The SHARE Road Map: Healthgrids for Biomedical Research and Healthcare.

The HealthGrid White Paper was published at the third annual conference in Oxford in 2005. Starting from the conclusions of the White Paper, the EU funded SHARE project (http://www.eu-share.org) has aimed at identifying the most important steps and significant milestones towards wide deployment and adoption of healthgrids in Europe. The project has defined a strategy to address the issues identified in the action plan for European e-Health (COM(2004).356) and has devised a roadmap for the major technological and ethical and legal developments and social and economic investments needed for successful take up of healthgrids in the next 10 years. A "beta" version of the road map underwent full review by a panel of 25 prominent European experts at a workshop in December 2007. The present document is an executive policy summary of the final draft road map. It has sought to reconcile likely conflicts between technological developments and regulatory frameworks by bringing together the project's technical road map and conceptual map of ethical and legal issues and socio-economic prospects. A key tool in this process was a collection of case studies of healthgrid applications

Pourquoi le décorer ?Quelques observations sur le décor céramique en Afrique

Depuis le fameux ‘Why pots are decorated’ (David et al. 1988), le décor céramique est passé à l’arrière plan des préoccupations des archéologues africanistes, au profit d’autres aspects comme les techniques de fabrication ou les modes de consommation. A l’époque, l’article sonnait le glas d’un interminable débat sur le style dominé par la question du marquage des frontières sociales. En illustrant la dimension religieuse des pratiques ornementales, David et al. (1988) n’ouvraient pas seulement de nouvelles pistes d’interprétation: ils ramenaient également le décor parmi les autres éléments de la chaîne opératoire, dont les dimensions symboliques commençaient alors à être mises en avant par un nombre croissant d’anthropologues. Cette théorie semble aujourd’hui aussi problématique que celle qu’elle visait à remplacer. Le temps est venu de remettre le décor sur la sellette, mais dans une perspective plus large que par le passé. C’est ce que vise cet article, basé sur des observations ethnographiques effectuées à travers le continent. Dans un premier temps, quelques aspects classiques de l’analyse des décors sont évoqués, afin d’illustrer la complexité des pratiques ornementales et les dangers d’interprétations trop univoques. Dans un second temps, de nouvelles perspectives d’interprétation sont illustrées, liées à la spatialisation et aux dynamiques de constitution des mondes sociaux.SCOPUS: cp.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedArchaeological Research in Afric

A fluid past: Socio‐hydrological systems of the West African Sahel across the long durée

Since the end of the last glacial period (similar to 12.4 ka bp) the African continent has undergone no less than 30 dramatic climate transitions. West Africa in particular witnessed abrupt climate oscillations-between humid optima and hyper-aridity-which lasted anywhere between 10 and 15 years and a millennium. Such unpredictable shifts forced local communities to develop a suite of risk-buffering strategies that could withstand climate change on various scales. Both archeological and palaeoclimatic research has begun to reveal how these societies engaged with their erratic environment over the span of the Holocene. The adoption of pastoral lifeways, the domestication of cereal crops, and the emergence of monumentality or urbanism may indeed be viewed through the lens of environmental risk-buffering strategies. Yet, these developments proceeded along trajectories that belie traditional narratives rooted in environmental determinism and underscore the unique cultural processes at play, which do not conform to presumptions imported from outside regions. Revised narratives, therefore, must take into account cultural perceptions of climate change, and the localized nature of landscape. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Water as Imagined and Represented Science of Water > Water Extreme