Qinghai Province and the Question of Chinese Rural Women’s Land Ownership Rights

Article 30 of the 2005 People’s Republic of China Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights stipulates that women enjoy equal rights to property as men. However, issues of marital status, patriarchal social structure, and minority status complicate the legal mediation of women’s rural property. Qinghai Province’s Hualong Hui Autonomous County (southeast of the provincial capital of Xining) offers one primary example of the difficulty of guaranteeing rural women’s land rights, not only because of the above-mentioned problems and the county’s autonomous status, but also because of the general lack of awareness of land rights and widespread illiteracy. My thesis answers why the number of property right violations in rural Qinghai Province is increasing. I chose this location in China for two reasons. The first reason is the province’s cultural diversity as a crossroads between Han, Hui, Tibetan, and other minority cultures. The second reason is that many of the legal clients of Women’s Watch-China (the location of my previous internship) who have been disputing property rights violations are from this province. I utilize eyewitness accounts from clients and lawyers disputing these cases, as well as statistical analysis from both Chinese and English sources. When analyzing sources concerning autonomous or culturally diverse regions in China, it is important to remember that the rights of officially recognized minorities remain a highly controversial issue, largely because of widespread sentiment that public policy does not represent their interests. As a result, minority status may not be discussed in domestic surveys and accounts on women’s land rights disputes. It is for this reason that I present a clearer picture of the correlation between women’s land rights violations and social, marital, communal, and cultural factors

On the role of deduction in reasoning from uncertain premises

The probabilistic approach to reasoning hypothesizes that most reasoning, both in everyday life and in science, takes place in contexts of uncertainty. The central deductive concepts of classical logic, consistency and validity, can be generalised to cover uncertain degrees of belief. Binary consistency can be generalised to coherence, where the probability judgments for two statements are coherent if and only if they respect the axioms of probability theory. Binary validity can be generalised to probabilistic validity (p-validity), where an inference is p-valid if and only if the uncertainty of its conclusion cannot be coherently greater than the sum of the uncertainties of its premises. But the fact that this generalisation is possible in formal logic does not imply that people will use deduction in a probabilistic way. The role of deduction in reasoning from uncertain premises was investigated across ten experiments and 23 inferences of differing complexity. The results provide evidence that coherence and p-validity are not just abstract formalisms, but that people follow the normative constraints set by them in their reasoning. It made no qualitative difference whether the premises were certain or uncertain, but certainty could be interpreted as the endpoint of a common scale for degrees of belief. The findings are evidence for the descriptive adequacy of coherence and p-validity as computational level principles for reasoning. They have implications for the interpretation of past findings on the roles of deduction and degrees of belief. And they offer a perspective for generating new research hypotheses in the interface between deductive and inductive reasoning. Keywords: Reasoning; deduction; probabilistic approach; coherence; p-validit

Setup of a UHV System for the Production of Tungsten TES

Humanity has concerned itself with the question of the basic elements of nature over thousands of years. The technological evolution of the last hundred years improved our understanding of the particle nature of matter. However, this is only true for particles, that reveal themselves to us by participating at electromagnetic interactions, or, like neutrinos, are closely related to an electromagnetically interacting partner. Large scale gravitation studies concluded, that these known forms of matter only account for about a sixth of the overall gravitationally interacting matte in the universe. Due to its invisibility to electromagnetic particles, the missing mass is referred to as dark matter. While gravitation still remains inaccessible to us on particle scales, technical evolution opened up the field of particle studies based on the weak interaction force, which is a promising field for dark matter studies, since reasonable suspicion exists, that dark matter is also weakly interacting. Low interaction cross sections and small signals are making particle detection via weak interaction challenging and require sophisticated technology. The CRESST experiment (Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers) and SuperCDMS (Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search) are aiming to directly detect dark matter particles and investigate their properties by taking advantage of TES (transition edge sensors) to measure the small signals. These TES’s are manufactured from thin tungsten films, that are thermally coupled to absorber crystals. To also meet the detection requirements for low interaction rates, a large numbers of detectors, and thus a large numbers of TES are needed. In order to achieve the required sensitivity, tuning the superconductive properties of the tungsten films is essential. The transition temperature defines the sensitivity range of the TES and the slope of the transition edge their sensitivity. In particular the low superconductive transition of about 15 mK in bulk material makes tungsten the favored material in cryogenic particle detection. However, it is challenging to grow thin tungsten films with such a low transition. The quantum effect of superconductivity is very sensitive to even small changes in the material properties, resulting from varying deposition conditions. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate and understand the influences of differing deposition conditions in order to grow TES of reproducible properties. In thin films especially crystal structure, grain size, impurities and film stress are known to influence superconductivity. In the framework of this thesis, a production facility for thin tungsten films, that is capable of mass production has successfully been set up. It proved to be capable of producing films with transition temperatures of 15 mK, meeting the requirements of the CRESST experiment. However, due to a lack of reliable transition curve measurements, influences of the deposition conditions on the superconductive properties and their reproducibility could not be investigated. Instead several analysis techniques for investigations of the crystal phase, impurity inclusions, surface morphology, electrical resistance and film stress have been performed. These techniques provide knowledge about film properties, that are known to affect superconductivity. Especially the influence of the substrate temperature during deposition on these film properties were studied. The results of the analysis techniques are specific to the deposition system that has been set up for this work and might differ quantitatively for other deposition systems

Oostende in 1835: Reisebriefe aus Belgien

The victim was part of an advance team which was defining the perimeter of a suspected mined area, with the help of a local guide. The victim was putting in metal markers about 3m away from the existing mined-area boundary stakes. At 09:20 the victim stepped on a mine about 8m away from the existing boundary stakes. He suffered a cracked bone and bruising to his left foot

Die Veränderung der Konzepte von Armut und Hunger in den letzten Entwicklungsdekaden

Die hier vorliegende Arbeit glieder sich in zwölf Kapitel und beschäftigt sich mit den Konzepten von Hunger und Armut in den letzten Entwicklungsdekaden. Das erste Kapitel beinhaltet die Einleitung und Gliederung der Arbeit. Das zweite Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit den forschungsleitenden Fragestellungen. Es werden außerdem die Hypothesen aufgestellt, die es in dieser Arbeit zu verifizieren oder zu falsifizieren gilt. Im Kapitel drei wird ein historischer Abriss über die Entwicklungsdekaden und den Verlauf des Diskurses der Konzepte von Armut und Hunger von 1940 bis 2010 gemacht. Die wichtigsten Gipfel und Leitdokumente der Armuts-, und Hungerdiskussion werden besprochen. Das Kapitel vier beschäftigt sich mit den Rahmenbedingungen der Arbeit. Es werden die für die Arbeit relevanten Definitionen und Begriffe erläutert. Ein weiterer Teil des vierten Kapitels beschäftigt sich mit den bedeutenden Konzepten des Armuts- bzw. Hungerbegriffes, unter Anderem dem Capability Ansatz von Amartya Sen. Im fünften Kapitel wird auf die verschiedenen Indikatoren für Armut und Hunger eingegangen. Das sechste Kapitel beleuchtet die Modernisierungstheorie aus verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten und betrachtet die Veränderung des Konzeptes und Indikatoren von Hunger und Armut. Im Bezug darauf beleuchtet das siebte Kapitel die Dependenztheorie und das achte Kapitel den Post-Development Ansatz. Im neunten Kapitel meiner Arbeit findet sich die Auseinandersetzung mit der Internationalen Ebene. Das Armuts- und Hungerkonzept der United Nations Organisation (UNO) bzw. der Millennium Development Goals (MDG´s) werden beleuchtet und sich mit deren inhaltliche Kontroverse auseinandergesetzt. Der Begriff Armut bzw. das Armuts-, sowie Hungerkonzept des Washington Consensus und des Human Rights Based Approaches werden besprochen. Kapitel zehn befasst sich mit dem historischen Hintergrund der Armut- und Hungerkonzepte der Zivilgesellschaft. OXFAM und die Deutsche Welthungerhilfe sind Stellvertreter dieser und deren Definition des Armuts- und Hungerbegriffes wird analysiert. Kapitel elf beinhaltet die Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse der hier vorliegenden Arbeit vor dem Hintergrund der forschungsleitenden Fragestellungen und aufgestellten Hypothesen. Hier wird die Arbeit resümiert und interpretiert. Im zwölften Kapitel befindet sich der Anhang mit Bibliographie, einer deutschen Zusammenfassung, einem englischen Abstract und einem Lebenslauf der Autorin.The present study is divided in twelve chapters and deals with the concepts of hunger and poverty in the last two decades of development The first chapter contains the summary and the introduction. Chapter two deals with the conditions of the thesis. It deals with the work of the underlying methods and the scientific questions. Hypotheses are generated, which will later be verified or falsified. Chapter three will make an historical overview of the development decades and the discourse of the concepts of poverty and hunger from 1940 to 2010. The most important documents and summits will also be discussed. The fourth chapter discusses the various indicators of poverty and hunger. It will also explain the relevant definitions and concepts. Another part of the fourth chapter deals with the major concepts of poverty and hunger, among other things, the capability approach of Amartya Sen. In the fifth chapter the indicators of poverty and hunger are being discussed. In the sixth chapter, the modernizations theory will be discussed and its view of the concepts of poverty and hunger. In this light, the seventh chapter discusses the dependency theory and the eight chapter the post-development debates. The ninth chapter will discuss the International level. The concept of poverty and hunger of the United Nations Organization (UNO) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be introduced and their controversy will be dealt with. The concept of poverty and hunger of the Washington Consensus and the Human Rights Based Approaches are discussed. Chapter ten deals with the historical background of poverty and hunger concepts of the civil society. OXFAM and the German „Welthungerhilfe“ will be representatives of these. Chapter eleven contains a summary and a result section of the scientific question. Here, the work is summarized and interpreted. In the twelfth chapter is the appendix with bibliography, German and English abstracts and a CV of the author

School and resilience. Conceptions and experiences in the whale village educational theory

In der bildungspolitischen Diskussion steht momentan die Entwicklung von Standards im Vordergrund. Demgegenüber sollte stärker in den Blick kommen, dass Schülerinnen und Schüler ihr Selbstwertgefühl erhalten können und gegen Stress resistent werden sollten. Eine Befragung ehemaliger Waldorfschüler lässt erkennen, dass eine Schule die Persönlichkeitsentwicklung der Schülerinnen und Schüler nachhaltig fördern kann. (DIPF/Orig.)At the moment the development of standards stands in the foreground in the educational discussion. Against this it should be considered more vigorously that and how pupils can maintain their self-esteem and can become resistant against stress. A questioning of former Waldorf School pupils reveals that a school can promote personality development of pupils with enduring effect. (DIPF/Orig.

Paradigms, possibilities and probabilities: Comment on Hinterecker et al. (2016)

Hinterecker et al. (2016) compared the adequacy of the probabilistic new paradigm in reasoning with the recent revision of mental models theory (MMT) for explaining a novel class of inferences containing the modal term “possibly”. For example, the door is closed or the window is open or both, therefore, possibly the door is closed and the window is open (A or B or both, therefore, possibly(A & B)). They concluded that their results support MMT. In this comment, it is argued that Hinterecker et al. (2016) have not adequately characterised the theory of probabilistic validity (p-validity) on which the new paradigm depends. It is unclear how p-validity can be applied to these inferences, which are anyway peripheral to the theory. It is also argued that the revision of MMT is not well motivated and its adoption leads to many logical absurdities. Moreover, the comparison is not appropriate because these theories are defined at different levels of computational explanation. In particular, revised MMT lacks a provably consistent computational level theory that could justify treating these inferences as valid. It is further argued that the data could result from the non-colloquial locutions used to express the premises. Finally, an alternative pragmatic account is proposed based on the idea that a conclusion is possible if what someone knows cannot rule it out. This account could be applied to the unrevised mental model theory rendering the revision redundant

Review: The Newsletter of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, volume 14, issue 2

Contents include: Dramaturgical Debris, A Word from the President Elect, LMDA Conference 2004 Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,Sneak Peak of One of the Breakout Sessions, Performances on Offer in Philadelphia, Preview the Alternative Guide to Philly Fun, The Production Notebooks Edited by Mark Bly: A Conversation Between Danielle Mages Amato and D.J.J Hopkins, and Get to Know Your Regional Vice President. Issue editors: D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, Megan Monaghan, Madeleine Oldhamhttps://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdareview/1029/thumbnail.jp

On the role of deduction in reasoning from uncertain premises

The probabilistic approach to reasoning hypothesizes that most reasoning, both in everyday life and in science, takes place in contexts of uncertainty. The central deductive concepts of classical logic, consistency and validity, can be generalised to cover uncertain degrees of belief. Binary consistency can be generalised to coherence, where the probability judgments for two statements are coherent if and only if they respect the axioms of probability theory. Binary validity can be generalised to probabilistic validity (p-validity), where an inference is p-valid if and only if the uncertainty of its conclusion cannot be coherently greater than the sum of the uncertainties of its premises. But the fact that this generalisation is possible in formal logic does not imply that people will use deduction in a probabilistic way. The role of deduction in reasoning from uncertain premises was investigated across ten experiments and 23 inferences of differing complexity. The results provide evidence that coherence and p-validity are not just abstract formalisms, but that people follow the normative constraints set by them in their reasoning. It made no qualitative difference whether the premises were certain or uncertain, but certainty could be interpreted as the endpoint of a common scale for degrees of belief. The findings are evidence for the descriptive adequacy of coherence and p-validity as computational level principles for reasoning. They have implications for the interpretation of past findings on the roles of deduction and degrees of belief. And they offer a perspective for generating new research hypotheses in the interface between deductive and inductive reasoning. Keywords: Reasoning; deduction; probabilistic approach; coherence; p-validit