Another Perspective (another + perspective)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Religious Market Share and Intensity of Church Involvement in Five Denominations

JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION, Issue 1 2000
Paul Perl graduate student
Proponents of the supply side approach to religion theorize that religious market share,the proportion of people in a geographical area who belong to a given denomination,is inversely related to religious commitment in that denomination. They argue that a small market share motivates religious leaders to compete harder in the religious market place, increasing the participation of members. Another perspective, often associated with secularization theory, make the opposite prediction. It argues that people find it difficult to remain religiously committed in social environments where they are numerical minoritiesbecause other people do not reinforce their beliefs and practices. We use data from a large study of financial giving to analyze the relationship between market share and commitment for five denominations in the United States. We find that market share has a negative effect on church financial giving within all five denominations and a weaker negative effect on attendance in threeof the denominations. We explore whether these effects are the spurious byproducts of pro-religious cultural norms associated with either the South or the presence of conservative Protestants in local areas. In models pooling all denominations, the negative effect of market share on financial giving and attendance cannot be explained away by either of these factors. However, the effect on attendance can be accounted for by congregational size. [source]


The climate change debate: Another perspective

AUSTRALIAN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
Blijlevens Heleen
No abstract is available for this article. [source]


The politics of community mediation: A study of community mediation in Israel

CONFLICT RESOLUTION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009
Lee Li-On
What is community mediation (CM), and how does it affect communities? Drawing on research that examined the politics of CM in the context of a complex, multicultural setting, this article portrays CM as a multifaceted discourse that stakeholders may use to achieve their particular goals. CM, it is suggested, is linked to multiple sources of power and is used by both state and residents to make contesting social claims. This article challenges the apolitical view of CM and its capacity to explain the complex character of power. It proposes considering CM from another perspective, suggesting that examining CM as discourse enables a broader understanding of its social role and significance and facilitates development of appropriate practice. The author suggests that to be socially meaningful CM should be practiced within a broader approach, in terms of social intervention, based on informed, context-related training and practice. Such an approach requires that the role, policies, and practices of community mediation programs (CMPs), and mediators' roles and training, be reconsidered. [source]


Points of View, Social Positioning and Intercultural Relations

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2010
GORDON SAMMUT
The challenge of intercultural relations has become an important issue in many societies. In spite of the claimed value of intercultural diversity, successful outcomes as predicted by the contact hypothesis are but one possibility; on occasions intercultural contact leads to intolerance and hostility. Research has documented that one key mediator of contact is perspective taking. Differences in perspective are significant in shaping perceptions of contact and reactions to it. The ability to take the perspective of the other and to understand it in its own terms is a necessary condition for successful intergroup outcomes. This paper sheds light on the processes involved in intercultural perspective taking by elaborating the notion of the point of view based on social representations theory. The point of view provides a theory of social positioning that can analyse cultural encounters between social actors, and identify the conditions for positive relations. Insights are drawn from a study of public views on the relative merits of science and religion, following a documentary by Richard Dawkins in which it was suggested that religion is a source of evil. The findings demonstrate that the point of view may be categorised according to a three-way taxonomy according to the extent to which it is open to another perspective. A point of view may be monological,closed to another's perspective entirely, dialogical,open to the possibility of another perspective while maintaining some percepts as unchallengeable, or metalogical,open to another's perspective based on the other's frame of reference. [source]


Hybrid Framework for Managing Uncertainty in Life Cycle Inventories

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 6 2009
Eric D. Williams
Summary Life cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly being used to inform decisions related to environmental technologies and polices, such as carbon footprinting and labeling, national emission inventories, and appliance standards. However, LCA studies of the same product or service often yield very different results, affecting the perception of LCA as a reliable decision tool. This does not imply that LCA is intrinsically unreliable; we argue instead that future development of LCA requires that much more attention be paid to assessing and managing uncertainties. In this article we review past efforts to manage uncertainty and propose a hybrid approach combining process and economic input,output (I-O) approaches to uncertainty analysis of life cycle inventories (LCI). Different categories of uncertainty are sometimes not tractable to analysis within a given model framework but can be estimated from another perspective. For instance, cutoff or truncation error induced by some processes not being included in a bottom-up process model can be estimated via a top-down approach such as the economic I-O model. A categorization of uncertainty types is presented (data, cutoff, aggregation, temporal, geographic) with a quantitative discussion of methods for evaluation, particularly for assessing temporal uncertainty. A long-term vision for LCI is proposed in which hybrid methods are employed to quantitatively estimate different uncertainty types, which are then reduced through an iterative refinement of the hybrid LCI method. [source]


Cardiovascular risk of rosiglitazone: another perspective

JOURNAL OF PHARMACY AND PHARMACOLOGY: AN INTERNATI ONAL JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE, Issue 12 2008
Javier C. Waksman
Rosiglitazone is an effective therapy for type 2 diabetes although concerns have grown about the incidence of oedema and cardiovascular adverse events in patients treated with the drug. The following review was conducted to evaluate further and complement the evidence linking rosiglitazone with an increased risk for cardiovascular adverse events by examining trials and case reports not included in recent meta-analyses. Rosiglitazone-related publications describing case reports and prospective and retrospective cohort analyses were identified using MEDLINE and EMBASE, from July 1999 to July 2007. Relevant reports cited in these publications were also obtained. A recently-published meta-analysis and a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial were also reviewed. This review of 20 case reports and 10 uncontrolled studies supports the need for added vigilance when prescribing rosiglitazone to patients for the treatment of type 2 diabetes who may be at risk for congestive heart failure. Clinical data from numerous case reports and uncontrolled studies suggested that patients receiving rosiglitazone should be monitored for the development of weight gain or oedema. Prudence should be observed in patients with a history or risk factors for congestive heart failure as they may be poor candidates for rosiglitazone therapy. [source]


Are differences in seed mass among species important in structuring plant communities?

OIKOS, Issue 3 2002
Evidence from analyses of spatial, temporal variation in dune-annual populations
We analyse the population and spatial structures of coastal annual-plant communities, across ten dunes and three years, to explore the role of seed mass in structuring these communities. One suggestion is that annual-plant communities are structured by competition-colonization trade-offs driven by difference among species in seed-allocation strategies, while another perspective is that seed mass influences the ways in which species respond to environmental variation. In support of the competition-colonization trade-off, the two largest-seeded species found on the dunes (Erodium cicutarium and Geranium molle) were negatively associated with the other guild members at the 10-mm scale in 1995, suggesting they locally excluded smaller-seeded species in that year (when population densities were high). In support of the environmental response hypothesis, populations of annual plants declined between 1995 and 1996 on eight of the ten dunes, underscoring the importance of year-to-year environmental fluctuations in determining population sizes. The species that became relatively uncommon also became more aggregated in space, and this effect was most pronounced among the small-seeded species. Thus, small-seeded species may be forced to retreat into refuges when conditions are unfavourable, where reduced frequencies of interspecific contacts may increase their chances of persistence. We also show that small-seeded species sometimes reach much higher population densities than larger-seeded species, consistent with earlier findings, but reason that this abundance/seed mass relationship could have resulted from either a competition-colonization trade-off or from different responses of small- and large-seeded species to environmental variation. We conclude that dune-annual species with contrasting seed masses respond differently to environmental variation, while the competition-colonization trade-off plays a lesser role in community dynamics than previously considered. [source]


Spin dependent distribution and Fermi surface of the perovskite manganite compound La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 via 2D-ACAR measurements,

PHYSICA STATUS SOLIDI (B) BASIC SOLID STATE PHYSICS, Issue 2 2004
A. S. Hamid
Abstract Using 2D angular correlation of positron annihilation radiation (ACAR) experiment, we have performed a systematic study of the spin dependent and Fermi surface of the colossal magneto-resistance CMR La0.7Sr0.3MnO3. The measurements have been carried out using a re-versal magnetic field direction (parallel and anti-parallel to the direction of motion of the polarized posi-trons). The measured spectra have been investigated in the momentum space as well as in the wave vector space. They revealed information about the hybridization effect of Mn(3d eg1) and O(2p) like states. Further, the results showed that the majority spin electrons predominated at the Fermi level. From another perspective, the Fermi surface of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 revealed a cuboids hole surface centered on R point and a spheroid electron surface centered on , point. A comparison with the earlier results showed qualitative agreement. However, the current results could reveal the dimension of the electron surface centered on , point that was predicted in the earlier 2D-ACAR measurements. (© 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) [source]


COURAGE: In the Eye of the Beholder

PREVENTIVE CARDIOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Jason H. Rogers MD
The following comment provides another perspective on the COURAGE Trial. A prior Editorial on this subject was by Franklin (Franklin BA. Lessons learned from the COURAGE Trial: generalizability, limitations, and implications. [source]


Points of View, Social Positioning and Intercultural Relations

JOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 1 2010
GORDON SAMMUT
The challenge of intercultural relations has become an important issue in many societies. In spite of the claimed value of intercultural diversity, successful outcomes as predicted by the contact hypothesis are but one possibility; on occasions intercultural contact leads to intolerance and hostility. Research has documented that one key mediator of contact is perspective taking. Differences in perspective are significant in shaping perceptions of contact and reactions to it. The ability to take the perspective of the other and to understand it in its own terms is a necessary condition for successful intergroup outcomes. This paper sheds light on the processes involved in intercultural perspective taking by elaborating the notion of the point of view based on social representations theory. The point of view provides a theory of social positioning that can analyse cultural encounters between social actors, and identify the conditions for positive relations. Insights are drawn from a study of public views on the relative merits of science and religion, following a documentary by Richard Dawkins in which it was suggested that religion is a source of evil. The findings demonstrate that the point of view may be categorised according to a three-way taxonomy according to the extent to which it is open to another perspective. A point of view may be monological,closed to another's perspective entirely, dialogical,open to the possibility of another perspective while maintaining some percepts as unchallengeable, or metalogical,open to another's perspective based on the other's frame of reference. [source]


Co-operation despite disagreement: from politics to healthcare

BIOETHICS, Issue 2 2003
Noam J. Zohar
Political interaction among citizens who hold opposing moral views commonly requires reaching beyond toleration, toward actual co-operation with policies one opposes. On the more personal level, however, regarding (e.g.) interactions between healthcare providers and patients, several authors emphasise the importance of preserving integrity. But those who oppose any ,complicity in evil' often wrongly conflate instances in which the other's position is (and should be) totally rejected with instances of legitimate, although deep, disagreement. Starting with a striking example from the context of a particular tradition, I argue generally that in the latter sort of disagreements, talk of ,complicity' should be largely replaced with a more co-operative moral stance, grounded in a pluralistic framework. Co-operation Despite Disagreement (CDD) should be sought either for institutional reasons , akin to the political , or for relational reasons. CDD involves sharing another's perspective and sometimes calls for adopting another's moral judgements in preference to one's own. I seek to identify some of the conditions and circumstances that would justify such a shift, particularly in scenarios involving assistance, such as physician-assisted suicide (PAS) or the role of an anaesthesiologist in abortion. This discussion is meant to provide examples of the kind of second-order reasons appropriate for determining the terms for CDD , in distinction from first-order considerations (e.g., the much-contested ,active/passive' distinction) which are likely to be the subject of the initial disagreement and hence cannot serve to resolve it. [source]


UNDERSTANDING THE OTHER/UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES: TOWARD A CONSTRUCTIVE DIALOGUE ABOUT "PRINCIPLES' IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 3 2005
Pamela A. Moss
The recent federal interest in advancing "scientifically based research," along with the National Research Council's 2002 report Scientific Research in Education (SRE), have provided space and impetus for a more general dialogue across discourse boundaries within the field of educational research. The goal of this article is to develop and illustrate principles for an educative dialogue across research discourses. I have turned to Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics and the critical dialogue that surrounds it to seek guidance about how we might better understand one another's perspectives and learn more about ourselves through the encounter. To illustrate these principles, I consider the dialogue between SRE authors and critics that was published in Educational Researcher shortly after the release of the report. I focus in particular on one of the many issues about which misunderstandings seem to arise , the nature, status, and role of generalizations , and point to some instructive challenges that each of the articles seems to raise for the others. Finally, I propose what I argue is a more prudent aspiration for general principles in educational research: developing the principles through which open critique and debate across differences might occur and through which sound decisions about particular programs for research might be made. [source]