scholarly journals The emergence and perils of polarization

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (50) ◽  
pp. e2116863118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delia Baldassarri ◽  
Scott E. Page

We provide commentaries on the papers included in the Dynamics of Political Polarization Special Feature. Baldassarri reads the contribution of the papers in light of the theoretical distinction between ideological partisanship, which is generally rooted in sociodemographic and political cleavages, and affective partisanship, which is, instead, mostly fueled by emotional attachment and repulsion, rather than ideology and material interests. The latter, she argues, is likely to lead to a runaway process and threaten the pluralistic bases of contemporary democracy. Page sees the contribution of the many distinct models in the ensemble as potentially contributing more than the parts. Individual papers identify distinct causes of polarization as well as potential solutions. Viewed collectively, the papers suggest that the multiple causes of polarization may self-reinforce, which suggests that successful interventions would require a variety of efforts. Understanding how to construct such interventions may require larger models with greater realism.

Author(s):  
Andrea Gamberini

This book aims to make an innovative contribution to the history of the state-building process in late medieval Lombardy (thirteenth–fifteenth centuries), by illuminating the myriad conflicts attending the legitimacy of power and authority at different levels of society. Through the analysis of the rhetorical forms and linguistic repertoires deployed by the many protagonists (not just the prince, but also cities, communities, peasants, and factions) to express their own ideals of shared political life, the work proposes to reveal the depth of the conflicts in which opposing political actors were not only inspired by competing material interests—as in the traditional interpretation to be found in previous historiography—but were often also guided by differing concepts of authority. From this comes a largely new image of the late medieval–early Renaissance state, one without a monopoly of force—as has been shown in many studies since the 1970s—and one that did not even have the monopoly of legitimacy. The limitations of attempts by governors to present the political principles that inspired their acts as shared and universally recognized are revealed by a historical analysis firmly intent on investigating the existence, in particular territorial or social ambits, of other political cultures which based obedience to authority on different, and frequently original, ideals.


Author(s):  
Khusnun Widiyati ◽  
Hideki Aoyama

Today’s customers see the product not only based on its functionality and its value, but also based on its aesthetic view. And from day to day, the level of consumers’ aesthetic satisfaction is advanced. Companies have to struggle in recognizing and feeding the customers with higher and higher level of aesthetics design, in order to win the competition. Kansei Engineering is a powerful tool during product designs that analyze the design in relation with consumers’ feeling toward the product. In this saturated market, moreover, the application of Kansei Engineering might be a way out to provide a product emotionally attached to the customers’ feeling. PET bottles, particularly bottles distributed in Japan, is an example of “everyday-beverage-container” which has many variations in the shape. Among the many product attributes, product form/shape is one of the product attribute that can attract emotional attachment to the customer. In this paper, physical attributes of PET bottle which evoke consumers to have certain emotional attachment were evaluated using Kansei Engineering. In order to do this, 18 models of PET bottle generated using Taguchi Methods, and 9 emotional evaluation words were applied in a questionnaire. By using Taguchi Methods, important shape parameters that evoke customer to certain emotional feeling were identified. Validation to the Taguchi Methods’ finding was validated using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The validation was performed by mapping the Kansei/emotional space to shape parameter space. Evaluation towards the result from Taguchi Methods and ANN was performed. Comparison between Taguchi Methods’ and ANN’s result showed that both result were correlated.


Author(s):  
Saleena Saleem

Post-Arab Spring events indicate that democratic openings can result in power shifts from secular authoritarian regimes to mainstream Islamists, contributing to a heightened secular-religious political polarization. This chapter considers how Tunisia’s Islamists avoided this pitfall where other post-Arab Spring countries failed. It argues that one key factor that helped Tunisia’s democratic transition was the building of a minimum level of trust during pre-Arab Spring interactions between non-regime secularists and Islamists, rooted in the common understanding that democracy in Tunisia was desired by all political participants. The Islamists’ willingness to trust in the democratic process and to engage in consensus building with secular political partners helped mediate the many contentious conflicts that arose at critical junctures of Tunisia’s democratic transition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Ji Ma

AbstractGiven the many types of suboptimality in perception, I ask how one should test for multiple forms of suboptimality at the same time – or, more generally, how one should compare process models that can differ in any or all of the multiple components. In analogy to factorial experimental design, I advocate for factorial model comparison.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Spurrett

Abstract Comprehensive accounts of resource-rational attempts to maximise utility shouldn't ignore the demands of constructing utility representations. This can be onerous when, as in humans, there are many rewarding modalities. Another thing best not ignored is the processing demands of making functional activity out of the many degrees of freedom of a body. The target article is almost silent on both.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tomasello

Abstract My response to the commentaries focuses on four issues: (1) the diversity both within and between cultures of the many different faces of obligation; (2) the possible evolutionary roots of the sense of obligation, including possible sources that I did not consider; (3) the possible ontogenetic roots of the sense of obligation, including especially children's understanding of groups from a third-party perspective (rather than through participation, as in my account); and (4) the relation between philosophical accounts of normative phenomena in general – which are pitched as not totally empirical – and empirical accounts such as my own. I have tried to distinguish comments that argue for extensions of the theory from those that represent genuine disagreement.


1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 179-187
Author(s):  
Clifford N. Matthews ◽  
Rose A. Pesce-Rodriguez ◽  
Shirley A. Liebman

AbstractHydrogen cyanide polymers – heterogeneous solids ranging in color from yellow to orange to brown to black – may be among the organic macromolecules most readily formed within the Solar System. The non-volatile black crust of comet Halley, for example, as well as the extensive orangebrown streaks in the atmosphere of Jupiter, might consist largely of such polymers synthesized from HCN formed by photolysis of methane and ammonia, the color observed depending on the concentration of HCN involved. Laboratory studies of these ubiquitous compounds point to the presence of polyamidine structures synthesized directly from hydrogen cyanide. These would be converted by water to polypeptides which can be further hydrolyzed to α-amino acids. Black polymers and multimers with conjugated ladder structures derived from HCN could also be formed and might well be the source of the many nitrogen heterocycles, adenine included, observed after pyrolysis. The dark brown color arising from the impacts of comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter might therefore be mainly caused by the presence of HCN polymers, whether originally present, deposited by the impactor or synthesized directly from HCN. Spectroscopic detection of these predicted macromolecules and their hydrolytic and pyrolytic by-products would strengthen significantly the hypothesis that cyanide polymerization is a preferred pathway for prebiotic and extraterrestrial chemistry.


Author(s):  
Benjamin F. Trump ◽  
Irene K. Berezesky ◽  
Raymond T. Jones

The role of electron microscopy and associated techniques is assured in diagnostic pathology. At the present time, most of the progress has been made on tissues examined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and correlated with light microscopy (LM) and by cytochemistry using both plastic and paraffin-embedded materials. As mentioned elsewhere in this symposium, this has revolutionized many fields of pathology including diagnostic, anatomic and clinical pathology. It began with the kidney; however, it has now been extended to most other organ systems and to tumor diagnosis in general. The results of the past few years tend to indicate the future directions and needs of this expanding field. Now, in addition to routine EM, pathologists have access to the many newly developed methods and instruments mentioned below which should aid considerably not only in diagnostic pathology but in investigative pathology as well.


Author(s):  
D.T. Grubb

Diffraction studies in polymeric and other beam sensitive materials may bring to mind the many experiments where diffracted intensity has been used as a measure of the electron dose required to destroy fine structure in the TEM. But this paper is concerned with a range of cases where the diffraction pattern itself contains the important information.In the first case, electron diffraction from paraffins, degraded polyethylene and polyethylene single crystals, all the samples are highly ordered, and their crystallographic structure is well known. The diffraction patterns fade on irradiation and may also change considerably in a-spacing, increasing the unit cell volume on irradiation. The effect is large and continuous far C94H190 paraffin and for PE, while for shorter chains to C 28H58 the change is less, levelling off at high dose, Fig.l. It is also found that the change in a-spacing increases at higher dose rates and at higher irradiation temperatures.


Author(s):  
David C. Joy

Personal computers (PCs) are a powerful resource in the EM Laboratory, both as a means of automating the monitoring and control of microscopes, and as a tool for quantifying the interpretation of data. Not only is a PC more versatile than a piece of dedicated data logging equipment, but it is also substantially cheaper. In this tutorial the practical principles of using a PC for these types of activities will be discussed.The PC can form the basis of a system to measure, display, record and store the many parameters which characterize the operational conditions of the EM. In this mode it is operating as a data logger. The necessary first step is to find a suitable source from which to measure each of the items of interest. It is usually possible to do this without having to make permanent corrections or modifications to the EM.


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