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The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) was fully implemented in October 2007 in England and Wales. This article reports on two similar, but separate, pilot questionnaire studies that examined the experience of consultants in old age psychiatry and consultants in other psychiatric specialities in the early implementation of the MCA pertaining to issues relevant to black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. Fifty‐two (27%) of the 196 consultants in old age psychiatry and 113 (12%) of the 955 consultants in other psychiatric specialities returned useable questionnaires. Eighty per cent or more of the consultants in old age psychiatry and consultants in other psychiatric specialities gave consideration to religion and culture and ethnicity in the assessment of decision‐making capacity (DMC). Almost 50% of the consultants in old age psychiatry reported that half or more of the patients lacking fluency in English or where English was not their first language received an assessment of DMC with the aid of an interpreter and 40% of the consultants in other psychiatric specialities reported that no such patients received an assessment of DMC with the aid of an interpreter.The low rate of using interpreters is of concern. The nature of the consideration and implementation of factors relevant to culture, ethnicity and religion in the application of the MCA and the precise reasons for the low rate of using interpreters in patients lacking fluency in English or English not being their first language require clarification in further studies.

During the period of Japanese rule after 1895, the language barrier resulted in social and political problems. Thus, the Japanese implemented an interpretation examination system, with an aim of encouraging rank-and-file members of the police force to learn interpretation. The system included tiers and stipends, and offered incentives such as career advancement. This policy, which started at the early period of Japanese rule, lasted up to 40 years. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an analysis of the contents of examinations and statements from interpreters in the system of multiple role interpreters during the period of Japanese rule in Taiwan.

Through analysis of several hundred examination questions on Japanese-Taiwanese interpretation, and dozens of pieces of literature examining the interpreter reactions toward this system and the examination questions, this study will explore the examination methodology, content of examination questions, and the difficulty of the examinations.

The tangible aspects of colonial rule can be seen through the contents of the examinations, and the roles and functions granted by the rulers to the interpreters can be described.

The establishment of a database for police interpretation examination questions and analysis of said questions in database.

It is suggested that nominalism and Platonism are modes of perceiving experience in the Kantian sense. These two modes, like the temporal and the spatial Kantian modes of perceiving experience, are related to the left and right cerebral hemispheres respectively. Learning experiments showing the relation of all these four modes of perceiving experience to the hemispheres are described. It is discussed that the nominalist and Platonic modes of perceiving experience are subjective as well as the Kantian modes, time and space. Some relation of this discussion to the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics is considered. A phenomenon of a one‐and‐a‐half hour cycle in hemispheric activity, which may have implications to the designing of examinations, is described.

The purpose of this short reflection is to allow for an informed use of both phenomenography and phenomenology in information studies and cognate fields.

The paper apprises uses of phenomenography found particularly in accounts of information literacy commonly describing phenomenography as distinct from phenomenology.

Both phenomenography and phenomenology continue to hold much credence in methods applied across scores of academic fields, with information studies being among those in the vanguard. Claims displaying differences of phenomenography from phenomenology are misleading and incomplete descriptions of phenomenology.

The paper presents newer materials on the origins of phenomenography and phenomenology to advocate for tighter relationships between and clearer applications of these methods in information studies and beyond.

The old year has gone, leaving its trail of never‐to‐be‐forgotten memories of strife and turbulence, calamity, disaster, and a huge burden of worries for us to face in the New Year. Few if any will not be deeply grateful to see the passing of 1985. Except for the periods of calm there cannot be a year within living memory to equal it in terms of violence, unparalleled in times of “peace”, collosal in terms of soaring social and public expenditure and financial loss, and in disasters in the world beyond the shores of these islands. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the enormous indebtedness which the year has heaped upon the people will never be wiped off, and it has got to be done mainly by those innocent of any misconduct, and their descendants. The unprecedented scale of street and community violence, the looting, thieving and general crime committed behind the screen of it.

“One picture says more than 1000 words”. This saving offers us information about one of the most important features of human beings. Human beings mostly relate their actions to their surroundings by optical means. No other information channel is as well developed as the optical channel and only the optical channel is able to process very large quantities of data at one time, bearing in mind the large number of steps which are between the image received by the eyes and the understanding of the contents of the picture by the brain.

The aim of this article is to address some aspects of a cross-cultural interview study conducted in a PhD research project. This is done by reflecting on and discussing the influence of language and culture on the research process, as experienced by the researcher.

The experiences have been taken from an interview study with fifteen American participants in which the researchers were Norwegian. The interviews were conducted in English.

By offering insights into experiences of the research process in a cross-cultural interview study, the article connects the discussion to the concepts of positionality and reflexivity. These concepts are found to be especially relevant when managing differences between the researcher and participants in cross-cultural studies, and for improving the trustworthiness of the research.

The experiences and reflections discussed in the article may be useful to other researchers in similar (cross-cultural) research contexts and situations.

This article has been inspired by the experience of conducting research in a second language and in a different country. By drawing on a researcher’s point of view, this article reflects on these aspects when working as a visiting researcher doing international research.

I would like to introduce myself. My name is Eugeniusz Makowski and I am the owner of a Polish consulting agency which has an agreement with the Federation International d'Ingenieurs et Conseir. I would like to reply to the gentleman from Holland who presented some types of programme.

This chapter discusses the extension of legal equality between male and female citizens in four states in North Africa – Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria – through one specific lens: A married woman's legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce without the husband's consent. Building on the works of Stein Rokkan and Reinhard Bendix on the expansion of citizenship to the ‘lower classes’, it is argued that amendments in divorce law by introducing in-court divorce for women, in addition to out-of-court divorce, is a significant institutional change that extends legal equality between men and women. The introduction of in-court divorce expands female citizenship by bolstering woman's juridical autonomy and capacity in state law. Changes in divorce laws are thus part of state centralization by means of standardizing rules that regulate family law through public administrative institutions rather than religious organizations. Two questions are addressed: First, how did amendments in divorce laws occur after independence? Second, in which ways did women's bolstered legal capacity in divorce have a spill over effect on reforms in other patriarchal state laws? Based on observations on sequences of change in four states in North Africa, it is argued that amendments that equalize between men and women in divorce should be seen as a key driver for reforms in other state laws, that reduce legal inequality between male and female citizens. In all four states, women's citizenship was extended in nationality law and criminal law after amendments in divorce law gave women unilateral legal power to exit a marital relationship.

Free movement of persons is one of the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by European laws. For workers, this freedom was set up since the beginning of the European selforganization by the European Council and the Economic Community. When this Community was established in 1957, that free dom became one of its leading principles. Since the Treaty of Maastricht, it is an essential element of European citizenship, and there fore an element of the civil community and of the democracy of the Union, too. Today, this freedom is guaranteed in Article 18 of the Treaty Establishing the European Community as a civil right and especially in Article 39 of that Treaty as a fundamental freedom. Because of this connection of a right for individuals and a status defining a corporation and community, I will discuss the thesis that free movement of workers can build or change the European society.