Asynchronous Announcements

We propose a multi-agent epistemic logic of asynchronous announcements, where truthful announcements are publicly sent but individually received by agents, and in the order in which they were sent. Additional to epistemic modalities the logic contains dynamic modalities for making announcements and for receiving them. What an agent believes is a function of her initial uncertainty and of the announcements she has received. Beliefs need not be truthful, because announcements already made may not yet have been received. As announcements are true when sent, certain message sequences can be ruled out, just like inconsistent cuts in distributed computing. We provide a complete axiomatization for this \emph{asynchronous announcement logic} (AA). It is a reduction system that also demonstrates that any formula in $AA$ is equivalent to one without dynamic modalities, just as for public announcement logic. The model checking complexity is in PSPACE. A detailed example modelling message exchanging processes in distributed computing in $AA$ closes our investigation

Reclaiming the (Swiss) nation for God: the politics of Charismatic prophecy

Using an ethnographical approach, this paper examines the relationship between Charismatic prophecy found in Evangelical circles and a discourse that envisions the concept of “the (Swiss) nation” as the basis and horizon for understanding God’s activity within history. We will demonstrate the intricacy of various modes of participation, ranging from ecstatic involvement in church Sunday worship and Charismatic youth meetings to citizenship in the national community. In such settings, participants are urged to connect the religious and political realms in order to restore the nation through the (re)establishment of an ancestral purity which is seen to have its source in Christianity. “Spiritual warfare” is the framework assumed by the members to perceive the issues at stake, this framework is then extended to the public domain. The analysis will try to shed light on the nature of the communities envisioned, the diverse modes of participating in them and the role of the Holy Spirit as an empowering agent for reshaping those communities and society.Empregando uma abordagem etnográfica, este artigo analisa a relação entre o profetismo carismático desenvolvido nos círculos evangélicos e um discurso que molda o conceito de “nação” (suíça) como fundamento e horizonte para a compreensão da acção de Deus através da história. Procuraremos demons­trar a complexidade e embrenhamento dos distintos modos de participação, que alternam entre o envolvimento extático no culto dominical e nos encontros das juventudes carismáticas, e a participação de cidadania na comunidade nacional. Nestes contextos, os participantes são convidados a interligar a esfera religiosa e política, de forma a poder restaurar a nação através do (re)estabelecimento de uma pureza ancestral que é encontrada no cristianismo. O enquadramento assumido pelos crentes para poder entender o contexto que os rodeia é o de “guerra espiritual”, que por sua vez se desloca para o domínio público. Esta análise procurará, finalmente, compreender a natureza das comunidades divisadas, os distintos modelos de participação nas mesmas e o papel do Espírito Santo como agente empoderador para a reconfiguração da sociedade

Topological susceptibility and Instanton size distribution from over-improved cooling

We measure the topological susceptibility by cooling with an over-improved action. In contrast with usual cooling, large instantons survive over-improved cooling {\em indefinitely}. By varying the parameter of the over-improved cooling action, we measure the instanton size distribution.Comment: 4 uuencoded PostScript pages, contribution to LAT95 (fig.2 simplified to conserve space; available upon request

The Social Scientist, the Public, and the Pragmatist Gaze

Although diverse and sometimes diverging, different approaches, from “pragmatic” to “pragmatist” to “praxeological,” have an important feature in common: the social order is said to be the practical accomplishment of ordinary agents who constitute and maintain in common the world they live in. After presenting the milestones of the main sociological version of pragmatism, that is, pragmatic sociology (sociologie pragmatique), initiated by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, this paper will dwell on the complicated relationship between a pragmatic framework, centered on the insider point of view of agents and social critique, which apprehends the social world from the external point of view of the critical sociologist. To tackle such problematic relationship, we will dwell on two groundbreaking contributions to the “pragmatic turn” in the social sciences, that of Jeanne Favret-Saada’s work on contemporary witchcraft, and Michel de Certeau’s study on 17th Century possessions. They will allow us to show that the revival of the epistemological break is not a necessary step towards political awareness and that pragmatic sociology as such can be fully critical

Biogenesis of the oxidative phosphorylation machinery in plants. From gene expression to complex assembly

This Research Topic is aimed at establishing a collection of articles that focus on the different processes involved in the biogenesis of respiratory complexes in plants as a means to highlight recent advances. In this way, it intends to help to construct a picture of the whole process and, not less important, to expose the existing gaps that need to be addressed to fully understand how plant cells build and modulate the complex structures involved in respiration.Fil: Gonzalez, Daniel Hector. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Santa Fe. Instituto de Agrobiotecnologia del Litoral; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Giegé, Philippe. Université de Strasbourg. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes du CNRS (IBMP-CNRS); Franci