Religion as Culture? How European and American High Courts Endorse Majority Religion

This paper examines a trend in European and American High Courts to endorse majority religion by transforming it into “culture”, and thus by secularizing it. To dissociate religion and state is the hallmark of the liberal state. However, no state has ever managed a perfect separation, not even the American. Under conditions of mounting religious pluralism and ongoing secularization, there is pressure on the state to live up to its “neutrality”. A main strategy to square the circle of neutrality and incomplete dissociation from religion is to declare it “culture”, which gives the state the license to associate or even identify with it (as guardian of nationhood). The paper compares recent American and European High Court rules on religious symbols (especially crucifixes) that exhibits this strategy, addressing similarities and differences as well as the limits and pitfalls of “culturalizing” religion.

L'Hopital's Rule in Chemistry: Irreversible Morphing into Reversible Isothermal Expansions

L'Hopital's Rule is discussed in the cvase of an irreversible isothermal expansion.

Lee O Case's "Elements of the Phase Rule", Chapter 2

The second chapter of the Case text on the phase rule, this time dealing with two component systems, added to by the author, is presented here.

Does the Federal Reserve Follow a Non-Linear Taylor Rule?

The Taylor rule has become one of the most studied strategies for monetary policy. Yet, little is known whether the Federal Reserve follows a non-linear Taylor rule. This paper employs the smooth transition regression model and asks the question: does the Federal Reserve change its policy-rule according to the level of inflation and/or the output gap? I find that the Federal Reserve does follow a non-linear Taylor rule and, more importantly, that the Federal Reserve followed a non-linear Taylor rule during the golden era of monetary policy, 1985-2005, and a linear Taylor rule throughout the dark age of monetary policy, 1960-1979. Thus, good monetary policy is associated with a non-linear Taylor rule: once inflation approaches a certain threshold, the Federal Reserve adjusts its policy-rule and begins to respond more forcefully to inflation.

Lee O. Case's "Elements of the Phase Rule", Chapter 1, One component systems

One component systems are treated from the point of view of the Gibbs' phase rule.

Lee O Case's "Elements of the Phase Rule", Introduction and Explanation

This out of print 1939 manuscript, updated, is added to the literature with slight additions

Lee O Case's "Elements of the Phase Rule", Chapter 3

This is the last (third) chapter of the phase rule text, again altered by the author, addressing 3 and 4 compnent systems.

Rule a wife and have a wife : a comedy

by Beaumont and Fletcher. Adapted for theatrical representation, as performed at the Theatres-Royal Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden. Regulated from the prompt-books, by permission of the managers

The new African slavery; or, King Leopold's rule in Africa

by E. D. Morel

Policy analysis of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and federal funding concerning barrier-free playgrounds

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was created to prohibit discrimination against disabled persons in our society. The goal of the ADA as a comprehensive civil rights law is to "ensure equal opportunity and complete participation, independent living and economic self-sufficiency" for disabled persons (U.S. Department of Justice, 2008). As part of Title II and III of the ADA, states and local governments are required to provide people with disabilities the same chance to engage in and benefit from all programs and services including recreational facilities and activities as every other citizen. Recreational facilities and related structures must comply with accessibility standards when creating new structures or renovating existing ones. Through a systematic literature review of articles accessed through online databases, articles relating to children with disabilities, their quality of life and their experience gained through play were reviewed, analyzed and synthesized. Additionally, the ADA's Final Rule regarding accessible playgrounds was evaluated through a descriptive analysis which yielded the following five components relating the importance of barrier-free playgrounds to children with disabilities: appropriate dimensions for children, integration of the play area, variety of activity and stimulation, availability of accessible play structures to communities, and financial feasibility. These components were used as evaluation criteria to investigate the degree to which the ADA's Final Rule document met these criteria. An evaluation of two federal funding sources, the Urban Parks and Recreation Renewal Program (UPARR) and the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), was also conducted which revealed three components relating the two programs' ability to support the realization of the ADA's Final Rule which included: current budget for the program, ability of local communities to attain funds, and level of ADA compliance required to receive funding. Majority of the evaluation of the Final Rule concluded it be adequate in development of barrier-free playgrounds although there are some portions of the guidelines that would benefit from further elucidation. Both funding programs were concluded to not adequately support the development of barrier-free playgrounds and therefore it was recommended that their funding be re-instated or increased as necessary. ^

External validation study of a clinical prediction rule for ambulation outcomes after traumatic spinal cord injury

The main objective of this study was to determine the external validity of a clinical prediction rule developed by the European Multicenter Study on Human Spinal Cord Injury (EM-SCI) to predict the ambulation outcomes 12 months after traumatic spinal cord injury. Data from the North American Clinical Trials Network (NACTN) data registry with approximately 500 SCI cases were used for this validity study. The predictive accuracy of the EM-SCI prognostic model was evaluated using calibration and discrimination based on 231 NACTN cases. The area under the receiver-operating-characteristics curve (ROC) curve was 0.927 (95% CI 0.894 – 0.959) for the EM-SCI model when applied to NACTN population. This is lower than the AUC of 0.956 (95% CI 0.936 – 0.976) reported for the EM-SCI population, but suggests that the EM-SCI clinical prediction rule distinguished well between those patients in the NACTN population who were able to achieve independent ambulation and those who did not achieve independent ambulation. The calibration curve suggests that higher the prediction score is, the better the probability of walking with the best prediction for AIS D patients. In conclusion, the EM-SCI clinical prediction rule was determined to be generalizable to the adult NACTN SCI population.^

Nota sobre el Rule of Law y la ética de la virtud

Fil: Massini Correas, Carlos I.. Universidad de Mendoza

Chairmanship in ASEAN+3:A Shared Rule of Behavior

ASEAN+3 is a cooperative framework among ASEAN members and the countries of Japan, China and Korea. It functions at the senior official, ministerial and summit levels. This article concerns how institutions in ASEAN+3 affect development of the direction and nature of this framework. ASEAN+3 is regarded as a loose framework that has regularized meetings as its main activity but has no organizational settings such as the secretariat. Little institutional analysis has been conducted on the development of this framework. This article introduces 'Chairmanship' as an analytical concept in which the chair or chairing member plays an important role in preparing and managing meetings. 'Chairmanship' is therefore an institution with an organizational element. It is also a shared rule of behavior among member states in that the chair's roles are not explicitly written in documents. Thus, it can be argued that the ASEAN+3 framework has an institution with an organizational element that affects development of its characteristics.

Impact of diagonal cumulation rule on FTA utilization : evidence from bilateral and multilateral FTAs between Japan and Thailand

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effect of diagonal cumulation on free trade agreement (FTA) utilization by exploring Thai exports to Japan under two kinds of FTA schemes. While the one scheme adopts bilateral cumulation, the other scheme does diagonal cumulation. Comparing trade under these two kinds of FTAs, we can examine the effect of diagonal cumulation without relying on not only the variation in cumulation rules across country pairs but also the variation across years. In short, our estimates do not suffer from biases from time-variant elements and country pair-specific elements. As a result, our estimates show around 4% trade creation effect of diagonal cumulation, which is much smaller than the estimates in the previous studies (around 15%).