Involuntary outpatient treatment for mental health problems in Switzerland: a literature review.

BACKGROUND: In 2008, the Swiss Civil Code was amended. From 1 January 2013, each Swiss canton may propose specific provisions for involuntary outpatient treatment (community treatment orders (CTOs)) for individuals with mental disorders. AIM: This review catalogues the legal provisions of the various Swiss cantons for CTOs and outlines the differences between them. It sets this in the context of variations in clinical provisions between the cantons. METHODS: Databases were searched to obtain relevant publications about CTOs in Switzerland. The Swiss Medical Association, Swiss Federal Statistical Office, Swiss Health Observatory and all the 26 Cantonal medical officers were contacted to complete the information. Conférence des cantons en matière de protection des mineurs et des adultes (COPMA), the authority which monitors guardianship legislation, and Pro Mente Sana, a patients' right association, were also approached. RESULTS: Three articles about CTOs in Switzerland were identified. Psychiatric provisions vary considerably between cantons and only a few could provide complete or even partial figures for rates of compulsion in previous years. Prior to 2013, only 6 of the 20 cantons, for which information was returned, had any provision for CTOs. Now, every canton has some form of legal basis but the level of detail is often limited. In eight cantons, the powers of the measure are not specified (for example, use of medication). In 12 cantons, the maximum duration of the CTO is not specified. German speaking cantons and rural cantons are more likely to specify the details of CTOs. CONCLUSION: Highly variable Swiss provision for CTOs is being introduced despite the absence of convincing international evidence for their effectiveness or good quality data on current coercive practice. Careful monitoring and assessment of these new cantonal provisions are essential.

A postcolonial gaze on monumentality. The need for interdisciplinary approaches

This article is a reflection on a master thesis. The article tries to unravel some of the interdisciplinary keys present in the work and necessary for the development of research on Public Space and Public Art. At the same time argues in favor of"post colonial" reading over the-produced space by the colonial powers, both in terms of its structural dimension and in the dimension of 'decorum'.

Una aproximación cuantitativa de las cargas del Estado y de las CCAA : distribución de competencias y gasto efectuado

We distinguish and quantify which part of the expenditures of the Spanish central government are on own competences, on competences of the regional governments and those that are on shared powers between both levels of government. The results obtained show that a great amount of the expenditures actually done by the central government are in fact on competences of the regional governments and on shared powers

What can ecosystems learn? Expanding evolutionary ecology with learning theory.

BACKGROUND: The structure and organisation of ecological interactions within an ecosystem is modified by the evolution and coevolution of the individual species it contains. Understanding how historical conditions have shaped this architecture is vital for understanding system responses to change at scales from the microbial upwards. However, in the absence of a group selection process, the collective behaviours and ecosystem functions exhibited by the whole community cannot be organised or adapted in a Darwinian sense. A long-standing open question thus persists: Are there alternative organising principles that enable us to understand and predict how the coevolution of the component species creates and maintains complex collective behaviours exhibited by the ecosystem as a whole? RESULTS: Here we answer this question by incorporating principles from connectionist learning, a previously unrelated discipline already using well-developed theories on how emergent behaviours arise in simple networks. Specifically, we show conditions where natural selection on ecological interactions is functionally equivalent to a simple type of connectionist learning, 'unsupervised learning', well-known in neural-network models of cognitive systems to produce many non-trivial collective behaviours. Accordingly, we find that a community can self-organise in a well-defined and non-trivial sense without selection at the community level; its organisation can be conditioned by past experience in the same sense as connectionist learning models habituate to stimuli. This conditioning drives the community to form a distributed ecological memory of multiple past states, causing the community to: a) converge to these states from any random initial composition; b) accurately restore historical compositions from small fragments; c) recover a state composition following disturbance; and d) to correctly classify ambiguous initial compositions according to their similarity to learned compositions. We examine how the formation of alternative stable states alters the community's response to changing environmental forcing, and we identify conditions under which the ecosystem exhibits hysteresis with potential for catastrophic regime shifts. CONCLUSIONS: This work highlights the potential of connectionist theory to expand our understanding of evo-eco dynamics and collective ecological behaviours. Within this framework we find that, despite not being a Darwinian unit, ecological communities can behave like connectionist learning systems, creating internal conditions that habituate to past environmental conditions and actively recalling those conditions. REVIEWERS: This article was reviewed by Prof. Ricard V Solé, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona and Prof. Rob Knight, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Typology of "Fatigue" by Heart Rate Variability Analysis in Elite Nordic-skiers.

This study investigated changes in heart rate variability (HRV) in elite Nordic-skiers to characterize different types of "fatigue" in 27 men and 30 women surveyed from 2004 to 2008. R-R intervals were recorded at rest during 8 min supine (SU) followed by 7 min standing (ST). HRV parameters analysed were powers of low (LF), high (HF) frequencies, (LF+HF) (ms(2)) and heart rate (HR, bpm). In the 1 063 HRV tests performed, 172 corresponded to a "fatigue" state and the first were considered for analysis. 4 types of "fatigue" (F) were identified: 1. F(HF(-)LF(-))SU_ST for 42 tests: decrease in LFSU (- 46%), HFSU (- 70%), LFST (- 43%), HFST (- 53%) and increase in HRSU (+ 15%), HRST (+ 14%). 2. F(LF(+) SULF(-) ST) for 8 tests: increase in LFSU (+ 190%) decrease in LFST (- 84%) and increase in HRST (+ 21%). 3. F(HF(-) SUHF(+) ST) for 6 tests: decrease in HFSU (- 72%) and increase in HFST (+ 501%). 4. F(HF(+) SU) for only 1 test with an increase in HFSU (+ 2161%) and decrease in HRSU (- 15%). Supine and standing HRV patterns were independently modified by "fatigue". 4 "fatigue"-shifted HRV patterns were statistically sorted according to differently paired changes in the 2 postures. This characterization might be useful for further understanding autonomic rearrangements in different "fatigue" conditions.

How institutions shaped the last major evolutionary transition to large-scale human societies.

What drove the transition from small-scale human societies centred on kinship and personal exchange, to large-scale societies comprising cooperation and division of labour among untold numbers of unrelated individuals? We propose that the unique human capacity to negotiate institutional rules that coordinate social actions was a key driver of this transition. By creating institutions, humans have been able to move from the default 'Hobbesian' rules of the 'game of life', determined by physical/environmental constraints, into self-created rules of social organization where cooperation can be individually advantageous even in large groups of unrelated individuals. Examples include rules of food sharing in hunter-gatherers, rules for the usage of irrigation systems in agriculturalists, property rights and systems for sharing reputation between mediaeval traders. Successful institutions create rules of interaction that are self-enforcing, providing direct benefits both to individuals that follow them, and to individuals that sanction rule breakers. Forming institutions requires shared intentionality, language and other cognitive abilities largely absent in other primates. We explain how cooperative breeding likely selected for these abilities early in the Homo lineage. This allowed anatomically modern humans to create institutions that transformed the self-reliance of our primate ancestors into the division of labour of large-scale human social organization.

Interdependency management in universities: a case study

There remains uncertainty in scientific discussions regarding the governance of universities in new public management regimes in terms of who actually 'rules' in the university. Apparently, a strengthened management leadership is confronted with continuing elements of academic self-regulation and professional autonomy in knowledge production and diffusion. Organisational and academic rationales coexist in today's management of universities. This article endeavours to clarify some of the ambiguities pertaining to the coexistence of two authorities by demonstrating the working of 'interdependency management' that is taking place within universities. For this purpose, the authors have scrutinised research, teaching and recruitment policies in one Swiss university that is subject to such ambiguities. The study confirms existing research in that a command-and-control system is not applied. Policymaking in universities is instead based on a mix of negotiations in faculties that are taking place in the 'shadow of hierarchy', negotiated bargaining between faculties and leaders and occasional unilateral decisions of leaders. This mitigates latent conflicts between management and the academic community: strategic orientations of the university are generally accepted by the academic community while the academic community has influence on policy formulation and maintains defining powers over policy substance.

Cultura, identitat i diversitat: projecte de creació d'un centre d'experimentació cultural i artística

Quin hauria de ser el paper de les pràctiques artístiques i la cultura contemporània a la societat? I les institucions artístiques, quin rol haurien d’assolir? Aquest treball final de màster és una indagació entorn els fets més significatius al llarg de la història del món occidental pel que fa a la cultura que s’ha desenvolupat al marge dels poders. Una anàlisi de les relacions que s’estableixen entre aquests diversos àmbits, on es planteja un projecte que compleix les característiques de ser un laboratori per a les pràctiques artístiques contemporànies i la seva recerca. Partint, a més a més, de la base teòrica de la historia cultural que ens porta fins on som ara i com a conformadora de les identitats

Monte Carlo simulation of x-ray emission by kilovolt electron bombardment

A physical model for the simulation of x-ray emission spectra from samples irradiated with kilovolt electron beams is proposed. Inner shell ionization by electron impact is described by means of total cross sections evaluated from an optical-data model. A double differential cross section is proposed for bremsstrahlung emission, which reproduces the radiative stopping powers derived from the partial wave calculations of Kissel, Quarles and Pratt [At. Data Nucl. Data Tables 28, 381 (1983)]. These ionization and radiative cross sections have been introduced into a general-purpose Monte Carlo code, which performs simulation of coupled electron and photon transport for arbitrary materials. To improve the efficiency of the simulation, interaction forcing, a variance reduction technique, has been applied for both ionizing collisions and radiative events. The reliability of simulated x-ray spectra is analyzed by comparing simulation results with electron probe measurements.