Fund for Scientific Research

Introduction Public speaking (PS) is a widespread activity required in many personal and professional settings. This activity is known to elicit anxiety, subsequently affecting oral communication, especially voice and speech parameters. As mastering PS skills requires practice in situations that are as similar as possible to reality, virtual reality (VR) may represent a promising method for research, training and intervention in this domain. However, it is of paramount importance to first validate VR environments in their ability to reproduce authentic anxiety responses and communicative behaviors, which are often overlooked. Methods Therefore, this study examined university students (N = 60) anxiety responses (self-reported and heart rate) as well as voice and fluency adjustments to a PS task performed either in (1) a real meeting room in front of an audience, (2) a virtual meeting room in front of an audience, and (3) the same virtual meeting room without any audience. As this last condition contained no anxious stimulus, it was included to act as a control for the anxiety induced by VR immersion. The main objective of this study was to examine the influence of the real vs. virtual nature of the audience on anxiety, voice and fluency parameters. Results Our results showed that the virtual audience elicited changes in anticipatory anxiety (increased heart rate and self-reported anxiety) compared to the control condition. The participant’s strong feeling of presence and lack of side effects such as cybersickness support the acceptability and usability of the virtual environment. Discussion Our results extend previous data and support the feasibility and relevance of using VR for PS. Additionally, we describe different VR immersion profiles among participants.

Abstract Objective This study examined how parents of adolescents make sense of their parenting in light of contemporary norms and the meanings they attribute to their coparental coordination. Background Contemporary parenting expectations emphasize meeting both the emotional and physical needs of children, and they are often guided by expert advice and media‐driven recommendations. During adolescence, these norms may also conflict with the developmental need for autonomy, creating potential tensions in the parent–child relationship and in the coordination between coparents. Moreover, they may impact mothers and fathers differently due to prevailing gender roles, affecting how they coordinate and share responsibilities within the coparental relationship. Method Twelve individual interviews of parents of adolescents (six couples) were conducted and analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis within a socioconstructivist framework. Results Three main themes were produced: “endorsement of societal expectations about parental roles,” “the evolving parent–adolescent bonding,” and “gendered teamwork?” Whereas the first and second themes concern how parents make sense of their contemporary parenthood, the third has more to do with coordination within the couple. Conclusion Parents adopt intensive parenting norms while striving to respect adolescents' autonomy. Coordination within the coparental relationship tends to reflect complementary rather than equal roles, which can pose challenges, particularly for mothers. Despite these dynamics, both parents aspire to work as a cohesive team. Implications . This study sheds light on how macro‐level factors, including prescriptive parenting and gender norms, shape coparenting practices during adolescence. It also offers insights for clinicians to better consider the distinct needs and expectations of each gender within the coparental relationship.

Parental burnout, which includes emotional exhaustion, emotional distance, and feeling fed up with parenting, is a chronic and potentially debilitating stress condition that has become highly prevalent in Western countries. Yet uncertainty remains about parents’ daily experience of burnout and how their experiences interact with their family environment. In this study, we surveyed a sample of 40 parents (who felt overwhelmed and exhausted by parenting) daily for eight weeks about their experiences of parental burnout, interactions with their children, and family environment, yielding 1541 total observations; main analyses focus on 36 mothers. We estimated a multilevel vector autoregressive model and created three distinct graphical networks to best reveal the dynamics of these interactions. All models point to interactions with children as a key determinant in the parent’s daily experience of parental burnout—particularly predicting emotional distance and feeling fed up. At the temporal level, parental burnout symptoms were characterized by strong self-prediction (autoregression). In addition, the severity of parental burnout was negatively correlated with daily variation of parental burnout features. Together, these results suggest that mothers in a severe state of burnout are less sensitive to their context, with the exception of interactions with their children.

ABSTRACTEmployment policies are central to contemporary social models. According to liberal democratic principles, public debate around policies must be characterized by politicization, understood as a discursive process marked by contingency and controversy. Given the far‐reaching transformations in employment policies, this study examines how they are (de)politicized in Belgian and French television news through a framing analysis of coverage from three points in time: 1995–96, 2005–06, and 2019. We then test differences between countries, time points, and speaker types using multinomial analysis. The results show that discourses are predominantly depoliticized, without significant country differences, but a decrease in the share of depoliticized frames over time. Moreover, trade unions and policy beneficiaries are more likely to produce politicized discourse as compared to other types of actors. These findings raise questions about the democratic quality of policy‐making for employment and challenge taken‐for‐granted conceptions of liberal democratic theory.Related ArticlesAnderson, L. 2014. “Review Essay: Nordic Welfare and U.S. Employment Policy: Public Policies That Reflect Equality as a Normative Political Value.” Politics & Policy 42, no. 3: 459–473. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12075.Son, J. W. 2020. “Welfare States With Work: Government Partisanship and Policy Responsiveness in the Netherlands.” Politics & Policy 48, no. 3: 525–549. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12356.Dekker, F. 2010. “Self‐Employed Without Employees: Managing Risks in Modern Capitalism.” Politics & Policy 38, no. 4: 765–788. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2010.00257.x.

ABSTRACT Urban metabolism approaches are increasingly becoming relevant in providing pathways to sustainable development. The ways through which urban green infrastructures are planned and designed can influence resource flows in cities. Yet, little is known about the agency and contributions of landscape architects and spatial planners as curators of urban greenery, in facilitating circular resource flows, and accelerating the transition to a circular economy. This paper offers an empirical inquiry into the understanding and use of metabolic approaches in spatial planning and design practices. Through a multi-method approach and the use of boundary spanning as an analytical lens, we identify different modes of agency of spatial practitioners in enhancing resource efficiency across the life stages of urban landscape projects. Results show that while the ‘urban metabolism’ concept is not widely used by practitioners, its relevance to planning and designing green infrastructure for sustainable resource flows is well understood. Additionally, we highlight existing barriers including policy constraints in engaging with metabolic approaches and offer recommendations to facilitate a resource-sensitive turn in planning and designing urban landscapes. This study highlights important contributions of design practice to an expanding discourse of urban metabolism, including policy reforms for enabling circular resource flows in cities.

Polders are coastal low-lying areas reclaimed on the sea mainly for agriculture. They are constantly drained by pumps, ditches and subsurface drains. In West-Flanders, Belgium they are composed of a shallow freshwater lens on top of denser saline groundwater. This freshwater lens is essential for crop growth but during dry periods, it can disappear and the saline groundwater can enter the root zone by capillary rise and endanger yield. To prevent this, farmers can use controlled drainage to raise the water table in their field during winter months to increase the freshwater lens thickness. To study the effectiveness of the technique, we monitored three fields with piezometers, resistivity sticks alongside field mapping using electromagnetic induction for three years. The resistivity sticks highlighted lithological differences, but also enabled us to monitor the fresh–saline water interface and the water table accurately. Controlled drainage retained additional rainfall during intense summer precipitation but little effect was observed on the fresh–saline water interface. Soil heterogeneity and past land use of the field seem to have a larger effect on the fresh–saline water interface. Despite the limited effect on the freshwater lens, the value of geophysical methods for monitoring its thickness for field-scale study was demonstrated.

Despite guidelines, life-sustaining treatment preferences (LSTP) documentation for advanced cancer patients remains limited and reactive to clinical events. As proactive documentation is a core component of early palliative care (EPC), addressing barriers to EPC can in parallel facilitate LSTP documentation. This narrative review examines barriers to both processes and proposes recommendations to overcome them. Barriers stem from patients, oncologists, and the healthcare system. Patients and oncologists face communication challenges. For patients, knowledge gaps on illness and LSTP documentation, family dynamics prioritizing informal over formal discussions, and limited intercultural considerations, compound these challenges. For oncologists, a curative-focused medical culture reinforces them. In the healthcare system, this culture contributes to deprioritizing LSTP documentation. Addressing these barriers requires multilevel recommendations. For patients: interventions to enhance illness understanding, foster culturally sensitive oncologist communication, and optimize care organization. For oncologists: integrating communication training and palliative care (PC) knowledge into oncology fellowships while cultivating a supportive medical culture for LSTP documentation through role modeling and intervision. For healthcare systems: LSTP documentation benchmarks, proactive EPC integration through automated reminders, telehealth, standardized medical records, and reimbursement codes. Assessing the implementation and sustainability of these recommendations is crucial to enhancing proactive LSTP documentation in advanced cancer care.