Religion and religious education : comparing and contrasting pupils’ and teachers’ views in an English school

This publication builds on and develops the English findings of the qualitative study of European teenagers’ perspectives on religion and religious education (Knauth et al. 2008), part of ‘Religion in Education: A contribution to dialogue or a factor of conflict in transforming societies of European countries?’ (REDCo) project. It uses data gathered from 27 pupils, aged 15-16, from a school in a multicultural Northern town in England and compares those findings with data gathered from ten teachers in the humanities faculty of the same school, collected during research for the Warwick REDCo Community of Practice. Comparisons are drawn between the teachers’ and their pupils’ attitudes and values using the same structure as the European study: personal views and experiences of religion, the social dimension of religion, and religious education in school. The discussion offers an analysis of the similarities and differences in worldviews and beliefs which emerged. These include religious commitment/observance differences between the mainly Muslim-heritage pupils and their mainly non-practising Christian-heritage teachers. The research should inform the ways in which the statutory duties to promote community cohesion and equalities can be implemented in schools. It should also facilitate intercultural and interreligious understanding between teachers and the pupils from different ethnic and religious backgrounds

Theories of Reference: What Was the Question?

The new theory of reference has won popularity. However, a number of noted philosophers have also attempted to reply to the critical arguments of Kripke and others, and aimed to vindicate the description theory of reference. Such responses are often based on ingenious novel kinds of descriptions, such as rigidified descriptions, causal descriptions, and metalinguistic descriptions. This prolonged debate raises the doubt whether different parties really have any shared understanding of what the central question of the philosophical theory of reference is: what is the main question to which descriptivism and the causal-historical theory have presented competing answers. One aim of the paper is to clarify this issue. The most influential objections to the new theory of reference are critically reviewed. Special attention is also paid to certain important later advances in the new theory of reference, due to Devitt and others

Developmental expression of COE across the Metazoa supports a conserved role in neuronal cell-type specification and mesodermal development

The transcription factor COE (collier/olfactory-1/early B cell factor) is an unusual basic helix–loop–helix transcription factor as it lacks a basic domain and is maintained as a single copy gene in the genomes of all currently analysed non-vertebrate Metazoan genomes. Given the unique features of the COE gene, its proposed ancestral role in the specification of chemosensory neurons and the wealth of functional data from vertebrates and Drosophila, the evolutionary history of the COE gene can be readily investigated. We have examined the ways in which COE expression has diversified among the Metazoa by analysing its expression from representatives of four disparate invertebrate phyla: Ctenophora (Mnemiopsis leidyi); Mollusca (Haliotis asinina); Annelida (Capitella teleta and Chaetopterus) and Echinodermata (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). In addition, we have studied COE function with knockdown experiments in S. purpuratus, which indicate that COE is likely to be involved in repressing serotonergic cell fate in the apical ganglion of dipleurula larvae. These analyses suggest that COE has played an important role in the evolution of ectodermally derived tissues (likely primarily nervous tissues) and mesodermally derived tissues. Our results provide a broad evolutionary foundation from which further studies aimed at the functional characterisation and evolution of COE can be investigated

Legal determinants of external finance revisited : the inverse relationship between investor protection and societal well-being

This paper investigates relationships between corporate governance traditions and quality of life as measured by a number of widely reported indicators. It provides an empirical analysis of indicators of societal health in developed economies using a classification based on legal traditions. Arguably the most widely cited work in the corporate governance literature has been the collection of papers by La Porta et al. which has shown, inter alia, statistically significant relationships between legal traditions and various proxies for investor protection. We show statistically significant relationships between legal traditions and various proxies for societal health. Our comparative evidence suggests that the interests of investors may not be congruent with the interests of wider society, and that the criteria for judging the effectiveness of approaches to corporate governance should not be restricted to financial metrics

Reciprocity as a foundation of financial economics

This paper argues that the subsistence of the fundamental theorem of contemporary financial mathematics is the ethical concept ‘reciprocity’. The argument is based on identifying an equivalence between the contemporary, and ostensibly ‘value neutral’, Fundamental Theory of Asset Pricing with theories of mathematical probability that emerged in the seventeenth century in the context of the ethical assessment of commercial contracts in a framework of Aristotelian ethics. This observation, the main claim of the paper, is justified on the basis of results from the Ultimatum Game and is analysed within a framework of Pragmatic philosophy. The analysis leads to the explanatory hypothesis that markets are centres of communicative action with reciprocity as a rule of discourse. The purpose of the paper is to reorientate financial economics to emphasise the objectives of cooperation and social cohesion and to this end, we offer specific policy advice

Social Participation and Disaster Risk Reduction Behaviors in Tsunami Prone Areas

This paper examines the relationships between social participation and disaster risk reduction actions. A survey of 557 households in tsunami prone areas in Phang Nga, Thailand was conducted following the 2012 Indian Ocean earthquakes. We use a multivariate probit model to jointly estimate the likelihood of undertaking three responses to earthquake and tsunami hazards (namely, (1) following disaster-related news closely, (2) preparing emergency kits and/or having a family emergency plan, and (3) having an intention to migrate) and community participation.We find that those who experienced losses from the 2004 tsunami are more likely to participate in community activities and respond to earthquake hazards. Compared to men, women are more likely to prepare emergency kits and/or have an emergency plan and have a greater intention to migrate. Living in a community with a higher proportion of women with tertiary education increases the probability of engaging in community activities and carrying out disaster risk reduction measures. Individuals who participate in village-based activities are 5.2% more likely to undertake all three risk reduction actions compared to those not engaging in community activities. This implies that encouraging participation in community activities can have positive externalities in disaster mitigation

How victim age affects the context and timing of child sexual abuse: applying the routine activities approach to the first sexual abuse incident

The aim of this study was to examine from the routine activities approach how victim age might help to explain the timing, context and nature of offenders’ first known contact sexual abuse incident. One-hundred adult male child sexual abusers (M = 45.8 years, SD = 12.2; range = 20–84) were surveyed about the first time they had sexual contact with a child. Afternoon and early evening (between 3 pm and 9 pm) was the most common time in which sexual contact first occurred. Most incidents occurred in a home. Two-thirds of incidents occurred when another person was in close proximity, usually elsewhere in the home. Older victims were more likely to be sexually abused by someone outside their families and in the later hours of the day compared to younger victims. Proximity of another person (adult and/or child) appeared to have little effect on offenders’ decisions to abuse, although it had some impact on the level of intrusion and duration of these incidents. Overall, the findings lend support to the application of the routine activities approach for considering how contextual risk factors (i.e., the timing and relationship context) change as children age, and raise questions about how to best conceptualize guardianship in the context of child sexual abuse. These factors should be key considerations when devising and implementing sexual abuse prevention strategies and for informing theory development

New Insights into the Evolution of Metazoan Tyrosinase Gene Family

Tyrosinases, widely distributed among animals, plants and fungi, are involved in the biosynthesis of melanin, a pigment that has been exploited, in the course of evolution, to serve different functions. We conducted a deep evolutionary analysis of tyrosinase family amongst metazoa, thanks to the availability of new sequenced genomes, assessing that tyrosinases (tyr) represent a distinctive feature of all the organisms included in our study and, interestingly, they show an independent expansion in most of the analyzed phyla. Tyrosinase-related proteins (tyrp), which derive from tyr but show distinct key residues in the catalytic domain, constitute an invention of chordate lineage. In addition we here reported a detailed study of the expression territories of the ascidian Ciona intestinalis tyr and tyrps. Furthermore, we put efforts in the identification of the regulatory sequences responsible for their expression in pigment cell lineage. Collectively, the results reported here enlarge our knowledge about the tyrosinase gene family as valuable resource for understanding the genetic components involved in pigment cells evolution and development