Content analysis of Advance Directives completed by patients with advanced cancer as part of an Advance Care Planning intervention : insights gained from the ACTION trial

Purpose Writing an Advance Directive (AD) is often seen as a part of Advance Care Planning (ACP). ADs may include specific preferences regarding future care and treatment and information that provides a context for healthcare professionals and relatives in case they have to make decisions for the patient. The aim of this study was to get insight into the content of ADs as completed by patients with advanced cancer who participated in ACP conversations. Methods A mixed methods study involving content analysis and descriptive statistics was used to describe the content of completed My Preferences forms, an AD used in the intervention arm of the ACTION trial, testing the effectiveness of the ACTION Respecting Choices ACP intervention. Results In total, 33% of 442 patients who received the ACTION RC ACP intervention completed a My Preferences form. Document completion varied per country: 10.4% (United Kingdom), 20.6% (Denmark), 29.2% (Belgium), 41.7% (the Netherlands), 61.3% (Italy) and 63.9% (Slovenia). Content analysis showed that 'maintaining normal life' and 'experiencing meaningful relationships' were important for patients to live well. Fears and worries mainly concerned disease progression, pain or becoming dependent. Patients hoped for prolongation of life and to be looked after by healthcare professionals. Most patients preferred to be resuscitated and 44% of the patients expressed maximizing comfort as their goal of future care. Most patients preferred 'home' as final place of care. Conclusions My Preferences forms provide some insights into patients' perspectives and preferences. However, understanding the reasoning behind preferences requires conversations with patients

Elements of Creativity: A Study of the Dimensions that Make for an Effective Advertisement

The advertising world is made up of many facets, such as creativity, networking, and thought leadership. At the center of these processes lies advertising creativity, a term used to describe an ad or element of an ad that is particularly novel and noteworthy. The contents of this thesis address the challenges academics and professionals have with establishing criteria to measure creativity, while considering the value of evaluating creative ability through a variety of processes. To do this, three case studies of award-winning advertisements were conducted in order to develop a profile of an effective ad. Results indicate that successfully creative ads contain elements of cognitive dissonance, relevancy, and clear communication. These techniques can maximize an advertisement’s creative potential in the marketplace. By implementing these characteristics, advertisers have the potential to gauge the effectiveness of an ad prior to publication and optimize the results of their campaign

Selling dreams: advertising strategies from grands magasins to supermarkets in Ghent, 1900-1960

As argued above, the specific historical role of the grands magasins follows directly out of their capacity to fuse modernist bourgeois culture and commercial mass production into a dream marriage. The commercialization of modernism took place in the heyday of the department store, the last decades of the nineteenth century. From the 1920s on, a major change was taking place. As consumption was on the rise, paralleling the welfare society coming into being, the department stores, with a high concentration of capital in their hands, were not to remain indifferent. Following the prix uniques principle, expansion was to take place on three levels. Geographically webs of ever more local branches were created; commercially the emphasis upon fashionable goods faded away as basic products like food stuff were taken in; and finally socially the department stores were to come out of their bourgeois background, addressing themselves to a much broader stratum of the population. By 1960 the transformation of the former grands magasins had become irreversible, destroying most of the historical identity of the stores, and leading them into a confrontation with the maisons à succursales. Still, as contrasted with the end of the nineteenth century, during this second phase of the development of a consumer society from the 1920s on, the grands magasins were no longer fore-runners, merely good followers as stores in general were making way for brand-names on the publicity market. Still, paying a last tribute to their social and cultural roots, the grands magasins found a compromise in an advertising style of their own, convincing through low prices and seducing through genteel images

Cooking Protestors Alive: The Excessive-Force Implications of the Active Denial System

The Active Denial System (ADS) is unlike any other nonviolent weapon: instead of incapacitating its targets, it forces them to flee, and it does so without being seen or heard. Though it is a promising new crowd-control tool for law-enforcement, excessive-force claims involving the ADS will create a Fourth Amendment jurisprudential paradox. Moreover, the resolution of that paradox could undermine other constitutional principles—like equality, fairness, and free speech. Ultimately, the ADS serves as a warning that without legislation, American jurisprudence may not be ready for the next generation of law-enforcement technology and the novel excessive-force claims sure to follow

Cooking Protestors Alive: The Excessive-Force Implications of the Active Denial System

The Active Denial System (ADS) is unlike any other nonviolent weapon: instead of incapacitating its targets, it forces them to flee, and it does so without being seen or heard. Though it is a promising new crowd-control tool for law-enforcement, excessive-force claims involving the ADS will create a Fourth Amendment jurisprudential paradox. Moreover, the resolution of that paradox could undermine other constitutional principles—like equality, fairness, and free speech. Ultimately, the ADS serves as a warning that without legislation, American jurisprudence may not be ready for the next generation of law-enforcement technology and the novel excessive-force claims sure to follow

An exploratory study to design an adaptive hypermedia system for online-advertisement

The revolutionary world of the World Wide Web has created an open space for a multitude of fields to develop and propagate. One of these major fields is advertisement. Online advertisement has become one of the main activities conducted on the web, heavily supported by the industry. Importantly, it is one of the main contributors to any businesses’ income. However, consumers usually ignore the great majority of adverts online. This research paper studies the field of online advertisement, by conducting an exploratory study to understand end users’ needs for targeted online advertisement using adaptive hypermedia techniques. Additionally, we explore social networks, one of the booming phenomena of the web, to enhance the appropriateness of the advertising to the users. The main current outcome of this research is that end users are interested in personalised advertisement that tackles their needs and that they believe that the use of social networks and social actions help in the contextualisation of advertisement