Dichotomy Of Approaches Research Articles

Iranian Women’s Uprising: Lessons for Euro-American Academic Feminism

Abstract This paper reflects on representations of the convergence of Islam and feminism in light of the recent uprising of Iranian women. Most of the existing literature discussing Muslim women’s rights are locked in a dichotomy of approaches, one being prejudicial and the other apologetic. The prejudicial approach is a (neo-)Orientalist one. It understands Muslim societies as backward and their redemption in abandoning Islam and following the lead of the “West.” The apologetic approach is a multiculturalist one, advocating most prominently by academic feminists based in Europe and United States. In trying to reclaim agency for Muslim women, this approach denies real oppressions happening in Muslim societies, and as a result of Islamic practices. Inspired by Iranian women’s fight for freedom, this paper challenges the aforementioned dichotomy, and instead calls for a third approach that begins with, and responds to, the lived experiences of women living in Muslim societies.

Parent Company Direct Liability for Overseas Human Rights Violations: Lessons from the UK Supreme Court

Human rights violations are perpetrated by corporate actors with troubling frequency. In most cases, plaintiffs do not have access to remedy. For 30 years, the United States has been a beacon of hope, its courts adjudicating human rights claims against corporate defendants under the Alien Tort Statute. Then, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Supreme Court closed the door on human rights plaintiffs. This Article charts the rise of the United Kingdom as a venue to bring suit. The U.K. Supreme Court, in a far-reaching judgment from 2019, upheld a decision to allow plaintiffs to sue a London-headquartered parent company for grave environmental damage and harm to local communities’ livelihoods that occurred through the operations of the company’s Zambian subsidiary. The dichotomy in approaches between the U.S. and the U.K. courts has prompted consideration of the following: is there anything that can be drawn from the U.K. litigation to improve access to remedy in the U.S. courts for victims of human rights violations by corporate actors? The article concludes that the argument used in the U.K. case law to attribute liability directly to parent companies should be taken up in the U.S.

Shareholder Value(s): Index Fund Activism and the New Millennial Corporate Governance

Major index fund operators have been criticized as ineffective stewards of the firms in which they are now the largest shareholders. While scholars debate whether this passivity is a serious problem, index funds’ generally docile approach to ownership is broadly acknowledged. However, this Article argues that the notion that index funds are passive owners overlooks an important dimension in which index funds have demonstrated outspoken, confrontational, and effective stewardship. Specifically, we document that index funds have taken a leading role in challenging management and voting against directors in order to advance board diversity and corporate sustainability. We show that index funds have engaged in a pattern of competitive escalation in their policies on environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) issues. Index funds’ confrontational and competitive activism on ESG issues is hard to square with their passive approach to more conventional corporate governance questions. To explain this dichotomy in approaches, we argue that index funds are locked in a fierce contest to win the soon-to-accumulate assets of the millennial generation, who place a significant premium on social issues in their economic lives. With fee competition exhausted and returns irrelevant for index investors, signaling a commitment to social issues is one of the few dimensions on which index funds can differentiate themselves and avoid commoditization. For index funds, the threat of millennial migration to another fund is more significant than the threat of management retaliation. Furthermore, managers themselves, we argue, face intense pressure from their millennial employees and customers to respond to their social preferences. This three-dimensional millennial effect—as investors, customers, and employees—we argue, is an important development with the potential to provide a counterweight to the wealth-maximization paradigm of corporate governance. We marshal evidence for this new dynamic, situate it within the existing literature, and consider the implications for the debate over index funds as shareholders and corporate law generally.

Inappropriate attempts to use distributions of 228Ra and 226Ra in coastal waters to model mixing and advection rates

Numerous investigators have used the advection–diffusion equation and the distributions of the four isotopes of radium to model coastal mixing rates. However, there is a dichotomy in approach. Some models use the short-lived 224Ra (T1/2=3.7 days) and 223Ra (T1/2=11 days) to determine horizontal mixing coefficients and the long-lived 226Ra (T1/2=1600 years) and 228Ra (T1/2=5.75 years) to test for the effects of advection. Because the timescales of mixing in most coastal systems (10–80km offshore) are on the order of months or less, radioactive decay and particle removal of the long-lived isotopes are neglected in these models. If the long-lived isotopes display a linear gradient with distance offshore, this is taken as evidence that conservative mixing rather than advection controls the radium distribution. In this case it is appropriate to neglect the advection term and calculate mixing rates based on the exponential decay of the short-lived isotopes. Other models assume that radioactive decay of all of the isotopes impacts their distribution offshore. These models set up equations that separate the effects of mixing from advection and attempt to force mixing rates derived from all of the Ra isotopes to match. There are several reasons these models are doomed to fail. First, 224Ra and 223Ra look at different scales of mixing-there is no reason they must give the same rate. Secondly, on the timescale of coastal mixing decay of 226Ra and 228Ra is essentially zero. Equations that include decay terms for 226Ra and 228Ra become unrealistic when we consider that the measurement error is considerably greater than decay. In fact particle removal of 226Ra is more important than radioactive decay. Finally, these models require steady-state conditions on the timescales of the decay terms. In order to use such models, the source functions and distributions of 228Ra and 226Ra would have to be constant for several times their half lives, approximately 25 and 4000 years, respectively. Seasonal and annual variability in supply and mixing rearranges the distributions, violating the steady-state assumption. Thus, models utilizing 226Ra and 228Ra radioactive decay are useless in the coastal zone.

Policy analysis and advocacy for livestock-based development: The gap between household-level analysis and higher-level models

The dichotomy in approaches to policy analysis for developing countries’ livestock sectors is presented. Substantial experience and information generated from a large number of household-level studies is not being utilised by macro- and aggregate models which fail to recognise heterogeneity, dynamics and fundamental drivers of change in livestock systems. Household-level studies are not standardised and rarely identify and characterise key drivers and mechanisms for exploiting heterogeneity in policy analysis. The paper provides an overview of a set of six papers contained in a special edition which define and address this gap in analytical approaches and identify aspects of the way forward. Evidence is presented of inconsistencies and practicalities which emphasise the gap, but all papers present evidence of integrative progress and list opportunities for accelerating it. Constraints on the subject matter are outlined and a challenge to livestock policy analysts is made.

Differentiating Agency Independence: Perceptions from Inside the European Medicines Agency

The regulations granting the establishment of EU agencies were meant to ensure institutional independence in order to insulate everyday decision-making from political pressure, vested interests and political short-termism. However, recent events, including managerial resignations and the introduction of new rules concerning conflicts of interest, have brought renewed attention to the autonomy/independence debate. This article goes beyond the traditional de jure/de facto dichotomy of approaches to approaching the question of independence to consider perceptions of agency staff. It seeks to gauge the opinions of members of the European Medicine Agency’s Management Board with regard to agency autonomy, distinguishing between four types of independence: legal, financial, administrative, decision-making. It draws on data collected using questionnaires, and interpreted using the expert evaluation method, to rank the importance given to types of independence among sub-sets of stakeholders overseeing the EMA.

Elder Law in Practice: The Case for Specialization and Focus On Substantive Law Areas in Clinical Programs

As clinical legal education has developed and matured, a growing body of scholarship has been devoted to discussing the ways in which virtually any clinical setting can further a law student’s understanding of and ability to master the essential lawyering skills identified by the MacCrate Report. Treacherous as it is to attempt to generalize among the myriad trends in clinical education, there appears to be a dichotomy in approach and structure that does exist, depending on whether a clinical program adopts the assumption that clinics provide skills training or whether clinics are conceived as professional practice models. Although every client’s case is specific and involves some particular substantive area of the law, if approached from the standpoint of the skills model, any case or issue (or even no case but a hypothetical) and any substantive area of the law will do to transmit to law students the essential lawyering skills that are needed for practice. Vladimir’s speech quoted above suggests that it will make no difference to the person in need whether his cries are answered by a doctor, a lawyer or a professional golfer, because we are all human, and all capable of responding to each other’s needs. But in point of fact, if the injured person is the victim of an auto accident, he will probably be much better served, at least with respect to his immediate needs, by the doctor. A careful reading of the speech shows that Vladimir concedes this when he states that others may be “better.” However, our individual weaknesses are not to be used by us as an excuse for inaction when we are placed in a situation where action is called for and we are the only ones available to respond. Even if the professional golfer cannot personally provide treatment to the injured victim, he can call 911 and stay with her until help arrives. By analogy, most law students are so desperately lacking with respect to knowledge of the actual practice of law that any experience provided will be beneficial. Thus, one need not dispute the importance of skills training nor denigrate or derogate those programs that operate along a general practice model by accepting a variety of cases without insisting on specialization. One would rather argue for recognition that such general practice clinics are in fact professional practice models of a sort that may be in dwindling supply in the legal profession, much as general practitioners in medicine were a dying breed before third party managed care payors reinvigorated the notion of the “primary care” generalist physician. There is clearly a place for such lawyering, even within the increasing complexity and specialization of the legal profession. The purpose of this paper is simply to challenge the notion that clinics are a fungible commodity, that one size fits all and that if a law student has enrolled in one clinic, the student has experienced all there is to experience of professional practice and all that clinical education has to offer. It is hoped that challenging the assumption of complete interchangeability among clinics will facilitate an acknowledgement that the experience of a particular practice is uniquely valuable. One also hopes that legal education will come to incorporate the notion that the detailed exposition of substantive law that is afforded within the context of a clinic will be qualitatively different from (and thus not duplicative of ) substantive law courses offered as part of the traditional classroom curriculum.

Limits on efficiency and power scaling in semiconductor disk lasers with diamond heatspreaders

The semiconductor disk laser (SDL) is a versatile laser source offering multiwatt-level output powers and diffraction limited beams. While an approach to thermal management based on substrate removal has led to tens of watts of output power in the 1 μm region, the use of intracavity diamond heatspreaders for thermal management has enabled multiwatt performance levels to be achieved at wavelengths from the red to the mid-infrared. The modeling presented indicates that this dichotomy in approach arises from the ability of the heatspreader approach to bypass the thermal resistance of the mirror structure built into the SDL. The power scaling limitations of SDLs with heatspreaders are explored: nonaxial heat flow in the heatspreader is shown to limit the power scaling with pump spot radius. The critical roles of the pump spot size and output coupling on efficiency are experimentally investigated. An output power of 7 W in a 1060 nm SDL is achieved with the maximum output power achieved at a pump spot radius of 85 μm.

Academic and informal science education practitioner views about professional development in science education

AbstractThis study documents the views of effective professional development held by eight professional development (PD) providers, representing four informal science institutions (ISI) and four programs within two institutions of higher education (IHE) in a large midwestern metropolitan area in the United States. This study finds that, while the reported learning and outcome agendas of the providers were similar across the board, a dichotomy in approach to PD emerged according to the type of institution. This dichotomy between ISI and IHE was persistent across thematic categories: (1) language use and meaning, (2) teacher outcomes as a result of PD, (3) resource strengths for teaching and learning, and (4) determination of content and course offerings. The significance of this research is threefold. First, the identification and characterization of important features of teacher PD in ISI is an important contribution to the PD literature, since most previous studies focus on IHE. Second, this study elucidates important differences between the two types of providers with respect to their views of inquiry, currently a fundamental component of PD for science teachers. Third, previously unreported gaps and overlaps in belief systems of PD from two institutions types, ISI and IHE, are identified. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 91:604–628, 2007

A UNIFIED APPROACH TO RISK CHARACTERIZATION

A fundamental issue of toxicology is to determine levels of human exposure to toxic substances, commonly referred to as acceptable daily intakes (ADIs) or reference doses (RfDs), that are presumed to cause no or negligible health risks. The goal is to determine relatively safe levels for human exposure to toxic substances using scientifically defensible methods and data, including a discussion of the imprecision of the process. Ideally, an understanding of the biochemical mechanisms of toxicity would allow the construction of biologically based dose-response models that are applicable across species in the range of human exposure levels. In the absence of such information, low-dose linear extrapolation to zero risk, without a threshold dose, generally is used by U.S. regulatory agencies to estimate cancer risk. For noncancer effects, the no-observed-adverseeffect level (NOAEL) is divided by safety (uncertainty) factors to arrive at an ADI (RfD) that is presumed to be below a threshold dose and to pose no risk, or at worst, negligible risk. The dichotomy of approaches for cancer and noncancer risk assessment based on the threshold concept can be questioned. Animals and humans with no known exposure to a particular toxic substance sometimes exhibit an noncancer adverse health effect such as kidney failure or a defect at birth. Hence, other exogenous and/or endogenous exposures produce that adverse health effect, particularly in susceptible individuals. Thus, a threshold dose, if one exists, is already surpassed in a population. If a toxic substance contributes by the same pathway to the background dose, additional adverse effects are expected with no threshold for the added exposure. For cancer, threshold doses may exist for nongenotoxic (secondary mechanisms) modes of action. Examples of secondary mechanisms are the production of bladder cancer at high doses that produce

The Role of Microbiology in Models of Dental Caries: Reaction Paper

Models of the caries process have made significant contributions toward defining the roles of bacteria in caries. Microbiologists use a variety of in vitro systems to model aspects of the caries process. Also, in situ models in humans provide information on the microbiology of caries in vivo. These models do not involve the entire process leading to natural caries; consequently, the results from such studies are used to deduce the roles of bacteria in natural caries. Therefore, they can be described as Inferential Caries Models. In contrast, animal models and some clinical trials in humans involve natural caries and can be described as Complete Caries Models. Furthermore, these models are used in two distinct ways. They can be used as Exploratory Models to explore different aspects of the caries process, or as Test Models to determine the effects of anticaries agents. This dichotomy in approach to the use of caries models results in modification of the models to suit a particular role. For example, if we consider Exploratory Models, the in situ appliance in humans is superior to others for analyzing the microbiology of plaque development and demineralization in vivo. The chemostat and biofilm models are excellent for exploring factors influencing bacterial interactions. Both models can also be used as Test Models. The in situ model has been used to test the effects of fluoride on the microflora and demineralization, while the chemostat and biofilm models allow for the testing of antibacterial agents. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages and role in analysis of the caries process. Selection of the model depends on the scientific question posed and the limitations imposed by the conditions available for the study.

Plant ecology-trends and traits

Analyses of the methods and philosophies of study in plant ecology over 50 years indicate a dichotomy of approaches, characterized broadly by community ecology and by physiological ecology. Community ecology is highly descriptive, often lacking an experimental approach. Physiological ecology is experimental when the research is in controlled environments. Yet physiological ecology in the field is rarely experimental and is generally observational. Both groups fail to measure up to the scientific paradigm and consequently have limited capacities to establish theories and hypotheses based on the knowledge of basic mechanisms. However, in combination the two groups have the necessary experimental, observational and theoretical approaches for defining mechanisms; the key for ecology in the future is integration not differentiation, and a wider acceptance of the need to develop theories and risk the tests of their predictions.