First Glance (first + glance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Equality and Constitutional Indeterminacy An Interpretative Perspective on the European Economic Constitution

EUROPEAN LAW JOURNAL, Issue 2 2001
Alexander Somek
It is claimed that European supranationalism represents an unprecedented mode of political association whose point is to maintain what is good about nationality and the nation state by stripping the latter of its adverse effects. In this article, this claim is submitted to a test by examining how different ways of conceiving of anti-discrimination in the context of intra-Community trading law give rise to two different conceptions of the European economic constitution. While the first one is married to the ideal of behavioural anti-discrimination,that is, of affording protection against discriminatory acts by Member States,whose application would seemingly leave the nation state in its place, the other one takes a system of nation states as something that in and of itself engenders systematically discriminatory effects on international trade. According to the latter, effective anti-discrimination presupposes overcoming such a system altogether. Both conceptions of the economic constitution are manifest in Community law, and at first glance it appears as if adherence to the first one would be consonant with supranationality as a special mode of political association. However, owing to internal predicaments arising from the application of the equality principle (understood as a principle protecting against discrimination), the difference between both conceptions cannot be upheld in practice. Since the first conception is constantly undermined by the second in the course of its application, it remains uncertain, at least in this context, whether or not the European nation state is left in place by the European Economic Constitution. [source]


UNDERSTANDING TRADITIONALIST OPPOSITION TO MODERNIZATION: NARRATIVE PRODUCTION IN A NORWEGIAN MOUNTAIN CONFLICT

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 1 2008
Tor A. Benjaminsen
ABSTRACT. In Gausdal, a mountainous community in southern Norway, a conflict involving dogsledding has dominated local politics during the past two decades. In order to understand local protests against this activity, in this article we apply discourse analysis within the evolving approach of political ecology. In this way, we also aim at contributing to the emerging trend of bringing political ecology "home". To many people, dogsledding appears as an environmentally friendly outdoor recreation activity as well as a type of adventure tourism that may provide new income opportunities to marginal agricultural communities. Hence, at a first glance, the protests against this activity may be puzzling. Looking for explanations for these protests, this empirical study demonstrates how the opposition to dogsledding may be understood as grounded in four elements of a narrative: (1) environmental values are threatened; (2) traditional economic activities are threatened; (3) outsiders take over the mountain; and (4) local people are powerless. Furthermore, we argue that the narrative is part of what we see as a broader Norwegian "rural traditionalist discourse". This discourse is related to a continued marginalization of rural communities caused by increasing pressure on agriculture to improve its efficiency as well as an "environmentalization" of rural affairs. Thus, the empirical study shows how opposition to dogsledding in a local community is articulated as a narrative that fits into a more general pattern of opposition to rural modernization in Norway as well as internationally. [source]


Churches in Dutch: Causes of Religious Disaffiliation in The Netherlands, 1937,1995

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 4 2001
Manfred Te Grotenhuis
The Netherlands has become one of the most secular countries in the world. A vast majority of the Dutch people does not attend church regularly and more than half its population is not affiliated with any church at all. In this study we set out to test which individual and contextual characteristics affect religious disaffiliation. We deduced several hypotheses from theories on social integration and rationalization. To test these hypotheses we used retrospective data containing information on events that took place in the lives of our respondents since adolescence. These data were analysed using a discrete-time event history model. We found that the higher the level of rationalization in a certain year, the more likely people were to disaffiliate. This effect was particularly strong for young people. Moreover, by introducing rationalization in the model we found a number of spurious relationships that at first glance seemed to be causal. Not surprisingly, respondents were more likely to disaffiliate in cases where their partners were nonreligious. However, as respondents and their partners presumably are effected equally by rationalization, we cannot but conclude that the process of rationalization is mainly responsible for the process of religious disaffiliation that takes place in The Netherlands. [source]


Another step toward global convergence

JOURNAL OF CORPORATE ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 6 2008
Kang Cheng
The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board have worked together to develop a single set of accounting standards for business combinations. It will make things easier for corporate finance and accounting professionals when dealing with domestic versus international acquisitions. However, at first glance, the new FASB standard looks like a total revision of SFAS No. 141. What are the latest changes? © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]


Homes for the orphans: utilization of multiple substrate-binding proteins by ABC transporters

MOLECULAR MICROBIOLOGY, Issue 1 2010
Gavin H. Thomas
Summary Acquiring nutrients from the environment is essential for all microbes, and the ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters are one of the major routes by which bacteria achieve it. In this issue of Molecular Microbiology, Chen et al. describe their characterization of what appeared at first glance a simple ABC transporter for acquisition of quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) in Pseudomonas sp., but their persistence in fully determining the properties of this system led to the experimental demonstration that QAC uptake utilizes three different substrate-binding proteins (SBPs), two of which are encoded at remote locations on the genome as ,orphan' SBPs that are each able to function with a single core ABC transporter. Building on the unusual nature of this system, in which multiple SBPs with non-overlapping substrate specificities compete for the same transporter binding site, they designed elegant in vivo experiments that suggest that only substrate-bound SBPs are able to form functional complexes with the membrane domains. This new finding provides an important piece of in vivo data leading to further insight into how this ubiquitous family of transporters operates. [source]


Effect of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy for Melanotic and Amelanotic Melanoma Transplanted into Mouse Brain

PIGMENT CELL & MELANOMA RESEARCH, Issue 1 2002
Masaki Iwakura
In order to develop a protocol to treat brain metastatic melanoma using our 10B- p -boronophenylalanine (BPA) boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), we initiated the following studies (i), Comparative analyses of boron biodistribution between melanoma proliferating in the brain and skin among melanotic and amelanotic types, and (ii) Therapeutic evaluation of BPA,BNCT for brain melanoma models of both types, using survival times. Our present data have revealed that boron concentration in melanoma proliferating in the brain, the major prerequisite for successful BNCT, showed a positive correlation to melanin synthesizing activity in the same way as melanoma proliferating in skin. Further, the boron concentration ratio of melanoma to normal surrounding tissue for brain melanoma models was considerably higher than that for subcutaneous (s.c.) ones because of the existence of the blood,brain barrier (BBB). Additionally, from analyses of median and mean survival times following BNCT using low, middle, and high neutron doses, the therapeutic effect of BNCT for the amelanotic A1059 melanoma appeared at first glance to be higher than that for the highly BPA attracting and highly relative biological effect equivalent dose obtaining B15b melanoma. As the survival time was dependent on both regression and regrowth curves, and because the brain melanoma model in small animals made it difficult to evaluate these curves separately, we further examined the in vivo growth curve of both types of melanomas following implantation in s.c. tissue. The melanotic B15b melanoma was indeed found to possess much higher growth rate as compared with that of the amelanotic A1059 melanoma. The significance of boron biodistribution studies and BNCT survival curve analyses in forming an effective clinical protocol for individual human cases of melanoma brain metastasis is discussed. [source]


Rural population growth in Sweden in the 1990s: unexpected reality or spatial,statistical chimera?

POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 3 2006
Jan Amcoff
Abstract Although estimating rural population change at first glance seems simple, it in fact involves methodological difficulties and requires the accommodation of definitional ambiguities. This article addresses the matter of urban spillover in rural population development. Simply stated, ,urban spillover' here refers to how urban localities tend to push a ring of diffuse urban growth outwards as they expand in area. If constant delimitations of urban localities and rural areas are employed, their definitions will de facto change, and what is actually diffuse urban growth will be treated as rural. The effect of urban spillover in different methods of estimating rural population change are illustrated here using Swedish data, which are suitable for this purpose given their high spatial resolution. The data do not support the existence of any actual rural population growth in Sweden in the 1990s, apart from the effects of urban spillover. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Correlated morphological and chemical phenotyping in myenteric type V neurons of porcine ileum

THE JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE NEUROLOGY, Issue 1 2002
Axel Brehmer
Abstract The study was aimed at the immunohistochemical characterization of myenteric Stach type V neurons of the pig ileum that were not included in the widely used Dogiel classification. So far, this conspicuous population has been defined morphologically on the basis of silver-impregnated specimens only. By using neurofilament immunohistochemistry, type V neurons that occur singly or in aggregates could be identified unequivocally and could be distinguished from other smoothly contoured myenteric neurons, i.e., type II and type IV. Double-labeling immunohistochemistry revealed a number of potentially neuroactive substances or their synthesizing enzymes to be present in type V neurons. Choline acetyltransferase immunoreactivity (-ir) was found in all type V neurons, whereas neuronal nitric oxide synthase was detected in none. Leu-enkephalin-ir was found within 92.3%, somatostatin (SOM)-ir within 91.1%, calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP)-ir within 80.6% and met-enkephalin-ir within 74.7% of type V neurons. Triple-labeling immunohistochemistry was applied to address the question of a specific chemical coding for myenteric type V neurons. In contrast to other combinations of neuroactive substances/enzymes that were found in both type V and other, nontype V neurons, SOM/CGRP-ir was the only combination observed exclusively within type V neurons. Both substances were colocalized in 79.3% of type V neurons. This colocalization discriminates four-fifths of the type V neurons chemically from both type II neurons (CGRP positive, SOM negative) and type IV neurons (CGRP negative, SOM positive), which both share, at first glance, a similar morphology with type V neurons. These results further support the concept of a close correlation between morphologically defined neuronal type and chemical coding and, it is likely, also function in the enteric nervous system of larger mammals. J. Comp. Neurol. 453:1,9, 2002. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]


Getting Behind the Grain: The Politics of Genetic Modification on the Canadian Prairies

ANTIPODE, Issue 2 2009
Emily Eaton
Abstract:, In 2001 a coalition of actors including farm, consumer, health, environmental and industry organizations announced its opposition to Monsanto's attempts to commercialize GM wheat in Canada. Although this coalition consisted mostly of rural and agricultural groups, the three arguments that came to dominate the discourse advanced by the coalition seem, at first glance, to characterize a politics of consumption. These three arguments revolve around market acceptance, environmental risk, and the lack of democratic and transparent process in biotech regulation and policy. This paper argues that producer interests were not displaced by, but rather articulated alongside and through consumer-driven discourses. In fact, farmers used claims about the supremacy of the consumer and impending environmental change to advance their vulnerable political and economic positions as producers of food. [source]


PAEDIATRIC MOTORBIKE INJURIES: DO CHILDREN RIDING MOTORBIKES GET THE SAME INJURIES AS THOSE RIDING BICYCLES?

ANZ JOURNAL OF SURGERY, Issue 7 2008
Jonathon Robertson
Background: Health workers have the impression that injuries sustained by children on motorcycles are more severe and debilitating than those of children on bicycles. This was not reflected by data collected for a statewide trauma registry: the two groups looked very similar at first glance. Methods: A retrospective chart review audit was carried out to further collect clinical data that might be deemed to be consequential to patients, their families and the health system, to see if this initial finding was reproduced. Results: Registry outcomes such as length of stay and mortality were no different, but number of procedures required, number of injuries and functional injuries were very different. Conclusions: Showing that children are more severely injured when riding motorcycles rather than bicycles is needed to promote cultural and legislative change. [source]


Golden goose or Trojan horse?

ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2008
Cruise ship tourism in Pacific development
Abstract: Pacific governments seeking to expand national economies are increasingly looking to tourism to provide revenues. At the same time, companies that operate cruise ships are searching for new destinations for increasing numbers of larger, faster ships which they are launching to cater for steadily increasing demand for cruises. The Pacific region appeals to both companies and passengers as a cruise destination. This coincidence would, at first glance, seem to provide an opportunity for a mutually beneficial relationship between companies and governments in the region. But little is presently available to those in the Pacific who must decide what role this form of tourism might play in their future. This paper reviews some of the environmental, economic and societal impacts of cruise ship tourism and concludes that, managed effectively, this form of tourism can yield higher returns with lower risks than some alternatives and could form a part of a sustainable tourism policy. [source]


Der Natur-Begriff des 17.

BERICHTE ZUR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE, Issue 4 2000
Jahrhunderts und zwei seiner Inter-pretamente:, intima rerum", res extensa" und
Abstract This article aims to show the general and broad use of the concept of nature in the philosophical discourse of the 17th century - and in this context it is obvious that this discourse includes both philosophy and theology. I will discuss two opposite views concerning its fundamental understanding of nature, yet will not go into elaborating differences concerning such particular concepts as, for example, space, void or motion. These views and the theoretical positions from which they emerged will here be called res extensa and intima rerum - this is done in order to clarify the basic opposition: there is no interior in pure extension and there is no extension at all in that what is called the interior. My aim is to show that these two views are, in fact, not quite as incompatible and contradictory as it easily may seem at first glance. Although I will for heuristic purposes introduce the two concepts res extensa and intima rerum as complete opposites and in a wholly contrary manner, ist should become clear that there exist both influences and interactions between these two notions. Theorists introduced here as advocates of the intima rerum -position, can, for example, be seen as having been influenced by the mechanistic, or res extensa -position, mainly through the formally and methodologically attractive geometric and mathematical argumentation. Likewise theorists advocating a mechanistic position can be said at some points to have been led by a substantial necessity concerning the contect of their argumentation to take recourse to the concept of intima rerum, at least partly or in a modified manner. [source]


Diagnosis at first glance: periorbital swelling and visual loss in an HIV-infected patient

CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY AND INFECTION, Issue 7 2000
J. A. Pérez-Molina
No abstract is available for this article. [source]