Hospice Palliative Home Care in Canada: A Progress Report

This report is a snapshot of hospice palliative home care services available to Canadians in 2008. The information refers only to hospice palliative care services provided in the home. Other settings where Canadians die -- in hospital, long-term care homes and hospices, and on the street -- are equally important but were not covered in this survey

UK-Russia Political Relations

A complex range of issues has undermined high level relations between the UK and Russia in recent years, many of which remain unresolved. Four stand out. First, many of the negative elements souring UK-Russian relations have come about because, despite formal declarations and engagement within multilateral fora such as the EU-Russian partnership framework and the G8, there has increasingly been a focus on bilateral elements in the relationship. Second, decreasing unity on the part of ‘the West’ in the early years of the 21st century has encouraged differentiation in Russia’s foreign policy towards western powers and has intensified competition between European powers with regard to good relations with Russia. Despite frequent arguments by some observers that the era of the nation state is gone and the era of globalisation is here, this is far from the case in Putin’s foreign policy and in UK-Russian relations. Third, the personal impact of Prime Minister Tony Blair as a key interlocutor declined since the beginning of the century. When President Putin came to power in 2000, Tony Blair was seen by many as a man of the future as opposed to the other leaders of key western powers who seemed to be on their way out. Six years later, however, Blair was nearing the end of his prime ministership, there were new leaders in Europe, and any role for Prime Minister Blair as a bridge between Russia and the United States was less necessary. Fourth, and related to the above, there are serious “value” differences between the UK and Russia, for example, over the independence of important elements of non-governmental society, such as the judiciary and big business. The importance of the political relationship between Britain and Russia as a whole, has decreased notably in recent years. This will not remain the case for ever, and even as it has occurred, mutual interests and obligations have continued to keep formal contacts and cooperation on many levels positive

Inductive Knowledge

This paper formulates some paradoxes of inductive knowledge. Two responses in particular are explored: According to the first sort of theory, one is able to know in advance that certain observations will not be made unless a law exists. According to the other, this sort of knowledge is not available until after the observations have been made. Certain natural assumptions, such as the idea that the observations are just as informative as each other, the idea that they are independent, and that they increase your knowledge monotonically (among others) are given precise formulations. Some surprising consequences of these assumptions are drawn, and their ramifications for the two theories examined. Finally, a simple model of inductive knowledge is offered, and independently derived from other principles concerning the interaction of knowledge and counterfactuals

The Broadest Necessity

In this paper the logic of broad necessity is explored. Definitions of what it means for one modality to be broader than another are formulated, and it is proven, in the context of higher-order logic, that there is a broadest necessity, settling one of the central questions of this investigation. It is shown, moreover, that it is possible to give a reductive analysis of this necessity in extensional language. This relates more generally to a conjecture that it is not possible to define intensional connectives from extensional notions. This conjecture is formulated precisely in higher-order logic, and concrete cases in which it fails are examined. The paper ends with a discussion of the logic of broad necessity. It is shown that the logic of broad necessity is a normal modal logic between S4 and Triv, and that it is consistent with a natural axiomatic system of higher-order logic that it is exactly S4. Some philosophical reasons to think that the logic of broad necessity does not include the S5 principle are given

Increasing Safety in America's Public Schools

As the Public Education Network (PEN) and its member local education funds (LEFs) are committed to creating systems of public education that result in high achievement for every child, we believe that equal opportunity, access to quality public schools, and an informed citizenry are all critical components of a democratic society. Part of making available a high-quality public education is ensuring that students and teachers spend their days in safe schools, which are free from violence, free from fear of harassment and threatening situations, and conducive to teaching and learning.Five local education funds have helped their communities broach these difficult issues with conversations on national and local issues of safety and violence in schools. During the last part of 2000, more than 250 people participated in conversations in Buffalo, NY; Lancaster, PA; McKeesport, PA; and Paterson, NJ. In February 2001, the local education fund in Atlanta, GA hosted a conversation that included students, teachers, principals, law enforcement officials, parents, and other community leaders.These local education funds conducted their community dialogues on school safety and violence as part of an assessment of their community's readiness and capacity to address the health and well being of children in their public schools. This assessment included looking into issues of health insurance coverage, coordination of health and social services for children and their families, maintaining safe learning environments, and the level of resources devoted to children's health and social services. Participants, therefore, understood that these community dialogues are not just "one-shot" efforts at addressing school safety and violence but as a part of a more comprehensive approach to address the systemic issues affecting children in their public schools.The local education funds used The 1999 Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher, Violence in America's Public Schools: Five Years Later, as a starting place for their conversations, to ground their local experiences in a national context. This Lessons from the Field provides a summary of the MetLife survey and highlights findings from the conversations in four local education fund communities. (Law enforcement officials are referred to in this publication as "officers." All teachers and students referred to here are from public schools, and all "schools" referred to are public schools.

Impasse or Tension - Pedagogy and the Canon Controversy

Englis