An introduction: British print media accounts of new religious movements 1975-1985

This thesis is a sociological account of the controversy that surrounds New Religious Movements with special emphasis on the role of the print media in sustaining the controversy. The research that is reported here was conducted primarily by means of content analysis of articles appearing in four leading British publications between 1975 and 1985. Results are compared with on going research in the U.S. and Belgium in an effort to gain some cross-cultural insight into the phenomenon. This thesis is not, however, confined to a presentation of statistical data for it attempts to make sense of the findings within an interpretative framework. The thesis begins with a discussion of certain key concepts and then reviews the authoritative works on New Religious Movements, showing that the dominant theories do not pay enough attention to the role of the mass media in the development and maintenance of crucial moral boundaries. The sociological literature on the topic of deviance in the mass media and the social construction of moral panics is reviewed in Chapter Two, with special attention being given to the relevance of this topic to the treatment of New Religious Movements. The methodology of content analysis is outlined and assessed for its usefulness in the social sciences in Chapter Three. The findings from the British study are presented in Chapter Four and compared with those from studies in both the U.S. and Belgium. Wide variations were found in the treatment of individual NRMs. The predominantly negative tenor of print media items about them was largely a function of the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of one particular movement; the tenor of items changed over time; but endorsement of anti-cultism was weaker than expected. The image of a control group of older minority religious movements was found to be significantly different from that of the NRMs. Finally, conclusions are drawn concerning the present study, with potentially productive areas for future research being highlighted

Mental state attribution and the gaze cueing effect

Theory of mind is said to be possessed by an individual if he or she is able to impute mental states to others. Recently, some authors have demonstrated that such mental state attributions can mediate the “gaze cueing” effect, in which observation of another individual shifts an observer’s attention. One question that follows from this work is whether such mental state attributions produce mandatory modulations of gaze cueing. Employing the basic gaze cueing paradigm, together with a technique commonly used to assess mental-state attribution in nonhuman animals, we manipulated whether the gazing agent could see the same thing as the participant (i.e., the target) or had this view obstructed by a physical barrier. We found robust gaze cueing effects, even when the observed agent in the display could not see the same thing as the participant. These results suggest that the attribution of “seeing” does not necessarily modulate the gaze cueing effect

Growth performance and nutrient utilization of post fingerlings Clarias gariepinus fed varied levels of biscuit waste

A feeding trial was conducted to determine the effect of biscuit waste meal on the growth performance and utilization of Clarias gariepinus juveniles. A total of 300 juveniles of average weight 8.85g were randomly divided into 5 Treatments, each with three replicates. Twenty juveniles were distributed into fifteen happas (0.7m3) and each happa was suspended to 3/4 of its volume using kuralon ropes carefully tied round the bamboo poles across the concrete tanks. Five diets containing 40% crude protein were formulated in which maize was replaced with biscuit waste meal at Treatment diet 1 (TD1) 0%, 25% (TD2), 50% (TD3), 75% (TD4), 100% (TD5) levels.The juveniles were fed at 3% body weight per day for 10 weeks. It was recorded at the end of the experiment that biscuit waste was most suitable as an energy supplement when incorporated at 25% replacement (TD2) with maize. TD1 had the highest weight gain followed by TD2, TD3, TD4 and TD5 respectively. There were no significant differences (P>0.05) in the growth response in TD1 (0%), T0D (25%) and TD3 (50%). It is therefore concluded that biscuit waste meal is a cheap source of non conventional energy source which can be used favorably to replace maize (25% inclusion level) as an energy source in the diets of Clarias gariepinus

Seagrass Loss in Belize: Studies of Turtlegrass (Thalassia testudinum) Habitat Using Remote Sensing and Ground-Truth Data

Spatial and temporal change in turtlegrass (Thalassia testudinum) habitat of the South Water Caye Marine Reserve (SWCMR) in Belize were analyzed using satellite images backed up with ground-truth data. We had two pri-mary objectives. First, we wanted to determine areal expanse of seagrass across a large area (~12 km by 3 km) of the SWCMR, and address its change over time. We used paired satellite images taken during 2001 and 2005 to determine coverage by seagrass and measure temporal variables. These analyses recorded an overall seagrass loss of 1.8% (52.3 ha) during the 4 yr period. Secondly, we wanted to determine whether seagrass gains or losses were consistent across the study area. Replicate sampling was used as a statistical basis and confirmed a significant loss of seagrass across the region. It also helped identify two regions of significant seagrass loss; one 600 ha area lost 12.4% of its seagrass; another 240 ha area lost nearly 40%. These components helped us assess seagrass habitat in an area perceived as critical to Belize fisheries, and provided the scale and statistical rigor necessary to adequately assess a broad region of study. The salient results from our study were not the magnitude of seagrass loss per se, but the loss in seagrass habitat from an area that is thought to be relatively pristine. Seagrass-habitat loss in this region of the Caribbean Sea may be evidence that even near-pristine areas can be impacted by anthropogenic factors. Determining the causes of habitat loss may help prevent loss of productivity, habitat, and livelihood for the associated human and nonhuman communities

Efficient quantum algorithms for simulating sparse Hamiltonians

We present an efficient quantum algorithm for simulating the evolution of a sparse Hamiltonian H for a given time t in terms of a procedure for computing the matrix entries of H. In particular, when H acts on n qubits, has at most a constant number of nonzero entries in each row/column, and |H| is bounded by a constant, we may select any positive integer $k$ such that the simulation requires O((\log^*n)t^{1+1/2k}) accesses to matrix entries of H. We show that the temporal scaling cannot be significantly improved beyond this, because sublinear time scaling is not possible.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures, substantial revision

Dogmatists Cannot Learn

We wish to provide some rational in defense of the title of this comment. If we agree that a dogmatist is one whose beliefs cannot be influenced by observations (i.e., data), and we define learning as having your beliefs influenced by observations, then it follows that dogmatists cannot learn. While this statement has been made previously, (p.47) we believe it is useful to expand on this point with a simple example. Indeed, some dangers of dogmatism in epidemiology have been documented, and one does not have to look far for trivial examples of dogmatic statements

Simulating the Cranfield geological carbon sequestration project with high-resolution static models and an accurate equation of state

Bureau of Economic Geolog

Information decomposition of symbolic sequences

We developed a non-parametric method of Information Decomposition (ID) of a content of any symbolical sequence. The method is based on the calculation of Shannon mutual information between analyzed and artificial symbolical sequences, and allows the revealing of latent periodicity in any symbolical sequence. We show the stability of the ID method in the case of a large number of random letter changes in an analyzed symbolic sequence. We demonstrate the possibilities of the method, analyzing both poems, and DNA and protein sequences. In DNA and protein sequences we show the existence of many DNA and amino acid sequences with different types and lengths of latent periodicity. The possible origin of latent periodicity for different symbolical sequences is discussed.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figure

Relations between fusion cross sections and average angular momenta

We study the relations between moments of fusion cross sections and averages of angular momentum. The role of the centrifugal barrier and the target deformation in determining the effective barrier radius are clarified. A simple method for extracting average angular momentum from fusion cross sections is demonstrated using numerical examples as well as actual data.Comment: 16 REVTeX pages plus 8 included Postscript figures (uses the epsf macro); submitted to Phys. Rev. C; also available at http://nucth.physics.wisc.edu/preprint