THE ROLE OF EXPECTATIONS AND HETEROGENEOUS PREFERENCES FOR CONGESTION IN THE VALUATION OF RECREATION BENEFITS

Studies of recreation congestion generally utilize nonmarket valuation techniques to determine the use level and entrance price that maximize aggregate recreation benefits for a specific recreation area. This paper improves upon these previous studies by relaxing the assumption of homogeneous preferences among visitors of the same recreation area and accounting for visitor expectations of congestion. The results indicate that failing to account for heterogeneous preferences for congestion by time of visit leads to overestimates of the benefits of relieving peak-time congestion, while accounting for expectations raises questions about the validity of the standard optimal use model.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Bericht Forum A.1: Nach der Theorie – ist vor der Theorie? : Das gegenwärtige Verhältnis von Literaturwissenschaft und Theorie(n)

Dieser Text ist der zusammenfassende Bericht zur Diskussion "Nach der Theorie – ist vor der Theorie?" auf dem Internationalen Colloquium "Perspektiven der Germanistik im 21. Jahrhundert, das vom 4. bis 6. April 2013 im Schloss Herrenhausen in Hannover stattfand

Das Text-Kontext-Problem in der literaturwissenschaftlichen Praxis: Zugänge und Perspektiven

This article begins by using representative examples to present an overview of the diverse ways in which contextualization is practiced in literary studies. Under the rubric of the terms ›universal‹ (indifferent) and ›complementary‹ (distinkt) contextualism, antihermeneutic and hermeneutic approaches are interrogated with respect to their premisses, methods, and intended insights. ›Universal contextualism‹ refers to those post-structuralist methods that operate with a relational concept of the sign and assume that all texts, indeed all the material artefacts of a culture have the same ontological status. A material manifestation of context, or intertextuality, is not assumed here; the aim is insight into regularities of discourse and into media practices. ›Complementary contextualism‹ is intended in its weak form to refer simply to making an indispensable distinction between a text and its contexts - in this case generally in the form of texts - and in its stronger, more clearly hermeneutic version to refer to making a distinction and setting up a hierarchy between a text and its textual or extratextual environment. The focus of attention is progressively narrowed in the course of the article: the forms and manifestations of universal contextualism are excluded from the remainder of the discussion insofar as the concepts of text and context no longer function as a complementary pair if one ceases to assume a hierarchy, indeed a distinction, between the (literary) text and the connections that explain it. Approaches that go down this path may reveal the practices of discourse in a universe of texts of equal status, but they do not draw on contexts to interpret texts or elucidate the meanings of texts. In the next step, the weak form of complementary contextualism - Stephen Greenblatt's New Historicist approach - is distinguished from stronger versions of complementary contextualism. In abandoning textual autonomy and textual authority and adopting a certain formal-aesthetic indifference, New Historicism dispenses with a strong concept of the text, even if its concentration on canonical authors means that it proceeds in a distinctly literature-centred fashion. Its intended insight, nonetheless, is not the understanding and improved understanding of the literary text in the context in which it originated, but instead ›understanding differently‹ and ›making new voices heard‹: its aim is to reveal the social and cultural conditions of possibility of canonical points of textual reference, with the texts and their generally intertextual contexts mutually conditioning one another in the sense of a ›circulation of social energies‹ and thus unable to be placed in a hierarchy. Stronger forms of complementary contextualism, on the other hand, work with a form- and language-oriented concept of the text that, depending on whether their interest is defined by authors or problems, can refer respectively to a narrow domain of canonical texts or to an extended domain of high literature and commercial literature. These forms of contextualist literary analysis, though, share premisses of understanding and textual meaning, as well as hermeneutic and philological tools with which reference is made to texts and their extra- and intertextual contexts. Here, nonetheless, a wide spectrum unfolds. It reaches from what tend to be narrow, author-centric approaches guided by concepts such as ›intention‹, ›influence‹, ›edition‹, and ›commentary‹ to a line of research that engages in a form of contextual analysis whose perspective goes beyond the individual subject and has been broadened to address cultural history. It distances itself from strong authorial intentionalism on the one hand and the associativeness of New Historicism on the other, and is to be understood as a culturalistic extension of social history. Finally, drawing on a hermeneutically negotiated, context-sensitive cultural historiography of this kind, three possible criteria are suggested for selecting contexts of an inter- and extratextual nature: relevance, representativeness, and usefulness. They serve to limit what is per se an unlimited set of textual environments and have previously been formulated in the literature in a similar manner. At the end of this increasingly focused research review, which draws on the whole range of contemporary approaches to the problem of text and context, before finally foregrounding a contextualism that is philologically grounded and extended to address cultural history, there follows a transition to the three individual articles in the section we have edited. They are concerned with three different possibilities for dealing with contexts of an inter- and primarily extratextual nature, are all located inside the hermeneutic and philological space we have mapped out, and can to this extent be considered an inexhaustive taxonomy of a contextualism that has been extended to address cultural history: society as a context of literature, knowledge as a context of literature, and finally the text-context relation as a bipartite combination of problem and solution. Whereas the first two approaches involve classes of context that are defined by content, the final one works with a formal definition of ›context‹ and is to this extent a more broadly conceived one, because almost all political, social, epistemic, and abstract quantities that are external to the text can be formulated as problems. The article, to conclude, is intended to provide an overview that brings order to a markedly heterogeneous, diverse research landscape, as well as to stake out a grounded position within this heterogeneous fiel

Technology for Justice : How Information Technology Can Support Judicial Reform

Oskamp, A. [Promotor]Harding, A.J. [Copromotor

The bacillary and macrophage response to hypoxia in tuberculosis and the consequences for T cell antigen recognition

M. tuberculosis is a facultative anaerobe and its characteristic pathological hallmark, the granuloma, exhibits hypoxia in humans and in most experimental models. Thus the host and bacillary adaptation to hypoxia is of central importance in understanding pathogenesis and thereby to derive new drug treatments and vaccines

Heterozygous Hfe gene deletion leads to impaired glucose homeostasis, but not liver injury in mice fed a high-calorie diet

Heterozygous mutations of the Hfe gene have been proposed as cofactors in the development and progression of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Homozygous Hfe deletion previously has been shown to lead to dysregulated hepatic lipid metabolism and accentuated liver injury in a dietary mouse model of NAFLD. We sought to establish whether heterozygous deletion of Hfe is sufficient to promote liver injury when mice are exposed to a high-calorie diet (HCD). Eight-week-old wild-type and Hfe mice received 8\ua0weeks of a control diet or HCD. Liver histology and pathways of lipid and iron metabolism were analyzed. Liver histology demonstrated that mice fed a HCD had increased NAFLD activity score (NAS), steatosis, and hepatocyte ballooning. However, liver injury was unaffected by Hfe genotype. Hepatic iron concentration (HIC) was increased in Hfe mice of both dietary groups. HCD resulted in a hepcidin-independent reduction in HIC. Hfe mice demonstrated raised fasting serum glucose concentrations and HOMA-IR score, despite unaltered serum adiponectin concentrations. Downstream regulators of hepatic de novo lipogenesis (pAKT, SREBP-1, Fas, Scd1) and fatty acid oxidation (AdipoR2, Pparα, Cpt1) were largely unaffected by genotype. In summary, heterozygous Hfe gene deletion is associated with impaired iron and glucose metabolism. However, unlike homozygous Hfe deletion, heterozygous gene deletion did not affect lipid metabolism pathways or liver injury in this model

Barnehagetilbudet til barn med særlige behov : Undersøkelse av tilbudet til barn med særlige behov under opplæringspliktig alder

-Alle barn under opplæringspliktig alder med særlig behov for spesialpedagogisk hjelp, har rett til slik hjelp. Kommunen har også ansvar for å tilrettelegge barnehagetilbudet til barn med nedsatt funksjonsevne, og barnehagetilbudet skal tilpasses det enkelte barn uavhengig av funksjonsnivå. Denne rapporten er en kartlegging av det tilbudet barn under opplæringspliktig alder med særlige behov får i kommuner og barnehager. For å belyse dette har vi gått bredt ut med flere ulike datainnsamlinger og datakilder, noe som har krevd at mange forskere har bidratt. Dette prosjektet er et samarbeid mellom NTNU Samfunnsforskning, Trøndelag Forskning og Utvikling (TFoU) og Nordisk institutt for studier av innovasjon, forskning og utdanning (NIFU)

Containment of aerogenic Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in mice does not require MyD88 adaptor function for TLR2, -4 and -9.

The role of Toll-like receptors (TLR) and MyD88 for immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection remains controversial. To address the impact of TLR-mediated pathogen recognition and MyD88-dependent signaling events on anti-mycobacterial host responses, we analyzed the outcome of Mtb infection in TLR2/4/9 triple- and MyD88-deficient mice. After aerosol infection, both TLR2/4/9-deficient and wild-type mice expressed pro-inflammatory cytokines promoting antigen-specific T cells and the production of IFN-gamma to similar extents. Moreover, TLR2/4/9-deficient mice expressed IFN-gamma-dependent inducible nitric oxide synthase and LRG-47 in infected lungs. MyD88-deficient mice expressed pro-inflammatory cytokines and were shown to expand IFN-gamma-producing antigen-specific T cells, albeit in a delayed fashion. Only mice that were deficient for MyD88 rapidly succumbed to unrestrained mycobacterial growth, whereas TLR2/4/9-deficient mice controlled Mtb replication. IFN-gamma-dependent restriction of mycobacterial growth was severely impaired only in Mtb-infected MyD88, but not in TLR2/4/9-deficient bone marrow-derived macrophages. Our results demonstrate that after Mtb infection neither TLR2, -4, and -9, nor MyD88 are required for the induction of adaptive T cell responses. Rather, MyD88, but not TLR2, TLR4 and TLR9, is critical for triggering macrophage effector mechanisms central to anti-mycobacterial defense