Confrontation Of Theory Research Articles

Instytucja kary umownej w latach 1965–1989 — wybrane zagadnienia

The basis of this article is the analysis of the functioning of a contractual penalty in the years 1965–1989, i.e. from the time the Civil Code entered into force until the end of the Polish People’s Republic period. The research was carried out by means of analysing the legal provisions, the caselaw of the Supreme Court and the views of the doctrine. Its purpose is to reflect and draw conclusions on the functioning of the civil law institution — a contractual penalty — under authoritarian governments. The considerations were focused on selected problems, first of all concentrating on the Supreme Court’s case-law. Legal relations with the participation of socialized economy units become an important element of these considerations. The provisions of the Civil Code constitute the starting point, but they cannot be interpreted in isolation from the provisions of other normative acts that introduced special legal solutions in contracts with the participation of units of the socialized economy. The confrontation of theory and practice shows how the obligations imposed on entities of civil law are enforced. Against this background, issues of key importance for civil law emerge. They relate to the principles of concluding contracts, the performance of obligations, and the consequences of a failure to perform the contract.

O ensino de Geografia e as estratégias de combate à desertificação e a degradação da terra no semiárido alagoano

A educação contextualizada se faz necessária para trabalhar o ensino de Geografia como forma de combate à desertificação e a degradação da terra no semiárido alagoano. Assim, esse trabalho pretende compreender o ensino de Geografia como forma de combate à desertificação da terra, partindo de uma abordagem sobre a educação contextualizada, afim de apresentar estratégias de ensino voltadas para a proteção do bioma Caatinga. Preferiu-se um caminho metodológico pautado inicialmente na leitura e discussão de alguns referenciais teóricos como Carvalho (2011), Falcão (2008), Moreira (2008), Sá Bezerra (2009), dentre outros. Em um segundo momento, realizou-se uma pesquisa de campo a título de confronto da teoria com a realidade local, no sentido de traçar exemplos de como o professor pode realizar uma análise do ensino de Geografia como forma de trabalhar a educação contextualizada, em prol da preservação do semiárido alagoano, em especial do município de Delmiro Gouveia-AL. O trabalho também se embasou em uma pesquisa bibliográfica qualitativa in loco, na qual se baseou na análise do livro didático de Geografia “Vontade de Saber”, do 6° ano do ensino fundamental e de autoria de Neiva Camargo Torrezani (2015), por ser usado em escolas locais. Buscando responder questionamentos como: de que forma se dá o ensino contextualizado no semiárido? Essa pesquisa tem como objetivo geral analisar como o ensino de geografia pode contribuir para a compreensão da consciência ambiental no semiárido alagoano? E como objetivos específicos identificar quais as particularidades no semiárido alagoano? Compreender quais as estratégias didático-pedagógicas usadas para trabalhar conteúdos como desertificação e degradação do semiárido alagoano no ensino de geografia? Foi possível observar que através do uso inadequado da terra, a degradação está ocorrendo e devido os livros didáticos serem padronizados, os conteúdos não dão ênfase as especificidades territoriais do semiárido, então cabe ao professor ser o mediador desse processo.
 
 Palavras-chave: Ensino de Geografia, Desertificação, Semiárido Alagoano.

Nuclear power supply: Going against the misconceptions. Evidence of nuclear flexibility from the French experience

In the context of power system decarbonisation, higher shares of variable renewables are usually promoted inducing higher flexibility needs. Worthwhile flexibility can be provided by a number of solutions, including baseload power modulation. Nuclear power is usually presented as poorly-flexible, and, as such, a brake to renewable development. This article aims at providing an assessment of nuclear flexibility from a technical viewpoint, based on both a literature review (theory) and industrial feedback of the French nuclear operator (practice). From the confrontation of theory and practice, the actual potential of nuclear power is analysed, both at the reactor scale and the fleet scale. The data shows that, today, nuclear reactors are flexible, and are currently operated in France as such (approximately 40% of the fleet is currently involved in load-following). They also demonstrate that there is a margin to further take advantage of this potential, by increasing the number of reactors involved in load-following operations and the number of operations realised by each reactor.

Политика социокультурной интеграции: основные теоретические подходы

This paper is devoted to research of the key theoretical approaches to analysis of sociocultural integration policy as a tool for resolving regional conflicts. It explores the theoretical tradition of the integration analysis, related to the conceptual confrontation of theories of ethnic conflict, identity-based conflict and citizenship, multiculturalism, neo-functionalism, normative conceptions of political integration. The contradiction lies in the interpretation of integration as a means of de-escalation of ethno-regional conflicts in pluralistic societies. Conflict theory is based on the analysis of conflict nature of ethnicity; multiculturalists come from the normativity of cultural pluralism and ethnic identity; neo-functionalists, citizenship theorists and political integration researchers interpret the status of ethnic groups from the standpoint of equality of opportunity and institutional imperative of sociocultural integration. Conflict resolution theory focuses on the ability of the sociocultural integration policy in the transformation of destructive identity-based conflicts into conflicts of interests. The author considers the systemic factors of regional conflicts and emphasizes destabilizing role of re-politicization of ethnicity in the North Caucasus. Contradictions between the systemic modernization and social disintegration are the primary source of identity-based conflicts. Structurally, escalation of violence in regional conflicts is determined by the intensity and scope of ethnic mobilization and social dissatisfaction. Integration policy has fundamental goals of ensuring regional safety and overcoming ethnic contradictions in their most destructive form of identity-based conflicts. Sociocultural integration policy must serve as a conflict-preventive tool, i.e. a pro-active action on the conflict environment by way of structural solutions to regional problems, transformation and rationalization of ethnic contradictions.

Private investment as an engine of rural development: A confrontation of theory and practice for the case of Mozambique

Governments and non-governmental organizations in developing countries have long struggled to identify effective strategies to support rural economic development. In the context of neoliberal reforms which have downsized the size of the state, governments are increasingly turning to private investment as a means of stimulating rural development. This is envisioned to occur through several different pathways, including employment creation, voluntary contributions to social services and infrastructure, and through business models that generate value for local communities. Yet to date, there is very little comparative research to identify the wider patterns of investment, and the nature and reach of benefits accruing through them. This paper undertakes such an analysis in the context of a national effort in Mozambique to level the playing field for local communities in the context of a recent surge in private investment, the Community Lands Initiative (Iniciativa de Terras Comunitarias, or iTC). iTC efforts to build community level capacity take place in a legislative context considered by many to be strongly supportive of customary rights, and in one of the most dynamic investment climates on the continent. Assessing outcomes in a context in which both the challenges and the potential for more empowering forms of investment are magnified provides a unique opportunity to explore the broader question of whether the logic of capital accumulation underlying agricultural investment can drive, or even be reconciled with, poverty alleviation and rural development agendas. Findings point to the incompatibilities between these aims, with many investments failing to result in community-investor partnerships and most of the partnerships that have emerged resulting in limited benefits for local communities. These findings suggest that community-investor partnerships are unlikely to be the much sought-after silver bullet for reconciling private investment with rural development and poverty alleviation aims.

On the growth and dissemination laws in a mathematical model of metastatic growth

Metastasis represents one of the main clinical challenge in cancer treatment since it is associated with the majority of deaths. Recent technological advances allow quantification of the dynamics of the process by means of noninvasive techniques such as longitudinal tracking of bioluminescent cells. The metastatic process was simplified here into two essential components – dissemination and colonization – which were mathematically formalized in terms of simple quantitative laws. The resulting mathematical model was confronted to in vivo experimental data of spontaneous metastasis after primary tumor resection. We discuss how much information can be inferred from confrontation of theories to the data with emphasis on identifiability issues. It is shown that two mutually exclusive assumptions for the secondary growth law (namely same or different from the primary tumor growth law) could fit equally well the data. Similarly, the fractal dimension coefficient in the dissemination law could not be uniquely determined from data on total metastatic burden only. Together, these results delimitate the range of information that can be recovered from fitting data of metastatic growth to already simplified mathematical models.

Mathematical Formalism and Political-Economic Content

Mathematical methods are only one moment in a layered process of theory generation in political economy, which starts from Schumpeterian vision, progresses to the identification of relevant abstractions, the development of mathematical and quantitative models, and the confrontation of theories with empirical data through statistical methods. But today the relevant abstract problems of political economy are modified to fit available mathematical tools. The role of empirical research in disciplining theoretical speculation, on which the scientific traditions integrity rests, was undermined by specific limitations of nascent econometric methods, and usurped by ex cathedra methodological fiats of theorists. These developmentssystematically favored certain ideological predispositions of economicsas a discipline. There is abundant room for New Thinking in political economy starting from the vision of the capitalist economy as a complex, adaptive system far from equilibrium, including the development of the theory of statistical fluctuations for economic interactions, redirection of macroeconomics and financial economics from path prediction toward an understanding of the qualitative properties of the system, introduction of constructive and computable methods into economic modeling, and the critical reconstruction of econometric statistical methods.

Incentives, contract policy, and disrespect: a critical normative analysis of changes in welfare policy leading to the disrespect of ethnic minorities in Denmark

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the theoretical discussion concerning the good and the just by means of an empirical case. Drawing on Honneth's theory of recognition, a critical analysis of changes in Danish social and labor market policy is carried out. It is shown that discriminatory social benefits to ethnic minorities lead to feelings of disrespect among the recipients. The confrontation of theory and empirical evidence substantiates Honneth's theory on the importance of equal legal rights. At the same time, it questions Nancy Fraser's attempt to make a logical distinction between redistribution and recognition. Still, however, Fraser may be right that Honneth has too little to say about justice. Therefore, the article concludes that his theory must be supplied with a stronger notion of just procedures and, most importantly, with a concept of judgment, since rules and ethics are always interpreted by a judgment in situations.

Satellites in the field and lens galaxies: SDSS/COSMOS versus SLACS/CLASS

The incidence of subgalactic level substructures is an important quantity, as it is a generic prediction of high-resolution cold dark matter (CDM) models which is susceptible to observational test. Confrontation of theory with observations is currently in an uncertain state. In particular, gravitational lens systems appear to show evidence for flux ratio anomalies, which are expected from CDM substructures although not necessarily in the same range of radius as observed. However, the current small samples of lenses suggest that the lens galaxies in these systems are unusually often accompanied by luminous galaxies. Here, we investigate a large sample of unlensed elliptical galaxies from the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) and determine the fraction of objects with satellites, in excess of background counts, as a function of satellite brightness and separation from the primary object. We find that the incidence of luminous satellites within 20 kpc is typically a few tenths of 1 per cent for satellites of a few tenths of the primary flux, comparable to what is observed for the wider but shallower Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Although the environments of lenses in the Sloan Lens ACS survey are compatible with this observation, the Cosmic Lens All-sky Survey (CLASS) radio lenses are significantly in excess of this.

Eclipsing Binary Solutions in Physical Units and Direct Distance Estimation

Opportunities for extraction of distances and temperatures from eclipsing binary light curves that are in standard flux units, as opposed to traditional arbitrary units, are examined. Benefits include (1) distance becomes an ordinary solution parameter with a standard error, (2) temperatures of both stars may be derivable in favorable circumstances, and (3) semidetached and overcontact binaries suffer no loss of distance accuracy, vis-a-vis well-detached binaries. Flux calibrations enter only for the observations, while theoretical fluxes are naturally in standard units, so confrontation of theory and observation is direct, and semiempirical quantities based on color-temperature relations are not needed. The monolithic process, called direct distance estimation (DDE), also saves time and effort by avoiding separate distance estimation steps and should lead to routine distance measurements for large numbers of eclipsing binaries (EBs). Discussions compare DDE with traditional EB distance estimation, which has been restricted to well detached binaries in most publications. Aspect dependence of spectroscopic or color temperature, as affected by tides and irradiation, is treated rigorously. A temperature-distance theorem that specifies requirements for finding temperatures and distance from EB light and velocity curves is checked by several kinds of simulations. Demonstration solutions are carried out for the overcontact binary AW UMa and the semidetached binary RZ Cnc, with discussions of temperature and distance results. Although AW UMa has many observational and structural oddities, its DDE and Hipparcos distances agree. Six DDE distances for RZ Cnc, done in several ways and for three photometric bands, fall well within the 1 σ range of its Hipparcos distance. Interactions among calibrative errors, parameter values, and fitting discrepancies are discussed, as is proper weighting.

High-pressure powder X-ray diffraction at the turn of the century

Studies at extreme pressures and temperatures are helpful for understanding the physical properties of the solid state, including such classes of materials as semiconductors, superconductors or minerals. This is connected with the opportunity of tuning the pressure by many orders of magnitude. Diamond-anvil and large-anvil pressure cells installed at dedicated synchrotron beamlines are efficient tools for examination of crystal structure, equation of state, compressibility and phase transitions. One of basic methods in such studies is powder diffraction. This review is devoted to methods of powder X-ray diffraction at high-pressures generated by devices installed at synchrotron radiation sources, in particular to the principles of operation of high-pressure–high-temperature cells. General information on high-pressure diffraction facilities installed at 11 synchrotron storage rings in the world is provided. Measurement aspects are considered, including (i) pressure generation and calibration, (ii) strain in the sample, the pressure marker and the pressure-transmitting medium and (iii) pressure and temperature distributions within the cells. Sources of interest in high-pressure diffraction studies (design of new materials, observation of new phenomena, confrontation of theory with experiment) are briefly discussed. Recent developments of high-pressure methods make that pressure becomes a variable playing a key role in investigation of condensed matter. The paper ends with some remarks on the possible future developments of the technique.

New perspectives of the relationships between higher education and employment

Abstract The relationships between higher education and the world of work revived in 1990 as a major issue of debate. Growing enrolment as well as labour market problems in many industrialised countries fuelled the debate. A close look reveals that the systematic information provided on graduate employment is often insufficient or biased. In spite of controversial assessments of graduate employment and work, most experts, however, tend to agree that a growing diversification is an appropriate response. Also, common views are widely held as regards the desirable curricular approaches: emphasis ought to be placed on general knowledge and flexibility, problem‐solving abilities, a confrontation of theory and practice, interdisciplinarity and international competencies. These views are advocated irrespective of whether higher education is expected to follow closely the presumed demands of the employment system or whether higher education is called on to counteract instrumentalist pressures and to prepare stude...

Multifragmentation in Xe(50 AMeV) + Sn: Confrontation of theory and data

We compare in detail central collisions Xe(50 AMeV) + Sn, recently measured by the INDRA collaboration, with the Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model in order to identify the reaction mechanism which leads to multifragmentation. We find that QMD describes most of the data quite well, in the projectile/target region as well as in the midrapidity zone where also statistical models can be and have been employed. The agreement between QMD and data allows us to use this dynamical model to investigate the reaction in detail. We arrive at the following observation: (a) the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section is not significantly different from the free cross section, (b) even the central collisions have a binary character, (c) most of the fragments are produced in the central collisions, (d) the simulations as well as the data show a strong attractive in-plane flow resembling deep inelastic collisions, and (e) at midrapidity the results from QMD and those from statistical model calculations agree for almost all of the observables with the exception of d 2σ dZ dE . This renders it difficult to extract the reaction mechanism from midrapidity fragments only. According to the simulations the reaction shows a very early formation of fragments, even in central collisions, which pass through the reaction zone without being destroyed. The final transverse momentum of the fragments is very close to the initial one and due to the Fermi motion. A heating up of the systems is not observed and hence a thermal origin of the spectra cannot be confirmed. The disagreement between the simulations and the data for some observables is presumably due to a force range which is too large as compared to reality but necessary to keep the nuclei stable in these semiclassical approach.

Proton elastic scattering cross section for carbon: confrontation of theory and experiment

The discrepancy between the evaluated 12C(p,p)12C cross sections and the results of the new measurement recently reported is discussed. It is shown that the basic assumption made while normalizing the new experimental data is inconsistent with the theoretical predictions. A classical approach to the estimation of the limits of Rutherford scattering is shown to be misleading.

Near-infrared absorption spectrum of the Ar–HD complex: Confrontation of theory with experiment

Converged close-coupling calculations of the bound rovibrational levels, positions and widths of metastable states that predissociate rotationally, vibrationally, and via tunneling, transition intensities, and spectrum shape have been performed starting from accurate ab initio and empirical potential energy surfaces for Ar–HD. The computed transitions frequencies agree very well with the observed positions of lines in the recorded near-infrared spectra [A.R.W. McKellar, Faraday Discuss. Chem. Soc. 73, 89 (1982); J. Chem. Phys. 105, 2628 (1996)]. The agreement of the measured and calculated linewidths in the S1(0) band is also good. Surprisingly, the ab initio potential reproduces the observed linewidths somewhat better than the empirical potential fitted to high-resolution infrared data of Ar–H2 and Ar–D2 [C. Bissonette et al., J. Chem. Phys. 105, 2639 (1996)]. As a result of the inclusion of some important transitions between the continuum states of the complex, a very good agreement with experiment is achieved for the shape of the S1(0) band of the spectrum. Reliable theoretical predictions of the transition energies in the Q1(1) band are also reported.

Panel Discussion

My first reaction, at the end of this conference, is that it has not produced nearly as much “Confrontation of Theory and Observations” as one might have wished. We have all made our separate presentations, but no one has yet made the connections that are so much to be desired. Perhaps it is just that we need time to absorb what we have heard, and react to it.

Approaches to Understanding High Temperature Superconductivity

This paper reports that the scientific history of superconductivity tells a fascinating story of how a series of experimental observations, theoretical conjectures and confrontation of theory with experiment went through a sequence of refinements until ultimately in 1957, nearly a half century after the discovery of superconductivity, a microscopic theory was set down. This pairing theory, while initially questioned, soon became accepted as a complete and detailed theory of the superconducting phase of so-called low temperature superconductors, namely metals whose superconducting transition temperatures fall in the range of approximately 0.1 to 23{degrees} K. The theory was so successful in explaining the observed phenomena as well as predicting new phenomena, such as the celebrated effects, that a tyranny of theory set in leading to the view that if an experiment agrees with the pairing theory, so what, and if it did not, the experiment was almost certainly wrong. This point of view squelched fundamental research in the field and most theorists moved on the more promising endeavors, while experimentalists found it quite difficult to secure funding for research in this field.

Determinants of Korean Birth Intervals: The Confrontation of Theory and Data

In this analysis, data from the Korean National Fertility Survey of 1974 are used to seek to explain differences in the pace of fertility in terms of differences in contraception, breastfeeding and other intermediate variables. Strong effects are found for these variables, particularly contraception. Nonetheless, virtually none of the effects of the socio-economic variables can be explained in our full model. Overall, our first models, which included only the socio-economic variables, contained 44 significant coefficients. With the introduction of the intermediate variables, only eleven of these coefficients became non-significant (while six others became significant). Thus, though using excellent data, we cannot begin to reproduce what theory predicts. The analysis suggests that this is a consequence of both measurement error and omitted intermediate variables, such as coital frequency. There are strong theoretical reasons for attempting to elucidate the mediating role of proximate variables by using individual data. Nonetheless, these findings, together with similar results obtained by others, strongly suggest that this is not likely to be a fruitful line of future endeavour.

Semiconductor surface state spectroscopy

We present here a review of optical spectroscopic methods applied to semiconductor surface states. Some results on Si, Ge, III–V compounds obtained by ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy and photoemission yield spectroscopy are emphasized and compared with theoretical calculations. It is shown that the confrontation of theory and experiments can give now a rather good understanding of the electronic properties of clean surfaces.

Crystal Growth from the Vapor and Solution : Confrontation of Theory with Experiment

Crystal Growth from the Vapor and Solution : Confrontation of Theory with Experiment