564 research outputs found
Populism and the scales of statehood. Localism and populist attitudes in Western Europe
The rise of populism in Western Europe is often portrayed as a reaction to globalisation and supra-national integration processes. However, the domestic-international divide is only one aspect of the scalar organisation of government. In this article, we explore the relationship between populist attitudes and orientations towards state scales more generally. Drawing on a representative survey of 4033 citizens in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland, we show that populist attitudes are linked to preferences for those state territories viewed as ‘closer to the people’ not only in a metaphorical but also in a scalar sense. The results suggest that the rise of populism should not only be considered a response to a crisis of party government in a context of globalisation but also as a response to a crisis of national statehood
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 . 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
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