Introduction: how language works in politics

Author(s):  
Matthew Williams

This book examines how language works in democratic politics and how it impacts the effectiveness of policy. Using evidence from the first computer-assisted analysis of all 41.5 million words of legislation enacted from 1900 to 2015, it tracks the major changes in form and function that Parliament's use of language has undergone over time and the reasons for such changes. More importantly, it explores the policy and social implications of changes in legislative language as well as the issue of legislative indeterminacy. This introductory chapter discusses the questions, arguments and aims of the book and reviews the literature on the operation of language in British politics, along with the impact of legislative language on policy effectiveness. It also explains what specifically the book contributes to the existing literature, describes the research design, and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.

Author(s):  
Michael Batty

AbstractThis introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the theories and models that constitute what has come to be called urban science. Explaining and measuring the spatial structure of the city in terms of its form and function is one of the main goals of this science. It provides links between the way various theories about how the city is formed, in terms of its economy and social structure, and how these theories might be transformed into models that constitute the operational tools of urban informatics. First the idea of the city as a system is introduced, and then various models pertaining to the forces that determine what is located where in the city are presented. How these activities are linked to one another through flows and networks are then introduced. These models relate to formal models of spatial interaction, the distribution of the sizes of different cities, and the qualitative changes that take place as cities grow and evolve to different levels. Scaling is one of the major themes uniting these different elements grounding this science within the emerging field of complexity. We then illustrate how we might translate these ideas into operational models which are at the cutting edge of the new tools that are being developed in urban informatics, and which are elaborated in various chapters dealing with modeling and mobility throughout this book.


Author(s):  
Elaine Chase ◽  
Jennifer Allsopp

This introductory chapter provides an overview of youth migration. Youth migration needs to be understood in relation to its negative drivers of persecution, violence, and unsustainable lives in countries of origin, factors that motivated the flights of many young people. But at the same time, there is a need to recognize that such adversity also fuels individual and collective dreams and aspirations for better lives. Without acknowledging this, politicians will struggle to formulate meaningful and workable asylum and immigration policies. The chapter then briefly outlines the differing journeys that young people took in order to arrive in Europe. The chapter explains that the book focuses on how asylum, immigration, and social care procedures are operationalized once unaccompanied children and young people arrive in the UK and Italy, and the impact that these bureaucratic processes have on them over time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-153
Author(s):  
O. A. Gromova ◽  
I. Yu. Torshin ◽  
M. V. Putilina ◽  
I. S. Sardaryan ◽  
L. E. Fedotova ◽  
...  

Objective: to carry out a systematic computer-assisted analysis of scientific literature on on the relationships between the effects of vitamin and nociception (including the impact of vitamin D deficiency on the development of pain syndrome.Material and methods. For the query “(pain OR nociception) AND (vitamin D OR cholecalciferol OR VITD OR CALCITRIOL OR HYDROXYVITAMIN OR DIHYDROXYVITAMIN OR ALPHACALCIDOL)", 2318 references, including 77 references on alpha-calcidol, were found in the biomedical publications database PubMed. The computer-assisted analysis of this array of publications was carried out using the current big data analysis methods developed within the topological and metric approaches to recognition/classification problems.Result and discussion. A systematic computer-assisted text analysis of 2318 studies on the relationships between nociception and vitamin D showed that the analgesic effects of the vitamin are by anti-inflammatory action and the regulation of serotonergic, dopaminergic, and opioidergic neurotransmission. The lower blood levels of the major vitamin D metabolite 25 (OH)D is a risk factor for decreased pain threshold in myalgia, fibromyalgia, arthralgia, dorsalgia, and a number of neuralgias.Conclusion. In patients with impaired renal conversion of active vitamin D metabolites (especially in the elderly), the efficacy of cholecalciferol-based drugs is reduced, which makes it necessary to use the active forms of vitamin D.


2021 ◽  
pp. 169-208
Author(s):  
Brian Z. Tamanaha

This chapter differentiates between abstract legal pluralism and folk legal pluralism. Abstract concepts of law within legal pluralist literature can be placed in one of two broad categories based on form and function: the inner ordering of associations or institutionalized rule systems. However, both types of concepts of law inevitably result in over-inclusiveness by encompassing social phenomena that are usually not considered to be law, creating irresolvable problems. Folk legal pluralism identifies coexisting forms of law in terms of what people collectively view as law, examined through a social-historical lens that pays attention to how forms of law vary across social contexts and change over time. It also articulates three categories of law applied throughout this book: community law, regime law, and cross-polity law. This approach offers a commonsensical account of law and legal pluralism useful for scholars, development practitioners, social scientists, and legal theorists.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
LYLE LUSTIGMAN ◽  
RUTH A. BERMAN

ABSTRACTThe study characterizes developmental trends in early Hebrew clause-combining (CC) by analyzing the interplay between linguistic form and communicative function in different interactional settings. Analysis applied to all utterances produced by three children aged 2;0–3;0 who combined two or more clauses, either self-initiated or on the basis of adult input. Ten types of CC were analyzed for marking by connectives (e.g. the Hebrew equivalents of ‘and’, ‘that’, ‘so’). Four shared consecutive developmental phases emerged: non-marking; partial marking by ‘and’ and ‘that’; use of ‘but’ and ‘because’, favored significantly in interlocutor-supported contexts; marking of adverbial relations and more varied use ofše-‘that’. These CC processes are interpreted as reflecting general properties of language development, in the form of gradually increasing specification of form–function relations under the impact of interlocutor–child interactive support combined with Hebrew-particular typological factors.


1998 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Giovannini ◽  
Carlo Chiarla ◽  
Giuseppe Boldrini ◽  
Gennaro Nuzzo

Author(s):  
Agata Ładniak

<p>Skin injuries are a health problem and can lead to serious, significant deterioration in the quality of life and, consequently, even illness and disability. Therefore, after wounding, immediate regeneration of the tissue is necessary to avoid further complications and pathogenesis. Consequently, many wound healing strategies have been developed, leading to the progress in constructing of multifunctional tissue substitutes for the skin, biomembranes, scaffolds and intelligent dressings. The field of science focusing on the creation of the above-mentioned products is tissue engineering (TE). Its main goal is to find a system that is able to replace or be a model that perfectly mimics the form and function of the skin. Research carried out on such constructs is mainly based on the analysis of mechanical properties (porosity, elasticity), as well as the assessment of the impact of individual components on processes related to the formation of new tissue as cell proliferation and differentiation, proliferation, angiogenesis - through <em>in vivo</em> studies (using animal models: mice, New Zealand rabbits) and <em>in vitro</em> (most often using mouse fibroblasts - L929). Skin constructions may have potential applications as wound dressings or skin substitutes in cases of severe skin damage.</p>


2022 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Mark McGill ◽  
Stephen Brewster ◽  
Daniel Pires De Sa Medeiros ◽  
Sidney Bovet ◽  
Mario Gutierrez ◽  
...  

This article discusses the Keyboard Augmentation Toolkit (KAT), which supports the creation of virtual keyboards that can be used both for standalone input (e.g., for mid-air text entry) and to augment physically tracked keyboards/surfaces in mixed reality. In a user study, we firstly examine the impact and pitfalls of visualising shortcuts on a tracked physical keyboard, exploring the utility of virtual per-keycap displays. Supported by this and other recent developments in XR keyboard research, we then describe the design, development, and evaluation-by-demonstration of KAT. KAT simplifies the creation of virtual keyboards (optionally bound to a tracked physical keyboard) that support enhanced display —2D/3D per-key content that conforms to the virtual key bounds; enhanced interactivity —supporting extensible per-key states such as tap, dwell, touch, swipe; flexible keyboard mappings that can encapsulate groups of interaction and display elements, e.g., enabling application-dependent interactions; and flexible layouts —allowing the virtual keyboard to merge with and augment a physical keyboard, or switch to an alternate layout (e.g., mid-air) based on need. Through these features, KAT will assist researchers in the prototyping, creation and replication of XR keyboard experiences, fundamentally altering the keyboard’s form and function.


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