Political attention to environmental issues: Analyzing policy punctuations in the Netherlands

One of the most dramatized features in Al Gore's movie The Inconvenient Truth is the effects of a rising sea-level in the Netherlands. The film is an example of how the mobilization of bias in the Netherlands resulted in sudden high levels of attention for climate change problems. We analyze agenda setting on Dutch environmental policy, using various policy issue datasets about parliamentary activities, media, and expert organizations and focusing on the interrelations between these policy venues. All datasets are coded by the same topic codebook. The findings show that interest in environmental issues is largely determined by the state of the economy, unexpected incidents, and the competition for attention with other issues in the political arena. We show that political interest in environmental issues has initially been flagging, since the environment was mostly seen as a European topic, and Europe has not been popular since the referendum on a European Constitution. However, once the climate change problem was translated to a national problem, popular attention increased enormously. We conclude that climate change framed as a European problem does not increase attention, nationalization of the problem does

Antiproton-proton partial-wave analysis below 925 MeV/c

A partial-wave analysis of all antiproton-proton scattering data below 925 MeV/c antiproton laboratory momentum is presented. The method used is adapted from the Nijmegen phase-shift analyses of pp and np scattering data. The Nijmegen 1993 antiproton-proton database, consisting of 3646 antiproton-proton scattering data, is presented and discussed. The best fit to this database results in chi^2_min/Ndata = 1.043. The pseudovector coupling constant of the charged pion to nucleons is determined to be (f_c)^2 = 0.0732(11) at the pion pole, where the error is statistical.Comment: Report THEF-NYM 93.02 42 pages REVTeX, 7 separate postscript figures appended. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Deconfinement and cold atoms in optical lattices

Despite the fact that by now one dimensional and three dimensional systems of interacting particles are reasonably well understood, very little is known on how to go from the one dimensional physics to the three dimensional one. This is in particular true in a quasi-one dimensional geometry where the hopping of particles between one dimensional chains or tubes can lead to a dimensional crossover between a Luttinger liquid and more conventional high dimensional states. Such a situation is relevant to many physical systems. Recently cold atoms in optical traps have provided a unique and controllable system in which to investigate this physics. We thus analyze a system made of coupled one dimensional tubes of interacting fermions. We explore the observable consequences, such as the phase diagram for isolated tubes, and the possibility to realize unusual superfluid phases in coupled tubes systems.Comment: Proceedings of the conference on "Quantum Many Body Theories 13", to be published by World Scientifi

Strategies for Improving Semi-automated Topic Classification of Media and Parliamentary documents

Since 1995 the techniques and capacities to store new electronic data and to make it available to many persons have become a common good. As of then, different organizations, such as research institutes, universities, libraries, and private companies (Google) started to scan older documents and make them electronically available as well. This has generated a lot of new research opportunities for all kinds of academic disciplines. The use of software to analyze large datasets has become an important part of doing research in the social sciences. Most academics rely on human coded datasets, both in qualitative and quantitative research. However, with the increasing amount of datasets and the complexity of the questions scholars pose to the datasets, the quest for more efficient and effective methods is now on the agenda. One of the most common techniques of content analysis is the Boolean key-word search method. To find certain topics in a dataset, the researcher creates first a list of keywords, added with certain parameters (AND, OR etc.). All keys are usually grouped in families and the entire list of keys and groups is called the ontology. Then the keywords are searched in the dataset, retrieving all documents containing the specified keywords. The online newspaper dataset, LexisNexis, provides the user with such a Boolean search method. However, the Boolean key-word search is not always satisfying in terms of reliability and validity. For that reason social scientists rely on hand-coding. Two projects that do so are the congressional bills project (www.congressionalbills.org ) and the policy agenda-setting project (see www.policyagendas.org ). They developed a topic code book and coded various different sources, such as, the state of the union speeches, bills, newspaper articles etcetera. The continuous improving automated coding techniques, and the increasing number of agenda setting projects (in especially European countries), however, has made the use of automated coding software a feasible option and also a necessity

Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Rejection: Rejection as the Shadow-Side of Election, With Special Reference to the Case of Judas Iscariot

Karl Barth defends the Reformed doctrine of rejection because it, as well as election, means that God loves in freedom. Barth’s doctrine of election is interpreted as a consistent dialectical application of double predestination in that Jesus Christ, as the subject of God’s grace to humanity, because he is both the elected and rejected subject of divine predestination. The doctrine is consistent because Barth unites the doctrine of God with the doctrine of Jesus’s election as the fulfillment of the covenant of grace. The argument of the thesis is that Barth’s doctrine of rejection is appropriately viewed as an improvement to the Reformed understanding of election and God’s singular will of grace. The argument in favour of Barth’s doctrine of rejection proceeds in three stages: the dialectical methodology of double predestination, Jesus Christ as the material precedent of double predestination, and Judas Iscariot as a case study of Christocentric rejection