Set Of Formal Rules Research Articles

Weak pluralism and shallow democracy: the rise of identity politics in Bulgaria and Romania

ABSTRACT The rise of identity politics has been surprising in two countries that have benefitted extensively from EU membership. To address the puzzle, the paper suggests that the EU vision of common and inclusive identity, grounded in a formal set of rules, had its strongest effect before and immediately after accession. Yet, its intensity was short-lived and mistaken for a popular embrace of multiculturalism. To understand this dynamic, the paper traces the interactions between citizens and elites, as well as the tradeoffs and complementarities between democracy and legitimacy in the two countries.

Quantifier Variance Without Meaning Variance

Quantifier variance entails that ‘there exists’ has a variety of meanings. Determining what makes all these meanings quantifier meanings is a problem associated with this view (the problem of meaning variance). A reasonable candidate suggested by Hirsch is the set of formal rules governing quantification. However, the collapse argument presents a notorious objection to the viability of the candidate: there cannot be more than one quantifier obeying the same rules up to logical equivalence. It is proposed that a quantifier variantist who intends to retain Hirsch’s proposed solution can admit a many-sorted language in order to block the collapse argument. Within the many-sorted language, a Kaplanian thesis about the rules governing sorted quantifiers saves quantifier variance from meaning variance.

AL-FĀRĀBĪ ET LA SCIENCE DESUṢŪL AL-FIQH

AbstractIt is known that Fārābī, in his political program, assumes philosophically some Islamic sciences likekalāmandfiqh. Focusing here on the case of thefiqhand in the limits of hisK. al-Milla, we try to establish correspondences between his theory of legislation and references to historically attested sciences. Our purpose is to show that he was able to articulatefiqhto the political science through an undeclared use ofʿilm uṣūl al-fiqh(science of principles of juridical science). He empties this science of its own material and preserves its form in order to fill it with philosophical material. This contributes to clear up his conception in this book of the shift from the voluntary universal to the particular. This shift is governed by a set of formal rules. These guidelines, which are rather deliberative, take place as a subject matter of the political science, alongside with universals, its classical subject matter. We think that these formal rules are borrowed from this typical Islamic science whose subject matter is the study of principles and rules governing the inference, from their sources, of particular legal status, the subject matter offiqh. If, from the strict philosophical point of view, political science provides the sources or foundations from which are inferred the original and primary legislation initiated by the founder of the religion (al-milla), as well as the derived and secondary one elaborated by his successors, the methodological part of this Islamic science would be the equivalent to the general prescriptions necessary for the application of universals so that concrete cases can be determined. For this purpose, Fārābī borrows willingly from the famous Shāfiʿī’sRisāla, the prototype of the treatises inuṣūl al-fiqh.

That's My TURF: An Experimental Analysis of Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries in Indonesia

We conduct a framed field experiment in Indonesian fishing communities with an eye towards evaluating the potential of Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURFs) for preserving coral reef fisheries. Conducted in three culturally distinctive sites, the study assembles groups of five fishers who participate in a common-pool resource game. We implement the game with randomly assigned treatments in all sites to explore whether the extraction decision varies according to three recommended non-binding extraction levels originating from (1) a democratic process, (2) a group leader or (3) an external source that recommends a socially optimal extraction level. In one of the sites - that having the highest levels of ethnic and religious diversity - we find that democratic decision-making as well as information originating from outside the community promotes the cooperative behavior that underpins TURFs, a result that is robust to regressions controlling for individual and community attributes. The absence of treatment effects in the remaining two sites highlights that a set of formal rules may have different consequences in different communities, depending on underlying values and norms.

AL-GHAZALI’S CONCEPTION OF FAITH

The article deals with juridical aspects of al-Ghazali’s conception of faith. Authors show that al-Ghazali clearly separated juridical understanding of faith and ontological one. In the first case, faith is conceptualized as a set of formal rules, while in the second it is conceptualized as divine light that poured out into human soul. According to al-Ghazali, juridical faith is not a guarantee for salvation, and a lack of formal belonging to Islam is not a guarantee for eternal sorrow in hell. Believing in inclusiveness of divine grace, al-Ghazali develops bride understanding of faith and allows possibility of salvation for infidels.

Russian Emigrant School of Translation

The article offers a glance at the history of those Russian literary scholars and translators who emigrated to Poland after the Revolution of 1917. It also presents an important, but forgotten writer and translator from Russian, Wacław Denhoff-Czarnocki (who played an important role in presenting Russian poetry to Polish audiences in the 1920s) and refers to a review in which Lev Gomolicki not only comments on a Polish translation of Pushkin’s verse, but also sketches a short set of formal rules that prominent Russian translators of the time defi ned as valid principles of poetry translation.

Public-private perception of collaborative infrastructure projects in Nigeria

The growing complexity of infrastructure projects, the attendant increase in project risk/uncertainty, the effects of the current global economic-recession, and the unprecedented demand on government agencies/institutions to provide better/efficient infrastructure/services have gradually reduced the need for a single supplier of many infrastructure services. However, the problems/issues associated with the implementation/operationalisation of collaborative engagement approaches worldwide over the last two decades prompted the need to identify/analyse the drivers of collaboration and determine the core-drivers of public-private sector collaboration in road infrastructure project management in Nigeria. In all, 45 survey-questionnaires were administered to relevant professionals/stakeholders in both the public and private sectors of Nigeria. The Mann-Whitney U test showed that there is no significant difference between the perception of the public and private sectors about the drivers of collaboration. The Relative Importance Index/ranking of the drivers also revealed that communication, trust, globalisation/collaboration, market-maturity, technology, relationships, finance, skills/competence, legal/regulatory framework, and risk are key-drivers that need to be aligned to existing business-models in Nigeria for the successful implementation/delivery of sustainable collaborative road infrastructure projects. Therefore, this paper advocates the establishment of a set of formal rules incorporating these core drivers in order to guide the actions of the partners to shape/deliver collaborative infrastructure projects in Nigeria.

The role of social capital within policy networks: evidence from EU cohesion policy in Spain

This article focuses on the policy process stemming from European cohesion policy at the regional level and at its programming stage (which precedes the implementation phase). It aims to explain how the formally introduced EU ‘partnership’ principles and rules work in practice in different political environments. The article argues that externally introduced procedural decision rules have different impacts on effective policymaking processes. In particular, we suggest that the patterns of social capital linkages carried by the actors involved produce different regional policy networks, even though the existing formal rules are similar. Relying on social network analysis as its main methodological tool, the article presents empirical evidence drawn from two similar Spanish regions, identifies the characteristics of the actors’ social capital and compares the structures of the policy networks dealing with the programming tasks in the two regions. Our findings suggest that the structures differ according to the amount of linking social capital displayed by the actors involved in the policy networks. We discuss in detail our exploratory hypothesis, considering also other possible variables that might account for these variations. Points for practitioners In this article we demonstrate that the EU partnership principle, as a set of formal rules, does not always work in practice as expected; we found that only when the actors involved share a certain level of trust does it produce and reinforce the expected pluralist and deliberative contexts for decision-making. In fact, EU partnership rules contribute to making policymaking more transparent and better procedurally organized by essentially sorting out the social capital resources already possessed by public and private actors involved in the policy network. This suggests that investing in the creation of social capital for regional elites might significantly improve the current EU institutional design of regional policy. More generally, we argue that partnership designs that provide stronger incentives for political and social elites to build their own social capital resources could make the implementation of decentralized regional policies more effective.

Evidence-Based Medicine, Systematic Reviews, and Guidelines in Interventional Pain Management: Part 3: Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Randomized Trials

In recent years, progress and innovations in healthcare are measured by evidence-based medicine (EBM), systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. A systematic review is defined as, "the application of scientific strategies that limit bias by the systematic assembly, critical appraisal, and synthesis of all relevant studies on a specific topic." In contrast, meta-analysis is the statistical pooling of data across studies to generate pooled estimates of effects. Meta-analysis usually is the final step in a systematic review. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are labor intensive, requiring expertise in both the subject matter and review methodology, and also must follow the rules of EBM which suggest that a formal set of rules must complement medical training and common sense for clinicians to interpret the results of clinical research effectively. While expertise in the subject matter is crucial, expertise in review methods is also particularly important. Despite an explosion of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the empiric research on the quality of systematic reviews has shown that not all systematic reviews are truly systematic, having highly variable quality, deficiencies in methodologic assessment of the quality of the included manuscripts, and bias. Even then, systematic review of the literature is currently the best, least biased and most rational way to organize, cull, evaluate, and integrate the research evidence from among the expanding medical and healthcare literature. However, a dangerous discrepancy between the experts and the evidence continues to persist in part because multiple instruments are available to assess the quality of systematic reviews or meta-analyses. Steps in conducting systematic reviews include planning, conducting, reporting, and disseminating the results. The Quality of Reporting of Meta-analysis (QUOROM) statement provides a checklist and a flow diagram. The checklist describes the preferred way to present the abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections of the report of an analysis. This review describes various aspects of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized trials with a special focus on interventional pain management.

Evidence-Based Medicine, Systematic Reviews, and Guidelines in Interventional Pain Management: Part 2: Randomized Controlled Trials

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a shift in medical paradigms and about solving clinical problems, acknowledging that intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale are insufficient grounds for clinical decision-making. The importance of randomized trials has been created by the concept of the hierarchy of evidence in guiding therapy. Even though the concept of hierarchy of evidence is not absolute, in modern medicine, most researchers synthesizing the evidence may or may not follow the principles of EBM, which requires that a formal set of rules must complement medical training and common sense for clinicians to interpret the results of clinical research. N of 1 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) has been positioned as the top of the hierarchy followed by systematic reviews of randomized trials, single randomized trial, systematic review of observational studies, single observational study, physiologic studies, and unsystematic clinical observations. However, some have criticized that the hierarchy of evidence has done nothing more than glorify the results of imperfect experimental designs on unrepresentative populations in controlled research environments above all other sources of evidence that may be equally valid or far more applicable in given clinical circumstances. Design, implementation, and reporting of randomized trials is crucial. The biased interpretation of results from randomized trials, either in favor of or opposed to a treatment, and lack of proper understanding of randomized trials, leads to a poor appraisal of the quality. Multiple types of controlled trials include placebo-controlled and pragmatic trials. Placebo-controlled RCTs have multiple shortcomings such as cost and length, which limit the availability for studying certain outcomes, and may suffer from problems of faulty implementation or poor generalizability, despite the study design which ultimately may not be the prime consideration when weighing evidence for treatment alternatives. However, in practical clinical trials, interventions compared in the trial are clinically relevant alternatives, participants reflect the underlying affected population with the disease, participants come from a heterogeneous group of practice settings and geographic locations, and endpoints of the trial reflect a broad range of meaningful clinical outcomes. Key words: Randomized controlled trial (RCT), placebo-controlled trial, pragmatic controlled trial, randomization, allocation concealment, sample size, blinding, consolidated standards of reporting trials (CONSORT) statement, minimal clinically important change (MCIC), minimal clinical important difference (MCID)

Innovative Economic Behaviour in Russia: the Case of Labour Markets

The aim of this paper is to draw up a methodological framework for analysing the dynamics of change in post-communist transition. The paper presents a new approach to innovatory institutions and to the specific features of Russia regarding the intermediate level of institutionalisation represented by labour markets. The tool provided by institutional trajectories permits some understanding of the debate between socially accepted norms coming from the past and the set of formal rules required for a prosperous future. “Too soft” or “too hard” behaviour by employers is both the consequence of the distance existing between required rules and effective rules influenced by societal norms, or between required rules and accepted norms. This expresses the difficulty of, and the need for building a new market salary relationship in Russia.JEL: A14, J2, J61, J63, J64, J65, P23, P36, P37, R23

A study on the grammatical construction of function structures

Function structures are used during conceptual engineering design to transform the customer requirements into specific functional tasks. Although they are usually constructed from a well-understood black-box description of an artifact, there is no clear approach or formal set of rules that guide the creation of function structures. To remedy the unclear formation of such structures and to provide the potential for automated reasoning of such structures, a graph grammar is developed and implemented. The grammar can be used by a designer to explore various solutions to a conceptual design problem. Furthermore, the grammar aids in disseminating engineering functional information and in teaching the function structure concept to untrained engineers. Thirty products are examined as a basis for developing the grammar rules, and the rules are implemented in an interactive user environment. Experiments with student engineers and with the automated creation of function structures validate the effectiveness of the grammar rules.

An ethics committee for medical research in Greenland history and challenges

Ethical appraisal of medical protocols for research is now well accepted, and needed when research may carry side effects and risks that may be difficult to understand for the people invited to take part in research. We argue that time has come for Greenland to establish a formal medical research ethics committee with a legal basis. With proper use of modern means of communication it should be possible to run a committee at a reasonable cost. We believe that such a committee should closely follow international standards. One urgent matter to get under a formal set of rules is to set proper standards for storage of biological samples taken from people in Greenland.

Evidence-based orthopaedics: a primer.

Evidence-based medicine has evolved from the need of solving clinical problems. In contrast to the traditional paradigm of clinical practice, evidence-based medicine acknowledges that intuition, clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale are not sufficient for making the best clinical decisions. Although evidence-based medicine recognizes the importance of clinical experience, it includes the evaluation of evidence from clinical research and the integration of patients' values, preferences, and actions for best clinical decision-making. To optimize this process, evidence-based medicine advocates that a formal set of rules must accompany training and clinicians' common sense to interpret and apply evidence from clinical research results effectively. We describe the critical appraisal of studies related to prognosis and therapy or prevention building on an example relevant for the clinical orthopaedist. Based on the example, the authors describe how clinicians can apply measures of association and of intervention effects to their practice and patient care. The authors conclude with describing the appraisal of systematic reviews, their application to the development of practice guidelines, and the process of guideline development and recommendations.

Mediated Character of Economic Interactions

Economic interactions are conducted between economic agents - individuals and collectives, through exchange of natural or artificial entities - goods, services and money, in a myriad of combinations. In this article we adopt a microscopic point of view, concentrate on the exchanged entities, and extract their relevant attributes as seen from structurally simple economic processes. Following that, we approach the interpretation of the economic interactions with their mediated character emphasized. Mediators of the interaction are locally available environment units. They are locally recognized and appropriately interpreted in a given value set as goods and money. The overall intensity of economic interactions considered is related to mediators' spatial and temporal characteristics. Extracted characteristics of mediators and economic processes are compacted in the set of formal rules. The approach is connected with similar approaches in economy and physics.

Analysis: toward algorithms in diabetes self-management.

371 IN HEALTH, fuel homeostasis is a robust process. Central to this mechanism, the endocrine pancreas controls the storage and release of all the vital fuels, including fat, carbohydrate, and protein precursors. It is easily within the physiologic range to control all metabolic needs from feast to famine. In diabetes, the exquisite control of protein, fat, as well as carbohydrate metabolism is lost because the release of insulin from the beta cells of the endocrine pancreas is either lacking (Type 1 diabetes) or inappropriate (Type 2 diabetes). Blood glucose concentrations, which are easily measured, partially reflect this loss of metabolic control. Thus for survival, persons with diabetes must substitute for the loss. This is achieved primarily by replacing the lost (closed-loop) endocrine function with subcutaneous injections of depots of insulin. In diabetes, self-management therefore involves strategic (open-loop) decisions about the timing and amounts of these injections needed to correct for abnormal blood glucose levels and anticipated carbohydrate intakes. Because a depot exists, the patient must ideally anticipate the effects of subsequent physical exercise. The rules used to govern these decisions are called algorithms, and their purpose is to control subsequent blood glucose levels. Algorithms in general can be thought of as a formal set of rules, procedures, or computer-executable routines that safely translate outcomes into interventions. In diabetes self-management, one outcome is self-measured blood glucose level, another is carbohydrate intake, and a third is planned exercise. Each modifies the intervention, which in this case is insulin dosing. For practical reasons, clinical algorithms have to be simple and easily self-administered by the patient at each injection. Clinicians teach the patients how to do this based on the blood glucose level they measure at each meal, the desired blood glucose level, the anticipated carbohydrate intake, the individual’s sensitivity to insulin at that time, and the anticipated level of exercise. If the parameters are correct, then the amount injected will control the following blood glucose levels. Although rules for the self-control of diabetes are not new, their formalization as mathematical algorithms is relatively recent. Albisser1 and Albisser et al.2 introduced the concept of programmable, hand-held computers into diabetic self-management and outlined closed-loop algorithms for the adjustment of shortand intermediate-acting insulins. The Albisser Insulin Dosage Computer executes algorithms that are responsive to just four blood glucose levels measured by the patient each day, with target levels and insulin sensitivity factors set by the provider. Patients can enter changes in anticipated carbohydrates. They can also enter changes in anticipated exercise that

On the Conversion of Program Specifications into Pseudo Code using Jackson Structured Programming

In this paper, we present a technique to automatically translate program specifications into pseudo code. This technique is developed in the context of the well-known programming method Jackson Structured Programming (JSP). The objective of our research is to investigate to what extent a programming method can be automated. Current CASE tools are only able to automate programming methods to a very limited extent, whereas our technique automates the entire programming cycle by creating pseudo code from program specifications. We show that the JSP programming method can be transformed into a set of formal rules when the scope of the technique is limited to a well-defined area of problems. The rules are implemented in a CASE tool, called JSPTool, which is currently operative, although still in a prototyping phase. We believe that the strength of the CASE tool lies in the fact that it is able to automate the programming process completely, although its scope possibly is still rather limited. In this paper, the technique is explained by solving an example programming problem. The source language that has been developed to enter program specifications is briefly explained. Also, the differences between other JSP CASE tools and JSPTool are dealt with. Some additional features of the method are discussed and suggestions for future research are given.

A semiautomatic method for assigning elevation in contour maps

Assigning contour elevations during digitalization process of topographic charts can be a very time-consuming task and liable to human errors. The method here presented for this purpose is based upon the integration of three elements: the definition of nesting tree, a formal set of rules linking neighboring contour elevations and the concept of ambiguity interval. The information provided by the chart control points and its propagation on the nesting tree for ambiguity interval update allows to automatically evaluate a considerable number of elevations, typically 60%. The remaining curves are assessed with the help of an operator where an strategy is employed to minimize human interaction. At the end of the process, the typical figure describing the number of elevations requested by the system is around 20%.

A mechanistic model for morphogenesis and regeneration of limbs and imaginal discs

When an amphibian limb, cockroach leg or Drosophila imaginal disc is subjected to a surgical operation, it is capable of regenerating or duplicating certain parts. Although the structure of the regenerated tissue varies depending on the location and mass of the amputated or transplanted part, it can be predicted from a set of formal rules, called the polar coordinate model [French et al., (1976) Science 193–983; Bryant et al., (1981) Science 212, 993–1002]. In the polar coordinate model, it is assumed (and experimentally proven) that the juxtaposition of normally non-adjacent cells stimulates cell proliferation locally, which implies that the underlying mechanism which gives positional values to each cell, is also responsible for the control of cell growth. Because locally activated proliferation alters the shape and size of the developmental field, the question of how to control the cell growth is the central problem in the regeneration of the limbs and imaginal discs. In this paper, I propose a possible underlying mechanism for the ‘polar coordinate rules’, and show how this mechanistic model explains the experimental results using computer simulation. The proposed mechanism is an extension of Turing's model (1952). In addition to the reaction-diffusion of the molecules, cell proliferation is taken into consideration. With appropriate initial conditions, the computer simulation shows that a small mass of cells grows up to form a mature limb, and that the mature limb is able to respond to surgical operations as predicted by the polar coordinate model.

Temporal Information Processing in Speech Perception

For a set of formal rules for the phonetic interpretation of speech during its perception one should have data concerning a possible structure and parameters of a subjective mechanism for processing temporal information, from segmenting the speech signal to making phonetic decisions. At present such data cannot be found in the literature. An attempt has been made to find out more about some parts of the subjective mechanism of duration measurement and comparison by studying the perception of tempo changes in short sound sequences. Running or 'momentary' tempo is shown to be the feature of tempo change perception, and possible procedures for its detection have been tested. A computational technique for getting the quantitative parameters of the mechanism is briefly described.