•Public fridges are an innovation in managing food as a commons.•They are host to multiple forms of governance.•Conflicts over their governance reveal broader contradictions in our food ...system.•Current forms of risk governance create obstacles for community-based sharing.
Public fridges are open-access community-stewarded spaces where food can be freely and anonymously shared. As such, they are fertile ground for understanding the obstacles and opportunities for governing food as a commons. This paper examines the governance strategies that have developed within and around Foodsharing.de, a grassroots food-rescue network in Berlin, to manage food as a commons. Analyzing the commoning of food in Foodsharing.de provides a novel entry point into the multi-scalar and multi-stakeholder governance processes that shape our broader food system. In this paper, I further develop the concept of urban food commons to specifically analyze the governance of food and risk. In particular, I draw on qualitative research to analyze a conflict between Foodsharing.de and the Berlin Food Safety Authority over the potential health and safety risks of public fridges. Building on this, I show how different governance practices, informed by different risk ontologies and understandings of the common good/hazard of food, come into tension through the everyday practices of sharing food. This paper departs from previous research that has focused on how the benefits of food commons are shared and regulated at various scales, to also explore how their risks are managed, or could be managed, within an urban food commons framework.
Although individually uncommon, rare diseases (RDs) collectively affect 6-8% of the population. The unmet need of the rare disease community was recognized by the European Commission which in 2012 ...funded three flagship projects, RD-Connect, NeurOmics, and EURenOmics, to help move the field forward with the ambition of advancing -omics research and data sharing at their core in line with the goals of IRDiRC (International Rare Disease Research Consortium). NeurOmics and EURenOmics generate -omics data and improve diagnosis and therapy in rare renal and neurological diseases, with RD-Connect developing an infrastructure to facilitate the sharing, systematic integration and analysis of these data. Here, we summarize the achievements of these three projects, their impact on the RD community and their vision for the future. We also report from the Joint Outreach Day organized by the three projects on the 3rd of May 2017 in Berlin. The workshop stimulated an open, multi-stakeholder discussion on the challenges of the rare diseases, and highlighted the cross-project cooperation and the common goal: the use of innovative genomic technologies in rare disease research.
Displacement from one's home is a contested issue, not only in actual urban politics but also in urban research. Empirical studies rely on rather different notions of displacement, which makes a ...coherent picture of the phenomenon difficult to obtain. In this article, we first deal with the conceptual ambiguities in the debate on displacement so as to carve out an empirically viable definition of direct displacement that focuses on the decision-making process before a relocation. We then present and discuss our own empirical findings on displacement. Finally, we reflect on possible conclusions one could draw from these findings in relation to housing policy. Our empirical results come from a survey we conducted of more than 2,000 tenants who had recently moved from their homes in Berlin, Germany. We found that more than 15% of the respondents had experienced direct displacement. A rent increase after refurbishment or the selling of the property proved to be the most common triggers of displacement. Addressing these particular issues therefore appears to be critical to curbing displacement in tight housing markets.
Compte tenu de l’évolution constante de la Belgique vers une plus grande décentralisation des compétences, le statut futur des institutions culturelles fédérales à Bruxelles demeure incertain. Afin ...d’élargir le champ du débat politique, le présent article présente une comparaison des configurations institutionnelles des institutions culturelles nationales dans différentes capitales fédérales. Les cas de Berlin, Brasília, Canberra, Ottawa et Bruxelles sont examinés, l’accent étant mis sur la répartition constitutionnelle des compétences et sur les mécanismes de coopération entre les niveaux de gouvernement. Cet état des lieux montre que le gouvernement fédéral joue invariablement un rôle dans l’administration des institutions culturelles nationales dans les différentes capitales. En outre, dans la plupart des capitales, des mécanismes de coopération culturelle sont mis en place pour coordonner l’action fédérale et celle des entités fédérées. Sur ce dernier point, il semble que des améliorations soient possibles à Bruxelles.
In België worden steeds meer bevoegdheden overgeheveld naar de gewestendeelstaten, en dat maakt het toekomstige statuut van de federale culturele instellingen in Brussel onzeker. Om het politieke debat te verbreden, gaan we in dit artikel na hoe nationale culturele instellingen in verschillende federale hoofdsteden gestructureerd zijn. We nemen Berlijn, Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa en Brussel onder de loep, met bijzondere aandacht voor de grondwettelijke verdeling van bevoegdheden en voor samenwerkingsmechanismen tussen regeringen. Uit het overzicht blijkt dat de federale overheid steevast een rol speelt in het bestuur van nationale culturele instellingen in deze hoofdsteden. Bovendien zijn er in de meeste hoofdsteden mechanismen voor culturele samenwerking ontstaan om federale en regionale deelstatelijke acties op elkaar af te stemmen. Op dat vlak is er in Brussel nog ruimte voor verbetering.
Given Belgium’s continuing surge towards a greater devolution of powers, the future status of the federal cultural institutions in Brussels remains uncertain. To expand the scope of the political debate, this article provides a comparison of the institutional configuration of national cultural institutions in different federal capitals. This article will examine Berlin, Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, and Brussels with a particular focus on the constitutional distribution of powers and intergovernmental cooperation mechanisms. The overview shows that the federal government invariably plays a role in the administration of national cultural institutions in these capital cities. In addition, in most capitals, cultural cooperation mechanisms are established to coordinate federal and state action. On this latter point, there seems to be room for improvement in Brussels.
Compte tenu de l’évolution constante de la Belgique vers une plus grande décentralisation des compétences, le statut futur des institutions culturelles fédérales à Bruxelles demeure incertain. Afin ...d’élargir le champ du débat politique, le présent article présente une comparaison des configurations institutionnelles des institutions culturelles nationales dans différentes capitales fédérales. Les cas de Berlin, Brasília, Canberra, Ottawa et Bruxelles sont examinés, l’accent étant mis sur la répartition constitutionnelle des compétences et sur les mécanismes de coopération entre les niveaux de gouvernement. Cet état des lieux montre que le gouvernement fédéral joue invariablement un rôle dans l’administration des institutions culturelles nationales dans les différentes capitales. En outre, dans la plupart des capitales, des mécanismes de coopération culturelle sont mis en place pour coordonner l’action fédérale et celle des entités fédérées. Sur ce dernier point, il semble que des améliorations soient possibles à Bruxelles.
In België worden steeds meer bevoegdheden overgeheveld naar de gewestendeelstaten, en dat maakt het toekomstige statuut van de federale culturele instellingen in Brussel onzeker. Om het politieke debat te verbreden, gaan we in dit artikel na hoe nationale culturele instellingen in verschillende federale hoofdsteden gestructureerd zijn. We nemen Berlijn, Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa en Brussel onder de loep, met bijzondere aandacht voor de grondwettelijke verdeling van bevoegdheden en voor samenwerkingsmechanismen tussen regeringen. Uit het overzicht blijkt dat de federale overheid steevast een rol speelt in het bestuur van nationale culturele instellingen in deze hoofdsteden. Bovendien zijn er in de meeste hoofdsteden mechanismen voor culturele samenwerking ontstaan om federale en regionale deelstatelijke acties op elkaar af te stemmen. Op dat vlak is er in Brussel nog ruimte voor verbetering.
Given Belgium’s continuing surge towards a greater devolution of powers, the future status of the federal cultural institutions in Brussels remains uncertain. To expand the scope of the political debate, this article provides a comparison of the institutional configuration of national cultural institutions in different federal capitals. This article will examine Berlin, Brasilia, Canberra, Ottawa, and Brussels with a particular focus on the constitutional distribution of powers and intergovernmental cooperation mechanisms. The overview shows that the federal government invariably plays a role in the administration of national cultural institutions in these capital cities. In addition, in most capitals, cultural cooperation mechanisms are established to coordinate federal and state action. On this latter point, there seems to be room for improvement in Brussels.
Constitutional borrowing looks very different today than it did thirty years ago: where in 1989, post-Soviet and Eastern European states were looking west for ideas and inspiration, today they are ...increasingly looking “eastward”—i.e. to Russia, China, and Singapore—for models of constitutional government. When they do look west, we argue, they are also doing so in increasingly “abusive ways”—i.e. in superficial, shallow, acontextual, or anti-purposive ways designed to use liberal democratic ideas and models not as inspiration but as justification for the erosion of minimum democratic norms and guarantees. This new mix of East-West influence is thus distinctly troubling from the perspective of a commitment to constitutional democracy.
Old manuscripts are cultural products of the ancestors of modern Indonesians and contain highly valuable cultural information. As such, they were sought after by other nations, who have managed to ...acquire them in various ways, including by taking them, bartering them with other items or buying them. It is thus no wonder that a lot of Indonesian manuscripts are now housed in various institutions in other countries, including the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (STABI) in Germany. This article aims to describe the Indonesian manuscripts that are now housed in STABI and to trace how they ended up there, with a particular focus on the physical condition of the manuscripts using the codicological approach. As the research shows, the Indonesian manuscripts housed in STABI are from various regions, including Java, the Batak lands, Aceh, Bima, Lampung and Makassar, and in the Malay language used all over Southeast Asia. The manuscripts date from the 15th century onwards, and they were acquired as a result of purchase or as gifts from certain institutions or individuals.
Due to the symptoms, patients with acute type A aortic dissection are first seen by the ambulance service and diagnosed at the emergency department. How often an aortic dissection occurs in an ...emergency department per year has been studied. The incidence in the emergency department may be used as a quality marker of differential diagnostics of acute chest pain. A multi-institutional retrospective study with the municipal Berlin hospital chain Vivantes and its Department of Pathology and the Charité - University Medicine Berlin was performed. From the Berlin Hospital Society, the annual numbers of publicly insured emergency patients were obtained. Between 2006 and 2016, 631 aortic dissections were identified. The total number of patients treated in the emergency departments (n = 12,790,577) was used to calculate the "emergency department incidence." The autopsy data from six clinics allowed an estimate on how many acute type A aortic dissections remained undetected. Across all Berlin hospitals, the emergency department incidence of acute type A aortic dissection was 5.24 cases in 100,000 patients per year. In tertiary referral hospitals and, particularly, in university hospitals the respective incidences were markedly higher (6.7 and 12.4, respectively). Based on the autopsy results, about 50% of the acute type A aortic dissection may remain undetected, which would double the reported incidences. Among different hospital types the emergency department incidences of acute type A aortic dissection vary between 5.93/100,000 and 24.92/100,000. Aortic dissection; Incidence; Emergency Department; Epidemiology.
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