Is Globalization a Fulfillment of Christian Biblical Prophecy?

This paper will explore the changes in globalization over the past 50+ years as it relates to the Christian Bible. Given the Christian view that many Old Testament prophecies have been fulfilled, these prophecies will be described in detail. It will examine financial events and how they appear to correlate with Biblical prophecy. In particular, there will be an emphasis on the move to one world currency and a one-world government. The potential for a unified economy and government to solve the world’s economic woes will be examined. The financial and political events that substantiate these prophecies will be discussed

Punishing Women: The Promise and Perils of Contextualized Sentencing for Aboriginal Women in Canada

This article examines the failure of Canadian sentencing reforms to remedy the over-incarceration of Aboriginal woman through exploration of a sentencing methodology that judges may employ to give effect to the reforms: the social contextualization of women\u27s lawbreaking. Social context analysis developed as a critique of how the state controls and punishes women and as a way to expose failures of justice. More recently, commentators have suggested that the insertion of social context analysis into the sentencing process might allow courts to find new and more robust justifications for lowering the penalties they impose on women lawbreakers from marginalized communities. This article also considers whether the emergence of risk as a rationale for penal intervention and control has made it more difficult for judges to realize the promise of contextualized analysis as a foundation for less harsh sentencing of Aboriginal women

Spinal cord injury and physical activity: health, well-being and (false) hope

It is vital that people with spinal cord injury (SCI) maintain a physically active lifestyle to promote lifelong health and well-being. Yet despite these benefits, within hospital rehabilitation and upon discharge into the community, people with SCI are largely inactive. Physiotherapists in SCI rehabilitation have been identified as the healthcare professionals (HCPs) ideally placed to promote a physically active lifestyle. However, to successfully engage people with SCI in physical activity (PA), physiotherapists have to manage their hopes and expectations of SCI rehabilitation. With all this in mind, the purpose of this thesis was to explore the role of PA for people with SCI in hospital rehabilitation and in the community. The first aim of this research was to explore the barriers, benefits and facilitators of PA for people with SCI. The second aim was to examine how hopes and expectations are managed by the physiotherapists in SCI rehabilitation and by health practitioners in a community-based leisure time physical activity (LTPA) setting. The third aim was to propose improvement to LTPA promotion for people with SCI. These aims were addressed through: 1) a meta-synthesis of the qualitative literature to identify the barriers, benefits and facilitators of LTPA for people with SCI; 2) an examination of the role of LTPA in SCI rehabilitation; and 3) an exploration of experiences of participants with SCI, and their trainers in a new type of LTPA; activity-based rehabilitation (ABR). Framed by interpretivism, data were analysed by thematic analysis and dialogical narrative analysis. This thesis has made an original and significant contribution to the literature by revealing a deep understanding of factors that constrain and facilitate physically active lifestyles for people with SCI. For example, this research has uniquely demonstrated the role of pleasure in facilitating continued engagement in LTPA. Furthermore, this thesis identified that despite valuing the role of PA for people with SCI, active promotion of PA remains largely absent from physiotherapy practice. The dilemmas of promoting PA for the physiotherapists in SCI centres included a lack of training and education in health promotion and a concern over the false hope of recovery from LTPA opportunities such as ABR. To try and avoid false hope of recovery, the physiotherapists drew upon the therapeutic plot of acceptance and employed therapeutic actions to guide patients towards realistic hopes and expectations. An identification of three narrative types operating in ABR did reveal that some clients were exercising in the hope to walk again. However, the trainers were not preoccupied with acceptance as they also tried to avoid false hopes of ABR. In light of these findings there are several practical recommendations for people with SCI, HCPs such as physiotherapists, the health care system and other health practitioners in community based LTPA opportunities. These practical implications are aimed at improving PA promotion and reducing the barriers to PA for people with SCI. For example, there is a need for more effective knowledge translation across the macro, meso and micro fields. At the macro level meaningful guidelines on PA for people with SCI need to be developed and embedded into UK and Ireland policies if they are to be received and utilised by physiotherapists in SCI rehabilitation and health practitioners in the community. At the meso and micro level appropriate training and education need to be delivered to physiotherapists on PA and SCI to equip them with sufficient knowledge to prescribe and promote PA. Furthermore, the knowledge on PA shared with physiotherapists needs to include the diversity of LTPA opportunities available to people with SCI including ABR. Closer communication and engagement should be implemented at the micro level between physiotherapists in SCI centres and the health practitioners working in community initiatives such as ABR to confront issues regarding hope. In addition to knowledge translation practices, there needs to be support within the healthcare system to facilitate a physically active lifestyle for people with SCI. Equally, a more critical attitude to PA promotion is called for in terms of the possible adverse consequences

Ready, Set, and Go Back: The Role of the Judiciary in Brazil’s Bingo Ban

Brazil, the host of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, is known for strong competitive traditions in sports and games. It is also one of only three G-20 countries (together with Saudi Arabia and Indonesia) that currently bans non-state provision of gambling products. Bingo was a notable exception to this prohibition, after enabling legislation was enacted in 1993, with the intention that proceeds would help fund national sports development. The game quickly became very popular but there were persistent questions about, and contestations over, the capacity of the regulatory framework to control the dual risks of exploitation of bingo consumers, and corruption of politicians and public officials by bingo entrepreneurs. By the mid-2000s the enabling framework had been abandoned and the game returned to the domain of illegality. Brazilian judges played an active and prominent role in the regulation of bingo during the shifts from prohibition to legalisation and back to prohibition. This paper critically and contextually analyses the complexities of judicial engagement with bingo regulation, focusing in particular on the ways that Brazilian judges have deployed social, economic, and political considerations to justify both permission and prohibition of commercial bingo houses. Recognising that contradictory and incoherent judicial decision-making is not unique to bingo law, the paper seeks to understand how the judiciary contributes to the governance of gambling in a setting where corruption is constructed as endemic

Monitoring bioaerosol and odour emissions from composting facilities - WR1121

Government policy requires that valuable resources should be recovered and recycled from biodegradable waste. A successful and growing organics recycling industry delivers this policy with composting being one of the principal technologies deployed to process suitable feedstock such as garden and food waste. Composting inevitably generates bioaerosols – particulate matter comprising cells or cellular components that are released into the air as a result of disturbance of composting feedstock or the processing of final product. Exposure to bioaerosols has the potential to be harmful to human and animal health. The Environment Agency adopts a precautionary and risk-based approach to the regulation of composting facilities which was developed on the basis of research by Wheeler et al. (2001) and which has been updated as new evidence has become available. The Environment Agency also requires site operators to monitor bioaerosols around their facilities using methods specified in a standard protocol which relies upon classical microbiology methods which are tried and tested but which are labour-intensive, slow and offer only a snapshot view of a highly dynamic system. A recent IOM review commissioned by Defra (Searl, 2009) on exposure-response relationships for bioaerosol emissions from waste treatment processes identified significant gaps in knowledge of exposure to bioaerosols and recommended that more research was needed into alternatives to viable microbial monitoring such as priority biomarkers (notably endotoxin) and potential surrogates such as particulate matter. The IOM review also concluded that there is a lack of information to support the development of appropriate stand-off distances. The overall aim of this project was to provide evidence on bioaerosol production, dispersion and potential exposures from composting facilities in support of future developments in policy and regulation of biowaste facilities. The objectives were: (i) to undertake a comprehensive set of standard and novel bioaerosol measurements at representative composting sites to assess comparability between different methods and also to measure spatial and temporal variations; and (ii) to determine the odour emissions and then compare these with bioaerosol emissions to see if odour is a marker of significant bioaerosol exposure. Standard (AfOR, 2009) and novel (CEN filter method, endotoxin, glucan, qPCR, real-time particulates) bioaerosols measurements were taken on a minimum of three to a maximum of six occasions over a twelve month period at four different composting facilities in England. The composting facilities were selected to represent sites of varying sizes (tonnages) and to allow a comparison of bioaerosol concentrations at standard open windrow sites versus a fully-contained site. Additional supporting information was collected including meteorological data at the time of sampling, observation of site operations and measurements of odour at one of the sites. Supporting bioaerosol and odour dispersion modelling was conducted at the site where the odour measurements were made. The spatial trend of bioaerosol concentrations described by Wheeler et al., (1991) and upon which EA regulatory policy is based was broadly corroborated by this dataset. Excursions above the EA acceptable levels at or beyond 250m from source were rare. Bioaerosol concentrations at the enclosed site were generally lower than at the open windrow sites. There was no evidence of a seasonal pattern in bioaerosol concentrations at any of the sites whereas between-sampling day variations were apparent. The cause(s) of these variations were not identified. No consistent relationship was observed between the concentration of bioaerosols measured by the two AfOR standard methods. The two methods displayed certain strengths and weakness in different situations. The IOM sampling device proved to be better suited to situations where high bioaerosol concentrations were encountered (close to source); the Andersen proving to be more effective in the lower concentration range typically found upwind of a site or at distance downwind from source. The higher volume filtration device tested in this project (referred to as the CEN method) produced data that did not consistently match either of the AfOR standard methods. This device demonstrated greater sensitivity than the IOM filter method but suffered drawbacks associated with its weight and a lack of ease of use in the field. Endotoxin concentrations were normally below the level recommended by the Dutch Expert Committee on Occupational Safety but occasional exceedances of this standard were detected at the larger open windrow sites. The majority of glucan measurements were below a widely referred to 10ng/m3 threshold. Significantly elevated concentrations were detected at one of the larger open windrow sites. The dynamic range of the qPCR method is wider (4-5-log) than either of the AfOR and the CEN methods. It is also quicker to carry out and has the potential for automation. The results from the qPCR method are mainly higher than standard AfOR methods, as the method does not distinguish viable and non-viable spores. The spatial distribution of Aspergillus fumigatus spores (by qPCR) along sampling transects, gives similar results compared to AfOR (and CEN) methods. Real time particle detection showed that both TSP and PM10 are correlated to Aspergillus fumigatus spore concentration. No consistent relationship was observed between odour and bioaerosol concentrations (although this was a limited dataset). The envelope of modelled (back-extrapolated) bioaerosol emission rates straddles several orders of magnitude. Distinguishing the influences of meteorological conditions on this variability was not possible. It was not possible to predict bioaerosol or odour emission rates with confidence. This continues to hamper confidence in modelling of odours and bioaerosols from open windrow facilities. The findings of this research have implications for the current standard monitoring protocol which should be reviewed accordingly. The findings of this multi-site survey accord with existing regulatory policy and are supportive of the general trend towards enclosed facilities. Notwithstanding this, continuing research is needed to enhance the database on emission from bioaerosol and odour abatement technologies (e.g. biofilters); to determine the cause(s) of occasional bioaerosol peaks from open facilities; to improve exposure assessments through better modelling protocols; and to link enhanced exposure information to future health impact studies

Targeted Activation Penalties Help CNNs Ignore Spurious Signals

Neural networks (NNs) can learn to rely on spurious signals in the training data, leading to poor generalisation. Recent methods tackle this problem by training NNs with additional ground-truth annotations of such signals. These methods may, however, let spurious signals re-emerge in deep convolutional NNs (CNNs). We propose Targeted Activation Penalty (TAP), a new method tackling the same problem by penalising activations to control the re-emergence of spurious signals in deep CNNs, while also lowering training times and memory usage. In addition, ground-truth annotations can be expensive to obtain. We show that TAP still works well with annotations generated by pre-trained models as effective substitutes of ground-truth annotations. We demonstrate the power of TAP against two state-of-the-art baselines on the MNIST benchmark and on two clinical image datasets, using four different CNN architectures.Comment: 24 pages including appendix; extended version of a paper accepted to AAAI-2024 under the same titl

Helping People Act on Their Hopes Rather Than Their Fears: Lessons From Non-Enrollees in the SEED Initiative

Helping People Act on Their Hopes Rather Than Their Fears: Lessons From Non-Enrollees in the SEED Initiativ

All about that Place: The curious case of bingo liberalisation in Brazil

Bingo is a form of gaming that is often associated with good works, social services, low stakes entertainment and working class sociality. In many parts of the world bingo halls are the province of charities, veterans’ clubs, older women and families: But not in Brazil. Commercial bingo grew rapidly in Brazil during a decade of legality that ended in 2004. Legal bingo halls employed tens of thousands of people and the game was widely played by middle-class and well-educated Brazilians as well as older working-class women and men. However, the game, or more precisely the bingo halls in which it was played, came to be regarded as laundries for dirty money, sources of corruption of public powers and risks to the security of urban neighbourhoods. Using contextualised socio-legal analysis of the places that Brazilian bingo halls became and their place in Brazilian society this article suggests that it may be insightful to look to the place of Brazil in a globalizing world to understand why Brazilian law and regulation failed to institutionalise the commercial bingo hall as a site of clean, safe ‘fun’, to contain the risks it posed and to ensure the continuity of bingo as a legal leisure practice