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Objective In December 2016, 66 health leaders from 14 countries convened at the Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) to engage in cross-cultural and collaborative discussions centered on 'Rethinking Care Toward the End of Life'. Conversations focused on global perspectives on death and dying, challenges experienced by researchers, physicians, patients and family caregivers. This paper summarizes key findings and recommendations from SGS. Design Featured sessions focused on critical issues of end of life care led by key stakeholders, physicians, researchers, and other global leaders in palliative care. Sessions spanned across several critical themes including: patient/family/caregiver engagement, integrating health and community-based social care, eliciting and honoring patient preferences, building an evidence base for palliative care, learning from system failures, and delivering end of life care in low-resource countries. Sessions were followed by intensive collaborative discussions which helped formulate key recommendations for rethinking and ultimately advancing end of life care. Results Prominent lessons learned from SGS include learning from low-resource countries, development of evidence-based quality measures, implementing changes in training and education, and respecting the personal agency of patients and their families. Conclusion There is a global need to rethink, and ultimately revolutionize end of life care in all countries. This paper outlines key aspects of end of life care that warrant explicit improvement through specific action from key stakeholders.

Enrichment factor (EF) of elements including geo-accumulation indices for soil quality and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to identify the contributions of the origin of sources in the studied area. Results of (40)K, (137)Cs, (238)U and (232)Th including their decay series isotopes in the agricultural soil of Mansa and Bathinda districts in the state of Punjab were presented and discussed. The measured mean radioactivity concentrations for (238)U, (232)Th and (40)K in the agricultural soil of the studied area differed from nationwide average crustal abundances by 51, 17 and 43 %, respectively. The sequence of the EFs of radionuclides in soil from the greatest to the least was found to be (238)U > (40)K > (226)Ra > (137)Cs > (232)Th > (228)Ra. Even though the enrichment of naturally occurring radionuclides was found to be higher, they remained to be in I(geo) class of '0', indicating that the soil is uncontaminated with respect to these radionuclides. Among non-metals, N showed the highest EF and belonged to I(geo) class of '2', indicating that soil is moderately contaminated due to intrusion of fertiliser. The resulting data set of elemental contents in soil was also interpreted by PCA, which facilitates identification of the different groups of correlated elements. The levels of the (40)K, (238)U and (232)Th radionuclides showed a significant positive correlation with each other, suggesting a similar origin of their geochemical sources and identical behaviour during transport in the soil system.