The shadow of Chornobyl. Ukraine thirty years after the disaster. OSW COMMENTARY NUMBER 210/22.04.2016

Thirty years after the Chornobyl nuclear power plant disaster, its aftermath and consequences are still a permanent element of the economic, environmental and social situation of Ukraine, Belarus and some regions of Russia. Ukraine, to which the scope of this text is limited, experienced the most severe shock because, among other factors, the plant where the accident took place was located just 100 km away from Kyiv. Its consequences have affected the course of political developments in the country, and have become part of the newly-shaped national identity of independent Ukraine. The country bore the huge cost of the clean-up effort but did not give up on nuclear energy, and today nuclear power plants generate more than half of its electricity. The system of social benefits for people recognised as disaster survivors, which was put in place by the Soviet government, has become a huge burden on the country’s budget; if implemented fully, it would account for more than 10% of total public spending, and is therefore being implemented to only a partial extent. This system has reinforced the Ukrainian people’s sense of helplessness and dependence on the state. The disaster has also become part of the ‘victim nation’ blueprint of the Ukrainian national myth, which it has further solidified. The technological and environmental consequences of the disaster, and hence also its economic costs, will persist for centuries, while the social consequences will dissipate as the affected generation passes away. In any case, Chornobyl will remain an important part of the life of the Ukrainian state and society.

An essential partner in the background. Europe in China's policy during the rule of Xi Jinping. OSW STUDIES 56 2016

Chinese elites do not treat Europe as an equal partner and are convinced that China holds the upper hand over Europe. They see a growing asymmetry in bilateral relations. China’s sense of its own potential is boosted by internal divisions within the European Union. At the same time, Europe is China’s key economic partner and an ‘economic pillar’ supporting China’s growth on the international stage. Beijing strives to maintain Europe’s open attitude towards the Chinese economy, in particular its exports, technology transfer to China, location of investments and diversification of China’s currency reserves. Cooperation with Europe and support from Europe are necessary to enable China to improve its position in the international economic and financial system, mainly in order to legitimise China’s actions in the area of multilateralism and global governance. Similarly, Beijing attaches great importance to maintaining Europe’s non-involvement in two issues: China’s core interests and Chinese-American relations.

Age, Period and Cohort effects in the Decline of Party Identification in Germany

Party identification traditionally is seen as an important linkage mechanism, connecting voters to the party system. Previous analyses have suggested that the level of party identity is in decline in Germany, and in this article, we first expand previous observations with more recent data. These suggest that the erosion of party identity continues up to the present time. An age-period-cohort analysis of the panel data of the SOEP panel suggests that period effects are significantly negative. Furthermore, it can be observed that throughout the 1992-2009 observation period, education level and political interest have become more important determinants of party identity. Contrary to some of the literature, therefore, it can be shown that the loss of party identity is concentrated among groups with lower levels of political sophistication, indicating that the socio-economic profile of the group with a sense of party identification has become more distinct compared to the population as a whole. In the discussion, we investigate the theoretical and democratic consequences of this trend.

Disturbances of agency and ownership in schizophrenia: An auditory verbal event related potentials study

A ‘sense of self’ is essentially the ability to distinguish between self-generated and external stimuli. It consists of at least two very basic senses: a sense of agency and a sense of ownership. Disturbances seem to provide a basic deficit in many psychiatric diseases. The aim of our study was to manipulate those qualities separately in 28 patients with schizophrenia (14 auditory hallucinators and 14 non-hallucinators) and 28 healthy controls (HC) and to investigate the effects on the topographies and the power of the event-related potential (ERP). We performed a 76-channel EEG while the participants performed the task as in our previous paper. We computed ERPs and difference maps for the conditions and compared the amount of agency and ownership between the HC and the patients. Furthermore, we compared the global field power and the topographies of these effects. Our data showed effects of agency and ownership in the healthy controls and the hallucinator group and to a lesser degree in the non-hallucinator group. We found a reduction of the N100 during the presence of agency, and a bilateral temporal negativity related to the presence of ownership. For the agency effects, we found significant differences between HC and the patients. Contrary to the expectations, our findings were more pronounced in non-hallucinators, suggesting a more profoundly disturbed sense of agency compared to hallucinators. A contemporary increase of global field power in both patient groups indicates a compensatory recruitment of other mechanisms not normally associated with the processing of agency and ownership.

The PLA at home and abroad : assessing the operational capabilities of China's military /

The chapters presented in this volume have demonstrated first, Chinese and PLA leaders have a strong sense of mission and concern for China's security and well-being. Second, the PLA is committed to the transformation in military affairs with Chinese characteristics. Third, the PLA is eager to learn from the U.S. military to expand and improve its operational capabilities. Finally, the PLA has made progress in its transformation and operational capabilities. For a long time, American leaders have been surprised with the PLA's advances. This volume (and many of the previous volumes from past PLA conferences) show that these advances did not come out of the blue. Although much of the learning and many of the improvements are still far from what is desired (from Chinese expectations and American critiques), and some of the learning has even created contradictions for the PLA, these persistent and diligent learning practices will eventually bring the PLA to a higher level of proficiency in its capabilities. The emergence of a much more sophisticated PLA in the coming years should not be a surprise.

The theory of William Miller : concerning the end of the world in 1843, utterly exploded ; with some other essays on the same subject.

Mode of access: Internet.

The catholic doctrine of a Trinity : proved by above an hundred short and clear arguments, expressed in the terms of the Holy Scripture, compared in a manner entirely new and digested under the four following titles: 1. The divinity of Christ. 2. The divinity of the Holy Ghost. 3. The plurality of persons. 4. The Trinity in unity. With a few reflections, occasionally interspersed, upon some of the Arian writers, particularly Dr. S. Clarke: to which is added, A letter to the common people, in answer to some popular arguments against the Trinity.

A reply to "An appeal to the common sense of all Christian people", by William Hopkins.

An oration, pronounced on the thirtysecond [sic] anniversary of American independence, at Barre, in the county of Worcester, July 4, 1808: /

"After the oration was delivered, the Hon. Salem Town was called to the chair, and the following resolutions ... adopted by the unanimous vote of the whole, consisting of more than six hundred Federal Republicans, from various parts of the county. Among whom were our representatives in Congress from both districts, and many other official characters."--Appendix, p. [27].

Illuminating Inner Life : A Comparison of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Arthur Schnitzler's Fräulein Else

In the early 20th century, authors increasingly experimented with literary techniques striving towards two common aims: to illumine the inner life of their protagonists and to diverge from conventional forms of literary representations of reality. This shared endeavour was sparked by changes in society: industrialisation, developments in psychology, and the gradual decay of empires, such as the Victorian (1837–1901) and the Austro-Hungarian (1867–1918). Those developments yielded a sense of uncertainty and disorientation, which led to a so-called “turn [inwards]” in the arts (Micale 2). In this context, this essay examines Virginia Woolf’s (1882–1941) development of her literary technique by comparing To the Lighthouse (1927), written in free indirect discourse, with Arthur Schnitzler’s (1862–1932) Fräulein Else (1924), written in interior monologue. Instead of applying Freud’s theories of consciousness, I will demonstrate how empiricist psychology informed and partly helped shape the two narrative techniques by referring to Ernst Mach’s (1838–1916) idea of the unstable self, and William James’ (1842–1910) concept of the stream of consciousness. Furthermore, I will show that there is a continuous progression of literary ideas from Schnitzler’s Viennese fin-de-siècle connected to impressionism, towards Woolf’s Bloomsbury aesthetics connected to Paul Cézanne’s post-impressionist logic of sensations. In addition to that, I address how the women’s movement, starting in the end of the 19th century, inspired Woolf and Schnitzler to utilise their techniques as a means of revealing women’s restricted position in society. Methodologically, I will analyse the two novels’ narrative techniques applying close reading and by that point out their differences and similarities in connection to the above-mentioned theories as well as the two author’s literary approaches. I argue that this comparison demonstrates that modernist literary techniques of representing interiority evolved from interior monologue towards free indirect discourse. This progression also implicates that modernism can be seen as a continuum reaching back to the fin-de-siècle and culminating in the 1920s. 

The Social Justice and Societal Impact of Public Programs in House Museums

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Helene & Writing Abuse, Shame, and Death: A Poetics of Spirit within the Failing Body

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Social Support Networks and Self-Efficacy of Peruvian Women Diagnosed with Cancer: A Biocultural Analysis of Health Behavior Constructs

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Teaching College Writing in a High School Setting: The Impact of Concurrent Enrollment on Teacher Learning and Practice

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Wishing for political dominance: Representations of history and community in 'Queer Theory'

Suggests that one's sense of one's self and one's sexuality may also have a close relationship to non-fiction texts about gay and lesbian cultures. Reliance of people's sense of being gay on literary representations; Popularity and authority of the book "Queer Theory," by Annamarie Jagose; Disagreements that characterize lesbian and gay historiography in Australia.

Quantum states far from the energy eigenstates of any local hamiltonian

What quantum states are possible energy eigenstates of a many-body Hamiltonian? Suppose the Hamiltonian is nontrivial, i.e., not a multiple of the identity, and L local, in the sense of containing interaction terms involving at most L bodies, for some fixed L. We construct quantum states psi which are far away from all the eigenstates E of any nontrivial L-local Hamiltonian, in the sense that parallel topsi-Eparallel to is greater than some constant lower bound, independent of the form of the Hamiltonian.