The case for veridical out-of-body experiences (OBEs) reported in near-death experiences might be strengthened by accounts of well-documented veridical OBEs not occurring near death. However, such accounts are not easily found in the literature, particularly accounts involving events seen at great distances from the percipient. In this article, I seek to mitigate this paucity of literature using my collection of dream journal OBE cases. Out of 3,395 records contained in the database as of June 15, 2012, 226 had demonstrated veridicality. This group divides into examples of precognition, after-death communications, and OBEs. Of the OBEs, 92 are veridical. The documentation involved is stronger than is normally encountered in spontaneous cases, because it is made prior to confirmation attempts, all confirmations are contemporaneous, and the number of verified records is large relative to the total number of similar cases in the literature. This database shows that NDE-related veridical OBEs share important characteristics of veridical OBEs that are not part of an NDE. Because the OBEs are similar, but the conditions are not, skeptical arguments that depend on specific physical characteristics of the NDE-such as the use of drugs and extreme physical distress-are weakened. Other arguments against purported psi elements found in veridical OBEs are substantially weakened by the cases presented in this article.
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Emotions embody the value in tourism experiences and drive essential outcomes such as intent to recommend. Current models do not explain how the ebb and flow of emotional arousal during an experience relate to outcomes, however. We analyzed 15 participants’ experiences at the Vincentre museum and guided village tour in Nuenen, the Netherlands. This Vincent van Gogh-themed experience led to a wide range of intent to recommend and emotional arousal, measured as continuous phasic skin conductance, across participants and exhibits. Mixed-effects analyses modeled emotional arousal as a function of proximity to exhibits and intent to recommend. Experiences with the best outcomes featured moments of both high and low emotional arousal, not one continuous “high,” with more emotion during the middle of the experience. Tourist experience models should account for a complex relationship between emotions experienced and outcomes such as intent to recommend. Simply put, more emotion is not always better.
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Background The caesarean delivery (CD) rate has risen in most countries over the last decades, but it remains relatively low in the Netherlands. Our objective was to analyse the trends of CD rates in various subgroups of women between 2000 and 2010, and identify the practice pattern that is attributable to the relative stability of the Dutch CD rate. Methods A total of 1,935,959 women from the nationwide Perinatal Registry of the Netherlands were included. Women were categorized into ten groups based on the modified CD classification scheme. Trends of CD rates in each group were described. Results The overall CD rate increased slightly from 14.0% in 2000–2001 to 16.7% in 2010. Fetal, early and late neonatal mortality rates decreased by 40–50% from 0.53%, 0.21%, 0.04% in 2000–2001 to 0.29%, 0.12%, 0.02% in 2010, respectively. During this period, the prevalence of non-vertex presentation decreased from 6.7% to 5.3%, even though the CD rate in this group was high. The nulliparous women with spontaneous onset of labor at term and a singleton child in vertex presentation had a CD rate of 9.9%, and 64.7% of multiparouswomen with at least one previous uterine scar and a singleton child in vertex presentation had a trial of labor and the success rate of vaginal delivery was 45.9%. Conclusions The Dutch experience indicates that external cephalic version for breech presentation, keeping the CD rate low in nulliparous women and encouraging a trial of labor in multiparous women with a previous scar, could help to keep the overall CD rate steady
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