Why it’s not just about the outcome: citizens also care about democratic decision-making

A well-known claim for citizens’ involvement in politics is that, when things are going well, they care little about participating in decision-making processes. Michael A. Strebel, Daniel Kübler and Frank Marcinkowski test this claim, and find that, in fact, democratic participation and transparency matter for citizens too, independently of the specific policy outcome

On the k-Boundedness for Existential Rules

The chase is a fundamental tool for existential rules. Several chase variants are known, which differ on how they handle redundancies possibly caused by the introduction of nulls. Given a chase variant, the halting problem takes as input a set of existential rules and asks if this set of rules ensures the termination of the chase for any factbase. It is well-known that this problem is undecidable for all known chase variants. The related problem of boundedness asks if a given set of existential rules is bounded, i.e., whether there is a predefined upper bound on the number of (breadth-first) steps of the chase, independently from any factbase. This problem is already undecidable in the specific case of datalog rules. However, knowing that a set of rules is bounded for some chase variant does not help much in practice if the bound is unknown. Hence, in this paper, we investigate the decidability of the k-boundedness problem, which asks whether a given set of rules is bounded by an integer k. We prove that k-boundedness is decidable for three chase variants, namely the oblivious, semi-oblivious and restricted chase.Comment: 20 pages, revised version of the paper published at RuleML+RR 201

Composting of Waste from Poultry Breeding – Biological Analysis

The objective of this study was primarily to determine the course of biological composition changes of wastes during composting. Here presented are the results of the bacteriological, mycological and parasitological composition analyses of composts consisting of: goose and broiler excrements from ecological farms, remainders of goose intestines from slaughterhouses, goose feather waste collected on the sieves of the farm wastewater treatment plants, as well as sewage sludge from slaughterhouse wastewater treatment plants and poultry processing plants. Ground pine bark, pine shavings and rye straw chaff was used as an addition to the composting mixture. The investigation of the composting process in static piles lasting 120 days was carried out in winter conditions in the area near the aforementioned wastewater treatment plant of an industrial complex situated in Lower Silesia (the south-western region of Poland), the complex specializing in breeding, slaughtering and processing of poultry

A method to localize gamma-ray bursts using POLAR

The hard X-ray polarimeter POLAR aims to measure the linear polarization of the 50-500 keV photons arriving from the prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The position in the sky of the detected GRBs is needed to determine their level of polarization. We present here a method by which, despite of the polarimeter incapability of taking images, GRBs can be roughly localized using POLAR alone. For this purpose scalers are attached to the output of the 25 multi-anode photomultipliers (MAPMs) that collect the light from the POLAR scintillator target. Each scaler measures how many GRB photons produce at least one energy deposition above 50 keV in the corresponding MAPM. Simulations show that the relative outputs of the 25 scalers depend on the GRB position. A database of very strong GRBs simulated at 10201 positions has been produced. When a GRB is detected, its location is calculated searching the minimum of the chi2 obtained in the comparison between the measured scaler pattern and the database. This GRB localization technique brings enough accuracy so that the error transmitted to the 100% modulation factor is kept below 10% for GRBs with fluence Ftot \geq 10^(-5) erg cm^(-2) . The POLAR localization capability will be useful for those cases where no other instruments are simultaneously observing the same field of view.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure

Utilization of Electrohydrodynamic Cavitation in Primary Sludge Conditioning

This paper presents a brief characterization of the method of electrochemical conditioning of sludge, using the effect of low-temperature plasma. Primary sludge from the municipal wastewater treatment plant in Gorzów was analysed. The sludge was conditioned electrochemically, chemically with calcium hydroxide and dihydrogen dioxide, and using a combined method – electrochemical and chemical. For each conditioned sludge its settlement characteristics, hydration, dry mass content, organic and mineral substances, calculated and measured specific filtration resistance, effectiveness of filtration, iron content in ash, as well as energy-consumption in the process were determined. For the electrochemical, chemical and combined processes of primary sludge conditioning, their courses were compared. It was proved that (1) processes of conditioning cause changes in properties of primary sludge; (2) electrochemical conditioning causes mineralization and stabilization; (3) dewaterability of sludge is improved; (4) the process can be supported using additionally calcium hydroxide and dihydrogen dioxide; (5) optimization of the process can be performed only by improving the effectiveness of selected process parameters

Prioritized Repairing and Consistent Query Answering in Relational Databases

A consistent query answer in an inconsistent database is an answer obtained in every (minimal) repair. The repairs are obtained by resolving all conflicts in all possible ways. Often, however, the user is able to provide a preference on how conflicts should be resolved. We investigate here the framework of preferred consistent query answers, in which user preferences are used to narrow down the set of repairs to a set of preferred repairs. We axiomatize desirable properties of preferred repairs. We present three different families of preferred repairs and study their mutual relationships. Finally, we investigate the complexity of preferred repairing and computing preferred consistent query answers.Comment: Accepted to the special SUM'08 issue of AMA

Disclination vortices in elastic media

The vortex-like solutions are studied in the framework of the gauge model of disclinations in elastic continuum. A complete set of model equations with disclination driven dislocations taken into account is considered. Within the linear approximation an exact solution for a low-angle wedge disclination is found to be independent from the coupling constants of the theory. As a result, no additional dimensional characteristics (like the core radius of the defect) are involved. The situation changes drastically for 2\pi vortices where two characteristic lengths, l_\phi and l_W, become of importance. The asymptotical behaviour of the solutions for both singular and nonsingular 2\pi vortices is studied. Forces between pairs of vortices are calculated.Comment: 13 pages, published versio

GRB030406 an extremely hard burst outside of the INTEGRAL field of view

Using the IBIS Compton mode, the INTEGRAL satellite is able to detect and localize bright and hard GRBs, which happen outside of the nominal INTEGRAL telescopes field of view. We have developed a method of analyzing such INTEGRAL data to obtain the burst location and spectra. We present the results for the case of GRB030406. The burst is localized with the Compton events, and the location is consistent with the previous Interplanetary Network position. A spectral analysis is possible with the detailed modeling of the detector response for such a far off-axis source with the offset of 36.9 $^\circ$. The average spectrum of the burst is extremely hard: the photon index above 400 \kev is -1.7, with no evidence of a break up to 1.1 \mev at 90% confidence level.Comment: Astronomy and Astrophysics in pres

How Citizens’ Views of Democracy Impact Their Evaluation of Metropolitan Governance Arrangements: Evidence From a Comparative Conjoint Experiment

What features are important for democracy from a citizens’ perspective? How do citizens’ views of what democracy should be translate into their day-to-day evaluation of real-existing institutions? These questions have gained a renewed interest in scholarly debates as the notion of democracy as a multi-layered and contested concept has become dominant. Existing research assesses what views of democracy citizens hold and how they combine into different models, but they tell us little about what citizens prefer when they cannot maximize all dimensions at the same time. We shed light on this question by analyzing citizens’ evaluations of different governance arrangements that vary with respect to their input-, throughput- and output-legitimacy and their formal authority. We draw on data from an online-conjoint experiment conducted in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. We find, first, that output-legitimacy is the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement. Second, we find that the importance citizens attribute to different dimensions of these governance bodies is a function of their more general views of democracy. Yet, third, the output-dimension is the most important driver for citizens’ choice of a governance arrangement, irrespective of their views of democracy. Our findings suggest that political actors and institutions can gain legitimacy primarily through the provision of “good output”. However, democratic procedures in the form of input- and throughput-legitimacy remain important traits of democratic governance