addition, we consider variants of the basic connection scheme. Our results can be seen as a generalization of the so-called E-connection approach for combining modal logics to an (...) algebraic setting. (shrink)

Feature logics are the logical basis for so-called unification grammars studied in computational linguistics. We investigate the expressivity of feature terms with negation and the functional uncertainty construct needed for the description of long-distance dependencies and obtain the following results: satisfiability of feature terms is undecidable, sort equations can be internalized, consistency of sort equations is decidable if there is at least one atom, and consistency of sort equations is undecidable if there is no atom.

Unification was originally introduced in automated deduction and term rewriting, but has recently also found applications in other fields. In this article, we give a survey of the results on unification obtained in two closely related, yet different, application areas of unification: description logics and modal logics.

Jean Paul's novel The Life of Fibel, Author of the Bienrodische Fibel places itself in a specifi c relation to literacy by identifying the alphabet and the spelling-book as a matrix of its own production. Thus, the text refers itself and its sense-effects back to the arbitrariness of its elements and their combinatorics. Moreover, at the margins of the book, it feigns to be abandoned to the contingency of its preliteral physis which is suppressed by sense, authority, authorship and control (...) of the work. (shrink)

Jean Paul's novel The Life of Fibel, Author of the Bienrodische Fibel places itself in a specifi c relation to literacy by identifying the alphabet and the spelling-book as a matrix of its own production. Thus, the text refers itself and its sense-effects back to the arbitrariness of its elements and their combinatorics. Moreover, at the margins of the book, it feigns to be abandoned to the contingency of its preliteral physis which is suppressed by sense, authority, authorship and control (...) of the work. (shrink)

The first introductory textbook on description logics, relevant to computer science, knowledge representation and the semantic web.

Während der größte Teil der Bevölkerung die kieferorthopädische Therapie, also die Veränderung der Zahn- bzw. Kieferstellung, als eine Behandlung betrachtet, die vor allem auf eine Verbesserung des Erscheinungsbildes zielt, sehen der kieferorthopädische und zahnärztliche Berufsstand sowie auch private und öffentliche Kostenträger in bestimmten Abweichungen von Zahn- oder Kieferstellungen eine Gefährdung der oralen Gesundheit und der Funktionsfähigkeit des Gebisses. Letztere Auffassung bestimmt das ärztliche Handeln in der Kieferorthopädie und begründet auch die Übernahme zumindest bestimmter Leistungen durch die gesetzlichen Krankenkassen. Anhand aktueller (...) wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse lassen sich jedoch in vielen Fällen keine (akuten oder potentiellen) gesundheitlichen oder essentiellen funktionellen Beeinträchtigungen und Risiken abweichender Zahnstellungen nachweisen. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, diesem Widerspruch nachzugehen. Im Folgenden werden wir aufzeigen, welche Faktoren die Anbieter kieferorthopädischer Leistungen beeinflussen, welches die entscheidenden Gründe und Grundlagen für die Behandlung sind und an welchen Kriterien sich die Leistungsübernahme durch die Krankenkassen orientiert. Dabei wird deutlich werden, dass die formalen Kriterien von Behandlung und Kostenübernahme, die tatsächliche Behandlungs- und Kostenerstattungspraxis, die Erwartungen derjenigen, die Behandlungsleistungen in Anspruch nehmen und der aktuelle Stand der Forschung zu erwartbaren Funktionsbeeinträchtigungen durch Zahnstellungsvariationen nicht zwanglos zu vereinbaren sind. Erforderlich erscheint ein interdisziplinärer normativer Diskurs über die Frage, wie die diagnostizierten Spannungen aufzulösen wären. Als Anregung für einen solchen Diskurs werden wir im Ausblick alternative Lösungsstrategien vorstellen. (shrink)

Description logics are a family of knowledge representation formalisms that are descended from semantic networks and frames via the system Kl-one. During the last decade, it has been shown that the important reasoning problems (like subsumption and satisfiability) in a great variety of description logics can be decided using tableau-like algorithms. This is not very surprising since description logics have turned out to be closely related to propositional modal logics and logics of programs (such as propositional dynamic logic), for which (...) tableau procedures have been quite successful.Nevertheless, due to different underlying institutions and applications, most description logics differ significantly from run-of-the-mill modal and program logics. Consequently, the research on tableau algorithms in description logics led to new techniques and results, which are, however, also of interest for modal logicians. In this article, we will focus on three features that play an important rôle in description logics (number restrictions, terminological axioms, and role constructors), and show how they can be taken into account by tableau algorithms. (shrink)

"Erscheinen und Verschwinden sind als Auf und Abtreten physische und symbolische Operationen, die sich auf die den Schauplatz abscheidend konstituierenden Grenze zwischen on-stage und backstage beziehen, aus dem das Geschehen auf der Bühne sich speist. Auftreten ist derart als ein riskanter und instabiler Vorgang zwischen Erscheinen und Verschwinden zu kennzeichnen. Am Beispiel zeitgenössischer Auseinandersetzungen mit den Bedingungen des Theaters, die die Bühne als Gefüge diverser Darstellungs-Flächen und -Räume nutzen, bekommt die Verwiesenheit der theatralen Präsentation auf das Anderswo einen spezifischen Witz (...) für das Verschwinden: was hier ›verschwindet‹ ist irgendwo anders. As entrances and exits, appearance and disappearance are physical and symbolic operations, which refer to the border between onstage and backstage that constitutes the scene and with it the action on stage. To make an entrance is thus a risky and unstable operation between appearance and disappearance. Using the example of contemporary explorations of the conditions of theater that use the stage as a structure of various presentation areas and -spaces, the dependence of the theatrical presentation on an Elsewhere produces a specific pun on disappearance: that which ›disappears‹ here is somewhere else.". (shrink)

?Starting from the literary translations and reflections on the theory of translation of Christoph Martin Wieland, this book deals with different modalities and methods of translating and transmitting? not only from language to language, but also between literary genres, epochs, knowledge formations and nations. Wieland is portrayed as an author and editor who devoted himself? with experimental openness? to a project of mediating and resolving dichotomies such as cosmopolitism and nation.".

This contribution compares entries on Friedrich Froebel and the kindergarten in German and United States’ histories of education from 1857 to 1933. In the American histories, Froebel appears as the great “hero” of education of the 19th century, whereas in the German histories, Pestalozzi is the “hero.” This difference in the perspectives goes back to fundamental differences in the political culture and political traditions of the two countries, which differed greatly as to the shaping of the public and private spheres. (...) Consequently, there were also different views on public education. In the immigration society of the United States, it was important to integrate children with various language and cultural backgrounds. As families could not do this alone, public kindergartens were needed. In Germany, in contrast, Froebel’s idea of the kindergarten was seen as an attack on family ties, and Pestalozzi was highly esteemed, because he made home education central. The American interest in “making citizens” produced Froebel as the hero; the German interest in leaving the education of young children to mothers and in the family lauded Pestalozzi. This case study of the reception of Froebel in Germany and the United States illustrates the high context-dependence of the construction of educational “heroes.”. (shrink)

Artikelen vanuit verschillende invalshoeken over het wezen en de oorsprong van het kwaad en de omgang ermee in verschillende culturen.

In this article I discuss the history of Italian Jews from the Emancipation to the racial laws of 1938 and their present-day attitudes to Judaism and the State of Israel. My aim is to suggest how the policy of social integration enabled Italian Jews to construct a new identity without losing their ancestral heritage. The example of Italian Jewry is relevant to understanding the growing need in today‘s European Union—now comprising 27 countries with different languages, cultures, and values—of revising the (...) concept of national identity and of exploring ways of constructing a new European identity. (shrink)

The history of Italian Jews from 1861 to 1938 is often viewed as the period in which they totally assimilated into the Italian nation. This article, however, argues that rather than their assimilation it was a period of their integration into Italian society. Various approaches to this question are presented, including a review of the literature, with a view to reconsidering the relationship between Jewish culture and Italian culture, or rather non-Jewish culture. Italian Jewish history is shown not to be (...) separated from, but to be “internal” to Italian social, cultural, and political history—part of the dynamic process of change that occurred during this period not only in Italy but throughout Europe. (shrink)

The combination of Fuzzy Logics and Description Logics has been investigated for at least two decades because such fuzzy DLs can be used to formalize imprecise concepts. In particular, tableau algorithms for crisp Description Logics have been extended to reason also with their fuzzy counterparts. It has turned out, however, that in the presence of general concept inclusion axioms this extension is less straightforward than thought. In fact, a number of tableau algorithms claimed to deal correctly with fuzzy DLs with (...) GCIs have recently been shown to be incorrect. In this paper, we concentrate on fuzzy \, the fuzzy extension of the well-known DL \. We present a terminating, sound, and complete tableau algorithm for fuzzy \ with arbitrary continuous t-norms. Unfortunately, in the presence of GCIs, this algorithm does not yield a decision procedure for consistency of fuzzy \ ontologies since it uses as a sub-procedure a solvability test for a finitely represented, but possibly infinite, system of inequations over the real interval [0,1], which are built using the t-norm. In general, it is not clear whether this solvability problem is decidable for such infinite systems of inequations. This may depend on the specific t-norm used. In fact, we also show in this paper that consistency of fuzzy \ ontologies with GCIs is undecidable for the product t-norm. This implies, of course, that for the infinite systems of inequations produced by the tableau algorithm for fuzzy \ with product t-norm, solvability is in general undecidable. We also give a brief overview of recently obtained decidability results for fuzzy \ w.r.t. other t-norms. (shrink)

Unification in description logics has been proposed as a novel inference service that can, for example, be used to detect redundancies in ontologies. The inexpressive description logic EL is of particular interest in this context since, on the one hand, several large biomedical ontologies are defined using EL. On the other hand, unification in EL has been shown to be NP-complete and, thus, of considerably lower complexity than unification in other description logics of similarly restricted expressive power. However, EL allows (...) the use of the top concept, which represents the whole interpretation domain, whereas the large medical ontology SNOMED CT makes no use of this feature. Surprisingly, removing the top concept from EL makes the unification problem considerably harder. More precisely, we will show that unification in EL without the top concept is PSPACE-complete. In addition to the decision problem, we also consider the problem of actually computing EL−⊤-unifiers. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Fermenta cognitionis, Heft 1." verfügbar.

Par leurs contributions à ce livre, vingt-trois chercheur.e.s rendent hommage à leur collègue qui souvent fut aussi leur professeure, l’historienne juive Paula Hyman. Comme le rappelle Richard I. Cohen dans son avant-propos, P. Hyman fut une historienne des Juifs de France et les publications qu’elle a consacrées à la vie des Juifs dans la France contemporaine ont constitué un apport considérable à ce champ de recherches. Toutefois le volume dont il est ici question célèbre P. Hyman pour ses...