scholarly journals “Living-with-dying”: the elderly’s language of terminal illness

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania M. Maci

Purpose This study aims to examine the way in which elderly people, men and women, with a terminal illness use language to construct a narrative about their “living-with-dying” experience. Design/methodology/approach This investigation is a secondary analysis based on a corpus of health and illness narratives collected by the Health Experiences Research Group at the University of Oxford and published by the DIPEx charity (available at: http://healthtalk.org/home). Findings This study shows that there are qualitative differences in the way in which not only elderly people but also men and women report their experience with terminal illness and their relation to death. Originality/value Understanding the different perspectives from which elderly people narrate their experiences of how they live while dying from terminal illness can help health professionals to develop more effective all-inclusive health policies and practices in end-of-life care.

1806 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 305-326 ◽  

Dear Sir, Being perfectly convinced of your love of mathematical science, and your extensive acquirements in it, I submit to your perusal a new demonstration of the binomial theorem, when the exponent is a positive or negative fraction. As I am a strenuous advocate for smoothing the way to the acquisition of useful knowledge, i deem the following articles of some importance ; and unless I were equally sincere in this persuasion, and in that of your desire to promote mathemati­cal studies, in requesting the perusal, I should accuse myself of an attempt to trifle with your valuable time. The following demonstration is new only to the extent above mentioned ; but in order that the reader may perceive the proof to be complete, a successive perusal of all the articles is necessary. As far as it relates to the raising of in­tegral powers, it is in substance the same with one which I drew up in the year 1794, and which was honoured with a place in the Philosophical Transactions for 1795. If, therefore, you think the following demonstration worthy the attention of mathematicians, you will much oblige me by presenting it to the Royal Society.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Zabihi ◽  
Mina Safizadeh ◽  
Massoomeh Hedayati Marzbali

Purpose Hospital landscape is not a useless space within hospital buildings anymore. It is considered as a supportive area providing mental and physical peace. However, the planting design of the hospital landscape and the way it should be in order to not disrupt wayfinding performance is neglected. This paper, which is a case study, aims at investigating the effects of planting design in Kerman hospitals’ landscapes on the users’ wayfinding using space syntax techniques. Design/methodology/approach This research focuses on the effects of planting design on the users’ wayfinding in hospitals. In so doing, library research, computer simulation and analysis with the University College London (UCL) Depthmap software, and comparison techniques are used. Based on axial maps, the measures of integration, connectivity and intelligibility are considered for analysing the wayfinding process of individuals. Findings The findings show that planting configurations in the hospital landscape can affect individuals’ wayfinding. Integrated and regular planting design in addition to combining planted areas with the hospital buildings can pave the way for intelligible space and easier wayfinding. Originality/value According to the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to use the space syntax techniques in the health-care landscape architecture in terms of planting design and wayfinding. As wayfinding is an important issue in health-care spaces, the study findings can greatly help the health-care building designers and the related organizations to pay attention to the hospital landscape as much as hospital indoors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1062-1081 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Kuzma ◽  
Albina Moscicka

Purpose This paper aims to present the authors’ attempts to evaluate the access to archival maps available in digital libraries. Its aim was to pinpoint the factors determining the effectiveness of access to old maps and to evaluate which Polish libraries provide resources in such a way as to give the users the best chance of finding the materials necessary for their research. Design/methodology/approach The presented research focussed on archival documents from academic libraries accessible from the Polish Digital Libraries Federation and available from Europeana Collections. The evaluation criteria were established along with features that determine the level of difficulty of access to data describing archival documents. The research took into account the way of recording the data about archival documents in metadata. The authors have also analysed the quantity of available resources and the consistency of metadata record. Findings The results of the research have demonstrated that one-third of the analysed libraries deserve a positive evaluation. The digital library of the Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian Digital Library received the best scores in terms of the description of archival documents. Considering the number of resources, the Jagiellonian Digital Library and the Digital Library of the University of Wrocław are positively distinguished. Originality/value The method of evaluating the access to archival maps has been developed. The criteria and features necessary for this evaluation and the way of their interpretation have also been defined. The future goals leading to the improvement of the access to the archival maps have been also presented.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna McKnight ◽  
Chris Davies

PurposeThis article aims to introduce the Kellogg College Centre for Research into Assistive Learning Technologies, which is a new research centre based at the University of Oxford.Design/methodology/approachThe article briefly sets the context of the centre within the current literature, and outlines the centre's current plan of work. The centre has funding for two years to look into new developments in the application of digital technologies to support the learning and educational achievement of young people in school and higher education with a range of specific learning difficulties. This will begin with a substantial research review, as well as in‐depth studies of current initiatives in secondary schools and higher education.FindingsThe findings from the research review will aim to be published and disseminated to the research community within the first two years of the centre's life.Originality/valueIt is hoped that this centre will be able to contribute to the existing research on the uses of a range of assistive technologies in educational settings.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Socratous

Purpose Using primary data from an online survey in addition to 29 semi-structured interviews among chartered accountants and academics in Cyprus, originally collected for the purposes of a PhD research, this paper aims to investigate the importance of networking with regards to women’s progression in the workplace, as well as the barriers women are faced with in their attempt to “play” the networking game in according to the male rules. Design/methodology/approach The use of an inductive approach was considered appropriate since there is little existing research on gender issues in Cypriot organisations. For the purposes of the study, a two-step qualitative approach was taken. Step 1 was an online survey with both closed and open-ended questions delivered to employed Cypriot men and women. Step 2 of the study comprised semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were conducted with specific, preselected employees, both men and women, comprising chartered accountants from the BIG Four companies in Cyprus and academics working at the University of Cyprus. Findings The research reported in this paper suggests that while there is the perception that men and women share the same opportunities within the workplace and women do not progress by choice, there appear to be various structural and cultural influences at play. It is clear that women are restricted from networking opportunities either intentionally or due to cultural and societal norms and this results in minimising their chances of breaking the glass ceiling and progressing to the top of the organisational ladder. Originality/value The research focuses on the impediments women in Cyprus are faced with in their attempt to network. There is no previous research on this subject in Cyprus.


Philosophy ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Longworth

John Langshaw Austin (b. 1911–d. 1960) was White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Oxford. He made a number of contributions in various areas of philosophy, including important work on knowledge, perception, action, freedom, truth, language, and the use of language in speech acts. Distinctions that Austin drew in his work on speech acts—in particular his distinction between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts—have assumed something like canonical status in more recent work. His work on knowledge and perception figures centrally in some recent work on these topics, especially with respect to questions about the nature of episodes of seeing and the way they can figure in enabling us to know things about our environments. His work on meaning and truth has played an important role in recent discussions of the extent to which sentence meaning can be accounted for in terms of truth-conditions. His work on action and freedom has played a role in some more recent discussions. However, Austin is often aligned with an approach to philosophical questions that focuses heavily on the way we use ordinary language. Many philosophers who are skeptical about the value of that approach are therefore skeptical about the worth of some of Austin’s work.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
George Osas Eromosele

Purpose An institutional repository has become a new way of making the intellectual outputs of academic and research institutions electronically accessible in the online public domain. The outcome has led to users gaining remote access to varieties of digitized information that is hitherto locally resident before digitization in hardcopy form in the various information centre and libraries without users’ restrictions. This initiative has helped to enhance the open access inventiveness. Nigeria libraries are therefore taking up the challenge of computerizing their libraries and some have taken some steps to source the requisite funds to digitize and archive their library resources for easier Web-based access. Consequent upon this development, the University of Ilorin, embarked on digitization of its local contents such as Convocation Ceremonies; Government Publications; and Staff Publications and Theses and Dissertations, and making these local resources available online. This paper attempts to give a detailed account, step-by-step procedures and the various challenges faced in the process of building its online institutional repository and the way forward. The report in this paper gives insight into academic libraries intention to digitize their library resources, on the best way to go about it and also to avoid unnecessary hurdles. Design/methodology/approach To provide a thorough breakdown of the building of institutional repositories in the University of Ilorin, Library, webliography sources were consulted. Findings Some areas in service provisions need to improve upon, and these areas are search engine optimization by subscribing to handle.net, integration of Google analytics to check performance, sitemap features and highly secured (SSL and public key encryption. Originality/value This paper attempts to give a detailed account, step-by-step procedures and the various challenges faced in the process of building its online institutional repository and the way forward. The report in this paper gives insight into academic libraries intention to digitize their library resources, on the best way to go about it and also to avoid unnecessary hurdles.


2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grit Höppner

This article investigates from an agential realist perspective the way the embodying of the self is constituted during interviews. Since the aim is to analyze how, in Karen Barad’s words, ‘matter comes to matter,’ the approach presented here takes into account not only how discursive but also how material practices produce ‘embodying processes’ that differ according to situational references. The approach considers the influence of the agency of human and non-human bodies in terms of non-verbal body language. Using the case of Viennese elderly people, this article presents three sets of material-discursive practices that have formed and transformed the way in which they embody their selves during the interviews: through their reference to absent non-human materiality, to non-human materiality present in the interview, and to human materiality present in the interview the elderly people non-verbally materialized their ideas on gender, age, health, and illness. In analyzing embodying processes, the article shows the kind of contribution that an agential realist account can make to sociological interview research. It particularly highlights the need to rethink both the constitution of the self and the popular procedure of focusing almost exclusively on discursive practices and human bodies in empirical analyses.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Poli

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is a presentation of the guiding ideas underlining the master degree course in social foresight recently launched by the University of Trento (Italy). Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a reconstruction of the guiding ideas that have been used for designing the social foresight master degree. Findings – Students are exposed to a mix of contributions from futures studies, the human and social sciences (including psychology of decisions, social change, values and secondary analysis techniques) and mathematics (not only statistics, but also system theory and simulation). Originality/value – A unique look at the ideas behind the master degree course in social foresight at the University of Trento (Italy).


The book provides a detailed and practical description of how companies can put purpose into practice in their organizations. Based on a ground-breaking research project on the Economics of Mutuality undertaken jointly by the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and Mars Catalyst, the think tank of Mars Inc., the food and beverages company, over a period of five years, the book describes how purpose promotes business growth and performance. In particular, it gives a highly accessible and readable account of how companies can determine and implement their corporate purposes, and how, by so doing, they address critical issues in their ecosystems, such as rising inequality and environmental degradation, while delivering superior performance and resilience. The book will equip executives, managers, investors, policymakers, academics, and students with tools to understand the way in which companies can build purpose-centric businesses, map and orchestrate stakeholder ecosystems, identify untapped resources, create unconventional partnerships, measure and manage performance beyond financial reporting, and adopt a new definition of profit to promote corporate purposes. The book includes fourteen case studies of companies of varying sizes, sectors, and geographies that sought to put purpose into practice. They provide deep insights into the way in which companies have delivered corporate purpose and the challenges they faced in doing this. The book stresses both the opportunity and obligation on business to reposition itself to address the changing needs of society and the planet in the twenty-first century.


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