How to Improve the Quality of Democracy? Experiences with Participatory Innovations at the Local Level in Germany

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 51-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Geissel
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Fast Track ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Analysis

Despite the world-wide triumph of democracy, the quest for an optimal politike has not yet reached the “end of history.” It turns out that representative democracies do not necessarily satisfy citizenries. These malaises are regarded as causes for concern and political actors increasingly pin their hopes on participatory innovations as re-legitimizing responses. But do they work? Germany is an especially interesting case for empirical research. Analysis of the variety of participatory innovations utilized at the local level in Germany—often varying considerably among the different Bundesländer—provides preliminary insights. The German case shows overall that participatory innovations have the potential to cure some of the current malaises of representative democracy. Participatory innovations, however, are certainly no fast-track cure. The useful implementation of participatory innovations requires comprehensive consideration, caution, and, (up to now limited) knowledge about possibilities and pitfalls.

Course Information on the World Wide Web

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 16-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Inglis
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
The World ◽  
Further Development ◽  
Australian Universities

A comparative study was made of the ways in which Australian universities are disseminating information about their courses over the World Wide Web. The study examined the quantity and quality of the information provided, the forms in which information is presented, and means of access to the information. The results of the survey indicated that while the majority of universities are now publishing at least some information over the World Wide Web, both the quantity and quality of information is variable. Implications for further development of institutional course information databases are discussed.

Web Application Quality

2003 ◽  
pp. 231-258
Author(s):  
Filippo Ricca ◽  
Paolo Tonella
Keyword(s):  
Web Application ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Web Applications ◽  
Dynamic Structure ◽  
Statistical Testing ◽  
Consistent Model ◽  
The World ◽  
White Box Testing ◽  
Whole Life Cycle

The World Wide Web has become an interesting opportunity for companies to deliver services and products at distance. Correspondingly, the quality of Web applications, responsible for the related transactions, has become a crucial factor. It can be improved by properly modeling the application during its design, but if the whole life cycle is considered, the availability of a consistent model of the application is fundamental also during maintenance and testing. In this chapter, the problem of recovering a model of a Web application from the implementation is faced. Algorithms are provided to obtain it even in presence of a highly dynamic structure. Based upon such a model, several static analysis techniques, among which reaching definitions and slicing, are considered, as well as some restructuring techniques. White box testing exploits the model in that the related coverage levels are based on it, while statistical testing assumes that transitions in the model are labeled with the conditional probabilities of being traversed.

scholarly journals Seducing for Truth and Justice: Civil Society Initiatives for the 1965 Mass Violence in Indonesia

2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sri Lestari Wahyuningroem
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
The World

The article examines both civil society initiatives that seek to address the mass violence of 1965 and 1966 and the state's responses to them. Unlike other political-transition contexts in the world, a transitional justice approach is apparently a formula that state authorities have found difficult to implement nationally for this particular case. The central government has, through its institutions, sporadically responded to some of the calls from civil society groups and has even initiated policy reforms to support such initiatives. Nevertheless, these responses were not sustained and any suggested programmes have always failed to be completed or implemented. Simultaneously, however, NGOs and victims are also voicing their demands at the local level. Many of their initiatives involve not only communities but also local authorities, including in some cases the local governments. In some aspects, these “bottom-up” approaches are more successful than attempts to create change at the national level. Such approaches challenge what Kieran McEvoy refers to as an innate “seductive” quality of transitional justice, but at the same time these approaches do, in fact, aim to “seduce” the state to adopt measures for truth and justice.

scholarly journals Occurence of Fusarium Mycotoxins in Wheat from Europe – A Review

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oana Stanciu ◽  
Roxana Banc ◽  
Anamaria Cozma ◽  
Lorena Filip ◽  
Doina Miere ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Fusarium Species ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Animal Nutrition ◽  
Fungal Metabolites ◽  
Substrate Type ◽  
Fusarium Mycotoxins ◽  
Economic Significance ◽  
The World

AbstractThe quality of cereals is very important for both human and animal nutrition. Fusarium mycotoxins include a great number of compounds. Trichothecenes, zearalenone (ZEN) and fumonisins are the major Fusarium mycotoxins occurring in cereal grains, animal feeds and forages. Conditions that predispose to mycotoxin production by Fusarium species include humidity, temperature, aeration and substrate type. Even if a great number of fungal metabolites have been designated as mycotoxins, a small number are known to have significant animal/human health and economic significance. For this, the world-wide impact of mycotoxins on human and animal health is likely underestimated and the future in this area is to identify additional specific biomarkers and group of biomarkers that can be used to establish the exposition of human and animals to individual mycotoxins.

Quality of information available on the World Wide Web for patients undergoing thyroidectomy: review

2011 ◽  
Vol 126 (2) ◽  
pp. 116-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Muthukumarasamy ◽  
Z Osmani ◽  
A Sharpe ◽  
R J A England
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Medical Information ◽  
Quality Of Information ◽  
Internet Health Information ◽  
Flesch Reading Ease ◽  
Key Word ◽  
The World ◽  
Ease Score

AbstractIntroduction:This study aimed to assess the quality of information available on the World Wide Web for patients undergoing thyroidectomy.Methods:The first 50 web-links generated by internet searches using the five most popular search engines and the key word ‘thyroidectomy’ were evaluated using the Lida website validation instrument (assessing accessibility, usability and reliability) and the Flesch Reading Ease Score.Results:We evaluated 103 of a possible 250 websites. Mean scores (ranges) were: Lida accessibility, 48/63 (27–59); Lida usability, 36/54 (21–50); Lida reliability, 21/51 (4–38); and Flesch Reading Ease, 43.9 (2.6–77.6).Conclusion:The quality of internet health information regarding thyroidectomy is variable. High ranking and popularity are not good indicators of website quality. Overall, none of the websites assessed achieved high Lida scores. In order to prevent the dissemination of inaccurate or commercially motivated information, we recommend independent labelling of medical information available on the World Wide Web.

Local community detection based on modularity metric G

2015 ◽  
Vol 29 (33) ◽  
pp. 1550215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhengyou Xia ◽  
Xiangying Gao ◽  
Xia Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Community Detection ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Complete Information ◽  
Detection Problem ◽  
Two Phase ◽  
The World ◽  
Local Community Detection

In complex network analysis, the local community detection problem is getting more and more attention. Because of the difficulty to get complete information of the network, such as the World Wide Web, the local community detection has been proposed by researcher. That is, we can detect a community from a certain source vertex with limited knowledge of an entire graph. The previous methods of local community detection now are more or less inadequate in some places. In this paper, we have proposed a new local modularity metric [Formula: see text] and based on it, a two-phase algorithm is proposed. The method we have taken is a greedy addition algorithm which means adding vertices into the community until [Formula: see text] does not increase. Compared with the previous methods, when our method is calculating the modularity metric, the range of vertices what we considered may affect the quality of the community detection wider. The results of experiments show that whether in computer-generated random graph or in the real networks, our method can effectively solve the problem of the local community detection.

Instruments to assess the quality of health information on the World Wide Web: what can our patients actually use?

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elmer V. Bernstam ◽  
Dawn M. Shelton ◽  
Muhammad Walji ◽  
Funda Meric-Bernstam
Keyword(s):  
World Wide Web ◽  
Health Information ◽  
World Wide ◽  
The World
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