Eliciting pension beneficiaries’ sustainability preferences:Netspar Design Paper 207

Pension funds are under social and political pressure to make their investment policies more sustainable. Furthermore, European legislation will increasingly require pension funds to explicitly measure participants’ preferences for sustainability in their investment policies. However, do pension fund participants prefer sustainable investments and do they want a say in how the fund does that? We assessed this by conducting two field experiments in which a Dutch pension fund gave its participants a real voice in its policy to advance sustainable investment

Disability and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Low back pain: a call for action.

Low back pain is the leading worldwide cause of years lost to disability and its burden is growing alongside the increasing and ageing population.1Because these population shifts are more rapid in low-income and middle-income countries, where adequate resources to address the problem might not exist, the effects will probably be more extreme in these regions. Most low back pain is unrelated to specific identifiable spinal abnormalities, and our Viewpoint, the third paper in this Lancet Series,2,3is a call for action on this global problem of low back pain

Arm hand skilled performance in cerebral palsy: activity preferences and their movement components

Background: Assessment of arm-hand use is very important in children with cerebral palsy (CP) who encounter arm-hand problems. To determine validity and reliability of new instruments to assess actual performance, a set of standardized test situations including activities of daily living (ADL) is required. This study gives information with which such a set for upper extremity skill research may be fine-tuned, relative to a specific research question. Aim of this study is to a) identify upper extremity related ADL children with CP want to improve on, b) determine the 10 most preferred goals of children with CP, and c) identify movement components of all goals identified. Method: The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure was used to identify upper extremity-related ADL preferences (goals) of 53 children with CP encountering arm-hand problems (mean age 9 +/- 4.5 year). Goals were ranked based on importance attributed to each goal and the number of times a goal was mentioned, resulting in a gross list with goals. Additionally, two studies were performed, i.e. study A to determine the 10 most preferred goals for 3 age groups (2.5-5 years; 6-11 years, 12-19 years), based on the total preference score, and study B to identify movement components, like reaching and grasping, of all goals identified for both the leading and the assisting arm-hand. Results: Seventy-two goals were identified. The 10 most preferred goals differed with age, changing from dressing and leisure-related goals in the youngest children to goals regarding personal care and eating for children aged 6-11 years. The oldest children preferred goals regarding eating, personal care and computer use. The movement components 'positioning', 'reach', 'grasp', and 'hold' were present in most tasks. 'Manipulating' was more important for the leading arm-hand, whereas 'fixating' was more important for the assisting arm-hand. Conclusion: This study gave insight into the preferences regarding ADL children with CP would like to improve on, and the movement components characterizing these activities. This information can be used to create a set of standardized test situations, which can be used to assess the validity and reliability of new measurement instruments to gauge actual arm-hand skilled performance

Consultations Preliminary to Interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Rehabilitation

Before patients with chronic pain enter an interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation programme, a team of various healthcare professionals performs a biopsychosocial analysis of their pain problem. To enhance patients’ engagement, the problem analysis is thoroughly discussed with them in order to gain a shared understanding of the nature of their pain problem. This study explores how patients and practitioners talk through their rehabilitation team’s hypotheses regarding the psychosocial factors involved in these patients’ health situation. Nine consultations were recorded at various Dutch interdisciplinary chronic pain rehabilitation units. The recordings were transcribed and analysed, combining an applied conversation analytic research approach with discursive psychology. Patients and practitioners are found to orient to ensuring consensus on the problem analysis as a relevant activity and tend to avoid or minimize the articulation of differences in perspectives. This study also shows that this orientation to consensus involves a delicate management of issues of accountability and blame. Findings can be used by practitioners to consider communication practices that are more likely to encourage patients to voice potential concerns regarding their rehabilitation team’s findings

Da glória retórica ao caso Delgado : Brasil-Portugal nos anos de Álvaro Lins (1956-1959)

Dissertação (mestrado) — Universidade de Brasília, Instituto de Relações Internacionais, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Relações Internacionais, 2016.Disserta-se aqui sobre a embaixada de Álvaro Lins em Portugal (1956-1959), partindo da perplexidade gerada pelo paradoxo das “excelentes” relações Brasil-Portugal na década de 1950. Um país, que se esforçava pela modernização e pelo aprofundamento de sua democracia, abraçava-se com um Portugal salazarista, orgulhoso da tradição e da conservação da ordem autoritária de passado fascista. Focalizando sobre as contradições, as condicionantes e o arcabouço político-intelectual do período, pretendeu-se aqui a introdução de um novo perfil de análise tanto do ponto de vista onto-epistemológico quanto metodológico. Agregando novas unidades de análise e um trabalho com a perspectiva micro-histórica, esta dissertação se esforça para reinterpretar fatos já discutidos pela bibliografia e para introduzir novas fontes. Acredita-se que, analisando desta maneira o período de Álvaro Lins (uma seleção cuidadosa de “caso”, portanto), pode-se revelar outras lógicas e dinâmicas que animaram as relações Brasil-Portugal no esplendor de sua fase retórica.This work focalizes on the diplomatic relations between Brazil and Portugal at the 1950’s through the Brazilian embassy of Álvaro Lins (1956-1959). The modernization of the Brazilian state and his democracy side by side the reactionary Portuguese political regime, the salazarism, was attached in a friendly relation of very deep commitments contradictories to its own basements. So, focalizing this relation through an analysis politic-intellectual and using the new analysis units of the micro-history may allow us to reveal dynamics forgotten by the main bibliography about this issue. In general, we tried to find here a new way of comprehension about this bilateral relation