Contesting Austerity

Despite the historical and political similarities between Portugal and Spain, the contentious responses to austerity diverged in terms of number, rhythm and players. This book compares the contentious responses to austerity in Portugal and Spain during the Eurozone crisis and the Great Recession between 2008 and 2015. While in Spain a sustained wave of mobilisation lasted for three years, involving various players and leading to a transformation of the party system, in Portugal social movements were only able to mobilise in specific instances, trade unions dominated protest and, by the end of the cycle, institutional change was limited. Contesting Austerity shows that the different trajectories and outcomes in these two countries are connected to the nature and configurations of the players in the mobilisation process. While in Spain actors’ relative autonomy from one another led to deeper political transformation, in Portugal the dominance of the institutional actors limited the extent of that change.

Use of the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-2 to assess motivation for physical activity in persons with rheumatoid arthritis: an observational study

Arthritis patients may show little motivation for physical activity (PA), resulting in a sedentary lifestyle. The primary objective of the study was to investigate whether motivation for PA and fulfillment of PA recommendations were associated with cardiorespiratory fitness in patients with RA. The exploratory objective was to study whether university students could be used as controls for RA patients in future studies of PA motivation. Peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) was measured in 93 RA patients. The patients and 354 students filled in the Behavioral Regulation in Exercise Questionnaire-2 (BREQ-2). Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with adjustment for age and sex. The BREQ-2 scores were also compiled to an overall motivational style “Relative Autonomy Index” as previously published. Mean VO2peak for the RA patients was 32.2 (SD: 9.6) mL × min−1 × kg−1. Only 29 patients (31%) fulfilled the current recommendations for PA. BREQ-2 scores were associated with measured VO2peak (standardized coefficient 0.33, p < 0.001). Whether a person fulfilled the current recommendations for PA was a significant mediator of this effect (standardized coefficients: mediated effect; 0.22, p = 0.001, remaining direct effect; 0.11, p = 0.18). The Relative Autonomy Index also significantly predicted measured VO2peak (standardized coefficient 0.30, p < 0.001). The underlying BREQ-2 factor structure was significantly different between RA patients and university students, and comparison of scores would not be adequate. Motivation for PA was significantly associated with measured VO2peak in RA patients. The effect was mediated by whether the patient fulfilled the current recommendations for PA. Addressing and stimulating motivation is important when intervening to increase PA and cardiovascular fitness in RA patients.

Education Policies in Argentina

Argentina is a federal country that has 24 jurisdictions with relative autonomy to define their own policies and manage schools inside their territories; it is the responsibility of the federal government to establish national policies and coordinate and monitor their implementation in the national territory. Since the beginning of the 21st century, there have been national policies promoted by governments of different political natures: On the one side, the Kirchnerist governments from 2003 to 2015, within the framework of the so-called post-neoliberalism in Latin America. On the other side, the government of the Alianza Cambiemos 2015–2019 was an exponent of the conservative restorations in the area. The education policies implemented by these governments are rooted in divergent conceptions about the meaning of education, about rights, and about the responsibility of the nation to create the conditions within which rights can be actualized. Policies based on a conception of education as a social right are confronted with those old and new trends towards privatization and mercantilization of education, whose goal is to have education satisfy market demands.

Persian in the Villages, or, the Language of Jamiat Rai’s Account Books

District (pargana)-level land revenue administration in late-Mughal south Gujarat was run mostly by Hindu and Jain family firms which operated within a multilingual environment featuring Gujarati and Marathi as well as Persian. Similar arrangements continued under early East India Company control but, by the 1820s, the British had done away with land-revenue family firms and their contextual multilingualism, replacing them with directly-employed village accountants writing only in Gujarati. This article argues that pargana-level officials’ multilingualism and relative autonomy were not an 18th-century aberration but a key feature of Mughal administration, dislodged with difficulty by the British.

Plant Hunting: “Evenki Medicines” in Northern Baikal [Okhota za rasteniiami: “evenkiiskie lekarstva” na Severnom Baikale]

The article discusses the attitudes of the Northern Baikal Evenkis toward the flora, formed by the situation of relative autonomy. The focus is on plants that are used in medical practice and are in great demand. The article examines the knowledge of the Northern Baikal Evenkis about the healing properties of two plants that are considered universal medicines – Gentiana algida and Rhodiola rosea, sometimes called “Evenki medicines”. It considers human interactions with these medicinal plants in the context of mobility, as well as human, animal and landscape relations, and describes the practice of their gathering by hunters and reindeer herders. The Evenk hunting ethos and ideas about hunting luck are part of the system of relations between humans and the environment and manifest themselves in the practice of searching for and collecting medicinal plants. Local knowledge about their beneficial properties was formed under the influence of observations of animals’ behaviour. The strategies for the use of medical devices and the practice of prevention and treatment of diseases by the Evenki were formed under conditions of constant resource shortages. Reindeer husbandry and hunting demanded that people in constant motion improve the skills of maintaining relative autonomy, that is a certain type of attitude towards resources as well as medicines, based on minimizing their consumption. In such conditions, medicines with a wide spectrum of action turned out to be especially in demand.

Changes of the Political and Legal Systems: Judicial Autonomy

This Article summarizes the features of modern non-democratic legal systems and draws the relevant conclusions. Some of these systemic issues have long-term consequences. The Article illustrates the defining effects of the historical traditions with concrete examples based on empirical researches. Judicial independence as part of the rule of law is not only institutional guarantees but cultural, mental dispositions too. This Article shows how non-democratic legal heritage led to backsliding democracy in post-communist Hungary. However relative autonomy of judges could emerge during the last three decades of the communist rule, skills and habits of professional self-defense could not stabilize.

Introduction

This chapter introduces a conception of the relative autonomy of upper-scale, continuum theories from lower-scale more fundamental molecular and atomic theories. It contrasts a notion of foundational philosophical problems with an understanding of autonomy and fundamentality. It lays out the key ingredients required to argue for a middle-out, mesoscale approach to many-body systems, including hydrodynamic descriptions, representative volume elements, and fluctuation and dissipation.

Hydrodynamics

This chapter begins the argument that the best way to understand the relations of relative autonomy between theories at different scales is through a mesoscale hydrodynamic description of many-body systems. It focuses on the evolution of conserved quantities of those systems in near, but out of equilibrium states. A relatively simple example is presented of a system of spins where the magnetization is the conserved quantity of interest. The chapter introduces the concepts of order parameters, of local quantities, and explains why we should be focused on the gradients of densities that inhabit the mesoscale between the scale of the continuum and that of the atomic. It introduces the importance of correlation functions and linear response.

Conclusions

This concluding chapter focuses on the philosophical lessons to be had from the discussions in the previous chapters. Specifically, it suggests that one interesting and fruitful way to understand the relation “theory X is more fundamental than theory Y” is through mediated mesoscale modeling. This is in contrast to the kind of direction derivational connections often invoked in the debates about reduction that depend on “in principle” mathematical claims. The hierarchical ordering in terms of this relation of relative fundamentality can be understood in terms of the conception of relative autonomy discussed throughout the book. It highlights the fact that this point of view has its genesis in Einstein’s work on Brownian Motion and specifically in his determination of an effective material parameter and the first expression of the Fluctuation-Dissipation theorem. Finally, it recaps the conception of an engineering, middle-out approach to many-body physics and the physical arguments that certain mesoscale variables should be considered to be natural kinds.

Embryo culture in vitro in the experimental evaluation of drought resistance in cereals (review)

Drought is an unfavorable combination of meteorological conditions when plants experience a long-term water deficiency both in the air and soil. This is one of the most common abiotic stressors, which leads not only to significant crop losses but also rises threat to food security. Researchers are actively developing ways to breed drought-tolerant cultivars of economically valuable crops, especially cereals – the main food resource. One of the promising areas of biotechnological evaluation of the resistance of existing and newly created cereal genotypes to drought for breeding purposes is the use of culture in vitro. In this case, embryos at the particular stage of development are used as explants (so-called embryo culture in vitro). The review aims to analyze the literature and own data on the production of cereal regenerants in embryo culture in vitro under selective experimental conditions of imitation of physiological drought. It has been shown that in vitro cultivation of immature embryos at a critical stage of relative autonomy is especially promising. This kind of embryo does not depend on the physiological factors of the maternal organism and can autonomously give rise to the fully developed plant under adequate conditions in vitro and later ex vitro. This allows the biotechnologist to obtain regenerants directly, excluding an additional time-consuming stage of the formation of morphogenic calli in vitro. As follows, the time required for expensive experiments is also reduced. Data on the identification of the critical stage of the relative autonomy of the cereal embryogenesis are presented. Criterion (proposed by the authors) for identifying this stage by the ability of the embryos to complete embryogenesis and form the seedlings on a hormone-free medium in vitro and give rise to the full developed regenerants ex vitro has been analyzed. Furthermore, the analysis of the laboratory germination of the obtained caryopses was carried out. It was discovered that in spring soft wheat, for example, such stage, corresponding to the formation of all organs in the embryo, occurs 15 days after pollination. The issues of using relatively autonomous embryos in the biotechnological assessment of the genotype drought resistance under selective conditions in vitro are considered.