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Thinking and writing draw on those who have gone before, in a more than abstract way. In this article, I answer the call of one philosopher--Novalis, the early German Romantic--in the form of a séance, which is really a dialogue with the dead. I speak to him, as a Maori writer, about the abstract philosophical issues that Maori encounter and anticipate his responses and his thinking. I suspect Novalis would have taken delight in this sort of a-rational event, especially with his own tendency to focus on the supernatural and invisible realms. He revered the dead and darkness. He was an interdimensional communicator "par excellence," and my aim in this article is to speculate alongside him and, as a Maori writer, form some productive ideas in community with him.

Despite an increasing number of studies demonstrating that young children selectively learn from others, and a few studies of children's selective teaching, the evidence almost exclusively comes from Western cultures, and cross-cultural comparison in this line of work is very rare. In the present research, we investigated Japanese and German children's selective learning and teaching abilities. We found clear cultural differences. Japanese children were better at selectively teaching an ignorant person over a knowledgeable person than at selectively learning from knowledgeable others. By contrast, German children were better at choosing to learn from a knowledgeable rather than from an ignorant person than at selectively teaching ignorant others. The present findings suggest that the development of human learning and teaching, especially the tendency to take into account others' knowledge status, is strongly affected by cultural background.

• A framework to differentiate systemic from non-systemic intermediation is proposed. • Three levels of systemic intermediation are conceptualised. • Empirical cases from Finland, Germany, and Sweden are analysed. • Intermediary roles are heterogenous and exist on multiple levels. • Systemic intermediation is proposed to describe this heterogeneity. This article contributes to the literature on sustainability transitions, innovation systems, and eco-innovation by addressing conceptual challenges regarding the systemic activities of intermediaries. Specifically, the article addresses a research gap pertaining to the ways in which the systemic activities of (eco-)innovation intermediaries can be conceptualised and empirically demonstrated. Empirically, the paper examines selected intermediaries in the context of support systems for eco-innovators in three regions across Finland, Germany, and Sweden. Drawing from our empirical findings and the literature on intermediaries, we conceptualise three system levels within which intermediation occurs: (i) in-between entities in a network, (ii) in-between networks of entities, and (iii) in-between actors, networks, and institutions. Our discussion suggests a heterogeneity of roles that individual intermediaries take at multiple system levels, complementing an emerging, more nuanced perspective of intermediaries in sustainability transitions. Thus, we suggest the term systemic intermediation for describing the system-level activities of intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Systemic citrate accumulation is a complication of regional citrate anticoagulation (RCA) during continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT). Our objective was to determine the incidence of clinical signs consistent with citrate accumulation in a large and representative cohort of intensive care unit patients undergoing RCA-CRRT. Methods: Patients treated with RCA-CRRT during 2008-2010 were retrospectively analyzed. Decreased systemic ionized calcium (iCa), increased demand for calcium substitution, elevated total calcium to iCa ratio, and metabolic acidosis were evaluated as indicators for citrate accumulation. Results: In the 3-year period, 1070 patients were treated with RCA-continuous venovenous hemodialysis. Metabolic signs of citrate accumulation occurred in 32 patients (2.99%, 64.5±14.0 years, 65.6% male, Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation score 34.2±9.7): systemic iCa decreased to 1.01±0.10 mmol/L with a simultaneous increase of the calcium substitution rate to 129%±26%, and the mean total calcium to iCa ratio increased to 2.51±0.54. All 32 patients had therapy-resistant shock with severe lactic acidosis (pH 7.20 ±0.11, lactate 136±61 mg/dL), indicating severe intracellular hypoxia. None of the patients survived. Conclusions: The incidence of disarrangements consistent with citrate accumulation in patients undergoing RCA-continuous venovenous hemodialysis was low, taking place exclusively in patients with severe lactic acidosis due to multiorgan failure. This suggests that the appearance of citrate accumulation is secondary to a severe failure of cellular respiration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using longitudinal life-course data of the German pension fund, the paper discusses effects of first-time institutionalization and of institutional filters on data production on the fields of unemployment and care-giving. Concerning (1) first time institutionalization, the data show at certain historical moments an increase/decrease which is due to the new institutional rules and regulations and not to a drastic social change. This period effect is important if different age cohorts are compared at the same age, but different social policy periods are encompassed. (2) Institutional filters also influence the gathered information due to eligibility rules: The change in the unemployment assistance scheme resulted in an increase of the number of the registered unemployed, but the longitudinal data show that the registered unemployed have also been partly exchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben criticizes Michel Foucault's distinction between "productive" bio-power and "deductive" sovereign power, emphasizing that it is not possible to distinguish between these two. In his view, the production of what he calls "bare life" is the original, although concealed, activity of sovereign power. In this article, Agamben's conclusions are called into question. (1) The notion of "bare life", distinguished from the "form of life", belongs exclusively to the order of sovereignty, being incompatible with the modern bio-political notion of life, that is univocal and immanent to itself. In the era of bio-politics, life is already a bios that is only its own zoe ("form-of-life"). (2) Violence is not hidden in the foundation of bio-politics; the "hidden" foundation of bio-politics is love (agape) and care (cura), "care for individual life". (3) Bio-politics is not absolutized in the Third Reich; the only thing that the Third Reich absolutizes is the sovereignty of power (Aryan race) and the nakedness of life (the Jews). (4) St Paul's "messianic revolution" does not endow us with the means of breaking away from the closure of bio-political rationality; on the contrary, Paul's "messianic revolution" is a historical precondition for the deployment of modern bio-politics. (5) Instead of homo sacer, who is permitted to kill without committing homicide, the paradigmatic figure of the bio-political society can be seen, for example, in the middle-class Swedish social-democrat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world of increasing academic mobility, most universities seek to give their students opportunities to experience education in different countries, which is especially true for senior research students. The Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine started a joint degree program (JDP) for PhD students with the University of Adelaide, Faculty of Health Science (Australia) in 2015 and with Lund University Faculty of Medicine (Sweden) in 2017. Furthermore, we have started a new JDP with the University of Freiburg, Faculty of Medicine (Germany) in 2018. This article reports the issues specific to counterpart medical schools, including student's recruitment, the curriculum, and the general differences between each schools. JDPs are not only important for educational collaboration, but also as a strategy to encourage international research collaboration, which is a core criterion to a university's world-ranking reputation. Acquiring knowledge about educational strategies that are implemented in different foreign medical schools represents a unique opportunity to improve our own curriculum., Competing Interests: All Authors declare no conflict of interest. All authors are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.