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Although their applications have not yet extended widely due to their incipient state, nano-technologies and nano-medicines may be presumed to be at the origin of the next great technological revolution, foreseeably contributing to a new stage with respect to evolutions in mankind’s progress. Their possibilities are truly immense in enormously varied spheres, but the risks and uncertainties they engender are enormous too. Because access and use of the unceasingly increasing mega-quantity of information they generate will place further strain on the protection of personal life, privacy, the exercise of freedom, as well as the safeguarding of other fundamental principles and rights.
Background: Adaptation to low oxygen by changing gene expression is vitally important for cell survival and tissue development. The sprouting of new blood vessels, initiated from endothelial cells, restores the oxygen supply of ischemic tissues. In contrast to the transcriptional response induced by hypoxia, which is mainly mediated by members of the HIF family, there are only few studies investigating alternative splicing events. Therefore, we performed an exon array for the genome-wide analysis of hypoxia-related changes of alternative splicing in endothelial cells.
Methodology/Principal findings: Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) were incubated under hypoxic conditions (1% O(2)) for 48 h. Genome-wide transcript and exon expression levels were assessed using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Exon 1.0 ST Array. We found altered expression of 294 genes after hypoxia treatment. Upregulated genes are highly enriched in glucose metabolism and angiogenesis related processes, whereas downregulated genes are mainly connected to cell cycle and DNA repair. Thus, gene expression patterns recapitulate known adaptations to low oxygen supply. Alternative splicing events, until now not related to hypoxia, are shown for nine genes: six which are implicated in angiogenesis-mediated cytoskeleton remodeling (cask, itsn1, larp6, sptan1, tpm1 and robo1); one, which is involved in the synthesis of membrane-anchors (pign) and two universal regulators of gene expression (cugbp1 and max).
Conclusions/Significance: For the first time, this study investigates changes in splicing in the physiological response to hypoxia on a genome-wide scale. Nine alternative splicing events, until now not related to hypoxia, are reported, considerably expanding the information on splicing changes due to low oxygen supply. Therefore, this study provides further knowledge on hypoxia induced gene expression changes and presents new starting points to study the hypoxia adaptation of endothelial cells.
The requalification of Habermas’ discussions on political philosophy and legal theory after the publication of Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (2005), and his most recent texts and debates on religion and the public sphere, suggest a revision of the Habermasian theory of rationalization as it was firstly presented in Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns (1982), especially on what concerns the processes of dessacralization and the linguistification of religious authority. In search of contributing to this revision, this paper intends to focus on the problem of a supposedly “lost” aesthetic-expressive understanding of religious authority in Habermas’s theory of rationalization, which may have contributed to a theory of law in Faktizität und Geltung (1992) that does not give satisfactory account to the aesthetical-expressive character of the modern understanding of legal authority. A better understanding of this special character, however, may contribute not only to the avoidance of fundamentalisms and new attempts of “aesthetization of politics”, but also to a rational strengthening of the solidarity of the citizens of democratic constitutional states.
This paper aims to discuss in which sense public hearings in supreme courts of democratic rules of law can be seen as proceduralization of popular sovereignty policies. These policies constitute expressions of a normative claim for a wider “publicization of law” by democratic states’ institutional powers and organs; a claim that becomes evident when one undertakes an intersubjective interpretation of law. This theoretical argument will be presented in the first section of the paper through a new articulation of Jürgen Habermas’ discursive theory of law and his most recent studies on the concept of political public sphere. The theoretical section gives normative and procedural criteria for the second section of the paper, which consists on a critical analysis of the procedures and practical cases of public hearings held at the Brazilian Supreme Court, constituting the first scientific study to date on the Court’s use of this legal instrument.
Since the XIX century, a pleiad of philosophers and historians support the idea that Greek philosophy, usually reported to have started with the presocratics, lays its basis in a previous moment: the Greek myths – systematized by Homer and Hesiod – and the Greek arts, in particular the lyric and tragedy literature. According to this, it is important to retrieve philosophical elements even before the pre-Socratics to understand the genesis of specific concepts in Philosophy of Law. Besides, assuming that the Western’s core values are inherited from Ancient Greece, it is essential to recuperate the basis of our own justice idea, through the Greek myths and tragedy literature. As a case study, this paper aims on the comparison of two key-works, each one representing a phase of the Greek tragedy: The Orestea, by Aeschylus, and Orestes, by Euripides. Both contain the same story, telling how the Greeks understood the necessity of solving their conflicts not by blood revenge, but through a political way, and also the political drama. Although, in Aeschylus’s one, men still leashed by their fate, while the gods play a major role, in order to punish human pride (hybris). In a different way, on Euripides’s work men face their own loneliness, in a world fulfilled with gods, each one demanding divergent actions. That represents a necessary moment to the flourishing freedom and human subjectivity, and, once the exterior divinity is unable to resolve human problems, men will need to discover their interior divinity: that is how the Philosophy emerges.
Dworkin`s political theory is characterized by the interpretative integrity of morality, law, and politics, the so-called “hedgehog’s approach”. The interpretative integrity approach functions on multiple levels. Firstly, philosophical foundations of his theory of justice are linked to his conception of just liberal society and state. Secondly, from the perspective of political morality, interpretative concepts of law and morality are internally connected, in addition to interpretative concepts of equality, liberty, and democracy. Thirdly, from the perspective of philosophical foundations, individual ethics, personal morality and political morality are mutually connected. The aforementioned ethical and moral foundations are also related – in a wider sense of philosophical foundations - with his gnoseological conception regarding value concepts in law, politics and morality, and with his episthemological conception regarding an objective truth in the field of values, in a sense that the value concepts are interpretative and can be objectively true when articulated in accordance with methodological rules and standards of a »reflexive equilibrium« and an interpretative integrity, and in accordance with the so-called internal scepticism in the context of value pluralism.
The term “ethics” in a “narrower” sense refers to individual ethics, the study of how to live well, while the “ethics” in a “broader” sense refers to personal morality, the study of how we must treat other people. The term “morality” however, is used primarily to denote a political morality, the issue of how a sovereign power should treat its citizens.
Philosophical foundations of Dworkin`s political theory of justice, his conception of two cardinal values of humanity, his concievement of individual ethics, personal morality and political morality will be in the focus of consideration.
Agamben has claimed to work inside the tradition inaugurated by the archaeological method of Michel Foucault but not to fully coincide with it. “My method is archaeological and paradigmatic in a sense which is very close to that of Foucault, but not completely coincident with it. The question is, facing the dichotomies that structuralize our culture, to go beyond the exceptions that have been producing the former, however, not to find a chronologically originary state, but to be able to understand the situation in which we are. Archaeology is, in this sense, the only way to access present” (interview to Flavia Costa, trad. Susana Scramim, in Revista do Departamento de Psicologia – Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, v. 18 - n. 1, 131-136, Jan./Jun. 2006, 132, translated by the author). However, the aspects in which Agamben follows Foucault's method and the ones he does not were never very clear. This situation seems to change with the edition of Agamben's most extensive and explicit texts on method, Signatura Rerum. Sul Metodo (2008, italian edition). The goal of this article is to identify the points of intersection between their methods and some points in which they differ.
John Gray is the thinker who has reconstructed the main tenets of ethical pluralism inherent in the work of its initiator - Isaiah Berlin - and pointed to its consequences for political philosophy. In particular he singled out three levels of conflict in ethics identifiable in Berlin’s writings: among the ultimate values belonging to the same morality or code of conduct, among whole ways or styles of life and within goods or values which are themselves internally complex and inherently pluralistic.
It is the third, internal kind of conflict that proves to be the richest in implications.Because it undermines a whole constellation of contemporary liberal doctrines informed by the Kantian-Lockean tradition that conform to the legal paradigm. From the pluralist perspective such monumental theories (e.g. those of Rawls or Dworkin) are no longer sustainable due to the recognition that no ultimate value is immune to the phenomenon of incommensurability. Thus, irresolvable conflicts may also break out within the given regulative value.
Confronting ethical pluralism with general reflection on law has mostly negative consequences. Nevertheless, the incommensurability thesis sheds considerable light on certain legal disputes. This claim will be illustrated by interpreting from the pluralist perspective the controversy over the verdict by the European Tribunal of Human Rights of 3 November 2010 concerning hanging crosses in classrooms.
Brazil has one of the worst distributions of income in the world. The wealth of the richest 1% of the population is equal to that of the poorest 50%. Brazil has a greater concentration of wealth than ninety-five percent of the countries on which data is available. In the legal field, tax justice is based on the constitutional principle of the “ability to pay”, according to which taxes should be paid based on the economic capacity of the taxpayer. This principle first appeared in the Brazilian legal order in the 1946 Constitution, was excluded from the texts of 1967/69, and reappeared in § 1 of article 145 of the 1988 Constitution. The aim of this paper is to examine two possible grounds for the ability to pay principle (equal sacrifices and proportional sacrifices) to show how, in Brazil, the interpretations that seek to assign a positive content to the principle are limited to the horizons of a particular form of State associated with the theory of equal sacrifice. This theory for its turn is consistent with a theory of justice, under which no expense or charge levied by the government can alter the distribution of welfare produced by the market. As the application of the ability to pay principle is done within the limits of that horizon, as a consequence, this principle does not play an important role in the issue of reduction of inequality in Brazil.
In their book Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Tom Beauchamp and James Childress offer an account of bioethics, called “Principlism”, by way of specifying and balancing four clusters of principles.2 These principles are found, as the author state, in a common morality, understood as a set of universally shared moral beliefs.
This paper seeks to introduce the following questions: Does this account of Beauchamp and Childress flow from common morality in a natural way? Can their proposals claim to be endorsed by the authority of common morality? If not, in what way does Principlism contribute to bioethics?
This paper is aimed to re-elaborate questions and discuss them rather than presenting answers. It starts with the dialog concerning specific contributions of philosophy of language to Law, followed by the re-elaboration of some yet unanswered problems, as well as the discussion of possible paths for this issue.
Since de advent of what is known as new constitucionalism, jurists have faced a difficult task in order to overcome some failures of normative positivism. In this context, the judiciary has played a renewed role, which can be justified on grounds of legal theory and on institutional reasons. However, this new role has led legal philosophers to several concerns, such as the relationship between law and ethics. On one hand, Critical Legal Studies points out that the judge always acts informed by his own convictions. On the other hand, according to R. Forst (within another context, but also relevant here), this is not really a problem, because a rule can be provided with ethics, but not ethically justified. This openness of law to moral makes it difficult for the interpretative judicial discourse to be taken as claimed by K. Günther: as a discourse of application only, and not of justification. All these controversies, however, lead to a common statement: the constitutional adjudication has been exercising a different activity. Some legal systems allows such activity legitimacy in some extent, like Brazilian’s, for example, which i) states a very broad adjudication, ii) provides an extensive catalog of basic rights, and iii) contains several procedural mechanisms for their protection. This empowers the adjudication to exercise what can be called a political activity. Therefore, a series of moral issues which were once exclusive to the political arena have been brought to the judiciary, such as: gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, religious freedom, federation, separation of powers, distribution of scarce resources. In a democracy, these moral questions ought to be mainly decided through deliberation outside the judiciary, but not always this is what happens. The paper discusses these issues, showing also how the Brazilian Supreme Court has dealt - technically, or not - with this relationship between law and justice in a complex and pluralist society.
Are Kantian philosophy and its principle of respect for persons inadequate to the protection of environmental values? This paper answers this question by elucidating how Kantian ethics can take environmental values seriously. In the period that starts with the Critique of Judgment in 1790 and ends with the Metaphysics of Morals in 1797, the subject would have been approached by Kant in a different manner; although the respect that we may owe to non-human nature is still grounded in our duties to mankind, the basis for such respect stems from nature’s aesthetic properties, and the duty to preserve nature lies in our duties to ourselves. Compared to the “market paradigm”, as it is called by Gillroy (the reference is to a conception of a public policy based on a criterion of economic efficiency or utility), Kantian philosophy can offer a better explanation of the relationship between environmental policy and the theory of justice. Kantian justice defines the “just state” as the one that protects the moral capacities of its “active” citizens, as presented in the first Part of the Metaphysics of Morals. In the Kantian paradigm, the environmental risk becomes a “public” concern. That means it is not subsumed under an individual decision, based on a calculus.
The increase in the volume of litigation verified since the 1990’s, having the Brazilian society as context, made the judiciary open itself to new technologies which facilitate the access to justice, as well as to a faster resolution of the demands. However, the intense insertion of technical rationalization in the process and decision operations by the judiciary, during the last years, led to a legalization supported by presuppositions of technical-instrumental regulation. According to the goal policy established by the CNJ, the annoyance of the instrumental rationality is present “with respect to purposes”, which demands, more and more, a mere fulfillment of previously instituted goals from the law operators. The matter is to know if the implementation of new technologies to solve the growing litigation coming from the complexity of societies is enough to adjust the Law to a post-conventional platform. If the social complexity implies resources coming from new technologies, it’s not certain that such technologies, on their own, satisfactorily answer a judicial model which, seen under the eyes of the post- conventional legitimacy and regulation, is adequate to complex societies. This illustrates that a judicial model, able to deal with the social plurality, must take into account not only the rules of instrumental rationality, but also the fundamental issues of communicative rationality. This current work intends to evaluate if the applicability of the instrumental rationality in the judiciary equally allows the law to extent the useful conditions of the communicative rationality to the consensual formation of will and opinion in the Democratic State of Law.
Civil Society became an important theme in the recent discussion of political or social theory. Civil Society is playing a substantial role for the legislation process. We can find it especially in the activities of international NGO. It gives a new aspect of the relationship between state and society, and legal philosophically speaking, of validity of law. Activities of Civil Society are socially recognized and their support systems are gradually institutionalized also domestic in Japan. But Japanese NPO has its own weak point, which arises from the political structure of our society.
Scientific and technical achievements can cause deep changes in spheres of morals and law. I am going to discuss some philosophical conclusions which follow from two significant ideas of contemporary civilization. First of them is a thesis about indistinguishability of natural from artificial, and the second one is an opportunity of creation of artificial human.
The first thesis is a consequence of the principle of relativity of physical reality to conditions and a way of observation, on which both interpretations of quantum theory and Einstein’s theories of relativity are based. I show that the given principle deprives us of objective criteria to distinguish natural from artificial, freedom from necessity, freedom from violence.
Today power of technique is directed not only on the external world, but also on a person. Due to information technology, and biotechnology an opportunity of creation of artificial and controlled individual increases. So human loses many features of a person and transforms to a part of a collective super individual subject. In modern time a search of the transcendental basis of law and power leads to impersonal human and recognition of super individuality.
Traditional belief about natural rights will disappear. There is necessity of revision of such concept as right of freedom. Liberal belief about freedom as a condition of human existence is changing. Prospects of technical development make justified R. Dworkin's reflections about superiority of right of equality in comparison with right of freedom.
The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 declares Brazil as a Democratic State of Law. This formally democratic legal status has been facing difficulties when it comes to its material implementation. Brazilian legal procedures are still greatly influenced by the catholic heritage from Portugal in the times of colonization, translated in the present times into a strong moral set of dogmas that still reflects upon the legal production and interpretation in the country. Recently in Brazil, a debate brought to the Supremo Tribunal Federal, the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court, has evidenced the struggle between Ethics and Morality in the country’s legal scenario. The focus of the discussion was the possibility of abortion of anencephalic fetuses (in Brazil, abortion in considered a crime against life). In order to properly ground its decision, the Court invited scientists, doctors, members of feminist movements and representatives of certain religions to a public dialogue, in which both scientific-technical and purely moral-religious arguments were presented. Although these procedures encouraged and promoted a democratic and pluralistic legal debate, it seems like the crucial point of the discussion were not taken into account: the scientific character of Law. This is the object of the present manuscript: in order to ensure an intersubjective construction and application of Law, this must be perceived as an Applied Social Science and judges, lawyers, legislators and all other legal actors must proceed in a scientific way. To illustrate the theme, the specific case of abortion of anencephalic fetuses will be mentioned through the text.
The very idea of the European Convention on Human Rights is to bring the laws of contracting states into line with fundamental human rights principles. Where the Convention is not explicit, the Court should never rule restrictively so as to reduce the scope of a general right. In the case of homeschooling, the Convention sets forth the general principle that “the state shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.” It must not, therefore, allow a contracting state to eliminate a means of achieving this desired by parents—unless the state can show that the means in question is ineffective.
I will discuss issues which can be seen as taken strictly from the science fiction literature. Nonetheless, I would like to demonstrate that those issues not so far from now will have a big influence on the ethical discourse and also the law and social philosophy. The first part aims at clarifying concept of “cyborg” and “cyborgization”. I will consider only meanings coined for scientific or philosophical purposes. I will also indicate two experiments, which bring to life “the first cyborg” – term in which the head-scientist of these experiments used to describe his effects. In the second part I will show ideas of transhumanists in the context of technological achievements mentioned earlier. I will concentrate on the human enhancement idea, underling majority of transhumanist’s branches. I will try to demonstrate that it is realistic concept. In the third part I will shift my attention to some of consequences which flow from “cyborgisation” and human enhancements mentioned in prior parts. I will present two rights seen by transhumanist’s philosophers as able to become human rights in the near future. In these frames I will consider the “morphological freedom” and the “cognitive liberty”. At the end, in the fourth part I will summarize my considerations about the influence of semi-fictitious technologies. I will try to bring on an unambiguous conclusion that aforesaid issues could in the nearest future become very substantial for every area of the theory and policy of law.
In his new book, R. Dworkin advocates the unity of values thesis. He wants to circumscribe morality as a proper epistemological domain which is methodologically different from scientific inquiry. The epistemological independence of morality is supposed to be a consequence of the irreducible fact/value dichotomy. This paper sustains that unity of values thesis is methodologically correct; all moral reasoning must be a constructive interpretation of its meaning. However, that author fails to recognize that not every axiological interpretation implies moral consequences. From H. Putnam’s pragmatic realism, this paper intends to demonstrate that much of scientific inquiry relies on values interpretation, and that this kind of reasoning is morally neutral. Finally, it should be clear that epistemological choices in legal positivism – e.g. the decision on which aspects of social interaction are theoretically relevant – should not disturb the soundness of its argument nor should it be read as if it had moral implications. This paper concludes that positivist theories cannot be ruled out. Since the choice between descriptive and interpretative models requires a circular justification, legal theory is itself an activity governed by epistemic values interpretation. Likewise natural sciences, it can only be understood from an internal perspective. Accordingly, inclusive positivism holds the advantage of being more consilient than interpretivism, which is arguably parochial.
A discussion regarding the complex relationship that exists between the concepts of efficiency and justice goes a long way back and raises several relevant arguments. One of them, and it must be rejected in advance, is that justice is in the realm of public law, while efficiency in that of private law. Is it unacceptable that the balance between public and private law leads to the belief of a divided legal system; one system, one set of laws, one legal system. Legislators and judges are responsible for determining a balance and no theory can postulate that the balance will always be found with a simple cut between public and private law to distinguish when the criterion should be justice or when it should be efficiency. It is reductionist to confine the discussion to single goals of efficiency and justice, when human dignity and human rights should also be considered when one is discussing law. Moreover, a discussion limited to only the concepts of justice and efficiency, relies on a belief that the terms are mutually exclusive. Posner has said that the economic analysis of law has limits and philosophy of law plays an extremely important role in this discourse, which must be interdisciplinary. There can be no goal other than the realization of human rights and there can be no justice if not shared by all of mankind.
The author will deal with the relationship between law and technology from the viewpoint of technology security standard. One of the relationships can be found in that law has been providing a security level of technology. They have been saying that law would often follow technology. Law is too slow to adapt the changing technology through the advancement of technology. Above all, information technology has an electronic rapidity and a legislation technology has a paper one. There might be a big estrangement between law and technology. However, law must provide a security standard of technology. The standard must be based on a relative security level. The relative level would premise on the ordinary, lawful and ethical use of technology. Most technology has been opened to the public without any technology impact assessment. Technology would have some defect, which the producers have overlooked. As a result, the users might often meet with the accidents caused on the defects.
Then law should provide a technology security standard to exclude the defects from the users’ viewpoint as secure as possible. The security standard must be reflected on the architecture standard of technology. The architecture standard may be a yardstick whether the creators can evade the responsibility for the accidents.
The standard would also premise on the ordinary, lawful and ethical use of technology. The ordinary use means that the users should use normally technology within the extent of the architecture standard. The ethical use means that the users should use technology being conscious of the defects in order to avoid accidents.
The relative security level may be the sum of the architecture standard and the ethical use of technology.
In information society, legal norm communications have been never established in certain fields for a long time. That is, a few legal norms have never obeyed in the fields. Above all, legal norms which relate to data protection, information contents and information security, would often infringed. Most violation would be conducted by using information technologies. Information technologies would often be used in these infringing incidents. It can be said that these infringing incidents would have never been conducted without information technology. These infringing incidents include hacking actions, personal data abuse, personal information disclosure, unauthorized access, infringing copyrights, infringing privacy rights, and so on. A way of preventing those infringements is to raise the level of punishment against the violators. But, it will prove to be disappointing. Furthermore, it would be an ex post facto measure to the last. It would be needed to invent an ex ante measure, if it is possible. As the ex ante measure, the author proposes a fusion of law and information technology. An information technology will lead people to a lawful deed when they conduct actions in using computers and networks. They say that information technology cures information technology. After all, the fusion will aim at realizing laws, and it will contribute to recover a social justice.
Vor Kurzem hat das koreanische Höchstgericht den lebensverkürzenden Behandlungsabbruch durch die Entnahme des Beatmungsgeräts als zulässig befunden. Dafür sollen zwei Voraussetzungen erfüllt sein; 1) der Eintritt des irreversiblen Todesprozesses, 2) der ernstliche mutmaßliche Wille des Patienten. Dabei sind auch die folgenden abweichenden Meinungen vertreten. Sie gehen davon aus, dass im betreffenden Fall der nahe Todesvorgang noch nicht eingetreten ist. Darüber hinaus darf die Selbstbestimmung des Patienten nur in der negativen Weise vollzogen und keinesfalls in positiver Weise, denn dies würde den Selbstmord bedeuten. Außerdem ist der mutmaßliche Wille der Patientin von ihrem hypothetischen zu unterscheiden. Allerdings könnte der Behandlungsabbruch unabhängig vom Willen des Patienten ohne Rekurs auf die Selbstbestimmung des Patienten genehmigt werden, wenn auf die immanenten Schranken des ärztlichen Auftrags abgestellt werden. In der Sterbehilfe steht die Unverfügbarkeit des Lebens im Gegensatz zu der Selbstbestimmung des Patienten. Dabei zeigt sich aber, dass der Schutz des Lebens angesichts der Tötung im Krieg oder in der Notwehrlage nur ein relativer ist. Genauso lässt sich das Recht des Patienten nicht als das auf das eigene Leben, sondern lediglich als das auf den natürlichen Tod verstehen. Im vorliegenden Fall kommt es in rechtlicher Hinsicht auf sog. Passive Sterbehilfe an. Wenn hier der in Kürze bevorstehende Todeseintritt und die mutmaßliche Einwilligung der Patienten nicht abzulehnen ist, soll der Behandlungsabbruch rechtfertigt werden. Allerdings darf der einseitige Behandlungsabbruch nicht bewilligt werden und zwar vor allem deshalb, weil das Selbstbestimmungsrecht des Patienten vernachlässigt werden kann.
The use of most if not all technologies is accompanied by negative side effects, While we may profit from today’s technologies, it is most often future generations who bear most risks. Risk analysis therefore becomes a delicate issue, because future risks often cannot be assigned a meaningful occurance probability. This paper argues that technology assessement most often deal with uncertainty and ignorance rather than risk when we include future generations into our ethical, political or juridal thinking. This has serious implications as probabilistic decision approaches are not applicable anymore. I contend that a virtue ethical approach in which dianoetic virtues play a central role may supplement a welfare based ethics in order to overcome the difficulties in dealing with uncertainty and ignorance in technology assessement.
Der religiöse Pluralismus innerhalb der multikulturellen Gesellschaft erfordert vom Staat das Bemühen, die wechselseitige Achtung nicht nur zwischen Personen mit unterschiedlichen religiösen Glaubensüberzeugungen, sondern auch zwischen Glaubenden und Nicht-Glaubenden sicherzustellen. In diesem Kontext wird es für die vom Staat übernommene Funktion entscheidend sein, rechtzeitig zu beurteilen, ob er eine aktive und positive Rolle als eine Institution spielt, welche dafür sorgt, dass die Religionsfreiheit der Einzelnen und der Gruppen geachtet wird. Im Vorliegenden werden einige Gefahren und Bedrohungen für die Religionsfreiheit in der heutigen Gesellschaft analysiert und eine kritische Betrachtung als Antwort auf diese Krisensituation vorgelegt. Konkret werden die folgenden Punkte erörtert: 1. Der Glaube, daß die Religion nicht mit den Werten einer modernen, liberalen Gesellschaft zu vereinbaren ist. 2. Die Konfessionalisierung des Staates. 3. Der Missbrauch der staatlichen Macht, um die Präferenzen der Bürger durch absichtliche Änderungen im sozialen Kontext zu beeinflussen. 4. Die unnötigen Behinderungen und Beschränkung des Rechts auf Verweigerung aus Gewissengründen, die von einem falschen Verständnisses desselben herrühren. 5. Die Verherrlichung eines falsch verstandenen, radikalen Individualismus. 6. Ein Verständnis des Grundsatzes der Nichtdiskriminierung als ,,Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber den Unterschieden“.
Technocracy is usually opposed to democracy. Here, another perspective is taken: technocracy is countered with the rule of law. In trying to understand the contemporary dynamics of the rule of law, two main types of legal systems (in a broad sense) have to be distinguished: firstly, the legal norm, studied by the science of law; secondly, the scientific laws (which includes the legalities of the different sciences and communities). They both contain normative prescriptions. But their differ in their subjects‘ source: while legal norms are the will’s expression of the normative authority, technical prescriptions can be derived from scientific laws, which are grounded over the commonly supposed objectivity of the scientific knowledge about reality. They both impose sanctions too, but in the legal norm they refer to what is established by the norm itself, while in the scientific legality they consist in the reward or the punishment derived from the efficacy or inefficacy to reach the end pursued by the action. The way of legitimation also differs: while legal norms have to have followed the formal procedures and must not have contravened any fundamental right, technical norms‘ validity depend on its theoretical foundations or on its efficacy. Nowadays, scientific knowledge has become and important feature in policy-making. Contradictions can arise between these legal systems. These conflicts are specially grave when the recognition or exercise of fundamental rights is instrumentally used, or when they are violated in order to increase the policies‘ efficacy. A political system is technocratic, when, in case of contradiction, the scientific law finally prevails.
Adaptation of wild-type p53 expressing UKF-NB-3 cancer cells to the murine double minute 2 inhibitor nutlin-3 causes de novo p53 mutations at high frequency (13/20) and multi-drug resistance. Here, we show that the same cells respond very differently when adapted to RITA, a drug that, like nutlin-3, also disrupts the p53/Mdm2 interaction. All of the 11 UKF-NB-3 sub-lines adapted to RITA that we established retained functional wild-type p53 although RITA induced a substantial p53 response. Moreover, all RITA-adapted cell lines remained sensitive to nutlin-3, whereas only five out of 10 nutlin-3-adapted cell lines retained their sensitivity to RITA. In addition, repeated adaptation of the RITA-adapted sub-line UKF-NB-3rRITA10 μM to nutlin-3 resulted in p53 mutations. The RITA-adapted UKF-NB-3 sub-lines displayed no or less pronounced resistance to vincristine, cisplatin, and irradiation than nutlin-3-adapted UKF-NB-3 sub-lines. Furthermore, adaptation to RITA was associated with fewer changes at the expression level of antiapoptotic factors than observed with adaptation to nutlin-3. Transcriptomic analyses indicated the RITA-adapted sub-lines to be more similar at the gene expression level to the parental UKF-NB-3 cells than nutlin-3-adapted UKF-NB-3 sub-lines, which correlates with the observed chemotherapy and irradiation sensitivity phenotypes. In conclusion, RITA-adapted cells retain functional p53, remain sensitive to nutlin-3, and display a less pronounced resistance phenotype than nutlin-3-adapted cells.
Poster presentation: Calcium plays a pivotal role in relaying electrical signals of the cell to subcellular compartments, such as the nucleus. Since this one ion type is used by the cell for many processes a neuron needs to establish finely tuned calcium pathways in order to be able to differentiate multiple tasks, [1-3].
While it is known that neurons can actively change their shape upon neuronal activity, [4-7], we here present novel findings of activity-regulated nuclear morphology, [8,9]. With the help of an experimental and computational modeling approach, we show that hippocampal neurons can change the previously spherical shape of their nuclei to complex and infolded morphologies. This morphology regulation is demonstrated to be regulated by NMDA-receptor gated calcium, while synaptic and extra-synaptic NMDA-receptors elicit opposing effects on nuclear morphology, [8].
The structural alterations of the cell nucleus have significant effects on nuclear calcium dynamics. Compartmentalization of the nucleus, due to membrane infoldings, changes calcium frequencies, amplitudes and spatial distributions, [8,10]. Since these parameters have been shown to control downstream events towards gene transcription, [11,12], the results elucidate the cellular control of nuclear function with the help of morphology modulation. With respect to processes downstream of calcium, we show that histone H3 phosphorylation is closely linked to nuclear morphology. Investigating the nuclear morphologies of hippocampal neurons, two major classes were identified [9,10]. One class contains non-infolded nuclei that have the function of calcium signal integrators, while the other class contains highly infolded nuclei, which function as frequency detectors of nuclear calcium, [10].
Extending this interdisciplinary approach of investigating structure/function relationships in neurons, the effects of cellular morphology – as well as the morphology of the endoplasmic reticulum and other organelles – on neuronal calcium signals is currently being investigated. This endeavor makes use of highly detailed, three-dimensional models of neuronal calcium dynamics, including the three-dimensional morphology of the cell and its organelles.
Urban health is potentially affected by particle emissions. The potential toxicity of nanoparticles is heavily debated and there is an enormous global increase in research activity in this field. In this respect, it is commonly accepted that nanoparticles may also be generated in processes occurring while driving vehicles. So far, a variety of studies addressed traffic-related particulate matter emissions, but only few studies focused on potential nanoparticles. Therefore, the present study analyzed the literature with regard to nanoparticles and cars. It can be stated that, to date, only a limited amount of research has been conducted in this area and more studies are needed to 1) address kind and sources of nanoparticles within automobiles and to 2) analyse whether there are health effects caused by these nanoparticles.
Bicycle traumata are very common and especially neurologic complications lead to disability and death in all stages of the life. This review assembles the most recent findings concerning research in the field of bicycle traumata combined with the factor of bicycle helmet use. The area of bicycle trauma research is by nature multidisciplinary and relevant not only for physicians but also for experts with educational, engineering, judicial, rehabilitative or public health functions. Due to this plurality of global publications and special subjects, short time reviews help to detect recent research directions and provide also information from neighbour disciplines for researchers. It can be stated that to date, that although a huge amount of research has been conducted in this area more studies are needed to evaluate and improve special conditions and needs in different regions, ages, nationalities and to create successful prevention programs of severe head and face injuries while cycling. Focus was explicit the bicycle helmet use, wherefore sledding, ski and snowboard studies were excluded and only one study concerning electric bicycles remained due to similar motion structures within this review. The considered studies were all published between January 2010 and August 2011 and were identified via the online databases Medline PubMed and ISI Web of Science.
Increasing evidence about the central nervous representation of pain in the brain suggests that the operculo-insular cortex is a crucial part of the pain matrix. The pain-specificity of a brain region may be tested by administering nociceptive stimuli while controlling for unspecific activations by administering non-nociceptive stimuli. We applied this paradigm to nasal chemosensation, delivering trigeminal or olfactory stimuli, to verify the pain-specificity of the operculo-insular cortex. In detail, brain activations due to intranasal stimulation induced by non-nociceptive olfactory stimuli of hydrogen sulfide (5 ppm) or vanillin (0.8 ppm) were used to mask brain activations due to somatosensory, clearly nociceptive trigeminal stimulations with gaseous carbon dioxide (75% v/v). Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) images were recorded from 12 healthy volunteers in a 3T head scanner during stimulus administration using an event-related design. We found that significantly more activations following nociceptive than non-nociceptive stimuli were localized bilaterally in two restricted clusters in the brain containing the primary and secondary somatosensory areas and the insular cortices consistent with the operculo-insular cortex. However, these activations completely disappeared when eliminating activations associated with the administration of olfactory stimuli, which were small but measurable. While the present experiments verify that the operculo-insular cortex plays a role in the processing of nociceptive input, they also show that it is not a pain-exclusive brain region and allow, in the experimental context, for the interpretation that the operculo-insular cortex splay a major role in the detection of and responding to salient events, whether or not these events are nociceptive or painful.
Lights, Camera, Action : zur Synthese von Film und Drama im interkulturellen Englischunterricht
(2012)
In Folge der Globalisierung und der stetig fortschreitenden digitalen Vernetzung ist die Welt zu einem überschaubaren, gar intimen, Ort geworden, in dem Individuen unterschiedlicher Kulturen, trotz enormer geographischer Distanzen, mittels eines breiten Angebots elektronischer Medien, regelmäßig miteinander in Kontakt treten. Die interkulturell-mediale Kommunikation und Interaktion hat sich als ein wesentliches Charakteristikum des modernen Lebens etabliert. Wir leben in einer „„mediatized„ world, a social and cultural environment which is permeated by the media […]“ (Voigts-Virchow 2005: 5). Der Großteil der Weltbevölkerung ist heute online. Die Menschen korrespondieren via Emails und Skype, verbringen ihre Freizeit in Chatrooms, schließen Freundschaften mit Fremden auf Facebook, twittern ihren Lebensalltag, sehen sich Videos auf YouTube an, frönen der ungesühnten Internetpiraterie mit FileSharing, richten sich auf MySpace häuslich im Internet ein, konstruieren ihren eigenen Webcontent und reisen mit Google Maps virtuell um den Globus. In der multikulturellen und –medialen Welt kann folglich ein jeder zum Kosmopolit werden, ohne je das eigene Haus verlassen zu müssen. Kinder und Jugendliche im Besonderen nutzen die Medien, um mit Altersgenossen aus anderen Ländern zu kommunizieren, neue Interessen zu entdecken, Geschichten auszutauschen und Erfahrungen zu teilen. Sie verfügen in dieser Hinsicht über eine „virtuelle Autonomie“ (Porcher 2006: 190-191), die es ihnen ermöglicht sich in einen interkulturellen Diskurs einzuschalten.
Angesichts dieser medialen und kulturellen Pluralisierung werden die bildungspolitischen und pädagogischen Forderungen nach der Ausbildung von medienspezifischen und interkulturellen Kompetenzen immer dringlicher (vgl. Kessler & Küppers 2008: 3/Frederking et al. 2008: 69). Medien- und Kulturkompetenz gelten nicht nur als Grundlage für eine gesunde Entwicklung und professionellen Erfolg, sondern werden vielmehr als Fundament eines friedlichen und intakten internationalen Zusammenlebens in Form eines toleranten und respektvollen interkulturellen Dialogs erachtet (vgl. Sercu et al. 2005). Wurden in diesem Zusammenhang in der Schule anfänglich noch die affektiven und reflexiven Fähigkeiten der Schüler verstärkt in den Fokus genommen, vornehmlich um eine Abkehr vom Ethnozentrismus durch die Bewusstmachung der eigenen kulturellenDeterminiertheit zu bewirken, hat sich im Rahmen der überschwänglichen Mediennutzung und dem Anstieg direkter und indirekter interkultureller Begegnungen1 das Bildungsethos herausgebildet Schüler2 zum praktischen Umgang mit medialer und kultureller Vielfalt zu befähigen, kurzum ihre Handlungskompetenzen zu entwickeln. Im fachdidaktischen Diskurs der Fremdsprachenbildung wird in diesem Fall generell von der Vorbereitung auf den Ernstfall gesprochen. Die Schüler sollen dazu ausgebildet werden mit Mitgliedern einer fremden Kultur kompetent interagieren zu können. Im Idealfall sollen sie sogar fähig sein als Mediatoren zwischen Individuen mit unterschiedlich kulturell geprägten Sicht- und Verhaltensweisen zu vermitteln (vgl. Fechler 2008).
Ich schließe mich der allgemeinen Auffassung an, dass das Konzept einer interkulturellen Handlungskompetenz eine enorme Bedeutsamkeit mit Blick auf ein multikulturelles, globales Gemeinschaftsleben aufweist, besonders im Kontext einer dominanten Medienpräsenz. Kinder und Jugendliche werden heutzutage regelmäßig mit interkulturellen Handlungssituationen konfrontiert, sei es nun in Form eines Chats, einer Forumsdiskussion oder eines Filmabends. In dieser Hinsicht stellt die Förderung substanzieller Medien- und Kulturkompetenzen das vorrangigste Ziel im Schulunterricht dar. Hier stellt sich nun die Frage ob traditionelle Unterrichtsmodelle den externen soziokulturellen Entwicklungen Rechnung tragen können. Ich persönlich vertrete die These, dass medienspezifische und interkulturelle Kompetenzen nur über den Gebrauch von Unterrichtsinstrumenten, die sich an der Lebenswelt und an den Interessen der Schüler orientieren, d.h. zeitgemäß und ansprechend sind, überzeugend und einprägsam vermittelt werden können. Das Lehrwerk ist zweifellos ein wirksames Unterrichtsmedium, entspricht aber nicht mehr dem Zeitgeist. Es müssen daher neue, innovative und anregende Lehr- und Lernmittel erschlossen werden, welche sich allerdings auch für den regelmäßigen Unterrichtseinsatz eignen und nicht nur gelegentlich als didaktische Bonbons Verwendung finden. Aus dem weiten Reservoir der neuen Medien erscheint mir in dieser Beziehung der Film als das geeignetste Medium. Es ist sowohl unterrichtspraktikabel als auch schülerrelevant. Zudem verfügt es über ein hohes interkulturelles Potenzial. Ähnlich verhält es sich auch mit der Dramapädagogik, deren motivierende und interkulturell förderliche Effekte ich selbst bereits in mehreren selbst geleiteten Unterrichtsstunden und einem Studienseminar an der Goethe UniversitätFrankfurt erfahren habe. Sowohl beim Film als auch bei der Dramapädagogik handelt es sich um zwar fachdidaktisch grundierte, doch um in der Praxis marginalisierte Unterrichtsmittel. Ich bin der Meinung, dass es an der Zeit ist Film und Drama3 im Mainstream des Unterrichts zu etablieren.
Dementsprechend hat die vorliegende Arbeit4 zum Ziel das interkulturelle Potenzial des Mediums Film und der Dramapädagogik auszuloten und einen Ansatz aufzuzeigen wie über die Synthese filmischer und dramatischer Stil- und Unterrichtsmittel die interkulturelle kommunikative Kompetenz bzw. die interkulturelle Handlungs- und Mediationskompetenz in Verbindung mit medienspezifischen Fertigkeiten im Englischunterricht gefördert werden kann.5 Einem derartigen Unterfangen muss meiner Ansicht nach zuallererst eine Auseinandersetzung mit den integralen Bestandteilen der Filmdidaktik und der Dramapädagogik vorausgehen. Bevor ich mich damit jedoch ausführlicher befasse, möchte ich zuerst den kontextuellen Rahmen der Arbeit skizzieren (Kapitel 1). Anschließend werde ich im zweiten und dritten Kapitel eine Bestandsaufnahme von Film und Drama vornehmen und die wesentlichen didaktisch-methodischen Elemente beider Konzepte im Hinblick auf den interkulturellen Schwerpunkt der Arbeit diskutieren. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit soll hier dem Konzept der Critical Incidents zukommen. Beim Film soll außerdem noch ein kurzer Einblick in die technischen Spezifika des Mediums gegeben und deren Verwertbarkeit im interkulturellen Englischunterricht deutlich gemacht werden.
In Kapitel 4 soll anschließend die Synthese von Film und Drama im interkulturellen Englischunterricht en détail thematisiert werden. Hierfür möchte ich zuerst das Konzept der interkulturellen kommunikativen Kompetenz (kurz IKK) vorstellen. In der Folge werde ich nach einer Auflistung wesentlicher Schnittpunkte von Film und Drama meinUnterrichtsschema über die Erstellung konkreter Kompetenzmodelle theoretisch fundieren und an expliziten Filmbeispielen belegen. Hier soll ebenfalls das Feld der Medienkompetenz eröffnet und in Beziehung mit der IKK gesetzt werden. Mit der Formulierung der filmdramatischen Methode wird schließlich der Übergang zum praktischen Teil vorbereitet (Kapitel 5). Hier werde ich das von mir konzipierte Unterrichtsmodell illustrieren und mit Blick auf Umsetzungsproblematiken und curriculare Richtlinien kritisch reflektieren. Im finalen Kapitel werde ich abschließend Bilanz ziehen, die wesentlichen Resultate der Arbeit resümieren und einen Ausblick vornehmen, der die Grenzen und Perspektiven der Arbeit erörtert.
Die Bromeliaceae umfassen mehr als 3.100 fast ausschließlich neotropische Arten. Bekannt für ihre außergewöhnliche ökologische Vielseitigkeit haben sich Bromelien erfolgreich in terrestrischen und epiphytischen Lebensräumen ausgebreitet.
Eine umfassende Untersuchung des Gefährdungsgrades aller Bromelienarten Panamas und Costa Ricas stand bisher noch aus und ist insbesondere aufgrund des großen Reichtums an Lebensräumen, der beide Länder auszeichnet, und den vielfältigen Veränderungen geboten.
Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit wurden während der insgesamt etwa achtmonatigen Feldarbeit 54 Exkursionen in Westpanama durchgeführt und Belege von 61% (126 Arten) der für Panama bekannten Arten gesammelt.
Auf der Basis der Feldarbeit und der in verschiedenen Herbarien durchgeführten Studien (Überprüfung und Digitalisierung von > 8.000 Aufsammlungen) wurden Diversität, Endemismus, Areale und räumliche Muster der Artenvielfalt der Bromeliaceae in Panama und Costa Rica erfasst, dokumentiert und analysiert.
Nur drei der derzeit bekannten acht Unterfamilien der Bromeliaceae finden sich in Panama und vier in Costa Rica. Zwanzig Arten werden hier erstmals für Panama gemeldet. Sechs bisher für Panama gemeldete Bromelienarten wurden als irrtümlich gemeldet identifiziert. Die Flora der Bromeliaceae umfasst nun 16 Gattungen und 206 Arten in Panama sowie 18 Gattungen und 199 Arten in Costa Rica.
33 Arten sind endemisch in Panama, 32 Arten in Costa Rica und 36 Arten sind auf das Gebiet beider Länder beschränkt. Die Gattung Werauhia hat ihr Diversitätszentrum in Panama (47 von insgesamt 87 Arten) und Costa Rica (59/87 Arten) und ist gleichzeitig die artenreichste Gattung in beiden Ländern.
In Panama treten 113 Arten (54,9 %) zwischen 1.000 und 2.000 Höhenmetern auf. Die Art mit der niedrigsten Höhengrenze ist Pitcairnia halophila, die am höchsten angetroffene Art ist Werauhia ororiensis.
Für jede der für Panama und Costa Rica (259 Arten) gemeldeten Bromelienarten wurde eine Verbreitungskarte erstellt; für die in beiden Ländern auftretenden 191 Arten wurde darüber hinaus die potenzielle Verbreitung modelliert.
In Panama ist der prämontane Regenwald mit 138 Arten (einschließlich 25 der insgesamt 33 endemischen Arten) die Holdridge-Vegetationszone mit der höchsten Anzahl an Bromelien. In Costa Rica hat der untere Bergregenwald einen besonders hohen Anteil endemischer Bromelien (13 von insgesamt 32 Arten).
In Panama und Costa Rica beherbergen mittlere Höhenlagen den größten Artenreichtum der Bromeliaceae mit Maximalwerten von etwa 125 Arten im Osten Costa Ricas und in Westpanama. Einige Regionen Panamas verfügen nicht über ausgewiesene Schutzgebiete, weisen jedoch einen hohen Artenreichtum an Bromelien auf (z.B. Teile Westpanamas, El Valle de Anton und benachbarte Gebiete sowie die Serranía de Cañazas).
In der hier vorgestellten Klassifizierung des Gefährdungsgrades gemäß den Richtlinien der IUCN werden für Panama 32 Arten als vom Aussterben bedroht (CR), 36 Arten als Stark Gefährdet (EN) und 36 Arten als Gefährdet (VU) eingestuft. In Costa Rica wird Aechmea aquilega als Ausgestorben (EX) eingeschätzt. Vier Arten werden als vom Aussterben bedroht (CR), 30 Arten als Stark Gefährdet (EN) und 39 Arten als Gefährdet (VU) klassifiziert.
In Panama wurden 184 Arten (89% der insgesamt 206 Arten) in Schutzgebieten nachgewiesen. 122 Arten (59%) wurden sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb und 19 Arten (9%) nur außerhalb von Schutzgebieten nachgewiesen. In Costa Rica kommen 182 Bromelienarten (91% der insgesamt 199 Arten) in Schutzgebieten vor, 168 Arten (84%) wurden sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb und 14 Arten (7%) nur außerhalb von Schutzgebieten nachgewiesen.
Die Schätzungen zeigen, dass die zu erwartende Gesamtzahl der Bromelienarten in Panama zwischen 224 und 250 Arten liegt, und die zu erwartende Gesamtzahl der Bromelienarten in Costa Rica liegt zwischen 207 und 221 Arten. Den Ergebnissen der Modellierung zufolge wird für eine Anzahl bisher nur für Costa Rica gemeldeter Arten das Auftreten in Panama mit erheblicher Wahrscheinlichkeit prognostiziert (z.B. Guzmania blassi, Werauhia ampla), wie auch umgekehrt das Vorkommen bisher nur für Panama bekannter Arten in Costa Rica (z.B. Aechmea strobilina, Pitcairnia kressii).
Der Erhalt der bestehenden Schutzgebiete sollte ein vorangiges Ziel sein. Darüber hinaus ist es wünschenswert, einige dieser Gebiete auszudehnen und neue Schutzgebiete auszuweisen, um biologisch hochdiverse Gebiete mit einem hohen Anteil endemischer Arten zu schützen.
1 Purpose of the Study:
The purpose of this retrospective study was to assess the volumetric changes of our institutional pediatric neuroblastoma in response to various therapeutic protocols.
2 Materials and Methods:
A retrospective study was conducted on children with neuroblastoma from different anatomical locations including suprarenal, paraspinal, pelvic, mediastinal and cervical neuroblastoma primaries. These children underwent tumor-stage based therapeutic protocols in Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Hospital, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, between January 1996 and July 2008. The study included 72 patients (44 males and 28 females). Patient demographics (age and gender), disease-related symptoms, laboratory results (tumor biomarkers including ferritin, neuron specific enolase, and urine catecholamine) and histopathological reports were collected from the electronic medical archiving system and subsequently analyzed.
Patients were classified into following groups according the anatomical origin of the primary neuroblastoma into:
1) Suprarenal neuroblastoma Group: This group included patients with neuroblastoma arising from the suprarenal gland. This group composed of 54 patients with male to female ratio (32:22).
2) Paravertebral neuroblastoma Group: This group composed of 6 male patients.
3) Mediastinal neuroblastoma Group: This group included patients with mediastinal neuroblastoma and composed of 3 patients (1 male and 2 females).
4) Pelvic neuroblastoma Group: This group included patients with pelvic neuroblastoma and composed of 6 patients (3 males and 3 females).
5) Cervical neuroblastoma Group: This group included patients with cervical neuroblastoma and composed of 2 male patients.
3 Results:
The mean volume of all suprarenal neuroblastoma group involved in the study before therapy was 176.62 cm3 (SD: 234.15) range: 239.4-968.9cm3. The mean initial volume of all suprarenal neuroblastoma group who underwent observation protocol was 86.0378 cm3 (SD: 114.44) range: 5.2-347.94cm3. Volumetric evaluation of suprarenal neuroblastoma following observation (Wait and See) protocol revealed continuous reduction of the tumor volumes in a statistically significant manner during the follow up periods up to 12 months with p value of less than 0.05. The volumetric changes afterwards were statistically insignificant.
The mean initial volume of all suprarenal neuroblastoma group who underwent primary surgery protocol was 42.4 cm3 (SD: 28.5) range: 7.5-90cm3. Complete surgical resection of the tumor was not feasible in all lesions due to local tumor extension and / or infiltration with the associated risk of injury of nearby organs or structures. However statistical analysis of the volumetric changes in the successive follow up periods did not reveal statistical significance.
Volumetric estimation of the tumor in the subsequent follow up periods revealed significant changes within the period first (3-9 month periods). The changes afterwards were statistically non significant. On the other hand, the mean initial volume of all suprarenal neuroblastoma group who underwent combined chemotherapy and Stem cell transplantation protocol only without surgical interference was 99.98cm3 (SD:46.2) range: 48.48-160.48 cm3. In this group the volumetric changes were variable and difference in volumes in follow up was statistically non significant during the follow up period.
The mean initial volume of all abdominal paravertebral neuroblastoma group was 249.197cm3 (SD: 249.63) range: 9.6-934cm3. The mean initial volume of all pelvic neuroblastoma group was 118.88cm3 (SD: 50.61) range: 73.4-173.4cm3. The mean initial volume of all mediastinal neuroblastoma group was 189.7cm3 (SD: 139.057) range: 10.7-415 cm3. The mean initial volume of all cervical neuroblastoma group was 189.7cm3 (SD: 139.057) range: 10.7-415 cm3. The volumetric measurements in the corresponding follow up periods according to the therapeutic protocol of abdominal paravertebral neuroblastoma, pelvic neuroblastoma, mediastinal and cervical neuroblastoma revealed significant change in the tumor volume within the early 3-6 months from the initial therapy while subsequently the tumor volumetric changes were statistically non significant.
4 Conclusion:
In conclusion, the role of MRI volumetry in the evaluation of tumor response is dependent on the risk adapted concept of neuroblastoma with the combination of different imaging modalities as well the therapeutic protocol. MRI Volumetry in addition to new protocols such as Whole-body imaging and 3D visualization techniques are gaining more importance and acceptance.
"Community and law approach" provides an illuminating insight into alternative legal orderings within a social unit. The comprehensiveness of legal systems within a community or a social unit, provides a suitable basis for a structural framework of alternative legal systems or Legal Pluralism, which is missing in the discourse on Legal Pluralism. "Identifying the locus of law within a community", provides us with an indication on how autopoetic a legal system can be within a social unit, taking into account the social rootedness of legal norms.
Legal practitioners and legal scientists need to have knowledge of the general rules that apply in the legal system. This involves both knowledge of the legislation and knowledge of the decisions by judges that function as general rules of law. Law students preparing themselves for the legal profession need to acquire these kinds of knowledge. A student has to have knowledge about where to look for decisions, understand the structure of decisions and learn to determine what makes a decision relevant to the body of applicable rules in the legal system. Legal education primarily aims at acquiring insight in the legal sources, their history and background. This basic knowledge is of great importance; legal problem solving is hardly possible without an understanding of the legal knowledge. To illustrate the use of this knowledge in practice, teachers work through decisions as examples. However, it is difficult, if not impossible, to learn by explanation or by imitation alone. A more effective way to obtain expertise is by actually performing the task, i.e. students should do the exercises, while the teacher provides feedback on their solutions. For effective learning, also the solution process should be monitored and provided with feedback. Furthermore it is desirable for students to be able to ask for help at any time during the process. They should also be able to practice over and over again. An ideal situation would have a teacher available for every student, monitoring the student while practicing and providing support where and whenever necessary. However, this being not practically feasible, the second best option is to offer the student electronic support.
CASE (Case Analysis and Structuring Environment) is an environment where a law student can practice with finding decisions, with structuring its text and with analysing the decision in order to be able to determine in what way it adds to the body of applicable rules in the legal system.
CASE is developed using a principled and structured design approach. A short description of this approach is followed by an analysis of the learning task, the difficulties law students experience and the remedies proposed on the basis of both the task analysis and the stated difficulties. This is followed by a description of architecture, functionality, platform and implementation of CASE and a description of a session with CASE and future work.
In this article the author, in the context of the fiftieth anniversary of H.L.A. Hart’s “The Concept of Law”, reconsiders the moderate indeterminacy of law thesis, which derives from the open texture of language. For that purpose, he intends: first, to analyze Hart’s moderate indeterminacy thesis, i.e. determinacy in “easy cases” and indeterminacy in “hard cases”, which resembles Aristotle’s "doctrine of the mean"; second, to criticize his moderate indeterminacy thesis as failing to embody the virtues of a center in between the vices of the extremes, by insisting that the exercise of discretion required constitutes an “interstitial” legislation; and, third, to reorganize an argument for a truly “mean” position, which requires a form of weak interpretative discretion, instead of a strong legislative discretion.
After the absurd terrorism and violence of the totalitarianism and bureaucratic administrative and legal systems of the 20th century it does not give any meaning to rationalize harm as meaningful evil that even though it is evil may have some importance for the development of the world towards the good. Rather, evil is incomprehensible and as radical and banal evil it challenges human rationality. This is indeed the case when we are faced with instrumental and rationalized administrative and political evil. Therefore, we must analyse the banality of evil in politics and in administration in order to understand the concept of evil. Moreover, as proposed by Hannah Arendt, we need to fight this evil with political thinking and social philosophy. The only way to deal with harm and wrongdoing is to return a concept of responsibility that is closely linked to reflective thinking. In this paper, we will on the basis of a discussion of the banality of evil explore this in relation to Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the administration of evil, as expressed by the personality of Adolf Eichmann. Finally, we will place this concept of administrative evil in Hannah Arendt’s general political philosophy.
Es ist die Aufgabe der Wissenschaft, richtige, d.h. möglichst vernünftige Entscheidungen anzuleiten. Der wissenschaftliche Geltungsanspruch umfasst immer sowohl einen Wahrheits- wie einen Wert- und einen Gerechtigkeitsanspruch.
Vernunft lässt sich nur in einem sowohl rationalen wie interrationalen Diskurs annähern:
(1) Im rationalen Diskurs wird der Anspruch erhoben, innerhalb einer bestimmten Rationalität richtige Antworten auf ausgewählte Fragen zu finden (meist innerhalb der Grenzen bestimmter institutionalisierter Schulen oder Disziplinen).
(2) Der interrationale Diskurs setzt bei der Relation zwischen verschiedenen Fragen mit unterschiedlicher Rationalität an und versucht,
(a) zwischen diesen Fragen eine wechselseitige Verständigung herzustellen (Diskurs zur Verständlichkeit), bevor er
(b) auf den Diskurs über die Richtigkeit von Antworten verschiedener Fragestellungen im Zusammenhang eintritt (materieller interrationaler Diskurs).
Der interrationale Diskurs bedarf der Verfassung:
(1) Formelle Verfassung des Diskurses
(a) Institutionelle Strukturen und Prozesse (Gleichberechtigung aller Beteiligten, Symmetrie der Strukturen, z.B. die Tagesordnung einer Ratssitzung)
(b) Methodische Argumentationsstrukturen und -abläufe (Wahrheit, Wert und Gerechtigkeit; Fragen- und Antwortdimension).
(2) Materielle Verfassung: Inhaltliches Argumentarium guter Gründe im Diskurs (bewährte Argumente aus bisherigen Diskursen).
Germany is the focus of this paper, owing to the fact that since 1938 it has had the strictest laws on compulsory schooling worldwide. As a result, homeschooling in Germany has become virtually impossible. There are interesting divergences between policy and practice in the German setting, both in the country’s educational history and present educational problems. The Länder (federal states) have the responsibility for education, and they are taking a much stricter line against homeschoolers than a decade ago, especially by depriving parents of the custody of their homeschooled children at an early stage. The laws relied upon, however, were never intended to deal with such educational matters; they were designed to punish parents who abuse or neglect their children. The present, highly questionable legal action succeeds only because of the consent of state schools, state social welfare offices, and courts. The same laws are not used against the parents of the approximately 250,000 teens who are truant. The functioning of the legal and sociological machinery in Germany is being employed aggressively to stamp out homeschooling, while at the same time it ignores the crucial issue of parents who allow their children to skip school—thus depriving them of an adequate education at home or elsewhere. At the same time, the number of specialists in law and education, as well as politicians and governmental experts who argue in favor of homeschooling is growing, and media reports on homeschooling are much more positive than they were a decade ago.
Human rights and the law: the unbreachable gap between the ethics of justice and the efficacy of law
(2012)
This paper explores the structure of justice as the condition of ethical, inter-subjective responsibility. Taking a Levinasian perspective, this is a responsibility borne by the individual subject in a pre-foundational, proto-social proximity with the other human subject, which takes precedence over the interests of the self. From this specific post-humanist perspective, human rights are not the restrictive rights of individual self-will, as expressed in our contemporary legal human rights discourse. Rights do not amount to the prioritisation of the so-called politico-legal equality of the individual citizen-subject animated by the universality of the dignity of autonomous, reasoned intentionality. Rather, rights enlivened by proximity invert this discourse and signify, first and foremost, rights for the other, with the ethical burden of responsibility towards the other.
The problem of this paper is prompted by the claim of Zagreb University students residing in government subsidized dormitories that their duty to act for free as dorm night porters amounts to forced labour. After a preliminary note on the nature and types of legal scholarship, the paper restates jurisprudential arguments against student rights and analyses limitations inherent in legal scholarship in action, or jurisprudence, that make it unresponsive to student rights: a limited normative framework and a limited subject-matter, most notably a limited focus of inquiry when it comes to force or coercion. A glimpse at an analysis of force in international law indicates that the naked force typical of elementary criminal law has dissolved long ago into phenomena remotely related to naked force, such as economic pressure and ideological propaganda. Two legal and social contexts of force are of primary interest to understanding student rights. The first is legal recognition of the vulnerability of children to naked force. The second is the blind eye of jurisprudence for the vulnerability of workers to economic need. The belief in economic necessity and subjugation of the state to capital has resulted in a bizarre reversal of the roles of corporations and students. Jurisprudence cannot change the world but can interpret it more sensibly. What is required is a re-examination of maturity and emancipation within the emerging world law.
Die Rassenmischung bekam in der Entwicklung der Sozialwissenschaften in Brasilien immer wieder neue Bedeutungen, um sich an jeden politischen Zusammenhang anzupassen. Sie wurde von den Männern des Wissens als Problem und später als Lösung angesehen – nämlich durch die Aufhellung – gemäß der evolutionären Rassentheorien Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts. Aber vor allem in den 1930er Jahren betrachteten einige Intellektuelle Brasiliens, wie Gilberto Freyre, die Mischung der drei Rassen, die das Volk Brasiliens bilden, als Bestandteil der Nation. Eine solche Vorstellung brachte juristische und politische, manchmal unmerkliche Folgen für den Platz des Mischlings innerhalb der brasilianischen Gesellschaft. Dieser wird als Notausstieg Mulatte nach Carl Degler oder als epistemologisches Hindernis nach Eduardo de Oliveira e Oliveira verstanden. Der Zweck dieser Arbeit besteht darin, aufzuzeigen, inwiefern jene Tradition eine tiefe Auseinandersetzung verbirgt und wie sie juristische Auswirkungen in der Gegenwart hervorruft, z.B. in Bezug auf die Debatte über Rassenquoten an öffentlichen Universitäten.
Some advances in legal practical reason: for a progressive dialogue with contemporary hermeneutics
(2012)
This paper intends to critically discuss some points of the contemporary thesis concerning constitutional hermeneutics and methodology of law. Once identified some authors and the lines of argumentation affiliated grosso modo to the linguistic turn and rhetoric, as well as the core of the transcendental powers of communication (v.g. N. MacCormick, R. Alexy, K. Günther), the objective is to identify some dialogue with economics and political science, enlightened by recent researches about Hegel-Marx interpretations of social life. Of course the discussion inevitably passes through methodological questions, opposing analytics vs. dialectics, idealistic vs. realists standpoints. In a effort to foment the inclusive dialogue between points of view concerning the concept of law that may create (not necessarily) radical opponents, the lines of conclusion intents to revisit some foundations of Hegelian "method" (so to speak) and intends to give a modest contribution to a more profound analysis of the relations between sein and sollen categories, in order to enrich the discussions about technology and social life, specially the life of the law nowadays.
Die Auffassung des Rechts in Hegels Rechtsphilosophie weicht bekanntlich von dem ab, was üblicherweise unter „Recht“ verstanden wird. Schon deshalb sind Hegels Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts nicht einfach neben andere Werke zur Rechtstheorie zu stellen. Aber Hegels Bestimmung des Rechts ergänzt nicht nur das Recht äußerlich, sondern lässt es auf etwas gründen, das über es selbst deutlich hinausweist: auf jener Normativität, die er als Sittlichkeit bezeichnet. So ist Hegels Rechtsphilosophie nur als eine Sozialphilosophie der Sittlichkeit zu verstehen. Sie kann als die philosophische Selbstreflexion einer Gesellschaft verstanden werden, die sich selbst primär als durch das Recht bestimmt versteht, aber auf eine andere Form von Normativität bezogen ist.
The doubt about certainty like an absolute value in law and as an ideal full in legal system (argument about impossibility) is a controversial fact in contemporary legal theory. In this text I examine some contemporary doctrines about the classic understanding (in critical sense) of this ideal. I have selected the most representative doctrines: doctrine about "open texture of Law" (H.L.A. Hart), starting point in this discussion; doctrine about "Il Diritto mite" (G. Zagrebelsky), from the continental European legal tradition at present; and doctrine about "vagueness in Law" (T.A.O. Endicott), this doctrine is the most recent, from the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. Finally, in Conclusions, I analyze if this doubt (argument about impossibility) contaminates (in some sense) to the concept of law or to the characteristics that describe law in the contemporary Constitutional State.
It is a fact that mediation and other alternative dispute resolution means are becoming increasingly popular. Actually, governments are encouraging people to use them instead of going to Court, as they are quicker, cheaper and more informal than trials, and can be implemented using internet. The author focus on the analysis of the structure and purposes of mediation, in particular. The paper aims to discuss and understand what kind of justice, if any, is offered by alternative dispute resolution.
Quarkonia are very promising probes to study the quark-gluon plasma. The essential baseline for measurements in heavy-ion collisions is high-precision data from proton-proton interactions. However, the basic mechanisms of quarkonium hadroproduction are still being debated. The most common models, the Color-Singlet Model, the non-relativistic QCD approach and the Color-Evaporation Model, are able to describe most of the available cross-section data, despite of their conceptual differences. New measures, such as the polarization, and data at a new energy regime are crucial to test the competing models. Another issue is an eventual interplay between the production process of a quarkonium state and the surrounding pp event. Current Monte Carlo event generators treat the hard scattering independently from the rest of the so-called underlying event. The investigation of possible correlations with the pp event might be very valuable for a detailed understanding of the production processes. ALICE ist the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its design has been optimized for high-precision measurements in very high track densities and down to low transverse momenta. ALICE is composed of various different detectors at forward and at central rapidities. The most important detectors for this study are the Inner Tracking System and the Time Projection Chamber, allowing to reconstruct and identify electron candidate tracks within eta < 0.9. The Transition Radiation Detector has not been utilized at this stage of the analysis; however, it will strongly improve the particle identification and provide a dedicated trigger in the upcoming beam periods. ...
Der homerische Ares
(2012)
Mit den Worten "Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστί, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους" wies einst der vorsokratische Philosoph Heraklit von Ephesos auf einen Dauerzustand in der Antike hin, der tief im Bewusstsein der damaligen Menschen verankert und somit allgegenwärtig war, wenn auch nie willkommen. Kriegshelden, denen zu Ehren man verschiedene Lobreden schrieb und Denkmäler errichten ließ, gab es dagegen viele. In der griechischen Kunst diente vornehmlich die Verwendung der sogenannten idealen Nacktheit zur Darstellung von Manneskraft und Tapferkeit, wozu einem Dichter hingegen nur Worte bleiben. ...
Weltweit ist der Galoppsport ein kapitalintensiver Wirtschaftszweig, der kontinuierlich
Zuchtbemühungen für optimal erfolgreiche Nachkommenschaft in den Mittelpunkt all seiner
Anstrengungen stellt. Dabei fällt auf, dass ähnlich intensive Bemühungen im
trainingsmethodologischen und -analytischen Bereich im Hinblick auf Leistungsoptimierung
der Vollblut-Rennpferde fast vollständig fehlen.
Die Motivation zur vorliegenden Studie lag einerseits in der langjährigen Beobachtung
„stabiler“ konventioneller Trainingsstrukturen in deutschen und internationalen Rennställen
sowie andererseits in der Dokumentaranalyse weltweit hochklassiger renommierter Rennen,
deren Ergebnisse seit mehr als 90 Jahren keinen Leistungsfortschritt, sondern
Geschwindigkeitsstagnation verzeichnen. ...
Die Untersuchung von RNA mittels NMR-Spektroskopie hat in den letzten Jahren an Bedeutung gewonnen, weil die Zahl der neu entdeckten RNA-Funktionen, wie z.B. RNA-Schalter in Bakterien, stark gestiegen ist. Ziel dieser Arbeit war es, mithilfe der NMR-Spektroskopie einen Beitrag zum besseren Verständnis der biochemischen Prozesse, in die RNA-Moleküle involviert sein können, zu leisten.
Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit (Kapitel 2, 3 und 4) werden zum einen die Entwicklung neuer Methoden für die RNA-Strukturbestimmung vorgestellt und zum anderen die Leistungsfähigkeit der modernen NMR-spektroskopischen Strukturaufklärung demonstriert.
Im zweiten Teil dieser Arbeit (Kapitel 5) wird die NMR-Spektroskopie zur Untersuchung der RNA-Schalter-Funktion eingesetzt. Die biologische Funktion von RNA oder Proteinen setzt oftmals eine dynamische Struktur voraus und involviert Konformationsänderungen infolge biochemischer Signalweiterleitung. Für die Charakterisierung solcher Prozesse eignet sich die NMR-Spektroskopie insbesondere gut, weil sie in Lösung unter verschiedenen Reaktionsbedingungen angewandt wer-den kann. Durch den direkten NMR-spektroskopischen Nachweis von Basenpaarungen können wichtige strukturelle Eigenschaften (Faltung, Strukturhomogenität und Dynamik) entschlüsselt und in einen Zusammenhang mit der Funktion gebracht werden.
Im Folgenden werden die einzelnen Kapitel vorgestellt.
Nachdem das erste Kapitel eine allgemeine Einleitung in die NMR-Spektroskopie, RNA-Struktur und Funktion der RNA-Schalter darstellt, folgt im Kapitel 2 die Einführung einer neuen Methode, die eine quantitative Bestimmung der Torsionswinkel alpha und zeta in RNA/DNA mittels NMR-Spektroskopie ermöglicht (Abb. 1). Sie basiert auf der Wechselwirkung zwischen dem CH-Dipol und der 31P-CSA, die von der relativen Orientierung abhängig ist. Die Methode wurde für die CH- und CH2-Gruppen in Form von zwei Pulssequenzen (2D- und 3D-G-HCP) zur Messung von insgesamt fünf kreuz-korrelierten Relaxationsraten entlang des RNA/DNA-Rückgrats optimiert. Die Funktionsfähigkeit der Methode wurde zunächst an der 14mer cUUCGg-Tetraloop RNA getestet und zur Bestimmung der Torsionswinkel alpha und zeta genutzt. Die Ergebnisse flossen in die Strukturrechnung der 14mer RNA, die im Kapitel 3 vorgestellt wird, mit ein. Des Weiteren gelang es die Anwendbarkeit der Experimente an einer größeren 27mer RNA zu demonstrieren. Die neue Methode ist deswegen von Bedeutung, weil die Winkel alpha und zeta nicht über 3J-Kopplungskonstanten gemessen werden können.
(Nozinovic, S., Richter, C., Rinnenthal, J., Fürtig, B., Duchardt-Ferner, E., Weigand, J. E., Schwalbe, H. (2010), J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132, 10318-10329.)
Im Kapitel 3 wird die NMR-spektroskopische Bestimmung der Struktur einer Model-RNA, der 14mer cUUCGg-Tetraloop RNA, vorgestellt. Die Strukturrechung wurde mit verschiedenen NMR-Datensätzen, die in der Arbeitsgruppe einschließlich dieser Doktorarbeit gesammelt wurden, durchgeführt. Zusammen mit den Ergebnissen aus dem Kapitel 2 konnte eine sehr präzise Struktur mit einem RMSD von 0,37 Å (20 Strukturen) in sehr guter Übereinstimmung mit experimentellen Daten ermittelt werden. Die gerechnete Struktur repräsentiert eine der gegenwärtig genauesten und umfassendsten Strukturbestimmungen einer RNA, bei der jeder Torsionswinkel quantitativ bestimmt wurde. Einen besonderen Höhepunkt stellt die strukturelle Analyse der 2’OH-Gruppen dar, die im anschließenden Kapitel 4 weiter vertieft wurde.
(Nozinovic, S., Fürtig, B., Jonker, H. R. A., Richter, C., Schwalbe, H. (2010), Nucleic Acids Res. 38, 683-694)
Über Jahre war bekannt, dass die Größe der 1J(C1’,H1’)- und 1J(C2’,H2’)-Kopplungskonstanten innerhalb der Ribonukleotide von der lokalen Struktur des Zuckers und der Orientierung der Nukleobase beeinflusst wird. In dieser Arbeit (Kapitel 4) wurde zum ersten Mal ein systematischer Vergleich zwischen NMR-Messungen und DFT-Rechnungen durchgeführt, der eine eindeutige Zuordnung der Hauptkonformationen des Zuckers (C3’- oder C2’-endo) und der Nukleobase (anti oder syn) anhand der 1J(C,H)-Kopplungskonstanten erlaubt. Die beschriebene Methode wurde an einer größeren 27mer RNA erfolgreich erprobt. Weiterhin wurde erstmalig entdeckt, dass zudem die Orientierung der 2’OH-Gruppe einen signifikanten Einfluss auf die 1J(C,H)-Kopplungen hat (Abb. 3). Mithilfe von NMR-Messungen und DFT-Rechnungen konnte aus 1J(C,H)-Kopplungskonstanten die Orientierung von allen 2’OH-Gruppen in der 14mer cUUCGg-Tetraloop RNA bestimmt werden. Die Methode hat den großen Vorteil, dass 2’OH-Gruppen, die aufgrund des schnellen Austauschs mit Wasser oder D2O keine NMR-Signale liefern, analysiert werden kön-nen.
(Nozinovic, S., Gupta, P., Fürtig, B., Richter, C., Tüllmann, S., Duchardt-Ferner, E., Holthausen, M. C., Schwalbe, H. (2011), Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 50, 5397-5400)
Im Kapitel 5 wird eine NMR-spektroskopische Untersuchung an der Aptamerdomäne des Adenin-bindenden RNA-Schalters (pbuE) vorgestellt. Im Fokus der Forschung stand die Frage: Welchen Einfluss hat die Länge der P1-Helix auf die Struktur und die Ligandbindung der freien Aptamer-domäne?
Durch den Vergleich von zwei Konstrukten mit unterschiedlich langer P1-Helix war es möglich, intrinsische Scherkräfte, die durch die Ausbildung der P1-Helix in der freien Aptamerdomäne entstehen, festzustellen. Es hat sich im Konstrukt mit der verlängerten P1-Helix gezeigt, dass diese zur Destabilisierung der P3-Helix und des Schlaufenkontakts führen. Diese strukturellen Änderungen haben außerdem zur Folge, dass die Bindungsstärke des Liganden reduziert wird. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass ein strukturelles Gleichgewicht zwischen Sekundärstrukturelementen die tertiäre Faltung beeinflusst und die Funktion moduliert.
(Nozinovic, S., Reining, A., Noeske, J., Wöhnert, J., Schwalbe, H. (2011), in Vorbereitung)
The present study focuses on specific aspects in the organization of teaching religion in Indonesia. It analyses the position of religion within the Indonesian Basic Law, consequential legislation, and educational policies. How does this framework translate into national and regional policies pertaining to the emergence, institutionalization, and organization of the Hindu class and the Hindu education system in Bali from 1945 to 2008?
Muslim majority Indonesia constitutes an interesting laboratory for doing fundamental research on religious plurality and transformations of religion. The model of organizing the religion class in Indonesia is rooted in a specific historical, socio-cultural, political, and legal context, which is fundamentally different to European models of religious education. In addition, in contrast to classical Islam and modern Islamic states, Indonesia recognizes Asian religions as equal in status with the religions of the book. Besides Islam and Christianity, Hindu Dharma and Buddhism were recognized as state funded religions in 1965. This recognition had important consequences for the Indonesian model of organizing five confessional religion classes and faith-based education systems.
The Balinese are a rare case of a religious and ethnic minority being simultaneously an ethnic and religious majority. Therefore, the Balinese provide an outstanding case to analyze how Indonesia’s religious and educational policies do deal with that particular ethnic and religious minority. In addition, how do the Balinese themselves use the constitutional and legal framework to establish the Hindu religion class in public schools and a private Hindu education system from the level of pre-school to higher education?
A qualitative examination was conducted basing on a combination of theoretical and empirical investigations. The province of Bali and three educational institutions were chosen, because the Balinese were the reformers of Indonesian Hindu Dharma and the inventors of the Hindu education system. As the study focuses on constitutional and legal contexts of the Hindu class and the Hindu education system, teachers’ professional education, and composition of curricula and textbooks, a qualitative approach was applied combining ethnographic fieldwork and case study research. In consequence, the subject positions the study in the academic disciplines of Religious Studies and Area Studies. Data were collected through bibliographical surveys and fieldwork.
The amended 1945 Basic Law and consequential legislation give the same right to state sanctioned religions. The state is based on “One Supreme Lordship” prescribing national monotheism or monism. Indonesia’s spirited statehood is based on a religious, but not confessional interpretation. In addition, the strategy to manage religious plurality is authoritarian, as positive freedom of religion is limited to six state-funded religions, whereas negative religious freedom is not provided for. Despite the equal status of the six state funded religions, discriminative practices prevail with regard to funding those Asian religions. Notwithstanding, the Muslim majority Pancasila state can serve a model function for countries with illiberal politics in the Muslim world.
The first objective of strategic and educational policies is to mould a citizen who has faith in God, follows the commands of God, and has morals. The dimension of spiritual intelligence in education is a particular Indonesian dimension of education, which Indonesian educational planners added to the UNESCO standards of student-centered learning throughout life. Indonesia organizes the religion class and faith-based education systems in a confessional but pluralistic style. The citizens are required to attend the religious class in the religion they adhere to instructed by a teacher of the same belief from elementary to higher education. In addition, the religious mark is a compulsory item in the school report, and whether a pupil/student stays back or is promoted to the next level depends, amongst other factors, on how the religion teacher grades the student.
Unlike the Muslim or Christian based education systems, the Hindu education system is still marginal and minuscule. Its funding is discriminative. Funding and expansion are linked to national policies, and the personal networks of Hindu agents are given the mandate to organize the Hindu administration and education system.
The intriguing effects of electroweak induced parity violation (PV) in molecules have yet to be observed, but experiments on molecular PV promise to provide fascinating insights. They potentially offer a novel testing ground for the low energy sector of the standard model and, in addition, a successful measurement of PV differences between the two enantiomers of a chiral molecule could promote a deeper understanding of molecular chirality, by essentially establishing a new link between particle physics and biochemistry. A key challenge in the design of such experiments is the identification of suitable molecules, which in turn requires widely applicable computational schemes for the prediction of PV experimental signals. To this end, a quasirelativistic density functional theory approach to the calculation of PV effects in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of chiral molecules has been developed and implemented during the course of this thesis. It includes relativistic as well as electron--correlation effects and has been used extensively in the screening of molecules possibly suited for a first observation of molecular PV. Some relevant compound classes have been identified, but none of their selected representatives are predicted to exhibit PV NMR frequency shifts that can be detected under current experimental restrictions. In order to advance the design of molecules which exhibit particularly large PV signals in experiments, systematic effects on PV NMR frequency splittings such as scaling with nuclear charge, conformational dependence and the impact of atomic substitution around the NMR active nucleus have been studied. Previously predicted scaling laws were confirmed and it was determined that the environment of the NMR active nucleus, both in terms of conformation and atomic composition, can be tuned to increase PV frequency shifts by several orders of magnitude. In addition to molecules suited for NMR experiments, a fascinating chiral actinide compound was studied with regard to PV frequency shifts in vibrational spectra. This compound displays the largest such shift ever predicted for an existing molecule, which lies well within the attainable experimental resolution. The challenge now lies in making it compatible with current experimental setups.
Die Geschichte von Sklavenhandel und Sklaverei im britischen Einflussgebiet ist in den letzten Jahrzehnten intensiv behandelt worden. Dabei ging es in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung um das – nicht zuletzt ‚erinnerungspolitische‘ – Problem der Verstrickung britischer Kaufleute und Politiker in den Sklavenhandel, um die Bedeutung der Sklaverei für die britische Wirtschaft und den britischen Aufstieg zur Weltmacht, schließlich um die Motive der Pionierrolle, welche die britische Öffentlichkeit und die britische Regierung für die Kritik an und die Abschaffung von Sklavenhandel und Sklaverei einnahmen. Die vorliegende Dissertation nimmt sich vor, das Bild zu ergänzen, in dem sie nach einer nur auf den ersten Blick marginalen Gruppe fragt: Afrikanerinnen und Afrikanern, die sich weder auf ‚Staatsbesuch‘ noch als Arbeitskräfte in Großbritannien aufhielten, sondern die danach strebten, in England eine britische bzw. europäische Bildung zu erhalten. Die Gruppe erscheint Ries aus zwei Gründen besonders signifikant: Zum einen, weil sie eine entscheidende Funktion für ‚Kulturkontakte‘ zwischen Großbritannien und Afrika hatte, da sie möglicherweise dazu beitragen konnte, britische Bilder und Perzeptionen von Afrika und Afrikanern in anderer Weise zu prägen, als Sklaven oder lokale Potentaten; zum anderen, weil sie die Möglichkeit bietet, die Veränderungen der Haltung(en) der britischen Öffentlichkeit im Allgemeinen und besonders an Afrika interessierter Gruppen im Besonderen abseits der (bereits hinreichend erforschten) Debatten zum Sklavenhandel genauer zu untersuchen.
Es werden folgende Publikationen rezensiert: Chytrý: Vegetation of the Czech Republic 1, Chytrý: Vegetation of the Czech Republic 2, Chytrý: Vegetation of the Czech Republic 3, Eger & Kesper: Flechten zwischen Eder und Diemel, Gerster: Kräuterwissen, Meyer: Pflanzen Nordhessens, Mollenhauer: Gregor Kraus, Seibold: Schmeil-Fitschen, Suck & Bushart: Karte der Potentiellen Natürlichen Vegetation Deutschlands, Süß & al.: Ried und Sand.
In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden 37 Vegetationsaufnahmen von Hecken- und Gebüschgesellschaften aus der Ordnung Prunetalia spinosae vorgestellt, die zwischen 2008 und 2010 im südhessischen Meerholzer Hügelland angefertigt wurden. 25 Aufnahmen konnten einer pflanzensoziologischen Assoziation zugeordnet werden. Acht Aufnahmen werden auf der Ebene des Verbandes und vier lediglich auf der Ebene der Ordnung charakterisiert. Am häufigsten wurden das Pruno-Ligustretum typicum und Gebüsche aus dem Verband Pruno-Rubion radulae dokumentiert. Neben der Exposition ist vor allem der Basen- und Nährstoffgehalt in den Böden des Untersuchungsgebietes entscheidend für die floristische Zusammensetzung der Gebüsche. Insgesamt wurden 199 Pflanzenarten gefunden. Die Bearbeitung bestimmungskritischer Gehölze aus den Gattungen Crataegus, Rosa und Rubus fand bei der Auswertung besondere Beachtung. Dabei konnten drei Weißdorn-, fünf Rosen- sowie 20 Brombeerarten nachgewiesen werden. Für die gebietsfremden Arten Rosa multiflora und Rubus armeniacus werden die Verbreitung in den Prunetalia-Gesellschaften des Meerholzer Hügellandes dargestellt und deren Einbürgerungsgrad im Gebiet diskutiert. Abschließend werden Hinweise zu Entstehung, Nutzung und Schutz der vorgefundenen Schlehengebüsche gegeben.
Es werden 36 Neu- oder Wiederfunde sowie nicht publizierte Funde von Flechten und flechtenbewohnenden Pilzen in Hessen gemeldet und kurz kommentiert. Drei Arten sind zugleich Neufunde für Deutschland: Lichenochora xanthoriae, Neolamya peltigerae und Phaeospora lecanorae. Die hessische Gesamtartenliste umfasst mittlerweile über 1200 Flechten und flechtenbewohnende oder flechtenähnliche Pilze.
The diplopod orders Callipodida and Polydesmida, and their respective families Abacionidae and
Xystodesmidae, are initially recorded from South Dakota as is Polydesmidae from North Dakota. Other new records of
indigenous taxa include Abacion Rafinesque, 1820/A. texense (Loomis, 1937) and Pleuroloma/P. flavipes, both by
Rafinesque, 1820, from South Dakota, and Pseudopolydesmus Attems, 1898/P. serratus (Say, 1821) from Alabama,
Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. New records of
Aniulus garius Chamberlin, 1912, A. (Hakiulus) d. diversifrons (Wood, 1867), and Oriulus venustus (Wood, 1864)
(Julida: Parajulidae) are provided for western Minnesota and/or eastern North Dakota. Published records from these
states are summarized, and the introduced taxa, Julidae/Cylindroiulus Verhoeff, 1894/C. caeruleocinctus (Wood, 1864)
and Paradoxosomatidae/Oxidus Cook, 1911/O. gracilis (C. L. Koch, 1847), are newly recorded from the Dakotas. The
distribution of P. serratus, which extends from Maine to South Carolina and the Florida panhandle, west to Texas, and
north to Fargo, North Dakota is described and discussed. This distribution exhibits a prominent southeastern lacuna
which we hypothesize suggests replacement by younger, more successful species, as postulated for a similar distributional
gap in Scytonotus granulatus (Say, 1821).
Snoqualmia, new genus, is described for two species of polydesmid millipeds from the northwestern
United States: Snoqualmia snoqualmie, new species, from Washington State, and S. idaho, new species,
from Idaho. Males of S. idaho possess unusually complex gonopods, perhaps the most complex to be found in the Order
Polydesmida. Snoqualmia is placed in context with other polydesmid genera known from North America. The
polydesmid fauna of North America is discussed, as well as characters of the gonopods of the family.
Recent fieldwork on North Andros Island by the authors resulted in the collection of six species of Pterophoridae
(Lepidoptera), five of which were previously unrecorded for the Bahamas in published accounts. Three
additional species are noted for the Bahamian fauna based on specimens collected in the 1980s on other islands.
Representative specimens are illustrated from North Andros along with genitalic images for species where these
are not readily available in other publications. In addition, images of the larva and pupa are provided for a reared
species for which the life history was previously unknown.
With the discovery of Mitocybe auriportae Cook and Loomis, 1928 (Platydesmida: Andrognathidae) in Alameda County (Co.), east of San Francisco Bay, a potential overall distribution in coastal California is projected based on those of partly congruent diplopods. The area extends from northern Mendocino to central Monterey cos. and inland to central Lake, Yolo, and Santa Clara cos.
Currently, the genus Chimarra Stephens (Trichoptera: Philopotamidae) is represented in the Oriental Region by 259 species. Of these, 61 species have been described or recorded from Vietnam. In this paper, 9 new species from Vietnam are described and illustrated (Chimarra aculeata, C. carinata, C. corneola, C. insolita, C. mina, C. prominens, C. rostrata, C. undulata, and C. ungula). In addition, 3 new country records are noted (Chimarra areli Malicky and Mey, Chimarra pipake Malicky and Chantaramongkol, and Chimarra suthepensis Chantaramongkol and Malicky), and 1 new species group (minuta Group) is proposed and populated. An additional species group (georgensis “Group”), with 1 new species from Vietnam, but otherwise only known from Africa, is discussed, but not formally defined. A table listing all known Vietnamese species of Chimarra is included, along with discussion of variability in the anal veins of the forewing found within this genus, and its relevance for defining subgenera and species groups.
A taxonomic review of the ancora species group of Graphipterus Latreille (Coleoptera: Carabidae)
(2012)
The taxonomy of the ancora species group of Graphipterus Latreille (Coleoptera: Carabidae) is reviewed and seven species are recognized, all from southern Africa: Graphipterus ancora Dejean, Graphipterus cordiger Dejean, Graphipterus distinctus Péringuey (new status), Graphipterus fasciatus Chaudoir, Graphipterus fritschi Chaudoir, Graphipterus wahlbergi Boheman (new status), and Graphipterus westwoodi Brême (new status).
Diagnostic features are provided for each species and adult specimens of each species are illustrated.
Two species of the weevil genus Compsus Schoenherr (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Entiminae) from Colombia are redescribed: C. obliquatus Hustache and C.viridivittatus (Guérin-Méneville). A key by Hustache in 1938, to 33 of the 34 recognized species of Colombian Compsus then known, is modified to include the one additional species. Habitus illustrations of males and females of the two species and illustrations of selected parts of the male and female genitalia are included. Nearly all of the specimens of these two species were collected on various species or varieties of citrus, indicating their potential as citrus pests in the future.
The relation between law, moral, society and science is shifting in Brazil as it is changing in democratic contemporary societies. This paper proposes to reflect about this change in the Brazilian legal and social context. Jurisprudence and legal practice have been transformed intensively after the Brazilian redemocratization that began in 1985 and Federal Constitution of 1988. In the field of Jurisprudence (Legal Theory), a new legal theory called post-positivism progressively has been overcoming legal critical studies and legal positivism. In recent years, ideas as any moral values can be improved by law (positivism) or law is one of many oppressive institutions in capitalist society (legal critical studies – Marxism) have been losing place in legal theory. Nowadays, when Brazilian Constitution implements just society and legal system, different from the authoritarian military regime (1964 – 1985), it is difficult to work with a complete relativistic idea of law (positivism) or difficult to accept that law is necessarily oppressive in capitalistic societies. Otherwise the idea of science in law at post-positivistic point of view try to overcome in a dialectic way a pure science methodology (normativistic positivism) and the complete political and economic studies of law (critical legal studies – Marxism). After that, the text will show that Brazilian legal practice have changed intensively after post positivistic methodology of law and will reflect about same dilemmas of post-positivism in Brazil in the legal theory and practice.
The paper is concerned with the Hartian idea that the justification of law’s normativity can be traced back to the exquisite social fact, viz. special kind of social convention. After discussing the view that the rule of recognition is a coordinative convention A. Marmor’s idea of constitutive convention is introduced. Relying on J. Dickson’s brilliant enquiry I finally argue that this latter idea is deprieved of any explanatory power, which was pressuposed by H.L.A. Hart when he himself reffered to the conventional rule of recognition as social fact having full normative significance.
In this paper, an analysis of Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall is presented as a hermeneutical key to investigate and criticize two examples of the oblivion of the reasonable distinction and the reasonable relationship between ethics and law proposed by a new Brazilian private law movement called Escola do Direito Civil-Constitucional (The Private-Constitutional School of Thought). Those examples of unreasonable relationship between ethics and law are: 1) the right to be loved and 2) the right to get a private education without paying for it.
Based on Walter Benjamin’s reflections on history and social struggles, this paper drafts an analysis of the relations of the subject with some problems of constitutional theory, in a first effort to bring the field nearer to social philosophy. After tracing a short narrative on modern constitutionalism and its new relationship with the historical time, we argument that Constitution shall be seen as a cultural document of memory of the social struggles of the past and at the same an object of the struggles of the present. Some inconclusive reflections on the possibility of human emancipation through law are presented as conclusion.
To become self-reflexive, Jurisprudence must to establish a dialogue: the human sciences should lose their exotic character in the eyes of Legal Science. It is in the middle between the "order" and the thinking about it, where the "naked experience" happens, that culture and therefore Law builds itself e it is constructed. This paper demonstrates the need to use other human sciences, with emphasis on anthropology, as "methodological strategies" for Jurisprudence self-reflection to become more faithful to the reality of the researched object. Anthropology has the power to show what is "anti-modern". It questions the intellectual space of modernity where the hard definition of antagonisms detached from reality occurs - West/East, “I”/other, civilized/barbarian. Jurisprudence consolidates antagonisms: the diversity and plurality of human societies are rarely seen as a fact but as an aberration, always demanding a justification. It is necessary to create a methodology using what is most extraordinary and human in the analysis of fact: "Anthopological Blues". Anthropology is capable of breaking with the classical conception of scientific methodology that is based on stiffness to produce absolute truths and also support the fulfillment of legal concepts with content and meaning, providing a reinterpretation of science as a human instrument of intervention on reality.
The debates about the interrelations between reason and law have undergone a change after the eighteenth century. References to the recta ratio of jusnaturalistic tradition have not disappeared, but other comprehensions of legal reason have developed. The European debate over legal positivist science has contributed to this in a manifestation of the rationality of law. This transformation may be considered the basis for the development of true “legal technologies” throughout the twentieth century. On the other hand, in the context of theories of positive law which have taken the relation between ethics and legal reason as a problem, the formation of discourses on coercion (Austin and Holmes), on validity (Kelsen and Hart) and on justification (Alexy and Dworkin) has also contributed to the emergence of new models of legal rationality. In this paper, it is highlighted that the construction of these models is linked to the “points of view” which theories have proposed as legitimate for the interpretation of legal phenomenon. And it is suggested that the discussion over points of view (defined as “focuses”, term which is close to the notion of “attitude”, “stance” or “place of speech”) may aid in the debate on the normativity of law.
New technologies generate risks, for the evaluation of which various mechanisms have been developed; the most frequent of these mechanisms consists of advice from committees of experts to the bodies whose role is to decide whether a new technology should be implemented or not. Such committees try to measure the magnitude of the threats that accompany the introduction of a new technology in order that the policy-makers may take their decisions in the light of the reports of the experts. The legitimacy of such reports is not only found in the technical capacity of its authors, but also in the impartiality of their recommendations. On numerous occasions, nevertheless, the effective presence of this evaluation finds itself today under suspicion. There are various methods that can be employed to try to resolve this problem. Firstly by reinforcing the mechanisms on which the technocratic evaluation of the risk are based; for example, through transparency in the selection of the experts. Secondly, by means of the incorporation of democratic mechanisms in the scientific-technological policy. The exposure of the internal conditions to the dynamics of the technological change that make possible the institutionalised involvement of society in the control of risk, as well as of the mechanisms to realise it are the principal subjects of this work.
Akrasia, or weak-will, is a term denoting a phenomenon when one acts freely and intentionally contrary to his or her better judgment. Discussion of akrasia originates in the Plato's Protagoras where he states that “No one who either knows or believes that there is another possible course of action, better than the one he is following, will ever continue on his present course”. However, in his influential article from 1970, Donald Davidson argued that akrasia is theoretically possible yet irrational. Some other critics of Plato's stance point out that phenomenon of akrasia is common in our everyday experience, therefore it must be possible.
These two arguments in favor of akrasia existence – theoretical and empirical – will be discussed from both – philosophical and psychological points of view. Especially, George Ainslie's argument that akrasia results from hyperbolic discounting will be taken into consideration to show how it affects traditional thinking about weak-willed actions.
Finally, the paper will discuss how the contemporary notion of akrasia may affect the idea of responsibility and free will. Implications for the philosophy of law will be shown, i.a. whether it is possible to claim that a given example of a weak-willed action was indeed free and intentional and one should be held responsible for its results.
Occasionally, in pursuing their adjudicative duties over the course of a legal hearing, judges are called upon to acquire new concepts – that is, concepts which they did not possess at the commencement of the hearing. In performing their judicial role they are required to learn new things and, as a result, conceptualise the world in a way which differs from the way they conceived of things before the hearing commenced. Some theorists have argued that either as a general matter or as a matter specific to judicial practice and the legal context, judges are, with some degree of necessity, incapacitated from acquiring certain kinds of concepts. Such concepts include those possessed by the members of culturally different minority groups. Drawing on contemporary trends in analytic and naturalistic philosophy of mind, this paper explores the extent to which a judge might be incapacitated from acquiring new concepts over the course of a legal hearing and identifies those factors which condition the success or failure of that process.
The main purpose of my article is to discuss what GMOs are, the controversies about this specific issue and the related regulations that are put forward by the authorities. GMOs are genetically altered organisms which have been widely produced and breeded in certain parts of the world. According to some experts, this special practice of agriculture emerged in order to put an end to famine and prevent food scarcity. As growing GMOs seems to be more convenient than the traditional farming, it is more eligible to produce food in large scale which will be a fine solution for food scarcity. However, there are some oppositions to the GMOs. It is strongly believed that the real causes of famine is not related to production, it is a problem of distribution of food. Moreover, patenting the seeds leads to an unstoppable control and dominance over food by the private enterprises. Therefore, the opponents state that the aims of these companies are solely financial gain and monopolisation in food production. Patenting the seeds is another arguable issue. It poses a great threat for the organic farmers since GMO seeds can contaminate the others through natural ways. This is not the only danger that organic farmers face with; thay can also be sued by the GMO producers for this unintended exposure to GMO seeds. Not only the diminishing of the variety of species but also the possible adverse effects of GMOs on human health create a debate between the two groups. These are not the only topics that are open to discussion. In addition to these, labelling the products creates a huge problem among the poorly educated consumers as they have not been clearly regulated in some countries. Hence, this subject having such a close connection to human health cannot be ignored by the law. In fact, a number of countries have enacted legislation in order to regulate this sensitive field. Turkey, having been dependent on the import of the agricultural goods for a period of time, has to join these countries with a recent legislation. All these contemporary issues for Turkey will be highlighted in my article.
In this paper I demonstrate the utility of a Values in Design (VID) perspective for the assessment, the design and development of e-democracy tools. In the first part, I give some background information on Values in Design and Value-Sensitive Design and their relevance in the context of e-democracy. In part 2, I analyze three different e-democracy tools from a VID-perspective. The paper ends with some conclusions concerning the merits of VID for e-democracy as well as some considerations concerning the dual tasks of philosophers in assessing and promoting value-sensitive technology design.
The aim of this paper is to explore the case of the Spanish ‘indignants’ movement of May 2011 as an example of the structural changes occurring in the public sphere after the emergence of a new type of social movement characterized by the widespread use of the ICTs. First I focus on the ideological dimension of discourse of the ‘indignants’ movement, so as to reconstruct the protesters’ self-image. They thought that ICTs were playing a prominent role in a wider trend towards a regeneration of democracy, but they were rather misguided because they lack an accurate description of what really happened. In the second part of this paper I will challenge some features of my case study, emphasizing three basic elements of a democratic public sphere. I aim to call into question the idea that a ‘truly’ democratic public may be hosted by the emergent communicative environment.
In the debate on how the new information and communication technologies impact on democratic politics the role played by the digital architecture seems to be surprisingly underrated. In particular, while a lot of attention has been paid to the possibilities that new technologies open up to democratic theory, few works have attempted to look at how democracy may help in shaping technologies. By adopting as a starting point the approach known as ‘code as law’, the paper aims at two objectives: to re-affirm the importance of discussing normative principles to guide the process of code writing in order to reinvigorate the debate; to claim the importance of input reasons when deciding which principles should be chosen. After having remarked that code is relevant for establishing democratic norms, the paper briefly tackles with the main attempts by European scholars to deal with this issue. Then, a couple of practical examples of how code impacts on democratic rights are sketched out. In the last section of the paper a shift from an output-based approach to the legitimacy of code to an input-based is openly advocated: an inquiry into the legitimacy of code should focus on its production.
The aim of this contribution is to introduce and outline a third theory of rights. Concentrating on claim-rights, it proposes to approach this aim via the concept of a directed duty. This approach is justified by the widely shared presupposition that an entity has a right if and only if a duty is owed to this entity. Unlike some prominent other proposals, this contribution does not contrast directed duties with undirected ones. It contrasts two ways a duty can be related to an entity. On the one hand, a duty can be owed to an entity. In this case it is directed to this entity. On the other hand, a duty can concern an entity. There is no reason to presuppose that they exclude each other, on the contrary. Theories of rights have to reconstruct the difference between these two ways a duty can be related to an entity. After having introduced the starting point for a theory of rights in that way, the two classic theories of rights will be rejected, the will theory and the interest theory. The main focus lies on the shortcomings of the different versions of the interest theory. This criticism helps to formulate the conditions a convincing theory of rights has to meet. In the last part, the status theory of rights will be outlined.
This paper aims to assess the arguments that claim representative democracy may be enhanced or replaced by an updated electronic version. Focusing on the dimension of elections and electioneering as the core mechanism of representative democracy I will discuss: (1) the proximity argument used to claim the necessity of filling the gap between decision-makers and stakeholders; (2) the transparency argument, which claims to remove obstacles to the publicity of power; (3) the bottom-up argument, which calls for a new form of legitimacy that goes beyond classical mediation of parties or unions; (4) the public sphere argument, referred to the problem of hierarchical relation between voters and their representatives; (5) the disintermediation argument, used to describe the (supposed) new form of democracy following the massive use of ICTs. The first way of conceptualizing e-democracy as different from mainstream 20th century representative democracy regimes is to imagine it as a new form direct democracy: this conception is often underlying contemporary studies of e-voting. To avoid some of the ingenuousness of this conception of e-democracy, we should take a step back and consider a broader range of issues than mere gerrymandering around the electoral moment. Therefore I shall problematize the abovementioned approach by analyzing a wider range of problems connected to election and electioneering in their relation with ICTs.
Until three years ago, ICT Technologies represented a main “subordinate clause” within the “grammar” of Participatory Budgeting (PB), the tool made famous by the experience of Porto Alegre and today expanded to more than 1400 cities across the planet. In fact, PB – born to enhance deliberation and exchanges among citizens and local institutions – has long looked at ICTS as a sort of “pollution factor” which could be useful to foster transparency and to support the spreading of information but could also lead to a lowering in quality of public discussion, turning its “instantaneity” into “immediatism,” and its “time-saving accessibility” into “reductionism” and laziness in facing the complexity of public decision-making through citizens’ participation. At the same time, ICTs often regarded Participatory Budgeting as a tool that was too-complex and too-charged with ideology to cooperate with. But in the last three years, the barriers which prevented ICTs and Participatory Budgeting to establish a constructive dialogue started to shrink thanks to several experiences which demonstrated that technologies can help overcome some “cognitive injustices” if not just used as a means to “make simpler” the organization of participatory processes and to bring “larger numbers” of intervenients to the process. In fact, ICTs could be valorized as a space adding “diversity” to the processes and increasing outreach capacity. Paradoxically, the experiences helping to overcome the mutual skepticism between ICTs and PB did not come from the centre of the Global North, but were implemented in peripheral or semiperipheral countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Portugal in Europe), sometimes in cities where the “digital divide” is still high (at least in terms of Internet connections) and a significant part of the population lives in informal settlements and/or areas with low indicators of “connection.” Somehow, these experiences were able to demystify the “scary monolithicism” of ICTs, showing that some instruments (like mobile phones, and especially the use of SMS text messaging) could grant a higher degree of connectivity, diffusion and accountability, while other dimensions (which could risk jeopardizing social inclusion) could be minimized through creativity. The paper tries to depict a possible panorama of collaboration for the near future, starting from descriptions of some of the above mentioned “turning-point” experiences – both in the Global North as well as in the Global South.
In this article, I examine how open borders can serve the idea of global distributive justice by asking how or how not the existing practices of immigration to rich countries may contribute to global economic redistribution. There are two observations. First, migration is not the redistributive option that anyone has an equal access. In order to make use of migration as a means of global redistribution, rich countries need to provide a chance to migrate to those who cannot afford movement by themselves. Second, as long as brain-drain problems happen, what the perspective of global distributive justice requires is the compensation for some educational cost of raising professionals or some control of their movement. Immigration admissions largely focusing on getting highly skilled professionals may not serve the idea of global redistribution.
The revolution will be tweeted : how the internet can stimulate the public exercise of freedoms
(2012)
This article discusses how new technologies of communication, especially the Internet and, more specifically, social network services, can interfere in social interactions and in political relations. The main objective is to problematize the concept of public liberty and verify how the new technologies can promote the reoccupation of public spaces and the recovery of public life, in opposition to the tendency to valorize the private sphere, observed in the second half of the twentieth century. The theoretical benchmark adopted for the investigation is Hannah Arendt's theory about the exercise of fundamental political capacities in order to establish a public space of freedom, as presented in “On Revolution”. The “Praia da Estação” (“Station Beach”) case is chosen to test the hypothesis. In 2010 in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, different individuals articulated a movement through blogs, Twitter and facebook, in order to protest against the Mayor’s act that banned the assembling of cultural events in one of the main public places of the city, the “Praça da Estação” (Station Square). By applying Arendt's concepts to the selected case, it is possible to demonstrate that the Internet can assume an important role against governmental arbitrariness and abuse of power, as it can stimulate the public exercise of fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of assembly and manifestation.
The role of experts grows in the present and that is, in part, justifiable: as complexity rises, the ones who deliberate feel the need of the help of those who have know-how in specific fields. The question that must be asked revolves around the type of expectations developed in modern societies regarding what experts can do. Though specialization is not a peculiarity of our time (the process can be observed since human beings became sedentary); it has presently gained specific characteristics. Two aspects of modern life are particularly significant on that matter: (i.) the fact that the economic system is based on excitation of new needs (and no longer on the demand for satisfaction of needs); (ii.) the growing pursuit for total administration of conflicts. These factors are constitutive of what Gadamer sees as a great threat to our civilization: the excessive emphasis given in our time to the human ability to adapt. A specific ability is demanded from individuals: the capability of making an apparatus functions properly. Less resistance and more adaptability is requested, and because of that, autonomous thought - that is, not determined by the function it has in a system – is devalued. The threat we currently face is that the abilities of a good technocrat become the only qualities demanded from those who are responsible for practical decisions (especially in politics and law). Teleological reason, that guides the activity of specialists (and requires know-how in a specific area and consists in choosing means to reach a previously established goal), should not substitute practical reason, as the former requires adaptability to experience (not to a plan that was previously established) and is grounded on solidarity. In order to discuss the limits of the activity of specialists, the paper looks back to phrónesis and the way ancient Greeks set boundaries - this exercise should help raising new questions revolving the matter.
Alexander’s theory of the civil sphere can be placed in the context of development of sociology of law. However, Alexander draws not so much on sociological theories but rather on the approaches of philosophy of law, particularly the ideas of Fuller, Dworkin and Habermas. The civil sphere is presented by Alexander as the embodiment of Dworkin’s principal integrity. Locating law within civil morality Alexander reveals the similarity of his viewpoint to Dworkin’s position. Drawing on Fuller’s works Alexander singles out the procedural foundations of the democratic order. At the same time for Alexander the source of morality of law is not the legal system itself but a certain level of civil solidarity. Like Habermas, Alexander emphasizes the culturally embedded character of the legal norms. Alexander shares Habermas’s understanding of law as a regulative mechanism affecting all spheres of social life. However, Habermas is more sensitive to the danger of colonization of law by the imperatives of the economic and political subsystems. Alexander’s approach can be contrasted with Luhmann’s sociological theory of law. Alexander concentrates on interrelation and mutual penetration of the civil sphere and law while Luhmann regards law as an autonomous system following its own logic. While Alexander claims that his theory is rooted both in sociology and philosophy of law in fact his approach is closer to normative philosophy.
Doctrines developed by the EFTA Court have placed considerable demands on national courts in the EFTA States. The Court now considers the EEA Agreement to form an “international treaty sui generis which contains a distinct legal order of its own.” It would thus seem that EEA law has transformed into an independent legal order, and subsequently has a claim to validity which emulates the self-legitimising presentation of the EU legal order. This, however, is not an empirically verifiable fact, but a particular understanding which arises when one adopts the viewpoint of the EFTA Court. EEA law takes place in a different realm when interpreted and applied in the national order: this realm is essentially a construction of the constitutional order. Case law shows that the Icelandic Supreme Court is far from accepting all EEA judge-made principles. This study will describe a context of legal pluralism by reference to the Icelandic legal system and its relationship with the EEA legal order. To illustrate the discussion, the most important case law relative to the interaction between Icelandic laws and EEA law will be considered in the light of legal pluralism - particularly the principles of contrapunctual law designed by Miguel Maduro. The paper argues that the Supreme Court’s internal domestic approach to the application of EEA law will inevitably become a source of fragmentation unless it takes place within an institutional framework of judicial tolerance and judicial dialogue.
The demarcation of authority between parents and the State regarding education of children has become an increasingly complex issue over the past three decades. During the same period the number of parents around the world choosing educational alternatives such as homeschooling has grown exponentially, causing significant legislative and jurisprudential shifts in the United States as well as other Western nations. If the State is responsible for education or has a significant interest therein, then it must have broad authority by which to prescribe the method, mechanism, and acceptable outcomes of education; it must also be able to review and enforce these desired outcomes. If parents, on the other hand, are responsible, then it is the State’s duty to defer to parents absent a compelling reason to interfere. A survey of the philosophical foundations from ancient to modern times demonstrates the tension between the State and parents in the realm of education; however, modern human rights norms contained in post-1945 international human rights documents provide explicit grounds on which the State must defer to parental choice in education.
H. L. A. Hart thought that a theory of law can be purely descriptive and called his theory a “descriptive sociology”. One of his great contributions to modern legal theory is his emphasis on the internal aspect of social rules. According to him, a theory of law can be built on the basis of the description of the participants’ view without sharing with it. This descriptivism is totally rejected by Dworkin, who propagates a theory that denies a sharp separation between a legal theory and its implications for adjudication. For Dworkin, a legal theory is only possible as a theory with “the internal, participants’ point of view”. Dworkin’s position implies a radicalization of legal theory that will transform the statement of an external point of view to that of an internal one. For Dworkin, the descriptivism bases on the sociological concept of law, which is an “imprecise criterial concept” and is “not sufficiently precise to yield philosophically interesting essential features.”Hart’s position is vulnerable because it takes an impure form of descriptivism that still draws a categorical distinction between fact and norm. This theoretical impurity results from the ambiguity of interpreting the internal aspect of rules. A strategy to rescue the Hart’s project is to radicalize his descriptivism with Luhmann's systems theory. Adapting the systems theoretical distinction between internal and external observation of law with all its implications for the explanation of the legal system and legal communications, Hart’s descriptivism finally attains its pure form, which is not only a distinctive paradigm of legal theory, but also possesses the potentialities to clarify its relationship to the legal theory based on the internal aspect of law.