The journalism industry was central to the materialization of U.S. freedom of information (FOI) laws, yet journalists frequently voice dissatisfaction with the state of FOI laws. The study surveyed ...330 public records requesters on their experiences with FOI laws, finding public-interest requesters (journalists, academics, nonprofits, and private individuals) reported a significantly different experience, including a lower likelihood of receiving records, than for-profit requesters (commercial requesters and lawyers). For-profit requesters were less likely to believe FOI laws positively impact government accountability or improve society. The findings suggest reassessing whom the laws serve and whether they meet their original democratic objectives.
Research on autocracies and their consequences has been a growth industry in the latest decade. Nonetheless, the relationship between the type of autocracy and the violation of civil liberties has ...largely been ignored. In this article, we employ a new dataset, which includes cross-temporal data on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly/association, freedom of religion, and freedom of movement, to shed light on this issue. Analysing 182 countries in the period 1979-2008, we show that democracies repress civil liberties less than autocracies do, whereas we find little evidence to the effect that different kinds of autocracies violate civil liberties to different degrees. However, we also show that the differences between democracies and autocracies have declined starkly since the Cold War. Finally, our results demonstrate that the difference in the extent to which democracies and autocracies repress civil liberties is larger for the freedom of speech and freedom of assembly/association than for the freedom of religion and freedom of movement. We take the general difference between the two categories of liberties as evidence that autocracies repress political liberties more than private liberties because the former presents levers for oppositional activity. We argue that the cross-temporal differences are a consequence of the spread of more minimalist democracies since the end of the Cold War.
A new linear sparse array based on the nested array is proposed, which enjoys all the good properties of the two-level nested array, and can provide more degrees of freedom (DOF). The new array is ...constructed by two uniform linear arrays (ULAs) and an additional sensor. The sensor locations, the array aperture, and the achievable DOF from its difference co-array (DCA) are all benefited for closed-form expressions. Furthermore, the resulting DCA is kept as a hole-free ULA. The optimal numbers of sensors in the two ULAs provided the total number of physical sensors are derived. This new array can resolve more sources and achieve better angle estimation performance than the two-level nested array. Simulation results validate these conclusions.
O objetivo do trabalho consiste em apresentar o modelo libertário de educação como um encontro entre a liberdade e a responsabilidade. Para tanto, usou-se o método hermenêutico, que permitiu uma ...análise das interfaces entre a Pedagogia do Oprimido de Paulo Freire e o Princípio da Responsabilidade de Hans Jonas. O método dialético permitiu um diálogo entre os dois modelos, investigando as relações entre a liberdade e a responsabilidade. Essas relações entre os dois modelos surge do fato de que não se pode pensar numa liberdade sem responsabilidade. Assim, a partir da responsabilidade, é possível pensar numa liberdade consciente que permite ao professor alcançar os objetivos pedagógicos estabelecidos na Agenda 2030 da ONU para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável.
Childhood vaccination is a safe and effective way of reducing infectious diseases. Yet, public confidence in vaccination is waning, driven in part by the ‘manufacture of doubt’ by anti-vaccination ...activists and websites. However, there is little research examining the psychological underpinnings of anti-vaccination rhetoric among parents.
Here, we examined the structure and moral roots of anti-vaccination attitudes amongst Australian parents active on social media parenting sites.
Participants (N = 296) completed questionnaires assessing their vaccination attitudes, behavioural intentions, and moral preferences.
Using Latent Profile Analysis, we identified three profiles (i.e., groups), interpretable as vaccine “accepters”, “fence sitters”, and “rejecters”, each characterised by a distinct pattern of vaccination attitudes and moral preferences. Accepters exhibited positive vaccination attitudes and strong intentions to vaccinate; rejecters exhibited the opposite pattern of responses; whilst fence sitters exhibited an intermediate pattern of responses. Compared to accepters, rejecters and fence sitters exhibited a heightened moral preference for liberty (belief in the rights of the individual) and harm (concern about the wellbeing of others). Compared to acceptors and fence sitters, rejecters exhibited a heightened moral preference for purity (an abhorrence for impurity of body), and a diminished moral preference for authority (deference to those in positions of power).
Given the sensitivity of fence sitters and rejecters to liberty-related moral concerns, our research cautions against the use of adversarial approaches—e.g., No Jab, No Pay legislation—that promote vaccination uptake by restricting parental freedoms, as they may backfire amongst parents ambivalent toward vaccination.
•Parents completed a vaccine confidence inventory and a measure of moral preferences.•We applied latent profile analysis to responses on the vaccine confidence inventory.•Three profiles of parents were uncovered: accepters, fence sitters, and rejecters.•The three profiles were associated with different moral preferences.•Fence sitters and rejecters both exhibited strong moral concerns for liberty.
Copyright and International Negotiations provides a historical study of the development of Chinese copyright law in terms of China's contemporary political economy and the impact that international ...copyright law has had. The analysis shows how China's copyright system is intertwined with censorship and international copyright law and how this has affected freedom of expression. China still enforces an old censorship regime that clamps down on free expression despite a modern system of copyright rules which should function as an engine of free expression. The book explores the development and architecture of Chinese copyright law in parallel with international copyright law, clarifies China's nuanced patterns of the control of free expression through copyright law, and identifies a breakthrough for neutralising the impact of China's censorship policies through copyright law.
We focus on a two-receiver multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), broadcast channel (BC), and interference channel (IC) with an arbitrary number of antennas at each node. We assume an imperfect ...knowledge of local channel state information at the transmitters, whose error decays with the signal-to-noise-ratio. With such configuration, we characterize the achievable degrees-of-freedom (DoF) regions in both BC and IC, by proposing a rate-splitting (RS) approach, which divides each receiver's message into a common part and a private part. Compared with the RS scheme designed for the symmetric MIMO case, the novelties of the proposed block lie in: 1) delivering additional non-ZF-precoded private symbols to the receiver with the greater number of antennas and 2) a space-time implementation. These features provide more flexibilities in balancing the common-message-decodabilities at the two receivers, and fully exploit asymmetric antenna arrays. Besides, in IC, we modify the power allocation designed for the asymmetric BC based on the signal space, where the two transmitted signals interfere with each other. We also derive an outer-bound for the DoF regions and show that the proposed achievable DoF regions are optimal under some antenna configurations and channel state information at the transmitter side qualities.
A pH‐responsive interlocked figure‐of‐eight molecular shuttle is reported by Frédéric Coutrot et al. in their Communication (e202310643). The rotaxane molecular shuttle operates through the ...invertible pH‐responsive translation of the macrocycle between two sites of interactions of the encircled axle. As illustrated by the picture, the two loops of the eight‐shaped rotaxane may be interdependently loosened and tightened. Increasing conformational degree of freedom of a loop results in the decreasing conformational degree of freedom of the other one.
What we critically ascertain in this essay is how the modern university is increasingly drifting away from the key ambitions of its own mission statement, and largely by its own doing. Although the ...typical university in its mission statement claims to aspire outstanding quality, academic freedom, and to contribute to society, in its daily organization, the modern university has normalized and internalized a neoliberal metrical governmentality, in which quality, freedom, and societal benefit risk being exchanged for quantity, managerial control, and status benefit. In this essay, we stand up against this worrying self-harming protection strategy, what we term—following Jacques Derrida—the autoimmunity of the university. To structure our argument, we will discern the main worrying autoimmune paradoxes of this university policy in the hope to further the debate and potentially remedy the university of this self-inflicted harm.
When noninvasive tests are unable to define the epileptogenic zone in patients, intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) is a method of localizing the epileptogenic zone. Compared with noninvasive ...evaluations, it offers more precise information about patterns of epileptiform activity, which results in useful diagnostic information that supports surgical decision-making. The primary aim of the present study was to assess the utility of iEEG for definitive surgery for patients with drug-resistant epilepsy. Online databases such as PubMed, Medline, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and IEEE Xplore were searched for MeSH terms and free-text keywords. The ROBINS I (risk of bias in non-randomized studies – of interventions) critical appraisal tool was used for quality assessment. The prevalence from different studies was pooled together using the inverse variance heterogeneity method. Egger’s regression analysis and funnel plot were used to evaluate publication bias. The systematic review included 18 studies, and the meta-analysis included 10 studies to estimate the prevalence of seizure freedom (Engel class I) in patients undergoing surgery after iEEG. A total of 526 patients were included in the meta-analysis. The follow-up period ranged from 1 to 10 years. The overall pooled estimate of the prevalence of seizure freedom (Engel class I) for patients undergoing surgery after iEEG was 53% (95% confidence interval, 44%–62%). The results additionally demonstrated that 12 studies had a moderate risk of bias and 6 had a low risk. Future studies are crucial to enhance our understanding of iEEG to guide patient choices and unravel their implications.
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