Moral competence is important for soldiers who have to deal with complex moral dilemmas in practice. However, openly dealing with moral dilemmas and showing moral competence is not always easy within the culture of a military organization. In this article, based on analysis of experiences during a train the trainer course on military ethics, we will describe the tensions between military and personal values on the one hand and the challenges related to showing moral competence on the other hand. We (...) will explain these tensions and challenges by elaborating on various aspects of the military organization, such as being a soldier, group bonding, uniformity, hierarchy, lack of privacy and masculinity. Furthermore, we will demonstrate how moral competence can be addressed and fostered during the training by introducing specific interventions. (shrink)

If one of the most important aims of education on military ethics is to strengthen moral competence, we argue that it is important to base ethics education on virtue ethics, the Socratic attitude and the process of ?living learning?. This article illustrates this position by means of the example of a ?train the trainer? course on military ethics for Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), which is developed at the Netherlands Defence Academy, and uses a number of examples both from its structure and (...) from experiences from its actual use. (shrink)

Increasing complexity of projects is mentioned as one of the reasons for project failure—still. This paper presents a comparative research to investigate how project complexity was perceived by project practitioners in different industry sectors. Five sectors were included: process industry, construction industry, ICT, high-tech product development, and food processing industry. In total, more than 140 projects were included in the research, hence providing a broad view on Dutch project practice. From the complexity assessments, it is concluded that only one complexity (...) element was present in the top complexity elements of projects across the five sectors: the high project schedule drive. The variety of external stakeholders’ perspectives, a lack of resources and skills availability, and interference with existing site were found in the top lists of three sectors. It was concluded that a framework to grasp project complexity could support the management of complex projects by creating awareness for the complexities. Further research could be focused on the subjective character of complexity as well as on the application of cross-sector learning, since this research does show similarities between large technical projects in different sectors. (shrink)

To explore whether market reforms in a health care system affect medical professional ethics of hospital-based specialists on the one hand and physicians in independent practices on the other. Qualitative interviews with 27 surgeons and 28 general practitioners in The Netherlands, held 2–3 years after a major overhaul of the Dutch health care system involving several market reforms. Surgeons now regularly advertise their work (while this was forbidden in the past) and pay more attention to patients with relatively minor afflictions, (...) thus deviating from codes of ethics that oblige physicians to treat each other as brothers and to treat patients according to medical need. Dutch GPs have abandoned their traditional reticence and their fear of medicalization. They now seem to treat more in accordance with patients’ preferences and less in accordance with medical need. Market reforms do affect medical professional principles, and it is doubtful whether these changes were intended when Dutch policy makers decided to introduce market elements in the health care system. Policy makers in other countries considering similar reforms should pay attention to these results. (shrink)

Starting from the Friday woman lead prayer held in 2005 in New York, I focus in this paper on the role Muslim contemporary women play in shaping Muslim societies and communities to assert their authoritative role “in the mosque”. I begin by setting the scene of the event and, after a brief discussion of its symbolic meaning, I address two main questions: first, how the debate which followed the event contributed and contributes to promote a change inside the Muslim world (...) and outside it, letting emerge some leading figures in the struggle for justice and equity in contemporary Islam; and second which are the theological and legal basis for the role of woman as imāma. Although the issue of women leadership in prayer is far from finding a unanimous consent, the debate demonstrates that some issues can and must be discussed, and that a change is possible only when Muslim women question the male elite power. (shrink)

Este artículo trata de la posmodernidad como estilo cultural que influye, desde todos los espacios sociales, en el individuo. Analizada como límite extremado de la modernidad, la posmodernidad se ha descrito como la base teórica de la revolución de las tecnologías que han modificado el mundo radicalmente en los últimos veinte años. La economía sigue ocupando un lugar fundamental en esta nueva sociedad, como en todas las anteriores. Pero, ahora el consumo se ha convertido en la variable más importante, y (...) condiciona la vida de los individuos afectando a su propia identidad.This article treats of the postmodern era as cultural style that influences, from all the social spaces, the individual. Analyzed as extreme limit of the modernity, the postmodern era has been described as the theoretical base of the revolution of the technologies that have modified the world radically in the last twenty years. The economy continues occupying a fundamental place in this new society, ,like in all the previous ones. But, now the consumption has turned into the most important variable, and determines the life of the individuals concerning his own identity. (shrink)

We study the preservation under projective ccc forcing extensions of the property of L(ℝ) being a Solovay model. We prove that this property is preserved by every strongly-̰Σ₃¹ absolutely-ccc forcing extension, and that this is essentially the optimal preservation result, i.e., it does not hold for Σ₃¹ absolutely-ccc forcing notions. We extend these results to the higher projective classes of ccc posets, and to the class of all projective ccc posets, using definably-Mahlo cardinals. As a consequence we obtain an exact (...) equiconsistency result for generic absoluteness under projective absolutely-ccc forcing notions. (shrink)

How can new drug lead suggestions beinferred from neurophysiological models? This paperaddresses this question based on a case study ofresearch into Parkinson''s disease at the GroningenUniversity Department of Pharmacy. It is argued thatneurophysiological box-and-arrow models can beunderstood as qualitative differential equationmodels. An inference task is defined to helpunderstand and possibly aid the discovery andexplanation of new drug lead suggestions.

Companion animals exemplify the affinities possible between humans and nonhuman animals. Evidence documenting a diversity of emotional, physical, and therapeutic benefits of pet guardianship substantiates sentimental anecdotes from pet owners. Although the literature focuses primarily on the "one to one" benefits accruing from interactions with pets, this paper explores the potential role of pets as facilitators of social interactions and sense of community. The paper uses triangulation to synthesize findings from qualitative and quantitative research undertaken in three Western Australian suburbs. (...) The qualitative data derive from 12 focus groups and quantitative data, from a survey of 339 residents. In both qualitative and quantitative research, pet ownership positively associated with social interactions, favor exchanges, civic engagement, perceptions of neighborhood friendliness, and sense of community. Pets appeared to ameliorate some determinants of mental health such as loneliness. Findings suggest pets have a ripple effect extending beyond their guardians to non-pet owners and the broader community. Given the high rates of pet residency in neighborhoods, there is merit in further considering the nexus between pets and community health and well being. (shrink)

Here we evaluate our current understanding of the function of the nervous system in Hydra, a non‐bilaterian animal which is among the first metazoans that contain neurons. We highlight growing evidence that the nervous system, with its rich repertoire of neuropeptides, is involved in controlling resident beneficial microbes. We also review observations that indicate that microbes affect the animal's behavior by directly interfering with neuronal receptors. These findings provide new insight into the original role of the nervous system, and suggest (...) that it emerged to orchestrate multiple functions including host‐microbiome interactions. The excitement of future research in the Hydra model now relies on uncovering the common rules and principles that govern the interaction between neurons and microbes and the extent to which such laws might apply to other and more complex organisms. (shrink)

This paper develops two new measures of labor tax avoidance based on social contribution expenses reported in financial statements and tests them and their determinants within a sample of 224 Italian firms defined as legally registered Mafia firms due to having been confiscated at some point by judicial authorities, in relation to alleged connections with Italian organized crime. Overall, our results reveal that before confiscation LMFs engage more in LTAV than lawful firms do, whereas after confiscation there is no significant (...) difference between both types of firm. Furthermore, we find that several factors have a significant influence on the probability of engaging in such a practice. This study can enhance further research on the effectiveness of our measures and on the determinants of LTAV in other contexts and for other types of firms. Moreover, these measures can be added to the other direct and indirect methods commonly employed to measure and detect undeclared work representing a primary means of LTAV. Finally, our study allows inferring conclusions on the relation between corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance, suggesting that socially irresponsible firms, such as LMFs, are more likely to adopt this practice. (shrink)

We study the preservation of the property of being a Solovay model under proper projective forcing extensions. We show that every strongly-proper forcing notion preserves this property. This yields that the consistency strength of the absoluteness of under strongly-proper forcing notions is that of the existence of an inaccessible cardinal. Further, the absoluteness of under projective strongly-proper forcing notions is consistent relative to the existence of a -Mahlo cardinal. We also show that the consistency strength of the absoluteness of under (...) forcing extensions with σ-linked forcing notions is exactly that of the existence of a Mahlo cardinal, in contrast with the general ccc case, which requires a weakly-compact cardinal. (shrink)

Die in diesem Band versammelten Aufsätze ist eine Auswahl von Kommentaren, Betrachtungen, Interviews und programmatischen Aufrufen von Horst von Gizycki, bezogen auf jeweils aktuelle Zeitfragen in mehr als vier Jahrzehnten.

We study the projective posets and their properties as forcing notions. We also define Martin's axiom restricted to projective sets, MA, and show that this axiom is weaker than full Martin's axiom by proving the consistency of ZFC + ¬lCH + MA with “there exists a Suslin tree”, “there exists a non-strong gap”, “there exists an entangled set of reals” and “there exists κ < 20 such that 20 < 2k”.

The conference explored an extraordinary diversity of aging strategies in organisms ranging from short‐lived species to “immortal” animals and plants. Research on the biological processes of aging is at the brink of a revolution with respect to our understanding of its underlying mechanisms as well as our ability to prevent and cure a wide variety of age‐related pathologies.

Liliane Tasmowski and Paul Verluyten have recently expressed their misgivings about a proposal for a distinction between syntactically and referentially functioning anaphoric pronouns that was put forth in Bosch (1980, 1983) and have re-emphasized their ideas towards a uniform treatment of anaphoric pronouns, as originally published in Tasmowski and Verluyten (1982). In the following pages I shall point out some limitations of the uniform pronoun treatment Tasmowski and Verluyten have in mind and I shall propose some amendments and extensions (...) of my earlier proposals in order to take phenomena of gender and number agreement of pronouns into account which were ignored in earlier versions. (shrink)

A key challenge faced by organizations is to provide project teams with workspaces, information, and collaboration technologies that fosters creativity and high-performance team productivity. This requires understanding the relation between and impacts of (1) workspace, (2) activity and content that is created, and (3) social, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of work. This paper describes an exploratory study of everyday activities in the context of knowledge work in a shared workspace used by a high-tech global design team that explores future products. (...) The study formalizes key elements for productive knowledge work as a function of tasks, context, and team. It identifies enablers, hindrances, and requirements for physical, virtual, and social work environments. The study identified, through semi-structured interviews, surveys, and on-site shadowing, a key workspace component that facilitates dynamic participation of all team members. This workspace component is a wall used as a large, public, physical display surface for project content (the WALL). The WALL acts as a mediator for individual reflection-in-action and team reflection-in-interaction. It serves as “social glue” both between individuals and between geographically distributed subgroups. (shrink)

This paper describes an exploratory comparative study of knowledge workers and their challenges in high tech global project teams. More specifically we focus on the tension between perceived collocation and actual geographical distributed project work as a function of: (1) the demand to distribute and shift attention in multi-teaming, (2) virtuality i.e. number of virtual teams participants engage in, (3) the continuous adjustment and re-adjustment to new places they perform their activity, and (4) the collaboration technologies they use. We present (...) the methodology for data collection that included semi-structured interviews, surveys, and on site shadowing of the project participants, and discuss the findings from the data analysis. The study is based on the bricks-bits-interaction framework. It is at the intersection of the design of physical spaces, i.e., bricks; rich digital information and collaboration technology (ICT) content, mobile devices and network infrastructures, i.e., bits, and emergent work practices, process, and new ways people behave in communicative events using the affordances of ICT augmented physical, virtual spaces and digital content, i.e., interaction. (shrink)