BLASPHEMY IN A SECULAR STATE:

African Journals Online (AJOL)

MLR

altogether the religious basis of secular authority'.2 Accordingly, it 'terminated the Pope's claim to universal authority and confirmed the diplomatic independence of secular rulers'.3 However, the meaning of the secular is itself in a continuous state of articulation and re-articulation, casting doubts also on its attributes.

The Incidence and Management of Conflicts in Secular and Non-Secular Tertiary Institutions in South West Nigeria

Science.gov (United States)

Ayodele, Joseph Babatola; Adewumi, Joseph Olukayode

2007-01-01

This paper compared the incidence and management of conflicts in secular and non-secular tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The sample of this study was made of sixty staff, and two hundred and forty students randomly selected each from two secular and two non-secular tertiary institutions in south western Nigeria. A validated questionnaire was…

HAS ROMANIA BECOME A SECULAR SOCIETY?

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IRINA STAHL

2016-04-01

Full Text Available The article examines the question of secularization of Europe, and in particular of Romania, by using multiple international data sets. Secularization has been defined separation of the state government and religious authority resulting in a decrease in church attendance, a diminished trust in religious institutions, a lessening of religions’ importance in society, an increase in religious diversity with a concomitant decrease in group cohesiveness, and the rise of situational ethics and moral relativism. Several theories of secularization are explored in an effort to determine the presence of a secular continuum. Although there may be an increase of secular behaviours in member states of the European Union, a claim of growing secularism in Romania is not supported by an examination of the multiple data sets

Geomagnetic secular variation in India-regional and local features

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Srivastava, B.J.; Abbas, H.

1977-01-01

A study of the secular variation in the geomagnetic elements H, Z, F and D at Colaba (Bombay)-Alibag for the period 1848-1973, has been made. Fifth degree polynomials are fitted to the data of annual mean values of H, Z and F, and third degree to D, and the residuals discussed. The trends are also examined at the six Indian observatories using the data for 1960-1974. The increasing trend of Z at Alibag is found to decrease from about 1937, while that of H and F from 1965 at 20-30 nT/year, it being of the same order at Sabhawala and Hyderabad but smaller at the equatorial stations, particularly for Z component. The westward annual change in D swings eastward again around 1965 at all the Indian stations. This reversal of the secular variation trend in India after 1965 emerges as an important regional feature connected with a southward migration of the dip equator in India from 1968. The secular change in D at Alibag (+0.4'/year) is somewhat anomalous in the sense that it is reduced as compared to Hyderabad and other stations (+1.6'/year), probably due to the local magnetic anomaly of the Deccan lavas, and calls for detailed investigations. (auth.)

Post-secular religious practices entering traditional religion

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Urszula Pękala

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Nowadays we can observe complex interactions between the religious and secular spheres. Several different processes take place simultaneously: the traditionally religious elements function in the secular sphere as if they were part of secular culture; elements of the secular sphere build a specific kind of post-secular religiosity; finally, this post-secular religiosity influences traditional religions. This article focuses on the last stage of these changes. The author's purpose is to describe and interpret the practices we can observe. Because of the complexity of this issue, the analyses are limited to examples taken from the Catholic Church in Germany, where this process seems to be as popular as it is paradoxical. Catholicism realises that the post-secular forms of religiosity are very popular and that many people choose them instead of the traditional Church. It could offer them spirituality based on ages of experience. But instead of making its own spiritual tradition competitive on the spiritual market, Catholicism seems to offer Christianised post-secular goods, or its own traditional elements represented in a secularised form. It seems difficult to predict how it will all end. However, we observe an interesting encounter and interaction between an ‘old’ religion and a new religiosity, which will certainly have impact on further presence of the Church in the society.

Research on meaning-making and health in secular society: Secular, spiritual and religious existential orientations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvidt, Niels Christian; La Cour, Peter

2010-01-01

cultural basis for research in secular society. Reviewing the literature, three main domains of existential meaning-making emerge: Secular, spiritual, and religious. In reconfirming these three domains, we propose to couple them with the three dimensions of cognition (knowing), practice (doing...

Religious Globalisms in the Post-Secular Age

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Wilson, E.K.; B. Steger, Manfred

2013-01-01

This article explores the interconnections between mounting global crises and the emergence of the post-secular. Specifically, the article argues that the post-secular is both a description of and a response to shifting global realities in the twenty-first century. It describes the crisis of secular

Out of time : the limits of secular critique

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Randell-Moon, Holly

2011-01-01

Full Text Available A review of Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood, 'Is critique secular? Blasphemy, injury, and free speech' and Michael Warner, Jonathan Vanantwerpen, and Craig Calhoun (eds, 'Varieties of secularism in a secular age'.

Quantitative investigation of Raman selection rules and validation of the secular equation for trigonal LiNbO3

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pezzotti, Giuseppe; Hagihara, Hirofumi; Zhu Wenliang

2013-01-01

Some theoretical aspects of the vibrational behaviour of trigonal lithium niobate (LiNbO 3 ) are studied and discussed in detail based on spectroscopic experimental assessments. Polarized Raman spectroscopy is systematically applied to retrieve the fundamental parameters governing the dependence of Raman intensity on crystallographic orientation, through quantitating the complete set of individual elements for the second-rank Raman tensors of the LiNbO 3 cell (C 3v (3m) point group, R3c space group). Moreover, computational algorithms are also explicitly constructed to describe the spectral shifts of the selected Raman bands when subjected to unknown stress fields. Accordingly, we have experimentally confirmed the validity of the secular equation for the trigonal cell and quantitatively substantiated its application through the determination of the full set of phonon deformation potentials for seven independent bands among those available in the LiNbO 3 vibrational spectrum. Finally, a brief discussion is offered about the significance of the presented characterizations in the technological field of LiNbO 3 devices, including the newly shown possibility of quantitatively and concurrently unfolding from polarized Raman spectra both crystallographic and mechanical information in their vectorial and tensorial nature, respectively. (paper)

SECULAR CHAOS AND THE PRODUCTION OF HOT JUPITERS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wu Yanqin; Lithwick, Yoram

2011-01-01

In a planetary system with two or more well-spaced, eccentric, inclined planets, secular interactions may lead to chaos. The innermost planet may gradually become very eccentric and/or inclined as a result of the secular degrees of freedom drifting toward equipartition of angular momentum deficit. Secular chaos is known to be responsible for the eventual destabilization of Mercury in our own solar system. Here we focus on systems with three giant planets. We characterize the secular chaos and demonstrate the criterion for it to occur, but leave a detailed understanding of secular chaos to a companion paper. After an extended period of eccentricity diffusion, the inner planet's pericenter can approach the star to within a few stellar radii. Strong tidal interactions and ensuing tidal dissipation extract orbital energy from the planet and pull it inward, creating a hot Jupiter. In contrast to other proposed channels for the production of hot Jupiters, such a scenario (which we term 'secular migration') explains a range of observations: the pile-up of hot Jupiters at 3 day orbital periods, the fact that hot Jupiters are in general less massive than other radial velocity planets, that they may have misaligned inclinations with respect to stellar spin, and that they have few easily detectable companions (but may have giant companions in distant orbits). Secular migration can also explain close-in planets as low in mass as Neptune; and an aborted secular migration can explain the 'warm Jupiters' at intermediate distances. In addition, the frequency of hot Jupiters formed via secular migration increases with stellar age. We further suggest that secular chaos may be responsible for the observed eccentricities of giant planets at larger distances and that these planets could exhibit significant spin-orbit misalignment.

The Coming of Secular Buddhism: a Synoptic View

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Winton Higgins

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Secular Buddhism is coalescing today in response to two main factors. First, it rejects the incoherence of Buddhist modernism, a protean formation that accommodates elements as far afield as ancestral Buddhism and psychotherapies claiming the Buddhist brand. Second, it absorbs the cultural influence of modern secularity in the West. Historically understood, secularity has constituted a centuries-long religious development, not a victory of "science" over "religion." Today's secularity marks a further stage in the cultural decline of "enchanted" truth-claims and the intellectual eclipse of metaphysics, especially under the aegis of phenomenology. In Buddhism as in Christianity, secularity brings forth a new humanistic approach to ethical-spiritual life and creative this-worldly practices.

Secular humanism and "scientific psychiatry"

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Szasz Thomas

2006-04-01

Full Text Available Abstract The Council for Secular Humanism identifies Secular Humanism as a "way of thinking and living" committed to rejecting authoritarian beliefs and embracing "individual freedom and responsibility ... and cooperation." The paradigmatic practices of psychiatry are civil commitment and insanity defense, that is, depriving innocent persons of liberty and excusing guilty persons of their crimes: the consequences of both are confinement in institutions ostensibly devoted to the treatment of mental diseases. Black's Law Dictionary states: "Every confinement of the person is an 'imprisonment,' whether it be in a common prison, or in private house, or in the stocks, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets." Accordingly, I maintain that Secular Humanism is incompatible with the principles and practices of psychiatry.

Secular humanism and "scientific psychiatry".

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Szasz, Thomas

2006-04-25

The Council for Secular Humanism identifies Secular Humanism as a "way of thinking and living" committed to rejecting authoritarian beliefs and embracing "individual freedom and responsibility ... and cooperation." The paradigmatic practices of psychiatry are civil commitment and insanity defense, that is, depriving innocent persons of liberty and excusing guilty persons of their crimes: the consequences of both are confinement in institutions ostensibly devoted to the treatment of mental diseases. Black's Law Dictionary states: "Every confinement of the person is an 'imprisonment,' whether it be in a common prison, or in private house, or in the stocks, or even by forcibly detaining one in the public streets." Accordingly, I maintain that Secular Humanism is incompatible with the principles and practices of psychiatry.

THEORY OF SECULAR CHAOS AND MERCURY'S ORBIT

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lithwick, Yoram; Wu Yanqin

2011-01-01

We study the chaotic orbital evolution of planetary systems, focusing on secular (i.e., orbit-averaged) interactions, which dominate on long timescales. We first focus on the evolution of a test particle that is forced by multiple planets. To linear order in eccentricity and inclination, its orbit precesses with constant frequencies. But nonlinearities modify the frequencies, and can shift them into and out of resonance with either the planets' eigenfrequencies (forming eccentricity or inclination secular resonances), or with linear combinations of those frequencies (forming mixed high-order secular resonances). The overlap of these nonlinear secular resonances drives secular chaos. We calculate the locations and widths of nonlinear secular resonances, display them together on a newly developed map (the 'map of the mean momenta'), and find good agreement between analytical and numerical results. This map also graphically demonstrates how chaos emerges from overlapping secular resonances. We then apply this newfound understanding to Mercury to elucidate the origin of its orbital chaos. We find that since Mercury's two free precession frequencies (in eccentricity and inclination) lie within ∼25% of two other eigenfrequencies in the solar system (those of the Jupiter-dominated eccentricity mode and the Venus-dominated inclination mode), secular resonances involving these four modes overlap and cause Mercury's chaos. We confirm this with N-body integrations by showing that a slew of these resonant angles alternately librate and circulate. Our new analytical understanding allows us to calculate the criterion for Mercury to become chaotic: Jupiter and Venus must have eccentricity and inclination of a few percent. The timescale for Mercury's chaotic diffusion depends sensitively on the forcing. As it is, Mercury appears to be perched on the threshold for chaos, with an instability timescale comparable to the lifetime of the solar system.

Geomagnetic Core Field Secular Variation Models

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gillet, N.; Lesur, V.; Olsen, Nils

2010-01-01

highlight the difficulty of resolving the time variability of the high degree secular variation coefficients (i.e. the secular acceleration), arising for instance from the challenge to properly separate sources of internal and of external origin. In addition, the regularisation process may also result...

Fearing Secularism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sheikh, Mona Kanwal

Secularism and Beyond - Comparative Perspectives: International og interdisciplinær konference, 29. maj-1. juni, 2007Arrangeret af Anders Berg-Sørensen for "Religion i det 21. århundrede" i samarbejde med kolleger fraKøbenhavns Universitet og universiteterne i Wien og Birmingham...

Secular Evolution of Spiral Galaxies

Science.gov (United States)

2003-01-01

recombination (z=1000). Furthermore, the BigBang nucleosynthesis model also requires a signi cantamount of non- baryonic dark matter (Primack 1999) ifthe universe...momentum (as well as energy) outward. Associ-ated with this outward angular momentum transport isan expected secular redistribution of disk matter , co...mode, a secular transfer of energy andangular momentum between the disk matter and thedensity wave. The existence of the phase shift betweenthe

A few more comments on secularly growing loop corrections in strong electric fields

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Akhmedov, E.T.; Popov, F.K.

2015-01-01

We extend the observations of our previous paper http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2014)071 [http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.5285]. particular, we show that the secular growth of the loop corrections to the two-point correlation functions is gauge independent: we observe the same growth in the case of the static gauge for the constant background electric field. Furthermore we solve the kinetic equation describing photon production from the background fields, which was derived in our previous paper and allows one to sum up leading secularly growing corrections from all loops. Finally, we show that in the constant electric field background the one-loop correction to the current of the produced pairs is not zero: it also grows with time and violates time translational and reversal invariance of QED on the constant electric field background.

Secular humanism and "scientific psychiatry"

OpenAIRE

Szasz, Thomas

2006-01-01

Abstract The Council for Secular Humanism identifies Secular Humanism as a "way of thinking and living" committed to rejecting authoritarian beliefs and embracing "individual freedom and responsibility ... and cooperation." The paradigmatic practices of psychiatry are civil commitment and insanity defense, that is, depriving innocent persons of liberty and excusing guilty persons of their crimes: the consequences of both are confinement in institutions ostensibly devoted to the treatment of m...

Feminist Practice and Solidarity in Secular Societies : Case Studies on Feminists Crossing Religious–Secular Divides in Politics and Practice in Antwerp, Belgium

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van den Brandt, H.P.

2015-01-01

In west European countries, public debates on migration, integration, and diversity are informed by particular understandings of secularism and the secular society. In our increasingly diverse societies, so the story goes, it is needed to implement a certain type of secularism and/or support

Secular schools in Zaragoza (1885-1917

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Alfonso HEREDIA MANRIQUE

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This research has a very specific goal that is to know how many and which were secular schools that took place in Zaragoza city, in the period that goes from the first established at the end of the 19th century until the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1923. Secular schools identified are described by the educational aspects most relevant to that appear in the scarce and scattered remains of them information, and mainly related to the urban location, organization and didactics, teachers and students. All these aspects allow us to glimpse something of how trying to implement his project of secular, rational, scientific education.

Feeding secularism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fischer, Johan

2005-01-01

life. He shows how Islamic organizations in Britain claim authority through halal in the interfaces of expanding markets, secularism, and the rights and demands of a growing group of Muslim consumers. These claims emerge in a society where powerful political discourses identify the veiling of Muslim...

Predicting Precession Rates from Secular Dynamics for Extra-solar Multi-planet Systems

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Van Laerhoven, Christa

2015-12-01

Considering the secular dynamics of multi-planet systems provides substantial insight into the interactions between planets in those systems. Secular interactions are those that don't involve knowing where a planet is along its orbit, and they dominate when planets are not involved in mean motion resonances. These interactions exchange angular momentum among the planets, evolving their eccentricities and inclinations. To second order in the planets' eccentricities and inclinations, the eccentricity and inclination perturbations are decoupled. Given the right variable choice, the relevant differential equations are linear and thus the eccentricity and inclination behaviors can be described as a sum of eigenmodes. Since the underlying structure of the secular eigenmodes can be calculated using only the planets' masses and semi-major axes, one can elucidate the eccentricity and inclination behavior of planets in exoplanet systems even without knowing the planets' current eccentricities and inclinations. I have calculated both the eccentricity and inclination secular eigenmodes for the population of known multi-planet systems whose planets have well determined masses and periods and have used this to predict what range of pericenter precession (and nodal regression) rates the planets may have. One might have assumed that in any given system the planets with shorter periods would have faster precession rates, but I show that this is not necessarily the case. Planets that are 'loners' have narrow ranges of possible precession rates, while planets that are 'groupies' can have a wider range of possible precession rates. Several planets are expected to undergo significant precession on few-year timescales and many planets (though not the majority of planets) will undergo significant precession on decade timescales.

Unsafe Gods: Security, Secularism and Schooling

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Davies, Lynn

2014-01-01

This book makes the compelling argument that religion can be complicit in conflict and that a new secularism is vital to foster security. Using insights from complexity science, it shows how dynamic secularism can be used to accommodate diverse faiths and beliefs within worldly politics. Exploration of the interplay of religion and education in…

Explaining Global Secularity: Existential Security or Education?

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Claude M. J. Braun

2012-11-01

Full Text Available At the time of data analysis for this report there were 193 countries in the world. Various institutions – the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the CIA, the World Values Survey, Gallup, and many others – have performed sophisticated statistical analyses on cross-national data. The present investigation demonstrates that valid and reliable data concerning religiosity and secularity exist for most countries and that these data are comparable. Cross-national data relating to social, political, economic and cultural aspects of life were tested for correlation with religiosity/secularity. In contrast to the most widely accepted general account of secularity, the Existential Security Framework (ESF; Norris & Inglehart, 2004, secularity was not most highly related to material security, though these were highly related. Rather, secularity was most strongly related to the degree of formal education attained. Material security explained no significant variance beyond education. Thus, religion’s primary function in the world today is being replaced, not so much by the pseudo-materialistic supplication for better living conditions as posited by the ESF, but by contemporary education – extensive knowledge of contemporary cultures, philosophy, modes of thought or processes of reasoning.

Constitutionalizing secularism, alternative secularisms or liberal-democratic constitutionalism?
A critical reading of some Turkish, ECtHR and Indian Supreme Court cases on ‘secularism’

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Veit Bader

2010-11-01

Full Text Available In recent debates on the constitutional status of 'secularism' we can discern three positions. The first tries to overcome the absence of 'secularism' in most liberal-democratic constitutions by developing a more robust theory of constitutional secularism. The second develops theories of 'alternative secularisms'. The third, defended in this article, argues that we should drop secularism as a 'cacophonous' concept from our constitutional and legal language and replace it by liberal-democratic constitutionalism. I develop an analytical taxonomy of twelve different meanings of 'secularism' based on a comparative study of Turkish and Indian Supreme Court cases on secularism, and demonstrate that they are incompatible with each other and with the hard core of liberal-democratic constitutions. Next, I criticize the respective rulings in the Turkish and Indian context. Particularly in 'militant democracies', the appeal to a principle of 'secularism' turns out to be inimical to the liberal and to the democratic 'constitutional essentials'. I end with some normative recommendations on the role of constitutional review and judicial activism.

Moderate Secularism, Difference Sensitivity and Contextualism

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lægaard, Sune

2009-01-01

The article is a rejoinder to Tariq Modood's reply (Politics, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2009) to my article 'Moderate Secularism and Multicultural Equality' (Politics, Vol 28, No. 3, 2008).......The article is a rejoinder to Tariq Modood's reply (Politics, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2009) to my article 'Moderate Secularism and Multicultural Equality' (Politics, Vol 28, No. 3, 2008)....

Concept and Indications of Secular State

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Philina N. V.

2014-10-01

Full Text Available The article deals with the elaborate analysis of the concept and indications of a secular state. The paper has the interdisciplinary character and it is written on the verge of constitutional law, theory of state administration, philosophy, political science. The comparative analysis between the constitutional indicators of a secular state and democracy realia has been conducted

Application of the equations of radioactive growth and decay to geochronological models and explicit solution of the equations by Laplace transformation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Catchen, G.L.

1984-01-01

A recently developed method of pore-fluid age determination assumes secular equilibrium in the 238 U decay chain. The efficacy of this approximation is investigated using computer evaluations of the equations that give the time evolution of the 238 U decay chain, i.e. the solution of the equations of radioactive growth and decay. This analysis is performed considering two alternative geochemical scenarios to that of secular equilibrium - only 238 U present initially and 238 U and 234 U present initially. In addition, the effects of the 235 U decay chain are also determined in a similar fashion. These particular examples were chosen to show that more sophisticated geochronological models for many dating applications can be developed using such computer calculations. To facilitate such analyses, a solution of the equations of radioactive growth and decay for an arbitrary initial condition is derived using the Laplace transformation method and matrix algebra. Other solutions - both general and special - that are found in some well-known textbooks are reviewed. (orig.)

Craniofacial Secular Change in Recent Mexican Migrants.

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Spradley, Katherine; Stull, Kyra E; Hefner, Joseph T

2016-01-01

Research by economists suggests that recent Mexican migrants are better educated and have higher socioeconomic status (SES) than previous migrants. Because factors associated with higher SES and improved education can lead to positive secular changes in overall body form, secular changes in the craniofacial complex were analyzed within a recent migrant group from Mexico. The Mexican group represents individuals in the act of migration, not yet influenced by the American environment, and thus can serve as a starting point for future studies of secular change in this population group. The excavation of a historic Hispanic cemetery in Tucson, Arizona, also allows for a comparison between historic Hispanics and recent migrants to explore craniofacial trends over a broad time period, as both groups originate from Mexico. The present research addresses two main questions: (1) Are cranial secular changes evident in recent Mexican migrants? (2) Are historic Hispanics and recent Mexican migrants similar? By studying secular changes within a migrant population group, secular trends may be detected, which will be important for understanding the biological variation of the migrants themselves and will serve as a preliminary investigation of secular change within Mexican migrants. The comparison of a sample of recent Mexican migrants with a historic Hispanic sample, predominantly of Mexican origin, allows us to explore morphological similarities and differences between early and recent Mexicans within the United States. Vault and face size and a total of 82 craniofacial interlandmark distances were used to explore secular changes within the recent Mexican migrants (females, n = 38; males, n = 178) and to explore the morphological similarities between historic Hispanics (females, n = 54; males, n = 58) and recent migrants. Sexes were separated, and multivariate adaptive regression splines and basis splines (quadratic with one knot) were used to assess the direction and magnitude

Modeling the secular evolution of migrating planet pairs

Science.gov (United States)

Michtchenko, T. A.; Rodríguez, A.

2011-10-01

The secular regime of motion of multi-planetary systems is universal; in contrast with the 'accidental' resonant motion, characteristic only for specific configurations of the planets, secular motion is present everywhere in phase space, even inside the resonant region. The secular behavior of a pair of planets evolving under dissipative forces is the principal subject of this study, particularly, the case when the dissipative forces affect the planetary semi-major axes and the planets move inward/outward the central star, the process known as planet migration. Based on the fundamental concepts of conservative and dissipative dynamics of the three-body problem, we develop a qualitative model of the secular evolution of the migrating planetary pair. Our approach is based on analysis of the energy and the orbital angular momentum exchange between the two-planet system and an external medium; thus no specific kind of dissipative forces is invoked. We show that, under assumption that dissipation is weak and slow, the evolutionary routes of the migrating planets are traced by the Mode I and Mode II stationary solutions of the conservative secular problem. The ultimate convergence and the evolution of the system along one of these secular modes of motion is determined uniquely by the condition that the dissipation rate is sufficiently smaller than the proper secular frequency of the system. We show that it is possible to reassemble the starting configurations and migration history of the systems on the basis of their final states and consequently to constrain the parameters of the physical processes involved.

Poisson equations of rotational motion for a rigid triaxial body with application to a tumbling artificial satellite

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Liu, J. J. F.; Fitzpatrick, P. M.

1975-01-01

A mathematical model is developed for studying the effects of gravity gradient torque on the attitude stability of a tumbling triaxial rigid satellite. Poisson equations are used to investigate the rotation of the satellite (which is in elliptical orbit about an attracting point mass) about its center of mass. An averaging method is employed to obtain an intermediate set of differential equations for the nonresonant, secular behavior of the osculating elements which describe the rotational motions of the satellite, and the averaged equations are then integrated to obtain long-term secular solutions for the osculating elements.

There is a Sexular Body: Introducing a Material Approach to the Secular

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Jelle Wiering

2017-05-01

Full Text Available This article calls for more ‘bottom-up inquiry’ into the secular, departing from the assumption that it features normative ideologies and practices that dominate current societies. I plea for collecting and analyzing manifestations of the secular, as the secular as an phenomenon in society is surprisingly unexplored. To stimulate such inquiry, I suggest a material approach to the secular, as it will provide researchers with tools to conduct empirical research on the secular in contemporary societies. Inspired by Joan Scott, Charles Hirschkind, and Talal Asad, this article explores the notion of a Dutch ‘sexular’ body: a body which affective-gestural repertoires, limited here to the context of sexuality, people in society (historically associate with the secular. I conclude by arguing that a material approach to the secular will contribute to (1 obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of the secular, including its cultural conceptualizations and manifestations, and (2 clarifying, and hence facing the normativity the secular imposes on the people living in secular societies.

Varieties of Secularism in Asia

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

of the North Atlantic rim. This anthology seeks to begin that task. It does so by suggesting that the kind of secularity described by Taylor is only one amongst others. By attending to the shifting relationship between proper religion and ‘bad faiths’; between politically valorised and embarrassing spiritual...... phenomena; between the new visibilities and silences of magic, ancestors, and religion in democratic politics, this book seeks to outline the particular formations of secularism that have become possible in Asia from China to Indonesia and from Bahrain to Timor-Leste....

Secular tolerance? : Anti‐Muslim sentiment in Western Europe

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ribberink, E.C.; Achterberg, P.H.J.; Houtman, D.

2017-01-01

he literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti-Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from

Sex, secularism and religious influence in US politics.

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Bernstein, Elizabeth; Jakobsen, Janet R

2010-01-01

Through an analysis of alliances between secular and religious actors in US politics and a specific case study on anti-trafficking policy, we show that the intertwining of religion and politics in the US comes from two sources: 1) the secular political and cultural institutions of American public life that have developed historically out of Protestantism, and which predominantly operate by presuming Protestant norms and values; and 2) the direct influence on US politics of religious groups and organisations, particularly in the past quarter-century of lobby groups and political action committees identified with conservative evangelical Christianity. The sources of policies that promote gender and sexual inequality in the US are both secular and religious and we conclude that it is inaccurate to assume that religious influence in politics is necessarily conservative or that more secular politics will necessarily be more progressive than the religious varieties.

Social Boundaries and Secularism in the Lebanese Left

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Haugbølle, Sune

2013-01-01

This article explores the social meaning of boundaries in Lebanon through debates about secularism in and around the Lebanese Left. The aim is to elucidate the political and social meaning of ‘Left’ in a Lebanese context, and the positioning of liminal political subjectivity in a system organized...... along sectarian boundaries. Based on readings of debates about secularism in 1975 and 1976, the article proposes that the Left has since that year been forced to embrace secularism as its primary ideological marker. This experience in turn has become constitutive for what it means to be a leftist...

Really not god: Secularization and pragmatism in Gamblers Anonymous.

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Browne, B R

1994-09-01

The paper argues that despite maintaining the image of a twelve-step organization, the central theme of the history of Gamblers Anonymous (GA) in the United States is the increasing secularization of the program of the recovery. The paper documents the increasing secularization and pragmatism of Gamblers Anonymous, as reflected in key documents, despite the spiritual vision of its founding member. The author speculates on why Gamblers Anonymous took a secularized development path. Further research is called for.

Secularization- the promoter of “new type of man”

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Traian-Alexandru MIU

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Secularization is a phenomenon supposing major mutations on the social level. Thus, based on the principle of rationality, secularization has led to the removal of religion from the social sphere, the desacralization, aiming, ultimately, that the sacred disappear altogether from man's life. Within the globalizing-secularizing society, economics seeks to take possession of the entire social and spiritual life, helped by a policy-aggressive mercantile mentality. Secularization has led to manipulation of man so that he believes he has to build his future by abstaining from religion. The secularized man has come to the conclusion that only by his own forces helped by reason, economy and technology he can be the one who creates progress, namely perfection for himself and for the world he lives in. The hypermodern man is a man of ephemerality, a human being looking for his accomplishment in trifles, who no longer has deification as his final goal. The problems that man is facing today can be solved by taking the eternity as reference system for them.

Kosovar Society through Secularism and Religion

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MSc. Dritero Arifi

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This paper will analyze the importance and the effects of religion, in Kosovar society. A great part of the paper, will analyze the social and the political relations in Post-War Kosovo. Initially it will elaborate religion and secularism, especially in theoreticall aspect, what impact have these definitions in modern societies. In order to explain what the importance of the religion in Kosovo is, we will focus on analyzing ethnical, social and political relations within Kosovo society. A considerable component of the paper is also, the elaboration of secularism in Kosovo conditions. This implies that the formulation of the problem and the objective of this research, are the substance of the paper’s theme, which is, religion in Kosovo; its definition and the outlook of the Kosovar society on religion. Is Kosovo post-war society more or less religious? That means the elements of Religions and Secularism will be part of the analysis of developments in post-war Kosovo.

Periodic and secular changes in SS 433

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Collins, G.W.; Newsom, G.H.

1983-01-01

The recent history of SS 433 is reviewed with particular attention being given to the discovery of the periodic phenomena displayed by this object. Several periods ranging from days to months are established as being present in the spectrum of the ''moving'' lines as well as in other aspects of the emission from the object. In addition evidence for secular change in some of the defining parameters of the system is presented. Although these secular changes may eventually prove to be periodic on a rather long time scale, some interpretation of both the periodic and secular phenomena is possible. It is shown that it is possible to interpret all the known periodic phenomena in terms of a processing object responding to the time-varying torques that one would expect in a binary system

Modelling the secular evolution of migrating planet pairs

Science.gov (United States)

Michtchenko, T. A.; Rodríguez, A.

2011-08-01

The subject of this paper is the secular behaviour of a pair of planets evolving under dissipative forces. In particular, we investigate the case when dissipative forces affect the planetary semimajor axes and the planets move inwards/outwards the central star, in a process known as planet migration. To perform this investigation, we introduce fundamental concepts of conservative and dissipative dynamics of the three-body problem. Based on these concepts, we develop a qualitative model of the secular evolution of the migrating planetary pair. Our approach is based on the analysis of the energy and the orbital angular momentum exchange between the two-planet system and an external medium; thus no specific kind of dissipative forces is invoked. We show that, under the assumption that dissipation is weak and slow, the evolutionary routes of the migrating planets are traced by the Mode I and Mode II stationary solutions of the conservative secular problem. The ultimate convergence and the evolution of the system along one of these secular modes of motion are determined uniquely by the condition that the dissipation rate is sufficiently smaller than the proper secular frequency of the system. We show that it is possible to reassemble the starting configurations and the migration history of the systems on the basis of their final states and consequently to constrain the parameters of the physical processes involved.

The post-secular city

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Greve, Anni

) elements in ritual and ceremonies. Second, emergent spaces of post-secular practices are not only connected to traditional religious sites. With Schmautz (1998) it is necessary to understand a sacred site in its original social and cultural setting, and in the present experience of it. With a point...... in research on trans-national identity making (Fortier 2002). This paper suggests a displacement of focus from trans-national to international identity making and the possible role of religious societies. It is argued that an international culture is not mainstream culture however there are (universal......’ the paper argues for a possible potential of storytelling and mutual recognition. Third, it offers an argument for detecting ‘post-secular sites’ at the urban level from two angles: From architecture (the iconic consciousness) and from performance (the sacred drama). Fourth, the paper closes with a case...

Human Rights Education and the Post Secular Turn

Science.gov (United States)

Bowie, Bob

2012-01-01

This article questions whether human rights education (HRE) scholarship is responding adequately to the post secular turn in thinking about the place and nature of religion in society. Here the post secular turn is used to describe the discrediting of secularisation theory, the recognition of religion as an enduring and pervasive global cultural…

Normal solutions of the Boltzmann equation with small Knudsen number

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ding, E.J.; Huang, Z.Q.

1986-01-01

A singular perturbation method is used to find the normal solutions of the Boltzmann equation with small Knudsen number. It is proved that the secular terms may be removed by improving the Hilbert expansion and the Enskog expansion

Pilgrimage as post-secular therapy

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Lisbeth Mikaelsson

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This article describes the institutionalized pilgrim role and then turns to the therapeutic discourse which is so prominent in the modern pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Both the role and the discourse can be related to the concept of post-secularity, demonstrating that complex cultural fields such as religion and therapy, become intertwined in new ways through modern pilgrimage. This article also shows that churches cooperating in this type of pilgrimage are adapting to the post-secular age, finding a new sort of raison d’être in a multi-religious, international world. Here the author refers to the Church of Norway and its role in Norwegian pilgrimage. The latter is modelled upon the Santiago example.

The „Pussy riot“ case and the post-secular hybrids

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Uzlaner Dmitrij

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The article is devoted to the analysis of the “Pussy riot” case and the peculiarities of Russian postsecularism. Special emphasis is placed on the phenomenon of post-secular hybrids, i.e. the overcoming of the situation of social differentiation between religion and other social subsystems (one of the main distinctive features of secularization. It is claimed that the materials of the trial against “Pussy riot” make evident the appearance in Russia of at least three post-secular hybrids: 1 the blending of religion and politics; 2 installation of religious norms into the public order of the secular state; 3 significance of confessional legal experts as part of the new “ideological state apparatus”.

Secularization and de-secularization processes under the light of Max Weber’s rationalization sociology

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Eduardo Weisz

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This article starts posing a number of problems with which the classical understanding of the end of religions in Modernity has been confronted. This allows for a framework from which Max Weber’s theory of secularization can be addressed. From 1904 onwards, this author was engaged in the understanding of the historical-universal process of rationalization, and it is in this analysis where his prospective of secularization has to be looked for. His sociology of religion is therefore deconstructed from this point of view, so as to grasp why he understood that religions were displaced in the constitution of modern life conducts. After this analysis, the article poses the importance of this author’s legacy for the understanding of different issues concerning the present process of rebirth of religions.

A model for solar constant secular changes

Science.gov (United States)

Schatten, Kenneth H.

1988-01-01

In this paper, contrast models for solar active region and global photospheric features are used to reproduce the observed Active Cavity Radiometer and Earth Radiation Budget secular trends in reasonably good fashion. A prediction for the next decade of solar constant variations is made using the model. Secular trends in the solar constant obtained from the present model support the view that the Maunder Minimum may be related to the Little Ice Age of the 17th century.

The Jesuit Imaginary: Higher Education in a Secular Age

Science.gov (United States)

Hendrickson, Daniel Scott

2012-01-01

The philosopher Charles Taylor argues in "A Secular Age" (2007) that people who live in secular cultures are losing the capacity to experience genuine "fullness." Described by Taylor as a philosophical-anthropological conception of human flourishing that corresponds with existential senses of meaning and purpose, fullness is…

Evaluating secular acceleration in geomagnetic field model GRIMM-3

Science.gov (United States)

Lesur, V.; Wardinski, I.

2012-12-01

Secular acceleration of the magnetic field is the rate of change of its secular variation. One of the main results of studying magnetic data collected by the German survey satellite CHAMP was the mapping of field acceleration and its evolution in time. Questions remain about the accuracy of the modeled acceleration and the effect of the applied regularization processes. We have evaluated to what extent the regularization affects the temporal variability of the Gauss coefficients. We also obtained results of temporal variability of the Gauss coefficients where alternative approaches to the usual smoothing norms have been applied for regularization. Except for the dipole term, the secular acceleration of the Gauss coefficients is fairly well described up to spherical harmonic degree 5 or 6. There is no clear evidence from observatory data that the spectrum of this acceleration is underestimated at the Earth surface. Assuming a resistive mantle, the observed acceleration supports a characteristic time scale for the secular variation of the order of 11 years.

Secular Islam and the Rhetoric of Humanity

OpenAIRE

Kharputly, Nadeen Sh B

2017-01-01

“Secular Islam and the Rhetoric of Humanity” examines competing notions of humanity in representations of Islam in the United States from the Civil Rights period to the present. In post-9/11 representations, Islam is rhetorically “humanized” by the dominant culture in attempts to determine Islam’s role in the United States. This humanizing framework not only presumes an inherent lack of humanity in Islam; it establishes the ideal of the human as white, rational, and secular. To critique this ...

Contrasting irreligious orientation: atheism and secularity in the USA and Scandinavia

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Phil Zuckerman

2012-06-01

Full Text Available Atheism and secularity are not static, fixed orientations. Rather, atheism and secularity are contoured, malleable, and deeply shaped by cultural and social forces. A clear example of the degree to which atheism and secularity can be lived and expressed quite differently in different socio-cultural locations is revealed by comparing and contrasting the ways in which they are manifested in the United States and Scandinavia.

The New Secular Humanists: Ronald Dworkin and Philip Kitcher on Life without God

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Charles Taliaferro

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Ronald Dworkin and Philip Kitcher recognize that traditional, religious faith—especially in Christian theistic tradition—has virtues that seem to be missing in a secular worldview. To remedy this apparent deficit, they both propose that a secular worldview can provide a satisfying foundation for a flourishing, meaningful life. Moreover, Kitcher argues that secular humanism is far more justified than a religious worldview because it does not face the problem of diversity that arises in the case of religion. I argue that secular humanism faces the same problem of diversity that Kitcher proposes undermines religious belief. I further argue that Dworkin’s and Kitcher’s secular alternative to a religious worldview is problematic.

Tendência secular em estatura: uma revisão da literatura Secular height trend: a literature review

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Gilberto Kac

1999-09-01

Full Text Available Esse trabalho constitui-se em uma revisão de literatura sobre tendência secular em estatura (TSE. Os principais tópicos abordados foram a definição do fenômeno, a utilização de dados históricos de estatura como estratégia alternativa no monitoramento de mudanças econômicas, as principais explicações teóricas sugeridas para a ocorrência do fenômeno, o início da antropometria militar, sua utilização no passado e no presente, e a magnitude da tendência em recrutas e na população infantil. Os principais achados revelaram que a TSE tem sido atribuída, sobretudo, a influências ambientais, em particular, a melhorias nas condições sanitárias, econômicas e sociais. As taxas médias de incremento variaram conforme a idade, o estrato sócio-econômico e o país considerado; portanto, deve-se ter cautela nas comparações interpopulacionais. A Segunda Guerra Mundial reduziu a tendência em diversos países, entre eles o Brasil, mas as taxas de incremento no pós-guerra foram ainda maiores do que as observadas no início do século. Constatou-se, por fim, que dados provenientes da antropometria militar são os mais utilizados para estimativas de TSE.This paper presents a literature review of secular height trends. The principal topics included were definition of the phenomenon, use of historical data sets on height as an alternative approach for monitoring economic changes, the main theoretical explanations of the phenomenon, the beginning of military anthropometry, and past and current use in measuring secular height trends in recruits and children. The most important results showed that the positive secular trend can be attributed to environmental influences, especially improvements in health, economic, and social conditions. The mean reported rates in height increases varied with age, socioeconomic status, and country, so one must exercise caution in drawing inferences. World War II slowed the trend in several countries

Non-linear development of secular gravitational instability in protoplanetary disks

Science.gov (United States)

Tominaga, Ryosuke T.; Inutsuka, Shu-ichiro; Takahashi, Sanemichi Z.

2018-01-01

We perform non-linear simulation of secular gravitational instability (GI) in protoplanetary disks, which has been proposed as a mechanism of planetesimal and multiple ring formation. Since the timescale of the growth of the secular GI is much longer than the Keplerian rotation period, we develop a new numerical scheme for a long-term calculation utilizing the concept of symplectic integration. With our new scheme, we first investigate the non-linear development of the secular GI in a disk without a pressure gradient in the initial state. We find that the surface density of dust increases by more than a factor of 100 while that of gas does not increase even by a factor of 2, which results in the formation of dust-dominated rings. A line mass of the dust ring tends to be very close to the critical line mass of a self-gravitating isothermal filament. Our results indicate that the non-linear growth of the secular GI provides a powerful mechanism to concentrate the dust. We also find that the dust ring formed via the non-linear growth of the secular GI migrates inward with a low velocity, which is driven by the self-gravity of the ring. We give a semi-analytical expression for the inward migration speed of the dusty ring.

Secular change in 13 metabolic phenotypes: A Chinese longitudinal twin study

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Shuxia; Pang, Zengchang; Zhang, Dongfeng

in prospective investigations. Based on Chinese twin data collected from Danish-Chinese collaboration research, we perform twin modeling on 13 metabolic phenotypes (total cholesterol; triglyceride; high density lipoprotein (HDL); low density lipoprotein (LDL); urine acid (UA); glucose; weight; body mass index...... fitted to the secular changes in each of the 13 phenotypes with best fitting model selected based on model performance. Age and sex were included as covariates in the models to adjust for their effects on secular trend. Results: Variations in secular change in 3 lipids (total cholesterol; triglyceride...

Secular stability of rotating stars

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Imamura, J.N.; Friedman, J.L.; Durisen, R.H.

1984-01-01

In this work, the authors calculate the secular stability limits of rotating polytropes to nonaxisymmetric perturbations of low m. Polytropic indices ranging from 1 to 3 and several angular momentum distributions are considered. Results are most conveniently presented in terms of the t-parameter, defined as the ratio of the rotational kinetic energy to the absolute value of the gravitational energy of the fluid. Previous work on polytropes considered only the m = 2 mode, which is unstable for values of the t-parameter greater than 0.14 +- 0.01 for the n values n = 1.5 and 3 and the angular momentum distributions tested (see Durisen and Imamura 1981). The GRR secular stability limit of the m - 2 mode for the Maclaurin spheroids (n = 0) was determined by Chandrasekhar (1970). GRR stability limits of higher m modes for the Maclaurin spheroids were located approximately by Comins (1979a,b) and more precisely by Friedman (1983). 16 references, 2 tables

Secular stability of rotating stars

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Imamura, J.N.; Friedman, J.L.; Durisen, R.H.

1984-01-01

In this work, we calculate the secular stability limits of rotating polytropes to nonaxisymmetric perturbations of low m. We consider polytropic indices ranging from 1 to 3 and several angular momentum distributions. Results are most conveniently presented in terms of the t-parameter, defined as the ratio of the rotational kinetic energy to the absolute value of the gravitational energy of the fluid. Previous work on polytropes considered only the m = 2 mode, which is unstable for values of the t-parameter greater than 0.14 +- 0.01 for the n values n = 1.5 and 3 and the angular momentum distributions tested (see Durisen and Imamura 1981). The GRR secular stability limit of the m = 2 mode for the Maclaurin spheroids (n = O) was determined by Chandrasekhar (1970). GRR stability limits of higher m modes for the Maclaurin spheroids were located approximately by Comins (1979a,b) and more precisely by Friedman (1983)

Contemporary environmentalism as a current of spiritual post-secular practice

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Laura Wickström

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Contemporary spirituality often bears the stamp of an eco-discourse. It is characteristic of post-spiritual practices that there is a blurring of the boundaries between the sacred and profane and in this sphere, influenced by the eco-consciousness, nature and the body can be sacralised. In this article the author looks into environmentalism as a current in spirituality. First spirituality as a concept is discussed. Second follows a section on aspects of contemporary environmentalism, dealing with new social movements, new identity and the main directions of environmentalism. After that, the distinction between environmentally motivated spirituality and spir­itually motivated environmentalism is presented. At the end there is a short discussion of post-secular issues concerning environmentalism. Worldviews are no longer necessarily either religious or secular, but may also combine elements of rational secularity with enchanted spirituality. The blurring of the boundaries between secular and religious views and motives occur, as well as the separation of mind and body, rationality and belief, and human and nature.

Familial resemblance in religiousness in a secular society

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvidtjørn, Dorte; Petersen, Inge; Hjelmborg, Jacob

2013-01-01

generally considered more religious than the very secular northern European countries. Comparisons of the results are complicated by diverse definitions of religiousness, but several studies indicate that the influence of the family environment is most predominant in early life, whereas genetic influences...... increase with age. We performed a population-based twin study of religiousness in a secular society using data from a Web-based survey sent to 6,707 Danish twins born 1970-1989, who were identified in the Danish Twin Registry. We applied Fishman's three conceptual dimensions of religiousness: cognition...

Post-religional perspective and secular Buddhism: Stephen Batchelor and the post-metaphysical religion

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Leandro Durazzo

2015-04-01

Full Text Available This paper aims to present one of the contemporary trends on Buddhism, specially from the last decades in West, for its encounter with the globalized and dynamic context of present societies. This Buddhist trend, the progressive secularization of its traditions and practices, not to mention its increasing acceptance of historical-textual refutation, finds in Stephen Batchelor - a former monk in two different Buddhist traditions, Tibetan and Korean Zen - a catalyzer and a well-known advocate of secular perspective to the contemporary Buddhism. Here we will present the potential dialogue between the Secular Buddhism - besides the secularizing perspectives over orthodox cultural traditions - and the post-religional subject, as proposed by Marià Corbí and the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians. For the purposes of this paper we will focus on the modernizing and secular hermeneutics on Dharma practice, as defended by Stephen Batchelor and others.

Technical Limitations in Merging Secular and Sacred Functions in Monumental Churches

Science.gov (United States)

Piatkowska, Ksenia

2017-10-01

The abandonment of churches and their adaptation for secular purposes is a current subject in Europe and worldwide. Most cases involve objects that were desacralized and then rebuilt as a whole object for alternative functions. Thus far, the merging of secular and sacred functions in one monumental Catholic church has not raised any issues. The paper describes the case of St. Catherine’s Church in Gdansk, Poland, where sacred function exists parallel to the new secular function being implemented. The study is based on the authentic, professional experience of the author. It describes the technical limitations arising from the need to ensure destinies for the optimal conditions of both sacred and secular function, while avoiding undesirable interference between them. The author further identifies architectural solutions most relevant to current requirements for protection of sacred zones in the church, for preservation of the monument, and for optimal function of a modern science museum. Significant design issues include: the inviolability of the sacred zone, preservation of the historical value of the monument, proper operation of new secular zones in compliance with contemporary standards of safety, performance of the assumed mission and profitability. The research indicates specific areas where the highest probability of collision exists between the sacred and profane and where technical problems are likely to occur.

Cognitive dissonance between religious and secular social attitudes

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Marković Jelena

2003-01-01

Full Text Available The initial finding of the study, which served as the basis for the exploration of cognitive dissonance between religious and secular behavioral norms, was revealed in a tendency of the majority of religious students to accept behavioral norms, attitudes and believes (concerning interpersonal relationships and reproduction-related ethical issues which are not supported by Orthodox Christian Church viewpoint and teachings. However, certain cognitive and value system consistency appeared to exist: the intensity of religiousness was related to lower degrees of secular norms approval. It has been found that religious and nonreligious subjects differ significantly in their preference of the strategy used to maintain balance between dissonant religious and secular attitudes- in 3 out of 4 issues considered in the study. Religious subjects most frequently chose relativism strategy, claiming that some specific exceptions from a general rule or standpoint do not necessarily depreciate it, while nonreligious subjects most frequently chose dualistic viewpoint that principally separated and restricted domains of reasoning on spiritual and worldly issues, making them psychologically irrelevant to one another.

Secular effects on inflation from one-loop quantum gravity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cabrer, J.A.; Espriu, D.

2008-01-01

In this Letter we revisit and extend a previous analysis where the possible relevance of quantum gravity effects in a cosmological setup was studied. The object of interest are non-local (logarithmic) terms generated in the effective action of gravity due to the exchange in loops of massless modes (such as photons or the gravitons themselves). We correct one mistake existing in the previous work and discuss the issue in a more general setting in different cosmological scenarios. We obtain the one-loop quantum-corrected evolution equations for the cosmological scale factor up to a given order in a derivative expansion in two particular cases: a matter dominated universe with vanishing cosmological constant, and in a de Sitter universe. We show that the quantum corrections, albeit tiny, may have a secular effect that eventually modifies the expansion rate. For a de Sitter universe they tend to slow down the rate of the expansion, while the effect may be the opposite in a matter dominated universe

Secular Examination of Spirituality-Prosociality Association

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dong, Mengchen; Wu, Song; Zhu, Yijie; Jin, Shenghua; Zhang, Yanjun

2017-01-01

Religious beliefs in Chinese cultural background, especially in Chinese secular society, have rarely been systematically investigated. The nonreligious-based population in China endorses certain supernatural beliefs or has related transcendent experience, even though they usually claim themselves as

Questioning Engelhardt's assumptions in Bioethics and Secular Humanism.

Science.gov (United States)

Ahmadi Nasab Emran, Shahram

2016-06-01

In Bioethics and Secular Humanism: The Search for a Common Morality, Tristram Engelhardt examines various possibilities of finding common ground for moral discourse among people from different traditions and concludes their futility. In this paper I will argue that many of the assumptions on which Engelhardt bases his conclusion about the impossibility of a content-full secular bioethics are problematic. By starting with the notion of moral strangers, there is no possibility, by definition, for a content-full moral discourse among moral strangers. It means that there is circularity in starting the inquiry with a definition of moral strangers, which implies that they do not share enough moral background or commitment to an authority to allow for reaching a moral agreement, and concluding that content-full morality is impossible among moral strangers. I argue that assuming traditions as solid and immutable structures that insulate people across their boundaries is problematic. Another questionable assumption in Engelhardt's work is the idea that religious and philosophical traditions provide content-full moralities. As the cardinal assumption in Engelhardt's review of the various alternatives for a content-full moral discourse among moral strangers, I analyze his foundationalist account of moral reasoning and knowledge and indicate the possibility of other ways of moral knowledge, besides the foundationalist one. Then, I examine Engelhardt's view concerning the futility of attempts at justifying a content-full secular bioethics, and indicate how the assumptions have shaped Engelhardt's critique of the alternatives for the possibility of content-full secular bioethics.

Substitution or Symbiosis? Assessing the Relationship between Religious and Secular Giving

Science.gov (United States)

Hill, Jonathan P.; Vaidyanathan, Brandon

2011-01-01

Research on philanthropy has not sufficiently examined whether charitable giving to religious causes impinges on giving to secular causes. Examining three waves of national panel data, we find that the relationship between religious and secular giving is generally not of a zero-sum nature; families that increase their religious giving also…

Quantum adiabatic Markovian master equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Albash, Tameem; Zanardi, Paolo; Boixo, Sergio; Lidar, Daniel A

2012-01-01

We develop from first principles Markovian master equations suited for studying the time evolution of a system evolving adiabatically while coupled weakly to a thermal bath. We derive two sets of equations in the adiabatic limit, one using the rotating wave (secular) approximation that results in a master equation in Lindblad form, the other without the rotating wave approximation but not in Lindblad form. The two equations make markedly different predictions depending on whether or not the Lamb shift is included. Our analysis keeps track of the various time and energy scales associated with the various approximations we make, and thus allows for a systematic inclusion of higher order corrections, in particular beyond the adiabatic limit. We use our formalism to study the evolution of an Ising spin chain in a transverse field and coupled to a thermal bosonic bath, for which we identify four distinct evolution phases. While we do not expect this to be a generic feature, in one of these phases dissipation acts to increase the fidelity of the system state relative to the adiabatic ground state. (paper)

Resurrecting Democracies : Secularity Recast in Charles Taylor, Paul Valadier, and Joseph Ratzinger

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ossewaarde-Lowtoo, Roshnee

In this article, the alternative conception of secularity of Charles Taylor, Paul Valadier and Joseph Ratzinger (former Benedict XVI) is explored. A secularized society, which they take as an established condition, does not necessarily exclude religion, Christianity or Christian transcendence, in

One Size Does Not Fit All: Complexity, Religion, Secularism and Education

Science.gov (United States)

Davies, Lynn

2014-01-01

The continuing incidence of extremist acts committed in the name of religion underscores the need to examine the interplay between religion and learning. This article argues for a secular foundation in society and school to protect against religion contributing to conflict and extremism. However, this is not a hard version of secularism, but a…

Institutional Confidence in the United States: Attitudes of Secular Americans

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Isabella Kasselstrand

2017-04-01

Full Text Available The First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution addresses freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. However, the historical influence of religion in laws, policies, and political representation have left secular individuals feeling excluded. At the same time, levels of confidence in social and political institutions in the United States are at an all-time low. This begs the question: Is there a relationship between secularity and confidence in various social and political institutions (e.g. the armed forces, churches, major companies, government, police, and political parties? This question is examined using data on the United States from the World Values Survey from 1995–2011. While controlling for a range of key demographics, the findings show a negative relationship between secularity and institutional confidence. More specifically, atheists and nonreligious individuals are less likely than those who are religious to have confidence in all six institutions. Based on previous literature and the empirical evidence presented in this study, we argue that overall lower levels of institutional confidence among secular Americans is an outcome of the exclusion of such individuals from American social life. Thus, it highlights the importance of addressing the stereotypes and prejudice that this minority group faces.

Secular and Koranic Literacies in South Asia: From Colonisation to Contemporary Practice

Science.gov (United States)

Maddox, Bryan

2007-01-01

This paper explores the distinction between "secular" and "Koranic" schooling and literacy in South Asia. It begins by tracing an archaeology of the distinction between secular "literacy" and religious "illiteracy". It locates the emergence of the distinction in the colonial census of the 19th century, in…

Lunar nitrogen: Secular variation or mixing?

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Norris, S.J.; Wright, I.P.; Pillinger, C.T.

1986-01-01

The two current models to explain the nearly 40% variation of the lunar nitrogen isotopic composition are: (1) secular variation of solar wind nitrogen; and (2) a two component mixing model having a constant, heavy solar wind admixed with varying amounts of indigenous light lunar N (LLN). Both models are needed to explain the step pyrolysis extraction profile. The secular variation model proposes that the low temperature release is modern day solar wind implanted into grain surfaces, the 900 C to 1100 C release is from grain surfaces which were once exposed to the ancient solar wind but which are now trapped inside agglutinates, and the >1100 C release as spallogenic N produced by cosmic rays. The mixing model ascribes the components to solar wind, indigenous lunar N and spallogenic N respectively. An extension of either interpretation is that the light N seen in lunar breccias or deep drill cores represent conditions when more N-14 was available to the lunar surface

Secular Ethics Education as an Alternative to Religious Education--Finnish Teachers' Views

Science.gov (United States)

Zilliacus, Harriet; Kallioniemi, Arto

2016-01-01

This study provides a Finnish perspective to international discussions on religious and worldviews education through the subject of secular ethics. This subject has been offered in Finland since 1985 throughout comprehensive schools and is primarily directed at students who are non-affiliated. Secular ethics education has scarcely been researched…

Calling in Work: Secular or Sacred?

Science.gov (United States)

Steger, Michael F.; Pickering, N. K.; Shin, J. Y.; Dik, B. J.

2010-01-01

Recent scholarship indicates that people who view their work as a calling are more satisfied with their work and their lives. Historically, calling has been regarded as a religious experience, although modern researchers frequently have adopted a more expansive and secular conceptualization of calling, emphasizing meaning and personal fulfillment…

Secular decline in male testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin serum levels in Danish population surveys

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersson, Anna-Maria; Jensen, Tina K; Juul, Anders

2007-01-01

Adverse secular trends in male reproductive health have been reported to be reflected in increased testicular cancer risk and decreased semen quality in more recently born men. These secular trends may also be reflected by changes in Leydig cell function.......Adverse secular trends in male reproductive health have been reported to be reflected in increased testicular cancer risk and decreased semen quality in more recently born men. These secular trends may also be reflected by changes in Leydig cell function....

Secularization and its Impact on the Jews’ Religious Life

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Vasile Adrian

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Secularization brings forward a desacralized world, exclusively oriented to the material and concerned with the “fashion of the day” rather than with the Spirit of God. Secularism made man wander from god and ignore the religious, spiritual and moral principles found in Christianity and Judaism. Secularization caused all social, economic or political aspects be expressed outside these principles and, many times, against them. Man’s religiousness has become something personal and original that has nothing to do with community or the life of the community, thus becoming a strictly private or intimate option, and in many case even a taboo. Therefore we speak about a privatization of the religious feeling that has no connection to Christianity or Judaism. Unfortunately Judaism has been affected in some other way besides what concerns religious life. We are referring to the anti-Semite feeling that reached its peak at the beginning of the last century and tragically ended in the holocaust in which millions of Jews lost their lives.

Habermas and the Meaning of the Post-Secular Society: Complementary Learning Processes

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Welton, Michael R.

2014-01-01

This essay argues that if social justice is to prevail in our world, we must understand the post-secular nature of our globalized society as a prerequisite for moving beyond "might is right" to national and international relations that heed all voices towards evidence-based interaction. Our post-secular world and postmetaphysical…

Surviving Secularization: Masking the Spirit in the Jankunu (John Canoe Festivals of the Caribbean

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Kenneth M. Bilby

2010-12-01

Full Text Available Jankunu (Jonkonnu, Junkanoo, an Afro-Caribbean Yuletide tradition centering on masked dance, is generally characterized as a secular festival. This article presents contemporary ethnographic evidence showing that certain older variants of the tradition remain closely connected with African-derived religious concepts and practices. On the basis of this new evidence, the author argues for a reexamination and reevaluation of the historical significance of this tradition, which even today, despite its ostensible secularity, has vaguely "spiritual" associations for many in the region—including some of those who represent it as "secular." The article interprets this apparent contradiction as the result of a historical process of secularization (in response to the stigmatization of African modes of religiosity that was only partly successful.

Secular chaos and its application to Mercury, hot Jupiters, and the organization of planetary systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Lithwick, Yoram; Wu, Yanqin

2014-09-02

In the inner solar system, the planets' orbits evolve chaotically, driven primarily by secular chaos. Mercury has a particularly chaotic orbit and is in danger of being lost within a few billion years. Just as secular chaos is reorganizing the solar system today, so it has likely helped organize it in the past. We suggest that extrasolar planetary systems are also organized to a large extent by secular chaos. A hot Jupiter could be the end state of a secularly chaotic planetary system reminiscent of the solar system. However, in the case of the hot Jupiter, the innermost planet was Jupiter (rather than Mercury) sized, and its chaotic evolution was terminated when it was tidally captured by its star. In this contribution, we review our recent work elucidating the physics of secular chaos and applying it to Mercury and to hot Jupiters. We also present results comparing the inclinations of hot Jupiters thus produced with observations.

Secular chaos and its application to Mercury, hot Jupiters, and the organization of planetary systems

Science.gov (United States)

Lithwick, Yoram; Wu, Yanqin

2014-01-01

In the inner solar system, the planets’ orbits evolve chaotically, driven primarily by secular chaos. Mercury has a particularly chaotic orbit and is in danger of being lost within a few billion years. Just as secular chaos is reorganizing the solar system today, so it has likely helped organize it in the past. We suggest that extrasolar planetary systems are also organized to a large extent by secular chaos. A hot Jupiter could be the end state of a secularly chaotic planetary system reminiscent of the solar system. However, in the case of the hot Jupiter, the innermost planet was Jupiter (rather than Mercury) sized, and its chaotic evolution was terminated when it was tidally captured by its star. In this contribution, we review our recent work elucidating the physics of secular chaos and applying it to Mercury and to hot Jupiters. We also present results comparing the inclinations of hot Jupiters thus produced with observations. PMID:24367108

Prediction of secular acceleration of axial rotation of Mars

Science.gov (United States)

Barkin, Yu. V.

2009-04-01

Secular motion of the Earth pole and non-tidal acceleration of its diurnal rotation have obtained rather precise explanation with the help of simple one-point model of the directed transport of fluid masses from a southern hemisphere in northern hemisphere with the general direction, given by geocentric axis OP directed to pole P with coordinates 700N, 10403 E[1]. The another generalized model represents a system of two material points with masses m2 and m1, located on surface of the Earth at poles of geocentric axis OP. Masses are linearly changed in the time with velocities [2]: ṁ2 = 0.179 × 1015kg/yrand ṁ1 = 0.043 × 1015kg/yr. A reduction of fluid masses of the appropriate thin spherical layer of the Earth correspond to secular increasing of masses of model points. The specified model has allowed to explain values of fundamental geodynamic parameters observably and determined during decades: a direction and velocity of drift of a pole of the Earth; value of non-tidal acceleration of axial rotation; to explain a secular variations of coefficients of the second, third, fourth, sixth and eighth zonal harmonics of a geopotential; coefficients of secular changes of a surface of ocean for the last approximately 150 years; a direction of secular drift of a geocenter and other planetary phenomena [3]. The role of the angular momentum of redistributed masses of the Earth in rotation of the Earth appeared not essential at the given stage of researches. On the essence the offered model has semi-empirical character as it bases on values of velocities of change of masses of points and the given position of axis OP. For their determination and estimations the part of the observant data was used, and other parameters were designed under analytical formulas. The obtained results have precisely confirmed competency and affectivity of geodynamic model [4] about existence of secular drift of a liquid core along radial direction OP with velocity about 2.6 cm/yr in the

Sacralizando o secular. Os movimentos etno-fundamentalistas

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Enzo Pace

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Os movimentos religiosos fundamentalistas encaram o Estado secular como um inimigo, porque pretendem sistematizar seu poder como se Deus não atuasse. Esses movimentos consideram sua religião como o repositório de verdade absoluta, a fonte derradeira que legitima as leis humanas. Assim, conquanto sejam pós-seculares, ao mesmo tempo tentam transformar os princípios religiosos em agendas políticas. Com efeito, os militantes agem frequentemente de acordo com princípios políticos, procurando afirmar o primado de sua própria fé sobre a dos outros. Eles se movem dentro das sociedades contemporâneas em nome de uma teologia política radical. Os principais argumentos baseiam-se em dois estudos de caso: o Bodu Bala Sena no Sri Lanka e os movimentos para o Hindutva na Índia.

A secular technetium–molybdenum generator

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Araujo, Wagner L., E-mail: wagnerleite@ufmg.br; Campos, Tarcisio P.R., E-mail: tprcampos@pq.cnpq.br

2015-05-11

A compact secular molybdenium generator is subject of this paper. This generator represents a nuclear system that comprises a hydrogen-isotopes fusor, moderator, reflector and shield. Deuterium fusion reactions in a tritiated or deuterated target provide the neutron source. A moderation fluid slowdown the neutron energy which increases {sup 98}Mo(n,γ){sup 99}Mo capture reaction rates. Neutron reflection minimizes the neutron escape and the radiation shield encloses the device. The neutron yield calculation along with electromagnetic and nuclear simulations were addressed. Results revealed the accelerator equipotential surfaces ranging from −30 to 150 kV, the ion trajectories and the energy beam profile define a deuteron current of 1 A with energy of 180 keV at the target, the spatial distribution of the neutron flux, and the {sup 99}Mo and {sup 99m}Tc activities in function of transmuter operation time. The kinetics of the {sup 99m}Tc correlated to its precursor activity demonstrates a secular equilibrium providing 2 Ci in a operational time of 150 h. As conclusion, the investigated nuclear and electromagnetic features have demonstrated that such generator shall have a notable potential for feeding the {sup 99m}Tc clinical application.

Adiabatically steered open quantum systems: Master equation and optimal phase

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Salmilehto, J.; Solinas, P.; Ankerhold, J.; Moettoenen, M.

2010-01-01

We introduce an alternative way to derive the generalized form of the master equation recently presented by J. P. Pekola et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 030401 (2010)] for an adiabatically steered two-level quantum system interacting with a Markovian environment. The original derivation employed the effective Hamiltonian in the adiabatic basis with the standard interaction picture approach but without the usual secular approximation. Our approach is based on utilizing a master equation for a nonsteered system in the first superadiabatic basis. It is potentially efficient in obtaining higher-order equations. Furthermore, we show how to select the phases of the adiabatic eigenstates to minimize the local adiabatic parameter and how this selection leads to states which are invariant under a local gauge change. We also discuss the effects of the adiabatic noncyclic geometric phase on the master equation.

What Lies between the Religious and the Secular?: Education beyond the Human

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Seo, Yong-Seok

2014-01-01

The current age is characterised by many as secular, and a source of such a characterisation can be found in the Nietzschean claim that thoughts about there being some ultimate reality have to be jettisoned, and human existence and the world need to be embraced as they are. That claim is renewed by some secular thinkers who insist that education…

Public debt, secular stagnation and functional finance

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Skott, Peter

2016-01-01

Fiscal policy and public debt may be required to maintain full employment and avoid secular stagnation. This conclusion emerges from a range of different models, including OLG specifications and stock-flow consistent (post-) Keynesian models. One of the determinants of the required long-run debt ...

Distinguish natural sources out of secular equilibrium with their parents or daughters in Gamma ray spectrum analyses

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mao Yahong; Liu Yigang

2005-01-01

Objective: To determine materials containing natural radionuclides in or out secular equilibrium with their parents or daughters. Methods: In gamma ray spectrum analyses, the activity concentration of every daughter is the same as that of its parent when the material is in secular equilibrium. The activity concentrations of daughters and their parents are different when the material is out of secular equilibrium. Results: It is different to determine whether the exposures from these materials should be exempted that materials containing natural radionuclides are in or out of secular equilibrium with their parents or daughters. Conclusion: It is important to determine materials containing natural radionuclides in or out secular equilibrium with their parents or daughters in gamma ray spectrum analyses. (authors)

Secular Love number of Phobos

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bursa, M.

1988-01-01

The secular Love number of Phobos was estimated k s =10.4. It only deviates by one order of magnitude from that corresponding to the ideal equilibrium state. It is not in contradiction with the theory of the origin of Phobos as a result of the accretion around Mars. In its early history, the rotation period of Phobos had been estimated to be approx. 2.4 hours. (author). 1 tab., 4 refs

Secular Evolution in Disk Galaxies

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Kormendy, John

2013-10-01

Self-gravitating systems evolve toward the most tightly bound configuration that is reachable via the evolution processes that are available to them. They do this by spreading -- the inner parts shrink while the outer parts expand -- provided that some physical process efficiently transports energy or angular momentum outward. The reason is that self-gravitating systems have negative specific heats. As a result, the evolution of stars, star clusters, protostellar and protoplanetary disks, black hole accretion disks and galaxy disks are fundamentally similar. How evolution proceeds then depends on the evolution processes that are available to each kind of self-gravitating system. These processes and their consequences for galaxy disks are the subjects of my lectures and of this Canary Islands Winter School. I begin with a review of the formation, growth and death of bars. Then I review the slow (`secular') rearrangement of energy, angular momentum, and mass that results from interactions between stars or gas clouds and collective phenomena such as bars, oval disks, spiral structure and triaxial dark haloes. The `existence-proof' phase of this work is largely over: we have a good heuristic understanding of how nonaxisymmetric structures rearrange disk gas into outer rings, inner rings and stuff dumped onto the centre. The results of simulations correspond closely to the morphology of barred and oval galaxies. Gas that is transported to small radii reaches high densities. Observations confirm that many barred and oval galaxies have dense central concentrations of gas and star formation. The result is to grow, on timescales of a few Gyr, dense central components that are frequently mistaken for classical (elliptical-galaxy-like) bulges but that were grown slowly out of the disk (not made rapidly by major mergers). The resulting picture of secular galaxy evolution accounts for the richness observed in galaxy structure. We can distinguish between classical and pseudo

Perils of the Future: A Discussion of Marx’s Secularization Thesis

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Clava Brodsky

2014-07-01

Full Text Available As both a journalist and a philosopher, Karl Marx had one eye on the present and the other on the future. This dual concern is particularly clear in On the Jewish Question, where Marx persons his theory of secularization. In this article, I claim that his account of political secularization is far more convincing; while his account of human emancipation – his wish for the future – rests on a thin reading of human rights.

Secular Extragalactic Parallax and Geometric Distances with Gaia Proper Motions

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Paine, Jennie; Darling, Jeremiah K.

2018-06-01

The motion of the Solar System with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame creates a well measured dipole in the CMB, which corresponds to a linear solar velocity of about 78 AU/yr. This motion causes relatively nearby extragalactic objects to appear to move compared to more distant objects, an effect that can be measured in the proper motions of nearby galaxies. An object at 1 Mpc and perpendicular to the CMB apex will exhibit a secular parallax, observed as a proper motion, of 78 µas/yr. The relatively large peculiar motions of galaxies make the detection of secular parallax challenging for individual objects. Instead, a statistical parallax measurement can be made for a sample of objects with proper motions, where the global parallax signal is modeled as an E-mode dipole that diminishes linearly with distance. We present preliminary results of applying this model to a sample of nearby galaxies with Gaia proper motions to detect the statistical secular parallax signal. The statistical measurement can be used to calibrate the canonical cosmological “distance ladder.”

Religion, Education and the Post-Secular Child

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Davis, Robert A.

2014-01-01

This essay endeavours to reframe current discussion of the relationship of religion to education by highlighting an often seriously neglected element of contemporary educational thought: the changing, post-secular understanding of childhood in the globalised age. Drawing upon recent ethnographies of childhood, and an older anthropological…

Spirituality and secularization: nursing and the sociology of religion.

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Paley, John

2008-01-01

The concept of spirituality is much discussed in the UK nursing literature, despite the fact that Britain is one of the most secular countries in the world, and steadily becoming more so. Here, I pose the following question: given this increasing secularization, what accounts for the current interest in spirituality among UK nurses? The literature on spirituality in nursing has blossomed in the last 10 years, and various attempts have been made to define 'spirituality', 'spiritual need' and 'spiritual care'. Most definitions distinguish between 'spirituality' and 'religion', acknowledging that the latter is more institutional, and theologically more restrictive, than the former; and they suggest that spirituality is universal, something which (unlike religion) all human beings share. I draw on the sociology of religion - neglected, for the most part, in the nursing literature - to establish two main points. Firstly, that the UK and the USA are at opposite ends of the religion/secularity spectrum, implying that it is a mistake to assimilate USA and UK sources. Secondly, that the concept of spirituality, as currently understood, is of very recent origin, and is still 'under construction', having become separated from its associations with Christian piety and mysticism only since the 1980s. The extension of spirituality into secular domains is part of a professionalization project in nursing, a claim to jurisdiction over a newly invented sphere of work. For the time being, it remains an academic project (in the UK) as it is not one with which many clinicians identify. Relevance to clinical practice. What counts as 'spiritual need' or 'spiritual care' may not be the same in both countries, and UK clinicians are unlikely to welcome the role of surrogate chaplain, which their USA colleagues are apparently willing to embrace.

Secularities, Diversities and Pluralities: Understanding the Challenges of Religious Diversity in Latin America

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Edgar Zavala-Pelayo

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Latin America is experiencing today the greatest religious diversity in its entire history. However, it must also be noted that a large number of the growing religious minorities may be classified into types of Christianity with conservative overtones. In this paper we will suggest that the literature streams on multiple secularities in contemporary (Western societies and religious diversity in Latin America do offer insightful perspectives yet fail to adequately convey the challenges raised by the religious across contemporary Latin America. Addressing Latin America’s historical background, we will distinguish conceptually and empirically among different degrees of secularities, diversities and pluralities and will construct with these distinctions a descriptive-normative model that can guide future analyses of secular and religious phenomena in Latin America. It is only through a comprehensive understanding of diversities, pluralities and secularities that the debates on those human rights crucial for social inclusion—from sexual and reproductive rights to gender and religious equality—can be fruitfully conducted in and beyond Latin America.

Thinking beyond Secularism: The Catholic Church and Political Practice in Rural South India

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Aparna Sundar

2012-04-01

Full Text Available This article re-opens the debate on secularism in India by looking at a religion and a region that has historically been marginal to this discourse, focusing on the way in which the Catholic Church has historically mediated the relationship between individuals and the state, among the fishing communities of South India. The Catholic Church’s dominant position among the fishing communities, its minority status within India, as well as theological and other shifts that have taken place within the global Church, lead it to articulate a secular, even radical politics as its primary mode of religious engagement. Radical clergy, many from fishing backgrounds, act as both organic and traditional intellectuals in the Gramscian sense, linking the traditional religious concerns of the Church to the secular interests of their parishioners. Likewise, villagers participate in Church-generated associations spaces to secure wider political goals. The paper concludes that certain forms of religious organisation in the public sphere might indeed be compatible with democracy, citizenship, and even secularism.

Effective Hamiltonians, two level systems, and generalized Maxwell-Bloch equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sczaniecki, L.

1981-02-01

A new method is proposed involving a canonical transformation leading to the non-secular part of time-independent perturbation calculus. The method is used to derive expressions for effective Shen-Walls Hamiltonians which, taken in the two-level approximation and on the inclusion of non-Hamiltonian terms into the dynamics of the system, lead to generalized Maxwell-Bloch equations. The rotating wave approximation is written anew within the framework of our formalism. (author)

Striking Seasonality in the Secular Warming of the Northern Continents: Structure and Mechanisms

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Nigam, S.; Thomas, N. P.

2017-12-01

The linear trend in twentieth-century surface air temperature (SAT)—a key secular warming signal— exhibits striking seasonal variations over Northern Hemisphere continents; SAT trends are pronounced in winter and spring but notably weaker in summer and fall. The SAT trends in historical twentieth-century climate simulations informing the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's Fifth Assessment show varied (and often unrealistic) strength and structure, and markedly weaker seasonal variation. The large intra-ensemble spread of winter SAT trends in some historical simulations was surprising, especially in the context of century-long linear trends, with implications for the detection of the secular warming signal. The striking seasonality of observed secular warming over northern continents warrants an explanation and the representation of related processes in climate models. Here, the seasonality of SAT trends over North America is shown to result from land surface-hydroclimate interactions and, to an extent, also from the secular change in low-level atmospheric circulation and related thermal advection. It is argued that the winter dormancy and summer vigor of the hydrologic cycle over middle- to high-latitude continents permit different responses to the additional incident radiative energy from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. The seasonal cycle of climate, despite its monotony, provides an expanded phase space for the exposition of the dynamical and thermodynamical processes generating secular warming, and an exceptional cost-effective opportunity for benchmarking climate projection models.

Secular and Religious Social Support Better Protect Blacks than Whites against Depressive Symptoms.

Science.gov (United States)

Assari, Shervin; Moghani Lankarani, Maryam

2018-05-04

Purpose: Although the protective effect of social support against depression is well known, limited information exists on racial differences in this association. The current study examined Black-White differences in the effects of religious and secular emotional social support on depressive symptoms in a national sample of older adults in the United States. Methods: With a longitudinal prospective design, the Religion, Aging and Health Survey, 2001⁻2004, followed 1493 Black ( n = 734) and White ( n = 759) elderly individuals (age 66 and older) for three years. Race, demographics (age and gender), socio-economics (education and marital status) and frequency of church attendance were measured at baseline in 2001. Secular social support, religious social support, chronic medical conditions and depressive symptoms [8- item Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale (CES-D)] were measured in 2004. Multiple linear regression models were used for data analysis. In the pooled sample, secular and religious social support were both protective against depressive symptoms, net of all covariates. Race interacted with secular ( β = −0.62 for interaction) and religious ( β = −0.21 for interaction) social support on baseline depressive symptoms ( p social support on depressive symptoms was larger for Blacks ( β = −0.64) than Whites ( β = −0.16). Conclusion: We found Black—White differences in the protective effects of secular and religious social support against depressive symptoms. Blacks seem to benefit more from the same level of emotional social support, regardless of its source, compared to Whites.

Post-Secularism, Religious Knowledge and Religious Education

Science.gov (United States)

Carr, David

2012-01-01

Post-secularism seems to follow in the wake of other (what are here called) "postal" perspectives--post-structuralism, postmodernism, post-empiricism, post-positivism, post-analytical philosophy, post-foundationalism and so on--in questioning or repudiating what it takes to be the epistemic assumptions of "modernism." To be sure, post-secularism…

Aggregate demand, functional finance and secular stagnation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Skott, Peter

2016-01-01

This paper makes three main points. Fiscal policy, first, may be needed in the long run to maintain full employment and avoid secular stagnation. If fiscal policy is used in this way, second, the long-run debt ratio depends (i) inversely on the rate of growth, (ii) inversely on government consump...

The Role of Interreligious and Interfaith Dialogue in the Post-Secular World

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Biljana Popovska

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Today, western liberal democratic societies are secular, or in other words, religion is set apart from the state. However, the beginning of the 21st century has seen a re-politicizing of the religion. This paper argues that religion plays an important role in current global politics and events. Moreover, it has been used as tool to recruit masses for a wrong cause. Hence, Interreligious and interfaith dialog can play a role of catalysts and a future trend in cultural diplomacy. The paper provides definitions of a secular and post secular society. Then, it discusses the general concept of dialogue and explores it from an interreligious and interfaith point of view as a way to mitigate the role religion has undertaken. Finally, it provides examples of what European Union has been doing in that respect.

Religion, Education, and Secularism in International Agencies

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Stambach, Amy; Marshall, Katherine; Nelson, Matthew J.; Andreescu, Liviu; Kwayu, Aikande C.; Wexler, Philip; Hotam, Yotam; Fischer, Shlomo; El Bilawi, Hassan

2011-01-01

During the interwar years of the early twentieth century, and through at least the 1980s, education was seen by scholars, state leaders, and international agency representatives alike as a way to modernize and secularize underdeveloped communities. Arguments about the modernizing power of education did not erase or discount the presence of…

The conditions of believe and unbelieve in a secular Age

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Juan Manuel Cincunegui

2014-05-01

Full Text Available In A Secular Age the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor offered an analytical description and a genealogy of the current conditions of belief and unbelief in the North Atlantic contemporary societies. He encouraged as well a set of similar investigations in other cultural settings that are affected by the processes of modernization. He argues about the existence of ‘alternative modernities’ each one of them facing critically the univocal sociological theories of modernity and secularization that interpreted as universal the process of disenchantment occurred in the West and the setbacks with regard to the presence of religion in the public sphere and religious practice in some contemporary Western societies

AN ORIGIN OF MULTIPLE RING STRUCTURE AND HIDDEN PLANETS IN HL TAU: A UNIFIED PICTURE BY SECULAR GRAVITATIONAL INSTABILITY

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Takahashi, Sanemichi Z.; Inutsuka, Shu-ichiro

2016-01-01

Recent ALMA observation has revealed multiple ring structures formed in a protoplanetary disk around HL Tau. Prior to the ALMA observation of HL Tau, theoretical analysis of secular gravitational instability (GI) described a possible formation of multiple ring structures with separations of 13 au around a radius of 100 au in protoplanetary disks under certain conditions. In this article, we reanalyze the viability of secular GI by adopting the physical values inferred from the observations. We derive the radial distributions of the most unstable wavelength and the growth timescale of secular GI and verify that secular GI can form the ring structures observed in HL Tau. When a turbulent viscosity coefficient α remains small in the inner region of the disk, secular GI grows in the whole disk. Thus, the formation of planetary mass objects should occur first in the inner region as a result of gravitational fragmentation after the nonlinear growth of secular GI. In this case, the resulting objects are expected to create gaps at r  ∼ 10 au and ∼30 au. As a result, all ring structures in HL Tau can be created by secular GI. If this scenario is realized in HL Tau, the outer region corresponds to the earlier growth phase of the most unstable mode of secular GI, and the inner region corresponds to the outcome of the nonlinear growth of secular GI. Therefore, this interpretation suggests that we are possibly witnessing both the beginning and the end of planet formation in HL Tau.

AN ORIGIN OF MULTIPLE RING STRUCTURE AND HIDDEN PLANETS IN HL TAU: A UNIFIED PICTURE BY SECULAR GRAVITATIONAL INSTABILITY

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Takahashi, Sanemichi Z. [Astronomical Institute, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba, Aramaki-aza, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi (Japan); Inutsuka, Shu-ichiro, E-mail: sanemichi@astr.tohoku.ac.jp, E-mail: inutsuka@nagoya-u.jp [Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya, Aichi, 464-8602 (Japan)

2016-12-01

Recent ALMA observation has revealed multiple ring structures formed in a protoplanetary disk around HL Tau. Prior to the ALMA observation of HL Tau, theoretical analysis of secular gravitational instability (GI) described a possible formation of multiple ring structures with separations of 13 au around a radius of 100 au in protoplanetary disks under certain conditions. In this article, we reanalyze the viability of secular GI by adopting the physical values inferred from the observations. We derive the radial distributions of the most unstable wavelength and the growth timescale of secular GI and verify that secular GI can form the ring structures observed in HL Tau. When a turbulent viscosity coefficient α remains small in the inner region of the disk, secular GI grows in the whole disk. Thus, the formation of planetary mass objects should occur first in the inner region as a result of gravitational fragmentation after the nonlinear growth of secular GI. In this case, the resulting objects are expected to create gaps at r  ∼ 10 au and ∼30 au. As a result, all ring structures in HL Tau can be created by secular GI. If this scenario is realized in HL Tau, the outer region corresponds to the earlier growth phase of the most unstable mode of secular GI, and the inner region corresponds to the outcome of the nonlinear growth of secular GI. Therefore, this interpretation suggests that we are possibly witnessing both the beginning and the end of planet formation in HL Tau.

"Doing the Secular": Academic Practices in the Study of Religion at Two Danish Universities

Science.gov (United States)

Johansen, Birgitte Schepelern

2011-01-01

The academic study of religion at the public university often presents itself as a secular, non-religious, scientific endeavor. The identity of the study is thus firmly rooted within one of the central secular-religious divides, namely that between science and religion. Based on the assumption that such distinctions between religion and the…

Ethics of surrogacy: a comparative study of Western secular and islamic bioethics.

Science.gov (United States)

Islam, Sharmin; Nordin, Rusli Bin; Bin Shamsuddin, Ab Rani; Mohd Nor, Hanapi Bin; Al-Mahmood, Abu Kholdun

2012-01-01

The comparative approach regarding the ethics of surrogacy from the Western secular and Islamic bioethical view reveals both commensurable and incommensurable relationship. Both are eager to achieve the welfare of the mother, child and society as a whole but the approaches are not always the same. Islamic bioethics is straightforward in prohibiting surrogacy by highlighting the lineage problem and also other social chaos and anarchy. Western secular bioethics is relative and mostly follows a utilitarian approach.

Ethics of Surrogacy: A Comparative Study of Western Secular and Islamic Bioethics

Science.gov (United States)

Islam, Sharmin; Nordin, Rusli Bin; Bin Shamsuddin, Ab Rani; Mohd Nor, Hanapi Bin; Al-Mahmood, Abu Kholdun

2012-01-01

The comparative approach regarding the ethics of surrogacy from the Western secular and Islamic bioethical view reveals both commensurable and incommensurable relationship. Both are eager to achieve the welfare of the mother, child and society as a whole but the approaches are not always the same. Islamic bioethics is straightforward in prohibiting surrogacy by highlighting the lineage problem and also other social chaos and anarchy. Western secular bioethics is relative and mostly follows a utilitarian approach. PMID:23864994

Secular change of LOD caused by core evolution

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Denis, C.; Rybicki, K. R.; Varga, P.

2003-04-01

Fossils and tidal deposits suggest that, on the average, the Earth's despinning rate had been five times less in the Proterozoic than in the Phanerozoic. This difference is probably due, for the major part, to the existence of a Proterozoic supercontinent. Nevertheless, core formation and core evolution should have compensated to some extent the effect of tidal friction, by diminishing the Earth's inertia moment. We have investigated quantitatively this contribution of the evolving core to the change of LOD. For the present epoch, we find that the solidification of the inner core causes a relative secular decrease of LOD of approximately 3 μs per century, whereas the macrodiffusion of iron oxides and sulfides from the D" into the outer core across the CMB (inasfar as Majewski's theory holds) leads to a relative secular decrease of LOD by about 15 μs per century. On the other hand, the theory of slow core formation developped by Runcorn in the early 1960s as a by-product of his theory of mantle-wide convection, leads to a relative secular decrease of LOD during most of the Proterozoic of about 0.25 ms per century. Although core formation is now widely assumed to have been a thermal run-away process that occurred shortly after the Earth itself had formed, Runcorn's theory of the growing core would nicely explain the observed palaeo-LOD curve. In any case, formation of the core implies, all in all, a relative decrease of LOD of typically 3 hours.

Sacred Spaces: Religious and Secular Coping and Family Relationships in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

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Brelsford, Gina M; Ramirez, Joshua; Veneman, Kristin; Doheny, Kim K

2016-08-01

Preterm birth is an unanticipated and stressful event for parents. In addition, the unfamiliar setting of the intensive care nursery necessitates strategies for coping. The primary study objective of this descriptive study was to determine whether secular and religious coping strategies were related to family functioning in the neonatal intensive care unit. Fifty-two parents of preterm (25-35 weeks' gestation) infants completed the Brief COPE (secular coping), the Brief RCOPE (religious coping), and the Family Environment Scale within 1 week of their infant's hospital admission. This descriptive study found that parents' religious and secular coping was significant in relation to family relationship functioning. Specifically, negative religious coping (ie, feeling abandoned or angry at God) was related to poorer family cohesion and use of denial. These findings have relevance for interventions focused toward enhancing effective coping for families. Further study of religious and secular coping strategies for neonatal intensive care unit families is warranted in a larger more diverse sample of family members.

Internal and environmental secular evolution of disk galaxies

Science.gov (United States)

Kormendy, John

2015-03-01

This Special Session is devoted to the secular evolution of disk galaxies. Here `secular' means `slow' i.e., evolution on time scales that are generally much longer than the galaxy crossing or rotation time. Internal and environmentally driven evolution both are covered. I am indebted to Albert Bosma for reminding me at the 2011 Canary Islands Winter School on Secular Evolution that our subject first appeared in print in a comment made by Ivan King (1977) in his introductory talk at the Yale University meeting on The Evolution of Galaxies and Stellar Populations: `John Kormendy would like us to consider the possibility that a galaxy can interact with itself.. . . I'm not at all convinced, but John can show you some interesting pictures.' Two of the earliest papers that followed were Kormendy (1979a, b); the first discusses the interaction of galaxy components with each other, and the second studies these phenomena in the context of a morphological survey of barred galaxies. The earliest modeling paper that we still use regularly is Combes & Sanders (1981), which introduces the now well known idea that box-shaped bulges in edge-on galaxies are side-on, vertically thickened bars. It is gratifying to see how this subject has grown since that time. Hundreds of papers have been written, and the topic features prominently at many meetings (e.g., Block et al. 2004; Falcoń-Barroso & Knapen 2012, and this Special Session). My talk here introduces both internal and environmental secular evolution; a brief abstract follows. My Canary Islands Winter School review covers both subjects in more detail (Kormendy 2012). Kormendy & Kennicutt (2004) is a comprehensive review of internal secular evolution, and Kormendy & Bender (2012) covers environmental evolution. Both of these subject make significant progress at this meeting. Secular evolution happens because self-gravitating systems evolve toward the most tightly bound configuration that is reachable by the evolution processes

Secular decline in male testosterone and sex hormone binding globulin serum levels in Danish population surveys

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersson, Anna-Maria; Jensen, Tina Kold; Juul, Anders

2007-01-01

Adverse secular trends in male reproductive health have been reported to be reflected in increased testicular cancer risk and decreased semen quality in more recently born men. These secular trends may also be reflected by changes in Leydig cell function....

Evidence in the auroral record for secular solar variability

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sicoe, G.L.

1980-01-01

The historial record of aurorae is continuous and usefully dense for at least the 2000 years. Revival of interest in the secular variability in solar activity motivates a review of the auroral record. The existence of secular variations in the auroral occurrence frequency has been known since the early 1700's, including the existence of a significant attenuation of auroral activity during the Maunder Minimum. Investigation of secular variations prior to the Maunder Minimum is now possible based on six auroral catalogs that have been published within the last 20 years. The catalogs cover the time period from the fifth century B.C. to the seventeenth century A.D. and combine both oriental and European obsertions. Features corresponding to the previously recognized Medieval Minimum, Medieval Maximum, and the Spoerer Minimum are clearly evident in both oriental and European records. The global synchronicity of anomalies in the auroral occurrence frequency is used to argue that they are caused by changes in the level or state of solar activity. The combined catalogs provide a sufficient number of events in the Middle Ages to resolve a quasi-80-year periodicity in the recorded auroral occurrence frequency. Also in the unusually rich intervals of the Middle Ages, clear quasi-10-year periodicities appear in the recorded occurrence frequency wave from. These are most reasonably interpreted as manifestations of the 11-year solar cycle and indicate that the solar cycle was then operative

An instance of secularization? The Finnish online discussion of the issue of same-sex marriages

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jenni Hokka

2013-01-01

Full Text Available In October 2010 one of Finland’s four national TV channels aired a panel discussion dealing with gay and lesbian rights in society. Among the debaters were members of parliament from various parties, well-known actors and other public figures, as well as a priest, a bishop and other religious spokespeople. Afterwards, a great number of people publicly expressed their views on same-sex marriages. The ways the Lutheran Church treated the same-sex couples, as well as the reasons and outcomes of a vast number of resignations from the Church were discussed, particularly in the online discussion forums. The public discussion spread rapidly, especially through the social media. Resignations from the Church are often perceived as a clear sign of the decline of religious beliefs and practices, which is an integral aspect of the secularization process. But lately the whole notion of a secularization of society has been questioned and a growing number of researchers have stated that the concepts of resacralization, desecularization, or a resurgence of religion would actually better describe the current situation than the theory of secularization. The aim of this article is to examine whether the concept of secularization still has some explanatory power at least in the Nordic countries. Another aim is to contemplate what kind of knowledge this special case has to offer when rethinking secularization.

Kosovar Society through Secularism and Religion

OpenAIRE

MSc. Dritero Arifi; Dr.Sc. Ylber Sela

2013-01-01

This paper will analyze the importance and the effects of religion, in Kosovar society. A great part of the paper, will analyze the social and the political relations in Post-War Kosovo. Initially it will elaborate religion and secularism, especially in theoreticall aspect, what impact have these definitions in modern societies. In order to explain what the importance of the religion in Kosovo is, we will focus on analyzing ethnical, social and political relations within Kosovo society. A...

Proper Elements and Secular Resonances for Irregular Satellites

Science.gov (United States)

Beaugé, C.; Nesvorný, D.

2007-06-01

We present results of an analytical study of proper elements and secular resonances for the irregular satellites of the outer planets. In the case of the Jovian system we identify three satellite families, two of them previously known (Carme and Ananke), plus a new agglomeration of four bodies that includes Pasiphae as its largest member. While the distribution of proper elements for Saturn's moons seems to be more random, a small cluster was found for the direct moons formed by Albiorix, Erriapo, and 2004 S1, slightly different from the so-called Gaulish cluster. No significant families are detected in the present study for the Uranian or Neptunian satellite systems. For each satellite system we determine the location of several secular resonances in the proper element space. Apart from the well-known resonance locks of Pasiphae, Sinope, and Siarnaq, a comparison between the resonance locations and proper elements shows that Saturn's satellite Narvi also exhibits temporary librations in the ϖ-ϖsolar resonance. However, unlike the resonant Jovian moons that are located in the same configuration, Narvi's critical argument librates alternately around values near 90° and 270°. Neither the Uranian nor Neptunian systems seem to have resonant moons. The resonant dynamics of the real satellites in the vicinity of ϖ˙-ϖ˙solar=0 is studied with a simple model for secular resonances based on the restricted three-body problem. Depending on the initial conditions, we show the existence of one or two modes of libration that can occur at different values of the critical angle, showing a good correspondence with the observed behavior of all the resonant moons. Finally, we discuss the global distribution of the real satellites with respect to the secular resonances, as compared with synthetic populations of bodies drawn solely from stability conditions. For Saturn, we find that the present satellite population appears compatible with simple random distributions. Although

Religiousness and religious coping in a secular society: the gender perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Hvidtjørn, Dorte; Hjelmborg, Jacob; Skytthe, Axel; Christensen, Kaare; Hvidt, Niels Christian

2014-10-01

Women are found to be more religious than men and more likely to use religious coping. Only few studies have explored religious gender differences in more secular societies. This population-based study comprised 3,000 Danish men and women (response rate 45 %) between 20 and 40 years of age. Information about demographics, religiousness and religious coping was obtained through a web-based questionnaire. We organized religiousness in the three dimensions: Cognition, Practice and Importance, and we assessed religious coping using the brief RCOPE questionnaire. We found substantial gender differences in both religiousness and religious coping. Nearly, 60 % of the women believed in some sort of spirit or in God compared to 40 % of the men. Generally, both men and women scored low on the RCOPE scale. However, for respondents reporting high levels of religiousness, the proportion of men who scored high in the RCOPE exceeded the proportion of women in using positive and especially negative coping strategies. Also, in a secular society, women are found to be more religious than men, but in a subset of the most religious respondents, men were more inclined to use religious coping. Further studies on religious coping in secular societies are required.

SPIRITUALITY IN A SECULAR AGE: FROM CHARLES TAYLOR TO ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

the secular is ignored or where exclusive humanism is seen as the inevitable conclusion of a .... responsible for ordinary events in the world. Various .... immanent frame is dependent on and open to a transcendent source while for others, the ...

Fuzzy Law and the Boundaries of Secularism

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W Menski

2010-12-01

Full Text Available The author delivered a speech at a Religare Conference. Showing his distaste for fuzzy law, he argues that "moderate secularism" is not merely another fuzzy concept, but it is "super-fuzzy", and that lawyers claiming to love certainty "have a tendency to sit in judgment over matters and even pre-judge things they know little about, including legal pluralism" leading to much irritation.

PEDIATRIC FITNESS: SECULAR TRENDS AND GEOGRAPHIC VARIABILITY

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Grant R. Tomkinson

2007-06-01

Full Text Available DESCRIPTION This book describes and discusses children's physical capacity in terms of aerobic and anaerobic power generation according to secular trends and geographic variability. PURPOSE To discuss the controversial issue of whether present day's children and adolescents are fitter than their equals of the past and whether they are fitter if they live in the more prosperous countries. AUDIENCE Pediatricians, medical practitioners, physical educators, exercise and/or sport scientists, exercise physiologists, personal trainers and graduate students in relevant fields will find this book helpful when dealing with contemporary trends and geographic variability in pediatric fitness. FEATURES The volume starts by examining the general picture on children fitness by the editors. The individual chapter's authors discuses the data gathered since the late 1950s on secular trends and geographic changeability in aerobic and anaerobic pediatric fitness performances of children and adolescents from 23 countries in Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. There are chapters proposing that there is proof that there has been a world-wide decline in pediatric aerobic performance in recent decades, relative stability in anaerobic performance, and that the best performing children come from northern and central Europe. In final chapters possible causes to that end are considered, including whether weakening in aerobic performance are the result of distributional or widespread declines, and whether increases in obesity alone can explain the failure in aerobic performance. ASSESSMENT The editors have assembled a volume of Medicine and Sports Science that is necessary and essential reading for all who are interested in understanding and improving the fitness of children. The readers will find useful information in this book on secular trends and geographic variability in pediatric fitness. I believe, the book will serve as a first

The Problems of Teaching the Basics of Secular Ethics to Pedagogic Students

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L. V. Shcheglova

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The paper looks at the specialists training for teaching the Basics of Secular Ethics course in the secondary school. In author’s opinion, the above course is entitled to develop children’s moral consciousness. The subject is practical rather than descriptive, focused on the spiritual work, and teaching how to live in harmony with themselves and the surrounding world. The author emphasizes the difference between the secular and religious ethics related to the specificity of moral consciousness - based either on the principle of personal moral autonomy or theonomy in case of the religious ethics. The problematic task of developing the morally independent personality in the modern society is complicated by the confusion of ethics and etiquette, wide spread ideas of pluralism, relativism, infantilism and sense gratification. The challenges and inner contradictions of the given educational module are revealed in dealing with such concepts as the mercy and moral ideal. In conclusion, the author points out the significance of active positions of teachers and students alike in pursuing the Secular Ethics course. 

Crustal concealing of small-scale core-field secular variation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hulot, G.; Olsen, Nils; Thebault, E.

2009-01-01

of internal origin happen to be detectable now in spherical harmonic degrees up to, perhaps, 16. All of these changes are usually attributed to changes in the core field itself, the secular variation, on the ground that the lithospheric magnetization cannot produce such signals. It has, however, been pointed...... out, on empirical grounds, that temporal changes in the field of internal origin produced by the induced part of the lithospheric magnetization could dominate the core field signal beyond degree 22. This short note revisits this issue by taking advantage of our improved knowledge of the small...... cause of the observed changes in the field of internal origin up to some critical degree, N-C, is indeed likely to be the secular variation of the core field, but that the signal produced by the time-varying lithospheric field is bound to dominate and conceal the time-varying core signal beyond...

Secularism in Nigeria: An Assessment | Ogoloma | AFRREV IJAH ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Secularism is not the absence of religions in the state. Rather, it is the absence of a state sponsored religion where everyone will be made to choose a religion of their choice. People are free to follow which religious tenets they like without any fear, intimidation, victimization or favour. The central and state administrations ...

Why religion deserves a place in secular medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Biggar, Nigel

2015-03-01

As a science and practice transcending metaphysical and ethical disagreements, 'secular' medicine should not exist. 'Secularity' should be understood in an Augustinian sense, not a secularist one: not as a space that is universally rational because it is religion-free, but as a forum for the negotiation of rival reasonings. Religion deserves a place here, because it is not simply or uniquely irrational. However, in assuming his rightful place, the religious believer commits himself to eschewing sheer appeals to religious authorities, and to adopting reasonable means of persuasion. This can come quite naturally. For example, Christianity (theo)logically obliges liberal manners in negotiating ethical controversies in medicine. It also offers reasoned views of human being and ethics that bear upon medicine and are not universally held-for example, a humanist view of human dignity, the bounding of individual autonomy by social obligation, and a special concern for the weak. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Paracelsus, Paracelsianism, and the secularization of the worldview.

Science.gov (United States)

Webster, Charles

2002-03-01

This paper examines Paracelsus and Paracelsianism in the light of the ideas of Max Weber concerning the social consequences of the Reformation, with special reference to his theories of Entzauberung and secularization. He linked these tendencies both to the rise of capitalism and the growth of experimental science. The detailed case study of Paracelsus' account of diseases linked with saints, in common with his interpretation of many other conditions, demonstrates that he self-consciously extended the boundaries of medicine and eroded the role of magic and witchcraft associated with the church. On the other hand, Paracelsus adopted the Neoplatonic worldview, was immersed in popular magic, and evolved a system of medicine that self-consciously revolved around magic. These factors seem to place a distinct limit on his role in the demystification of knowledge. However, the magic of Paracelsus entailed a decisive break with the entrenched elitist and esoteric tradition of the occultists and hermeticists. It is argued that this reconstructed magic re-establishes the credentials of Paracelsus as a significant contributor to the disenchantment and secularization of the worldview.

Study of secular equilibrium reinstatement on UO2 pellets manufactured by AUC route

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Carnaval, João Paulo R.; Beltran, Dalton J.M.C.; Oliveira, Carlos A.

2017-01-01

The fuel assemblies manufactured by INB for Angra-1 power plant has axial blanket fuel rods which must be inspected due the columns formed by different enrichment pellets. The equipment used for inspection is built with a group of BGO scintillators detectors which measurement principle is based on the absorption of gamma rays emitted from Uranium decay. The commercial grade UF 6 used by INB is stored into cylinders type 30B. The uranium inside these cylinders is in secular equilibrium before the processing. It has been found that the AUC route causes the loss of that equilibrium because the UF 6 is volatilized from the cylinder and the uranium daughters remain in the container. As AUC is converted to powder and pellets, the secular equilibrium is restored through time. The purpose of this work is to present a study of the secular equilibrium reinstatement on UO 2 pellets manufactured by AUC route before being inspected on Rod Scanner. (author)

Secular trends in menarcheal age in India-evidence from the Indian human development survey.

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Praveen Kumar Pathak

Full Text Available Evidence from a number of countries in Europe and North America point towards the secular declining trend in menarcheal age with considerable spatial variations over the past two centuries. Similar trends were reported in several developing countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, data corroborating any secular trend in the menarcheal age of the Indian population remained sparse and inadequately verified.We examined secular trends, regional heterogeneity and association of socioeconomic, anthropometric and contextual factors with menarcheal age among ever-married women (15-49 years in India. Using the pseudo cohort data approach, we fit multiple linear regression models to estimate secular trends in menarcheal age of 91394 ever-married women using the Indian Human Development Survey.The mean age at menarche among Indian women was 13.76 years (95 % CI: 13.75, 13.77 in 2005. It declined by three months from 13.83 years (95% CI: 13.81, 13.85 among women born prior to 1955-1964, to nearly 13.62 years (95% CI: 13.58, 13.67 among women born during late 1985-1989. However, these aggregate national figures mask extensive spatial heterogeneity as mean age at menarche varied from 15.0 years in Himachal Pradesh during 1955-1964 (95% CI: 14.89-15.11 to about 12.1 years in Assam (95% CI: 11.63-12.56 during 1985-1989.The regression analysis established a reduction of nearly one month per decade, suggesting a secular decline in age at menarche among Indian women. Notably, the menarcheal age was significantly associated with the area of residence, geographic region, linguistic groups, educational attainment, wealth status, caste and religious affiliations among Indian women.

SECULAR GROWTH AND MATURATION CHANGES IN HUNGARY IN RELATION TO SOCIOECONOMIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES.

Science.gov (United States)

Bodzsar, Eva B; Zsakai, Annamaria; Mascie-Taylor, Nicholas

2016-03-01

This paper analyses the secular changes in the body development patterns of Hungarian children between the 1910s and the beginning of the 2000s in relation to socioeconomic and demographic changes in the country. Individual growth data of children were available from two national growth studies (1983-86, 2003-06), while sample-size weighted means of children's body dimensions were collected through regional studies between the 1920s and 1970s. Gross domestic product, Gini index, life expectancy at birth and under-5 mortality rate were used to assess the changes in economic status, income inequalities of the society and the population's general health status, respectively. Secular changes in food consumption habits were also examined. The positive Hungarian secular changes in socioeconomic status were associated with a continuous increase in children's body dimensions. The negative socioeconomic changes reflected only in wartime and post-war periods of children's growth, and the considerable socioeconomic changes at the beginning of the 1990s did not appear to influence the positive trend in children's growth. The positive secular trend in stature and body mass did not level off at the beginning of the 2000s: the socioeconomic conditions that support optimal growth and maturation could improve in Hungary.

Secularity and religiosity: keystones of Turkish national identity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sergey V. Olyunin

2011-01-01

Full Text Available According to many experts Turkish National Federation experiences crisis of its national identity. The article concerns the problem of secular and religious balance in Turkish nationalism. Special attention is attached to Turkey as a project and Turkey as a process, war factor in a birth of the nation, national idea reproduction, Islam nationalization and nationalism Islamisation.

The use of MAGSAT data to determine secular variation.

Science.gov (United States)

Cain, J.C.; Frayser, J.; Muth, L.; Schmitz, D.

1983-01-01

A combined spatial and secular variation model of the geomagnetic field, labeled M061581, is derived from a selection of MAGSAT data. Secular variation (SV) data computed from linear fits to midnight hourly values from 19 magnetic observatories were also included in the analysis but were seen to have little effect on the model. The SV patterns from this new model are compared with those from the 1980 IGRF and with those for 1970 computed by the DGRF and with the 1960 patterns computed using the GSFC(12/66) model. Most of the features of the M061581 are identical in location and level with those of the 1980 IGRF. Together they confirm that the reversals in sign of field change seen over Asia and North America between 1965 and 1975 are reverting to the pre-1965 states. The M061581 model gives -32 nT/yr for the dipole decay rate, larger than the 70% increase already reported since 1965. -Authors

Secular Feminisms and Attitudes towards Religion in the Context of a West-European Society – Flanders, Belgium

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van den Brandt, H.P.

2014-01-01

Ideologies and politics of humanism and secularism in Western Europe historically have a tensioned relationship with religion as well as with feminism and the women's movement. In this article, I aim to demonstrate the multiplicity and complexity of several recent secular feminist responses to

The Role of Secularism of State on the Relationship Between Catholic Identity, Political Orientation, and Gay Rights Issues.

Science.gov (United States)

Hichy, Zira; Gerges, Mina Halim Helmy; Platania, Silvia; Santisi, Giuseppe

2015-01-01

In discussions of regulations governing same-sex marriage and adoption by gays and lesbians, the issue of state secularism is often called into question. This study aims to test the mediating effects of state secularism on the relationship between Catholic identity, political orientation, and gay civil rights. Participants were Catholic Italians who completed a questionnaire measuring the constructs under investigation. Results showed that state secularism mediates the effects of Catholic identity and political orientation on attitudes toward same-sex marriage and adoption by gays and lesbians.

Measurement of Secular Motion Frequency in Miniature Paul Trap to Ascertain the Stability Parameters

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bin, Guo; Hua, Guan; Qu, Liu; Yao, Huang; Xue-Ren, Huang; Ke-Lin, Gao

2010-01-01

40 Ca + ions are trapped and laser cooled in a miniature Paul trap. The secular motion was observed by the radio-frequency resonance of the ion cloud and Zeeman profile sidebands of a single ion experimentally. The trap stability parameters a and q are determined with an uncertainty under 1 % by the secular motion frequency measurement. The trap efficiency is 0.75. A practicable suggestion is given for the benefits of a new trap design. (atomic and molecular physics)

RELIGIOUS QUESTION AND SECULAR STATE: CRISIS OF REGULATION BY DANI LE HERVIEU-L GER

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S. V. Trophimov

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The proposed paper outlines concepts of the Religious individualism in modern Western society analyzed by the French sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger in “Religion in movement (1999”. Author proposes an assessment of the religious situation in the French society at the end of the XX century and discuss some examples. Particular attention is given to crisis of secular regulation of the religious in the modern society. The weakening of the regulatory capacity of religious institutions leads to a weakening of the secular state. Religious institutions should be able to implement the regime of the truth of faith, which makes the institutional power of the superior guarantor of common faith principles shared by all believers of the denomination. The system of “copying” the structures of the Catholic Church of the XVIII century adopted by the secular state, today is not more correspond nor religious organizations in general, neither even the modern structures of the organization of the Catholic Church in France, that become a problem for a state-confessional relation. Modern institutional disorganization in the religious field, contributing to the destabilization of the French model of secularism, weakened by political cultural and economic liberalization that undermine its principles values that historically based secular system itself. Institutional crisis of the truths of faith approval favours an increase in the number of belief systems of individual communities. The problem can not be solved a priori, legally separating the traditional, “recognized by law” and other religions. The changing religious situation the state must find a new model of interaction with religious groups and organizations. The material is useful for comparative studies of the religious situation in Russia and Western Europe.

When Science Replaces Religion: Science as a Secular Authority Bolsters Moral Sensitivity.

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Onurcan Yilmaz

Full Text Available Scientific and religious thinking compete with each other on several levels. For example, activating one generally weakens the other. Since priming religion is known to increase moral behaviour and moral sensitivity, priming science might be expected to have the opposite effect. However, it was recently demonstrated that, on the contrary, science priming increases moral sensitivity as well. The present set of studies sought to replicate this effect and test two explanations for it. Study 1 used a sentence unscrambling task for implicitly priming the concept of science but failed to replicate its effect on moral sensitivity, presumably due to a ceiling effect. Study 2 replicated the effect with a new measure of moral sensitivity. Study 3 tested whether science-related words create this effect by activating the idea of secular authority or by activating analytic thinking. It was demonstrated that words related to secular authority, but not words related to analytic thinking, produced a similar increase in moral sensitivity. Religiosity level of the participants did not influence this basic finding. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that science as a secular institution has overtaken some of the functions of religion in modern societies.

When Science Replaces Religion: Science as a Secular Authority Bolsters Moral Sensitivity.

Science.gov (United States)

Yilmaz, Onurcan; Bahçekapili, Hasan G

2015-01-01

Scientific and religious thinking compete with each other on several levels. For example, activating one generally weakens the other. Since priming religion is known to increase moral behaviour and moral sensitivity, priming science might be expected to have the opposite effect. However, it was recently demonstrated that, on the contrary, science priming increases moral sensitivity as well. The present set of studies sought to replicate this effect and test two explanations for it. Study 1 used a sentence unscrambling task for implicitly priming the concept of science but failed to replicate its effect on moral sensitivity, presumably due to a ceiling effect. Study 2 replicated the effect with a new measure of moral sensitivity. Study 3 tested whether science-related words create this effect by activating the idea of secular authority or by activating analytic thinking. It was demonstrated that words related to secular authority, but not words related to analytic thinking, produced a similar increase in moral sensitivity. Religiosity level of the participants did not influence this basic finding. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that science as a secular institution has overtaken some of the functions of religion in modern societies.

Secular stagnation or stagnation policy? Steindl after Summers

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Eckhard Hein

2016-03-01

Full Text Available The debate on secular stagnation suffers from vagueness and several shortcomings, which affect its economic policy implications. In this work we provide an alternative view on the advanced economies’ tendencies to stagnation, based on Josef Steindl’s contributions. Steindl’s pioneering 1952 book in particular is not prone to several problems that affect the current debate on secular stagnation. It does not rely on the dubious notion of an equilibrium real interest rate as the equilibrating force of saving and investment at full employment levels. Rather, it is based on the notion that modern capitalist economies face aggregate demand constraints, and that saving adjusts to investment through income growth and changes in capacity utilisation in the long run. Steindl’s treatment allows for potential growth to become endogenous to actual demand, and it seriously considers the role of institutions and power relationships for long-run growth. In illustrating Steindl’s contributions on this topic, the article presents an original model synthetizing the main points in particular concerning long run growth and stagnation. JEL codes: B22, E11, E12, E65, O11

Study of secular equilibrium reinstatement on UO{sub 2} pellets manufactured by AUC route

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Carnaval, João Paulo R.; Beltran, Dalton J.M.C.; Oliveira, Carlos A., E-mail: joaocarnaval@inb.gov.br, E-mail: daltonbeltran@inb.gov.br, E-mail: carlossilva@inb.gov.br [Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil S.A. (INB), Resende, RJ (Brazil)

2017-07-01

The fuel assemblies manufactured by INB for Angra-1 power plant has axial blanket fuel rods which must be inspected due the columns formed by different enrichment pellets. The equipment used for inspection is built with a group of BGO scintillators detectors which measurement principle is based on the absorption of gamma rays emitted from Uranium decay. The commercial grade UF{sub 6} used by INB is stored into cylinders type 30B. The uranium inside these cylinders is in secular equilibrium before the processing. It has been found that the AUC route causes the loss of that equilibrium because the UF{sub 6} is volatilized from the cylinder and the uranium daughters remain in the container. As AUC is converted to powder and pellets, the secular equilibrium is restored through time. The purpose of this work is to present a study of the secular equilibrium reinstatement on UO{sub 2} pellets manufactured by AUC route before being inspected on Rod Scanner. (author)

Secular instability of axisymmetric rotating stars to gravitational radiation reaction

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Managan, R.A.

1985-01-01

A generalization of the Eulerian variational principle derived by Ipser and Managan, for nonaxisymmetric neutral modes of axisymmetric fluid configurations, is developed. The principle provides a variational basis for calculating the frequencies of nonaxisymmetric normal modes proportional to e/sup i/(sigmat + mphi). A modified form of this principle, valid for sigma near 0, is also developed. The latter principle is used to locate the points where the frequency of a nonaxisymmetric normal mode of an axisymmetric rotating fluid configuration passes through zero. lt is at these points that the configuration becomes secularly unstable to gravitational radiation reaction (GRR). This is demonstrated directly by including the GRR potential and showing that the imaginary part of sigma passes through zero and becomes negative at these points. The imaginary part of the frequency is used to estimate the e-folding time of the mode. This variational principle is applied to sequences of rotating polytropes. The sequences are constructed using four rotation laws at each value of the polytropic index n = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0. The values of (T/W)/sub m/, the ratio of the rotational kinetic energy to the magnitude of the gravitational potential energy at the onset of instability, and timescales for the modes with m = 2, 3, and 4 are estimated for each sequence. The value of (T/W) 2 is largely independent of the equation of state and rotation law. For m > 2, (T/W)/sub m/ decreases as the equation of state becomes softer, i.e., as the polytropic index n increases, and increases as the amount of differential rotation increases. The most striking result of this behavior occurs for uniform rotation

On the side of Barrabas or on the side of Christ. The harassment again the secular private schools in Spain, 1880-1910

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Miguel LÁZARO LORENTE

2013-02-01

Full Text Available The introduction of secular education in Spain from the eighties in the nineteenth century will come from the hand of associations linked to freethinking and masonry, of Republican groups, and of anarchist groups. Since its inception, its development was extremely difficult. Funding was not readily available for premises, nor was for teachers or appropriate textbooks. But, above all, proponents of the secular school will soon have to face systematic harassment by the Spanish Church, social groups and the Conservatives who, at all levels, will oppose a fierce resistance to the timid and limited attempts of secularization in the Spanish social life. In that effort, the secular school should have played an important role, which will, in fact, be severely limited by the small number of secular schools put in place in Spain.

Zero Secular Torque on Asteroids from Impinging Solar Photons in the YORP Effect: A Simple Proof

Science.gov (United States)

Rubincam, David Perry; Paddack, Stephen J.

2010-01-01

YORP torques, where "YORP" stands for "Yarokovsky-O'Keefe-Radzievskii-Paddack." arise mainly from sun light reflected off a Solar System object and the infrared radiation emi tted by it. We show here, through the most elementary demonstration that we Can devise, that secular torques from impinging solar photons are generally negligible and thus cause little secular evolution of an asteroid's obliquity or spin rate.

Gravitational dynamos and the low-frequency geomagnetic secular variation.

Science.gov (United States)

Olson, P

2007-12-18

Self-sustaining numerical dynamos are used to infer the sources of low-frequency secular variation of the geomagnetic field. Gravitational dynamo models powered by compositional convection in an electrically conducting, rotating fluid shell exhibit several regimes of magnetic field behavior with an increasing Rayleigh number of the convection, including nearly steady dipoles, chaotic nonreversing dipoles, and chaotic reversing dipoles. The time average dipole strength and dipolarity of the magnetic field decrease, whereas the dipole variability, average dipole tilt angle, and frequency of polarity reversals increase with Rayleigh number. Chaotic gravitational dynamos have large-amplitude dipole secular variation with maximum power at frequencies corresponding to a few cycles per million years on Earth. Their external magnetic field structure, dipole statistics, low-frequency power spectra, and polarity reversal frequency are comparable to the geomagnetic field. The magnetic variability is driven by the Lorentz force and is characterized by an inverse correlation between dynamo magnetic and kinetic energy fluctuations. A constant energy dissipation theory accounts for this inverse energy correlation, which is shown to produce conditions favorable for dipole drift, polarity reversals, and excursions.

Celebrating the Secular

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amanda Lohrey

2013-08-01

Full Text Available On 4 November 2004 I read a report in the Sydney Morning Herald that I found genuinely shocking, a statement by Cardinal George Pell, of the Catholic diocese of Sydney, on what’s wrong with democracy. This report was of a speech given to the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in the United States. In it, Dr Pell told his audience that liberal democracy is a world of ‘empty secularism’ that is over-focused on ‘individual autonomy’. The problem with democracy, said the Cardinal, quoting John Paul II, is that it is not a good thing in itself; its value depends on the moral vision that it serves, and a secular democracy is lacking in moral vision. If democracy is not a good thing in and of itself, then why have we sent troops to Iraq to enable it? And what about the principle of equality before the law? Freedom of conscience? Freedom of speech and of action? Responsibility for community? Sounds like a moral vision to me.

Rapid separation of pure 144Ce fraction from fuel dissolver solution for demonstration experiment on secular equilibrium

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ashok Kumar, G.V.S.; Kumar, R.; Venkata Subramani, C.R.

2015-01-01

Radioactive equilibrium is a condition in which the activity ratio of parent to its daughter is maintained constant with time which occurs only when the parent half-life is greater than daughter half-life. It is transient equilibrium in the case of the ratio of their half-lives of parent to daughter being less than an order whereas it becomes secular equilibrium when it is more than an order. In the case of secular equilibrium, the ratio of the activities becomes unity whereas the same depends on the decay constants of the parent and daughter nuclide for the transient equilibrium. 144 Ce- 144 Pr pair is a good example for the demonstration of secular equilibrium

The Possibility of Religion in a Scientific and Secular Culture ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

... anthropological arguments in the modern period, to a contemporary argument from interpersonal relationships, a deepening insight into human nature produces an evermore comprehensive conception of a god, one that is not incompatible with a scientific worldview, or the secular rejection of the supernatural in the name ...

Secular Life Philosophy as a Subject in Schools in Norway.

Science.gov (United States)

Horn, Kristian

1981-01-01

In Norway changes in legislation in recent years have loosened the firm hold of Christian philosophy in the schools and given room for alternative secular philosophy. This article presents background information and an outline of the basic plan for life philosophy as a school subject. (Author/SJL)

Analytical solutions for systems of partial differential-algebraic equations.

Science.gov (United States)

Benhammouda, Brahim; Vazquez-Leal, Hector

2014-01-01

This work presents the application of the power series method (PSM) to find solutions of partial differential-algebraic equations (PDAEs). Two systems of index-one and index-three are solved to show that PSM can provide analytical solutions of PDAEs in convergent series form. What is more, we present the post-treatment of the power series solutions with the Laplace-Padé (LP) resummation method as a useful strategy to find exact solutions. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is that the procedure is based on a few straightforward steps and it does not generate secular terms or depends of a perturbation parameter.

Religion and modernity in a secular city: A public theology of ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

2011-07-20

Jul 20, 2011 ... The theme of the conference,1 'Religion and Modernity in a Secular City', brings together old enemies who ...... and Habermas seek it, but a language of pure mathematics, .... 236–252, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Teaching about Religion in History Classes: Sacred and Secular History.

Science.gov (United States)

Abrahamson, Brant; Smith, Fred

In teaching about religion there is the fundamental distinction between secular history, which is restricted to natural cause and effect relationships, and sacred histories, which assume that a spirit world exists and that human/divine interaction has taken place. In the United States, the academically approved way of dealing with these…

The sacred, the secular, and the profane

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Tsinovoi, Alexei

2017-01-01

types of power relations, which can provide a basis for critical re-formulation of the concepts of securitisation and desecuritisation. The article illustrates the analytical purchase of these ideal types through an analysis of the politics of Israel’s natural gas discoveries. Due to neoliberal reforms......In security studies, the dichotomy between ‘security’ and ‘regular’ politics has been effectively challenged in recent years, both theoretically and empirically. To address this challenge, the article develops Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of the sacred, the profane and the secular into three ideal...

The practice of mindfulness: from Buddhism to secular mainstream in a post-secular society

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Liselotte Frisk

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The article focuses on the practice of mindfulness, which has migrated from being part of a religion, Buddhism, to being an integral part of Western psychology. Mindfulness is especially used in cognitive behavioural therapy, but also in, e.g., dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT. In Sweden several doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists use and recommend mindfulness for therapeutic purposes. Mindfulness is used today in many segments of mainstream medical and therapeutic care. Mindfulness is also used outside the mainstream medical and therapeutic sector, in the area of personal development or spirituality, as well as in more traditional Buddhist groups and innovative Buddhist groups such as vipassana groups. This paper investigates the migration of mindfulness from a religious to a secular sphere, and discusses whether mindfulness is a religious practice or not.

Secular trends of growth and pubertal maturation of school children in Southern Thailand.

Science.gov (United States)

Jaruratanasirikul, Somchit; Sriplung, Hutcha

2015-01-01

In Thailand, studies of growth date back to 1975, but there have been no studies examining any trends in increasing/decreasing growth. To determine if there have been any secular trends of increasing/decreasing growth and/or ages at puberty in Thai children. In 2012, a cross-sectional study of growth was conducted in 3460 children. The median heights and weights and the ages of pubertal maturation were compared with previous studies. Correlations between the secular trends and the health statistics indicators were calculated. From 1975-2012, the median final height of boys and girls had increased by 1.32 and 0.86 cm/decade and weight by 2.49 and 1.76 kg/decade, respectively. In girls, the age at thelarche and menarche had declined by 0.39 and 0.12 years/decade, respectively. In boys, the age at testicular enlargement Tanner II had declined by 0.15 years/decade. Increased physical growth was positively correlated to life expectancy, per capita income and prevalence of overweight/obesity was negatively correlated to prevalence of malnutrition and under-five mortality rate. The positive secular trend towards an increase in growth and a decline in the age at onset of puberty of Thai children is correlated with improvements in overall living conditions in Thailand.

Formation of the Russian Federation as a secular state (XVII century - beginning of the XXI century: historical and theoretical aspects

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Igor Pibaev

2015-10-01

 Abstract: The article examines main stages of formation of the secular state in the Russian Federation. The author provides historical and legal overview of the development of secularism in Russia in the period starting from 1701 to the present days.

Secular trends in the geologic record and the supercontinent cycle

Science.gov (United States)

Bradley, Dwight C.

2011-01-01

Geologic secular trends are used to refine the timetable of supercontinent assembly, tenure, and breakup. The analysis rests on what is meant by the term supercontinent, which here is defined broadly as a grouping of formerly dispersed continents. To avoid the artificial pitfall of an all-or-nothing definition, quantitative measures of “supercontinentality” are presented: the number of continents, and the area of the largest continent, which both can be gleaned from global paleogeographic maps for the Phanerozoic. For the secular trends approach to be viable in the deep past when the very existence of supercontinents is debatable and reconstructions are fraught with problems, it must first be calibrated in the Phanerozoic against the well-constrained Pangea supercontinent cycle. The most informative geologic variables covering both the Phanerozoic and Precambrian are the abundances of passive margins and of detrital zircons. Both fluctuated with size of the largest continent during the Pangea supercontinent cycle and can be quantified back to the Neoarchean. The tenure of Pangea was a time represented in the rock record by few zircons and few passive margins. Thus, previously documented minima in the abundance of detrital zircons (and orogenic granites) during the Precambrian (Condie et al., 2009a, Gondwana Research 15, 228–242) now can be more confidently interpreted as marking the tenures of supercontinents. The occurrences of carbonatites, granulites, eclogites, and greenstone-belt deformation events also appear to bear the imprint of Precambrian supercontinent cyclicity. Together, these secular records are consistent with the following scenario. The Neoarchean continental assemblies of Superia and Sclavia broke up at ca. 2300 and ca. 2090 Ma, respectively. Some of their fragments collided to form Nuna by about 1750 Ma; Nuna then grew by lateral accretion of juvenile arcs during the Mesoproterozoic, and was involved in a series of collisions at ca. 1000 Ma

Secular variations of radon in metropolitan Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ghomshei, M.M.; Slawson, W.F.

1990-01-01

In this paper sampling of radon within the soil from three sites in metropolitan Vancouver is reported. Alpha trace bi-weekly measurements during a period of 4 years show secular variations with a period of 8-15 months. There are low-radon and high-radon episodes enduring several months to a year. Average radon level during the high-radon episodes reaches 5-10 times that of the low-radon periods. During high-radon episodes the high-frequency variations show very high amplitudes. After filtering of the high-frequency fluctuations, the data from different sites demonstrate remarkably similar trends. It is suggested that along with hydrogeological events, stress relaxation in rocks, earthquake, and magma emplacement may contribute to the sources of secular variations of radon. Because of long-term variations, radon level in urban areas should be monitored on a continuous basis. Single measurements, even those integrating radiation over a period of few months, may sample a low-radon episode, and provide a false assurance, or occur during a high-radon episode and give a false alarm

Secular trends in Cherokee cranial morphology: Eastern vs Western bands.

Science.gov (United States)

Sutphin, Rebecca; Ross, Ann H; Jantz, Richard L

2014-01-01

The research objective was to examine if secular trends can be identified for cranial data commissioned by Boas in 1892, specifically for cranial breadth and cranial length of the Eastern and Western band Cherokee who experienced environmental hardships. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the degree of relationship between each of the cranial measures: cranial length, cranial breadth and cephalic index, along with predictor variables (year-of-birth, location, sex, admixture); the model revealed a significant difference for all craniometric variables. Additional regression analysis was performed with smoothing Loess plots to observe cranial length and cranial breadth change over time (year-of-birth) separately for Eastern and Western Cherokee band females and males born between 1783-1874. This revealed the Western and Eastern bands show a decrease in cranial length over time. Eastern band individuals maintain a relatively constant head breadth, while Western Band individuals show a sharp decline beginning around 1860. These findings support negative secular trend occurring for both Cherokee bands where the environment made a detrimental impact; this is especially marked with the Western Cherokee band.

Geomagnetic secular variation at the African observatories

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Haile, T.

2002-10-01

Geomagnetic data from ten observatories in the African continent with time series data length of more than three decades have been analysed. All-day annual mean values of the D, H and Z components were used to study secular variations in the African region. The residuals in D, H and Z components obtained after removing polynomial fits have been examined in relation to the sunspot cycle. The occurrence of the 1969-1970 worldwide geomagnetic impulse in each observatory is studied. It is found that the secular variation in the field can be represented for most of the observatories with polynomials of second or third degree. Departures from these trends are observed over the Southern African region where strong local magnetic anomalies have been observed. The residuals in the geomagnetic field components have been shown to exhibit parallelism with the periods corresponding to double solar cycle for some of the stations. A clear latitudinal distribution in the geomagnetic component that exhibits the 1969-70 jerk is shown. The jerk appears in the plots of the first differences in H for the southern most observatories of Hermanus, Hartebeesthoek, and Tsuemb, while the Z plots show the jerk for near equatorial and equatorial stations of Antananarivo, Luanda Belas, Bangui and Addis Ababa. There is some indication for this jerk in the first difference plots of D for the northern stations of M'Bour and Tamanrasset. The plots of D rather strongly suggest the presence of a jerk around 1980 at most of the stations. (author)

Access to abortion and secular liberties

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roberto Arriada Lorea

2007-01-01

Full Text Available In Brazil, facing an issue like abortion requires a secular perspective since the freedom of conscience assured by the Federal Constitution places upon the State the need to regard not only different viewpoints of different religions, but more specifically assure the right to diversity existing within a same religion, as well as the right to exercise different views from those of the hierarchy of his/her own religion. As such, there is no legal barrier for the decriminalization of abortion in the country. It is up to legislators to reform the present law and decriminalize abortion, assuming the commitments Brazil has assumed with international human-rights organizations, thus assuring the efficacy of civil liberties.

Secular trends on traditional ecological knowledge: An analysis of different domains of knowledge among Tsimane' men.

Science.gov (United States)

Reyes-García, Victoria; Luz, Ana C; Gueze, Maximilien; Paneque-Gálvez, Jaime; Macía, Manuel J; Orta-Martínez, Martí; Pino, Joan

2013-10-01

Empirical research provides contradictory evidence of the loss of traditional ecological knowledge across societies. Researchers have argued that culture, methodological differences, and site-specific conditions are responsible for such contradictory evidences. We advance and test a third explanation: the adaptive nature of traditional ecological knowledge systems. Specifically, we test whether different domains of traditional ecological knowledge experience different secular changes and analyze trends in the context of other changes in livelihoods. We use data collected among 651 Tsimane' men (Bolivian Amazon). Our findings indicate that different domains of knowledge follow different secular trends. Among the domains of knowledge analyzed, medicinal and wild edible knowledge appear as the most vulnerable; canoe building and firewood knowledge seem to remain constant across generations; whereas house building knowledge seems to experience a slight secular increase. Our analysis reflects on the adaptive nature of traditional ecological knowledge, highlighting how changes in this knowledge system respond to the particular needs of a society in a given point of time.

[Civic religion, civil religion, secular religion. a historiographical investigation].

Science.gov (United States)

Boucheron, Patrick

2013-01-01

Because of its conceptual plasiticity, the term civic religion is now widely used by historians, particularly historians of the Middle Ages. Yet, as this article suggests, historians would do well to interrogate the relationships (which can be hidden) that this term bears to similar concepts such as Greek Roman civic religion, Enlightenment civil religion or even the secular religion that emerged in the work of 20(th) century thinkers.

Bottom-up control of geomagnetic secular variation by the Earth's inner core

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Aubert, Julien; Finlay, Chris; Fournier, Alexandre

2013-01-01

of geomagnetic secular variation. Here we show that it can be reproduced provided that two mechanisms relying on the inner core are jointly considered. First, gravitational coupling5 aligns the inner core with the mantle, forcing the flow of liquid metal in the outer core into a giant, westward drifting, sheet...... release in the outer core which in turn distorts the gyre, forcing it to become eccentric, in agreement with recent core flow inversions6, 10, 11. This bottom-up heterogeneous driving of core convection dominates top-down driving from mantle thermal heterogeneities, and localizes magnetic variations......Temporal changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, known as geomagnetic secular variation, occur most prominently at low latitudes in the Atlantic hemisphere1, 2 (that is, from −90 degrees east to 90 degrees east), whereas in the Pacific hemisphere there is comparatively little activity...

The Universal Constitutionalism in an Age of Religious Diversity. Western Secularism Tested by “New” Cultural Conflicts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francesco Alicino

2011-03-01

Full Text Available An abridged version of this article (reported by Prof. Nicola Colaianni, University of Bari “Aldo Moro” was presented at the Seminar on “Secularism and Liberal Constitutionalism”, held at the University of LUISS “Guido Carli” (Rome on 6th July 2010.This article is due to be published in the International Review of Sociology, in 2011. SUMMARY: 1. Introduction – 2. Relation-Collaboration between the State and Churches in Constitutional Democracies – 3. The laicité à la française Tested by a Deprivatised Religious Process – 3.1. The French Rigid Secularism. Freedom (of Religion through the State – 4. Canada’s Open Secularism. The  question of Religious-Based Family Law Disputes – 4.1 Reasonable Accommodation and “New” Religious Nomoi Groups – 5. Collaboration-Relation between the State and Churches in Italy – 5.1. The Italian Secularism Tested by the New “Religious Geography” – 6. Conclusion. Abstract Under the pressing process of immigration and globalisation many Western constitutional democracies have moved from a number of religions, sharing a common culture, to today's age of diversity. As opposed to the past, the current democracies are facing the lack of overlapping consensus over the basic constitutional laws: namely, the meaning and the scope of freedom of religion, secularism, the separation Church-State, equal treatment and the rule of law. This is because individuals often come to adopt their basic values by very different ways. The nature, scope and force of such values are likely to be affected by competing and, sometimes, contested fundamental values and worldviews. From here stems the pressing tension – or dilemma – between “unity” and “diversity”. This essay starts with general considerations about the freedom of religion principle, strictly related with the “separation” as well as “collaboration” between secular States and Churches; then the author analyses three case

Leo Tolstoy’s Anticlericalism in Its Context and Beyond: A Case against Churches and Clerics, Religious and Secular

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

2016-05-01

Full Text Available In the last thirty years of his life, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated views on violence, the state, the church, and on how to improve the human condition. Since then, these “Christian anarchist” views have often been dismissed as utopian or naive, and, despite inspiring many activists and intellectuals, often forgotten or ignored. Some of those views and arguments, however, arguably remain apposite today—and can in some cases be applied to broader phenomena than those he identified. This article focuses on one of the aspects of his Christian anarchist thought: his anticlericalism. The first Section recounts the evolution of Tolstoy’s views on religion and the church, and briefly describes Tolstoy’s peculiar metaphysics. The second outlines his main charges against the church, discusses some common objections to it, and considers the continuing relevance of his anticlericalism. The third seeks to secularise his anticlerical arguments by applying them beyond the church, against secular preachers and institutions, and does so by reflecting on the quality of debate in the contemporary public sphere, on the hypocritical distance between the morality preached by secular “clerics” and their practice, and on the steady process of ossification and betrayal which befalls secular political ideals. The article thus contributes to the literature firstly by summarising, discussing and reflecting upon the anticlericalism of a famous writer who also espoused controversial religious and political views; secondly by succinctly outlining his idiosyncratic metaphysics, including his peculiar reinterpretation of traditional Christian referents; and thirdly by applying the arguments that informed his criticisms of the church to a broader variety of religious and secular secular institutions.

Secular and religious: the intrinsic doubleness of analytical psychology and the hegemony of naturalism in the social sciences.

Science.gov (United States)

Main, Roderick

2013-06-01

In recent years a number of prominent social theorists, including Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, have voiced concern about the hegemony of naturalistic, secular assumptions in the social sciences, and in their different ways have sought to address this by establishing greater parity between secular and religious perspectives. This paper suggests that C.G. Jung's analytical psychology, which hitherto has been largely ignored by social theory, may have something to contribute on this issue as it can be understood coherently both empirically, without reference to transcendent reality, and metaphysically, with reference to transcendent reality. It is argued that, despite his denials of any metaphysical intent, Jung does in fact engage in metaphysics and that together the empirical and metaphysical vectors of his thought result in a rich and distinctive double perspective. This dual secular and religious perspective can be seen as part of Jung's own critique of the hegemony of naturalism and secularism, which for Jung has profound social as well as clinical relevance. The concern and approach that Habermas and Taylor share with Jung on this issue may provide some grounds for increased dialogue between analytical psychology and the social sciences. © 2013, The Society of Analytical Psychology.

Secular Trends in the Incidence of Dementia in a Multi-Ethnic Community.

Science.gov (United States)

Noble, James M; Schupf, Nicole; Manly, Jennifer J; Andrews, Howard; Tang, Ming-Xin; Mayeux, Richard

2017-10-03

Determination of secular trends in cognitive aging is important for prioritization of resources, services, and research in aging populations. Prior studies have identified declining dementia incidence associated with changes in cardiovascular risk factors and increased educational attainment. However, few studies have examined these factors in multi-ethnic cohorts. To identify secular trends in the incidence rate of dementia in an elderly population. Participants in this study were drawn from the Washington Heights-Inwood Columbia Aging Project, a multi-ethnic cohort study of northern Manhattan residents aged 65 years and older. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine differences in the incidence of dementia in cohorts recruited in 1992 and 1999, with age at dementia or age at last follow-up visit as the "time-to-event" variable. Overall, there was a 41% reduction in the hazard ratio for dementia among participants in the 1999 cohort compared with those in the 1992 cohort, adjusting for age, sex, race, and baseline memory complaints (HR = 0.59). The reduction in incidence was greatest among non-Hispanic Whites and African-Americans and lowest among Hispanic participants (HRs = 0.60, 0.52 and 0.64, respectively), and was associated with increases in level of educational attainment, especially among African-Americans. Reduction in incidence of dementia was also greater among persons 75 years or older than among younger participants (HR = 0.52 versus HR = 0.69). Our results support previous findings that secular trends in dementia incidence are changing, including in aging minority populations.

Neo-Hindu Fundamentalism Challenging the Secular and Pluralistic Indian State

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gino Battaglia

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Secularism seems to require separation between religion and State. Regarding India, it would be better to speak of ‘equidistance’ between State and religious denominations. Nonetheless a ‘balanced treatment’ towards the religions leaves the question open as to what form that equidistance should take. This is the reason of some contradictions in today’s Indian social and political life. It is likely that without the Moghul and British domination Hinduism would not have acquired a militant identity. It was the ‘epiphany’ of well-armed, powerful ‘Others’ (Muslim, Christian or secular which generated frustration and fear to such an extent that a religious nationalism (Hindutva was born. Nehru and the Left of the Congress Party leadership thought that modernity would overcome religion, which is a remnant of the past. They were confident that a political culture based on pluralism and tolerance would become the foundations of the new society. This is exactly what Hindu Nationalism takes issue with: the ‘pseudo-seculars’ project of building the national identity without Hinduism or against Hinduism. Hindutva asserts that Hinduism is the basis of the Indian civilization. The Hindu ethos is the soul of the nation.

New methods for deriving cometary secular light curves: C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp) revisited

Science.gov (United States)

Womack, Maria; Lastra, Nathan; Harrington, Olga; Curtis, Anthony; Wierzchos, Kacper; Ruffini, Nicholas; Charles, Mentzer; Rabson, David; Cox, Timothy; Rivera, Isabel; Micciche, Anthony

2017-10-01

We present an algorithm for reducing scatter and increasing precision in a comet light curve. As a demonstration, we processed apparent magnitudes of comet Hale-Bopp from 16 highly experienced observers (archived with the International Comet Quarterly), correcting for distance from Earth and phase angle. Different observers tend to agree on the difference in magnitudes of an object at different distances, but the magnitude reported by observer is shifted relative to that of another for an object at a fixed distance. We estimated the shifts using a self-consistent statistical approach, leading to a sharper light curve and improving the precision of the measured slopes. The final secular lightcurve for comet Hale-Bopp ranges from -7 au (pre-perihelion) to +8 au (post-perihelion) and is the best secular light curve produced to date for this “great” comet. We discuss Hale-Bopp’s lightcurve evolution and possibly related physical implications, and potential usefulness of this light curve for comparisons with other future bright comets. We also assess the appropriateness of using secular lightcurves to characterize dust production rates in Hale-Bopp and other dust-rich comets. M.W. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1615917.

Effects of Antipsychotics on Secular Mortality Trends in Patients With Alzheimer's Disease

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, René Ernst; Valentin, Jan B; Lolk, Annette

2018-01-01

OBJECTIVE: To investigate secular changes in mortality rates between patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and the general population as well as changes in antipsychotic drug treatment and the association between drug treatment and mortality in patients with AD in Denmark during a 12-year study...

A Multi-Disciplinary Inquiry of Secular and Christian Approaches to Sex Education

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Chong Ho; Lee, Hyun Seo

2018-01-01

Secular scholars have criticized Christian education and counseling on sex as restrictive, ineffective, and outdated. The authors of the current study explored both common non-Christian and Christian approaches to human sexuality with reference to overarching domains of religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. Secular…

Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Identities Convergence: Introduction to the Special Issue

Science.gov (United States)

Small, Jenny L.; Bowman, Nicholas A.

2018-01-01

The purpose of this special issue is to share the best research, theory, practice, and perspectives from presenters at the 2017 Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Identities Convergence conference, alongside the new writing of scholars and practitioners who were inspired by the themes of the conference. Readers will have access both to the best of…

The European Court of Human Rights, Secular Education and Public Schooling

Science.gov (United States)

Arthur, James; Holdsworth, Michael

2012-01-01

Since 9/11 the European Court of Human Rights (the European Court) has raised anew the question of the relationship between religion and public education. In its reasoning, the European Court has had to consider competing normative accounts of the secular, either to accept or deny claims to religious liberty within Europe's public education…

Secular Trends in the Physical Fitness of American Youth, Young Adults and Army Recruits

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Knapik, Joseph

2004-01-01

This paper reviews the literature and existing databases for information on secular trends in the physical fitness of young Americans and describes changes in fitness during Basic Combat Training (BCT...

Transit Duration Variations due to Secular Interactions in Systems with Tightly-packed Inner Planets

Science.gov (United States)

Boley, Aaron; Van Laerhoven, Christa; Granados Contreras, A. Paula

2018-04-01

Secular interactions among planets in multi-planet systems will lead to variations in orbital inclinations and to the precession of orbital nodes. Taking known system architectures at face value, we calculate orbital precession rates for planets in tightly-packed systems using classical second-order secular theory, in which the orientation of the orbits can be described as a vector sum of eigenmodes and the eigenstructure is determined only by the masses and semi-major axes of the planets. Using this framework, we identify systems that have fast precession frequencies, and use those systems to explore the range of transit duration variation that could occur using amplitudes that are consistent with tightly-packed planetary systems. We then further assess how transit duration variations could be used in practice.

Spatial patterns and secular trends in human leishmaniasis incidence in Morocco between 2003 and 2013.

Science.gov (United States)

Sadeq, Mina

2016-05-11

Few studies on spatial patterns or secular trends in human leishmanias have been conducted in Morocco. This study aimed to examine spatial patterns and trends associated with the human leishmaniasis incidence rate (HLIR) at the province/prefecture level between 2003 and 2013 in Morocco. Only the available published country data on the HLIR between 2003 and 2013, from the open access files of the Ministry of Health, were used. Secular trends were examined using Kendall's rank correlation. An exploratory spatial data analysis was also conducted to examine the spatial autocorrelation (Global Moran's I and local indicator of spatial association [LISA]), and spatial diffusion at the province/prefecture level. The influence of various covariates (poverty rate, vulnerability rate, population density, and urbanization) on the HLIR was tested via spatial regression (ordinary least squares regression). At the country level, no secular variation was observed. Poisson annual incidence rate estimates were 13 per 100 000 population (95 % CI = 12.9-13.1) for cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) and 0.4 per 100 000 population (95 % CI = 0.4-0.5) for visceral leishmaniasis (VL). The available data on HLIR were based on combined CL and VL cases, however, as the CL cases totally outnumbered the VL ones, HLIR may be considered as CL incidence rate. At the provincial level, a secular increase in the incidence rate was observed in Al Hoceima (P = 0.008), Taounate (P = 0.04), Larache (P = 0.002), Tétouan (P = 0.0003), Khenifra (P = 0.008), Meknes (P = 0.03), and El Kelaa (P = 0.0007), whereas a secular decrease was observed only in the Chichaoua province (P = 0.006). Even though increased or decreased rate was evident in these provinces, none of them showed clustering of leishmaniasis incidence. Significant spatial clusters of high leishmaniasis incidence were located in the northeastern part of Morocco, while spatial clusters of low leishmaniasis

Secular trend of the leading causes of death in China from 2003 to ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Secular trend of the leading causes of death in China from 2003 to 2013. ... African Health Sciences ... respiratory, and digestive system diseases in urban areas and genito-urinary system diseases in rural areas decreased during this period ...

The steady part of the secular variation of the Earth's magnetic field

Science.gov (United States)

Bloxham, Jeremy

1992-01-01

The secular variation of the Earth's magnetic field results from the effects of magnetic induction in the fluid outer core and from the effects of magnetic diffusion in the core and the mantle. Adequate observations to map the magnetic field at the core-mantle boundary extend back over three centuries, providing a model of the secular variation at the core-mantle boundary. Here we consider how best to analyze this time-dependent part of the field. To calculate steady core flow over long time periods, we introduce an adaptation of our earlier method of calculating the flow in order to achieve greater numerical stability. We perform this procedure for the periods 1840-1990 and 1690-1840 and find that well over 90 percent of the variance of the time-dependent field can be explained by simple steady core flow. The core flows obtained for the two intervals are broadly similar to each other and to flows determined over much shorter recent intervals.

Examination of US puberty-timing data from 1940 to 1994 for secular trends

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Euling, Susan Y; Herman-Giddens, Marcia E; Lee, Peter A

2008-01-01

or girls. A majority of the panelists agreed that data are sufficient to suggest a trend toward an earlier breast development onset and menarche in girls but not for other female pubertal markers. A minority of panelists concluded that the current data on girls' puberty timing for any marker...... are insufficient. Almost all panelists concluded, on the basis of few studies and reliability issues of some male puberty markers, that current data for boys are insufficient to evaluate secular trends in male pubertal development. The panel agreed that altered puberty timing should be considered an adverse effect......Whether children, especially girls, are entering and progressing through puberty earlier today than in the mid-1900s has been debated. Secular trend analysis, based on available data, is limited by data comparability among studies in different populations, in different periods of time, and using...

Debating Modernity as Secular Religion: Hans Kelsen’s futile exchange with Eric Voegelin

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thomassen, Bjørn

2014-01-01

This article reviews the mysterious and recently published last book by Hans Kelsen, “Secular Religion. A Polemic Against the Misinterpretation of Modern Social Philosophy, Science and Politics as ‘New Religions’”, contextualizing it with reference to the little known dialogue between Hans Kelsen...... and Eric Voegelin. The confrontation between Kelsen and Voegelin, two of the most illustrious émigré scholars who found in America their new home, is important to revisit because it touches upon several axes of debate of crucial importance to postwar intellectual history: the religion/secularity debate......, the positivist/anti-positivist debates, and the controversy that also led to the famous Voegelin/Arendt debate: how to read the horrors of totalitarianism into a historical trajectory of modernity. Although the Kelsen/Voegelin exchange ended in failure and bitterness its substance matter goes to the heart...

Secular changes in Earth's shape and surface mass loading derived from combinations of reprocessed global GPS networks

Science.gov (United States)

Booker, David; Clarke, Peter J.; Lavallée, David A.

2014-09-01

The changing distribution of surface mass (oceans, atmospheric pressure, continental water storage, groundwater, lakes, snow and ice) causes detectable changes in the shape of the solid Earth, on time scales ranging from hours to millennia. Transient changes in the Earth's shape can, regardless of cause, be readily separated from steady secular variation in surface mass loading, but other secular changes due to plate tectonics and glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) cannot. We estimate secular station velocities from almost 11 years of high quality combined GPS position solutions (GPS weeks 1,000-1,570) submitted as part of the first international global navigation satellite system service reprocessing campaign. Individual station velocities are estimated as a linear fit, paying careful attention to outliers and offsets. We remove a suite of a priori GIA models, each with an associated set of plate tectonic Euler vectors estimated by us; the latter are shown to be insensitive to the a priori GIA model. From the coordinate time series residuals after removing the GIA models and corresponding plate tectonic velocities, we use mass-conserving continental basis functions to estimate surface mass loading including the secular term. The different GIA models lead to significant differences in the estimates of loading in selected regions. Although our loading estimates are broadly comparable with independent estimates from other satellite missions, their range highlights the need for better, more robust GIA models that incorporate 3D Earth structure and accurately represent 3D surface displacements.

SECULAR EVOLUTION OF COMPACT BINARIES NEAR MASSIVE BLACK HOLES: GRAVITATIONAL WAVE SOURCES AND OTHER EXOTICA

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Antonini, Fabio; Perets, Hagai B.

2012-01-01

The environment near supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei contains a large number of stars and compact objects. A fraction of these are likely to be members of binaries. Here we discuss the binary population of stellar black holes and neutron stars near SMBHs and focus on the secular evolution of such binaries, due to the perturbation by the SMBH. Binaries with highly inclined orbits with respect to their orbit around the SMBH are strongly affected by secular Kozai processes, which periodically change their eccentricities and inclinations (Kozai cycles). During periapsis approach, at the highest eccentricities during the Kozai cycles, gravitational wave (GW) emission becomes highly efficient. Some binaries in this environment can inspiral and coalesce at timescales much shorter than a Hubble time and much shorter than similar binaries that do not reside near an SMBH. The close environment of SMBHs could therefore serve as a catalyst for the inspiral and coalescence of binaries and strongly affect their orbital properties. Such compact binaries would be detectable as GW sources by the next generation of GW detectors (e.g., advanced-LIGO). Our analysis shows that ∼0.5% of such nuclear merging binaries will enter the LIGO observational window while on orbits that are still very eccentric (e ∼> 0.5). The efficient GW analysis for such systems would therefore require the use of eccentric templates. We also find that binaries very close to the SMBH could evolve through a complex dynamical (non-secular) evolution, leading to emission of several GW pulses during only a few years (though these are likely to be rare). Finally, we note that the formation of close stellar binaries, X-ray binaries, and their merger products could be induced by similar secular processes, combined with tidal friction rather than GW emission as in the case of compact object binaries.

Contemplative Science and Secular Ethics

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Brendan Ozawa-de Silva

2016-08-01

Full Text Available This article argues that the emerging project of contemplative science will be best served if it is informed by two perspectives. First, attention should be paid not only to non-analytical and/or mindfulness-based practices, but to a fuller range of contemplative practices, including analytical styles of meditation. Second, the issue of ethics must be addressed as a framework within which to understand contemplative practice: both theoretically in order to understand better the practices themselves and the traditions they come from, and practically in order to understand the ways in which contemplative practices are deployed in contemporary societies. The Tibetan Buddhist Lojong (blo sbyong tradition and secularized practices derived from it, which are now an area of study in contemplative science, are examined as a kind of case study in order to make these two points and illustrate their importance and relevance for the future of this emerging field.

Between Christianity and secularity: counselling and psychotherapy provision in Scotland

OpenAIRE

Bondi, Liz

2013-01-01

Counselling and psychotherapy services have become increasingly prominent within modern urban welfare. Although often perceived to be intrinsically secular, since psychoanalytic thinking and practice arrived in Scotland it has been shaped by the Christian culture it encountered. Early Scottish-born contributors to psychoanalytic theory, including Ian Suttie and W.R.D. Fairbairn, reframed Freud’s ideas in ways that incorporated Scottish Presbyterian understandings of what it is to be human. A ...

Defining and Distinguishing Secular and Religious Terrorism

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Heather S. Gregg

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Religious terrorism is typically characterised as acts of unrestrained, irrational and indiscriminant violence, thus offering few if any policy options for counterterrorism measures. This assumption about religious terrorism stems from two challenges in the literature: disproportionate attention to apocalyptic terrorism, and a lack of distinction between religious terrorism and its secular counterpart. This article, therefore, aims to do four things: define and differentiate religiously motivated terrorism from traditional terrorism; investigate three goals of religious terrorism (fomenting the apocalypse, creating a religious government, and establishing a religiously pure state; consider the role of leadership and target selection of religious terrorists; and, finally, suggest a range of counterterrorism strategies based on these observations.

Variaciones seculares de período en las RR Lyrae de ω~Centauri

Science.gov (United States)

Marraco, H. G.; Milesi, G. E.

Utilizando 689 observaciones de 35 estrellas RR Lyrae del cúmulo globular ω Centauri hemos obtenido nuevas determinaciones de sus períodos y sus correspondientes variaciones seculares. Las observaciones fueron obtenidas de la literatura con la excepción de un grupo 66 determinaciones que se presentan por vez primera aquí. Utilizando el parámetro testigo σ descripto en Marraco & Muzzio (Publ. Astron. Soc. Pacific 92, 700, 1980), hemos realizado un ajuste bidimensional en P y β (donde β es la variación secular del período). Con este fin la totalidad de las 689 observaciones fueron llevadas a un sistema fotométrico común. Para esto se realizó un cuidadoso análisis de los numerosos errores en la identificación de las estrellas de las series de comparación. Los resultados de los ajustes bidimensionales fueron analizados utilizando técnicas de procesamiento de imágenes. Con este fin el parámetro de ajuste σ fue representado como función de P y β. En las imágenes resultantes se buscaron los mínimos y al menor de ellos se lo aceptó como período instantáneo verdadero y su variación secular β. La determinación precisa de cada parámetro se realizó mediante ajuste de gaussianas y se determinaron sus errores. A modo de ejemplo la variable #8 fue analizada en una matriz de 501 × 501 elementos representando el parámetro σ para valores comprendidos entre 0,521034 son P = 0,5212859±0,0000001 días y β 14,012±,010×10-10 días/día respectivamente. Con estos valores el parámetro testigo resulta σ= 0,127 . Si no se tiene en cuenta la variación secular del período y se busca aquél de mejor ajuste para β = 0, se obtiene P = 0,5212960 días, pero entonces el parámetro de ajuste resulta tan alto como σ = 0,23 .

Reference frame access under the effects of great earthquakes: a least squares collocation approach for non-secular post-seismic evolution

Science.gov (United States)

Gómez, D. D.; Piñón, D. A.; Smalley, R.; Bevis, M.; Cimbaro, S. R.; Lenzano, L. E.; Barón, J.

2016-03-01

The 2010, (Mw 8.8) Maule, Chile, earthquake produced large co-seismic displacements and non-secular, post-seismic deformation, within latitudes 28°S-40°S extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans. Although these effects are easily resolvable by fitting geodetic extended trajectory models (ETM) to continuous GPS (CGPS) time series, the co- and post-seismic deformation cannot be determined at locations without CGPS (e.g., on passive geodetic benchmarks). To estimate the trajectories of passive geodetic benchmarks, we used CGPS time series to fit an ETM that includes the secular South American plate motion and plate boundary deformation, the co-seismic discontinuity, and the non-secular, logarithmic post-seismic transient produced by the earthquake in the Posiciones Geodésicas Argentinas 2007 (POSGAR07) reference frame (RF). We then used least squares collocation (LSC) to model both the background secular inter-seismic and the non-secular post-seismic components of the ETM at the locations without CGPS. We tested the LSC modeled trajectories using campaign and CGPS data that was not used to generate the model and found standard deviations (95 % confidence level) for position estimates for the north and east components of 3.8 and 5.5 mm, respectively, indicating that the model predicts the post-seismic deformation field very well. Finally, we added the co-seismic displacement field, estimated using an elastic finite element model. The final, trajectory model allows accessing the POSGAR07 RF using post-Maule earthquake coordinates within 5 cm for ˜ 91 % of the passive test benchmarks.

Tendencia secular da amamentacao no Brasil

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Sonia Isoyama Venancio

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Com o objetivo de documentar a tendência secular da amamentação no Brasil, foram reanalisadas as bases de dados de sete pesquisas nacionais realizadas de 1975 a 2008. Para obter dados comparáveis entre os diferentes inquéritos, foram analisadas as mesmas faixas etárias e indicadores, e utilizadas as mesmas técnicas estatísticas. A duração mediana da amamentação aumentou de 2,5 para 11,3 meses e a prevalência da amamentação exclusiva em menores de seis meses passou de 3,1% para 41,0% no período. Os resultados apontam importantes desafios no sentido de acelerar o ritmo de crescimento dessa prática no País, rumo às recomendações internacionais.

The Shi'ites, the West and the Future of Democracy: Reframing Political Change in a Religio-secular World

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John A Rees

2006-02-01

Full Text Available The present article critically reviews Paul McGeough’s important analysis of the most recent Iraq war within a broader consideration of secular-religious relations in international affairs. The thesis of Mission Impossible: The Sheikhs, the US and the Future of Iraq (2004 can be summarised around two ideas: that the US strategy in Iraq was flawed because it wilfully bypassed the traditional power structures of Iraqi society; and that these structures, formed around the tribe and the mosque, are anti-democratic thus rendering attempts at democratisation impossible. The article affirms McGeough’s argument concerning the inadequacy of the US strategy, but critically examines the author’s fatalism toward the democratic capacity of Iraqi structures, notably the structure of the mosque. By broadening the notion of democracy to include religious actors and agendas, and by an introductory interpretation of the Shi’ite community as vital players in an emerging Iraqi democracy, the article attempts to deconstruct the author’s secularist view that the world of the mosque exists in a ‘parallel universe’ to the liberal democratic West. Reframing the Shi’ites as essential actors in the democratic project thus situates political discourse in a ‘religio-secular world’ and brings the ‘other worlds’ of religion and secularism together in a sphere of interdependence. Such an approach emphasises the importance of post-secular structures in the discourses on democratic change.

Secular trends in hip fractures worldwide: opposing trends East versus West.

Science.gov (United States)

Ballane, Ghada; Cauley, Jane A; Luckey, Marjorie M; Fuleihan, Ghada El-Hajj

2014-08-01

Despite wide variations in hip rates fractures worldwide, reasons for such differences are not clear. Furthermore, secular trends in the age-specific hip fracture rates are changing the world map of this devastating disease, with the highest rise projected to occur in developing countries. The aim of our investigation is to systematically characterize secular trends in hip fractures worldwide, examine new data for various ethnic groups in the United States, evidence for divergent temporal patterns, and investigate potential contributing factors for the observed change in their epidemiology. All studies retrieved through a complex Medline Ovid search between 1966 and 2013 were examined. For each selected study, we calculated the percent annual change in age-standardized hip fracture rates de-novo. Although occurring at different time points, trend breaks in hip fracture incidence occurred in most Western countries and Oceania. After a steep rise in age-adjusted rates in these regions, a decrease became evident sometimes between the mid-seventies and nineties, depending on the country. Conversely, the data is scarce in Asia and South America, with evidence for a continuous rise in hip fracture rates, with the exception of Hong-Kong and Taiwan that seem to follow Western trends. The etiologies of these secular patterns in both the developed and the developing countries have not been fully elucidated, but the impact of urbanization is at least one plausible explanation. Data presented here show close parallels between rising rates of urbanization and hip fractures across disparate geographic locations and cultures. Once the proportion of the urban population stabilized, hip fracture rates also stabilize or begin to decrease perhaps due to the influence of other factors such as birth cohort effects, changes in bone mineral density and BMI, osteoporosis medication use and/or lifestyle interventions such as smoking cessation, improvement in nutritional status and fall

Secular Volunteerism among Texan Emerging Adults: Exploring Pathways of Childhood and Adulthood Religiosity

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Reed T. DeAngelis

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Prior research suggests that religiosity, especially public religious participation, is related to greater volunteerism. However, less is known about religious transmission across the life course, in particular whether and how religiosity in childhood is linked to later life volunteerism. This study investigates a sample of emerging adults in South Texas (n = 701 with a high percent of Hispanic Americans (53 percent. Specifically, we examine pathways of childhood and emerging adulthood religiosity leading to secular volunteerism. Findings indicate that both childhood and emerging adulthood religiosity are associated with greater volunteerism, but the effects of childhood religiosity on emerging adulthood volunteerism are mediated through emerging adulthood religiosity. These findings provide further confirmation of the importance of childhood religiosity only insofar as religiousness persists into adulthood. In other words, we find that it is emerging adulthood religiosity that transmits childhood religiosity into greater secular volunteerism in later life. Furthermore, emerging adulthood public religiosity has the most robust direct effects on volunteerism.

Long-Term Seafloor Electromagnetic Observation in the Northwest Pacific May Detect the Vector Geomagnetic Secular Variation

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H Toh

2010-03-01

Full Text Available Sea Floor ElectroMagnetic Stations (SFEMSs are now operating at two deep seafloor sites called the 'WPB' and the 'NWP' in the West Philippine Basin and the Northwest Pacific Basin, respectively. One of the main objectives of the SFEMSs is to detect the geomagnetic secular variations on the deep seafloor where long-term geomagnetic observations have not so far been achieved. SFEMSs can measure the absolute geomagnetic total force as well as the geomagnetic vector field with precise attitude monitoring systems. The vector geomagnetic time-series that was observed for more than 5 years revealed that the westward drift of the equatorial dipole dominates in the geomagnetic secular variation at the NWP.

Religious and territorial identities in a cosmopolitan and secular city: youth in Amsterdam

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mamadouh, V.; van der Welle, I.; Brunn, S.D.

2015-01-01

Religion is a much contested issue in Dutch politics and more specifically in Amsterdam. We investigate whether and how religion works as an obstacle or a vehicle for integration for youth in the secular and cosmopolitan Amsterdam. First, we describe the role religion played in the process of nation

Secular Trends in Meal and Snack Patterns among Adolescents from 1999 to 2010.

Science.gov (United States)

Larson, Nicole; Story, Mary; Eisenberg, Marla E; Neumark-Sztainer, Dianne

2016-02-01

Linkages between snack patterns, diet, and obesity in adolescents likely depend on the consumption of main meals, how often snacks are prepared away from home, and whether energy-dense, nutrient-poor snack foods and sugary drinks are frequently consumed. Nutrition-based interventions need to be informed by an understanding of how secular changes in the contribution of snacks to dietary intake may be related to changes in meal frequency as well as how these trends differ by sociodemographic characteristics. To examine secular trends from 1999 to 2010 in meal and snack patterns among adolescents. A repeated cross-sectional design was used. Participants from Minneapolis/St Paul, MN, secondary schools completed classroom-administered surveys and food frequency questionnaires in 1999 (n=2,598) and 2010 (n=2,540). Weekly meal frequencies; number of snacks consumed on school and vacation/weekend days; frequent consumption of snacks prepared away from home (≥3 times/week); and daily servings of energy-dense, nutrient-poor food/drinks that are commonly consumed at snack occasions. Trends from 1999 to 2010 were examined using inverse probability weighting to control for differences in sociodemographic characteristics in the two samples. Mean frequencies of breakfast and lunch increased modestly in the overall population (both P values snacks consumed on schools days (Psnacks prepared away from home, there was a secular decrease in energy-dense, nutrient-poor food/drink consumption (Psnack trends among adolescents suggests the need for targeted efforts to ensure public health messages reach low-income and ethnic/racial minority population subgroups most vulnerable to poor nutrition and the development of obesity. Copyright © 2016 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Examination of US puberty-timing data from 1940 to 1994 for secular trends

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Euling, Susan Y; Herman-Giddens, Marcia E; Lee, Peter A

2008-01-01

different methods. As a result, conclusions from data comparisons have not been consistent. An expert panel was asked to evaluate the weight of evidence for whether the data, collected from 1940 to 1994, are sufficient to suggest or establish a secular trend in the timing of puberty markers in US boys...

Secular variation of cosmic ray intensity recorded in the radiocarbon concentration of tree rings

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kigoshi, K.

1978-01-01

Study of the secular variations of cosmic ray intensity on the basis of the secular variations of atmospheric radiocarbon concentration in 8000 years is considered. The data on the radiocarbon concentration is received by three laboratories using the dendrochronologically dated tree ring samples. In order to use the data the variations due to geochemical process must be eliminated. From this point of view the climatic effect on the atmospheric radiocarbon concenttration is estimated using the data on sunspot number and global surface temperature during 1650-1800 y. The barge influence of climate on the atmospheric radiocarbon concentration syggests the small contribution of change of radiocarbon production rate to the short-period fluctuations in the atmospheric radiocarbon concentration. Elimination of variations caused by climate and sunspot activities from the variations in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration gives a long-term scale of its concentration which agrees well to the observed paleo-geomagnetic data

A good social work: women's clubs, libraries, and the construction of a secular society in Utah, 1890-1920.

Science.gov (United States)

Stauffer, Suzanne M

2011-01-01

After the renunciation of polygamy, Mormon women formed secular women's clubs as a means of collaborating with non-Mormon women in the construction of a shared secular society. Their common goal was the establishment and maintenance of the mainstream American social order. Activity in these clubs extended women's sphere into the public realm through socially acceptable public activities such as the temperance cause, civic improvements, political reform movements, and child welfare. The women campaigned for public support of libraries as institutions that would construct, preserve, and transmit American culture, educate the young, strengthen the home and family, and reform society.

Secular trends of body sizes in Korean children and adolescents: from 1965 to 2010

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Jin Soo Moon

2011-11-01

Full Text Available An anthropometric survey is one of the most important approaches to use when evaluating the health status of children. Secular trends in body sizes, such as height, weight, head circumference, chest circumference, and body mass index showed significant changes over 40 years in Korea. A series of periodic surveys were conducted in 1967, 1975, 1985, 1997, and 2005 by the Korean Pediatric Society and Ministry of Health and Welfare. The quality of data from school health examinations and the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey has improved, so we can use them now as resources for anthropometric analysis. The final height differences between 1965 and 1997 were 4.5 cm both in boys (168.9 cm in 1965; 173.4 cm in 1997 and girls (155.9 cm in 1965; 160.4 cm in 1997. The differences between 1997 and 2005 were 0.9 cm in boys (174.3cm in 2005 and 0.8 cm in girls (161.2 cm in 2005. There was no difference in final height measurements between 2005 and 2010. An increase in body size at earlier teen ages was pronounced during these decades compared to the previous generation; however, little change has been identified more recently. Body size has been increasing, and obesity has become more prevalent. Systems that gather data should be updated in order to cope with these secular trends. In an upcoming era of secular trends that would be in a slow transition, several surveys that include body measurements should be prepared to meet future needs.

Observations of secular changes in the kinematic model of SS433

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Collins, G.W. II; Newsom, G.H.

1982-01-01

In this paper the authors present evidence that several of the defining parameters of the Kinematic Model for SS433 are not constant but rather exhibit long term systematic changes. Recent data confirm the existence of the previously reported decrease in the precessional period. The value for this period change, when combined with the observed change in the period of the synodic spectral variations, implies that the orbital period is not significantly changing on a time scale less than 1000 years. In addition they find mounting evidence for a statistically significant (4sigma) secular change in the cone angle theta at a rate of about -1.5 x 10 -3 deg/day. However, the surprisingly short time scales implied by the observed values of dP/dt and dtheta/dt when combined with estimates of the system age suggest the possible existence of detectable higher time derivatives. This view is supported by the most recent data which suggest a value for d 2 P/dt 2 approximately 10 -5 (days) -1 . It is possible to understand these secular changes in terms of the motions to be expected from an object exhibiting classical precession in response to an external torque. (Auth.)

Geographical localisation of the geomagnetic secular variation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Aubert, Julien; Finlay, Chris; Olsen, Nils

2013-01-01

the model and geomagnetic data previously processed in the same way. Our results suggest that conservation of angular momentum and heterogeneous thermochemical boundary control in the coupled inner core / outer core / mantle system are central to understanding how Earth’s magnetic field currently evolves......., westward moving, magnetic flux patches at the core surface. Despite its successes in explaining the main morphological properties of Earth’s magnetic field, self-consistent numerical modelling of the geodynamo has so far failed to reproduce this field variation pattern. Furthermore its magnetohydrodynamic...... control from either, or both, the inner-core boundary and the core-mantle boundary. In addition to presenting an Earth-like magnetic field morphology, these new numerical models also reproduce the morphology and localization of geomagnetic secular variation. In our models, the conservation of the angular...

[Adolphe Quetelet and biopolitics as secularized theology].

Science.gov (United States)

Pich, Santiago

2013-01-01

The article recaptures the work of an author who has been forgotten by the contemporary social sciences, that is, the Belgium polymath Adolphe Quetelet. Focusing on his main work, Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale, the study underscores how the secularization of theological principles within the realm of science was important to the construction of Quetelet's work. His dual engagement in science and politics is pertinent here, as he was the main nineteenth-century force behind the incorporation of statistics as a science essential to the State's ability to govern its people. He also played a relevant role in the realization of the hegemonic political project of modernity, biopolitics, and its influence in the field of biomedicine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Religious and secular volunteering: A comparison between immigrants and non-immigrants in the Netherlands.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Carabain, C.L.; Bekkers, R.H.F.P.

2011-01-01

Using new survey data from the Netherlands, we find that non-immigrants are more likely to volunteer for secular organisations than guest worker immigrants and postcolonial citizen immigrants. In contrast, non-immigrants are less likely to engage in religious volunteering than both immigrant groups.

Secular dynamics of hierarchical multiple systems composed of nested binaries, with an arbitrary number of bodies and arbitrary hierarchical structure - II. External perturbations: flybys and supernovae

Science.gov (United States)

Hamers, Adrian S.

2018-05-01

We extend the formalism of a previous paper to include the effects of flybys and instantaneous perturbations such as supernovae on the long-term secular evolution of hierarchical multiple systems with an arbitrary number of bodies and hierarchy, provided that the system is composed of nested binary orbits. To model secular encounters, we expand the Hamiltonian in terms of the ratio of the separation of the perturber with respect to the barycentre of the multiple system, to the separation of the widest orbit. Subsequently, we integrate over the perturber orbit numerically or analytically. We verify our method for secular encounters and illustrate it with an example. Furthermore, we describe a method to compute instantaneous orbital changes to multiple systems, such as asymmetric supernovae and impulsive encounters. The secular code, with implementation of the extensions described in this paper, is publicly available within AMUSE, and we provide a number of simple example scripts to illustrate its usage for secular and impulsive encounters and asymmetric supernovae. The extensions presented in this paper are a next step towards efficiently modelling the evolution of complex multiple systems embedded in star clusters.

Traditional vs. secular values and work-life well being across Europe

OpenAIRE

Georgellis, Y; Lange, T

2007-01-01

This paper examines how culture, defined in our analysis by reference to traditional versus secular values, affects the work-life balance across Europe. Specifically, we focus on the factors that affect the propensity of individuals across 30 European countries to exhibit behavioural patterns in the work and life domains consistent with the segmentation, spillover or compensation hypotheses. Testing the latter assertions, our empirical analysis replicates the study by Judge and Watanabe (1994...

American medicine as religious practice: care of the sick as a sacred obligation and the unholy descent into secularization.

Science.gov (United States)

Wardlaw, Margaret P

2011-03-01

Modern medicine serves a religious function for modern Americans as a conduit through which science can be applied directly to the human body. The first half of this paper will focus on the theoretical foundations for viewing medicine as a religious practice arguing that just as a hierarchical structured authoritarian church historically mediated access to God, contemporary Western medicine provides a conduit by which the universalizable truths of science can be applied to the human being thereby functioning as a new established religion. I will then illustrate the many parallels between medicine and religion through an analysis of rituals and symbols surrounding and embedded within the modern practice of medicine. This analysis will pay special attention to the primacy placed on secret interior knowledge of the human body. I will end by responding to the hope for a "secularization of American medicine," exploring some of the negative consequences of secularization, and arguing that, rather than seeking to secularize, American medicine should strive to use its religious features to offer hope and healing to the sick, in keeping with its historically religious legacy.

Ancient Ephesus: Processions as Media of Religious and Secular Propaganda

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Lilian Portefaix

1993-01-01

Full Text Available The significance of religious rituals often reaches beyond their strict religious intentions. Specifically a procession, performed in front of the public, is a most effective instrument of disseminating a message to the crowds. Consequently, this ritual, as is well known, has often been used not only in religious but also in secular contexts; a procession under the cloak of religion can even become a politically useful medium to avoid popular disturbances on peaceful terms. This was the case in ancient Ephesus, where Roman power conflicted with Greek culture from the middle of the first century B.C. onwards. In the beginning of the second century A.D. the public religious life in the city of Ephesus was to a great extent characterized by processions relating to the cult of Artemis Ephesia. The one traditionally performed on the birthday of the goddess called to mind the Greek origin of the city; it was strictly associated with the religious sphere bringing about a close relationship between the goddess and her adherents. The other, artificially created by a Roman, was entirely secular, and spread its message every fortnight in the streets of Ephesus. It referred to the political field of action and intended to strengthen the Roman rule over the city. The Greek origin of Ephesian culture was later included in the message of the procession, reminding the Greeks not to rebel against Roman rule.

Numerical search for a Phi4 breather mode and study of the Phi4, sine-Gordon, and Kdv equations with adibatic coefficients

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wingate, C.A.

1978-01-01

Two major problems are studied in this thesis. The first is a numerical search for a stable oscillating mode in the Phi4 equation similar to the one that is known for the sine-Gordon equation. Starting with a widely separated soliton and anti-soliton traveling toward each other, it is observed, after a long period of time (t = 2800), that the solitons form a quasistable oscillating state. An interesting, previously unknown structure in the interaction depending on the initial velocity and initial separation is found and studied in detail. The second topic covered here is a study of the phi4, KdV and sine-Gordon equations when the coefficients vary slowly with time. A general first order solution is found for the wave equation with a non-linear potential and is applied to the phi4 and sine-Gordon potentials. In doing this it is found that the conservation of momentum is equivalent order by order to the secular conditions. Deficiencies in existing calculations for the KdV equation are pointed out through the use of adiabatic invariants and numerical calculations

Situational influences of religious VS. secular symbols on cognition in Nigeria

OpenAIRE

Iruayenama, Mark, Abiye

2016-01-01

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London. Nigeria is constitutionally a secular country but its citizens are rated among the most religious in the world by several surveys. Religious symbolism is conspicuous in Nigeria, littered from educational institutions to work environments and market places. Semiotics and semantics have a rich history of the study of symbols, however, symbols are also utilized as primes in psycholog...

Shelley’s Unknown Eros: Post-Secular Love in Epipsychidion

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Michael Tomko

2016-09-01

Full Text Available Whether Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Epipsychidion—a Platonic poem on love addressed to the patriarchally imprisoned Theresa Viviani or “Emily”—receives praise or blame has generally been determined by two focal passages: a secular sermon on free love and a planetary allegorical thinly veiling his own imbroglio. This essay re-reads Shelley’s 1821 work drawing on two recent arguments: Stuart Curran’s Dantean call to take the poem’s Florentine narrator seriously as a character, not just as an autobiographical cypher, and Colin Jager’s outline of Shelley’s move beyond the assumptions of his professed atheism after 1816. Based on the poem’s structure and imagery, the paper argues that Epipsychidion critiques the false sense of revolutionary ascent and dualistic escape offered to Emily, who is commodified and erased by the narrator’s egocentric, “counterfeit divinization of eros” (Benedict XVI. Turning from this Radical Enlightenment Platonism, the poem momentarily realizes an embodied, hylomorphic romantic union akin to the Christian nuptial mystery of two becoming “one flesh” (Mark 10:8. This ideal, however, collapses back into solipsism when the narrator cannot understand or accept love as a “unity in duality” (Benedict XVI. This paper thus claims Epipsychidion as a post-secular inquiry into the problem of love whose philosophic limits and theological horizons are both surprising and instructive. It also reclaims Shelley as a phenomenological poet who can open up the world to Christian and non-Christian readers, one whose Platonic and Dantean formation lend him an openness to transcendence and one whose countercultural path through life makes him wary of inhumane appropriations of religion.

The secular rise in IQs in the Netherlands: Is the Flynn Effect on g?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

te Nijenhuis, J.; van der Flier, H.

2007-01-01

IQ scores have been increasing over the last half century, a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. In this study, we focused on the question to what extent these secular gains are on the g factor. Two IQ batteries: the Interest-School achievement-Intelligence Test (ISI) and the Groningen Final

Religion, secular medicine and utilitarianism: a response to Biggar.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Kevin R

2015-11-01

Nigel Biggar has argued that religion ought to be given a seat at the negotiating table of medical ethics. I respond in broadly utilitarian terms, arguing that the flawed empirical basis, lack of rationality and non-universality inherent in religion disqualify it from ethical discourse. I conclude that while it would be unacceptable to attempt to debar religious individuals from the negotiating table, an exclusively secular approach is required for ethical decision making in medicine. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Exploring the determinants of secular decreases in dental caries among Korean children.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Hye-Ju; Han, Dong-Hun

2015-08-01

The aim of this study was to determine the contributions of sealant and water fluoridation to the time trends in dental caries from 2003 to 2010. Data were from three waves of the Korean National Oral Health Surveys between 2003 and 2010, including a total of 23 059 children (11 889 boys and 11 170 girls) aged 8, 10, and 12 years. The impacts of sealant and water fluoridation on dental caries were obtained by logistic regression for each age group of children. The contributions of sealant and water fluoridation to the time trends in the prevalence of dental caries were examined by a series of logistic regression models, and changes in the adjusted odds ratios for each survey year were also calculated. Over the past 7 years, the prevalence of dental caries decreased dramatically. Although sealant had a significant impact on dental caries in each survey year, remarkable decreases in dental caries from 2003 to 2010 were not explained by the secular changes in the dental sealant or water fluoridation factor. We observed important population declines in dental caries in Korea in children aged 8-12 years; however, the likely causes for these secular trends remain to be determined. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Importance of selecting archaeomagnetic data for geomagnetic modelling: example of the new Western Europe directional and intensity secular variation curves from 1500 BC to 200 AD

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Herve, Gwenael; Chauvin, Annick; Lanos, Philippe

2014-05-01

At the regional scale, the dispersion between archaeomagnetic data and especially archaeointensities suggests that some of them may be biased. As a consequence, it appears necessary to perform a selection of available data before to compute mean regional secular variation curves or geomagnetic models. However the definition of suitable selection criteria is not obvious and we need to know how to manage "old" data acquired during the 60-70s. The Western Europe directional and intensity data set from 1500 BC to 200 AD allows to discuss these issues. It has recently been enhanced by 39 new archaeodirections and 23 new archaeointensities (Hervé et al., 2013a and 2013b data sets and 5 unpublished data). First, the whole Western Europe data set was selected but the strong dispersion restricted the accuracy and the reliability of the new Western Europe secular variation curves at Paris. The causes of the dispersion appear different between archaeodirections and archaeointensities. In the directional data set, the main problem comes from some age errors in the oldest published data. Since their publication their archaeological dating may have changed of 50 years or more. For intensity data that were acquired much more recently, the dispersion mainly results from the use of unreliable archaeointensity protocols. We propose a weighting approach based on the number of specimens and the use of pTRM-checks, anisotropy and cooling rate corrections. Only 63% of available archaeodirections and 32% of archaeointensities were used to build the new Western Europe secular variation curves from 1500 BC to 200 AD. These curves reveal that selecting the reference data avoids wrong estimations of the shape of the secular variation curves, the secular variation rate, the dating of archaeomagnetic jerks... Finally, it is worth pointing out that current geomagnetic global models take into account almost all the data that we decided to reject. It could partly explain why their predictions at

An upper limit to the secular variation of the gravitational constant from white dwarf stars

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

García-Berro, Enrique; Lorén-Aguilar, Pablo; Torres, Santiago [Departament de Física Aplicada, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, c/Esteve Terrades, 5, 08860 Castelldefels (Spain); Althaus, Leandro G. [Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n, (1900) La Plata (Argentina); Isern, Jordi, E-mail: garcia@fa.upc.edu, E-mail: loren@fa.upc.edu, E-mail: santi@fa.upc.edu, E-mail: althaus@fcaglp.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar, E-mail: isern@ieec.cat [Institut de Ciències de l' Espai (CSIC), Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra (Spain)

2011-05-01

A variation of the gravitational constant over cosmological ages modifies the main sequence lifetimes and white dwarf cooling ages. Using an state-of-the-art stellar evolutionary code we compute the effects of a secularly varying G on the main sequence ages and, employing white dwarf cooling ages computed taking into account the effects of a running G, we place constraints on the rate of variation of Newton's constant. This is done using the white dwarf luminosity function and the distance of the well studied open Galactic cluster NGC 6791. We derive an upper bound Ġ/G ∼ −1.8 × 10{sup −12} yr{sup −1}. This upper limit for the secular variation of the gravitational constant compares favorably with those obtained using other stellar evolutionary properties, and can be easily improved if deep images of the cluster allow to obtain an improved white dwarf luminosity function.

Secular painting in the Ionian islands and Italian art: Aspects of a multi-faceted relationship

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Aphrodite Kouria

2017-02-01

Full Text Available The contribution of Italian art, especially Venetian, was decisive to the secularisation of art in the Ionian Islands and the shaping of the so-called Ionian School, in the context of a broader Western influence affecting all aspects of life and culture, especially on the islands of Zakynthos and Corfu. Italian influences, mainly of Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque art, can be identified both on the iconographic and the stylistic level of artworks, with theoretical support. This article explores facets of the dialogue of secular painting in the Ionian with Italian art in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focussing on works and artists that highlight significant aspects of this multilayered phenomenon and also through secondary channels that expand the horizon of analysis. Procession paintings, with their various connotations, and portraiture, which flourished in secular Ionian art, offer the most interesting material as regards the selection, reception and management of Italian models and points of reference.

Secularization versus religious revival in Eastern Europe: Church institutional resilience, state repression and divergent paths.

Science.gov (United States)

Northmore-Ball, Ksenia; Evans, Geoffrey

2016-05-01

Despite continuing for over two decades, the debate about the nature of the trends in religiosity in post-Communist Eastern Europe remains unresolved: some arguing that these countries are undergoing the same process of secularization as the West, while others insist that the entire region is experiencing a religious revival. Using national sample surveys from the early 1990s to 2007 to examine the change in demographic predictors of religiosity, we show that Catholic and Orthodox countries are experiencing different trends, the first group displaying evidence of secularization and the second of revival, and that these two different trends are likely to derive from the legacies of state repression and the differing abilities of the churches to resist such repression. We argue that the current literature has thus taken a mistakenly general approach, and that the post-Communist region consists of at least two distinct groups of societies with different trends in religiosity. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Secularism e post-modernità: qualche eco da oltreoceano

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Alessandro Ferrari

2018-01-01

ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on the works of six North American authors stemming from the conviction that the end of the ‘modern world’ is nigh and we are locked into the irreversible entropy of a secularism understood as a wall of separation between politics and religion. These convictions, together with a strong criticism towards legal positivism, imply the idea of the porousness of the borders between the sacred and profane, and a resulting reciprocal adjustment, an osmosis between the political and the religious spheres. In this paper, I would like to concentrate on the new approaches proposed by these authors and on the historical end epistemological connotations of the posited osmosis between the political and religious spheres.

The sociology of late secularization: social divisions and religiosity.

Science.gov (United States)

Bruce, Steve

2016-12-01

At the start of the twentieth century the religious differed from the religiously indifferent largely in being religious. Now they differ in a number of other social and demographic characteristics that reduce interaction between the two populations further than simple numbers would require. That some of the main carriers of religion are immigrants or adherents of recently imported faiths reinforces the sense that religion is what other people do. In the context of the stock of religious knowledge being depleted and religion-taken-too-seriously being unpopular, the narrow demographic base of the religious makes conversion unlikely and thus makes the reversal of secularization unlikely. © London School of Economics and Political Science 2016.

Familial resemblance in religiousness in a secular society: a twin study.

Science.gov (United States)

Hvidtjørn, Dorte; Petersen, Inge; Hjelmborg, Jacob; Skytthe, Axel; Christensen, Kaare; Hvidt, Niels C

2013-04-01

It is well known that human behavior and individual psychological traits are moderately to substantially heritable. Over the past decade, an increasing number of studies have explored the genetic and environmental influence on religiousness. These studies originate predominantly from countries generally considered more religious than the very secular northern European countries. Comparisons of the results are complicated by diverse definitions of religiousness, but several studies indicate that the influence of the family environment is most predominant in early life, whereas genetic influences increase with age. We performed a population-based twin study of religiousness in a secular society using data from a Web-based survey sent to 6,707 Danish twins born 1970-1989, who were identified in the Danish Twin Registry. We applied Fishman's three conceptual dimensions of religiousness: cognition, practice, and importance. In all polygenic models and biometric analyses, we controlled for gender and age. The study sample comprised 2,237 same sex twins, a response rate of 45%. We found high correlations within both monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs in most items of religiousness, indicating a large influence from shared environmental factors. Personal religiousness such as praying to God, believing in God, and finding strength and comfort in religion were more influenced by genetic factors than were social forms of religiousness such as church attendance. We found a small tendency for increasing genetic influence with increasing age for some religious items, but not for all.

The Post-Secular Transformation of the Relation between Religion and Rationality

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Carlos Miguel Gómez Rincón

2015-04-01

Full Text Available The article examines the idea of a direct link between modernization and the loss of plausibility of religious belief, explores the contemporary image of the relation between religion and rationality, and shows why it is not possible to say that the advance of science leads to secularization. In view of the question regarding whether postsecularization entails the mutual exclusion of religion and rationality, it examines the proposals of J. Habermas and N. Wolterstorff, in a search for normative criteria for the dialogue between religious and non-religious rationalities.

Explanation of observable secular variations of gravity and alternative methods of determination of drift of the center of mass of the Earth

Science.gov (United States)

Barkin, Yury

2010-05-01

?-r⊙. Leaning on results of works [2], [3], we shall accept the following values of parameters of drift of the center of mass: ṙC=5.54 mm/yr, φP=70°0 N, λP=104°3 E. On the other hand a displacement of the center of mass of the Earth leads to effect of slow change of heights of gravimetric station: ḣ = -?dotC cos? = -5.54 × cos? mm/yr. Errors in determination of the specified characteristics in the given work we shall neglect. Besides the gravitational attraction of a displaced core leads also to effect of increase of horizontal component of gravitational force of an attraction of the Earth on its surface directed to the North along the corresponding meridian with pole P. For any point of a surface of the Earth this component of force is determined by the formula ?φ = ṙCg sin?-r⊙ and has positive values. And the maximal values ?φ are reached on equator, which plane is orthogonal to axes of drift of the core OP. Thus, final working formulas for studying of secular variations of components of force of a gravitational attraction of the Earth and for a variation of the heights caused by a drift of the center of mass of the Earth become: ?r = 1.74cos?-r⊙ ?Gal/yr, ?φ = 0.87sin?-r⊙ ?Gal/yr, ḣ = -5.54cos?-r⊙ mm/yr. Calculated values of mentioned gravimetric characteristics (2) for the wide list of gravimetry stations are resulted in work [5] and used in the given work. 3 Explanation of observable secular variations of a gravity and heights on gravimetric stations. We have been analysed observed variations of a gravity and heights available and accessible to us, namely their secular changes, for 8 known gravimetry stations. The periods of observations at mentioned stations make the order of 5-10 years, i.e. are not greater, but nevertheless the obtained results unequivocally testify in favour of that the basic contribution to secular variations of a gravity gives the drifting core of the Earth (by means of direct gravitational influence and due to a

Religious law versus secular law
The example of the get refusal in Dutch, English and Israeli law

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Matthijs de Blois

2010-06-01

Full Text Available The tension between religious law and secular law in modern democracies is illustrated in this article by a discussion of the different approaches to the get (a bill of divorce refusal (based on Jewish law under Dutch, English and Israeli law. These legal orders share many characteristics, but also display important differences as to the role of religion and religious law in the public realm. The Dutch system is the most secular of the three; it does not recognize a role for religious law within the secular system as such. The English legislation provides for means that to a certain extent facilitate the effectuation of a religious divorce. In Israel, finally, the law of marriage and divorce is as such governed by the religious law of the parties concerned; for the majority of the population that is Jewish law. An evaluation of the different approaches in the framework of human rights law reveals the complexities of the collision of the underlying values in terms of equality, religious freedom and minority rights, also having regard to the diversity of opinions within religious communities.

Secular gains in fluid intelligence: evidence from the Culture-Fair intelligence test.

Science.gov (United States)

Colom, Roberto; García-López, Oscar

2003-01-01

There is no doubt about the reality of the secular increase in cognitive test scores. However, there is disagreement about a key issue: does the observed increase reflect a genuine upward trend in intelligence? Evidence from the Raven test is clear, although there are some doubts about its adequacy as a fine-grained measure of fluid intelligence. Evidence from the so-called 'method of correlated vectors' is much less clear. When a crystallized battery is considered, the results leave little doubt: the increase does not reflect gains in general intelligence. However, when a fluid battery is analysed, the increase does reflect gains in general intelligence. The present study uses one of the best available measures of fluid intelligence (the Culture-Fair intelligence test) to provide new evidence for the secular increase in fluid intelligence, beyond the findings from the Raven test and the method of correlated vectors. A total of 4498 Spanish high school students and high school graduates were tested within a time interval of 20 and 23 years, respectively. The results show that there is a clear upward trend in intelligence. Moreover, students show an average increase equivalent to 6 IQ points, while graduates show an average increase of 4 IQ points. Therefore, more selected people (graduates) show a smaller increase than less selected people (students). Some implications are discussed.

Religiousness and religious coping in a secular society

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hvidtjørn, Dorte; Hjelmborg, Jacob; Skytthe, Axel

2014-01-01

Women are found to be more religious than men and more likely to use religious coping. Only few studies have explored religious gender differences in more secular societies. This population-based study comprised 3,000 Danish men and women (response rate 45 %) between 20 and 40 years of age....... Information about demographics, religiousness and religious coping was obtained through a web-based questionnaire. We organized religiousness in the three dimensions: Cognition, Practice and Importance, and we assessed religious coping using the brief RCOPE questionnaire. We found substantial gender...... differences in both religiousness and religious coping. Nearly, 60 % of the women believed in some sort of spirit or in God compared to 40 % of the men. Generally, both men and women scored low on the RCOPE scale. However, for respondents reporting high levels of religiousness, the proportion of men who...

Christian Resistance to Gay-Proselytism in a Secular Nigeria: Anathema or Social Heroism?

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Endong Floribert

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The criminalization of homosexuality in Nigeria has partially been inspired and acclaimed by a number of religious schools of thought, including Christian opinion leaders. Such an influence of religion on politics has been seriously questioned. Using observations and literary sources, this paper underlines the unconstitutionality of Christian antigay proselytism at the political sphere of the Nigerian State, anchoring its claim on the constitutional provision stipulating the secular character of Nigeria. It however interprets such a move (the “influential” Christian anti-gay proselytism as an inevitable expression of the religious character of Nigeria’s social and cultural spheres. Furthermore, the paper argues that the Nigerian Federation is “fully secular” only on paper and not in practice. Secularity is partially observed at the political sphere of the State. Religion and populism continue to shape major socio-political schemes (as seen in the criminalization of homosexuality in Nigeria. With such a socio-political influence of religion, legislative projects such as the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition Act and political strategies such as the Nigerian Government’s resistance against western gay-proselytism can only be massively celebrated. In line with this, (Christian anti-gay proselytism at the Nigeria’s political sphere is logically viewed less as an anathema, and more as socio-political heroism.

The contribution of radioisotopes in secular equilibrium in the transport index of fissile uranium compounds in different enrichments

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Silva, Teresinha de Moraes da; Sordi, Gian M.A.A.

2008-01-01

Full text: This work shows the contribution of radioisotopes in secular equilibrium in the transport index (TI) of some fissile uranium compounds: uranium oxides UO 2 , U 3 O 8 and uranium silicide U 3 Si 2 , taking into account the different enrichment grades.The range of enrichment (E%) studied was 3,4,5,7,10,20,30,40,50,93 and 100. Initially, the cell of optimum moderation ratio was built, since it represents the most reactive of the system (consisting of uranium), with maximum infinitive multiplication factor k∞, in certain concentration of uranium for each enrichment. This was made using the computer program Gamtec II. The critical radius of a sphere was calculated for a cell of optimum moderation ratio, in order to calculate the critical mass of the uranium compound or of the uranium element for each specific enrichment. For this the program Citation was used. In this study it was calculated the smallest critical mass of the uranium compound or the smallest critical mass of the uranium element. The objective was to match the largest mass of the uranium with each specific enrichment. The largest safety mass corresponds to 45% the critical mass the compound uranium or uranium element. Then, we calculated the uranium element safety mass, which it related to a fifth of this mass to the value 50, which corresponds to criticality safety index (CSI). That is, 20% of the safety mass is the value where the transport is carried out with subcritical mass, going in favor of the security. From the uranium element safety mass (USM) was determined for each enrichment , and it was calculated the mass of 235 U, activity 235 U and dose rate of 235 U, the same items were calculated for the isotope 238 U. The total dose rate was calculated for two isotopes, and applying the transport index definition as the gamma dose rate for the distance of 1 m from the packed, it was determined the TI for 20% of the safety mass for each enrichment of the compound studied. The study of

Secular instabilities of Keplerian stellar discs

Science.gov (United States)

Kaur, Karamveer; Kazandjian, Mher V.; Sridhar, S.; Touma, Jihad R.

2018-05-01

We present idealized models of a razor-thin, axisymmetric, Keplerian stellar disc around a massive black hole, and study non-axisymmetric secular instabilities in the absence of either counter-rotation or loss cones. These discs are prograde mono-energetic waterbags, whose phase-space distribution functions are constant for orbits within a range of eccentricities (e) and zero outside this range. The linear normal modes of waterbags are composed of sinusoidal disturbances of the edges of distribution function in phase space. Waterbags that include circular orbits (polarcaps) have one stable linear normal mode for each azimuthal wavenumber m. The m = 1 mode always has positive pattern speed and, for polarcaps consisting of orbits with e normal modes for each m, which can be stable or unstable. We derive analytical expressions for the instability condition, pattern speeds, growth rates, and normal mode structure. Narrow bands are unstable to modes with a wide range in m. Numerical simulations confirm linear theory and follow the non-linear evolution of instabilities. Long-time integration suggests that instabilities of different m grow, interact non-linearly, and relax collisionlessly to a coarse-grained equilibrium with a wide range of eccentricities.

Secular Trends in Habitual Physical Activities of Mozambican Children and Adolescents from Maputo City

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Fernanda Karina dos Santos

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Social and economic changes occurring in the last two decades in Mozambique may have induced lifestyle changes among youth. This study aimed to document secular changes in habitual physical activities of Mozambican youth between 1992, 1999 and 2012. A total of 3393 youth (eight–15 years, were measured in three different time periods (1992, 1999, 2012. Habitual physical activity (PA was estimated with a questionnaire, including items related to household chores, sport participation, traditional games and walking activities. Biological maturation was assessed. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA was used to compare mean differences in PA across the years. Significant decreases between 1992–1999 and 1992–2012 were observed for boys in household chores, games and walking, and a significant decline between 1999 and 2012 was found in sport participation. Among girls, a significant and consistent decline (1992 > 1999 > 2012 was observed for household chores, a decline between 1992–1999 and 1992–2012 for games and walking, and a significant increase between 1992 and 1999 in sport participation. In general, a negative secular trend was found in habitual PA among Mozambican youth. Interventions aimed at increasing PA represent important educational and public health opportunities.

Geomagnetic secular variation from recent lake sediments, ancient fireplaces and historical measurements in southeastern Australia

Science.gov (United States)

Barton, C. E.; Barbetti, Mike

1982-07-01

Compilations of historical observations, archaeomagnetic data from ancient fireplaces and palaemagetic results from short cores of sediment from lakes in southeastern Australia, particularly Lake Keilambete, provide a detailed record of the geomagnetic secular variation during the last 3000 years. The independent sets of data are in good agreement if the radiocarbon time scale for the lacustrine record is about 450 years too old. The error is attributed to systematic incorporation of ancient carbon into the lake floor sediments, mainly through erosion of sediment on the crater walls at times of low water level. A significant lag between deposition and the acquisition of stable magnetic remanence is ruled out. Inclination has been abnormally steep during the last 500 years but remained fairly close to the axial dipole field value prior to that. During the last 1000 years the predominant sense of looping of the magnetic vector corresponds to westward drift of the nondipole field. Secular variations on a time scale of ˜ 100 years can be resolved by the lacustrine record.

Longitudinal and secular trends in adolescent whole-grain consumption, 1999-2004.

Science.gov (United States)

Burgess-Champoux, Teri L; Larson, Nicole I; Neumark-Sztainer, Dianne R; Hannan, Peter J; Story, Mary T

2010-01-01

The replacement of refined grains in the diet with whole grains may help prevent chronic disease and excess weight gain, but intakes in adolescents are often lower than recommended. This study aimed to examine demographic disparities and 5-y longitudinal and secular trends (1999-2004) in whole-grain intake among 2 cohorts of Minnesota adolescents. Whole-grain intake was examined among 996 adolescent males and 1222 adolescent females who were Project EAT (Eating Among Teens) participants in 1999 and 2004. Multinomial logistic regression models were used to examine demographic differences in whole-grain intake. Mixed linear regression models were used to estimate 1) longitudinal trends among 2 cohorts of adolescents during developmental transitions and 2) age-matched secular trends between the cohorts at middle adolescence. In 1999, 11% of adolescent males and 13% of adolescent females reported that they consumed more than one daily serving of whole grains. Whole-grain intake was lowest among youth of the Native American and white races and among youth of high socioeconomic status. During the transition from middle to late adolescence, whole-grain intake increased by a mean of 0.14 daily servings among adolescent males and 0.09 daily servings among adolescent females. No significant changes in whole-grain intake were shown among either sex during the transition from early to middle adolescence. Yeast breads, popcorn, and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals were major sources of whole grains in 1999 and 2004. Findings suggest the need to advance efforts that target improvements in the amount of whole-grain foods selected by adolescents.

A model of the geomagnetic field and its secular variation for epoch 2000 estimated from Orsted data

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olsen, Nils

2002-01-01

as measured simultaneously by globally distributed geomagnetic observatories. In addition, the observatory data are used to constrain secular variation. The model is estimated using an iteratively reweighted least-squares method with Huber weights to account for the non-Gaussian data error distribution...

The Role of Interreligious and Interfaith Dialogue in the Post-Secular World

OpenAIRE

Biljana Popovska; Zhanet Ristoska; Pablo Payet

2017-01-01

Today, western liberal democratic societies are secular, or in other words, religion is set apart from the state. However, the beginning of the 21st century has seen a re-politicizing of the religion. This paper argues that religion plays an important role in current global politics and events. Moreover, it has been used as tool to recruit masses for a wrong cause. Hence, Interreligious and interfaith dialog can play a role of catalysts and a future trend in cultural diplomacy. The paper prov...

PSEUDOBULGE FORMATION AS A DYNAMICAL RATHER THAN A SECULAR PROCESS

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Guedes, Javiera; Mayer, Lucio; Carollo, Marcella [Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zuerich, Wolgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zurich (Switzerland); Madau, Piero [Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 (United States)

2013-07-20

We investigate the formation and evolution of the pseudobulge in 'Eris', a high-resolution N-body + smoothed particle hydrodynamic cosmological simulation that successfully reproduces a Milky-Way-like massive late-type spiral in an cold dark matter universe. At the present epoch, Eris has a virial mass M{sub vir} {approx_equal} 8 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 11} M{sub Sun }, a photometric stellar mass M{sub *} = 3.2 Multiplication-Sign 10{sup 10} M{sub Sun }, a bulge-to-total ratio B/T = 0.26, and a weak nuclear bar. We find that the bulk of the pseudobulge forms quickly at high redshift via a combination of non-axisymmetric disk instabilities and tidal interactions or mergers, both occurring on dynamical timescales, not through slow secular processes at lower redshift. Its subsequent evolution is not strictly secular either, and is closely intertwined with the evolution of the stellar bar. In fact, the structure that we recognize as a pseudobulge today evolved from a stellar bar that formed at high redshift due to tidal interactions with satellites, was destroyed by minor mergers at z {approx} 3, re-formed shortly after, and weakened again following a steady gas inflow at z {approx}< 1. The gradual dissolution of the bar ensued at z {approx} 1 and continues until the present without increasing the stellar velocity dispersion in the inner regions. In this scenario, the pseudobulge is not a separate component from the inner disk in terms of formation path; rather, it is the first step in the inside-out formation of the baryonic disk, in agreement with the fact that pseudobulges of massive spiral galaxies typically have a dominant old stellar population. If our simulations do indeed reproduce the formation mechanisms of massive spirals, then the progenitors of late-type galaxies should have strong bars and small photometric pseudobulges at high redshift.

Constitutional legitimacy: Sharia Law, Secularism and the Social Compact

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Zia Akhtar

2011-05-01

Full Text Available This article considers the general points relating to the application of Sharia law which challenges legislators in the political instability of a number of Middle Eastern countries. The question explored is how governments of these countries who are facing discontent can work towards constitutional governance. As an example comparison is made between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and Indonesia with the largest Muslim populations. In Pakistan an inherited Westminster Parliamentary system with a common law codified dated at the time of the British rule is supplemented by criminal penalties as present in the Hudood ordinances. These codes enforce punishments for some crimes and these were promulgated in the early 1980s during the reign of the Pakistani conservative military government. These different layers of jurisprudence do not accord with a uniform legal precedence and creates a clash between liberals and the fundamentalists who want an all pervasive Sharia law. The Pakistani legal canon of Islamic law has been restricted by the secular ideology of the state which has parallels in other Asian countries with a Muslim majority. However, there is an issue of compatibility of a secular ideology and the application of Sharia. It needs an exposition of thought that takes account of the enlightenment in Europe which led to the social contract theory in the 18th century. This theory rejects the narrow interpretation of divine authority and presents the jurist with a challenge to make modernize the laws. In recent times Muslim academics have adopted a critical approach against the tenets of conservatism in temporal Islam and called them unrepresentative of the true spirit of the Sharia. The present turmoil in the Arab countries has raised the question of legitimacy and the need arises to evaluate the principles of the Compact of Medina, which was proclaimed by the first Islamic state, and secondly, to enquire if the adoption of Sharia can be made

Tendência secular da altura na idade adulta de crianças nascidas na cidade de São Paulo entre 1950 e 1976 Secular trends in the adult height of children born in S. Paulo city, Brazil, from 1950 to 1976

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Ivan França Júnior

2000-12-01

Full Text Available OBJETIVO: Estimar a tendência/mudança secular das estaturas de jovens do sexo masculino, aos 18 anos de idade, nascidos na cidade de São Paulo, SP, entre 1950 e 1976. MÉTODOS: Foi coletada amostra aleatória e representativa de 6.942 indivíduos avaliados no alistamento militar. A análise estatística compreendeu a avaliação da normalidade da distribuição estatural (teste de Shapiro-Wilk e a análise da tendência pelas técnicas de regressão linear. RESULTADOS/CONCLUSÕES: A distribuição das estaturas foi considerada normal para todas as coortes. O aumento total das estaturas foi de 3,42 centímetros ao longo dos 27 anos do estudo (1,26 cm/década. A tendência no período não foi linear, havendo aumento significativo na década de 50 (0,84 cm/década, aumento não significativo na década de 60 (0,5 cm/década e aumento expressivo no período 1970-76 (2,9 cm/década. O ritmo de mudança secular observado é comparável ao de outros países e estados do Brasil. As coortes mais recentes (1975 e 1976 atingiram a maior estatura (~175 cm; contudo, este valor ainda indica déficits de 1,8 cm e 6,2 cm quando comparado às estaturas de jovens americanos nascidos em 1961 (NCHS e holandeses em 1972. Mantidas as aceleradas taxas de mudança secular da década de 70, os jovens paulistas poderão recuperar estes déficits entre uma a três décadas. Isto indica a necessidade de contínua monitoração da tendência secular das alturas na cidade de São Paulo.OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to estimate the secular trend/change in the height of young males born in the city of S. Paulo between 1950 and 1976 and measured in the year they turn 18 years. METHODS: A random and representative sample (6,942 individuals was evaluated in military draft. Statistical analyses included Shapiro-Wilk test for normality of height distribution in each birth cohort, and linear regression analysis for trend on heights. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: Stature has

On the univocity of rationality: a response to Nigel Biggar's 'Why religion deserves a place in secular medicine'.

Science.gov (United States)

Symons, Xavier

2015-11-01

Nigel Biggar (2015) argues that religion deserves a place in secular medicine. Biggar suggests we abandon the standard rationalistic conception of the secular realm and see it rather as "a forum for the negotiation of rival reasonings". Religious reasoning is one among a number of ways of thinking that must vie for acceptance. Medical ethics, says Biggar, is characterised by "spiritual and moral mixture and ambiguity". We acknowledge this uncertainty by recognising rival viewpoints and agreeing to provisional compromises.In this response, I object to Biggar's characterisation of medical ethics as "morally ambiguous" and "provisional". I argue that Biggar has failed to provide adequate support for his conception of ethics as a "forum for negotiation and compromise". I criticise Biggar's attempt to 'pluralise' rationality, and assert that if religion is to play a role in secular medicine, it must be ready to defend itself against a universal standard of reason. In the second section of my response, I argue that 'theistic natural law' gives us the resources to defend using reason alone ostensibly faith-based positions in healthcare ethics. In doing so, we retain a univocal conception of rationality, while at the same time leaving space for 'theism' in healthcare ethics. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/

Secular Variation and Physical Characteristics Determination of the HADS Star EH Lib

Science.gov (United States)

Pena, J. H.; Villarreal, C.; Pina, D. S.; Renteria, A.; Soni, A., Guillen, J. Calderon, J.

2017-12-01

Physical parameters of EH Lib have been determined based on observations carried out in 2015 with photometry. They have also served, along with samples from the years 1969 and 1986, to analyse the frequency content of EH Lib with Fourier Transforms. Recent CCD observations increased the times of maximum with twelve new times which helped us study the secular variation of the period with a method based on the minimization of the standard deviation of the O-C residuals. It is concluded that there may be a long-term period change.

Secular evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters in decaying dark matter cosmology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ferrer, Francesc; Nipoti, Carlo; Ettori, Stefano

2009-01-01

If the dark matter sector in the Universe is composed by metastable particles, galaxies and galaxy clusters are expected to undergo significant secular evolution from high to low redshift. We show that the decay of dark matter, with a lifetime compatible with cosmological constraints, can be at the origin of the observed evolution of the Tully-Fisher relation of disk galaxies and alleviate the problem of the size evolution of elliptical galaxies, while being consistent with the current observational constraints on the gas fraction of clusters of galaxies.

On the problem of secular variability in the stellar initial mass function

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Meusinger, H.

1987-01-01

The hypothesis of secular variations in the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is studied. It is found that neither the present-day mass function of the nearby main sequence field stars nor the velocity distribution of these stars are contradictory with this hypothesis. The luminosity functions of unbiased kinematically defined age-groups of the nearby stars also provide no strong constraints. Simple evoluion models with time-dependent IMF and star formation rate enable to fit the data of blue irregular galaxies. Some problems with an universal IMF are pointed out. (author)

Tendência secular de crescimento em escolares de Paulínia, São Paulo-Brasil (1979/80 - 1993/94 Secular trends of growth of schoolchildren from Paulínia, São Paulo - Brazil (1979/80 - 1993/94

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Denise Barbieri Marmo

2004-12-01

Full Text Available OBJETIVO: Avaliar a tendência secular de altura, peso e da relação peso/altura em escolares de Paulínia, São Paulo, Brasil, entre 1979/80 e 1993/94. MÉTODOS: Medidas antropométricas de peso (P e altura (A e da relação P/A de 1.903 crianças de 6,5 a 12,5 anos (51,5% M e 48,5% F de escolas públicas de Paulínia foram comparadas com dados de estudo anterior realizado na mesma cidade, com intervalo de 15 anos. Calculou-se o incremento por década e alisou-se os dados pela técnica de médias e medianas móveis (3H3H3. RESULTADOS: As médias de altura e peso foram sempre superiores às do estudo anterior, com incrementos positivos. Os incrementos para a altura variaram de 1,13 a 5 cm no sexo masculino e 1,2 a 4,33 cm nas meninas, já para o peso a variação foi de 0,53 a 4,13 kg nos meninos e 0,87 a 3,0 kg nas meninas. Para a relação P/A, as médias dos dois estudos foram muito semelhantes em ambos os sexos. CONCLUSÕES: A tendência secular positiva da estatura e do peso neste período deve-se principalmente ao desenvolvimento econômico, de saneamento básico, de habitação, de educação e na área de saúde ocorrido na cidade de Paulínia. A tendência secular positiva encontrada foi semelhante à observada em países desenvolvidos após a II Guerra Mundial e de outros trabalhos brasileiros.BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the secular trends in height, weight and weight/height of schoolchildren from the city of Paulínia, São Paulo, Brazil between 1979/80 and 1993/94. METHODS: Anthropometric measurements (height, weight and weight/height of 1,903 children (6.5-12.5y; 51.5% M: 48.5% F, from Paulínia public schools were compared with data from a previous study carried out in the same city 15 years earlier. Decade increments were calculated and data was smoothed by the technique of means and medians (3H3H3. RESULTS: Height and weight mean values were always greater than those of the previous study, with positive

Mapping structural influences on sex and HIV education in church and secular schools in Zimbabwe.

Science.gov (United States)

Mpofu, Elias; Mutepfa, Magen Mhaka; Hallfors, Denise Dion

2012-09-01

The authors used state-of-the-art concept mapping approaches to examine structural institutional effects of church and secular high schools on the types of sexual and HIV-prevention education messages transmitted to learners in Zimbabwe. Participants were school teachers (n = 26), school counselors (n = 28), and pastors involved in student pastoral care (n = 14; males = 27, females = 41). They reported on messages perceived to influence sexual decisions of learners in their school setting. The self-report data were clustered into message types using concept mapping and contrasted for consistency of content and structure both between and within type of school. The authors also engaged in curriculum document study with member checks in the participant schools to determine convergence of the evidence on school-type effects of the messages transmitted to students. Church schools prioritized faith-informed sexual and HIV-prevention messages, whereas both types of schools prioritized Life skills education and a future focus. Secular schools prioritized sex and HIV messages in the context of community norms. Facts about HIV and AIDS were relatively underemphasized by church schools. The implicit knowledge values that differentiate types of schools influence learner access to information important for their sexual decisions.

Religious law versus secular law The example of the get refusal in Dutch, English and Israeli law

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Blois, M. de

2010-01-01

The tension between religious law and secular law in modern democracies is illustrated in this article by a discussion of the different approaches to the get (a bill of divorce) refusal (based on Jewish law) under Dutch, English and Israeli law. These legal orders share many characteristics, but

Die Versprachlichung des Sakralen: The Transformation of the Authority of the Sacred into Secular Political Deliberation in Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action

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Øjvind Larsen

2011-03-01

Full Text Available bermas claims in connection with his development of the theory of communicative action that the sacred is transformed in a positive way and can take the form of free deliberation in society, the so called Versprachlichung des Sakralen. The thesis is that the authority which could be found in religion and which is of fundamental significance for the integration of pre-modern societies is taken over by modern societies in forms of deliberation. Habermas develops his thesis in a discussion of Durkheim’s religious-sociological considerations. Habermas presents his thesis about the linguistic transformation of the sacred as a harmonious theory of secularization. However, if we follow Weber in his religious-sociological considerations of modernity, we reach a tragic theory of secularization which poses the real problem that modernity’s connection to the sacred has been dissolved. Cornelius Castoriadis’ theory of the imaginary institution and Claude Lefort’s theory of the empty place of the political as a new insecure moral ground for modern society are presented together as an alternative theory of secularization which can serve as a new framework for Habermas’ theory of communicative ethics and deliberative politics in modern society.

Long term stability of yttria-stabilized zirconia waste forms. Stability for secular change of partitioned TRU waste composition by disintegration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kuramoto, Ken-ichi; Banba, Tsunetaka; Mitamura, Hisayoshi; Sakai, Etsuro; Uno, Masayoshi; Kinoshita, H.; Yamanaka, Shinsuke

1999-01-01

In this study, the stability of YSZ waste forms for secular change of partitioned TRU waste composition by disintegration, one of important terms in long-term stability, is the special concern. Designed amount of waste and YSZ powder were mixed and sintered. These TRU waste forms were submitted to tests of phase stability, chemical durability, mechanical property and compactness. The results were compared with those of another YSZ waste forms, non-radioactive Ce and/or Nd doped YSZ samples, and glass and Synroc waste forms. Experimental results show following: (1) Phase stability of (Np+Am)-, (Np+U)-, and (Np+U+Bi)-doped YSZ waste forms could be maintained of that of the initial Np+Am-doped YSZ waste form permanently even when the composition of partitioned TRU waste were changed by disintegration. (2) Secular change also accelerated volume increase of YSZ waste forms as well as alpha-decay damage. (3) Hv, E and K IC of (Np+U)- and (Np+U+Bi)-doped YSZ waste forms were independent of the secular change of the partitioned TRU waste composition by disintegration. (4) Mechanical properties of YSZ waste forms were more than those of a glass and Synroc waste forms. (5) Compactness of YSZ waste forms was good as waste forms for the partitioned TRU wastes. (J.P.N.)

The Egyptian geomagnetic reference field to the Epoch, 2010.0

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H.A. Deebes

2017-06-01

The geomagnetic anomaly maps, the normal geomagnetic field maps with their corresponding secular variation maps, the normal geomagnetic field equations of the geomagnetic elements (EGRF and their corresponding secular variations equations, are outlined. The anomalous sites, as discovered from the anomaly maps are, only, mentioned. In addition, a correlation between the International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF 2010.0 and the Egyptian Geomagnetic Reference Field (EGRF 2010 is indicated.

Extending religion-health research to secular minorities: issues and concerns.

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Hwang, Karen; Hammer, Joseph H; Cragun, Ryan T

2011-09-01

Claims about religion's beneficial effects on physical and psychological health have received substantial attention in popular media, but empirical support for these claims is mixed. Many of these claims are tenuous because they fail to address basic methodological issues relating to construct validity, sampling methods or analytical problems. A more conceptual problem has to do with the near universal lack of atheist control samples. While many studies include samples of individuals classified as "low spirituality" or religious "nones", these groups are heterogeneous and contain only a fraction of members who would be considered truly secular. We illustrate the importance of including an atheist control group whenever possible in the religiosity/spirituality and health research and discuss areas for further investigation.

Religion and survival in a secular region. A twenty year follow-up of 734 Danish adults born in 1914.

Science.gov (United States)

la Cour, Peter; Avlund, Kirsten; Schultz-Larsen, Kirsten

2006-01-01

The aim of the study was to analyse associations of religiosity and mortality in a secular region. The sample consisted of 734 Danish, community dwelling elderly persons, living in a secular culture, and all aged 70 when primary data were collected. Secondary data consisted of a 20 year follow-up on vital status or exact age of death. The study was designed to be highly comparable to studies conducted in more religious environments in order to compare results. Three variables of religion were investigated in relation to survival: importance of affiliation, church attendance and listening to religious media. Relative hazards (RH) of dying were controlled in models including gender, education, medical and mental health, social relations, help given and received, and health behaviour. The results showed significant and positive associations between claiming religious affiliation important and survival (relative hazard of dying=RH .70; 95% CI .58-.85) and church attendance and survival (RH .73; 95% CI .64-.87). Results decreased and only stayed significant regarding church attendance when controlled for covariates. Nearly all significant effects were seen in women, but not in men. The effect size of the full sample is less than in more religious environments in United States samples. Although the positive overall RHs are comparable to those of other studies, the mediating variables and pathways of effects seem dissimilar in this sample from a secular environment. Receiving and especially giving help to others are suggested as variables of explanatory value.

The impact of a religious opera on a secular audience : The existential and religious importance of art

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zock, T.H.; Alma, H.

2005-01-01

What role does art play in the life of contemporary, secularized people who are looking for existential and spiritual meaning? This was the leading question in our empirical research on the opera ‘‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’’ by the French composer, Francis Poulenc. First, we will sketch the

Tendência secular do peso ao nascer na cidade de São Paulo (1976-1998 Secular trends in birth weight in S. Paulo city, Brazil (1976-1998

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Carlos Augusto Monteiro

2000-12-01

Full Text Available OBJETIVO: Resgatar a tendência secular da distribuição do peso ao nascer na cidade de São Paulo, SP, bem como examinar suas possíveis causas, com base em dados coletados por dois inquéritos domiciliares sobre condições de saúde na infância realizados em 1984/85 e em 1995/96, complementados por informações procedentes de levantamento de prontuários de maternidades e por informações do Sistema Estadual de Declarações de Nascidos Vivos. MÉTODOS: Os inquéritos domiciliares estudaram amostras probabilísticas da população infantil de São Paulo com idade inferior a cinco anos (n=1.016 em 1984/85; n=1.280 em 1995/96. O levantamento de prontuários estudou uma amostra probabilística dos partos ocorridos nas maternidades da cidade no ano de 1976 (n=5.734. As declarações de nascidos vivos referem-se às coortes de crianças nascidas na cidade entre 1993 e 1998 (cerca de 200 mil crianças por ano. O estudo da distribuição social do peso ao nascer levou em conta a renda familiar per capita e a escolaridade materna. A estratégia analítica para estudar os determinantes da tendência secular do peso ao nascer empregou modelos hierárquicos de causalidade, análises multivariadas de regressão e procedimentos análogos aos utilizados para calcular riscos atribuíveis populacionais. RESULTADOS/CONCLUSÕES: A distribuição do peso ao nascer na cidade de São Paulo (média de 3.160 g com 8,9% de pesos OBJECTIVE: Data from two household surveys on infant and child health status undertaken in the mid-80s and mid-90s, complemented with previous data collected from maternity hospitals records and more recent data provided by the state system on birth registries, allowed to characterize and analyse secular trends in birth weight in the city of S. Paulo, Brazil. METHODS: The household surveys included random samples of children under 5 years old (n=1,016 children in 1984-85 and n=1,280 children in 1995-96. A random sample of births that

Secular trends of salted fish consumption and nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a multi-jurisdiction ecological study in 8 regions from 3 continents

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Lau, Hiu-Ying; Leung, Chit-Ming; Chan, Yap-Hang; Lee, Anne Wing-Mui; Kwong, Dora Lai-Wan; Lung, Maria Li; Lam, Tai-Hing

2013-01-01

Despite salted fish being a classical risk factor of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC), whether secular trends in salted fish consumption worldwide accounted for changes in NPC rates were unknown. The relationship between vegetable and cigarette consumption to NPC risk worldwide were also largely uncertain. We investigated the longitudinal trends in standardised NPC incidence/mortality rates across 8 regions and their associations with secular trends in salted fish, vegetable and tobacco consumptions. Age standardised mortality rate (ASMR) and age standardised incidence rate (ASIR) of NPC were obtained from the WHO cancer mortality database and Hong Kong Cancer Registry. Per capita consumption of salted fish, tobacco and vegetables in Hong Kong and 7 countries (China, Finland, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States) were obtained from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) and Hong Kong Trade and Census Statistics. Pearson correlation and multivariate analysis were performed to examine both crude and adjusted associations. There were markedly decreasing trends of NPC ASIR and ASMR in Hong Kong over the past three decades, which were correlated with corresponding secular changes in salted fish consumption per capita (Pearson r for 10 cumulative years : ASIR = 0.729 (male), 0.674 (female); ASMR = 0.943 (male), 0.622 (female), all p < 0.05 except for female ASMR). However such associations no longer correlated with adjustments for decreasing tobacco and increasing vegetable consumption per capita (Pearson r for 10 cumulative years: ASIR = 2.007 (male), 0.339 (female), ASMR = 0.289 (male), 1.992 (female), all p > 0.05). However, there were no clear or consistent patterns in relations between NPC ASIR and ASMR with salted fish consumption across 7 regions in 3 continents. Our results do not support the notion that changes in salted fish consumption had played an important role in explaining secular trends of NPC rates in Hong

Secular trends of salted fish consumption and nasopharyngeal carcinoma: a multi-jurisdiction ecological study in 8 regions from 3 continents.

Science.gov (United States)

Lau, Hiu-Ying; Leung, Chit-Ming; Chan, Yap-Hang; Lee, Anne Wing-Mui; Kwong, Dora Lai-Wan; Lung, Maria Li; Lam, Tai-Hing

2013-06-19

Despite salted fish being a classical risk factor of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC), whether secular trends in salted fish consumption worldwide accounted for changes in NPC rates were unknown. The relationship between vegetable and cigarette consumption to NPC risk worldwide were also largely uncertain. We investigated the longitudinal trends in standardised NPC incidence/mortality rates across 8 regions and their associations with secular trends in salted fish, vegetable and tobacco consumptions. Age standardised mortality rate (ASMR) and age standardised incidence rate (ASIR) of NPC were obtained from the WHO cancer mortality database and Hong Kong Cancer Registry. Per capita consumption of salted fish, tobacco and vegetables in Hong Kong and 7 countries (China, Finland, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, United Kingdom and United States) were obtained from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) and Hong Kong Trade and Census Statistics. Pearson correlation and multivariate analysis were performed to examine both crude and adjusted associations. There were markedly decreasing trends of NPC ASIR and ASMR in Hong Kong over the past three decades, which were correlated with corresponding secular changes in salted fish consumption per capita (Pearson r for 10 cumulative years : ASIR = 0.729 (male), 0.674 (female); ASMR = 0.943 (male), 0.622 (female), all p ASMR). However such associations no longer correlated with adjustments for decreasing tobacco and increasing vegetable consumption per capita (Pearson r for 10 cumulative years: ASIR = 2.007 (male), 0.339 (female), ASMR = 0.289 (male), 1.992 (female), all p > 0.05). However, there were no clear or consistent patterns in relations between NPC ASIR and ASMR with salted fish consumption across 7 regions in 3 continents. Our results do not support the notion that changes in salted fish consumption had played an important role in explaining secular trends of NPC rates in Hong

Secular changes of LOD associated with a growth of the inner core

Science.gov (United States)

Denis, C.; Rybicki, K. R.; Varga, P.

2006-05-01

From recent estimates of the age of the inner core based on the theory of thermal evolution of the core, we estimate that nowadays the growth of the inner core may perhaps contribute to the observed overall secular increase of LOD caused mainly by tidal friction (i.e., 1.72 ms per century) by a relative decrease of 2 to 7 μs per century. Another, albeit much less plausible, hypothesis is that crystallization of the inner core does not produce any change of LOD, but makes the inner core rotate differentially with respect to the outer core and mantle.

The Secularization of Russian Orthodoxy in the Late Russian Empire, 1860–1910: the Indoctrination and De-Institutionalization (Problem Statement

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Andrey Yu. Mikhailov

2015-09-01

Full Text Available This article is based on the methodology of intellectual history examines the process of secularization of Orthodoxy in the late Russian Empire 1860 – 1910-ies. The focus of the formulation of a scientific problem: consideration of secularization as indoctrination Orthodoxy and de-institutionalization of the Synod Church. Under the first attempt to synthesize the doctrine Orthodoxy with modernist ideologies (socialism, nationalism, secularism (laicism, under the second – the erosion of the church as an institution by dividing into various inner-group. As a consequence of early modern rationalization to 1830–1840 there are three ways of indoctrination orthodoxy as synthesis with modern ideology. Firstly, synthesis with a modernist nationalism in its evolution from the "civilian" to the "political". The concept of late imperial political nationalism (N.P. Ignatiev, A.A. Kireev, tied to version of neoslavyanofily (new slavyanofily (N.P. Aksakov, D.A. Khomyakov and civilizational theory (L. Leontiev, N.I. Danilevsky tried synthesize Orthodoxy and nationalism in the spirit of religious interpretation of the nation and society. Secondly, with social theories of modern European socialism and positivism. (archimandrite Fedor (Bukharev, S.N. Bulgakov, archimandrite Michael (Semenov, and others.. Thirdly, with a modernist secularism (laicism and liberalism: P.V. Valuev, D.A. Tolstoy, K.P. Pobedonostsev. De-institutionalization of the Synodal Church took place in the following ways. In the period of early modernity (1700–1840, konfessionaliztion (die Konfessionalisierung, happened embedding religious institution in the state organism (nationalization on the practical and theoretical level. The evolution from the early modernity to late modernity (1830–1860 itself has raise the question of the "internal" secularization as activation of layman or parishioner. Theory A.S. Khomyakov (new criteria and the nature of the Church as a divine

Parental age and offspring mortality: Negative effects of reproductive ageing may be counterbalanced by secular increases in longevity.

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Barclay, Kieron; Myrskylä, Mikko

2018-07-01

As parental ages at birth continue to rise, concerns about the effects of fertility postponement on offspring are increasing. Due to reproductive ageing, advanced parental ages have been associated with negative health outcomes for offspring, including decreased longevity. The literature, however, has neglected to examine the potential benefits of being born at a later date. Secular declines in mortality mean that later birth cohorts are living longer. We analyse mortality over ages 30-74 among 1.9 million Swedish men and women born 1938-60, and use a sibling comparison design that accounts for all time-invariant factors shared by the siblings. When incorporating cohort improvements in mortality, we find that those born to older mothers do not suffer any significant mortality disadvantage, and that those born to older fathers have lower mortality. These findings are likely to be explained by secular declines in mortality counterbalancing the negative effects of reproductive ageing.

Geomagnetic Secular Variation and Its Applications to the Core

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jackson, Andrew; Finlay, Chris

2015-01-01

the mathematical models of the field’s evolution that can be derived from them. We discussthe prominent features of the field’s evolution, both at the Earth’s surface and at the surface of theliquid core. The final section concerns itself with a discussion of the interpretation of the field’sevolution, in terms......We review the observational constraints on the morphology and evolution of the magnetic field of the Earth over the last few centuries; these changes are referred to as the secular variation.Starting with a description of the available sources of original observations of the field, we thendiscuss...... of physical core processes. These divide themselves into processes associatedwith movement of core fluid, which is capable of advecting the field, and processes associated withthe finite resistivity of the core, commonly termed diffusive processes. We lay the foundations for some of the more theoretical...

Survey of secular change for the buildings of nuclear fuel facility in JNC Tokai Works

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Uryu, Mitsuru; Kyue, Tadashi; Satoko, Hiroyuki; Yamazaki, Toshihiko

2002-06-01

Some nuclear facilities of JNC such as Tokai Reprocessing Plant or Tokai Plutonium Fuel plant have been operating over 20 years since their completion. These facilities' buildings are constructed near the seaside, so we are that, we are surveying the secular change, estimating the tendency and counterplan to operate the facilities stably. In this paper, we report the abstract of the result of the survey, and the maintenance stage of the diagnostic techniques etc. (author)

Composition of 12-18th century window glass in Belgium: Non-figurative windows in secular buildings and stained-glass windows in religious buildings

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schalm, Olivier; Janssens, Koen; Wouters, Hilde; Caluwe, Danielle

2007-01-01

A set of ca. 500 window glass fragments originating from different historical sites in Belgium and covering the period 12 th -18 th century was analyzed by means of electron probe microanalysis. Most samples are archaeological finds deriving from non-figurative windows in secular buildings. However, the analyzed set also contains glass sampled from still existing non-figurative windows in secular buildings and stained-glass windows in religious buildings. A sudden compositional change at the end of the 14 th century can be noticed among the series of glass compositions that were obtained. These changes could be related to the use of different glassmaker recipes and to the introduction of new raw materials for glass making

Composition of 12-18 th century window glass in Belgium: Non-figurative windows in secular buildings and stained-glass windows in religious buildings

Science.gov (United States)

Schalm, Olivier; Janssens, Koen; Wouters, Hilde; Caluwé, Danielle

2007-07-01

A set of ca. 500 window glass fragments originating from different historical sites in Belgium and covering the period 12 th-18 th century was analyzed by means of electron probe microanalysis. Most samples are archaeological finds deriving from non-figurative windows in secular buildings. However, the analyzed set also contains glass sampled from still existing non-figurative windows in secular buildings and stained-glass windows in religious buildings. A sudden compositional change at the end of the 14 th century can be noticed among the series of glass compositions that were obtained. These changes could be related to the use of different glassmaker recipes and to the introduction of new raw materials for glass making.

Secular trends in dietary intake in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Briefel, Ronette R; Johnson, Clifford L

2004-01-01

This review focuses on dietary intake and dietary supplement use among the U.S. population age 1-74 based on four National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys conducted in 1971-74, 1976-80, 1988-94, and 1999-2000. Secular trends in intake of energy, macronutrients, cholesterol, sodium, calcium, iron, folate, zinc, vitamins A and C, fruits, vegetables, and grain products are summarized. During the 30-year period, mean energy intake increased among adults, and changed little among children age 1-19, except for an increase among adolescent females. Factors contributing to increases in energy intake include increases in the percentage of the population eating away from home (particularly at fast-food restaurants), larger portion sizes of foods and beverages, increased consumption of sweetened beverages, changes in snacking habits, and improved dietary methodology. Dietary supplement use increased among adult men and women, decreased among children age 1-5, and was stable for children age 6-11 and adolescents.

Proper Motion and Secular Variations of Keplerian Orbital Elements

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Alexey G. Butkevich

2018-05-01

Full Text Available High-precision observations require accurate modeling of secular changes in the orbital elements in order to extrapolate measurements over long time intervals, and to detect deviation from pure Keplerian motion caused, for example, by other bodies or relativistic effects. We consider the evolution of the Keplerian elements resulting from the gradual change of the apparent orbit orientation due to proper motion. We present rigorous formulae for the transformation of the orbit inclination, longitude of the ascending node and argument of the pericenter from one epoch to another, assuming uniform stellar motion and taking radial velocity into account. An approximate treatment, accurate to the second-order terms in time, is also given. The proper motion effects may be significant for long-period transiting planets. These theoretical results are applicable to the modeling of planetary transits and precise Doppler measurements as well as analysis of pulsar and eclipsing binary timing observations.

Use of GRACE determined secular gravity rates for glacial isostatic adjustment studies in North-America

Science.gov (United States)

van der Wal, Wouter; Wu, Patrick; Sideris, Michael G.; Shum, C. K.

2008-10-01

Monthly geopotential spherical harmonic coefficients from the GRACE satellite mission are used to determine their usefulness and limitations for studying glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) in North-America. Secular gravity rates are estimated by unweighted least-squares estimation using release 4 coefficients from August 2002 to August 2007 provided by the Center for Space Research (CSR), University of Texas. Smoothing is required to suppress short wavelength noise, in addition to filtering to diminish geographically correlated errors, as shown in previous studies. Optimal cut-off degrees and orders are determined for the destriping filter to maximize the signal to noise ratio. The halfwidth of the Gaussian filter is shown to significantly affect the sensitivity of the GRACE data (with respect to upper mantle viscosity and ice loading history). Therefore, the halfwidth should be selected based on the desired sensitivity. It is shown that increase in water storage in an area south west of Hudson Bay, from the summer of 2003 to the summer of 2006, contributes up to half of the maximum estimated gravity rate. Hydrology models differ in the predictions of the secular change in water storage, therefore even 4-year trend estimates are influenced by the uncertainty in water storage changes. Land ice melting in Greenland and Alaska has a non-negligible contribution, up to one-fourth of the maximum gravity rate. The estimated secular gravity rate shows two distinct peaks that can possibly be due to two domes in the former Pleistocene ice cover: west and south east of Hudson Bay. With a limited number of models, a better fit is obtained with models that use the ICE-3G model compared to the ICE-5G model. However, the uncertainty in interannual variations in hydrology models is too large to constrain the ice loading history with the current data span. For future work in which GRACE will be used to constrain ice loading history and the Earth's radial viscosity profile, it is

Effects of socioeconomic factors on secular trends in suicide in Japan, 1953-86.

Science.gov (United States)

Motohashi, Y

1991-04-01

The effects of socioeconomic factors on secular trends in suicide rates in Japan for the periods 1953-72 and 1973-86 were investigated using twelve socioeconomic indicators. Multiple regression analysis showed that the socioeconomic indicators affecting suicide rates were not identical in the two periods. The rates in both sexes in 1953-72 were closely related to unemployment rate and the labour force but between 1973 and 1986, divorce rate and the proportion in tertiary industry were most influential. The changes reflect the socioeconomic changes in industrial structure in Japan in transition from an industrial to a service economy.

SECULAR EVOLUTION OF BINARIES NEAR MASSIVE BLACK HOLES: FORMATION OF COMPACT BINARIES, MERGER/COLLISION PRODUCTS AND G2-LIKE OBJECTS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Prodan, Snezana; Antonini, Fabio; Perets, Hagai B.

2015-01-01

Here we discuss the evolution of binaries around massive black holes (MBHs) in nuclear stellar clusters. We focus on their secular evolution due to the perturbation by the MBHs, while simplistically accounting for their collisional evolution. Binaries with highly inclined orbits with respect to their orbits around MBHs are strongly affected by secular processes, which periodically change their eccentricities and inclinations (e.g., Kozai-Lidov cycles). During periapsis approach, dissipative processes such as tidal friction may become highly efficient, and may lead to shrinkage of a binary orbit and even to its merger. Binaries in this environment can therefore significantly change their orbital evolution due to the MBH third-body perturbative effects. Such orbital evolution may impinge on their later stellar evolution. Here we follow the secular dynamics of such binaries and its coupling to tidal evolution, as well as the stellar evolution of such binaries on longer timescales. We find that stellar binaries in the central parts of nuclear stellar clusters (NSCs) are highly likely to evolve into eccentric and/or short-period binaries, and become strongly interacting binaries either on the main sequence (at which point they may even merge), or through their later binary stellar evolution. The central parts of NSCs therefore catalyze the formation and evolution of strongly interacting binaries, and lead to the enhanced formation of blue stragglers, X-ray binaries, gravitational wave sources, and possible supernova progenitors. Induced mergers/collisions may also lead to the formation of G2-like cloud-like objects such as the one recently observed in the Galactic center

The field of the sociology of religion: secularization versus the “God’s revenge”

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Fabiana Luci de Oliveira

2005-01-01

Full Text Available The manuscript discusses the field of the Sociology of Religion, focusing on the debate “secularization versus non-secularization”; decline/ mercantilization/ privatization of religion versus the “God’s revenge” (phenomenon of explosion of new religious movements. The discussion gives attention to authors like Weber, Durkheim, Tocqueville, Pierucci, Campbell, Woodhead e Heelas. The argument presented here is that religion had reappeared as a new kind of moral, meaning not a traditional moral, but new values, a new ethics that critically opposes to reason and science.

The visible spectrum of Pluto: secular and longitudinal variation

Science.gov (United States)

Lorenzi, Vania; Pinilla-Alonso, Noemí; Emery, Joshua P.; Licandro, Javier; Cruikshank, Dale P.; Grundy, Will; Binzel, Richard P.

2015-11-01

Continuous near-infrared spectroscopic observations during the last 30 years enabled the characterization of the Pluto's surface and the study of its variability. Nevertheless, only few data are available in the visible range, where the nature of the complex-organics can be studied.For this reason, we started an observational campaign to obtain the Pluto's relative reflectance in the visible range, with the aim of characterizing the different components of its surface, and providing ground based observations in support of the New Horizons mission. We observed Pluto on six nights in 2014, with the imager/spectrograph ACAM@WHT (La Palma, Spain). We obtained six spectra in the 0.40 - 0.93 µm range, that covered a whole Pluto's rotational period (6.4 days).To study longitudinal variations, we computed for all the spectra the spectral slope, and the position and the depth of the methane ice absorption bands. Also, to search for secular or seasonal variations we compared our data with previously published results.All the spectra present a red slope, indicating the presence of complex organics on Pluto's surface, and show the methane ice absorption bands between 0.73 and 0.90 μm. We also report the detection of the CH4 absorption band at 0.62 μm, already detected in the spectra of Makemake and Eris. The measurement of the band depth at 0.62 μm in the new spectra of Pluto, and in the spectra of Makemake and Eris, permits us to estimate the Lambert coefficient, not measured yet at this wavelength, at a temperature of 30 K and 40 K.We find that all the CH4 bands present a blue shift. This shift is minimum at the Charon-facing hemisphere, where the CH4 is also more abundant, indicating a higher degree of saturation of CH4 in the CH4:N2 dilution at this hemisphere.Comparing with data in the literature, we found that the longitudinal and secular variations of the parameters measured in our spectra are in accordance with previous results and with the distribution of the dark

Secular Orbit and Spin Variations of Asteroid (16) Psyche

Science.gov (United States)

Bills, B. G.; Park, R. S.; Scott, B.

2016-12-01

The obliquity, or angular separation between spin and orbit poles, of asteroid (16) Psyche is currently 95 degrees. We are interested in knowing how much that angular separation varies, on time scales of 104 to 106 years. To answer that question, we have done several related analyses. On short time scales, the orbital element variations of Psyche are dominated by perturbations from Jupiter. Jupiter's dominance has two basic causes: first is the large mass and relatively close position of Jupiter, and second is a 19:8 mean motion resonance. Jupiter completes 8 orbits in 94.9009 years, while Psyche takes 94.9107 years to complete 19 orbits. As a result of this, all of the orbital elements of Psyche exhibit significant periodic variations, with a 94.9 year period dominating. There are also significant variations at the synodic period, which is 8.628 years, or 1/11 of the resonant period. Over a 1000 year time span, centered on the present, the eccentricity varies from 0.133 to 0.140, and the inclination varies from 2.961 to 3.229 degrees. On longer time scales, the orbital elements of Psyche vary considerably more than that, due to secular perturbations from the planets. The secular variations are modeled as the response of interacting mass rings, rather than point masses. Again, Jupiter is the main perturbing influence on Psyche. The eccentricity and inclination both oscillate, with dominant periods of 18.667 kyr. The range of values seen over a million year time span, is 0.057 to 0.147 for eccentricity, and 0.384 to 4.777 degrees for inclination. Using a recent shape model, and assumption of uniform density, to constrain relevant moments of inertia, we estimate the spin pole precession rate parameter to be 8.53 arcsec/year. The current spin pole is at ecliptic {lon, lat} = { 32, -7} deg, whereas the orbit pole is at {lon, lat} = {60.47, 86.91} deg. The current obliquity is thus 94.3 degree. Using nominal values of the input parameters, the recovered spin pole

Religious morality (and secular humanism) in Western civilization as precursors to medical ethics: A historic perspective

OpenAIRE

Miguel A Faria

2015-01-01

In discussing bioethics and the formulation of neuroethics, the question has arisen as to whether secular humanism should be the sole philosophical guiding light, to the exclusion of any discussion (or even mention) of religious morality, in professional medical ethics. In addition, the question has arisen as to whether freedom or censorship should be part of medical (and neuroscience) journalism. Should independent medical journals abstain from discussing certain issues, or should only the m...

WAHHABISM, IDENTITY AND SECULAR RITUAL: Graduation at an Indonesian High School

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Inayah Rohmaniyah

2012-01-01

Full Text Available This paper concerns the social and ritual construction of social identities at Pondok Pesantren Madrasah Wathoniyah Islamiyah (PPMWI, a theologically Wahhabi oriented pesantren (traditional Islamic school in Central Java, Indonesia. We focus on the inter-play of religious and secular symbols in the school’s graduation ceremonies (wisuda for secondary school students and the ways it contributes to the construction of individual and social identities. Our analysis builds on Turner’s studies of the processual logic of rites of passage, Moore and Meyerhoff’s distinction between religious and secular ritual and Tambiah’s application of the Piercian concept of indexical symbols to the analysis of ritual. Theoretically we will be concerned with ritual, cognitive and social processes involved in the construction of religious identities. Empirically, we critique the common assumption that Salafi, and more specifically, Wahhabi, religious teachings contribute to the construction of exclusivist identities, social conflict and violence. In the case we are concerned with, religious tolerance and non-violence are among the defining features of Wahhabi identity.[Tulisan membahas konstruksi identitas ritual dan sosial pada sebuah pesantren yang berorientasi teologi Wahhabi, yaitu Pondok Pesantren Madrasah Wathoniyah Islamiyah (PPMWI. Diskusi akan difokuskan pada saling silang simbol-simbol agama dan sekuler dalam peringatan wisuda siswa menengah pertama serta signifikansinya dalam konstruksi identitas sosial dan individual. Analisis tulisan ini berdasarkan studi Turner mengenai logika proses dalam daur ritus (the processual logic of rites of passage, pembagian ritual agama dan sekuler oleh Moore dan Meyerhoff serta konsep Piercian mengenai indek simbolis dalam ritual oleh Tambiah. Secara teoritis, artikel ini akan mendiskusikan ritual, kognisi, dan proses sosial yang menjadi bagian dalam konstruksi identitas agama. Selain itu, penulis juga melakukan

Human rights and faith: a ‘world-wide secular religion’?

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Henri Féron

2014-12-01

Full Text Available While human rights are meant to represent a secular morality, there are surprising parallels to be drawn with religions. Perhaps most striking is the realization that human rights are actually based on faith, as was already recognized at the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This dependence on faith has deep implications for the way we understand and propagate them, because it puts rights in situations of epistemological stalemate vis-à-vis other cultural, religious, or ideological moral systems. This paper proposes to compare human rights doctrine to a religion to identify potential threats to its long-term credibility, and how to address them. In particular, it explains why coercive propagation of rights risks degenerating into a form of self-contradictory fundamentalism. Ultimately, the article argues for a return to the values of tolerance and mutual respect that rights actually stand for.

The geomagnetic jerk of 2003.5-characterisation with regional observatory secular variation data

Science.gov (United States)

Feng, Yan; Holme, Richard; Cox, Grace Alexandra; Jiang, Yi

2018-05-01

The 2003.5 geomagnetic jerk was identified in geomagnetic records from satellite data, and a matching feature reported in variations in length-of-day (ΔLOD), but detailed study has been hampered by lack of geomagnetic observatory data where it appears strongest. Here we examine secular variation (annual differences of monthly means) based on a new resource of 43 Chinese observatory records for 1998 until the present, focusing on 10 series of particularly high quality and consistency. To obtain a clean series, we calculate the covariance matrix of residuals between measurements and a state-of-the-art field model, CHAOS-6, and use eigenvalue analysis to remove noisy contributions from the uncorrected data. The magnitude of the most significant eigenvector correlates well with Dcx (corrected, extended Dst), suggesting the noise originates from unmodelled external magnetic field. Removal of this noise eliminates much coherent misfit around 2003-2005; nevertheless, the 2003.5 jerk is seen clearly in the first time derivative of the East component in Chinese data, and is also seen in the first time derivative of the vertical component in European data. Estimates of the jerk time are centred on 2003.5, but with some spatial variation; this variation can be eliminated if we allow a discontinuity in the secular variation as well as its temporal gradient. Both regions also provide evidence for a jerk around 2014, although less clearly than 2003.5. We create a new field model based on new data and CHAOS-6 to further examine the regional signals. The new model is close to CHAOS-6, but better fits Chinese data, although modelling also identifies some data features as unphysical.

Towards an exact theory of linear absorbance and circular dichroism of pigment-protein complexes: Importance of non-secular contributions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dinh, Thanh-Chung; Renger, Thomas

2015-01-01

A challenge for the theory of optical spectra of pigment-protein complexes is the equal strength of the pigment-pigment and the pigment-protein couplings. Treating both on an equal footing so far can only be managed by numerically costly approaches. Here, we exploit recent results on a normal mode analysis derived spectral density that revealed the dominance of the diagonal matrix elements of the exciton-vibrational coupling in the exciton state representation. We use a cumulant expansion technique that treats the diagonal parts exactly, includes an infinite summation of the off-diagonal parts in secular and Markov approximations, and provides a systematic perturbative way to include non-secular and non-Markov corrections. The theory is applied to a model dimer and to chlorophyll (Chl) a and Chl b homodimers of the reconstituted water-soluble chlorophyll-binding protein (WSCP) from cauliflower. The model calculations reveal that the non-secular/non-Markov effects redistribute oscillator strength from the strong to the weak exciton transition in absorbance and they diminish the rotational strength of the exciton transitions in circular dichroism. The magnitude of these corrections is in a few percent range of the overall signal, providing a quantitative explanation of the success of time-local convolution-less density matrix theory applied earlier. A close examination of the optical spectra of Chl a and Chl b homodimers in WSCP suggests that the opening angle between Q y transition dipole moments in Chl b homodimers is larger by about 9 ∘ than for Chl a homodimers for which a crystal structure of a related WSCP complex exists. It remains to be investigated whether this change is due to a different mutual geometry of the pigments or due to the different electronic structures of Chl a and Chl b

Towards an exact theory of linear absorbance and circular dichroism of pigment-protein complexes: Importance of non-secular contributions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Dinh, Thanh-Chung; Renger, Thomas, E-mail: thomas.renger@jku.at [Institut für Theoretische Physik, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Altenberger Str. 69, 4040 Linz (Austria)

2015-01-21

A challenge for the theory of optical spectra of pigment-protein complexes is the equal strength of the pigment-pigment and the pigment-protein couplings. Treating both on an equal footing so far can only be managed by numerically costly approaches. Here, we exploit recent results on a normal mode analysis derived spectral density that revealed the dominance of the diagonal matrix elements of the exciton-vibrational coupling in the exciton state representation. We use a cumulant expansion technique that treats the diagonal parts exactly, includes an infinite summation of the off-diagonal parts in secular and Markov approximations, and provides a systematic perturbative way to include non-secular and non-Markov corrections. The theory is applied to a model dimer and to chlorophyll (Chl) a and Chl b homodimers of the reconstituted water-soluble chlorophyll-binding protein (WSCP) from cauliflower. The model calculations reveal that the non-secular/non-Markov effects redistribute oscillator strength from the strong to the weak exciton transition in absorbance and they diminish the rotational strength of the exciton transitions in circular dichroism. The magnitude of these corrections is in a few percent range of the overall signal, providing a quantitative explanation of the success of time-local convolution-less density matrix theory applied earlier. A close examination of the optical spectra of Chl a and Chl b homodimers in WSCP suggests that the opening angle between Q{sub y} transition dipole moments in Chl b homodimers is larger by about 9{sup ∘} than for Chl a homodimers for which a crystal structure of a related WSCP complex exists. It remains to be investigated whether this change is due to a different mutual geometry of the pigments or due to the different electronic structures of Chl a and Chl b.

Rayleigh waves in elastic medium with double porosity

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Rajneesh KUMAR

2018-03-01

Full Text Available The present paper deals with the propagation of Rayleigh waves in isotropic homogeneous elastic half-space with double porosity whose surface is subjected to stress-free boundary conditions. The compact secular equations for elastic solid half-space with voids are deduced as special cases from the present analysis. In order to illustrate the analytical developments, the secular equations have been solved numerically. The computer simulated results for copper materials in respect of Rayleigh wave velocity and attenuation coe¢ cient have been presented graphically.

Archeointensities in Greece during the Neolithic period: New insights into material selection and secular variation curve

Science.gov (United States)

Fanjat, G.; Aidona, E.; Kondopoulou, D.; Camps, P.; Rathossi, C.; Poidras, T.

2013-02-01

Numerous archeomagnetic studies have provided high quality data for both the direction and the intensity of the geomagnetic field, essentially in Europe for the last 10 millennia. In particular, Greece supplies a lot of archeological materials due to its impressive cultural heritage and volcanic activity, so that numerous data have been obtained from burnt clays or historical lava flows. The most recent Greek secular variation curves are available for the last 8 millennia for the intensity and the last 6 millennia for the direction. Nevertheless, the coverage still presents several gaps for periods older than 2500 BC. In an effort to complete the Greek curve and extend it to older times, we present the archeointensity results from three Neolithic settlements in Northern Greece. The samples are of two different natures: burnt structures from Avgi (5250 ± 150 BC) and Vasili (4800 ± 200 BC), as well as ceramics from Dikili Tash (4830 ± 80 BC) and Vasili (4750 ± 250 BC). The samples have been subjected to standard rock magnetic analyses in order to estimate the thermal stability and the domain state of the magnetic carriers before archeointensity measurements. Surprisingly, very few ceramic samples provided reliable archeointensities whereas samples from burnt structures presented a very good success rate. Complementary studies showed that a detailed examination of the matrix color, following archeological information and classification standards can be a decisive test for pre-selection of sherds. In spite of these unsuccessful measurements from ceramics, we obtained an intensity value of 73.5 ± 1.1 μT for Dikili Tash, a higher value than the other data obtained in the same area, during the same period. However we do not have evidences for a technical artefact during the experiment. The burnt structures yielded two reliable archeointensities of 36.1 ± 1.8 μT and 46.6 ± 3.4 μT for Avgi and Vasili, respectively. Finally, we achieved a new archeomagnetic dating

Imagining Exodus for Israel-Palestine: Reading the Secular and the Sacred, Diaspora and Homeland, in Edward Said and David Grossman

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Anna Hartnell

2005-03-01

Full Text Available This paper takes as its starting point Edward Said's distinction between 'religious' and 'secular' modes of cultural affiliation. As these simultaneously diverging and converging modes also trammel the particular grounds of thinking that have been Said's natural target of criticism - Zionism - his work speaks particularly powerfully to the debate surrounding the religious genealogy of Jewish identity. This paper argues that Said's interventions on Zionism highlight as problematic the position whereby the 'Ingathering of the Exiles' is promoted as coexisting with a 'diasporic consciousness' nurtured by Judaism during exile; messianic hopes of religious Jews cannot be reconciled with physical return to the Promised Land; identity circumscribed by ethnicity and place cannot stand in as exemplary for the exiled, unsettled and ultimately homeless identity trumpeted by discourses of the 'post', as many contemporary theorists would have it. And yet through an exploration of the writings of David Grossman, whose construction of Jewish identity is envisaged through the regulating, competing and collaborating tropes of Zionism and Diaspora, I argue that this position is crucial for the elaboration of Israeli identity. I also argue that in fact there is room within Said's thinking both for the anti-essentialist elaboration of 'homeless' identities as well as 'the permission to narrate' an identity politics, and that his own distinction between the 'secular' and the 'religious' begins to disassemble. I explore this blurring of the sacred and the secular through the prism of Exodus - as both concept and narrative. This paper suggests that it is precisely Said's achievement to embody these tensions between religion and its other, divine providence and human agency, historical materialism and postmodernism, alienation and its perennially tempting opposite: home.

Secular trends in salt and soy sauce intake among Chinese adults, 1997-2011.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Lianlong; Li, Suyun; Zhao, Jinshan; Zhang, Junli; Wang, Liansen; Wang, Kebo

2018-03-01

Salt and soy sauce are the main ways of sodium intake in Chinese dietary. In this study, we used the data of the China Health and Nutrition Surveys to describe the secular trends of salt and soy sauce intake among Chinese adults from 1997 to 2011. Trends were tested by multiple linear regression models. During the past 14 years, the consumption of sodium, salt and soy sauce intake values decreased significantly across the six study periods (p sauce intake values decreased by 9.0 g/d among men and 7.3 g/d among women. Similar significant trends were observed in all age groups, activity levels and regions (p < .0001).

Differential Equations Compatible with KZ Equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Felder, G.; Markov, Y.; Tarasov, V.; Varchenko, A.

2000-01-01

We define a system of 'dynamical' differential equations compatible with the KZ differential equations. The KZ differential equations are associated to a complex simple Lie algebra g. These are equations on a function of n complex variables z i taking values in the tensor product of n finite dimensional g-modules. The KZ equations depend on the 'dual' variable in the Cartan subalgebra of g. The dynamical differential equations are differential equations with respect to the dual variable. We prove that the standard hypergeometric solutions of the KZ equations also satisfy the dynamical equations. As an application we give a new determinant formula for the coordinates of a basis of hypergeometric solutions

Visiting Ground Zero: sacred echoes in secular rites

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Richard C. Martin

2010-01-01

Full Text Available For the past several years since September 11, 2001, large numbers of people from across the continent and around the world have visited the site of the devastated World Trade Center in New York. Scholars in religious studies and the social sciences have noticed that there were and continue to be (though less so over time religious aspects to the observances and performances of visitors to ‘Ground Zero’, as the site of the former World Trade Center almost immediately came to be called. A central argument of this article is that the ongoing stream of visitors to Ground Zero, strictly speaking, does not qualify this phenomenon as a pilgrimage in the traditional religious sense; it is more akin to the growing phenomenon of religious tourism, although it is not exactly that either. Nonetheless the event of 9/11 generated many ritualized activities; the article will also address the pro­cess scholars call ‘ritualization’ and related terms in ritual studies. Although ritualized performances at Ground Zero do not amount to a pilgrimage in the narrow sense that historians of religion mean when they analyse traditional pilgrimages, such as the Hajj to Mecca, or following the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, visiting Ground Zero has taken on both secular and religious elements.

Secular trend of menarche in Zagreb (Croatia) adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Veček, Nenad; Veček, Andrea; Zajc Petranović, Matea; Tomas, Zeljka; Arch-Veček, Branka; Skarić-Jurić, Tatjana; Miličić, Jasna

2012-01-01

To study the secular trend of menarche in high-school urban adolescent girls (Zagreb, Croatia) over the last two decades, and to evaluate the possible impact of worsening of socio-economic conditions on age at menarche during the Croatian War of Independence (1991-1995). Three surveys of female adolescents aged 15-19 years: (a) 523 girls interviewed in 1990, (b) 888 girls interviewed in 1997, and (c) 399 girls interviewed in 2010. Self-reported age at menarche (in decimal years) was presented by age groups and year of interview. Differences in mean age at menarche between adolescent age groups as well as between surveys were tested using One-way ANOVA. The mean age at menarche was 12.82 years in 1990, 12.92 years in 1997 and 12.31 years in 2010. It increased by 0.10 years from 1990 to 1997 (p=0.290) and then declined by 0.61 years from 1997 to 2010 (pZagreb adolescents continued to decline significantly from 1990 to 2010 (p<0.001), in spite of a statistically insignificant initial increase between 1990 and 1997. When put in broader context, age at menarche mirrored socio-economic changes in the war period. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The role of religious faith, spirituality and existential considerations among heart patients in a secular society: relation to depressive symptoms 6 months post acute coronary syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Bekke-Hansen, Sidsel; Pedersen, Christina G; Thygesen, Kristian; Christensen, Søren; Waelde, Lynn C; Zachariae, Robert

2014-06-01

We explored the significance of religious faith/coping and spirituality and existential considerations reported during hospitalisation on depressive symptoms at 6-month follow-up and addressed patients' perceived influence of their faith among 97 consecutive acute coronary syndrome patients (72.2% male patients; mean age, 60.6 years) in a secular society. All faith variables were found unrelated to depressive symptoms. Having unambiguous religious or spiritual faith at follow-up was associated with a perceived positive influence of this faith on quality of life and the disease itself compared to patients with ambiguous faith. These findings underscore the importance of examining degrees of faith in secular settings. © The Author(s) 2013.

Research on the neutron flux, secular equilibrium of chlorine-36 and groundwater age of the deep quaternary sediments, Hebei plain

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dong Yuean; He Ming; Jiang Songsheng; Wu Shaoyong; Jiang Shan

2001-01-01

For the study of the neutron flux, secular equilibrium of chlorine-36 in the deep quaternary sediments of Hebei plain, the main chemical composition of water sand and confining bed was determined by neutron activation analysis. The mean neutron flux is 2.79 x 10 -5 cm -2 s -1 which was calculated by the chemical composition of the strata. The mean 36 Cl/Cl ratio in secular equilibrium is 1.27 x 10 -14 in the deep quaternary sediments, Hebei Plain. For the study of the groundwater age of the deep Quaternary sediments of Hebei Plain, the 36 Cl/Cl ratio of groundwater samples were determined by tandem accelerator mass spectrometry. The mixed groundwater 36 Cl/Cl ratio of the second and the third aquifer of Quaternary sediments in Baoding district is 247 x 10 -15 , that of the fourth aquifer in Baoding city is 224 x 10 -15 and the third aquifer in Cangzhou district is 40.5 x 10 -15 . The groundwater age of Baoding district was young and that of the third aquifer in Cangzhou was 229.2 ka

Gandhi on Religion, Faith and Conversion: Secular Blueprint Relevant Today*

Science.gov (United States)

Singh, Ajai R.; Singh, Shakuntala A.

2004-01-01

symbols could not be made into a fetish to prove the superiority of one religion over another. In a multi-religious secular polity like that of India, Gandhi's ideas on religion and attitude toward other religions could serve as a secular blueprint to ponder over and implement. PMID:22815610

Talla final de mujeres de Córdoba, Argentina, y exploración de la tendencia secular (1978­1988) Full adult height of women in Cordoba, Argentina, and an exploration of secular trends 1978­1988

OpenAIRE

Fernando Agrelo; Laura Rosa Pascual; Beatriz Lobo; Jacobo Sabulsky

1999-01-01

Este trabajo tuvo por objeto aportar datos locales sobre la talla final de mujeres de Córdoba, Argentina, y explorar la posibilidad de una tendencia secular en su crecimiento. Se examinaron 513 mujeres de 18 a 40 años de edad, madres de niños incluidos en el estudio CLACYD (Córdoba: lactancia, alimentación, crecimiento y desarrollo). Las mediciones se realizaron según técnicas estandarizadas, durante mayo y junio de 1994. Usando como normas de referencia datos del Centro Nacional de Estadísti...

Facing suffering and death: alternative therapy as post-secular religious practice

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Anne Kalvig

2012-01-01

Full Text Available The idea of religious practice being ‘post-secular’ raises questions concerning secularisation, sacralisation and the various meanings of the prefix ‘post’. This paper investigates a kind of practice that is ever increasing in late modern, Western societies and elsewhere; namely, the practice of alternative therapy and the conceptualisations and world-views pertaining to it. The focus is on the themes of suffering and death in relation to alternative spirituality and therapy. Some answers are given to the following questions: is alternative therapy a kind of post-secular religious practice? If so, what kinds of answers or consolations does alternative therapy offer in the face of suffering and death? How do possible ‘alternative theodicies’ relate to holism as a paradigmatic principle? To what extent does, for example, ‘reincarnationism’ seem to function as explanatory model regarding suffering, evil and death?

Short-term secular change in height, body mass and Tanner-Whitehouse 3 skeletal maturity of Madeira youth, Portugal.

Science.gov (United States)

Freitas, Duarte; Malina, Robert M; Maia, José; Lefevre, Johan; Stasinopoulos, Mikis; Gouveia, Élvio; Claessens, Albrecht; Thomis, Martine; Lausen, Berthold

2012-05-01

Secular trends in height and weight are reasonably well documented in Europe. Corresponding observations for skeletal maturation are lacking. To assess secular trends in height, body mass and skeletal maturity of Portuguese children and adolescents and to provide updated reference values for skeletal maturity scores (SMSs). Data for 2856 children and adolescents of 4-17 years, 1412 boys and 1444 girls, from The 'Madeira Growth Study' (MGS; 1996-1998) and from the'Healthy Growth of Madeira Children Study' (CRES; 2006) were used. Height and body mass were measured. Skeletal maturity was assessed with the Tanner-Whitehouse 2 and 3 methods. Children from CRES were taller and heavier than peers from MGS. Differences in height reached 5.8 cm in boys and 5.5 cm in girls. RUS SMSs did not differ consistently between surveys boys, while higher RUS scores were observed in CRES girls. Adult RUS SMSs for MGS and CRES combined were attained at 15.8 years in boys and 14.8 years in girls. Corresponding ages for adult Carpal SMSs were 14.4 and 14.0, respectively. The short-term trends for height and mass were not entirely consistent with the trends in RUS and Carpal SMSs and SAs.

Cohorts based on decade of death: no evidence for secular trends favoring later cohorts in cognitive aging and terminal decline in the AHEAD study.

Science.gov (United States)

Hülür, Gizem; Infurna, Frank J; Ram, Nilam; Gerstorf, Denis

2013-03-01

Studies of birth-year cohorts examined over the same age range often report secular trends favoring later-born cohorts, who are cognitively fitter and show less steep cognitive declines than earlier-born cohorts. However, there is initial evidence that those advantages of later-born cohorts do not carry into the last years of life, suggesting that pervasive mortality-related processes minimize differences that were apparent earlier in life. Elaborating this work from an alternative perspective on cohort differences, we compared rates of cognitive aging and terminal decline in episodic memory between cohorts based on the year participants had died, earlier (between 1993 and 1999) or later in historical time (between 2000 and 2010). Specifically, we compared trajectories of cognitive decline in 2 death-year cohorts of participants in the Asset and Health Dynamics Among the Oldest Old study that were matched on age at death and education and controlled for a variety of additional covariates. Results revealed little evidence of secular trends favoring later cohorts. To the contrary, the cohort that died in the 2000s showed a less favorable trajectory of age-related memory decline than the cohort that died in the 1990s. In examinations of change in relation to time to death, the cohort dying in the 2000s experienced even steeper terminal declines than the cohort dying in the 1990s. We suggest that secular increases in "manufacturing" survival may exacerbate age- and mortality-related cognitive declines among the oldest old.

‘Culture’ as a discursive resource in newspaper articles from Le Monde about secularism : Constructing ‘us’ through strategic oppositions with religion

NARCIS (Netherlands)

M. Sommier (Mélodine)

2018-01-01

markdownabstractBuilding on research highlighting the complex webs of relations between secularism, culture, and religion, this study investigates how the concept of culture was utilized in discourses of laïcité from the newspaper _le Monde_. Articles (_N_ = 76) published between 2011 and 2014 were

WOMEN, CRIME AND THE SECULAR COURT IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CLUJ

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrea Fehér

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this presentation is to address the issue of female criminality in early modern Cluj, and to analyze women’s position before the law. Our investigation is based on the records of the secular Court from the town Cluj, where we have identified more than 250 cases of women accused of fornication, adultery, witchcraft, infanticide, theft and drunkenness, poisoning, swearing and slander. There were a significant number of female convictions during the century, from which most ended with light sentences, such as banishment, corporal punishments, stigmatizations with hot iron, mutilations and only occasionally death. We would like to analyze in detail the types of crime and their punishments presenting the legal background, the jurisdiction and the habitual practices of the Court. We would also like to underline the importance of the narrative strategies used in these inquisitorial trials, since our documents reveal female criminality from a male perspective, as in these times men ran the legal system, consequently the Court records, in our reading contain moral, legal and sexual elements of a male discourse on female crime.

Technological Progress, Globalization, and Secular Stagnation

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Popović Milenko

2018-01-01

Full Text Available After the 2008 crisis, despite economic recovery that started in 2009, the world economy has experienced a downward shift of its growth path and a consequent decline. As shown at the beginning of this paper, this shift and growth rate stagnation are totally attributable to the economic dynamics in developed economies, the USA and the EU. Explanations of this phenomenon can be divided into two large groups: explanations that belong to the demand side and those that belong to the supply side. The aim of this paper is to give a critical survey of the most important explanations for the ongoing growth stagnation in developed countries and consequently in the entire world economy. This ongoing prolonged stagnation can only be explained by looking at both, the demand and supply sides of the explanation, and particularly by taking a closer look at the interaction between aggregate demand and aggregate supply. In other words, secular stagnation manifests itself as a problem of the limitation of long run growth of aggregate demand. However, in order to explain the causes of those demand limitations, we have to undertake a careful analysis of the supply side dynamics, especially the dynamics of innovations, which bring us to circular and cumulative causation. In order to explain the numerous consequences of this stagnation and to solve some important puzzles, like the productivity paradox for example, a special emphasis is given to the analysis of deindustrialization and the consequent strange reoccurrence of a dual economy within most developed countries during the period of the IT revolution and hyper-globalization. It will also be shown that this new dual economy presents serious limitations for further technological advancement and economic development, quite contrary to the old dualism which contributed to an acceleration of economic growth.

Secular trends in consultations for asthma in early childhood, the 16 administrative regions of Morocco, 2004-2012.

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Sadeq, Mina; Abouqal, Redouane; ElMarnissi, Abdelilah

2015-09-17

Little is known about asthma trend in Morocco, particularly in early childhood. Furthermore, when dealing with asthma related environmental risk factors in Morocco, decision-making focus is in one region R9, while 16 regions make up the country. This work aims at studying 9-year trends in consultations for asthma in under-5 children in the 16 individual regions with respect to area and age group. Direct method use, based on the only available national data from the open access files of the ministry of health, standardizing data for three age groups (0-11 ; 12-23 and 24-59 months). We compared age-adjusted rates, stratified by area (urban and rural areas) within each region (Wilcoxon's signed ranks test), and between all regions emphasizing on R9. Secular trends are examined (Kendall's rank correlation test). We also compared directly standardized rates as a rate ratio for two study populations (that of R9 and any region with highest rates). We finally compared rates by age group in selected regions. Secular increase in prevalence rates was shown in both urban and rural Morocco, particularly in urban areas of R10, R14, R16 and R5, and in rural areas of R14 and R16. In urban area of R10 (the highest age-adjusted prevalence rates area) the rates showed secular increase from 6.82 at 95 % CI = [6.44 to 7.19] per 1000 childhood population in 2004 to 20.91 at 95 % CI = [20.26 to 21.56] per 1000 childhood population in 2012 (P = 0.001). Rates were higher in urban than rural Morocco, particularly in R8, R9, R10, R14, R15 ; R6 was an exception. Rates in R10 were 1.63 higher than that in R9 in 2004 and rose to be 2.55 higher in 2012 ; rates in urban area of R14, about 3 times lower than that in R9 in 2004, increased to be similar in 2012. The highest-prevalence age group varied according to region and area. The regions that worth decision making attention are the urban areas of R10 (the highest prevalence rates Moroccan area, showing continuous increase), of R9, of R14

A secular carbon debt from atmospheric high temperature combustion of stem wood?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Czeskleba-Dupont, Rolf

2012-01-01

' approach for smokestack emissions that was propagated within the Kyoto process, the first phase of which is terminating in 2012. Otherwise, it is tolerated that the substitution of wood pellets for coal or other fossil fuels creates long lasting extra emissions of carbon dioxide – a mistake of climate......Basically, combustion of woody biomass in high temperature processes that react with atmospheric air results in a long lasting addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. When harvesting large extra amounts of stem tree for energetic use, a global as well as secular time frame is needed to assess...... overall consequences with due attention given to biosphere processes, including the complex productivity of whole ecosystems. Analytically, a time dependent variable of carbon neutralization can be traced by a simple carbon neutrality or CN factor. Using the forgotten Marland approach, project managers...

Sacred Torrents in Modernity: German Jewish Philosophers and the Legacy of Secularization

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Roemer Nils

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This article investigates the ongoing interaction between the Jewish sacred past and its modern interpreters. Jewish thinkers from the eighteenth century reclaimed these ideals instead of dismissing them. Sacred traditions and modern secular thought existed in their mutual constitutive interdependence and not in opposition. When the optimism in historical progress and faith in reason unraveled in the fin de siècle, it engendered a new critical response by Jewish historians and philosophers of the twentieth century. These critical voices emerged within the fault lines of nineteenth and early twentieth century Jewish anti-historicist responses. What separated twentieth-century Jewish thinkers such as Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, and Gershom Scholem from their nineteenth-century forerunners was not their embrace of religion but their critical stance toward reason and their crumbling faith in historical progress.

Émile Durkheim: from secular ideologist to forerunner of postsecular theories

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Raquel Weiss

2017-10-01

Full Text Available This paper presents and articulates three points that, taken together, suggest a reinterpretations of Durkheim’s concept of religion, allowing us to take the arguments of his late writings as a key ground to postsecular theories. The first point inserts the author in his historical environments, highlighting his commitment to the principle of laicité, part of the moral ideals of the Third Republic. The second point builds a narrative where the idea religion and its relationship with morality undergoes a transformation along his career. The thesis is that in The Elemental Forms of Religious Life (DURKHEIM, 1912 he presents a concept of religion fully compatible with the idea of post-secularization both as a diagnostic of the present times and as a normative horizon for late modernity. In the third and last point I take a stand in defending the idea of postsecular as the best way to encourage religious and axiological pluralism.

SECULAR STELLAR DYNAMICS NEAR A MASSIVE BLACK HOLE

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Madigan, Ann-Marie; Hopman, Clovis; Levin, Yuri

2011-01-01

The angular momentum evolution of stars close to massive black holes (MBHs) is driven by secular torques. In contrast to two-body relaxation, where interactions between stars are incoherent, the resulting resonant relaxation (RR) process is characterized by coherence times of hundreds of orbital periods. In this paper, we show that all the statistical properties of RR can be reproduced in an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model. We use the ARMA model, calibrated with extensive N-body simulations, to analyze the long-term evolution of stellar systems around MBHs with Monte Carlo simulations. We show that for a single-mass system in steady state, a depression is carved out near an MBH as a result of tidal disruptions. Using Galactic center parameters, the extent of the depression is about 0.1 pc, of similar order to but less than the size of the observed 'hole' in the distribution of bright late-type stars. We also find that the velocity vectors of stars around an MBH are locally not isotropic. In a second application, we evolve the highly eccentric orbits that result from the tidal disruption of binary stars, which are considered to be plausible precursors of the 'S-stars' in the Galactic center. We find that RR predicts more highly eccentric (e > 0.9) S-star orbits than have been observed to date.

Secular Stellar Dynamics near a Massive Black Hole

Science.gov (United States)

Madigan, Ann-Marie; Hopman, Clovis; Levin, Yuri

2011-09-01

The angular momentum evolution of stars close to massive black holes (MBHs) is driven by secular torques. In contrast to two-body relaxation, where interactions between stars are incoherent, the resulting resonant relaxation (RR) process is characterized by coherence times of hundreds of orbital periods. In this paper, we show that all the statistical properties of RR can be reproduced in an autoregressive moving average (ARMA) model. We use the ARMA model, calibrated with extensive N-body simulations, to analyze the long-term evolution of stellar systems around MBHs with Monte Carlo simulations. We show that for a single-mass system in steady state, a depression is carved out near an MBH as a result of tidal disruptions. Using Galactic center parameters, the extent of the depression is about 0.1 pc, of similar order to but less than the size of the observed "hole" in the distribution of bright late-type stars. We also find that the velocity vectors of stars around an MBH are locally not isotropic. In a second application, we evolve the highly eccentric orbits that result from the tidal disruption of binary stars, which are considered to be plausible precursors of the "S-stars" in the Galactic center. We find that RR predicts more highly eccentric (e > 0.9) S-star orbits than have been observed to date.

Galaxy Zoo: Observing secular evolution through bars

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cheung, Edmond; Faber, S. M.; Koo, David C.; Athanassoula, E.; Bosma, A.; Masters, Karen L.; Nichol, Robert C.; Melvin, Thomas; Bell, Eric F.; Lintott, Chris; Schawinski, Kevin; Skibba, Ramin A.; Willett, Kyle W.

2013-01-01

In this paper, we use the Galaxy Zoo 2 data set to study the behavior of bars in disk galaxies as a function of specific star formation rate (SSFR) and bulge prominence. Our sample consists of 13,295 disk galaxies, with an overall (strong) bar fraction of 23.6% ± 0.4%, of which 1154 barred galaxies also have bar length (BL) measurements. These samples are the largest ever used to study the role of bars in galaxy evolution. We find that the likelihood of a galaxy hosting a bar is anticorrelated with SSFR, regardless of stellar mass or bulge prominence. We find that the trends of bar likelihood and BL with bulge prominence are bimodal with SSFR. We interpret these observations using state-of-the-art simulations of bar evolution that include live halos and the effects of gas and star formation. We suggest our observed trends of bar likelihood with SSFR are driven by the gas fraction of the disks, a factor demonstrated to significantly retard both bar formation and evolution in models. We interpret the bimodal relationship between bulge prominence and bar properties as being due to the complicated effects of classical bulges and central mass concentrations on bar evolution and also to the growth of disky pseudobulges by bar evolution. These results represent empirical evidence for secular evolution driven by bars in disk galaxies. This work suggests that bars are not stagnant structures within disk galaxies but are a critical evolutionary driver of their host galaxies in the local universe (z < 1).

Post-Newtonian templates for binary black-hole inspirals: the effect of the horizon fluxes and the secular change in the black-hole masses and spins

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Isoyama, Soichiro; Nakano, Hiroyuki

2018-01-01

Black holes (BHs) in an inspiraling compact binary system absorb the gravitational-wave (GW) energy and angular-momentum fluxes across their event horizons and this leads to the secular change in their masses and spins during the inspiral phase. The goal of this paper is to present ready-to-use, 3.5 post-Newtonian (PN) template families for spinning, non-precessing, binary BH inspirals in quasicircular orbits, including the 2.5 PN and 3.5 PN horizon-flux contributions as well as the correction due to the secular change in the BH masses and spins through 3.5 PN order, respectively, in phase. We show that, for binary BHs observable by Advanced LIGO with high mass ratios (larger than  ∼10) and large aligned-spins (larger than  ∼ 0.7 ), the mismatch between the frequency-domain template with and without the horizon-flux contribution is typically above the 3% mark. For (supermassive) binary BHs observed by LISA, even a moderate mass-ratios and spins can produce a similar level of the mismatch. Meanwhile, the mismatch due to the secular time variations of the BH masses and spins is well below the 1% mark in both cases, hence this is truly negligible. We also point out that neglecting the cubic-in-spin, point-particle phase term at 3.5 PN order would deteriorate the effect of BH absorption in the template.

Harry and Sally Revisited: The Influence of Spirituality and Education on Sexual Tension in Cross-Sex Friendships in Secular and Christian Universities

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George, Darren; Adalikwu-Obisike, Justina; Boyko, Jesse; Johnson, Jay; Boscanin, Alex

2014-01-01

A sample of 406 subjects completed a questionnaire testing the influence of personal spirituality, education and several other factors on sexual tension in cross-sex friendships (CSF Tension). The subjects included 143 students from a Christian university (CU), 137 from a secular junior college (JC), and 127 non-students (NS). The primary…

Fighting Rage with Fear: The “Faces of Muhammad” and the Limits of Secular Rationality

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Shirin S. Deylami

2018-03-01

Full Text Available In recent years, a number of incidents have pitted Islam against secularism and liberal democracy. This essay examines the Danish publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in order to examine the deployment of rationality as a litmus test for political membership. It argues that Western media and political analysis of the protests surrounding the cartoons constructed Muslims as anti-rational and thus unfit for democratic citizenship. Such a deployment of rationality inhibits the possibility of and demands for political pluralism. The essay then looks to two disparate theorists of affective reason, Abdulkarim Soroush and William Connolly, to offer an alternative model of reason that encourages pluralist political engagement.

Fundamental movement skills in adolescents: Secular trends from 2003 to 2010 and associations with physical activity and BMI.

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Huotari, P; Heikinaro-Johansson, P; Watt, A; Jaakkola, T

2018-03-01

The aim of this study was to examine the secular trends in fundamental movement skills (FMS) among 15- to 16-year-old adolescents at 2 assessment points scheduled in 2003 and 2010 and to investigate the associations between FMS, physical activity (PA), and body mass index (BMI). In 2003, self-reported PA, weight and height, and objective FMS scores were collected from 2390 students, and in 2010, similar data were generated from a second sample of 1346 students. FMS were assessed during both assessment phases using 3 identical objective FMS tests that were figure 8 dribbling, jumping laterally, and coordination track tests. This study indicated that the sum index of FMS did not change among the boys and the girls between 2 data collection points. However, findings demonstrated a secular decline in coordination test scores in both gender groups between 2 measurement points but an improvement in girls' object control skills between 2003 and 2010. The results also showed that FMS had a significant main effect on BMI in both gender groups, whereas the main effect of PA on BMI was not significant for either gender group. Results also demonstrated that there was no significant interaction effect between FMS and PA on BMI in either of the girls' or the boys' groups. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Secular Changes in the Solar Semidiurnal Tide of the Western North Atlantic Ocean

Science.gov (United States)

Ray, Richard D.

2009-01-01

An analysis of twentieth century tide gauge records reveals that the solar semidiurnal tide S, has been decreasing in amplitude along the eastern coast of North America and at the mid-ocean site Bermuda. In relative terms the observed rates are unusually large, of order 10% per century. Periods of greatest change, however, are inconsistent among the stations, and roughly half the stations show increasing amplitude since the late 1990s. Excepting the Gulf of Maine, lunar tides are either static or slightly increasing in amplitude; a few stations show decreases. Large changes in solar, but not lunar, tides suggest causes related to variable radiational forcing, but the hypothesis is at present unproven. Citation: Ray, R. D. (2009), Secular changes in the solar semidiurnal tide of the western North Atlantic Ocean

From Religious Education to Secular Education in the Official Curriculum of Primary Education in Mexico (1821-1917

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Adelina Arredondo

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The history of the curriculum is a window to observe the changes and permanences of the school and of the educational system as a whole and for understanding social transformations. The aim of this article is to explain how the curriculum of the primary school (Mexico of the nineteenth century was changed from one centred on Catholic formation towards a secular curriculum. The school curriculum was one of the spearheads to build the state and society projects imagined by the different groups fighting for the control of power. I described how religious education was officially promoted, notwithstanding the political ups and downs that led to differentiate educational policies in federal systems and centralist regimes. Later, I explain how religious education was omitted from the official curriculum, replacing the space with courses of laic morals, with the consequent difficulty of introducing a new subject. Then I analyse how political circumstances led to a radicalization of liberal positions and to the prohibition not only of religious content, but also of symbols, rites and persons linked with religious vows. Finally, secular education, understood in a complex way, began to be demanded not only in public schools but also in private schools. Due to the nature of this article and the spatial limitations I have privileged the follow-up of the legislative history of education, based on primary sources and secondary sources for the understanding of the different contexts that determine this long journey.

Secular trends in new childhood epidemics: insights from evolutionary medicine.

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Brüne, Martin; Hochberg, Ze'ev

2013-10-21

In the last few decades, pediatric medicine has observed a dramatic increase in the prevalence of hitherto rare illnesses, among which obesity, diabetes, allergies and other autoimmune diseases stand out. In addition, secular trends towards earlier onset of puberty and sexual activity contribute to the psychological problems of youth and adolescents. All this has occurred in spite of the improved health care provision for children, yet traditional concepts of medicine have failed to explain these new "epidemics". A recent conference and science school of the European Society of Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) in Acre, Israel, has taken up this challenge. Experts across disciplines including medicine, anthropology and developmental psychology discussed potential causes of childhood ill-health from an evolutionary point-of-view. Seen from an evolutionary vantage point, the "epidemics" of childhood obesity, diabetes and psychological dysfunction appear, in part, to be related to a mismatch between ancestral adaptations and novel environmental contingencies. These include changing exposures to pathogens, which impact on the function of the immune system, as well as changing patterns of parenting, which influence the timing of puberty and the risk for developing psychopathology.

The Vertigo of Secularization: the innovative Notion of Political Authority

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María Pía Lara Zavala

2003-01-01

Full Text Available El artículo aborda la relación entre religión y política, centrándose en el problema de la autoridad política. La expresión “vértigo de la secularización” se emplea aquí para describir los temores que experimentamos al afrontar el problema de pensar nuestras propias normas políticas. La autora examina tres modelos distintos de autoridad política: el que representa la tradición religiosa cívica (Maquiavelo, Hobbes y Rousseau; el modelo puramente secular (Weber y un modelo muy original e innovador (Hannah Arendt. A continuación, muestra cómo al traducir los contenidos de la religión al ámbito político, empleándolos también para configurar nuevos espacios políticos, nos encontramos con una idea innovadora de autoridad. En su opinión, la ejemplar noción de autoridad política de Hannah Arendt es la que se adapta mejor a la que la autora denomina idea innovadora de autoridad.

SECULAR TRENDS AND LATITUDE GRADIENTS IN SEX RATIOS AT BIRTH IN THE FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS

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Victor Grech

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Background: The male-female ratio at birth (M/F: male births divided by total births, which is anticipated to approximate 0.515, has been shown to exhibit latitude gradients and secular trends. Methods: Annual national data for male and female live births for the 15 countries that comprise the former Soviet Union were obtained from the World Health Organisation for the period 1980–2009 (115,167,569 total live births and analysed with contingency tables. Spearman correlation was also carried out to compare percentage annual gross domestic product growth (GDP% – downloaded from the World Bank and M/F. In this context, GDP% is used as a measure for economic hardship or wellbeing within the populace. Results: There have been overall highly significant secular increases in M/F (p < 0.0001 in the countries and regions investigated. M/F is significantly lower in the three more northern regions (Russian Federation, Baltic States and Central Asia. M/F 0.51324, 0.51335-0.51314 than the two more southern regions (Southern Caucasus and Eastern Europe. M/F 0.51654, 0.51635-0.51672. There was a male excess of 113,818 live births.There was a significant positive correlation between GDP% and M/F for Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. There was a significant negative correlation in Estonia. Conclusion: Previous studies have shown that improving socioeconomic conditions increase M/F, and the converse has also been demonstrated. This is a potential influence in this geographical area since this region has relatively recently emerged from communist rule and experienced an overall economic upturn, but is only partially supported using GDP%. Another factor may be the selective termination of female pregnancies. The latitude gradient parallels that of neighbouring Europe but no theory has been put forward to convincingly explain this finding to date.

Prevalence of osteoporosis and incidence of hip fracture in women - secular trends over 30 years

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Sernbo Ingemar

2010-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The number of hip fractures during recent decades has been reported to be increasing, partly because of an increasing proportion of elderly women in the society. However, whether changes in hip fracture annual incidence in women are attributable to secular changes in the prevalence of osteoporosis is unclear. Methods Bone mineral density was evaluated by single-photon absorptiometry at the distal radius in 456 women aged 50 years or above and living in the same city. The measurements were obtained by the same densitometer during three separate time periods: 1970-74 (n = 106, 1987-93 (n = 175 and 1998-1999 (n = 178, and the age-adjusted prevalence of osteoporosis in these three cohorts was calculated. Additionally, all hip fractures sustained in the target population of women aged 50 years or above between 1967 and 2001 were registered, whereupon the crude and the age-adjusted annual incidence of hip fractures were calculated. Results There was no significant difference in the age-adjusted prevalence of osteoporosis when the three cohorts were compared (P = 1.00. The crude annual incidence (per 10,000 women of hip fracture in the target population increased by 110% from 40 in 1967 to 84 in 2001. The overall trend in the crude incidence between 1967 and 2001 was increasing (1.58 per 10,000 women per year; 95 percent confidence interval, 1.17 to 1.99, whereas the age-adjusted incidence was stable over the same period (0.22 per 10,000 women per year; 95 percent confidence interval, -0.16 to 0.60. Conclusions The increased number of hip fracture in elderly women is more likely to be attributable to demographic changes in the population than to secular increase in the prevalence of osteoporosis.

The secular and the supernatural: madness and psychiatry in the short stories of Muriel Spark.

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Beveridge, A W

2015-01-01

Edinburgh-born Muriel Spark is one of modern Scotland's greatest writers. Examination of her work reveals that the subjects of madness and psychiatry are recurrent themes in her writing. She herself had a mental breakdown when she was a young woman and she took an interest in the world of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In her short stories, Spark approaches the subject of madness in a variety of ways: she relates it to the supernatural; to writing fiction; and to religion. She frequently juxtaposes secular and supernatural explanations of mental disturbance. Spark adopts a sceptical and, at times, mocking view of psychiatrists and psychiatric treatment. Both psychoanalysis and pills are seen as problematic.

Social structure, infectious diseases, disasters, secularism, and cultural change in America.

Science.gov (United States)

Grossmann, Igor; Varnum, Michael E W

2015-03-01

Why do cultures change? The present work examined cultural change in eight cultural-level markers, or correlates, of individualism in the United States, all of which increased over the course of the 20th century: frequency of individualist themes in books, preference for uniqueness in baby naming, frequency of single-child relative to multichild families, frequency of single-generation relative to multigeneration households, percentage of adults and percentage of older adults living alone, small family size, and divorce rates (relative to marriage rates). We tested five key hypotheses regarding cultural change in individualism-collectivism. As predicted by previous theories, changes in socioeconomic structure, pathogen prevalence, and secularism accompanied changes in individualism averaged across all measures. The relationship with changes in individualism was less robust for urbanization. Contrary to previous theories, changes in individualism were positively (as opposed to negatively) related to the frequency of disasters. Time-lagged analyses suggested that only socioeconomic structure had a robust effect on individualism; changes in socioeconomic structure preceded changes in individualism. Implications for anthropology, psychology, and sociology are discussed. © The Author(s) 2015.

The secular tidal disruption of stars by low-mass Super Massive Black Holes secondaries in galactic nuclei

Science.gov (United States)

Fragione, Giacomo; Leigh, Nathan

2018-06-01

Stars passing too close to a super massive black hole (SMBH) can produce tidal disruption events (TDEs). Since the resulting stellar debris can produce an electromagnetic flare, TDEs are believed to probe the presence of single SMBHs in galactic nuclei, which otherwise remain dark. In this paper, we show how stars orbiting an IMBH secondary are perturbed by an SMBH primary. We find that the evolution of the stellar orbits are severely affected by the primary SMBH due to secular effects and stars orbiting with high inclinations with respect to the SMBH-IMBH orbital plane end their lives as TDEs due to Kozai-Lidov oscillations, hence illuminating the secondary SMBH/IMBH. Above a critical SMBH mass of ≈1.15 × 108 M⊙, no TDE can occur for typical stars in an old stellar population since the Schwarzschild radius exceeds the tidal disruption radius. Consequently, any TDEs due to such massive SMBHs will remain dark. It follows that no TDEs should be observed in galaxies more massive than ≈4.15 × 1010 M⊙, unless a lower-mass secondary SMBH or IMBH is also present. The secular mechanism for producing TDEs considered here therefore offers a useful probe of SMBH-SMBH/IMBH binarity in the most massive galaxies. We further show that the TDE rate can be ≈10-4 - 10-3 yr-1, and that most TDEs occur on ≈0.5 Myr. Finally, we show that stars may be ejected with velocities up to thousands of km s-1, which could contribute to the observed population of Galactic hypervelocity stars.

A Secular Indicator Of the Degree Of Economic Development and Synthetic Evaluation Of Population Well-Being Trends

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Gheorghe Săvoiu

2015-12-01

Full Text Available he specifically multidisciplinary approach employed in the present paper is motivated by the validity of Engel’s sociological laws, the usefulness of the elasticity of the population’s food products demand according to income, the statistical association between the contraction of the share of expenditures for these goods and the expansion of economy development, and the consistent assessment of the trends in population well-being, in keeping with the research of family budgets, focusing on the case of Romania in the last century. The introduction is devoted to the statistical, economic and sociological tools for assessing economic development and the trends in well-being. The first section describes the weighting coefficients in the universe of interpret indexes, and the second presents the methodology relating to a secular instrument of assessing the degree of economic development and the synthetic evaluation of the trends of well-being in Romania, in parallel to a number of maximum and minimum (European and international trends. The results presented, and the discussion caused by the statistical confrontation of that statistical, economic and sociological information, embrace, with the conclusions, the attempt made by the whole of the paper, to round up, by means of this tool, a necessary set of secular or Schumpeterian indicators, harmonized and comparable, of the GDP/capita type, or such as cost of life index, consumer price index, public and external debt, etc.; such already constructed indicators contribute to delineating the historical and macro-behavioural specificity of such an economy in Eastern Europe as that of Romania.

Modelling the KIC8462852 light curves: compatibility of the dips and secular dimming with an exocomet interpretation

Science.gov (United States)

Wyatt, M. C.; van Lieshout, R.; Kennedy, G. M.; Boyajian, T. S.

2018-02-01

This paper shows how the dips and secular dimming in the KIC8462852 light curve can originate in circumstellar material distributed around a single elliptical orbit (e.g. exocomets). The expected thermal emission and wavelength dependent dimming is derived for different orbital parameters and geometries, including dust that is optically thick to stellar radiation, and for a size distribution of dust with realistic optical properties. We first consider dust distributed evenly around the orbit, then show how to derive its uneven distribution from the optical light curve and to predict light curves at different wavelengths. The fractional luminosity of an even distribution is approximately the level of dimming times stellar radius divided by distance from the star at transit. Non-detection of dust thermal emission for KIC8462852 thus provides a lower limit on the transit distance to complement the 0.6 au upper limit imposed by 0.4 d dips. Unless the dust distribution is optically thick, the putative 16 per cent century-long secular dimming must have disappeared before the WISE 12 μm measurement in 2010, and subsequent 4.5 μm observations require transits at >0.05 au. However, self-absorption of thermal emission removes these constraints for opaque dust distributions. The passage of dust clumps through pericentre is predicted to cause infrared brightening lasting tens of days and dimming during transit, such that total flux received decreases at wavelengths dimming levels than seen for KIC8462852 are more common in the Galactic population and may be detected in future transit surveys.

p-Euler equations and p-Navier-Stokes equations

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Lei; Liu, Jian-Guo

2018-04-01

We propose in this work new systems of equations which we call p-Euler equations and p-Navier-Stokes equations. p-Euler equations are derived as the Euler-Lagrange equations for the action represented by the Benamou-Brenier characterization of Wasserstein-p distances, with incompressibility constraint. p-Euler equations have similar structures with the usual Euler equations but the 'momentum' is the signed (p - 1)-th power of the velocity. In the 2D case, the p-Euler equations have streamfunction-vorticity formulation, where the vorticity is given by the p-Laplacian of the streamfunction. By adding diffusion presented by γ-Laplacian of the velocity, we obtain what we call p-Navier-Stokes equations. If γ = p, the a priori energy estimates for the velocity and momentum have dual symmetries. Using these energy estimates and a time-shift estimate, we show the global existence of weak solutions for the p-Navier-Stokes equations in Rd for γ = p and p ≥ d ≥ 2 through a compactness criterion.

Equating error in observed-score equating

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Linden, Willem J.

2006-01-01

Traditionally, error in equating observed scores on two versions of a test is defined as the difference between the transformations that equate the quantiles of their distributions in the sample and population of test takers. But it is argued that if the goal of equating is to adjust the scores of

Secular distribution of highly metalliferous black shales corresponds with peaks in past atmosphere oxygenation

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Sean C.; Large, Ross R.; Coveney, Raymond M.; Kelley, Karen D.; Slack, John F.; Steadman, Jeffrey A.; Gregory, Daniel D.; Sack, Patrick J.; Meffre, Sebastien

2017-08-01

Highly metalliferous black shales (HMBS) are enriched in organic carbon and a suite of metals, including Ni, Se, Mo, Ag, Au, Zn, Cu, Pb, V, As, Sb, Se, P, Cr, and U ± PGE, compared to common black shales, and are distributed at particular times through Earth history. They constitute an important future source of metals. HMBS are relatively thin units within thicker packages of regionally extensive, continental margin or intra-continental marine shales that are rich in organic matter and bio-essential trace elements. Accumulation and preservation of black shales, and the metals contained within them, usually require low-oxygen or euxinic bottom waters. However, whole-rock redox proxies, particularly Mo, suggest that HMBS may have formed during periods of elevated atmosphere pO2. This interpretation is supported by high levels of nutrient trace elements within these rocks and secular patterns of Se and Se/Co ratios in sedimentary pyrite through Earth history, with peaks occurring in the middle Paleoproterozoic, Early Cambrian to Early Ordovician, Middle Devonian, Middle to late Carboniferous, Middle Permian, and Middle to Late Cretaceous, all corresponding with time periods of HMBS deposition. This counter-intuitive relationship of strongly anoxic to euxinic, localized seafloor conditions forming under an atmosphere of peak oxygen concentrations is proposed as key to the genesis of HMBS. The secular peaks and shoulders of enriched Se in sedimentary pyrite through time correlate with periods of tectonic plate collision, which resulted in high nutrient supply to the oceans and consequently maximum productivity accompanying severe drawdown into seafloor muds of C, S, P, and nutrient trace metals. The focused burial of C and S over extensive areas of the seafloor, during these anoxic to euxinic periods, likely resulted in an O2 increase in the atmosphere, causing short-lived peaks in pO2 that coincide with the deposition of HMBS. As metals become scarce, particularly Mo

Explanation of the anomalous secular increase of the moon orbit eccentricity by the new theory of gravitation (NTG)

Science.gov (United States)

Ziefle, Reiner Georg

2013-03-01

Present day gravitational physics experiences a huge success in obtaining better and better experimental results. In some cases, the observations do not fit with the present knowledge of established physics. Phenomena, like the increase of the Astronomical Unit by 7 m per century or the so-called anomalous secular increase of the eccentricity of the lunar orbit by about 9 × 10^-12 per year, which can neither be explained by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, nor by the Newtonian Theory of Gravitation, can be explained by the New Theory of Gravitation

Secular trends: a ten-year comparison of the amount and type of physical activity and inactivity of random samples of adolescents in the Czech Republic

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Frömel Karel

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background An optimal level of physical activity (PA in adolescence influences the level of PA in adulthood. Although PA declines with age have been demonstrated repeatedly, few studies have been carried out on secular trends. The present study assessed levels, types and secular trends of PA and sedentary behaviour of a sample of adolescents in the Czech Republic. Methods The study comprised two cross-sectional cohorts of adolescents ten years apart. The analysis compared data collected through a week-long monitoring of adolescents' PA in 1998-2000 and 2008-2010. Adolescents wore either Yamax SW-701 or Omron HJ-105 pedometer continuously for 7 days (at least 10 hours per day excluding sleeping, hygiene and bathing. They also recorded their number of steps per day, the type and duration of PA and sedentary behaviour (in minutes on record sheets. In total, 902 adolescents (410 boys; 492 girls aged 14-18 were eligible for analysis. Results Overweight and obesity in Czech adolescents participating in this study increased from 5.5% (older cohort, 1998-2000 to 10.4% (younger cohort, 2008-2010. There were no inter-cohort significant changes in the total amount of sedentary behaviour in boys. However in girls, on weekdays, there was a significant increase in the total duration of sedentary behaviour of the younger cohort (2008-2010 compared with the older one (1998-2000. Studying and screen time (television and computer were among the main sedentary behaviours in Czech adolescents. The types of sedentary behaviour also changed: watching TV (1998-2000 was replaced by time spent on computers (2008-2010. The Czech health-related criterion (achieving 11,000 steps per day decreased only in boys from 68% (1998-2000 to 55% (2008-2010. Across both genders, 55%-75% of Czech adolescents met the health-related criterion of recommended steps per day, however less participants in the younger cohort (2008-2010 met this criterion than in the older cohort

Christian identity of secular Europe

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Malešević Miroslava

2006-01-01

Full Text Available The Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy began after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005. The newspaper explained that this publication was a contribution to debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship. In response, Danish Muslim organizations held public protests and spread knowledge of Jyllands-Postens publication. As the controversy grew, some or all of the cartoons were reprinted in newspapers in more than fifty other countries, which led to violent protests, particularly in the Muslim world. Critics of the cartoons describe them as islamophobic and argue that they are blasphemous, intended to humiliate a marginalized Danish minority, and a manifestation of ignorance about the history of western imperialism, from colonialism to the current conflicts in the Middle East. Supporters of the cartoons claim they illustrate an important issue in an age of Islamic extremist terrorism and that their publication is a legitimate exercise of the right of free speech. They also note that similar cartoons about other religions are frequently printed, arguing that the followers of Islam were not targeted in a discriminatory way. The dispute has again pointed out to the relevance of religion and religious differences in the contemporary world. Again, several questions presented themselves as significant: citizen freedom, values and the rights to exercise them, secularism, tolerance, multiculturalism majority-minority relationships and so on. The resolution to these issues appears as of the outmost importance, considering the existing tendencies of united Europe to even more firmly establish cultural, economic, and political associations, in order to launch a one, joined European identity with vanishing national, ethnic and religious differences. Therefore, the question becomes: what could serve as a foundation for

Historical and Doctrinal Background for the Study of Secularism | Antecedentes históricos y doctrinales para el estudio del laicismo

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Salvador Ordóñez Delgado

2007-12-01

Full Text Available In the history of Spanish constitutionalism, progressive texts have included several provisions of a secular character, as in the case of the draft federal Constitution of 1873 and, especially, the Republican Constitution of 1931 and the various regulations adopted during the Second Republic, as well as the period of the Sexenio Democrático, in contrast to the setback of the Restoration period and, particularly, the Franco period, during which Catholicism became the official State religion, as part of the special treatment which the Catholic Church obtained in its relations with the State. The current Constitution of 1978 restored the secular spirit of the Republican period within a framework of respectful relations with the Catholic Church. In this context, the successive democratic governments have devised their educational policies, in which secular principles have depended on the political colour of the various cabinets and the distribution of parliamentary seats, against the background of the agreements between the Spanish State and the Holy See of 1979. | En la historia del constitucionalismo español, los textos progresistas contemplan diversas disposiciones de carácter laicista, como es el caso del proyecto de Constitución federal de 1873 y, especialmente, la Constitución republicana de 1931 y las distintas disposiciones legislativas aprobadas durante la II República, además de la etapa del Sexenio democrático, en contraposición con el retroceso que representa la época de la Restauración y particularmente el franquismo, en el que el catolicismo se convierte en la religión oficial del Estado, de acuerdo con el especial tratamiento que consigue la Iglesia en sus relaciones con el Estado. La actual Constitución de 1978 retoma el espíritu laico de la etapa republicana en el marco de unas relaciones de respeto con la Iglesia católica. En este contexto, los gobiernos democráticos han elaborado sus políticas educativas, en las

Constraints on geomagnetic secular variation modeling from electromagnetism and fluid dynamics of the Earth's core

Science.gov (United States)

Benton, E. R.

1986-01-01

A spherical harmonic representation of the geomagnetic field and its secular variation for epoch 1980, designated GSFC(9/84), is derived and evaluated. At three epochs (1977.5, 1980.0, 1982.5) this model incorporates conservation of magnetic flux through five selected patches of area on the core/mantle boundary bounded by the zero contours of vertical magnetic field. These fifteen nonlinear constraints are included like data in an iterative least squares parameter estimation procedure that starts with the recently derived unconstrained field model GSFC (12/83). Convergence is approached within three iterations. The constrained model is evaluated by comparing its predictive capability outside the time span of its data, in terms of residuals at magnetic observatories, with that for the unconstrained model.

THE "BEES" VERSUS THE "SPIDERS": A SECULAR DEBATE ON THE FUTURE OF THE OLD BOOK.

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Nicolas Bas Martin

2011-12-01

Full Text Available The advent of Internet in the Information Society noticeably has revolutionized the uses of writing, of print culture. Thus, access and dissemination to the ancient book, secularly reduced to a privileged few, has been democratized noticeably thanks to the Net. Old and new have returned to live with. A debate that takes us to the Modern age, when the Republic of Letters, the current Internet, reflected on the authority of ancient and modern. It has been many centuries since, and the life of the ancient book, despite the technological changes, remains the same. Only the media has changed, the messages remain similar to those found during the Old Typography Regime. Evidence of how cohabitation is imposed on the idea of substitution by other means.

Abortion in Islamic Ethics, and How it is Perceived in Turkey: A Secular, Muslim Country.

Science.gov (United States)

Ekmekci, Perihan Elif

2017-06-01

Abortion is among the most widely discussed concepts of medical ethics. Since the well-known ethical theories have emerged from Western world, the position of Islamic ethics regarding main issues of medical ethics has been overlooked. Muslims constitute a considerable amount of world population. Turkish Republic is the only Muslim country ruled with secular democracy and one of the three Muslim countries where abortion is legalized. The first aim of this paper is to present discussions on abortion in Islamic ethics in the context of major ethical concepts; the legal status of the fetus, respect for life and the right not to be born. The second aim is to put forth Turkey's present legislation about abortion in the context of Islamic ethical and religious aspects.

Effect of the Pauli principle on the excited states of doubly-even deformed nuclei

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jolos, R.V.; Molina, J.L.; Soloviev, V.G.

1980-01-01

It is shown that the commutation relations between the quasiparticles forming phonons can correctly be taken into account within the quasiparticle-phonon nuclear model. The doubly-even deformed nuclei with the isoscalar and isovector multipole-multipole forces are studied. The exact and approximate secular equations are derived. It is shown that the two-phonon poles in the secular equation are shifted due to the Pauli principle. These shifts are large for the two identical collective phonons. In some cases pronounced shifts are found for the poles composed of a low-lying collective phonon and a collective phonon forming the giant resonance. In other cases the shifts are not large, as a rule. (orig.) 891 FKS/orig. 892 MB

equateIRT: An R Package for IRT Test Equating

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Michela Battauz

2015-12-01

Full Text Available The R package equateIRT implements item response theory (IRT methods for equating different forms composed of dichotomous items. In particular, the IRT models included are the three-parameter logistic model, the two-parameter logistic model, the one-parameter logistic model and the Rasch model. Forms can be equated when they present common items (direct equating or when they can be linked through a chain of forms that present common items in pairs (indirect or chain equating. When two forms can be equated through different paths, a single conversion can be obtained by averaging the equating coefficients. The package calculates direct and chain equating coefficients. The averaging of direct and chain coefficients that link the same two forms is performed through the bisector method. Furthermore, the package provides analytic standard errors of direct, chain and average equating coefficients.

Figurative lights: Images of Techno-Scientific slides and Secularization in Spain during the 18th Century

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Germán LABRADOR MÉNDEZ

2010-06-01

Full Text Available This paper asembles and studies a set of iconological representations linked to technical and scientific transformations during the eighteenth Century in Spain, reading them in a dialectic between modern science, Enlightenment policies and popular culture. After analyzing the emergence of representations both of science and scientists according to the process of institutionalizing science as a socio-professional language, two specific eighteenth century technologies are studied: magic lanterns and aerostats. By interpreting their first images and their infiltration into popular and official speeches and the imagination of the moment, it is argued that in those images a tale of demo-Enlightenment is expressed, a tale about secularization and progress as a collective aesthetic experience.

Does the prescriptive lifestyle of Seventh-day Adventists provide 'immunity' from the secular effects of changes in BMI?

Science.gov (United States)

Kent, Lillian M; Worsley, Anthony

2009-04-01

To examine the effect of Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) membership on 'immunity' to the secular effects of changes in BMI. Three independent, cross-sectional, screening surveys conducted by Sydney Adventist Hospital in 1976, 1986 and 1988 and a survey conducted among residents of Melbourne in 2006. Two hundred and fifty-two SDA and 464 non-SDA in 1976; 166 SDA and 291 non-SDA in 1986; 120 SDA and 300-non SDA in 1988; and 251 SDA and 294 non-SDA in 2006. Height and weight measured by hospital staff in 1976, 1986 and 1988; self-reported by respondents in 2006. The mean BMI of non-SDA men increased between 1986 and 2006 (P < 0.001) but did not change for SDA men or non-SDA women. Despite small increases in SDA women's mean BMI (P = 0.030) between 1988 and 2006, this was no different to that of SDA men and non-SDA women in 2006. The diet and eating patterns of SDA men and women were more 'prudent' than those of non-SDA men and women, including more fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts and legumes, and less alcohol, meat, sweetened drinks and coffee. Many of these factors were found to be predictors of lower BMI. The 'prudent' dietary and lifestyle prescriptions of SDA men appear to have 'immunised' them to the secular effects of changes that occurred among non-SDA men's BMI. The dietary and lifestyle trends of SDA women did not reflect the increase in their BMI observed in 2006.

Secular trends in the rate of low birth weight in Brazilian State Capitals in the period 1996 to 2010 Tendencia secular de la tasa de bajo peso al nacer en las capitales brasileñas de 1996 a 2010 Tendência secular da taxa de baixo peso ao nascer nas capitais brasileiras de 1996 a 2010

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Helma Jane Ferreira Veloso

2013-01-01

Full Text Available Secular trends in rates of low birth weight in Brazilian state capital cities were evaluated for the period 1996 to 2010 using joinpoint regression models. The rates were calculated using data from the Live Births Information System. Newborns weighing less than 500g were excluded. Only data for capital cities was included since under-registration of births in these cities is lower and new trends can be detected earlier. There was a significant increase in the rate of low birth weight in the Brazilian capitals of the North Region, Northeast Region, South Region and Southeast Region up to 2003/2004, stabilizing thereafter. In the capitals of the Center-west Region the rate increased throughout the whole study period. The rate of low birth weight was higher in the capitals of the more developed regions. The rate of multiple births increased significantly in all Brazilian capitals, while the stillbirth rate decreased and showed a negative correlation with the rate of low birth weight. The increase in the rate of low birth weight may be partially explained by the increase in multiple births, an increase in the birth of infants weighing 500 to 999g and by the reduction in the stillbirth rate.La tendencia secular de la tasa de bajo peso al nacer de 1996 a 2010 en las capitales brasileñas se evaluó utilizando modelos de regresión joinpoint. Las tasas se calcularon a partir del Sistema de Información sobre Nacidos Vivos, excluyéndose recién nacidos con un peso A tendência secular da taxa de baixo peso ao nascer de 1996 a 2010 nas capitais brasileiras foi avaliada utilizando-se modelos de regressão joinpoint. As taxas foram calculadas a partir do Sistema de Informações sobre Nascidos Vivos, excluindo-se recém-nascido com peso < 500g. Foram incluídos apenas dados das capitais, onde o sub-registro é menor e novas tendências podem ser detectadas mais precocemente. A taxa de baixo peso ao nascer aumentou significantemente nas capitais

Dynamical renormalization group approach to transport in ultrarelativistic plasmas: The electrical conductivity in high temperature QED

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boyanovsky, Daniel; Vega, Hector J. de; Wang Shangyung

2003-01-01

The dc electrical conductivity of an ultrarelativistic QED plasma is studied in real time by implementing the dynamical renormalization group. The conductivity is obtained from the real-time dependence of a dissipative kernel closely related to the retarded photon polarization. Pinch singularities in the imaginary part of the polarization are manifest as secular terms that grow in time in the perturbative expansion of this kernel. The leading secular terms are studied explicitly and it is shown that they are insensitive to the anomalous damping of hard fermions as a result of a cancellation between self-energy and vertex corrections. The resummation of the secular terms via the dynamical renormalization group leads directly to a renormalization group equation in real time, which is the Boltzmann equation for the (gauge invariant) fermion distribution function. A direct correspondence between the perturbative expansion and the linearized Boltzmann equation is established, allowing a direct identification of the self-energy and vertex contributions to the collision term. We obtain a Fokker-Planck equation in momentum space that describes the dynamics of the departure from equilibrium to leading logarithmic order in the coupling. This equation determines that the transport time scale is given by t tr =24 π/e 4 T ln(1/e). The solution of the Fokker-Planck equation approaches asymptotically the steady-state solution as ∼e -t/(4.038...t tr ) . The steady-state solution leads to the conductivity σ=15.698 T/e 2 ln(1/e) to leading logarithmic order. We discuss the contributions beyond leading logarithms as well as beyond the Boltzmann equation. The dynamical renormalization group provides a link between linear response in quantum field theory and kinetic theory

Secular and seasonal trends of Neospora abortion in California dairy cows.

Science.gov (United States)

Thurmond, M C; Anderson, M L; Blanchard, P C

1995-06-01

This study was undertaken to determine if the proportion of dairy cow abortions attributable to Neospora sp. infection increased or occurred in a seasonal cycle during a 6-yr period. Abortions caused by Neospora sp. were tallied for all fetuses submitted to the Tulare branch of the California Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory between January 1985 and December 1990. Regression analysis of 221 cases of Neospora among 762 fetuses submitted showed a weak increasing secular trend (P = 0.053, r2 = 0.05), with predicted monthly proportions at the beginning and end of the 6 yr of 0.16 and 0.33, respectively. Using a Kolmogorov-Smirnov-type statistic, comparison of the 12-mo distribution of Neospora sp. cases and a hypothetical distribution of cows at risk of aborting found about 16% of variation in cases was attributable to season (P fall. Results indicate that Neospora sp. abortion in California dairy cows is not new or recently emerging and that seasonally related factors influence some of the risk of abortion. Results suggest that Neospora sp. has contributed to the high dairy cow abortion rate for many years, and that seasonally varying exposures may predispose to transmission or recrudescence of infection.

Computing generalized Langevin equations and generalized Fokker-Planck equations.

Science.gov (United States)

Darve, Eric; Solomon, Jose; Kia, Amirali

2009-07-07

The Mori-Zwanzig formalism is an effective tool to derive differential equations describing the evolution of a small number of resolved variables. In this paper we present its application to the derivation of generalized Langevin equations and generalized non-Markovian Fokker-Planck equations. We show how long time scales rates and metastable basins can be extracted from these equations. Numerical algorithms are proposed to discretize these equations. An important aspect is the numerical solution of the orthogonal dynamics equation which is a partial differential equation in a high dimensional space. We propose efficient numerical methods to solve this orthogonal dynamics equation. In addition, we present a projection formalism of the Mori-Zwanzig type that is applicable to discrete maps. Numerical applications are presented from the field of Hamiltonian systems.

Talla final de mujeres de Córdoba, Argentina, y exploración de la tendencia secular (1978­1988)

OpenAIRE

Agrelo Fernando; Pascual Laura Rosa; Lobo Beatriz; Sabulsky Jacobo

1999-01-01

Este trabajo tuvo por objeto aportar datos locales sobre la talla final de mujeres de Córdoba, Argentina, y explorar la posibilidad de una tendencia secular en su crecimiento. Se examinaron 513 mujeres de 18 a 40 años de edad, madres de niños incluidos en el estudio CLACYD (Córdoba: lactancia, alimentación, crecimiento y desarrollo). Las mediciones se realizaron según técnicas estandarizadas, durante mayo y junio de 1994. Usando como normas de referencia datos del Centro Nacional de Estadísti...

Development of kinetics equations from the Boltzmann equation; Etablissement des equations de la cinetique a partir de l'equation de Boltzmann

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Plas, R.

1962-07-01

The author reports a study on kinetics equations for a reactor. He uses the conventional form of these equations but by using a dynamic multiplication factor. Thus, constants related to delayed neutrons are not modified by efficiency factors. The author first describes the theoretic kinetic operation of a reactor and develops the associated equations. He reports the development of equations for multiplication factors.

Microscopic equation of state calculations: 1. Nuclear matter. 2. Liquid helium 3

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heyer, J.P.

1989-01-01

A new method for calculating the equation of state of extended Fermi systems is proposed and applied to nuclear matter and liquid 3 He. New techniques are developed for summing up the particle-particle (pp) and particle-hole (ph) ring diagrams to all orders in the calculation of the ground state shift ΔE 0 for many-body systems. Analytic expressions for ΔE pp P 0 , the contribution from all of the pp ring diagrams to ΔE 0 , and ΔE ph 0 , the corresponding contribution from all of the ph ring diagrams, have been obtained. It has been shown that the pp ring diagram sum may be written as an integral over frequency, involving the particle-particle Green's function. A similar integral expression is derived for the ph ring diagram sum. Two methods are developed for carrying out the frequency integrations, namely the multipole and transition amplitude methods. These methods have been tested on an exactly-solvable many-fermion model, a modified Lipkin model, and compared. The author has studied the instability of nuclear matter at both zero and finite temperature within the pp ring diagram framework. He has found using the Gogny D1 effective nucleon-nucleon interaction, complex eigenvalues of an RPA-type secular equation are obtained in a well-defined temperature-density region. When complex eigenvalues occur, the thermodynamic potential becomes complex. The possible connection between the occurrence of complex eigenvalues and liquid-gas phase separation is discussed. The pp ring diagrams are also found to lower the compression modulus of nuclear matter. Lastly, the pp ring diagram method is applied to the calculation of the ground state energy of normal and spin-polarized liquid 3 He. We have found a binding energy per particle (BE/A) of 1.45 degree K and 1.79 degree K for the normal and spin-polarized systems, respectively

Time-causal decomposition of geomagnetic time series into secular variation, solar quiet, and disturbance signals

Science.gov (United States)

Rigler, E. Joshua

2017-04-26

A theoretical basis and prototype numerical algorithm are provided that decompose regular time series of geomagnetic observations into three components: secular variation; solar quiet, and disturbance. Respectively, these three components correspond roughly to slow changes in the Earth’s internal magnetic field, periodic daily variations caused by quasi-stationary (with respect to the sun) electrical current systems in the Earth’s magnetosphere, and episodic perturbations to the geomagnetic baseline that are typically driven by fluctuations in a solar wind that interacts electromagnetically with the Earth’s magnetosphere. In contrast to similar algorithms applied to geomagnetic data in the past, this one addresses the issue of real time data acquisition directly by applying a time-causal, exponential smoother with “seasonal corrections” to the data as soon as they become available.

Simple equation method for nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications

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Taher A. Nofal

2016-04-01

Full Text Available In this article, we focus on the exact solution of the some nonlinear partial differential equations (NLPDEs such as, Kodomtsev–Petviashvili (KP equation, the (2 + 1-dimensional breaking soliton equation and the modified generalized Vakhnenko equation by using the simple equation method. In the simple equation method the trial condition is the Bernoulli equation or the Riccati equation. It has been shown that the method provides a powerful mathematical tool for solving nonlinear wave equations in mathematical physics and engineering problems.

Examining secular trend  and seasonality in count data using dynamic generalized linear modelling

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Lundbye-Christensen, Søren; Dethlefsen, Claus; Gorst-Rasmussen, Anders

series regression model for Poisson counts. It differs in allowing the regression coefficients to vary gradually over time in a random fashion. Data  In the period January 1980 to 1999, 17,989 incidents of acute myocardial infarction were recorded in the county of Northern Jutland, Denmark. Records were......Aims  Time series of incidence counts often show secular trends and seasonal patterns. We present a model for incidence counts capable of handling a possible gradual change in growth rates and seasonal patterns, serial correlation and overdispersion. Methods  The model resembles an ordinary time...... updated daily. Results  The model with a seasonal pattern and an approximately linear trend was fitted to the data, and diagnostic plots indicate a good model fit. The analysis with the dynamic model revealed peaks coinciding with influenza epidemics. On average the peak-to-trough ratio is estimated...

High-resolution chronology of sediment below CCD based on Holocene paleomagnetic secular variations in the Tohoku-oki earthquake rupture zone

Science.gov (United States)

Kanamatsu, Toshiya; Usami, Kazuko; McHugh, Cecilia M. G.; Ikehara, Ken

2017-08-01

Using high-resolution paleomagnetic data, we examined the potential for obtaining precise ages from sediment core samples recovered from deep-sea basins close to rupture zones of the 2011 and earlier earthquakes off Tohoku, Japan. Obtaining detailed stratigraphic ages from deep-sea sediments below the calcium compensation depth (CCD) is difficult, but we found that the samples contain excellent paleomagnetic secular variation records to constrain age models. Variations in paleomagnetic directions obtained from the sediments reveal systematic changes in the cores. A stacked paleomagnetic profile closely matches the Lake Biwa data sets in southwest Japan for the past 7000 years, one can establish age models based on secular variations of the geomagnetic field on sediments recovered uniquely below the CCD. Comparison of paleomagnetic directions near a tephra and a paleomagnetic direction of contemporaneous pyroclastic flow deposits acquired by different magnetization processes shows precise depositional ages reflecting the magnetization delay of the marine sediment record.Plain Language SummaryGenerally obtaining detailed ages from deep-sea sediments is difficult, because available dating method is very limited. We found that the deep-see sediment off North Japan recorded past sequential geomagnetic directions. If those records correlate well with the reference record in past 7000 years, then we could estimate age of sediment by pattern matching. Additionally a volcanic ash emitted in 915 A.D., which was intercalated in our samples, indicates a time lag in our age model. This observation makes our age model more precise.

Emission lineshapes of the B850 band of light-harvesting 2 (LH2) complex in purple bacteria: a second order time-nonlocal quantum master equation approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Praveen; Jang, Seogjoo

2013-04-07

The emission lineshape of the B850 band in the light harvesting complex 2 of purple bacteria is calculated by extending the approach of 2nd order time-nonlocal quantum master equation [S. Jang and R. J. Silbey, J. Chem. Phys. 118, 9312 (2003)]. The initial condition for the emission process corresponds to the stationary excited state density where exciton states are entangled with the bath modes in equilibrium. This exciton-bath coupling, which is not diagonal in either site excitation or exciton basis, results in a new inhomogeneous term that is absent in the expression for the absorption lineshape. Careful treatment of all the 2nd order terms are made, and explicit expressions are derived for both full 2nd order lineshape expression and the one based on secular approximation that neglects off-diagonal components in the exciton basis. Numerical results are presented for a few representative cases of disorder and temperature. Comparison of emission line shape with the absorption line shape is also made. It is shown that the inhomogeneous term coming from the entanglement of the system and bath degrees of freedom makes significant contributions to the lineshape. It is also found that the perturbative nature of the theory can result in negative portion of lineshape in some situations, which can be removed significantly by inclusion of the inhomogeneous term and completely by using the secular approximation. Comparison of the emission and absorption lineshapes at different temperatures demonstrates the role of thermal population of different exciton states and exciton-phonon couplings.

Islamism, Secularism and the Woman Question in the Aftermath of the Arab Spring: Evidence from the Arab Barometer

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Ashley M. Fox

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The uprisings that led to regime change during the early period of the Arab Spring were initially inclusive and pluralistic in nature, with men and women from every political and religious orientation engaging actively in political activities on the street and in virtual spaces. While there was an opening of political space for women and the inclusion of demands of marginalized groups in the activists’ agenda, the struggle to reimagine national identities that balance Islamic roots and secular yearnings is still ongoing in many countries in the region. This paper seeks to deepen understanding of the extent to which the pluralistic sentiments and openness to accepting the rights women have persisted following the uprising. We aim to examine changes in attitudes towards women’s equality in countries that underwent regime change through popular uprisings during revolutionary upheavals of the Arab Spring and in countries where regimes have remained unchanged. Using available data from consecutive rounds of the Arab Barometer survey, we examine changes in attitudes in nine countries with two rounds of Arab Barometer during and post Arab Spring (Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, Sudan, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine. We find that support for “Muslim feminism” (an interpretation of gender equality grounded in Islam has increased over the period and particularly in Arab Spring countries, while support for “secular feminism” has declined. In most countries examined, relatively high degrees of support for gender equality co-exist with a preference for Islamic interpretations of personal status codes pertaining to women. We discuss the implications of these findings for academics and activists concerned with women’s rights in the Middle East North Africa (MENA.

Extended rate equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Shore, B.W.

1981-01-01

The equations of motion are discussed which describe time dependent population flows in an N-level system, reviewing the relationship between incoherent (rate) equations, coherent (Schrodinger) equations, and more general partially coherent (Bloch) equations. Approximations are discussed which replace the elaborate Bloch equations by simpler rate equations whose coefficients incorporate long-time consequences of coherence

Modified Reduced Differential Transform Method for Partial Differential-Algebraic Equations

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Brahim Benhammouda

2014-01-01

PDAEs in convergent series form. In addition, we present the posttreatment of the power series solutions with the Laplace-Padé resummation method as a useful technique to find exact solutions. The main advantage of the proposed technique is that it is based on a few straightforward steps and does not generate secular terms or depend on a perturbation parameter.

Harmonically excited orbital variations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Morgan, T.

1985-01-01

Rephrasing the equations of motion for orbital maneuvers in terms of Lagrangian generalized coordinates instead of Newtonian rectangular cartesian coordinates can make certain harmonic terms in the orbital angular momentum vector more readily apparent. In this formulation the equations of motion adopt the form of a damped harmonic oscillator when torques are applied to the orbit in a variationally prescribed manner. The frequencies of the oscillator equation are in some ways unexpected but can nonetheless be exploited through resonant forcing functions to achieve large secular variations in the orbital elements. Two cases are discussed using a circular orbit as the control case: (1) large changes in orbital inclination achieved by harmonic excitation rather than one impulsive velocity change, and (2) periodic and secular changes to the longitude of the ascending node using both stable and unstable excitation strategies. The implications of these equations are also discussed for both artificial satellites and natural satellites. For the former, two utilitarian orbits are suggested, each exploiting a form of harmonic excitation. 5 refs

Spiritual Needs among Patients with Chronic Pain Diseases and Cancer Living in a Secular Society

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Büssing, Arndt; Janko, Annina; Baumann, Klaus

2013-01-01

. Methods In an anonymous cross-sectional study, standardized questionnaires were provided to German patients with chronic pain diseases (and cancer), i.e., Spiritual Needs Questionnaire (SpNQ), Spirituality/Religiosity and Coping (SpREUK-15), Spiritual Well-being (FACIT-Sp), Brief Multidimensional Life......Objective Research has shown that several patients report unmet psychosocial and spiritual needs. While most studies focus on patients with advanced stages of disease, we intended to identify unmet spiritual needs in patients with chronic pain diseases and cancer living in a secular society...... Satisfaction Scale, Interpretation of Illness Questionnaire, and Escape from Illness (Escape). Results We enrolled 392 patients (67% women, mean age 56.3 ± 13.6 years; 61% Christian denomination) with chronic pain diseases (86%) and cancer (14%). Religious Needs (mean score 0.5 ± 0.8 on the scale...

Multiple-scattering theory with a truncated basis set

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang, X.; Butler, W.H.

1992-01-01

Multiple-scattering theory (MST) is an extremely efficient technique for calculating the electronic structure of an assembly of atoms. The wave function in MST is expanded in terms of spherical waves centered on each atom and indexed by their orbital and azimuthal quantum numbers, l and m. The secular equation which determines the characteristic energies can be truncated at a value of the orbital angular momentum l max , for which the higher angular momentum phase shifts, δ l (l>l max ), are sufficiently small. Generally, the wave-function coefficients which are calculated from the secular equation are also truncated at l max . Here we point out that this truncation of the wave function is not necessary and is in fact inconsistent with the truncation of the secular equation. A consistent procedure is described in which the states with higher orbital angular momenta are retained but with their phase shifts set to zero. We show that this treatment gives smooth, continuous, and correctly normalized wave functions and that the total charge density calculated from the corresponding Green function agrees with the Lloyd formula result. We also show that this augmented wave function can be written as a linear combination of Andersen's muffin-tin orbitals in the case of muffin-tin potentials, and can be used to generalize the muffin-tin orbital idea to full-cell potentals

Numerical Solution of Heun Equation Via Linear Stochastic Differential Equation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hamidreza Rezazadeh

2014-05-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we intend to solve special kind of ordinary differential equations which is called Heun equations, by converting to a corresponding stochastic differential equation(S.D.E.. So, we construct a stochastic linear equation system from this equation which its solution is based on computing fundamental matrix of this system and then, this S.D.E. is solved by numerically methods. Moreover, its asymptotic stability and statistical concepts like expectation and variance of solutions are discussed. Finally, the attained solutions of these S.D.E.s compared with exact solution of corresponding differential equations.

Secular trends in growth and nutritional status of Mozambican school-aged children and adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

dos Santos, Fernanda Karina; Maia, José A R; Gomes, Thayse Natacha Q F; Daca, Timóteo; Madeira, Aspacia; Katzmarzyk, Peter T; Prista, António

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine secular changes in growth and nutritional status of Mozambican children and adolescents between 1992, 1999 and 2012. 3374 subjects (1600 boys, 1774 girls), distributed across the three time points (523 subjects in 1992; 1565 in 1999; and 1286 in 2012), were studied. Height and weight were measured, BMI was computed, and WHO cut-points were used to define nutritional status. ANCOVA models were used to compare height, weight and BMI across study years; chi-square was used to determine differences in the nutritional status prevalence across the years. Significant differences for boys were found for height and weight (p2012), and those from 2012 had the highest BMI (1999growth and nutritional status were observed among Mozambican youth from 1992 to 2012, which are associated with economic, social and cultural transitional processes, expressing a dual burden in this population, with reduction in malnourished youth in association with an increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity.

On the side of Barrabas or on the side of Christ. The harassment again the secular private schools in Spain, 1880-1910 Con Barrabás o con Cristo. El acoso a la escuela laica en España, 1880-1910

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Miguel LÁZARO LORENTE

2013-02-01

Full Text Available The introduction of secular education in Spain from the eighties in the nineteenth century will come from the hand of associations linked to freethinking and masonry, of Republican groups, and of anarchist groups. Since its inception, its development was extremely difficult. Funding was not readily available for premises, nor was for teachers or appropriate textbooks. But, above all, proponents of the secular school will soon have to face systematic harassment by the Spanish Church, social groups and the Conservatives who, at all levels, will oppose a fierce resistance to the timid and limited attempts of secularization in the Spanish social life. In that effort, the secular school should have played an important role, which will, in fact, be severely limited by the small number of secular schools put in place in Spain.La introducción de la escuela laica en España a partir de los años ochenta del siglo XIX vendrá de la mano de asociaciones vinculadas al librepensamiento y la masonería, de agrupaciones republicanas y de grupos anarquistas. Desde sus comienzos, su desarrollo resultó extraordinariamente difícil. No resultaba fácil disponer de financiación para los locales, ni tampoco contar con el profesorado y los libros de texto adecuados. Pero, sobre todo, los impulsores de la escuela laica pronto van a tener que afrontar el acoso sistemático de la Iglesia española y de los grupos sociales y políticos más conservadores que, a todos los niveles, opondrán una feroz resistencia a los tímidos y limitados intentos de secularización de la vida social española. En ese esfuerzo, la escuela laica debía haber jugado un importante papel, que quedará seriamente limitado por el reducido número de escuelas laicas realmente instaladas en España.

A generalization of the simplest equation method and its application to (3+1)-dimensional KP equation and generalized Fisher equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhao, Zhonglong; Zhang, Yufeng; Han, Zhong; Rui, Wenjuan

2014-01-01

In this paper, the simplest equation method is used to construct exact traveling solutions of the (3+1)-dimensional KP equation and generalized Fisher equation. We summarize the main steps of the simplest equation method. The Bernoulli and Riccati equation are used as simplest equations. This method is straightforward and concise, and it can be applied to other nonlinear partial differential equations

Chaotic diffusion in the Solar System

OpenAIRE

Laskar, Jacques

2008-01-01

A statistical analysis is performed over more than 1001 different integrations of the secular equations of the Solar system over 5 Gyr. With this secular system, the probability of the eccentricity of Mercury to reach 0.6 in 5 Gyr is about 1 to 2 %. In order to compare with (Ito and Tanikawa, 2002), we have performed the same analysis without general relativity, and obtained even more orbits of large eccentricity for Mercury. We have performed as well a direct integration of the planetary orb...

Analysis of wave equation in electromagnetic field by Proca equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pamungkas, Oky Rio; Soeparmi; Cari

2017-01-01

This research is aimed to analyze wave equation for the electric and magnetic field, vector and scalar potential, and continuity equation using Proca equation. Then, also analyze comparison of the solution on Maxwell and Proca equation for scalar potential and electric field, both as a function of distance and constant wave number. (paper)

Comparison of Kernel Equating and Item Response Theory Equating Methods

Science.gov (United States)

Meng, Yu

2012-01-01

The kernel method of test equating is a unified approach to test equating with some advantages over traditional equating methods. Therefore, it is important to evaluate in a comprehensive way the usefulness and appropriateness of the Kernel equating (KE) method, as well as its advantages and disadvantages compared with several popular item…

Integral equations

CERN Document Server

Moiseiwitsch, B L

2005-01-01

Two distinct but related approaches hold the solutions to many mathematical problems--the forms of expression known as differential and integral equations. The method employed by the integral equation approach specifically includes the boundary conditions, which confers a valuable advantage. In addition, the integral equation approach leads naturally to the solution of the problem--under suitable conditions--in the form of an infinite series.Geared toward upper-level undergraduate students, this text focuses chiefly upon linear integral equations. It begins with a straightforward account, acco

Partial Differential Equations

CERN Document Server

1988-01-01

The volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 7th Symposium on differential geometry and differential equations (DD7) held at the Nankai Institute of Mathematics, Tianjin, China, in 1986. Most of the contributions are original research papers on topics including elliptic equations, hyperbolic equations, evolution equations, non-linear equations from differential geometry and mechanics, micro-local analysis.

Nonlinear evolution equations

CERN Document Server

Uraltseva, N N

1995-01-01

This collection focuses on nonlinear problems in partial differential equations. Most of the papers are based on lectures presented at the seminar on partial differential equations and mathematical physics at St. Petersburg University. Among the topics explored are the existence and properties of solutions of various classes of nonlinear evolution equations, nonlinear imbedding theorems, bifurcations of solutions, and equations of mathematical physics (Navier-Stokes type equations and the nonlinear Schrödinger equation). The book will be useful to researchers and graduate students working in p

FMTLxLyLz DIMENSIONAL EQUAT DIMENSIONAL EQUATION ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

eobe

plant made of 12mm thick steel plate was used in de steel plate ... water treatment plant. ... ameters affecting filtration processes were used to derive an equation usin ..... system. However, in deriving the equation onl terms are incorporated.

Kinetic equations for an unstable plasma; Equations cinetiques d'un plasma instable

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Laval, G; Pellat, R [Commissariat a l' Energie Atomique, Fontenay-aux-Roses (France). Centre d' Etudes Nucleaires

1968-07-01

In this work, we establish the plasma kinetic equations starting from the Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvon hierarchy of equations. We demonstrate that relations existing between correlation functions may help to justify the truncation of the hierarchy. Then we obtain the kinetic equations of a stable or unstable plasma. They do not reduce to an equation for the one-body distribution function, but generally involve two coupled equations for the one-body distribution function and the spectral density of the fluctuating electric field. We study limiting cases where the Balescu-Lenard equation, the quasi-linear theory, the Pines-Schrieffer equations and the equations of weak turbulence in the random phase approximation are recovered. At last we generalise the H-theorem for the system of equations and we define conditions for irreversible behaviour. (authors) [French] Dans ce travail nous etablissons les equations cinetiques d'un plasma a partir des equations de la recurrence de Bogoliubov, Born, Green, Kirkwood et Yvon. Nous demontrons qu'entre les fonctions de correlation d'un plasma existent des relations qui permettent de justifier la troncature de la recurrence. Nous obtenons alors les equations cinetiques d'un plasma stable ou instable. En general elles ne se reduisent pas a une equation d'evolution pour la densite simple, mais se composent de deux equations couplees portant sur la densite simple et la densite spectrale du champ electrique fluctuant. Nous etudions le cas limites ou l'on retrouve l'equation de Balescu-Lenard, les equations de la theorie quasi-lineaire, les equations de Pines et Schrieffer et les equations de la turbulence faible dans l'approximation des phases aleatoires. Enfin, nous generalisons le theoreme H pour ce systeme d'equations et nous precisons les conditions d'evolution irreversible. (auteurs)

equate: An R Package for Observed-Score Linking and Equating

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anthony D. Albano

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The R package equate contains functions for observed-score linking and equating under single-group, equivalent-groups, and nonequivalent-groups with anchor test(s designs. This paper introduces these designs and provides an overview of observed-score equating with details about each of the supported methods. Examples demonstrate the basic functionality of the equate package.

Relative Motion Modeling and Autonomous Navigation Accuracy

Science.gov (United States)

2016-11-15

74-79. [39] T. Carter and M. Humi, “Clohessy-Wiltshire Equations Modified to Include Quadratic Drag,” Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics...the effect of the absolute and differential effects of the equatorial bulge term, J2, in the linearized equations for the relative motion of...perturbation equations up to third-order used for separating the secular and periodic effects can be written as where , , , and are the Kamiltonians of

Religious and secular Cape Malay Afrikaans: Literary varieties used by Shaykh Hanif Edwards (1906-1958

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xavier Luffin

2008-12-01

Full Text Available In the context of the White and Christian-dominated Afrikaans language movements, followed by apartheid, little attention has been paid to an Afrikaans literary variety used among Muslim Cape Coloureds, a group often referred to as ‘Cape Malays’. Descending mainly from Asian slaves brought by the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East India Company, and bearing the marks of cohabitation with non-Asian populations at the Cape, the Cape Malays at an early stage developed a distinct religious culture through their adherence to Islam, as well as a distinct Cape Dutch linguistic identity through their connections with the Dutch East Indies and the Islamic world. These cultural idiosyncrasies found expression in a local literature, religious and (more rarely secular, using as a medium a variety of Cape Dutch/Afrikaans written either in the Arabic alphabet or in the Roman alphabet.

Complex molecular orbital method: open-shell theory

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hendekovic, J.

1976-01-01

A singe-determinant open-shell formalism for complex molecular orbitals is developed. An iterative algorithm for solving the resulting secular equations is constructed. It is based on a sequence of similarity transformations and matrix triangularizations

Chemical Equation Balancing.

Science.gov (United States)

Blakley, G. R.

1982-01-01

Reviews mathematical techniques for solving systems of homogeneous linear equations and demonstrates that the algebraic method of balancing chemical equations is a matter of solving a system of homogeneous linear equations. FORTRAN programs using this matrix method to chemical equation balancing are available from the author. (JN)

A new auxiliary equation and exact travelling wave solutions of nonlinear equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sirendaoreji

2006-01-01

A new auxiliary ordinary differential equation and its solutions are used for constructing exact travelling wave solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations in a unified way. The main idea of this method is to take full advantage of the auxiliary equation which has more new exact solutions. More new exact travelling wave solutions are obtained for the quadratic nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation, the combined KdV and mKdV equation, the sine-Gordon equation and the Whitham-Broer-Kaup equations

On a functional equation related to the intermediate long wave equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hone, A N W; Novikov, V S

2004-01-01

We resolve an open problem stated by Ablowitz et al (1982 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 15 781) concerning the integral operator appearing in the intermediate long wave equation. We explain how this is resolved using the perturbative symmetry approach introduced by one of us with Mikhailov. By solving a certain functional equation, we prove that the intermediate long wave equation and the Benjamin-Ono equation are the unique integrable cases within a particular class of integro-differential equations. Furthermore, we explain how the perturbative symmetry approach is naturally extended to treat equations on a periodic domain. (letter to the editor)

Some New Integrable Equations from the Self-Dual Yang-Mills Equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ivanova, T.A.; Popov, A.D.

1994-01-01

Using the symmetry reductions of the self-dual Yang-Mills (SDYM) equations in (2+2) dimensions, we introduce new integrable equations which are 'deformations' of the chiral model in (2+1) dimensions, generalized nonlinear Schroedinger, Korteweg-de Vries, Toda lattice, Garnier, Euler-Arnold, generalized Calogero-Moser and Euler-Calogero-Moser equations. The Lax pairs for all of these equations are derived by the symmetry reductions of the Lax pair for the SDYM equations. 34 refs

Auxiliary equation method for solving nonlinear partial differential equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sirendaoreji,; Jiong, Sun

2003-01-01

By using the solutions of an auxiliary ordinary differential equation, a direct algebraic method is described to construct several kinds of exact travelling wave solutions for some nonlinear partial differential equations. By this method some physically important nonlinear equations are investigated and new exact travelling wave solutions are explicitly obtained with the aid of symbolic computation

Mechanisms of the multi-secular atmospheric corrosion of ferrous alloys: The case of the Metz cathedral reinforcements

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bouchar, Marie

2015-01-01

The study of the mechanisms of the multi-secular atmospheric corrosion of ferrous alloys has various applications, from the preservation and restoration of cultural heritage metals, to the evaluation of their long term behaviour, specifically when they are used for the storage containers surrounding nuclear wastes. The study of the corrosion product layers (CPL) developed during 5 centuries on the Metz cathedral reinforcements brings new results for a better understanding of the complex processes involved in the formation of the atmospheric CPL. The phases and chemical elements constituting the CPL of these reinforcements were characterized at the micrometric scale (μDRX, Raman μ-spectroscopy (μRS), SEM-EDS). Results specifically showed that these CPL differ from other multi-secular systems previously studied by their very high content in ferri-hydrite (5Fe 2 O 3 , 9H 2 O). This very reactive phase is distributed in the whole CPL and mixed at the microscopic scale with goethite (a-FeOOH) and lepidocrocite (g-FeOOH). Diffusion experiments of bromide ions followed by in situ X-ray μ-fluorescence allowed a better understanding of the transport of dissolved species in the porous network of the CPL. Furthermore, a test of the corrosion system behavior in conditions simulating the wetting stage of the RH cycle of atmospheric corrosion, also followed in situ by μRS, highlighted the reduction of ferri-hydrite at the metal/CPL interface. These results allowed to verify for the first time a fundamental hypothesis about the mechanisms of very long term atmospheric corrosion. Finally, re-corrosion experiments of the corrosion system were monitored in a climatic chamber simulating accelerated atmospheric cycles in an 18 O-labelled environment. Then the detection of the 18 O isotope linked to the precipitated phases, by nuclear reaction analysis using a nuclear microprobe, allowed to localise the formation sites of the new corrosion products. All these results improve the

[Secular trends of height among Chinese students aged 17 in 18 ethnic minorities from 1985 to 2010].

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Yi; Hu, Pei-jin; Zhang, Bing; Ma, Jun

2015-06-18

To analyze the secular trends of height among Chinese students aged 17 in different ethnic minorities from 1985 to 2010. A total of 18 Chinese ethnic minorities' students, including Mongolian, Hui, Uygur, Zhuang, Korean, Tibetan, Miao, Buyi, Dong, Bai, Tujia, Hani, Dai, Lisu, Wa, Nakhi, Tu and Qiang as subjects were sampled from the 1985, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 Chinese National Surveys on Students' Constitution and Health. The heights of 17 years old people by gender in various ethnic minorities were analyzed and compared. From 1985 to 2010, the increments of adult heights increased significantly in many ethnic minorities' boys. In 2010, the average height of boys aged 17 years in each minority group was higher than 162 cm and was higher than 170 cm among boys from Hui, Mongolian and Korean groups. The ethnics with height growth rates of more than 2 cm per decade in boys were Hui (2.64 cm/decade) and Dong (2.05 cm/decade) and the ethnics with height growth rates of more than 1 cm per decade were Korean (1.99 cm/decade), Tibetan (1.90 cm/decade), Hani (1.80 cm/decade) and the other 9 minority groups. The average height of girls aged 17 years in each minority group was higher than 150 cm in 2010. The heights showed an upward trend in 15 minority groups, but with different degrees. The ethnics with height growth rates of more than 1 cm per decade were Hui (1.56 cm/decade) and Korean (1.29 cm/decade). The increments that were significant between 1985 and 2010 were Hui (3.89 cm), Korean (3.23 cm), Dong (2.35 cm) and the other 6 minority groups (Pminority groups during the past 25 years, but there was an obvious disequilibrium among various ethnic minorities. We should pay more attention to the minority groups with poor growth and give them more help. Meanwhile, we should also pay attention to the negative effects of the secular growth trend on those minority groups with fast increasing adult height.

The equationally-defined commutator a study in equational logic and algebra

CERN Document Server

Czelakowski, Janusz

2015-01-01

This monograph introduces and explores the notions of a commutator equation and the equationally-defined commutator from the perspective of abstract algebraic logic.  An account of the commutator operation associated with equational deductive systems is presented, with an emphasis placed on logical aspects of the commutator for equational systems determined by quasivarieties of algebras.  The author discusses the general properties of the equationally-defined commutator, various centralization relations for relative congruences, the additivity and correspondence properties of the equationally-defined commutator, and its behavior in finitely generated quasivarieties. Presenting new and original research not yet considered in the mathematical literature, The Equationally-Defined Commutator will be of interest to professional algebraists and logicians, as well as graduate students and other researchers interested in problems of modern algebraic logic.

A Comparison between Linear IRT Observed-Score Equating and Levine Observed-Score Equating under the Generalized Kernel Equating Framework

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Haiwen

2012-01-01

In this article, linear item response theory (IRT) observed-score equating is compared under a generalized kernel equating framework with Levine observed-score equating for nonequivalent groups with anchor test design. Interestingly, these two equating methods are closely related despite being based on different methodologies. Specifically, when…

The Influence of Secular Trends in Body Height and Weight on the Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity among Chinese Children and Adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Fu, Lian Guo; Sun, Li Li; Wu, Shao Wei; Yang, Yi De; Li, Xiao Hui; Wang, Zheng He; Wu, Lu; Wang, Fu Zhi; Ma, Jun

2016-12-01

To explore the influence of secular trends in body height and weight on the prevalence of overweight and obesity among Chinese children and adolescents. The data were obtained from five cross-sectional Chinese National Surveys on Students' Constitution and Health. Overweight/obesity was defined as BMI-for-age Z-score of per the Wold Health Organization (WHO) reference values. Body height and weight for each sex and age were standardized to those reported in 1985 (standardized height: SHY; standardized weight: SWY) and for each sex and year at age 7 (standardized height: SHA; standardized weight: SWA) using the Z-score method. The prevalence of overweight/obesity in Chinese children was 20.2% among boys and 10.7% among girls in 2010 and increased continuously from 1985 to 2010. Among boys and girls of normal weight, SHY and SHA were significantly greater than SWY and SWA, respectively (P overweight/obesity, SHY was significantly lower than SWY (P overweight boys aged 7-8 years and girls aged 7-9 years. SHY/SHW and SHA/SWA among normal-weight groups were greater than among overweight and obese groups (P overweight/obesity among Chinese children may be related to a rapid increase in body weight before age 9 and lack of secular increase in body height after age 12. Copyright © 2016 The Editorial Board of Biomedical and Environmental Sciences. Published by China CDC. All rights reserved.

On religious and secular exemptions: A case study of childhood vaccination waivers

Science.gov (United States)

2017-01-01

This paper analyses exemptions to general law through the prism of vaccine waivers in the United States. All US states legally require the vaccination of children prior to school or daycare entry; however, this obligation is accompanied with a system of medical, religious, and/or philosophical exemptions. Nonmedical exemptions became subject of discussion after the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak in California, which unequivocally brought to light what had been brewing below the surface for a while: a slow but steady decline in vaccination rates in Western societies, resulting in the reoccurrence of measles outbreaks. This can be traced back to an increasing public questioning of vaccines by a growing anti-vaccination movement. In reaction to the outbreak and the public outrage it generated, several states proposed—and some already passed—bills to eliminate nonmedical exemptions. I analyze two questions. First, can legal exemptions from mandatory childhood vaccination schemes for parents who are opposed to vaccination (still) be justified? Second, should legal exemptions be limited to religious objections to vaccination, or should they also be granted to secular objections? Although the argument in the paper starts from the example of the US, it seeks to provide a more general philosophical reflection on the question of exemptions from mandatory childhood vaccination. PMID:28546785

On religious and secular exemptions: A case study of childhood vaccination waivers.

Science.gov (United States)

Pierik, Roland

2017-04-01

This paper analyses exemptions to general law through the prism of vaccine waivers in the United States. All US states legally require the vaccination of children prior to school or daycare entry; however, this obligation is accompanied with a system of medical, religious, and/or philosophical exemptions. Nonmedical exemptions became subject of discussion after the 2015 Disneyland measles outbreak in California, which unequivocally brought to light what had been brewing below the surface for a while: a slow but steady decline in vaccination rates in Western societies, resulting in the reoccurrence of measles outbreaks. This can be traced back to an increasing public questioning of vaccines by a growing anti-vaccination movement. In reaction to the outbreak and the public outrage it generated, several states proposed-and some already passed-bills to eliminate nonmedical exemptions. I analyze two questions. First, can legal exemptions from mandatory childhood vaccination schemes for parents who are opposed to vaccination (still) be justified? Second, should legal exemptions be limited to religious objections to vaccination, or should they also be granted to secular objections? Although the argument in the paper starts from the example of the US, it seeks to provide a more general philosophical reflection on the question of exemptions from mandatory childhood vaccination.

Five-dimensional Monopole Equation with Hedge-Hog Ansatz and Abel's Differential Equation

OpenAIRE

Kihara, Hironobu

2008-01-01

We review the generalized monopole in the five-dimensional Euclidean space. A numerical solution with the Hedge-Hog ansatz is studied. The Bogomol'nyi equation becomes a second order autonomous non-linear differential equation. The equation can be translated into the Abel's differential equation of the second kind and is an algebraic differential equation.

Differential equations a dynamical systems approach ordinary differential equations

CERN Document Server

Hubbard, John H

1991-01-01

This is a corrected third printing of the first part of the text Differential Equations: A Dynamical Systems Approach written by John Hubbard and Beverly West. The authors' main emphasis in this book is on ordinary differential equations. The book is most appropriate for upper level undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of mathematics, engineering, and applied mathematics, as well as the life sciences, physics and economics. Traditional courses on differential equations focus on techniques leading to solutions. Yet most differential equations do not admit solutions which can be written in elementary terms. The authors have taken the view that a differential equations defines functions; the object of the theory is to understand the behavior of these functions. The tools the authors use include qualitative and numerical methods besides the traditional analytic methods. The companion software, MacMath, is designed to bring these notions to life.

Quantification of the 214 Pb and 214 Bi decay products before and after to reach the secular equilibria with the 226 Ra

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Quintero P, E.; Rojas M, V.P.; Cervantes N, M.L.; Gaso P, M.I.

2002-01-01

In this work a comparison between the 226 Ra concentration and its decay products ( 214 Pb and 214 Bi) in soil samples is presented before and after that the decay mentioned products reach the equilibria with the radium. Moreover, the obtained daughter/father ratio is presented; and the correction factor for the calculus of the 214 Pb and 214 Bi quantification without being necessary to wait until that the secular equilibria has been established. For the quantification of the concentration of the three radionuclides the gamma spectrometry technique was used. (Author)

A Secular Resonant Origin for the Loneliness of Hot Jupiters

Science.gov (United States)

Spalding, Christopher; Batygin, Konstantin

2017-09-01

Despite decades of inquiry, the origin of giant planets residing within a few tenths of an astronomical unit from their host stars remains unclear. Traditionally, these objects are thought to have formed further out before subsequently migrating inwards. However, the necessity of migration has been recently called into question with the emergence of in situ formation models of close-in giant planets. Observational characterization of the transiting subsample of close-in giants has revealed that “warm” Jupiters, possessing orbital periods longer than roughly 10 days more often possess close-in, co-transiting planetary companions than shorter period “hot” Jupiters, that are usually lonely. This finding has previously been interpreted as evidence that smooth, early migration or in situ formation gave rise to warm Jupiter-hosting systems, whereas more violent, post-disk migration pathways sculpted hot Jupiter-hosting systems. In this work, we demonstrate that both classes of planet may arise via early migration or in situ conglomeration, but that the enhanced loneliness of hot Jupiters arises due to a secular resonant interaction with the stellar quadrupole moment. Such an interaction tilts the orbits of exterior, lower-mass planets, removing them from transit surveys where the hot Jupiter is detected. Warm Jupiter-hosting systems, in contrast, retain their coplanarity due to the weaker influence of the host star’s quadrupolar potential relative to planet-disk interactions. In this way, hot Jupiters and warm Jupiters are placed within a unified theoretical framework that may be readily validated or falsified using data from upcoming missions, such as TESS.

Differential equations

CERN Document Server

Barbu, Viorel

2016-01-01

This textbook is a comprehensive treatment of ordinary differential equations, concisely presenting basic and essential results in a rigorous manner. Including various examples from physics, mechanics, natural sciences, engineering and automatic theory, Differential Equations is a bridge between the abstract theory of differential equations and applied systems theory. Particular attention is given to the existence and uniqueness of the Cauchy problem, linear differential systems, stability theory and applications to first-order partial differential equations. Upper undergraduate students and researchers in applied mathematics and systems theory with a background in advanced calculus will find this book particularly useful. Supplementary topics are covered in an appendix enabling the book to be completely self-contained.

Secular, Spiritual, and Religious Existential Concerns of Women with Ovarian Cancer during Final Diagnostics and Start of Treatment

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Seibæk, Lene; Hounsgaard, Lise; Hvidt, Niels Christian

2013-01-01

resources of comfort and meaning. Conclusion. Hope and courage to face life represent significant personal resources that are created not only in the interplay between body and mind but also between patients and their healthcare professionals. The women dealt with this in a dialectical manner, so that hope...... a woman with ovarian cancer during her first treatment period. Although the women experienced their health to be seriously threatened, they also felt hope, will, and courage. The diagnostic procedures and treatment had comprehensive impact on their lives. However, hope and spirituality were important...... and despair could be present simultaneously. In this process secular, spiritual, and religious existential meaning orientations assisted the women in creating new narratives and obtain new orientations in life....

Sacred content, secular context: a generative theory of religion and spirituality for social work.

Science.gov (United States)

Liechty, Daniel

2013-01-01

Although a secular profession, social work practitioners and educators do explore human spirituality, and this is embraced now by the profession as integral to a holistic view of the human being. Social workers in hospice and end-of-life care are on the front line of this shift. Still needed is for the profession to coalesce around a generative theory of religion to inform the discipline. The author proposes that a synthesis of ideas, particularly from anthropologists Ernest Becker and Fredrick Streng, provides a generative theory of religion that advances meaningful interface between diverse religious and spiritual ideations of clients and clinicians alike. This theory of generative death anxiety locates the basic religious urge as response to the human awareness of the ontological condition of mortality, which then becomes expressed existentially in all of its diverse particularities. This approach avoids being overly reductionist, yet does provide categories for clear analysis. It cultivates critical respect for human religiosity and fosters productive and creative incorporation of human spirituality into the practical and pragmatic clinical perspective.

An investigation of the unexpectedly high fertility of secular, native-born Jews in Israel.

Science.gov (United States)

Okun, Barbara S

2016-07-01

Secular, native-born Jews in Israel enjoy the socio-economic status of many affluent populations living in other democratic countries, but have above-replacement period and cohort fertility. This study revealed a constellation of interrelated factors which together characterize the socio-economic, cultural, and political environment of this fertility behaviour and set it apart from that of other advanced societies. The factors are: a combination of state and family support for childbearing; a dual emphasis on the social importance of women's employment and fertility; policies that support working mothers within a conservative welfare regime; a family system in which parents provide significant financial and caregiving aid to their adult children; relatively egalitarian gender-role attitudes and household behaviour; the continuing importance of familist ideology and of marriage as a social institution; the role of Jewish nationalism and collective behaviour in a religious society characterized by ethno-national conflict; and a discourse which defines women as the biological reproducers of the nation. Supplementary material for this article is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2016.1195913.

New Equating Methods and Their Relationships with Levine Observed Score Linear Equating under the Kernel Equating Framework

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Haiwen; Holland, Paul

2010-01-01

In this paper, we develop a new curvilinear equating for the nonequivalent groups with anchor test (NEAT) design under the assumption of the classical test theory model, that we name curvilinear Levine observed score equating. In fact, by applying both the kernel equating framework and the mean preserving linear transformation of…

Relations between nonlinear Riccati equations and other equations in fundamental physics

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Schuch, Dieter

2014-01-01

Many phenomena in the observable macroscopic world obey nonlinear evolution equations while the microscopic world is governed by quantum mechanics, a fundamental theory that is supposedly linear. In order to combine these two worlds in a common formalism, at least one of them must sacrifice one of its dogmas. Linearizing nonlinear dynamics would destroy the fundamental property of this theory, however, it can be shown that quantum mechanics can be reformulated in terms of nonlinear Riccati equations. In a first step, it will be shown that the information about the dynamics of quantum systems with analytical solutions can not only be obtainable from the time-dependent Schrödinger equation but equally-well from a complex Riccati equation. Comparison with supersymmetric quantum mechanics shows that even additional information can be obtained from the nonlinear formulation. Furthermore, the time-independent Schrödinger equation can also be rewritten as a complex Riccati equation for any potential. Extension of the Riccati formulation to include irreversible dissipative effects is straightforward. Via (real and complex) Riccati equations, other fields of physics can also be treated within the same formalism, e.g., statistical thermodynamics, nonlinear dynamical systems like those obeying a logistic equation as well as wave equations in classical optics, Bose- Einstein condensates and cosmological models. Finally, the link to abstract ''quantizations'' such as the Pythagorean triples and Riccati equations connected with trigonometric and hyperbolic functions will be shown

La religión en el mundo secular : trascendencia e individualidad. Un estudio del problema desde el pensamiento de Charles Taylor

OpenAIRE

Sepúlveda del Río, Ignacio

2013-01-01

Las teorías clásicas del secularismo vaticinaron, durante decenios, el lento declinar de las religiones, su marginación al espacio privado y, finalmente, su disolución y muerte. Con todo, las profecías seculares no se han cumplido. Las religiones siguen gozando de relativa buena salud y siguen estado muy presentes en el espacio público. De esta manera, la religión está siendo ¿y vaticinamos que lo seguirá siendo en el futuro- un fenómeno importante, que continuará marcando, de una u otra mane...

Secular trends in gestational age and birthweight in twins.

Science.gov (United States)

Gielen, M; van Beijsterveldt, C E M; Derom, C; Vlietinck, R; Nijhuis, J G; Zeegers, M P A; Boomsma, D I

2010-09-01

In recent decades, the overall rate of preterm births has increased. The aim of the present study was to examine whether this trend is also seen for multiple gestations. More specifically, we examined if there has been a decrease in gestational age for live born monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins and if there has been a simultaneous change in birthweight. The contributions of fertility treatments and Caesarean sections were taken into consideration. All analyses were carried out in two large European twin cohorts. Cross-sectional study of 6310 live born twin pairs, born between 1964-2007, from the Belgian East Flanders Prospective Twin Survey and 14,712 twin pairs, born between 1990-2006, from the Netherlands Twin Register. Multiple regression analyses were performed with gestational age as outcome variable, and multilevel analysis with birthweight as outcome variable. All analyses were performed with and without adjustment for zygosity, parity, maternal age, mode of conception and delivery and, for the analyses of birthweight, gestational age. Gestational age decreased in a linear fashion from 1964 to 2007 with a decrease of 0.25 days per year in a similar way for MZ and DZ twins. Changes in birthweight depended on gestational age: up to 32 weeks, birthweight decreased and after 32 weeks birthweight increased. The frequency of infertility treatment and Caesarean sections, primiparity and advanced maternal age increased over the years, but none of these factors influenced the secular trends in gestational age and birthweight. The decrease in gestational age and change in birthweight in twins are sources of concern, especially for very preterm twins, for whom birthweight decreased. For twins born after 32 weeks, an increase in birthweight was observed and this is very likely the explanation for the decrease in gestational age.

Bridging the Knowledge Gaps between Richards' Equation and Budyko Equation

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, D.

2017-12-01

The empirical Budyko equation represents the partitioning of mean annual precipitation into evaporation and runoff. Richards' equation, based on Darcy's law, represents the movement of water in unsaturated soils. The linkage between Richards' equation and Budyko equation is presented by invoking the empirical Soil Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN) model for computing surface runoff at the event-scale. The basis of the SCS-CN method is the proportionality relationship, i.e., the ratio of continuing abstraction to its potential is equal to the ratio of surface runoff to its potential value. The proportionality relationship can be derived from the Richards' equation for computing infiltration excess and saturation excess models at the catchment scale. Meanwhile, the generalized proportionality relationship is demonstrated as the common basis of SCS-CN method, monthly "abcd" model, and Budyko equation. Therefore, the linkage between Darcy's law and the emergent pattern of mean annual water balance at the catchment scale is presented through the proportionality relationship.

THE CRISIS OF THE MODERN MAN IN THE CONTEXT OF SECULARIZATION AND A POSSIBLE ANSWER FROM A TRANSDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

MUSTEA ANCA

2010-09-01

Full Text Available The human being is permanently in search for meaning: the meaning of his life, the meaning ofdaily events, and most of all, the meaning of its sufferance. The process of secularization affects themeaning making process by eliminating the spiritual dimension of man, and the consequences, asemphasized by Mircea Eliade, Carl Gustav Jung or Viktor Frankl are disastrous, all leading to thealienation of man and the possibility of self destruction. The transdisciplinary approach isdiscussed here in relation to the possibility of recuperating this meaning. The consideration of aspiritual dimension of human, as well as of democracy might be a viable solution against the“existential vacuum” due to the loss of meaning.

Partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

Evans, Lawrence C

2010-01-01

This text gives a comprehensive survey of modern techniques in the theoretical study of partial differential equations (PDEs) with particular emphasis on nonlinear equations. The exposition is divided into three parts: representation formulas for solutions; theory for linear partial differential equations; and theory for nonlinear partial differential equations. Included are complete treatments of the method of characteristics; energy methods within Sobolev spaces; regularity for second-order elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic equations; maximum principles; the multidimensional calculus of variations; viscosity solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi equations; shock waves and entropy criteria for conservation laws; and, much more.The author summarizes the relevant mathematics required to understand current research in PDEs, especially nonlinear PDEs. While he has reworked and simplified much of the classical theory (particularly the method of characteristics), he primarily emphasizes the modern interplay between funct...

Nonlinear Dirac Equations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei Khim Ng

2009-02-01

Full Text Available We construct nonlinear extensions of Dirac's relativistic electron equation that preserve its other desirable properties such as locality, separability, conservation of probability and Poincaré invariance. We determine the constraints that the nonlinear term must obey and classify the resultant non-polynomial nonlinearities in a double expansion in the degree of nonlinearity and number of derivatives. We give explicit examples of such nonlinear equations, studying their discrete symmetries and other properties. Motivated by some previously suggested applications we then consider nonlinear terms that simultaneously violate Lorentz covariance and again study various explicit examples. We contrast our equations and construction procedure with others in the literature and also show that our equations are not gauge equivalent to the linear Dirac equation. Finally we outline various physical applications for these equations.

Functional equations with causal operators

CERN Document Server

Corduneanu, C

2003-01-01

Functional equations encompass most of the equations used in applied science and engineering: ordinary differential equations, integral equations of the Volterra type, equations with delayed argument, and integro-differential equations of the Volterra type. The basic theory of functional equations includes functional differential equations with causal operators. Functional Equations with Causal Operators explains the connection between equations with causal operators and the classical types of functional equations encountered by mathematicians and engineers. It details the fundamentals of linear equations and stability theory and provides several applications and examples.

Evaluating Equating Results: Percent Relative Error for Chained Kernel Equating

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, Yanlin; von Davier, Alina A.; Chen, Haiwen

2012-01-01

This article presents a method for evaluating equating results. Within the kernel equating framework, the percent relative error (PRE) for chained equipercentile equating was computed under the nonequivalent groups with anchor test (NEAT) design. The method was applied to two data sets to obtain the PRE, which can be used to measure equating…

Handbook of integral equations

CERN Document Server

Polyanin, Andrei D

2008-01-01

This handbook contains over 2,500 integral equations with solutions as well as analytical and numerical methods for solving linear and nonlinear equations. It explores Volterra, Fredholm, WienerHopf, Hammerstein, Uryson, and other equations that arise in mathematics, physics, engineering, the sciences, and economics. This second edition includes new chapters on mixed multidimensional equations and methods of integral equations for ODEs and PDEs, along with over 400 new equations with exact solutions. With many examples added for illustrative purposes, it presents new material on Volterra, Fredholm, singular, hypersingular, dual, and nonlinear integral equations, integral transforms, and special functions.

Secular trends of pregnancies in women with inflammatory connective tissue disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Wallenius, Marianne; Salvesen, Kjell Å; Daltveit, Anne K; Skomsvoll, Johan F

2015-11-01

This study examined secular trends in reproductive outcome in women with inflammatory connective tissue disease compared with reference deliveries from the general population. Historical cohort study based on data registered in the Medical Birth Register of Norway from 1967 to 2009. The study included singleton births in women recorded with connective tissue disease (n = 851) and reference deliveries from the general population (n = 2 437 110). Births were stratified in four periods, 1967-1979, 1980-1989, 1990-1999 and 2000-2009. Associations between connective tissue disease and maternal and perinatal outcomes by decade were assessed in logistic regression analyses and adjusted for maternal age at delivery and parity. In the 1970s, around 2.7 deliveries/year were registered for women with connective tissue disease (0.004% of all deliveries). This increased to 42 deliveries/year (0.07% of all deliveries) after 2000. Adjusted odds ratios (aOR) for cesarean section were 5.0 (95% CI 2.1-11.9) in the first and 1.8 (95% CI 1.4-2.3) in the last period. For preterm delivery the aOR decreased from 4.9 (95% CI 2.1-11.4) to 3.1 (95% CI 2.3-4.2) and the aOR for birthweight connective tissue disease. Adverse pregnancy outcomes were more common among women with connective tissue disease but risks have decreased over time. © 2015 Nordic Federation of Societies of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Secular change in cardiorespiratory fitness of men: Cooper Center Longitudinal Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Willis, Benjamin L; Morrow, James R; Jackson, Allen W; Defina, Laura F; Cooper, Kenneth H

2011-11-01

Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) has been shown to be an independent predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, as well as health outcomes such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and metabolic syndrome. During the last four decades, national guidelines for physical activity and fitness have emerged in an ongoing effort to improve health outcomes through enhanced CRF risk profiles. The purpose of the study was to describe the secular trend in CRF as a function of decade and age in a large cohort of men during the past 40 yr. A cross-sectional analysis of baseline fitness data collected during comprehensive medical examinations of 52,785 men age 20-74 yr evaluated at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, TX, from 1970 to 2009 who completed a maximum treadmill exercise test for estimation of aerobic capacity was conducted. Comparisons were made between mean fitness levels in each decade stratified by five age groups. Mean CRF in MET from estimated V·O 2max has increased overall approximately 1 MET during a 40-yr period for each of the five age groups (P < 0.0001). The greatest change occurred during the 1970s to 1980s with minimal subsequent increase and a small decline commencing in the last decade especially in younger men. In a large cohort of men, average CRF has improved during the last 40 yr with a slight decline in the favorable trend notable in the most recent decade.

Ordinary differential equations

CERN Document Server

Greenberg, Michael D

2014-01-01

Features a balance between theory, proofs, and examples and provides applications across diverse fields of study Ordinary Differential Equations presents a thorough discussion of first-order differential equations and progresses to equations of higher order. The book transitions smoothly from first-order to higher-order equations, allowing readers to develop a complete understanding of the related theory. Featuring diverse and interesting applications from engineering, bioengineering, ecology, and biology, the book anticipates potential difficulties in understanding the various solution steps

Could a secular increase in organic burial explain the rise of oxygen? Insights from a geological carbon cycle model constrained by the carbon isotope record

Science.gov (United States)

Krissansen-Totton, J.; Kipp, M.; Catling, D. C.

2017-12-01

The stable isotopes of carbon in marine sedimentary rock provide a window into the evolution of the Earth system. Conventionally, a relatively constant carbon isotope ratio in marine sedimentary rocks has been interpreted as implying constant organic carbon burial relative to total carbon burial. Because organic carbon burial corresponds to net oxygen production from photosynthesis, it follows that secular changes in the oxygen source flux cannot explain the dramatic rise of oxygen over Earth history. Instead, secular declines in oxygen sink fluxes are often invoked as causes for the rise of oxygen. However, constant fractional organic burial is difficult to reconcile with tentative evidence for low phosphate concentrations in the Archean ocean, which would imply lower marine productivity and—all else being equal—less organic carbon burial than today. The conventional interpretation of the carbon isotope record rests on the untested assumption that the isotopic ratio of carbon inputs into the ocean reflect mantle isotopic values throughout Earth history. In practice, differing rates of carbonate and organic weathering will allow for changes in isotopic inputs, as suggested by [1] and [2]. However, these inputs can not vary freely because large changes in isotopic inputs would induce secular trends in carbon reservoirs, which are not observed in the isotope record. We apply a geological carbon cycle model to all Earth history, tracking carbon isotopes in crustal, mantle, and ocean reservoirs. Our model is constrained by the carbon isotope record such that we can determine the extent to which large changes in organic burial are permitted. We find both constant organic burial and 3-5 fold increases in organic burial since 4.0 Ga can be reconciled with the carbon isotope record. Changes in the oxygen source flux thus need to be reconsidered as a possible contributor to Earth's oxygenation. [1] L. A. Derry, Organic carbon cycling and the lithosphere, in Treatise on

Secular Trends and Latitude Gradients in Sex Ratios at Birth in Czechoslovakia and the Post-Czechoslovakian States

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Victor Grech

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Latitude gradients and secular trends in Europe and North America have been found in the male-female ratio at birth (M/F: male births divided by total births which is expected to be 0.515. Annual national data for Czechoslovakia and the post-Czechoslovakian (Czech Republic and Slovakia countries for male and female live births were obtained from the World Health Organisation and analysed with contingency tables. This study analysed 13,123,538 live births. An overall decreasing trend in M/F was found (p < 00001. No latitude gradient was noted. There was an overall deficit of 15,232 male births based on an M/F of 0.515. M/F is declining in this region, despite well developing economies that have resisted the worldwide slowdown. An interplay of several poorly understood factors is likely.

Fractional Schroedinger equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Laskin, Nick

2002-01-01

Some properties of the fractional Schroedinger equation are studied. We prove the Hermiticity of the fractional Hamilton operator and establish the parity conservation law for fractional quantum mechanics. As physical applications of the fractional Schroedinger equation we find the energy spectra of a hydrogenlike atom (fractional 'Bohr atom') and of a fractional oscillator in the semiclassical approximation. An equation for the fractional probability current density is developed and discussed. We also discuss the relationships between the fractional and standard Schroedinger equations

Introduction to differential equations

CERN Document Server

Taylor, Michael E

2011-01-01

The mathematical formulations of problems in physics, economics, biology, and other sciences are usually embodied in differential equations. The analysis of the resulting equations then provides new insight into the original problems. This book describes the tools for performing that analysis. The first chapter treats single differential equations, emphasizing linear and nonlinear first order equations, linear second order equations, and a class of nonlinear second order equations arising from Newton's laws. The first order linear theory starts with a self-contained presentation of the exponen

BMI-for-age in South Asian children of 0-20 years in the Netherlands: secular changes and misclassification by WHO growth references.

Science.gov (United States)

de Wilde, J A; Dekker, M; Middelkoop, B J C

2018-03-01

South Asians are prone to cardiometabolic disease at lower BMI levels than most other ethnic groups, starting in childhood. The magnitude of BMI misclassifications is unknown. To compare the BMI distribution of contemporary South Asian 0-20 year olds in the Netherlands with: (1) The South Asian norm reference (secular trends); and (2) The WHO child growth standard and reference. The BMI-for-age distribution of 6677 routine measurements of 3322 South Asian children, aged 0-20 years, was described with the LMS method and BMI z-scores. The BMI distribution in South Asian 0-4 year olds was almost similar to the norm reference (mean BMI z-score = 0.11, skewness = 0.31, SD = 1.0), whereas in 5-19 year olds the distribution had shifted upwards (mean = 0.53) and widened (skewness = -0.12, SD = 1.08). Overweight (incl. obesity) and obesity peaked at 8-10 years, at 45-48% and 35-37%, respectively. Relative to the WHO references, the BMI distribution was left-shifted at ages 0-4 years (mean BMI z-score = -0.46, skewness = 0.23, SD = 0.98) and widened at ages 5-20 years (mean = 0.05; skewness = -0.02, SD = 1.40). At most ages, thinness rates were significantly higher and obesity rates lower than based on South Asian norms. A secular change of BMI-for-age in South Asian children mostly affected children >4 years. WHO references likely under-estimate overweight and obesity rates in South Asian children.

Stochastic optimal control, forward-backward stochastic differential equations and the Schroedinger equation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Paul, Wolfgang; Koeppe, Jeanette [Institut fuer Physik, Martin Luther Universitaet, 06099 Halle (Germany); Grecksch, Wilfried [Institut fuer Mathematik, Martin Luther Universitaet, 06099 Halle (Germany)

2016-07-01

The standard approach to solve a non-relativistic quantum problem is through analytical or numerical solution of the Schroedinger equation. We show a way to go around it. This way is based on the derivation of the Schroedinger equation from conservative diffusion processes and the establishment of (several) stochastic variational principles leading to the Schroedinger equation under the assumption of a kinematics described by Nelson's diffusion processes. Mathematically, the variational principle can be considered as a stochastic optimal control problem linked to the forward-backward stochastic differential equations of Nelson's stochastic mechanics. The Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellmann equation of this control problem is the Schroedinger equation. We present the mathematical background and how to turn it into a numerical scheme for analyzing a quantum system without using the Schroedinger equation and exemplify the approach for a simple 1d problem.

Averaged RMHD equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ichiguchi, Katsuji

1998-01-01

A new reduced set of resistive MHD equations is derived by averaging the full MHD equations on specified flux coordinates, which is consistent with 3D equilibria. It is confirmed that the total energy is conserved and the linearized equations for ideal modes are self-adjoint. (author)

Higher-order relativistic periastron advances and binary pulsars

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Damour, T.; Schafer, G.

1988-01-01

The contributions to the periastron advance of a system of two condensed bodies coming from relativistic dynamical effects of order higher than the usual first post-Newtonian (1PN) equations of motion are investigated. The structure of the solution of the orbital second post-Newtonian (2PN) equations of motion is given in a simple parametrized form. The contributions to the secular pariastron advance, and the period, of orbital 2PN effects are then explicitly worked out by using the Hamilton-Jacobi method. The spin-orbit contribution to the secular precession of the orbit in space is rederived in a streamlined way by making full use of Hamiltonian methods. These results are then applied to the theoretical interpretation of the observational data of pulsars in close eccentric binary systems. It is shown that the higher-order relativistic contributions are already of theoretical and astophysical significance for interpreting the high-precision measurement of the secular periastron advance of PSR 1913+16 achived by Taylor and coworkers. The case of extremely fast spinning (millisecond) binary pulsars is also discussed, and shown to offer an easier ground for getting new tests of general relativity, and/or, a direct measurement of the moment of inertia of a neutron star

Differential equations

CERN Document Server

Tricomi, FG

2013-01-01

Based on his extensive experience as an educator, F. G. Tricomi wrote this practical and concise teaching text to offer a clear idea of the problems and methods of the theory of differential equations. The treatment is geared toward advanced undergraduates and graduate students and addresses only questions that can be resolved with rigor and simplicity.Starting with a consideration of the existence and uniqueness theorem, the text advances to the behavior of the characteristics of a first-order equation, boundary problems for second-order linear equations, asymptotic methods, and diff

Discovery of a secular trend in Cayo Santiago macaque reproduction.

Science.gov (United States)

Hernández-Pacheco, Raisa; Rawlins, Richard G; Kessler, Matthew J; Delgado, Diana L; Ruiz-Lambides, Angelina V; Sabat, Alberto M

2016-02-01

Reproductive synchrony and the consequent clustering of births are hypothesized to be regulated by seasonal changes in rainfall and food availability. Such climate-related seasonality is, however, questionable in tropical populations occupying temporally invariant habitats year round. Using the long-term data of the Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques from 1973 to 2013, this study distinguishes synchrony (a greater than chance clustering of births) from seasonality (a cluster of births during a period of the year when abiotic conditions are favorable) and shows that females are highly synchronized (>72% of births in a 3-month period) but the effects of environmental zeitgebers on reproduction are overridden by biological factors. Specifically, biotic and abiotic factors including (i) loss of immature offspring; (ii) population density; (iii) age at delivery; (iv) rainfall; and (v) changes in colony management were modeled in relation to the annual onset of births and the median birth date. Females experiencing loss of immature offspring had an interbirth interval of trend in both the onset of births and the median date of birth is documented and the model predicts that the median birth date will advance across all calendar-based seasons by 2050. The secular trend in reproduction appears to be triggered by changes in the age at delivery of females, the absence of physiological constraints from maternal investment due to offspring loss, shorter interbirth interval, and a higher degree of coordination due to increasing population density. This study challenges the reproductive phenology previously described for rhesus macaques highlighting the importance of long-term studies in addressing the ultimate causes of reproductive synchrony. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

How to obtain the covariant form of Maxwell's equations from the continuity equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Heras, Jose A

2009-01-01

The covariant Maxwell equations are derived from the continuity equation for the electric charge. This result provides an axiomatic approach to Maxwell's equations in which charge conservation is emphasized as the fundamental axiom underlying these equations

A generalized simplest equation method and its application to the Boussinesq-Burgers equation.

Science.gov (United States)

Sudao, Bilige; Wang, Xiaomin

2015-01-01

In this paper, a generalized simplest equation method is proposed to seek exact solutions of nonlinear evolution equations (NLEEs). In the method, we chose a solution expression with a variable coefficient and a variable coefficient ordinary differential auxiliary equation. This method can yield a Bäcklund transformation between NLEEs and a related constraint equation. By dealing with the constraint equation, we can derive infinite number of exact solutions for NLEEs. These solutions include the traveling wave solutions, non-traveling wave solutions, multi-soliton solutions, rational solutions, and other types of solutions. As applications, we obtained wide classes of exact solutions for the Boussinesq-Burgers equation by using the generalized simplest equation method.

On separable Pauli equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhalij, Alexander

2002-01-01

We classify (1+3)-dimensional Pauli equations for a spin-(1/2) particle interacting with the electro-magnetic field, that are solvable by the method of separation of variables. As a result, we obtain the 11 classes of vector-potentials of the electro-magnetic field A(t,x(vector sign))=(A 0 (t,x(vector sign)), A(vector sign)(t,x(vector sign))) providing separability of the corresponding Pauli equations. It is established, in particular, that the necessary condition for the Pauli equation to be separable into second-order matrix ordinary differential equations is its equivalence to the system of two uncoupled Schroedinger equations. In addition, the magnetic field has to be independent of spatial variables. We prove that coordinate systems and the vector-potentials of the electro-magnetic field providing the separability of the corresponding Pauli equations coincide with those for the Schroedinger equations. Furthermore, an efficient algorithm for constructing all coordinate systems providing the separability of Pauli equation with a fixed vector-potential of the electro-magnetic field is developed. Finally, we describe all vector-potentials A(t,x(vector sign)) that (a) provide the separability of Pauli equation, (b) satisfy vacuum Maxwell equations without currents, and (c) describe non-zero magnetic field

Modified Method of Simplest Equation Applied to the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation

Science.gov (United States)

Vitanov, Nikolay K.; Dimitrova, Zlatinka I.

2018-03-01

We consider an extension of the methodology of the modified method of simplest equation to the case of use of two simplest equations. The extended methodology is applied for obtaining exact solutions of model nonlinear partial differential equations for deep water waves: the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It is shown that the methodology works also for other equations of the nonlinear Schrödinger kind.

Elliptic and solitary wave solutions for Bogoyavlenskii equations system, couple Boiti-Leon-Pempinelli equations system and Time-fractional Cahn-Allen equation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mostafa M.A. Khater

Full Text Available In this article and for the first time, we introduce and describe Khater method which is a new technique for solving nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs.. We apply this method for each of the following models Bogoyavlenskii equation, couple Boiti-Leon-Pempinelli system and Time-fractional Cahn-Allen equation. Khater method is very powerful, Effective, felicitous and fabulous method to get exact and solitary wave solution of (PDEs.. Not only just like that but it considers too one of the general methods for solving that kind of equations since it involves some methods as we will see in our discuss of the results. We make a comparison between the results of this new method and another method. Keywords: Bogoyavlenskii equations system, Couple Boiti-Leon-Pempinelli equations system, Time-fractional Cahn-Allen equation, Khater method, Traveling wave solutions, Solitary wave solutions

On inclusion of the Pauli principle in the quasi particle-phonon nuclear model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Soloviev, V.G.

1979-01-01

The Pauli principle in odd-even, even-odd and even-even nuclei in the quasi particle-phonon nuclear model is considered. It is shown that the Pauli principle can excactly be taken into account. The exact and approximate secular equations are obtained for the wave function containing the one-quasi particle and quasi particle plus phonon components. The effect of the Pauli principle is discussed, when the wave function contains the one- and two-phonon components. In both the cases the poles are shifted in the secular equations and the quasi particle-phonon interaction terms are added. The number of quasi particles in the ground states is estimated. It is stated that in the majority of deformed nuclei the correlations in the ground states are small. It is shown that within the quasi particle-phonon nuclear model the calculations can be performed with the exact commutation relations

Modified Method of Simplest Equation Applied to the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vitanov Nikolay K.

2018-03-01

Full Text Available We consider an extension of the methodology of the modified method of simplest equation to the case of use of two simplest equations. The extended methodology is applied for obtaining exact solutions of model nonlinear partial differential equations for deep water waves: the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It is shown that the methodology works also for other equations of the nonlinear Schrödinger kind.

A Secular Trend in Birth Weight and Delivery Practices in Periurban Vietnam During 2005-2012.

Science.gov (United States)

Duong, Duc Minh; Nguyen, Anh Duy; Nguyen, Chuong Canh; Le, Vui Thi; Hoang, Son Ngoc; Bui, Ha Thi Thu

2017-07-01

The remarkable increase in Vietnamese economic conditions can increase the birth weight in neonates and better delivery practices among women. The Chi Linh Health and Demographic Surveillance System started in 2004. An open cohort of data consisting of about 57 561 people from 17 993 households has been followed primarily with respect to demography, economy, and education. The aim of this research is to study secular trends in delivery practice and birth weight in the past decade (2005-2012) in Chi Linh. We found a significant change in delivery rates at hospitals and cesarean section rates, but the birth weights over a decade of drastic economic development were stable. Furthermore, the findings show significant associations of birth weight and delivery practices with the child's sex, mother's age, and household income. Our results might be considered as representative for other similar periurban settings in Vietnam. We suggest that appropriate policies should be developed given the reduction in the use of delivery services in commune health centers in urban areas.

Integrable dissipative nonlinear second order differential equations via factorizations and Abel equations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Mancas, Stefan C. [Department of Mathematics, Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL 32114-3900 (United States); Rosu, Haret C., E-mail: hcr@ipicyt.edu.mx [IPICYT, Instituto Potosino de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica, Apdo Postal 3-74 Tangamanga, 78231 San Luis Potosí, SLP (Mexico)

2013-09-02

We emphasize two connections, one well known and another less known, between the dissipative nonlinear second order differential equations and the Abel equations which in their first-kind form have only cubic and quadratic terms. Then, employing an old integrability criterion due to Chiellini, we introduce the corresponding integrable dissipative equations. For illustration, we present the cases of some integrable dissipative Fisher, nonlinear pendulum, and Burgers–Huxley type equations which are obtained in this way and can be of interest in applications. We also show how to obtain Abel solutions directly from the factorization of second order nonlinear equations.

On the Existence and the Applications of Modified Equations for Stochastic Differential Equations

KAUST Repository

Zygalakis, K. C.

2011-01-01

In this paper we describe a general framework for deriving modified equations for stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with respect to weak convergence. Modified equations are derived for a variety of numerical methods, such as the Euler or the Milstein method. Existence of higher order modified equations is also discussed. In the case of linear SDEs, using the Gaussianity of the underlying solutions, we derive an SDE which the numerical method solves exactly in the weak sense. Applications of modified equations in the numerical study of Langevin equations is also discussed. © 2011 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

An Auxiliary Equation for the Bellman Equation in a One-Dimensional Ergodic Control

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fujita, Y.

2001-01-01

In this paper we consider the Bellman equation in a one-dimensional ergodic control. Our aim is to show the existence and the uniqueness of its solution under general assumptions. For this purpose we introduce an auxiliary equation whose solution gives the invariant measure of the diffusion corresponding to an optimal control. Using this solution, we construct a solution to the Bellman equation. Our method of using this auxiliary equation has two advantages in the one-dimensional case. First, we can solve the Bellman equation under general assumptions. Second, this auxiliary equation gives an optimal Markov control explicitly in many examples

Covariant field equations in supergravity

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vanhecke, Bram [KU Leuven, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Leuven (Belgium); Ghent University, Faculty of Physics, Gent (Belgium); Proeyen, Antoine van [KU Leuven, Institute for Theoretical Physics, Leuven (Belgium)

2017-12-15

Covariance is a useful property for handling supergravity theories. In this paper, we prove a covariance property of supergravity field equations: under reasonable conditions, field equations of supergravity are covariant modulo other field equations. We prove that for any supergravity there exist such covariant equations of motion, other than the regular equations of motion, that are equivalent to the latter. The relations that we find between field equations and their covariant form can be used to obtain multiplets of field equations. In practice, the covariant field equations are easily found by simply covariantizing the ordinary field equations. (copyright 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Covariant field equations in supergravity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vanhecke, Bram; Proeyen, Antoine van

2017-01-01

Covariance is a useful property for handling supergravity theories. In this paper, we prove a covariance property of supergravity field equations: under reasonable conditions, field equations of supergravity are covariant modulo other field equations. We prove that for any supergravity there exist such covariant equations of motion, other than the regular equations of motion, that are equivalent to the latter. The relations that we find between field equations and their covariant form can be used to obtain multiplets of field equations. In practice, the covariant field equations are easily found by simply covariantizing the ordinary field equations. (copyright 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH and Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Reduction of lattice equations to the Painlevé equations: PIV and PV

Science.gov (United States)

Nakazono, Nobutaka

2018-02-01

In this paper, we construct a new relation between Adler-Bobenko-Suris equations and Painlevé equations. Moreover, using this connection we construct the difference-differential Lax representations of the fourth and fifth Painlevé equations.

Test equating methods and practices

CERN Document Server

Kolen, Michael J

1995-01-01

In recent years, many researchers in the psychology and statistical communities have paid increasing attention to test equating as issues of using multiple test forms have arisen and in response to criticisms of traditional testing techniques This book provides a practically oriented introduction to test equating which both discusses the most frequently used equating methodologies and covers many of the practical issues involved The main themes are - the purpose of equating - distinguishing between equating and related methodologies - the importance of test equating to test development and quality control - the differences between equating properties, equating designs, and equating methods - equating error, and the underlying statistical assumptions for equating The authors are acknowledged experts in the field, and the book is based on numerous courses and seminars they have presented As a result, educators, psychometricians, professionals in measurement, statisticians, and students coming to the subject for...

Quantification of the {sup 214} Pb and {sup 214} Bi decay products before and after to reach the secular equilibria with the {sup 226} Ra; Cuantificacion de los productos de decaimiento {sup 214} Pb y {sup 214} Bi antes y despues de alcanzar el equilibrio secular con el {sup 226} Ra

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Quintero P, E.; Rojas M, V.P.; Cervantes N, M.L.; Gaso P, M.I. [Gerencia de Seguridad Radiologica, ININ, A.P. 18-1027, 11801 Mexico D.F. (Mexico)

2002-07-01

In this work a comparison between the {sup 226} Ra concentration and its decay products ({sup 214} Pb and {sup 214} Bi) in soil samples is presented before and after that the decay mentioned products reach the equilibria with the radium. Moreover, the obtained daughter/father ratio is presented; and the correction factor for the calculus of the {sup 214} Pb and {sup 214} Bi quantification without being necessary to wait until that the secular equilibria has been established. For the quantification of the concentration of the three radionuclides the gamma spectrometry technique was used. (Author)

On generalized fractional vibration equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dai, Hongzhe; Zheng, Zhibao; Wang, Wei

2017-01-01

Highlights: • The paper presents a generalized fractional vibration equation for arbitrary viscoelastically damped system. • Some classical vibration equations can be derived from the developed equation. • The analytic solution of developed equation is derived under some special cases. • The generalized equation is particularly useful for developing new fractional equivalent linearization method. - Abstract: In this paper, a generalized fractional vibration equation with multi-terms of fractional dissipation is developed to describe the dynamical response of an arbitrary viscoelastically damped system. It is shown that many classical equations of motion, e.g., the Bagley–Torvik equation, can be derived from the developed equation. The Laplace transform is utilized to solve the generalized equation and the analytic solution under some special cases is derived. Example demonstrates the generalized transfer function of an arbitrary viscoelastic system.

Differential equations for dummies

CERN Document Server

Holzner, Steven

2008-01-01

The fun and easy way to understand and solve complex equations Many of the fundamental laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and economics can be formulated as differential equations. This plain-English guide explores the many applications of this mathematical tool and shows how differential equations can help us understand the world around us. Differential Equations For Dummies is the perfect companion for a college differential equations course and is an ideal supplemental resource for other calculus classes as well as science and engineering courses. It offers step-by-step techniques, practical tips, numerous exercises, and clear, concise examples to help readers improve their differential equation-solving skills and boost their test scores.

Every Equation Tells a Story: Using Equation Dictionaries in Introductory Geophysics

Science.gov (United States)

Caplan-Auerbach, Jacqueline

2009-01-01

Many students view equations as a series of variables and operators into which numbers should be plugged rather than as representative of a physical process. To solve a problem they may simply look for an equation with the correct variables and assume it meets their needs, rather than selecting an equation that represents the appropriate physical…

Fundamental equations for two-phase flow. Part 1: general conservation equations. Part 2: complement and remarks; Equations fondamentales des ecoulements diphasiques. Premiere partie: equations generales de conservation. Deuxieme partie: complements et remarques

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Delhaye, J M [Commissariat a l' Energie Atomique, 38 - Grenoble (France). Centre d' Etudes Nucleaires

1968-12-01

This report deals with the general equations of mass conservation, of momentum conservation, and energy conservation in the case of a two-phase flow. These equations are presented in several forms starting from integral equations which are assumed initially a priori. 1. Equations with local instantaneous variables, and interfacial conditions; 2. Equations with mean instantaneous variables in a cross-section, and practical applications: these equations include an important experimental value which is the ratio of the cross-section of passage of one phase to the total cross-section of a flow-tube. 3. Equations with a local statistical mean, and equations averaged over a period of time: A more advanced attempt to relate theory and experiment consists in taking the statistical averages of local equations. Equations are then obtained involving variables which are averaged over a period of time with the help of an ergodic assumption. 4. Combination of statistical averages and averages over a cross-section: in this study are considered the local variables averaged statistically, then averaged over the cross-section, and also the variables averaged over the section and then averaged statistically. 5. General equations concerning emulsions: In this case a phase exists in a locally very finely divided form. This peculiarity makes it possible to define a volume concentration, and to draw up equations which have numerous applications. - Certain points arising in the first part of this report concerning general mass conservation equations for two-phase flow have been completed and clarified. The terms corresponding to the interfacial tension have been introduced into the general equations. The interfacial conditions have thus been generalized. A supplementary step has still to be carried out: it has, in effect, been impossible to take the interfacial tension into account in the case of emulsions. It was then appeared interesting to compare this large group of fundamental

Fundamental equations for two-phase flow. Part 1: general conservation equations. Part 2: complement and remarks; Equations fondamentales des ecoulements diphasiques. Premiere partie: equations generales de conservation. Deuxieme partie: complements et remarques

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Delhaye, J.M. [Commissariat a l' Energie Atomique, 38 - Grenoble (France). Centre d' Etudes Nucleaires

1968-12-01

This report deals with the general equations of mass conservation, of momentum conservation, and energy conservation in the case of a two-phase flow. These equations are presented in several forms starting from integral equations which are assumed initially a priori. 1. Equations with local instantaneous variables, and interfacial conditions; 2. Equations with mean instantaneous variables in a cross-section, and practical applications: these equations include an important experimental value which is the ratio of the cross-section of passage of one phase to the total cross-section of a flow-tube. 3. Equations with a local statistical mean, and equations averaged over a period of time: A more advanced attempt to relate theory and experiment consists in taking the statistical averages of local equations. Equations are then obtained involving variables which are averaged over a period of time with the help of an ergodic assumption. 4. Combination of statistical averages and averages over a cross-section: in this study are considered the local variables averaged statistically, then averaged over the cross-section, and also the variables averaged over the section and then averaged statistically. 5. General equations concerning emulsions: In this case a phase exists in a locally very finely divided form. This peculiarity makes it possible to define a volume concentration, and to draw up equations which have numerous applications. - Certain points arising in the first part of this report concerning general mass conservation equations for two-phase flow have been completed and clarified. The terms corresponding to the interfacial tension have been introduced into the general equations. The interfacial conditions have thus been generalized. A supplementary step has still to be carried out: it has, in effect, been impossible to take the interfacial tension into account in the case of emulsions. It was then appeared interesting to compare this large group of fundamental

Calculation of axial secular frequencies in a nonlinear ion trap with hexapole, octupole, decapole and dodecapole superpositions by the combined methods of multiple scales and Lindstedt-Poincare

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Doroudi, A.; Emampour, M.; Emampour, M.

2012-01-01

In this paper a combination of the method of multiple scales and the method of Lindstedt-Poincare which is a perturbative technique is used for calculation of axial secular frequencies of a nonlinear ion trap in the presence of second ,third, fourth and fifth order nonlinear terms of the potential distribution within the trap. The frequencies are calculated. The calculated frequencies are compared with the results of multiple scales method and the exact results.

Equating TIMSS Mathematics Subtests with Nonlinear Equating Methods Using NEAT Design: Circle-Arc Equating Approaches

Science.gov (United States)

Ozdemir, Burhanettin

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study is to equate Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) mathematics subtest scores obtained from TIMSS 2011 to scores obtained from TIMSS 2007 form with different nonlinear observed score equating methods under Non-Equivalent Anchor Test (NEAT) design where common items are used to link two or more test…

Milk siblingship, religious and secular: History, applications, and implications for practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Thorley, Virginia

2014-12-01

Milk kinship has religious and practical importance to Muslim families that is not well understood in Western cultures. The relationship occurs when an infant receives the milk of a woman other than the biological mother, creating familial relationships between the child and the woman whose milk is received. As milk siblings, her children and the recipient infant must never marry each other. Midwives in Western countries may encounter this in relation to human milk banking. This review provides a context for respectfully assisting families with their decision making when they are offered banked milk. A database search was conducted and other publications were found manually. Milk siblingship can be religious or secular. In Islam similar prohibitions on marriage exist to those for blood relations. The mothers therefore have to be known to each other to prevent an inappropriate marriage. This relationship has been a barrier to use of human milk banks by Muslim families as milk from several mothers is usually pooled. Nevertheless, donor milk has been used for premature neonates in two Islamic countries, applying the religious requirements. Recent interpretations by some Islamic scholars permitting milk banking may be acceptable to some families, but others will heed other rulings. NICU staff may encounter difficulties in providing banked human milk to infants from Muslim families. Different rulings exist and Muslim families in Western countries come from a variety of traditions. Sensitivity is required to explore these issues with families. Copyright © 2014 Australian College of Midwives. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The experience of stuttering among Ultra-Orthodox and Secular/Traditional Jews.

Science.gov (United States)

Freud, Debora; Ezrati-Vinacour, Ruth; Katz-Bernstein, Nitza; Fostick, Leah

2017-12-01

This groundbreaking research compares the experience of stuttering among adult male People Who Stutter (PWS) from the ultra-Orthodox (UO) Jewish community in Israel to those from Secular/Traditional (ST) backgrounds. Participants were 32 UO and 31 ST PWS, aged 18-67 years. Self-report questionnaires utilized: Perceived Stuttering Severity (PSS); Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering (OASES-A); Students' Life Satisfaction Scale (SLSS); Situation Avoidance Behavior Checklist (SABC). Demographic, religious, and stuttering information was collected. Groups were compared on scales, and correlations between scales and the PSS. Subjective stuttering severity ratings were significantly higher among the UO. A significant group effect was found for the OASES-A quality of life subscale, but not other subscales. Significant positive correlations were found between: 1) PSS and OASES-A Total Impact; 2) PSS and 3 OASES subscales; and 3) PSS and SABC (indicating increased avoidance with increased stuttering severity rating). A significant negative correlation was found between the PSS and SLSS, indicating lower life satisfaction with higher rates of stuttering severity among the ST. Interestingly, when tested by group, significant correlations between the PSS and all other study measures were observed only among the ST. UO participants showed higher subjective stuttering severity ratings, yet less impact on quality of life, and no correlation between subjective stuttering and other measures of stuttering experience. These novel findings may result from the combined protective effect of religiosity and socio-cultural characteristics on UO PWS' well-being, despite heightened concern about social consequences of stuttering within UO society. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ON THE MIGRATION OF JUPITER AND SATURN: CONSTRAINTS FROM LINEAR MODELS OF SECULAR RESONANT COUPLING WITH THE TERRESTRIAL PLANETS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Agnor, Craig B.; Lin, D. N. C.

2012-01-01

We examine how the late divergent migration of Jupiter and Saturn may have perturbed the terrestrial planets. Using a modified secular model we have identified six secular resonances between the ν 5 frequency of Jupiter and Saturn and the four apsidal eigenfrequencies of the terrestrial planets (g 1-4 ). We derive analytic upper limits on the eccentricity and orbital migration timescale of Jupiter and Saturn when these resonances were encountered to avoid perturbing the eccentricities of the terrestrial planets to values larger than the observed ones. Because of the small amplitudes of the j = 2, 3 terrestrial eigenmodes the g 2 – ν 5 and g 3 – ν 5 resonances provide the strongest constraints on giant planet migration. If Jupiter and Saturn migrated with eccentricities comparable to their present-day values, smooth migration with exponential timescales characteristic of planetesimal-driven migration (τ ∼ 5-10 Myr) would have perturbed the eccentricities of the terrestrial planets to values greatly exceeding the observed ones. This excitation may be mitigated if the eccentricity of Jupiter was small during the migration epoch, migration was very rapid (e.g., τ ∼< 0.5 Myr perhaps via planet-planet scattering or instability-driven migration) or the observed small eccentricity amplitudes of the j = 2, 3 terrestrial modes result from low probability cancellation of several large amplitude contributions. Results of orbital integrations show that very short migration timescales (τ < 0.5 Myr), characteristic of instability-driven migration, may also perturb the terrestrial planets' eccentricities by amounts comparable to their observed values. We discuss the implications of these constraints for the relative timing of terrestrial planet formation, giant planet migration, and the origin of the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment of the Moon 3.9 ± 0.1 Ga ago. We suggest that the simplest way to satisfy these dynamical constraints may be for the bulk of any giant

Solving polynomial differential equations by transforming them to linear functional-differential equations

OpenAIRE

Nahay, John Michael

2008-01-01

We present a new approach to solving polynomial ordinary differential equations by transforming them to linear functional equations and then solving the linear functional equations. We will focus most of our attention upon the first-order Abel differential equation with two nonlinear terms in order to demonstrate in as much detail as possible the computations necessary for a complete solution. We mention in our section on further developments that the basic transformation idea can be generali...

Lorentz-force equations as Heisenberg equations for a quantum system in the euclidean space

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rodriguez D, R.

2007-01-01

In an earlier work, the dynamic equations for a relativistic charged particle under the action of electromagnetic fields were formulated by R. Yamaleev in terms of external, as well as internal momenta. Evolution equations for external momenta, the Lorentz-force equations, were derived from the evolution equations for internal momenta. The mapping between the observables of external and internal momenta are related by Viete formulae for a quadratic polynomial, the characteristic polynomial of the relativistic dynamics. In this paper we show that the system of dynamic equations, can be cast into the Heisenberg scheme for a four-dimensional quantum system. Within this scheme the equations in terms of internal momenta play the role of evolution equations for a state vector, whereas the external momenta obey the Heisenberg equation for an operator evolution. The solutions of the Lorentz-force equation for the motion inside constant electromagnetic fields are presented via pentagonometric functions. (Author)

Differential Equation over Banach Algebra

OpenAIRE

Kleyn, Aleks

2018-01-01

In the book, I considered differential equations of order $1$ over Banach $D$-algebra: differential equation solved with respect to the derivative; exact differential equation; linear homogeneous equation. In noncommutative Banach algebra, initial value problem for linear homogeneous equation has infinitely many solutions.

Elements of partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

Sneddon, Ian Naismith

1957-01-01

Geared toward students of applied rather than pure mathematics, this volume introduces elements of partial differential equations. Its focus is primarily upon finding solutions to particular equations rather than general theory.Topics include ordinary differential equations in more than two variables, partial differential equations of the first and second orders, Laplace's equation, the wave equation, and the diffusion equation. A helpful Appendix offers information on systems of surfaces, and solutions to the odd-numbered problems appear at the end of the book. Readers pursuing independent st

New exact solutions to MKDV-Burgers equation and (2 + 1)-dimensional dispersive long wave equation via extended Riccati equation method

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kong Cuicui; Wang Dan; Song Lina; Zhang Hongqing

2009-01-01

In this paper, with the aid of symbolic computation and a general ansaetz, we presented a new extended rational expansion method to construct new rational formal exact solutions to nonlinear partial differential equations. In order to illustrate the effectiveness of this method, we apply it to the MKDV-Burgers equation and the (2 + 1)-dimensional dispersive long wave equation, then several new kinds of exact solutions are successfully obtained by using the new ansaetz. The method can also be applied to other nonlinear partial differential equations.

Introduction to partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

Greenspan, Donald

2000-01-01

Designed for use in a one-semester course by seniors and beginning graduate students, this rigorous presentation explores practical methods of solving differential equations, plus the unifying theory underlying the mathematical superstructure. Topics include basic concepts, Fourier series, second-order partial differential equations, wave equation, potential equation, heat equation, approximate solution of partial differential equations, and more. Exercises appear at the ends of most chapters. 1961 edition.

A New Fractional Projective Riccati Equation Method for Solving Fractional Partial Differential Equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Feng Qing-Hua

2014-01-01

In this paper, a new fractional projective Riccati equation method is proposed to establish exact solutions for fractional partial differential equations in the sense of modified Riemann—Liouville derivative. This method can be seen as the fractional version of the known projective Riccati equation method. For illustrating the validity of this method, we apply this method to solve the space-time fractional Whitham—Broer—Kaup (WBK) equations and the nonlinear fractional Sharma—Tasso—Olever (STO) equation, and as a result, some new exact solutions for them are obtained. (general)

A new sine-Gordon equation expansion algorithm to investigate some special nonlinear differential equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yan Zhenya

2005-01-01

A new transformation method is developed using the general sine-Gordon travelling wave reduction equation and a generalized transformation. With the aid of symbolic computation, this method can be used to seek more types of solutions of nonlinear differential equations, which include not only the known solutions derived by some known methods but new solutions. Here we choose the double sine-Gordon equation, the Magma equation and the generalized Pochhammer-Chree (PC) equation to illustrate the method. As a result, many types of new doubly periodic solutions are obtained. Moreover when using the method to these special nonlinear differential equations, some transformations are firstly needed. The method can be also extended to other nonlinear differential equations

Singular stochastic differential equations

CERN Document Server

Cherny, Alexander S

2005-01-01

The authors introduce, in this research monograph on stochastic differential equations, a class of points termed isolated singular points. Stochastic differential equations possessing such points (called singular stochastic differential equations here) arise often in theory and in applications. However, known conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a solution typically fail for such equations. The book concentrates on the study of the existence, the uniqueness, and, what is most important, on the qualitative behaviour of solutions of singular stochastic differential equations. This is done by providing a qualitative classification of isolated singular points, into 48 possible types.

Reactimeter dispersion equation

OpenAIRE

A.G. Yuferov

2016-01-01

The aim of this work is to derive and analyze a reactimeter metrological model in the form of the dispersion equation which connects reactimeter input/output signal dispersions with superimposed random noise at the inlet. It is proposed to standardize the reactimeter equation form, presenting the main reactimeter computing unit by a convolution equation. Hence, the reactimeter metrological characteristics are completely determined by this unit hardware function which represents a transient re...

Generalized KKR-theory for non-muffin-tin potentials

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Molenaar, J.

1989-01-01

The author shows that the secular equation in KKR (Korringa, Kohn and Rostoker) theory retains its separable structure also in the case of non-muffin-tin potentials. This generalisation has been extensively discussed recently. During this discussion, in which the possible necessity of so-called near

Symmetries and Invariants of the Time-dependent Oscillator Equation and the Envelope Equation

CERN Document Server

Qin, Hong

2005-01-01

Single-particle dynamics in a time-dependent focusing field is examined. The existence of the Courant-Snyder invariant* is fundamentally the result of the corresponding symmetry admitted by the oscillator equation with time-dependent frequency.** A careful analysis of the admitted symmetries reveals a deeper connection between the nonlinear envelope equation and the oscillator equation. A general theorem regarding the symmetries and invariants of the envelope equation, which includes the existence of the Courant-Snyder invariant as a special case, is demonstrated. The symmetries of the envelope equation enable a fast algorithm for finding matched solutions without using the conventional iterative shooting method.

A generalized fractional sub-equation method for fractional differential equations with variable coefficients

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tang, Bo; He, Yinnian; Wei, Leilei; Zhang, Xindong

2012-01-01

In this Letter, a generalized fractional sub-equation method is proposed for solving fractional differential equations with variable coefficients. Being concise and straightforward, this method is applied to the space–time fractional Gardner equation with variable coefficients. As a result, many exact solutions are obtained including hyperbolic function solutions, trigonometric function solutions and rational solutions. It is shown that the considered method provides a very effective, convenient and powerful mathematical tool for solving many other fractional differential equations in mathematical physics. -- Highlights: ► Study of fractional differential equations with variable coefficients plays a role in applied physical sciences. ► It is shown that the proposed algorithm is effective for solving fractional differential equations with variable coefficients. ► The obtained solutions may give insight into many considerable physical processes.

True amplitude wave equation migration arising from true amplitude one-way wave equations

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Yu; Zhang, Guanquan; Bleistein, Norman

2003-10-01

One-way wave operators are powerful tools for use in forward modelling and inversion. Their implementation, however, involves introduction of the square root of an operator as a pseudo-differential operator. Furthermore, a simple factoring of the wave operator produces one-way wave equations that yield the same travel times as the full wave equation, but do not yield accurate amplitudes except for homogeneous media and for almost all points in heterogeneous media. Here, we present augmented one-way wave equations. We show that these equations yield solutions for which the leading order asymptotic amplitude as well as the travel time satisfy the same differential equations as the corresponding functions for the full wave equation. Exact representations of the square-root operator appearing in these differential equations are elusive, except in cases in which the heterogeneity of the medium is independent of the transverse spatial variables. Here, we address the fully heterogeneous case. Singling out depth as the preferred direction of propagation, we introduce a representation of the square-root operator as an integral in which a rational function of the transverse Laplacian appears in the integrand. This allows us to carry out explicit asymptotic analysis of the resulting one-way wave equations. To do this, we introduce an auxiliary function that satisfies a lower dimensional wave equation in transverse spatial variables only. We prove that ray theory for these one-way wave equations leads to one-way eikonal equations and the correct leading order transport equation for the full wave equation. We then introduce appropriate boundary conditions at z = 0 to generate waves at depth whose quotient leads to a reflector map and an estimate of the ray theoretical reflection coefficient on the reflector. Thus, these true amplitude one-way wave equations lead to a 'true amplitude wave equation migration' (WEM) method. In fact, we prove that applying the WEM imaging condition

First-order partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

Rhee, Hyun-Ku; Amundson, Neal R

2001-01-01

This first volume of a highly regarded two-volume text is fully usable on its own. After going over some of the preliminaries, the authors discuss mathematical models that yield first-order partial differential equations; motivations, classifications, and some methods of solution; linear and semilinear equations; chromatographic equations with finite rate expressions; homogeneous and nonhomogeneous quasilinear equations; formation and propagation of shocks; conservation equations, weak solutions, and shock layers; nonlinear equations; and variational problems. Exercises appear at the end of mo

Equating Multidimensional Tests under a Random Groups Design: A Comparison of Various Equating Procedures

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Eunjung

2013-01-01

The purpose of this research was to compare the equating performance of various equating procedures for the multidimensional tests. To examine the various equating procedures, simulated data sets were used that were generated based on a multidimensional item response theory (MIRT) framework. Various equating procedures were examined, including…

Comparing the IRT Pre-equating and Section Pre-equating: A Simulation Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Hwang, Chi-en; Cleary, T. Anne

The results obtained from two basic types of pre-equatings of tests were compared: the item response theory (IRT) pre-equating and section pre-equating (SPE). The simulated data were generated from a modified three-parameter logistic model with a constant guessing parameter. Responses of two replication samples of 3000 examinees on two 72-item…

Beginning partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

O'Neil, Peter V

2014-01-01

A broad introduction to PDEs with an emphasis on specialized topics and applications occurring in a variety of fields Featuring a thoroughly revised presentation of topics, Beginning Partial Differential Equations, Third Edition provides a challenging, yet accessible,combination of techniques, applications, and introductory theory on the subjectof partial differential equations. The new edition offers nonstandard coverageon material including Burger's equation, the telegraph equation, damped wavemotion, and the use of characteristics to solve nonhomogeneous problems. The Third Edition is or

A new formulation of equations of compressible fluids by analogy with Maxwell's equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kambe, Tsutomu

2010-01-01

A compressible ideal fluid is governed by Euler's equation of motion and equations of continuity, entropy and vorticity. This system can be reformulated in a form analogous to that of electromagnetism governed by Maxwell's equations with source terms. The vorticity plays the role of magnetic field, while the velocity field plays the part of a vector potential and the enthalpy (of isentropic flows) plays the part of a scalar potential in electromagnetism. The evolution of source terms of fluid Maxwell equations is determined by solving the equations of motion and continuity. The equation of sound waves can be derived from this formulation, where time evolution of the sound source is determined by the equation of motion. The theory of vortex sound of aeroacoustics is included in this formulation. It is remarkable that the forces acting on a point mass moving in a velocity field of an inviscid fluid are analogous in their form to the electric force and Lorentz force in electromagnetism. The significance of the reformulation is interpreted by examples taken from fluid mechanics. This formulation can be extended to viscous fluids without difficulty. The Maxwell-type equations are unchanged by the viscosity effect, although the source terms have additional terms due to viscosities.

Degenerate nonlinear diffusion equations

CERN Document Server

Favini, Angelo

2012-01-01

The aim of these notes is to include in a uniform presentation style several topics related to the theory of degenerate nonlinear diffusion equations, treated in the mathematical framework of evolution equations with multivalued m-accretive operators in Hilbert spaces. The problems concern nonlinear parabolic equations involving two cases of degeneracy. More precisely, one case is due to the vanishing of the time derivative coefficient and the other is provided by the vanishing of the diffusion coefficient on subsets of positive measure of the domain. From the mathematical point of view the results presented in these notes can be considered as general results in the theory of degenerate nonlinear diffusion equations. However, this work does not seek to present an exhaustive study of degenerate diffusion equations, but rather to emphasize some rigorous and efficient techniques for approaching various problems involving degenerate nonlinear diffusion equations, such as well-posedness, periodic solutions, asympt...

Computational partial differential equations using Matlab

CERN Document Server

Li, Jichun

2008-01-01

Brief Overview of Partial Differential Equations The parabolic equations The wave equations The elliptic equations Differential equations in broader areasA quick review of numerical methods for PDEsFinite Difference Methods for Parabolic Equations Introduction Theoretical issues: stability, consistence, and convergence 1-D parabolic equations2-D and 3-D parabolic equationsNumerical examples with MATLAB codesFinite Difference Methods for Hyperbolic Equations IntroductionSome basic difference schemes Dissipation and dispersion errors Extensions to conservation lawsThe second-order hyperbolic PDE

Integrable systems of partial differential equations determined by structure equations and Lax pair

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bracken, Paul

2010-01-01

It is shown how a system of evolution equations can be developed both from the structure equations of a submanifold embedded in three-space as well as from a matrix SO(6) Lax pair. The two systems obtained this way correspond exactly when a constraint equation is selected and imposed on the system of equations. This allows for the possibility of selecting the coefficients in the second fundamental form in a general way.

Drift-Diffusion Equation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K. Banoo

1998-01-01

equation in the discrete momentum space. This is shown to be similar to the conventional drift-diffusion equation except that it is a more rigorous solution to the Boltzmann equation because the current and carrier densities are resolved into M×1 vectors, where M is the number of modes in the discrete momentum space. The mobility and diffusion coefficient become M×M matrices which connect the M momentum space modes. This approach is demonstrated by simulating electron transport in bulk silicon.

A identidade do Ensino Religioso no contexto da laicidade (The identity of Religious Education in the context of secularism - DOI: 10.5752/ P.2175-5841.2010v8n19p101

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sergio Rogerio Junqueira

2010-12-01

Full Text Available A discussão sobre o Ensino Religioso na escola pública das diferentes unidades da Federação é uma polêmica constante ao longo da história da República brasileira. A imposição legal do Ensino Religioso no âmbito escolar pode remeter à ideia de um Estado não laico e acarretar mais preocupações e discussões do que propriamente promover uma formação integral que favoreça os estudantes. No Estado laico, as religiões são livres contanto que respeitem a neutralidade confessional da esfera pública e a garantia de cuidar do bem comum. O Ensino Religioso, no espaço da educação, contribui para prevenir a intolerância e instiga os estudantes a buscar seus direitos e liberdades. Isto não significa abrir mão do direito de expressão da confessionalidade de alunos e professores, mas permitir ao outro ser sujeito de sua cultura e de seus desejos. O Ensino Religioso como componente curricular está alicerçado nos princípios da cidadania, no entendimento do outro enquanto outro. E isso só é possível num Estado laico, pois é competência do Estado assegurar aos alunos o direito de receber a formação religiosa desejada. É um direito cidadão. Palavras-chave: Educação; Ensino Religioso; Estado laico. Abstract The discussion of Religious Education in public schools of the various units of the federation is a constant debate throughout the history of the Brazilian Republic. The legal imposition on Religious Education in schools may refer to the idea of a secular State and not cause more concern and discussion than actually promote an integral formation that favors students. In the secular State, religions are free provided, they satisfy the confessional neutrality of the public sphere and ensuring care for the common good. The Religious Education in the area of education helps to prevent intolerance and encourages students to pursue their rights and freedoms. This does not mean giving up the right of expression of denominational

Symmetries of the Euler compressible flow equations for general equation of state

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Boyd, Zachary M. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Ramsey, Scott D. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Baty, Roy S. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

2015-10-15

The Euler compressible flow equations exhibit different Lie symmetries depending on the equation of state (EOS) of the medium in which the flow occurs. This means that, in general, different types of similarity solution will be available in different flow media. We present a comprehensive classification of all EOS’s to which the Euler equations apply, based on the Lie symmetries admitted by the corresponding flow equations, restricting to the case of 1-D planar, cylindrical, or spherical geometry. The results are conveniently summarized in tables. This analysis also clarifies past work by Axford and Ovsiannikov on symmetry classification.

Alternatives to the Dirac equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Girvin, S.M.; Brownstein, K.R.

1975-01-01

Recent work by Biedenharn, Han, and van Dam (BHvD) has questioned the uniqueness of the Dirac equation. BHvD have obtained a two-component equation as an alternate to the Dirac equation. Although they later show their alternative to be unitarily equivalent to the Dirac equation, certain physical differences were claimed. BHvD attribute the existence of this alternate equation to the fact that their factorizing matrices were position-dependent. To investigate this, we factor the Klein-Gordon equation in spherical coordinates allowing the factorizing matrices to depend arbitrarily upon theta and phi. It is shown that despite this additional freedom, and without involving any relativistic covariance, the conventional four-component Dirac equation is the only possibility

Eight years secular trends of physical self-esteem among Swedish adolescents.

Science.gov (United States)

Raustorp, Anders

2010-01-01

The main aim of this study was to explore secular trends between 2000 and 2008 in physical self esteem by comparing cross sectional cohorts of young adolescents. Data of physical self esteem, mean steps per day and body mass index (BMI) were collected in comparable cohorts comprising 191 (103 girls) (2000) and 170 adolescents (101 girls) (2008) in a middle class Swedish community. There was a significant higher Global Self-esteem in the cohort 2008 compared with the 2000 cohort both in boys (p = .004) and girls (p = .018). Regarding Physical Self-worth, both boys and girls reported higher mean values in 2008, which were however not significant. Boys classified overweight/obese showed a significant lower value in Global Self-esteem (p = .001) in the 2008 cohort when compared with the overweight/obese in the 2000 cohort, but all other domains showed non significant differences. Girls classified overweight/obese showed a significant lower value in Physical Strength (p = .023), in the 2008 cohort when compared with the overweight/ obese in the 2000 cohort, but all other domains showed non significant differences. There was significantly higher Global Self-esteem in the cohort 2008 compared with the 2000 cohort both in boys and girls, and regarding Physical Self-worth, both boys and girls reported higher mean values in 2008 that were not significant. In the overweight/obese adolescents group, the only significant difference was a lower perceived Physical Strength in girls in 2008 and a significant lower Global Self-esteem in boys in 2008. Enhanced focus on physical activity in society and actions taken by the school might have influenced the result.

Nonlinear differential equations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Dresner, L.

1988-01-01

This report is the text of a graduate course on nonlinear differential equations given by the author at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the summer of 1987. The topics covered are: direction fields of first-order differential equations; the Lie (group) theory of ordinary differential equations; similarity solutions of second-order partial differential equations; maximum principles and differential inequalities; monotone operators and iteration; complementary variational principles; and stability of numerical methods. The report should be of interest to graduate students, faculty, and practicing scientists and engineers. No prior knowledge is required beyond a good working knowledge of the calculus. The emphasis is on practical results. Most of the illustrative examples are taken from the fields of nonlinear diffusion, heat and mass transfer, applied superconductivity, and helium cryogenics.

Nonlinear differential equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dresner, L.

1988-01-01

This report is the text of a graduate course on nonlinear differential equations given by the author at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the summer of 1987. The topics covered are: direction fields of first-order differential equations; the Lie (group) theory of ordinary differential equations; similarity solutions of second-order partial differential equations; maximum principles and differential inequalities; monotone operators and iteration; complementary variational principles; and stability of numerical methods. The report should be of interest to graduate students, faculty, and practicing scientists and engineers. No prior knowledge is required beyond a good working knowledge of the calculus. The emphasis is on practical results. Most of the illustrative examples are taken from the fields of nonlinear diffusion, heat and mass transfer, applied superconductivity, and helium cryogenics

Semilinear Schrödinger equations

CERN Document Server

Cazenave, Thierry

2003-01-01

The nonlinear Schrödinger equation has received a great deal of attention from mathematicians, in particular because of its applications to nonlinear optics. It is also a good model dispersive equation, since it is often technically simpler than other dispersive equations, such as the wave or Korteweg-de Vries equation. Particularly useful tools in studying the nonlinear Schrödinger equation are energy and Strichartz's estimates. This book presents various mathematical aspects of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It examines both problems of local nature (local existence of solutions, unique

Dynamic Responses of the Earth's Outer Core to Assimilation of Observed Geomagnetic Secular Variation

Science.gov (United States)

Kuang, Weijia; Tangborn, Andrew

2014-01-01

Assimilation of surface geomagnetic observations and geodynamo models has advanced very quickly in recent years. However, compared to advanced data assimilation systems in meteorology, geomagnetic data assimilation (GDAS) is still in an early stage. Among many challenges ranging from data to models is the disparity between the short observation records and the long time scales of the core dynamics. To better utilize available observational information, we have made an effort in this study to directly assimilate the Gauss coefficients of both the core field and its secular variation (SV) obtained via global geomagnetic field modeling, aiming at understanding the dynamical responses of the core fluid to these additional observational constraints. Our studies show that the SV assimilation helps significantly to shorten the dynamo model spin-up process. The flow beneath the core-mantle boundary (CMB) responds significantly to the observed field and its SV. The strongest responses occur in the relatively small scale flow (of the degrees L is approx. 30 in spherical harmonic expansions). This part of the flow includes the axisymmetric toroidal flow (of order m = 0) and non-axisymmetric poloidal flow with m (is) greater than 5. These responses can be used to better understand the core flow and, in particular, to improve accuracies of predicting geomagnetic variability in future.

Quantum linear Boltzmann equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vacchini, Bassano; Hornberger, Klaus

2009-01-01

We review the quantum version of the linear Boltzmann equation, which describes in a non-perturbative fashion, by means of scattering theory, how the quantum motion of a single test particle is affected by collisions with an ideal background gas. A heuristic derivation of this Lindblad master equation is presented, based on the requirement of translation-covariance and on the relation to the classical linear Boltzmann equation. After analyzing its general symmetry properties and the associated relaxation dynamics, we discuss a quantum Monte Carlo method for its numerical solution. We then review important limiting forms of the quantum linear Boltzmann equation, such as the case of quantum Brownian motion and pure collisional decoherence, as well as the application to matter wave optics. Finally, we point to the incorporation of quantum degeneracies and self-interactions in the gas by relating the equation to the dynamic structure factor of the ambient medium, and we provide an extension of the equation to include internal degrees of freedom.

Arab revolts and 'Civil State': a new term for old conflicts between Islamism and secularism

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Barbara De Poli

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The Arab revolts that erupted in late 2010, forcing from power the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and dragging Syria through a ferocious civil war, reactivated the public debate on government in Islamic countries. In all those countries, after removing the authoritarian regimes (or fighting against them, the political arena saw a division into two main camps: Islamic parties and secularists; both claiming to stand for democracy. Within the political discourse of both sides a new concept began to play a pivotal role: that of the ’civil state’ – dawla madaniyya – a term which, however, renders different semantic interpretations according to the political actors involved, meaning both ‘no military or theocratic (but Islamic State’, and ‘secular State’. We’ll especially analyse the usage of the term ‘dawla madaniyya’ in Tunisia and Egypt since the beginning of the Arab revolts and up until 2014 and, for the same time period, the political practices of Islamist and secularist parties (government experiences, constituent assemblies focusing on the effectiveness of the dawla madaniyya paradigm for building a democratic state.

Exact Solutions to Nonlinear Schroedinger Equation and Higher-Order Nonlinear Schroedinger Equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ren Ji; Ruan Hangyu

2008-01-01

We study solutions of the nonlinear Schroedinger equation (NLSE) and higher-order nonlinear Schroedinger equation (HONLSE) with variable coefficients. By considering all the higher-order effect of HONLSE as a new dependent variable, the NLSE and HONLSE can be changed into one equation. Using the generalized Lie group reduction method (GLGRM), the abundant solutions of NLSE and HONLSE are obtained

Nonlinear diffusion equations

CERN Document Server

Wu Zhuo Qun; Li Hui Lai; Zhao Jun Ning

2001-01-01

Nonlinear diffusion equations, an important class of parabolic equations, come from a variety of diffusion phenomena which appear widely in nature. They are suggested as mathematical models of physical problems in many fields, such as filtration, phase transition, biochemistry and dynamics of biological groups. In many cases, the equations possess degeneracy or singularity. The appearance of degeneracy or singularity makes the study more involved and challenging. Many new ideas and methods have been developed to overcome the special difficulties caused by the degeneracy and singularity, which

On the F-equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kalinowski, M.W.; Szymanowski, L.

1982-03-01

A generalization of the Truesdell F-equations is proposed and some solutions to them - generalized Fox F-functions - are found. It is also shown that a non-linear difference-differential equation, which does not belong to the Truesdell class, nevertheless may be transformed into the standard F-equation. (author)

How to obtain the covariant form of Maxwell's equations from the continuity equation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Heras, Jose A [Departamento de Ciencias Basicas, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Unidad Azcapotzalco, Av. San Pablo No. 180, Col. Reynosa, 02200, Mexico D. F. (Mexico); Departamento de Fisica y Matematicas, Universidad Iberoamericana, Prolongacion Paseo de la Reforma 880, Mexico D. F. 01210 (Mexico)

2009-07-15

The covariant Maxwell equations are derived from the continuity equation for the electric charge. This result provides an axiomatic approach to Maxwell's equations in which charge conservation is emphasized as the fundamental axiom underlying these equations.

Linear integral equations and soliton systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Quispel, G.R.W.

1983-01-01

A study is presented of classical integrable dynamical systems in one temporal and one spatial dimension. The direct linearizations are given of several nonlinear partial differential equations, for example the Korteweg-de Vries equation, the modified Korteweg-de Vries equation, the sine-Gordon equation, the nonlinear Schroedinger equation, and the equation of motion for the isotropic Heisenberg spin chain; the author also discusses several relations between these equations. The Baecklund transformations of these partial differential equations are treated on the basis of a singular transformation of the measure (or equivalently of the plane-wave factor) occurring in the corresponding linear integral equations, and the Baecklund transformations are used to derive the direct linearization of a chain of so-called modified partial differential equations. Finally it is shown that the singular linear integral equations lead in a natural way to the direct linearizations of various nonlinear difference-difference equations. (Auth.)

Lectures on partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

Petrovsky, I G

1992-01-01

Graduate-level exposition by noted Russian mathematician offers rigorous, transparent, highly readable coverage of classification of equations, hyperbolic equations, elliptic equations and parabolic equations. Wealth of commentary and insight invaluable for deepening understanding of problems considered in text. Translated from the Russian by A. Shenitzer.

Reduction operators of Burgers equation.

Science.gov (United States)

Pocheketa, Oleksandr A; Popovych, Roman O

2013-02-01

The solution of the problem on reduction operators and nonclassical reductions of the Burgers equation is systematically treated and completed. A new proof of the theorem on the special "no-go" case of regular reduction operators is presented, and the representation of the coefficients of operators in terms of solutions of the initial equation is constructed for this case. All possible nonclassical reductions of the Burgers equation to single ordinary differential equations are exhaustively described. Any Lie reduction of the Burgers equation proves to be equivalent via the Hopf-Cole transformation to a parameterized family of Lie reductions of the linear heat equation.

The magnetic field experiment onboard Equator-S and its scientific possibilities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K.-H. Fornacon

1999-12-01

Full Text Available The special feature of the ringcore fluxgate magnetometer on Equator-S is the high time and field resolution. The scientific aim of the experiment is the investigation of waves in the 10–100 picotesla range with a time resolution up to 64 Hz. The instrument characteristics and the influence of the spacecraft on the magnetic field measurement will be discussed. The work shows that the applied pre- and inflight calibration techniques are sufficient to suppress spacecraft interferences. The offset in spin axis direction was determined for the first time with an independent field measurement by the Equator-S Electron Drift Instrument. The data presented gives an impression of the accuracy of the measurement.Key words. Magnetospheric physics (instruments and techniques · Space plasma physics (instruments and techniques

The magnetic field experiment onboard Equator-S and its scientific possibilities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

K.-H. Fornacon

Full Text Available The special feature of the ringcore fluxgate magnetometer on Equator-S is the high time and field resolution. The scientific aim of the experiment is the investigation of waves in the 10–100 picotesla range with a time resolution up to 64 Hz. The instrument characteristics and the influence of the spacecraft on the magnetic field measurement will be discussed. The work shows that the applied pre- and inflight calibration techniques are sufficient to suppress spacecraft interferences. The offset in spin axis direction was determined for the first time with an independent field measurement by the Equator-S Electron Drift Instrument. The data presented gives an impression of the accuracy of the measurement.

Key words. Magnetospheric physics (instruments and techniques · Space plasma physics (instruments and techniques

Turbulence in unmagnetized Vlasov plasmas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kuo, S.P.

1985-01-01

The classical technique of transformation and characteristics is employed to analyze the problem of strong turbulence in unmagnetized plasmas. The effect of resonance broadening and perturbation expansion are treated simultaneously, without time secularities. The renormalization procedure of Dupree and Tetreault is used in the transformed Vlasov equation to analyze the turbulence and to derive explicitly a diffusion equation. Analyses are extended to inhomogeneous plasmas and the relationship between the transformation and ponderomotive force is obtained. (author)

Methods for Equating Mental Tests.

Science.gov (United States)

1984-11-01

1983) compared conventional and IRT methods for equating the Test of English as a Foreign Language ( TOEFL ) after chaining. Three conventional and...three IRT equating methods were examined in this study; two sections of TOEFL were each (separately) equated. The IRT methods included the following: (a...group. A separate base form was established for each of the six equating methods. Instead of equating the base-form TOEFL to itself, the last (eighth

Supersymmetric quasipotential equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zaikov, R.P.

1981-01-01

A supersymmetric extension of the Logunov-Tavkhelidze quasipotential approach is suggested. The supersymmetric Bethe- Salpeter equation is an initial equation. The transition from the four-time to the two-time Green function is made in the super- center-of-mass system. The two-time Green function has no inverse function in the whole spinor space. The resolvent operator if found using the Majorana character of the spinor wave function. The supersymmetric quasipotential equation is written. The consideration is carried out in the framework of the theory of chiral scalar superfields [ru

Ordinary differential equations

CERN Document Server

Miller, Richard K

1982-01-01

Ordinary Differential Equations is an outgrowth of courses taught for a number of years at Iowa State University in the mathematics and the electrical engineering departments. It is intended as a text for a first graduate course in differential equations for students in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. Although differential equations is an old, traditional, and well-established subject, the diverse backgrounds and interests of the students in a typical modern-day course cause problems in the selection and method of presentation of material. In order to compensate for this diversity,

Uncertain differential equations

CERN Document Server

Yao, Kai

2016-01-01

This book introduces readers to the basic concepts of and latest findings in the area of differential equations with uncertain factors. It covers the analytic method and numerical method for solving uncertain differential equations, as well as their applications in the field of finance. Furthermore, the book provides a number of new potential research directions for uncertain differential equation. It will be of interest to researchers, engineers and students in the fields of mathematics, information science, operations research, industrial engineering, computer science, artificial intelligence, automation, economics, and management science.

Introduction to nonlinear dispersive equations

CERN Document Server

Linares, Felipe

2015-01-01

This textbook introduces the well-posedness theory for initial-value problems of nonlinear, dispersive partial differential equations, with special focus on two key models, the Korteweg–de Vries equation and the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. A concise and self-contained treatment of background material (the Fourier transform, interpolation theory, Sobolev spaces, and the linear Schrödinger equation) prepares the reader to understand the main topics covered: the initial-value problem for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation and the generalized Korteweg–de Vries equation, properties of their solutions, and a survey of general classes of nonlinear dispersive equations of physical and mathematical significance. Each chapter ends with an expert account of recent developments and open problems, as well as exercises. The final chapter gives a detailed exposition of local well-posedness for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, taking the reader to the forefront of recent research. The second edition of Introdu...

Generalized Lorentz-Force equations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yamaleev, R.M.

2001-01-01

Guided by Nambu (n+1)-dimensional phase space formalism we build a new system of dynamic equations. These equations describe a dynamic state of the corporeal system composed of n subsystems. The dynamic equations are formulated in terms of dynamic variables of the subsystems as well as in terms of dynamic variables of the corporeal system. These two sets of variables are related respectively as roots and coefficients of the n-degree polynomial equation. In the special n=2 case, this formalism reproduces relativistic dynamics for the charged spinning particles

A new evolution equation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Laenen, E.

1995-01-01

We propose a new evolution equation for the gluon density relevant for the region of small x B . It generalizes the GLR equation and allows deeper penetration in dense parton systems than the GLR equation does. This generalization consists of taking shadowing effects more comprehensively into account by including multigluon correlations, and allowing for an arbitrary initial gluon distribution in a hadron. We solve the new equation for fixed α s . We find that the effects of multigluon correlations on the deep-inelastic structure function are small. (orig.)

Thermoviscous Model Equations in Nonlinear Acoustics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Anders Rønne

Four nonlinear acoustical wave equations that apply to both perfect gasses and arbitrary fluids with a quadratic equation of state are studied. Shock and rarefaction wave solutions to the equations are studied. In order to assess the accuracy of the wave equations, their solutions are compared...... to solutions of the basic equations from which the wave equations are derived. A straightforward weakly nonlinear equation is the most accurate for shock modeling. A higher order wave equation is the most accurate for modeling of smooth disturbances. Investigations of the linear stability properties...... of solutions to the wave equations, reveal that the solutions may become unstable. Such instabilities are not found in the basic equations. Interacting shocks and standing shocks are investigated....