Religious reasons in the public sphere: an empirical study of religious actors' argumentative patterns in Swiss direct democratic campaigns

The ‘going public' of religious actors is taking central stage both in religious studies and political philosophy. But this ‘going public' of religious actors is controversial. The debate revolves around the question of whether religious actors must frame their religious convictions in terms of secular reasons or whether they should be allowed to introduce religiously grounded beliefs into public political argument without constraints. Despite vigorous and ongoing debate, there is little systematic and empirical research on this question. This article focuses on the public statements of religious actors in the context of Swiss direct democratic votes on abortion and immigration. Our empirical findings reveal an interesting gap: while many political philosophers and religious thinkers have moved to a position where religious actors can - and even should - openly employ religious arguments, the practice of religious actors in Switzerland is different. The larger denominations of Catholics and Protestants especially have a tendency to use a great amount of secular vocabulary. In addition, our findings also reveal that the use of religious or secular reasons varies considerably according to different issues, different media types (religious vs. secular press), different religious traditions, different alliance structures, and different media genres, while there is no clear time tren

Reproducibility of a new signal processing technique to assess joint sway during standing

Postural control strategies can be investigated by kinematic analysis of joint movements. However, current research is focussing mainly on the analysis of centre of pressure excursion and lacks consensus on how to assess joint movement during postural control tasks. This study introduces a new signal processing technique to comprehensively quantify joint sway during standing and evaluates its reproducibility. Fifteen patients with non-specific low back pain and ten asymptomatic participants performed three repetitions of a 60-second standing task on foam surface. This procedure was repeated on a second day. Lumbar spine movement was recorded using an inertial measurement system. The signal was temporally divided into six sections. Two outcome variables (mean absolute sway and sways per second) were calculated for each section. The reproducibility of single and averaged measurements was quantified with linear mixed-effects models and the generalizability theory. A single measurement of ten seconds duration revealed reliability coefficients of 0.75 for mean absolute sway and 0.76 for sways per second. Averaging a measurement of 40 seconds duration on two different days revealed reliability coefficients higher than 0.90 for both outcome variables. The outcome variables’ reliability compares favourably to previously published results using different signal processing techniques or centre of pressure excursion. The introduced signal processing technique with two outcome variables to quantify joint sway during standing proved to be a highly reliable method. Since different populations, tasks or measurement tools could influence reproducibility, further investigation in other settings is still necessary. Nevertheless, the presented method has been shown to be highly promising

La vision des acteurs de l'économie sociale au Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean

Depuis l’émergence d’une multitude d’entreprises d’économie sociale au début des années 1990, de nombreux chercheurs se sont appliqués à documenter cette forme de pratique. Ce rapport finalise une première étude quantitative menée en 2010 auprès des entreprises d’économie sociale de la région du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean. Il constitue la deuxième phase du portrait de l’économie sociale de cette région. Cette étude se singularise par le fait qu’elle donne la parole aux acteurs de l’économie sociale, en l’occurrence les entreprises d’économie sociale et les organismes de soutien à l’économie sociale

Declining 1-year case-fatality of stroke and increasing coverage of vascular risk management: population-based cohort study

Background The authors estimated trends in 1-year case-fatality of stroke in relation to changes in vascular risk management from 1997 to 2005.Methods A cohort study was implemented using data for 407 family practices in the UK General Practice Research Database, including subjects with first acute strokes between 1997 and 2005. One-year case-fatality was estimated by year and sex. Rate ratios were estimated using Poisson regression.Results There were 19 143 women and 16 552 men who had first acute strokes between 1997 and 2005. In women, the 1-year case-fatality declined from 41.2% in 1997 to 29.2% in 2005. In men, the decline was from 29.2% in 1997 to 22.2% in 2005. The proportion of general practices that prescribed antihypertensive drugs to two-thirds or more of new patients with stroke increased from 6% in 1997 to 48% in 2005, for statins from 1% to 39% and for antiplatelet drugs from 11% to 39%. The rate ratio for 1-year mortality in 2005, compared with 1997--1998, adjusted for age group, sex, prevalent coronary heart disease, prevalent hypertension and deprivation quintile was 0.79 (0.74 to 0.86, p<0.001). After adjustment for antihypertensive, statin and antiplatelet prescribing, the rate ratio was 1.29 (1.17 to 1.42).Conclusions Reducing 1-year case-fatality after acute stroke may be partly explained by increased prescribing of antihypertensive, statin and antiplatelet drugs to patients with recent strokes. However, these analyses did not include measures of possible changes over time in stroke severity or acute stroke management

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This study shows how bioenergy potential and total greenhouse gas (GHG) balances of land-use change and agricultural intensification can be modeled in an integrated way. The modeling framework is demonstrated for first- and second-generation ethanol production in Ukraine for the timeframe 2010-2030 for two scenarios: a business as usual (BAU) scenario in which current trends in agricultural productivity are continued; and a progressive scenario, which projects a convergence of yield levels in Ukraine with Western Europe. The spatiotemporal development in land for food production is analyzed making use of the PCRaster Land Use Change (PLUC) model. The land-use projections serve as input for the analysis of the CO2, N2O, and CH4 emissions related to changes in land use and agricultural management, as well as the abatement of GHG emissions by replacing fossil fuels with bioethanol production from wheat and switchgrass. This results in annual maps (1 km2 resolution) of the different GHG emissions for the modeled timeframe. In the BAU scenario, the GHG emissions increase over time, whereas in the progressive scenario, a total cumulative GHG emission reduction of 0.8 Gt CO2-eq for wheat and 3.8 Gt CO2-eq for switchgrass could be achieved in 2030. When the available land is used for the re-growth of natural vegetation, 3.5 Gt CO2-eq could be accumulated. These emission reductions could increase when appropriate measures are taken. The spatiotemporal PLUC model + GHG module allows for spatiotemporal and integrated modeling of total GHG emissions of bioenergy production and intensification of the agricultural sector

Utilidad, aplicabilidad y movilización del conocimiento: un estudio de caso del curso de Licenciatura en Educación del campo de la Universidad Federal do Recôncavo de Bahia-Brasil

Brasil es un país que posee dimensiones continentales, con múltiples particularidades, con un amplioespacio agrario y un desigual desarrollo del mismo. La Educación del Campo y la Universidad estáninmersas en esta realidad sociocultural y por lo tanto considerarla de manera contextualizada es premisafundamental para cualquier análisis de esta naturaleza. En esta perspectiva, estudiar los procesospedagógicos, sus múltiples y complejas relaciones, su repercusión e interacción con la sociedad es de granrelevancia para comprender la dinámica actual de la Universidad. En este trabajo serán presentados losresultados de un estudio de caso en la UFRB (Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia), que estáubicada en Bahia - Brasil, más específicamente en el curso de Educación del Campo, donde fue analizadasu propuesta contra hegemónica y su compromiso con la categoría de movilización del conocimiento.Basado en una investigación bibliográfica y en análisis documentales de la institución en cuestión, estetrabajo busca contribuir a una reflexión respeto a la Educación del Campo para una mejor comprensión desu función social, resolución de problemas concretos y su orientación al servicio de la sociedad.Brazil is a country of continental dimensions with multiple special features and with a vast agrarian space that suffers from an unequal development. The Education in the Countryside and the University are immersed in this sociocultural reality and thus contextualization is a fundamental prerequisite for any kind of analysis. Considering this perspective, to study the pedagogical processes, its multiple and complex relations, its repercussion and interaction with society, it is utterly relevant to understand the current dynamics of the University. This work presents the results of a case study at UFRB (Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia), which is located in Bahia – Brazil, more specifically of the course of Education in the Countryside. Its counter-hegemonic proposal and its commitment with the category of mobilization of knowledge were analyzed. Based on a bibliographical investigation as well as an analysis of documents of the institution, the aim of this work is to contribute to a reflection about the Education in the Countryside in order to understand better its social function, its concrete problem solving and its focus on serving the society.Fil: Barreto Sanders, André. No especifíca;Fil: Naidorf, Clara Judith. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

The orbit space of groupoids whose C∗C^*-algebras are GCR

Let $G$ be second countable locally compact Hausdorff groupoid with a continuous Haar system. We remove the assumption of amenability in a theorem by Clark about GCR groupoid $C^*$-algebras. We show that if the groupoid $C^*$-algebra of $G$ is GCR then the orbits of $G$ are locally closed.Comment: 1

Optimizing the cloud data center availability empowered by surrogate models

Making data centers highly available remains a challenge that must be considered since the design phase. The problem is selecting the right strategies and components for achieving this goal given a limited investment. Furthermore, data center designers currently lack reliable specialized tools to accomplish this task. In this paper, we disclose a formal method that chooses the components and strategies that optimize the availability of a data center while considering a given budget as a constraint. For that, we make use of stochastic models to represent a cloud data center infrastructure based on the TIA-942 standard. In order to improve the computational cost incurred to solve this optimization problem, we employ surrogate models to handle the complexity of the stochastic models. In this work, we use a Gaussian process to produce a surrogate model for a cloud data center infrastructure and we use three derivative-free optimization algorithms to explore the search space and to find optimal solutions. From the results, we observe that the Differential Evolution (DE) algorithm outperforms the other tested algorithms, since it achieves higher availability with a fair usage of the budget