Mature Citizens Research Articles

Effects of COVID-19 on a mature citizen first responder system in the German district of Gütersloh: an observational study.

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of COVID-19 on the response rate of community-first-responders (CFR) and other out-of-hospital-cardiac-arrest (OHCA) outcomes using the smartphone-first-responder-system (SFRS) "Mobile Retter." All adult non-traumatic OHCA in the district of Gütersloh between 01.01.2018-31.12.2021 were included. Periods of interest were 1) prior to the first COVID-19-lockdown; to 2) both lockdowns; and 3) the time in between, as well as after the COVID-19-lockdowns (pre-COVID-19, COVID-19-lockdown and COVID-19-pandemic respectively). The primary outcome was the CFR response rate defined as proportion of CFR alerts that were accepted by a CFR and in which at least one CFR arrived on scene of the emergency out of all CFR alerts. Secondary outcomes included the rate of CFR alerts, defined as proportion of OHCA to which CFR were summoned by the emergency medical dispatcher, as well as the rate of return-of-spontaneous-circulation (ROSC) and rate of survival until hospital discharge. We also examined the incidence COVID-19-infection of CFR in context of the SFRS. A total of 1064 OHCA-patients (mean age: 71.4±14.5 years; female: 33.8%) were included in the study (Pre-COVID-19: 539; COVID-19-lockdown: 109; COVID-19-pandemic: 416). The response rate was 64.0% (pre-COVID-19: 58.7%; COVID-19-lockdown: 63.5%; COVID-19-pandemic: 71.8%, P=0.002 vs. pre-COVID-19). The alert rate was 52.7% (pre-COVID-19: 56.2%; COVID-19-lockdown: 47.7%, P=0.04 vs. Pre-COVID-19; COVID-19-Pandemic: 49.5%, P=0.02 vs. pre-COVID-19). The ROSC-rate was 40.4% (pre-COVID-19: 41.0%; COVID-19-lockdown: 33.9%; COVID-19-pandemic: 41.4%) and hospital discharge rate 31.2% (Pre-COVID-19: 33.0%; COVID-19-lockdown: 36.8%; COVID-19-pandemic: 28.7%). The use of CFR was associated with favorable effects in terms of hospital admission (odds ratio [OR]: 0.654 (CI95: 0.444-0.963), P=0.03), hospital discharge (OR: 2.343 (CI95: 1.002-5.475), P=0.04). None of the CFR became infected with COVID-19. "Mobile-Retter" was associated with high response rates, improved outcome in OHCA patients and no COVID-19-infections of CFR during the COVID-19-pandemic and -lockdowns.

인류세에서의 장소성과 생태교육 : 제천간디학교를 중심으로

Jecheon Gandhi School, which opened in 1997, is the only alternative school in Korea with an integrated middle and high-school curriculum. This school has been providing ecological education under the democratic school philosophy of growing into happy and mature citizens. Ecological toilets, farming, operating a curriculum based on love and spontaneity, and active social participation form a model of a future school that coexists with the local community by prioritizing the will of students. Based on Timothy Morton's concept of a place with potential, we can understand the Jecheon Gandhi School from cultural geography and aesthetic aspects. We aimed to create a village community that goes against civilization, and educational activities both inside and outside the school that resonated with the ideology of ecological art. The Jecheon Gandhi School can beused as an excellent school model for the future to overcome climate crises and regional extinction.

Why they do not care? Exploring young Indonesians' low participation in proenvironmental activities

PurposeYouths are known as a challenging group to be engaged in environmental programs due to their fickle characteristic. This study would like to offer Global South and developing countries' perspectives by using Indonesia as a case study. This study gives a lesson about the top-down approach in Indonesia's proenvironmental program and its trajectories toward youth participation.Design/methodology/approachUsing a case study approach, this article tries to deeply understand the issues happening in Indonesia, particularly among the young people living in several cities in Indonesia. The author was helped by the first participant, a student with experience with air pollution campaigns. Using snowball approach, the authors was helped by the first participant to contact with her friends from different cities to join as the participant in this research. To obtain their dynamic perspectives, the researcher conducted three focus group discussions via Zoom, each with a duration of 1.5–2 h. The researcher asked for their written permission to be participants through WhatsApp text and then verbally via Zoom video call. This research was done during the lockdown status of COVID-19 pandemic; thus, it was advised to do every research activity online. Based on their experience, the participants were divided into three groups: volunteers, influencers and university students aged 18–21. These Focus Group Discussion (FGD) results were transcribed and coded into behavior, peer support and knowledge by the author.FindingsThis study found that youths in Indonesia are concerned about the community's perspective on the environment; thus, their behavior will mirror others as part of a collectivist society. Parents, friends and the community are their role models when practicing proenvironmental behavior. Next, environmental education should be embedded in school curricula and religious centers. In addition, they should apply an open and democratic approach to reach youths' participation effectively. Programs and curricula with a top-down approach should be avoided to maintain sustainable actions. Last, there is an urgent need to develop citizens' literacy about environmental issues because it will highly influence young generations.Research limitations/implicationsThere should be more discussion on developing environmental knowledge for citizens at large. First, the next research should focus on the curricula development in formal and nonformal organisations, focusing on youths' voices during the process. In a proenvironmental program, honoring and prioritizing youth voices is central to youth work. Second, there should be further research on using a democratic approach for building conversation and discussion on environmental issues rather than a top-down approach. Further, researchers must focus on Indonesians' literacy in general, especially older and mature citizens, since their perspective will affect youths' behavior in the long term. These positive attitudes cannot be perceived and sustained if the community comments negatively toward proenvironmental behavior. Last, there is a lack of exploration to the influencers group to show their differences with other groups. Other researchers could further explore this in the future.Practical implicationsMultiple approaches must be used continuously to ask and seek youths' opinions, listen to what youths want and then prioritize them in the program. Rather than using programmatic design and delivery to shape social attitudes and behavior, campaigners should discuss with youths and influencers on creating their campaigns rather than maintain the program's sustainability. Environmental campaign messages should integrate with creative storytelling to build engagement with young people. By implementing this, youths could share their expressions using photography, narration, music, etc.Originality/valueIndonesia becomes a significant case study for this research due to its political and cultural system. Indonesia is known as a paternalistic and corporatist country where the practice of citizenship is challenged by the issue of power dynamics and imbalance. Therefore, a top-down communication is a common practice to create a quick-fix solution to foster productivity. Further, Indonesia has an environmental problem which made it vital for climate study. Globally, Indonesia ranks third in greenhouse gas emission after China and India. Recently, its capital city, Jakarta, is ranked as the worst-polluted city in the world.

Guest Editors’ Introduction: New Challenges to the Enlightenment: How Twenty-First-Century Sociotechnological Systems Facilitate Organized Immaturity and How to Counteract It

Organized immaturity, the reduction of individual capacities for public use of reason constrained by sociotechnological systems, constitutes a significant pushback against the project of Enlightenment. Forms of immaturity have long been a concern for philosophers and social theorists, such as Kant, Arendt, Fromm, Marcuse, and Foucault. Recently, Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism” describes how advancements in digital technologies lead to new, increasingly sophisticated forms of organized immaturity in democratic societies. We discuss how sociotechnological systems initially designed to meet human needs can inhibit the multidimensional development of individuals as mature citizens. To counteract these trends, we suggest two mechanisms: disorganizing immaturity as a way to safeguard individuals’ and collectives’ negative freedoms (freedoms from), and organizing maturity as a way to strengthen positive freedoms (freedoms to). Finally, we provide an outlook on the five further articles that constitute the Business Ethics Quarterly Special Issue “Sociotechnological Conditions of Organized Immaturity in the Twenty-First Century.”

The Contribution of Village Youth Organisations in Developing Young Citizens' Civic Virtue Values

The study of young citizens is still evolving. As the largest population, young citizens need to be equipped with various values in order to become mature citizens when they grow up. One of the important values for young citizens is civic virtue. Civic virtue is related to the virtues of citizenship. So, it is very important to see the contribution of youth organisation activities that are closely related to young citizens in developing the value of civic virtue of young citizens. This research uses a case study method with a qualitative approach with resource persons from the youth organization, the village head, and the community of Dompyong Wetan village. The results showed that Karang Taruna has contributed to developing the value of civic virtue with various habits and activities developed by prioritising the value of social responsibility, participation of young citizens and also getting used to having a high commitment in advancing the village

다원주의 사회와 실용주의적 법 해석

In a pluralistic society, law interpreters, such as judges, also have various value ideas. If the text of the law is not unilateral, the interpretations will inevitably be various depending on the interpreters' personal belief in goodness. When there is hate speech, there is no general standard for determining whether the speech exceeds the limits of freedom of expression under the Constitution, whether it meets the requirements for defamation under the criminal law, or tort under the civil law. 
 Would it be okay for judges to draw a conclusion according to their own values? Values are inevitably subjective, and all judges have different values. Sometimes, opposite judgments are pronounced on similar cases, causing confusion in the legal life of citizens, and some citizens are dissatisfied with the judgment and resist it. In a pluralistic society facing such difficulties, pragmatism is attractive.
 Legal pragmatism is the idea of interpreting and applying the law to produce the best results by accepting philosophical pragmatism. Legal pragmatism does not talk about the fundamental values that exist at the root of the case and cannot be agreed upon, but emphasizes only the consequences of legal judgment. Such a judgment may be questionable and regretful to intellectually mature citizens, but it does not attack the fundamental values they have in their hearts. This is because it show sincerity to provide practical solutions to specific issues that have arisen in reality, while reserving conclusions on fundamental values.
 This study examines how philosophical pragmatism can affect the interpretation of law, and how pragmatism is embodied in concrete case judgments in the United States and Korea.

Communing with Figs and Palm Trees. Nature Mysticism, Migration and Moral Maturity in Marica Bodrožić

In her writings, the German-Croatian author Marica Bodrožić develops a new form of feminist ecocriticism from a postmigrant perspective, which portrays the mystical encounter with the natural world as essential for the understanding of the postmodern self and the survival of diverse postmigrant communities. Drawing on Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of moral maturity, Bodrožić suggests that the epistemological and aesthetic qualities of nature may help educate individuals towards critical, independent, but also empathetic thought and action. The key to this educational experience lies in contextualizing nature within political and social processes, while also acknowledging its transcendental dimension. In her novel, Mein weisser Frieden (2014), Bodrožić merges the genres of autobiography and essay to explore the relationship between memory, nature and identity via the lens of a hybrid German and post-Yugoslav intellectual heritage. By weaving together personal narrative and intertextual references from Romanticism to the contemporary period, she also challenges common assumptions about postmigrant writing and national belonging. Bodrožić suggests that a re-enchantment of the world is necessary to create the community of morally mature citizens that is needed to meet the challenges of alienation, displacement, and systemic violence in the postmodern world.

Personality transformations of the modern age: from a postmodern individual to a spiritually mature citizen

The study includes the analysis of the spiritual foundations of modern socio-political events in Ukraine and the world in the context of personality transformations of the XXI century. Given that today our country is at the epicenter of awareness and defense of the core values of mankind, this article is primarily about the urgency of protecting universal spiritual values and the best, most important features of a worthy personality in the civilized world. The spiritual values of mankind have crystallized throughout historical practice and are preserved in the Holy Books of all nations of the world. They are the same for all nations and ethnic groups, although due to certain odious historical conflicts and due to certain odious leaders, these values have been distorted and discouraged in the minds of entire nations lost in the paths of history. The article considers the socio-ethical aspects of personality transformations of today. It continues with a review of the specific features of a modern individual belonging to a developed civilized society, which has long been free of acute social problems and international conflicts. The author provides a comparative analysis of the characteristics of a man of the civilized world and a zombie person of the totalitarian regime. It is emphasized in the study that today, in extremely difficult circumstances, Ukrainians are confidently holding on the edge of a cliff dividing the world’s civilized and barbaric territories. The whole united Ukrainian people, our youth are confident in those universal human values that we protect at a heavy price. By now, the civilized world has woken up from its complacent lethargy, realizing the dangers of an unreflective crowd. Ukrainian soldiers, volunteers, politicians - all Ukrainians rose to fight for the defense of their own ethno-national achievements and values, as well as for the restoration of the universal axiological core, for freedom and democracy. The latest experience of Ukrainian citizens has gradually reduced the relevance of relative postmodern worldview models. Ukrainians have restored a transparent, stable and reliable moral image of the representative of modern youth: an intellectual and optimistic patriot.

Political Authority, Personal Autonomy and Higher Education

Does the liberal state have a role in helping mature citizens make worthwhile educational choices? The question has clear relevance for the aims of higher education in a liberal democratic society. As systems of higher education internationalize, it has become difficult for liberal states to steer high education policy in directions that serve civic interests. This is, in part, because political liberalism imposes restrictions on what one might call directive educational authority: the power to direct citizens toward specific kinds of knowledge, understanding and skills in the interests of making their lives better. This restriction follows from the view that citizens have the capacity to make thier own decisions about how best to live, including decisions about the kind of education they need. My aim in this paper is to make the case for a more direct role for the state in promoting a good life through higher education. In particular, I argue that the liberal state’s obligation to promote autonomy across its citizenry confers legitimate educational authority over post-compulsory, as well as compulsory, education. This argument affirms the State’s educational obligations to citizens beyond a basic or compulsory education. Getting in the way of this affirmation, however, is an overly restrictive account of educational authority that occludes these obligations under the guise of respect for autonomy. Accordingly, in making my case I propose an autonomy-based account educational authority derived from Joseph Raz’s Service Conception, defending this account against the charge that such authority is illegitimately paternalistic.

Growing Pains of Crowdsourced Stream Stage Monitoring Using Mobile Phones: The Development of CrowdHydrology

Citizen science-based approaches to monitor the natural environment tend to be bimodal in maturity. Older and established studies such as the Audubon’s Christmas bird count and Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) have thousands of participants across decades of observations, while less mature citizen science projects have shorter lifespans often focused on local or regional observations with tens or hundreds of participants. For the latter, it can be difficult to transition into a more mature and sustainable citizen science-based research project. This research focuses on this transition by evaluating CrowdHydrology (ca. 2010), a citizen science project that has transitioned from a regional to national network. The CrowdHydrology network asks citizens to send in text messages of water levels in streams and lakes, which has resulted in 16,294 observations submitted by over 8,000 unique participants. Using water level data and participation records from CrowdHydrology, we evaluate the expansion and citizen participation from a regional to national citizen science initiative. We identify barriers to entry to participation and evaluate why some citizen science observation stations are popular while others are not. We explore our chosen contributory program model for CrowdHydrology and the influence this model has had on long-term participation. Results demonstrate a highly variable rate of contributions of citizen scientists and address why many of our observations are from one-time participants. Finally, we address the future expansion of the CrowdHydrology network by evaluating current successful monitoring locations and recent expansion of interest from watershed groups to participate in the project.

NEW AND EVEN NEWER FOSTERING INNOVATIVENESS IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

This paper describes the need for the implementation of an education for innovativeness. Innovativeness as the ability to participate in innovation processes is a competence closely linked to participation processes in a complex, dynamic and ever-changing world that needs mature citizens to shape present and future societies in accordance with their ideas, interests, and social responsibility. This involves questioning current circumstances (reflexivity), developing new ideas (creativity) and bringing those ideas into action (implementivity), which are the three core dimensions of innovativeness. Participation options in innovation processes are multifaceted as they occur in an active, idea-creating manner, and/or in a reactive, innovation-evaluating and implementing orientation as well. An education for innovativeness addresses all these extents. This paper outlines, that current educational-political documents in the case of Germany are nominally supportive towards an education for innovativeness at least by promoting the ability to participate. However, these calls do not comprehensively meet the standards of innovativeness: Firstly, because the term innovation is fuzzy and dominated by catch-word usage. Secondly, innovation and participation are mostly obligated to a neoliberalist ideal that rather supports consolidation of a given framework than mature societal changes. Widely deepening rudimentary educational-political calls for participation, this paper, in contrast, argues for a humanistic perspective on innovation processes in accordance with the humanistic ideal of education, allowing real participation as well as future- and development-oriented structuring of society. The case of the German subject Sachunterricht (Primary Social and Science Education) illustrates that innovativeness can be taught in school -even in the early years- as this interdisciplinary subject meets the open character of innovativeness and provides linkages to lifeworld related scenarios. Nevertheless, a schoolbook task analysis regarding the subject Sachunterricht reveals that there is almost no fostering of innovativeness in this given material. Space and obligation are left to develop concepts and instruments that foster innovativeness in school.

Euthanasia in South Africa: Philosophical and theological considerations

Debates on euthanasia (or �mercy killing�) have been a concern in moral, philosophical, legal, theological, cultural and sociological discourse for centuries. The topic of euthanasia inspires a variety of strong views of which the �slippery slope� argument is one. The latter warns that the principle(s) underlying any ethical issue (including euthanasia) may be distorted. Scholars� views on euthanasia are influenced mainly by cultural, personal, political and religious convictions. In South Africa, the issue of euthanasia has arisen from time to time, but the question of whether it should be legalised was not seriously considered until it recently attracted attention because of a particular case, that of Cape Town advocate Robin StranshamFord. Although euthanasia is still illegal (this is because the Stransham-Ford ruling is confined to this particular case only), as stated in the ratio decidendi by Judge Hans Fabricius of the High Court in Pretoria, the Court granted leave to appeal its April 2015 judgement regarding euthanasia in the application lodged by Stransham-Ford. In considering the contentious nature of the issue of euthanasia, this article adopts a multidisciplinary approach which includes historical, legal, theological, philosophical, theoretical and analytic frameworks, discussing euthanasia from philosophical and theological perspectives, in particular. We conclude by recommending that the subject of applied ethics, which helps to educate citizens about contemporary moral problems such as euthanasia, be introduced at school level. Exposing young people to the debates around thorny issues such as this would familiarise them with the discourse, encourage them to engage with it and empower them as mature citizens to make informed, reasonable decisions, obviating confusion and conflict which might otherwise arise. The problems surrounding the issue of euthanasia are multidimensional and have the capacity to polarise the nation and destroy families.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article challenges government tendencies to decide on its own to make policy decisions on which society does not have input; thus against the Batho Pele principle of participation. We suggest that applied ethics be introduced earlier at the school level and be carried onto tertiary education to ensure effective citizen participation.

Towards a liberal management education

PurposeThis paper seeks to outline the element of a liberal management education that would attend to the full human development of undergraduate management students enabling them to exercise the responsibility and leadership that the profession and practice of business and management require. It places such an education in the context of the global university today, and points to the shortcomings in management education as it is currently taught, the challenges facing implementation, and finishes with the example of Singapore Management University.Design/methodology/approachThis is a discursive discussion piece drawing on philosophical texts, contemporary debates on management education, historical perspectives on the University, and the authors’ combined experience in management education and business school leadership. It was written as an argument to be debated by future interlocutors.FindingsThe article concludes that liberal management education faces obstacles to implementation. These obstacles are recast as shortcomings in management education itself. It concludes that in part by recognising and overcoming these shortcomings liberal management education holds prospects for improving the full human development of undergraduate management students, and in so doing creating business leaders who have the maturity to take responsible and visionary decisions.Research limitations/implicationsThe article points to the need to elaborate a concrete curriculum across the spectrum of courses and subjects in management education.Practical implicationsThe article invites other business schools to enter into a conversation about liberal management education and share experiences of implementing reforms in management education.Social implicationsLiberal management education aims to produce citizen‐leaders who have the maturity and enlightened perspective to lead in organisations and in society. The intention of the article is to encourage debate and adoption in some form of a liberal management education philosophy and curriculum at other business schools beyond Singapore Management University, with the hope of shifting the emphasis in management education to preparing students as mature citizens as well as business leaders.Originality/valueMany have discussed the problems of the contemporary global university, but few have considered undergraduate management education as a crucible for working out the conflicts and challenges facing today's university.

Love Them and Lose Them, Then Move On

Love Them and Lose Them, Then Move On NaToya Faughnder (bio) Melancholia and Maturation: The Use of Trauma in American Children’s Literature, by Eric L. Tribunella. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2010. Central to Eric Tribunella’s Melancholia and Maturation are the questions of what it means to be an adult, and what process the child must experience to transcend into adulthood. In his text, Tribunella examines what he identifies as a particular rising thematic trend in American children’s literature from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the maturation process that propels the child into adulthood is increasingly catalyzed by the traumatic loss of a desperately loved individual or object. It is this loss, says Tribunella, which “generates the escape velocity of youth” (xi). His project, then, is to “explore” why this particular narrative recurs so often, and to “consider what we can learn about children and childhood by studying what these narratives mean and how they work” (xi). To accomplish this, Tribunella has “situated” his exploration “at the intersection of children’s literature, queer theory, and trauma studies” (xii). Drawing extensively from Freud and Judith Butler, especially in the earlier chapters, the psychoanalytic concept of melancholic identity—the melancholic process by which that which is lost is yet retained through an interpolation of some of the lost object’s essence into the individual’s unconscious, thus allowing both the trauma of the loss and what is actually lost to become a part of that individual—becomes essential to Tribunella’s understanding of the maturation process. Indeed, the unifying connective tissue throughout the body of his text is that each lesson or path toward maturation which he explores in the individual chapters is achieved not in the actual loss of the loved object, but in its incorporation. Especially crucial to Tribunella’s argument is his assertion that traumatic loss functions as a sacrifice, which he identifies as “critical to the formation of the disciplined and mature citizen” (xiv). Equally significant are his working constructions of the child and the adult, which are extracted from patterns he sees within American children’s maturation literature and which are thus representative of current American sociocultural characteristics of both. Extrapolating key qualities he sees represented in the final characterization of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’s young protagonist Jody in The Yearling, Tribunella [End Page 270] establishes a set of qualities as hallmarks of maturity, the possession of which socially identifies one as an adult. The mature adult is sober, responsible, knowing, experienced, law abiding, hard-working, and heteronormatively gendered (xx–xxii). Antipodal to the adult is the child, who lacks these qualities and stricter definitions; the goal of the melancholic maturation trope, argues Tribunella, is to develop the child figure into the adult, and to bring the child reader along for the experience. In his first chapter, “Losing and Using Queer Youth,” Tribunella identifies queerness as the beloved object most often sacrificed in order to “[escape] the gravitational force of childhood” (xi). Primarily focusing on John Knowles’s A Separate Peace and Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, he argues that it is the loss of a beloved and queer friend which initiates the development into social conformity; essentially, this friend must die in order “to effect the melancholic maturation of the survivor” (5). Same-sex affection and queerness are opposed to the sociocultural promoted ideal of the heteronormative adult; thus, Knowles’s Finny, “surely, the queerest of the Devon boys,” sacrifices himself not for “spiritual salvation” but because “that sacrifice purchases Gene’s heterosexual manhood” (13). Chapter two, “A Boy and His Dog,” functions in much the same manner, identifying a child’s affection for his canine companion as a “proto-sexual” substitute for adult heterosexual love. Serving as a transitional love object between parental love and adult heterosexual love, Tribunella argues, attachment to a beloved anthropomorphized animal allows the child to “practice engaging in the complex sexualized relations of later life” (46). The loss of this animal then propels the character, and by extension the reader, toward socially acceptable heterosexual adult love. Turning to an exploration of S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is...

Singlet oxygen: there is still something new under the sun, and it is better than ever

Singlet oxygen, O(2)(a(1)Δ(g)), the lowest excited electronic state of molecular oxygen, has a characteristic chemistry that sets it apart from the triplet ground state of oxygen, O(2)(X(3)Σ). Although singlet oxygen can be produced in a variety of ways, it is arguably best known as a product of the interaction between a light absorbing chromophore (i.e., a photosensitizer) and O(2)(X(3)Σ). In this way, it plays a key role in the many disciplines that comprise the "photosciences". As outlined in this Perspective, which is part of the program "Photosciences: a look to the future", the study of singlet oxygen provides a coalescence point for many topics currently at the cutting edge of modern science ranging from materials science to biology and medicine. As such, although singlet oxygen is a "mature citizen" and has been examined for many years in a variety of contexts, there is still something new under the sun, and the future looks exceedingly bright for this photo-related discipline.

ChemInform Abstract: Singlet Oxygen: There Is Indeed Something New under the Sun

AbstractReview: 243 refs.

Equipping and empowering patients: An examination of project work in critical health literacy

Health services are characterised by a high degree of complexity. At the same time, patients require participation in medical decision-making. Patient empowerment is both of ethical and economic relevance. In this context, critical health literacy (CHL) is a process of imparting health-related competencies to individual citizens. In this paper, we introduce two initiatives by Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) which support CHL. The first project is a patient guidebook. The second is a tutorial series consisting of three single courses. In the 21st century, we feel we should help the more mature citizens to stay empowered even when they use the health system as patients.

Equipping and empowering patients: An examination of project work in critical health literacy

Health services are characterised by a high degree of complexity. At the same time, patients require participation in medical decision-making. Patient empowerment is both of ethical and economic relevance. In this context, critical health literacy (CHL) is a process of imparting health-related competencies to individual citizens. In this paper, we introduce two initiatives by Techniker Krankenkasse (TK) which support CHL. The first project is a patient guidebook. The second is a tutorial series consisting of three single courses. In the 21st century, we feel we should help the more mature citizens to stay empowered even when they use the health system as patients.

Singlet oxygen: there is indeed something new under the sun

Singlet oxygen, O(2)(a(1)Delta(g)), the lowest excited electronic state of molecular oxygen, has been known to the scientific community for approximately 80 years. It has a characteristic chemistry that sets it apart from the triplet ground state of molecular oxygen, O(2)(X(3)Sigma), and is important in fields that range from atmospheric chemistry and materials science to biology and medicine. For such a "mature citizen", singlet oxygen nevertheless remains at the cutting-edge of modern science. In this critical review, recent work on singlet oxygen is summarized, focusing primarily on systems that involve light. It is clear that there is indeed still something new under the sun (243 references).

Teaching scientists to be citizens. It is hard to become a good scientist. It is even harder to become a good citizen.

Deep in the German forests above Heidelberg, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), in its infancy in the late 1970s, was a haven of basic research and serenity. I remember hard experimental work, intensive discussions and unexpected ideas emerging along the wooded paths. On a recent visit, I saw that the busy buzzing of EMBL has by no means receded. But I also saw that EMBL is changing. The explosive growth of the parking lots and the new buildings for commercial companies are reshaping the glade; scientists are sitting behind their computer screens most of the time; there are more females than males; last summer, the temperature broke another record high. And, probably much more important, the scientists working there are becoming aware that there is a world outside the laboratories. It started with rumours rising from the valley that first reminded us that a wider world was bubbling not far away. We were amazed at the gossip reported in the local press that clover, growing around the Laboratory, had a suspicious number of leaves because of some mysterious genetic manipulations. We were shocked when the media widely covered the claim made by an East German scientist that AIDS was a product of the US Secret Services. Nowadays, news about cloning, stem‐cell research, bioterrorism and the turbulence of the stock market is pouring in daily. Biologists know about change. For more than 3 billion years, life has undergone changes, and no one would be here to witness anything if evolution had not been hard at work. But the changes that are now occurring are different, because they are anthropogenic and because they are happening increasingly rapidly. And they are not met with enthusiasm by everyone: “Stop improving things!”, an angry hand had written on the door of the computer room. …