Astrotheology: Exoplanets, Christian Concerns, and Human Hopes

Are there planets beyond our solar system? What may appear quite plausible now had only been a hypothesis until about twenty years ago. The search for exoplanets is driven by the interest in the “habitable” ones among them. Could such planets one day in the far future provide resources or even shelter for humankind? Will we find one day a habitable planet that is even inhabited? These kinds of imaginative speculations drive public interest in the subject. Imagining alien intelligent life in the universe is not at all new. When Ted Peters called for establishing the field of “astrotheology,” he was certainly thinking less of historical precedents than of something analogous to the emerging field of astrobiology. Will astrotheology result in the decentering of humanity in cosmic dimensions? One could also conclude that we are alone, at least for all practical purposes.

Diskriminierung in der beruflichen Bildung

Der Beitrag fasst den Forschungsstand zu Diskriminierung in der beruflichen Bildung am Gegenstand der betrieblichen Vergabe von Ausbildungsplätzen zusammen. Neben der Messbarkeit und der Erklärung von Diskriminierung bei der Ausbildungsplatzvergabe wird speziell auf die vier Diskriminierungskategorien soziale Herkunft, Nationalität, Geschlecht und Alter eingegangen. Zum Schluss werden der weitere Forschungsbedarf sowie einige Antidiskriminierungsmaßnahmen umrissen.

How Do Second-Generation Immigrant Students Access Higher Education? The Importance of Vocational Routes to Higher Education in Switzerland, France, and Germany

We analyse the access to different institutional pathways to higher education for second-generation students, focusing on youths that hold a higher-education entrance certificate. The alternative vocational pathway appears to compensate to some degree, compared to the traditional academic one, for North-African and Southern-European youths in France, those from Turkey in Germany, and to a lesser degree those from Portugal, Turkey, Ex-Yugoslavia, Albania/Kosovo in Switzerland. This is not the case in Switzerland for Western-European, Italian, and Spanish youths who indeed access higher education via the academic pathway more often than Swiss youths. Using youth panel and survey data, multinomial models are applied to analyse these pathway choices.

The Book of Joshua, shadowing forth the fulness of Christian blessing in Christ.

Mode of access: Internet.