Land registration systems are used throughout the world in order to store information on the ownership of land, rights attached to it, and burdens affecting it. A smoothly functioning land registration system guarantees the security of land transfer operations. However, there are significant differences in the way national land registration systems are run due to their historical development and divergent legislative approaches to land registration. Consequently, the need arises (...) to compare different systems so as to find both common ground and discrepancies between them. The paper contains such a comparative analysis which has been carried out with translation in mind: to discover the best ways of transferring land registration legal concepts expressed in one linguistic framework and characteristic of a given legal culture into target legal spaces using other linguistic frameworks. The comparison in question has taken place in a third space, a space where selected aspects of selected legal systems mingle revealing more or less clear similarities and more or less distinct differences between them. The juxtaposition of source and target legal cultures in a third space has resulted in finding translation equivalents that do not abuse the original ideas or—if this has been unavoidable—abuse them to the smallest extent possible. The analysis has covered the Polish land registration system and equivalent systems in English- and German-speaking countries and has been conducted from the point of view of a Polish-English and Polish-German translator. (shrink)

This chapter traces the evolution of Japan's systems of household and land registration from c.1600 to the period of early Meiji reforms in the 1870s and 1880s, with due attention to the distinction between a system designed by the state and local forms of registration practice. In the section on the pre-Meiji period, one such local practice of having people ‘disowned’ and its consequence — registerlessness — is examined. The section on the Meiji reforms and the (...) section that follows turn to the issue of continuity and discontinuity, and the question of whether any progress was made by those reforms. In order to illustrate the actual changes that took place at the local level, the chapter begins with an eighteenth-century story about a peasant woman and ends with a case of a family dispute that another village woman brought before the court some 120 years later. (shrink)

In 1894, the Institut Colonial International was founded in Brussels, with the aim to engage and promote transnational exchanges between jurists, scholars, politicians, colonial administrators and experts, comparing different colonial experiences. As the Institut Colonial International’s founders had hoped, its publications promoted legal debates, discussions and the prospects of specific legislation, decrees or norms to be adapted and used in entirely different colonial systems. This paper will show that the Institut Colonial International encouraged the exchange of ideas about the (...) various colonial experiences in order to create common and universal principles. International law and domestic law, or national law concerning land register systems and land law were part of the colonial discourse as it endeavoured to create and adopt universal principles of law, trying to establish a platform of common dialogue, with common premises, concerning different colonies, different colonial experiences and ultimately different cultural, social and political contexts. (shrink)

The article aims to analyze the legal norms that regulate the protection of the property right in the legal system of the Republic of Macedonia. In most cases, the protection of property right is realized through suits; however, our legal system provides for the possibility that the protection of property right can also be realized through the registration of immovable property rights in the respective Public Registries. Given the fact that in the Republic of North Macedonia the normative regulation (...) of property suits is not contained in a single normative act, but rather extends to several such acts, the article, based on the practice of the high courts, seeks to analyze the legal cases related to property rights that qualify as rights similar to property rights, but which enjoy legal protection provided by law. The article will mainly elaborate on the basic provisions on property protection suits contained in the Law on Ownership and other Real Rights (2001). However, in this context, the provisions on property protection that are contained in the Law on Real Estate Cadastre (2008), the Law on Contentious Procedure (2005), the Law on Securing of Claims (2007), the Law on Construction Land (2008), etc., will also be taken into consideration. (shrink)

Perception involves the processing of content or information about the world. In what form is this content represented? I argue that perception is widely compositional. The perceptual system represents many stimulus features (including shape, orientation, and motion) in terms of combinations of other features (such as shape parts, slant and tilt, common and residual motion vectors). But compositionality can take a variety of forms. The ways in which perceptual representations compose are markedly different from the ways in which sentences or (...) thoughts are thought to be composed. I suggest that the thesis that perception is compositional is not itself a concrete hypothesis with specific predictions; rather it affords a productive framework for developing and evaluating specific empirical hypotheses about the form and content of perceptual representations. The question is not just whether perception is compositional, but how. Answering this latter question can provide fundamental insights into perception. (shrink)

Establishing territorial control was one of the primary activities of colonial presence on Timor from the late nineteenth century. In Portuguese Timor as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the colonial s...

An ongoing philosophical discussion concerns how various types of mental states fall within broad representational genera—for example, whether perceptual states are “iconic” or “sentential,” “analog” or “digital,” and so on. Here, I examine the grounds for making much more specific claims about how mental states are structured from constituent parts. For example, the state I am in when I perceive the shape of a mountain ridge may have as constituent parts my representations of the shapes of each peak and saddle (...) of the ridge. More specific structural claims of this sort are a guide to how mental states fall within broader representational kinds. Moreover, these claims have significant implications of their own about semantic, functional, and epistemic features of our mental lives. But what are the conditions on a mental state's having one type of constituent structure rather than another? Drawing on explanatory strategies in vision science, I argue that, other things being equal, the constituent structure of a mental state determines what I call its distributional properties—namely, how mental states of that type can, cannot, or must co‐occur with other mental states in a given system. Distributional properties depend critically on and are informative about the underlying structures of mental states, they abstract in important ways from aspects of how mental states are processed, and they can yield significant insights into the variegation of psychological capacities. (shrink)

Mental capacities for perceiving, remembering, thinking, and planning involve the processing of structured mental representations. A compositional semantics of such representations would explain how the content of any given representation is determined by the contents of its constituents and their mode of combination. While many have argued that semantic theories of mental representations would have broad value for understanding the mind, there have been few attempts to develop such theories in a systematic and empirically constrained way. This paper contributes to (...) that end by developing a semantics for a ‘fragment’ of our mental representational system: the visual system’s representations of the bounding contours of objects. At least three distinct kinds of composition are involved in such representations: ‘concatenation’, ‘feature composition’, and ‘contour composition’. I sketch the constraints on and semantics of each of these. This account has three principal payoffs. First, it models a working framework for compositionally ascribing structure and content to perceptual representations, while highlighting core kinds of evidence that bear on such ascriptions. Second, it shows how a compositional semantics of perception can be compatible with holistic, or Gestalt, phenomena, which are often taken to show that the whole percept is ‘other than the sum of its parts’. Finally, the account illuminates the format of a key type of perceptual representation, bringing out the ways in which contour representations exhibit domain-specific form of the sort that is typical of structured icons such as diagrams and maps, in contrast to typical discursive representations of logic and language. (shrink)

Over the years, artificial neural networks have been applied successfully in many areas including IT security. Yet, neural networks can only process continuous input data. This is particularly challenging for security-related, non-continuous data like system calls of an operating system. This work focuses on five different options to preprocess sequences of system calls so that they can be processed by neural networks. These input options are based on one-hot encodings and learning word2vec, GloVe or fastText representations of system calls. As (...) an additional option, we analyse if mapping system calls to their respective kernel modules is an adequate generalization step for replacing system calls or enhancing system call data with additional information regarding their context. When performing such preprocessing steps it is important to ensure that no relevant information is lost during the process. The overall objective of system call analysis in the context of IT security is to categorize a sequence of them as benign or malicious behavior. Therefore, this scenario is used to evaluate different system call representations in a classification task. Results indicate that a broader range of attacks can be detected when enriching system call representations with corresponding kernel module information. Prior learning of embeddings does not achieve significant improvements. This work is an extension of the work by Wunderlich et al. [1] published in Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. (shrink)

The human visual system is amazing in its ability to guide us in a wide range of tasks - driving, reading, playing ball games, or reading music. Somehow our eyes just manage to find the information we need to perform such tasks. This book explores how our eyes process and communicate the data needed for us to negotiate the world around us.

Insurance is pervasive in many social settings. As a cooperative device based on risk pooling, it serves to attenuate the adverse consequences of various risks by offering policyholders coverage against the losses implied by adverse events in exchange for the payment of premiums. In the insurance industry, the concept of actuarial fairness serves to establish what could be adequate, fair premiums. Accordingly, premiums paid by policyholders should match as closely as possible their risk exposure. Such premiums are the product of (...) the probabilities of losses and the expected losses. This article presents a discussion of the fairness of actuarial fairness through three steps: defining the concept based on its formulation within the insurance industry; determining in which sense it may be about fairness; and raising some objections to the actual fairness of actuarial fairness. The necessity of a normative evaluation of actuarial fairness is justified by the influence of the concept on the current reforms of public insurance systems and the fact that it highlights the question of the repartition of the gains and burdens of social cooperation. (shrink)

The requirement of gauge invariance for the Schwinger-DeWitt equations, interpreted as a manifestly covariant quantum theory for the evolution of a system in spacetime, implies the existence of a five-dimensional pre-Maxwell field on the manifold of spacetime and “proper time” τ. The Maxwell theory is contained in this theory; integration of the field equations over τ restores the Maxwell equations with the usual interpretation of the sources. Following Schwinger's techniques, we study the Green's functions for the five-dimensional hyperbolic field equations (...) for both signatures ± [corresponding to O(4, 1) or O(3, 2) symmetry of the field equations] of the proper time derivative. The classification of the Green's functions follows that of the four-dimensional theory for “massive” fields, for which the “mass” squared may be positive or negative, respectively. The Green's functions for the five-dimensional field are then given by the Fourier transform over the “mass” parameter. We derive the Green's functions corresponding to the principal part ΔP and the homogeneous function Δ 1 ; all of the Green's functions can be expressed in terms of these, as for the usual field equations with definite mass. In the O(3, 2) case, the principal part function has support for x2⩾τ2, corresponding to spacelike propagation, as well as along the light cone x2=0 (for τ=0). There can be no transmission ofinformation in spacelike directions, with this propagator, since the Maxwell field, obtained by integration over τ, does not contain this component of the support. Measurements are characterized by such an integration. The spacelike field therefore can dynamically establish spacelike correlations. (shrink)

In his paper ‘The Gibbs Paradox and the Distinguishability of physical Systems’ Robert Rosen discusses the discontinuity of the diffusion entropy S of two gases, A and B.

Background: Evidence suggesting adverse drug reactions often emerges unsystematically and unpredictably in form of anecdotal reports, case series and survey data. Safety trials and observational studies also provide crucial information regarding the (un-)safety of drugs. Hence, integrating multiple types of pharmacovigilance evidence is key to minimising the risks of harm. Methods: In previous work, we began the development of a Bayesian framework for aggregating multiple types of evidence to assess the probability of a putative causal link between drugs and side (...) effects. This framework arose out of a philosophical analysis of the Bradford Hill Guidelines. In this article, we expand the Bayesian framework and add “evidential modulators,” which bear on the assessment of the reliability of incoming study results. The overall framework for evidence synthesis, “E-Synthesis”, is then applied to a case study. Results: Theoretically and computationally, E-Synthesis exploits coherence of partly or fully independent evidence converging towards the hypothesis of interest (or of conflicting evidence with respect to it), in order to update its posterior probability. With respect to other frameworks for evidence synthesis, our Bayesian model has the unique feature of grounding its inferential machinery on a consolidated theory of hypothesis confirmation (Bayesian epistemology), and in allowing any data from heterogeneous sources (cell-data, clinical trials, epidemiological studies), and methods (e.g., frequentist hypothesis testing, Bayesian adaptive trials, etc.) to be quantitatively integrated into the same inferential framework. Conclusions: E-Synthesis is highly flexible concerning the allowed input, while at the same time relying on a consistent computational system, that is philosophically and statistically grounded. Furthermore, by introducing evidential modulators, and thereby breaking up the different dimensions of evidence (strength, relevance, reliability), E-Synthesis allows them to be explicitly tracked in updating causal hypotheses. (shrink)

(1) The idea that diffraction of matter particles can only be understood in terms of a temporary wave transformation or 'double manifestation' is an uneconomical ad hoc hypothesis, shattered already in 1923 by the unitary quantum theory of diffraction of Duane which in 1926 became part of the quantum mechanics, with a statistical interpretation of wave-like appearances. (2) Bohr's re-interpretation of Heisenberg's uncertainty of prediction as an indeterminacy of existence rests on an illegitimate literal translation of a wave result into (...) particle language which is at variance with experience as well as with the statistical interpretation. (3) The fact that one can transform the simple and unitary particle mechanics into a complicated wavelike form is only a weak substitute for genuine dualism -- as if one would see dualism in the transformability from the geo- to the heliocentric reference system. (4) The strongest argument against a symmetry of the particle and the wave theory of matter is the explainability of the former in terms of simple postulates of invariance, leaving the wave formalism as a purely ad hoc construction. (shrink)

Although Maxwell theory is O(3,1)-covariant, electrodynamics only transforms invariantly between Lorentz frames for special forms of the field, and the generator of Lorentz transformations is not generally conserved. Bérard, Grandati, Lages, and Mohrbach have studied the O(3) subgroup, for which they found an extension of the rotation generator that satisfies the canonical angular momentum algebra in the presence of certain Maxwell fields, and is conserved by the classical motion. The extended generator depends on the field strength, but not the potential, (...) and so is manifestly gauge invariant. The conditions imposed on the Maxwell field by the algebra lead to a Dirac monopole solution.In this paper, we study the generalization of the Bérard, Grandati, Lages and Mohrbach construction to the full Lorentz group in N dimensions. The requirements can be maximally satisfied in a three-dimensional subspace of the full Minkowski space; this subspace can be chosen to describe either an O(3)-invariant space sector, or an O(2,1)-invariant restriction of spacetime. The field solution reduces to the Dirac monopole found in the nonrelativistic case when the O(3)-invariant subspace is selected. When an O(2,1)-invariant subspace is chosen, the field strength can be associated with a Coulomb-like potential of the type A μ(x) = n μ/ρ, where ρ = (x μ x μ)1/2, similar to that used by Horwitz and Arshansky to obtain a covariant generalization of the hydrogen-like bound state. In the presence of these fields, which are determined entirely by symmetry considerations, without reference to a source equation, the extended generator is conserved under classical relativistic system evolution. (shrink)

Public insurance is both everywhere and nowhere. It is everywhere in the sense that it is omnipresent in industrialised societies: public health insurance, unemployment benefits and pensions. It is a sizeable part of modern nations’ public budget . It has permeated our understanding of societal institutions to the extent that now access to public insurance coverage is understood as being a struggle for equality and equal citizenship .Public insurance is only one aspect of a broader phenomenon: the transformation of modern (...) societies into insurance societies, i.e. societies that are orientated toward risk-management . Nevertheless, public insurance is at the core of the welfare state as insurance system. Paul Krugman once said of the modern state that it is ‘an insurance company with an army’ while David Moss argues that government is the ultimate risk manager ( .. (shrink)

The Bohr-Heisenberg doctrine of wave-particle duality has been attacked in the past for its methodical defects, over-complication, internal contradictions, its positivistic phenomenalism, etc. The present investigation shows that duality, the doctrine of equivalence of the particle picture and the wave picture of matter, is untenable since its wave part leads to empirically wrong results in the relativistic domain, and violates the postulate of independence of the arbitrary choice of reference system in the non-relativistic realm. Therefore, when methodical objections were never (...) quite conclusive, the physical failure of the duality idea seals its fate irrefutably, together with all its pseudo-philosophical implications. (shrink)

After a brief survey of arguments for a unitary particle theory of matter, offered by the writer in previous publications, the following new items are discussed. (1) The wave part of the dual aspect of matter, resting on the translation formula λ=h/p, is not covariant in the nonrelativistic domain. And relativistically, it is untenable not only on methodological grounds, but because it leads to obvious contradictions to elementary experience, e.g., in the equilibrium between a material oscillator and radiation. (2) The (...) photon story as usually presented is rectified historically and factually. (3) The previous derivation by the writer of quantum mechanical theory from a nonquantal background is supplemented, in order to be conclusive, by the postulate that the general probability relation is to become the ordinary addition law in the average. (4) Quotations from the writings of prominant dualists, intended by the latter to support their ideology, disclose a fantastic disarray of pseudophilosophical standpoints which can be cleared up only by repudiating the alleged dual nature of matter and of light and by ceasing to constantly mix up the contrast between particles and fields with that between particles and waves, and by returning to a strictly unitary aspect. (shrink)

How we can reliably draw inferences from data, evidence and/or experience has been and continues to be a pressing question in everyday life, the sciences, politics and a number of branches in philosophy (traditional epistemology, social epistemology, formal epistemology, logic and philosophy of the sciences). In a world in which we can now longer fully rely on our experiences, interlocutors, measurement instruments, data collection and storage systems and even news outlets to draw reliable inferences, the issue becomes even more (...) pressing. While we were working on this question using a formal epistemology approach Landes and Osimani (2020); De Pretis et al. (2019); Osimani and Landes (2020); Osimani (2020), we realised that the width of current active interests in the notion of reliability was much broader than we initially thought. Given the breadth of approaches and angles present in philosophy (even in this journal Schubert 2012; Avigad 2021; Claveau and Grenier 2019; Kummerfeld and Danks 2014; Landes 2021; Trpin et al. 2021; Schippers 2014; Schindler 2011; Kelly et al. 2016; Mayo-Wilson 2014; Olsson and Schubert 2007; Pittard 2017), we thought that it would be beneficial to provide a forum for an open exchange of ideas, in which philosophers working in different paradigms could come together. Our call for expression of interest received a great variety of promised manuscripts, the variety is reflected in the published papers. They range from fields far away from our own interests such as quantum probabilities de Ronde et al. (2021), evolvable software systems Primiero et al. (2021), to topics closer to our own research in the philosophy of medicine Lalumera et al. (2020), psychology Dutilh et al. (2021), traditional epistemology Dunn (2021); Tolly (2021) to finally close shared interests in formal epistemology Romero and Sprenger (2021) even within our own department Merdes et al. (2021). Our job is now to reliably inform you about all the contributions in the papers in this special issue. Unfortunately, that task is beyond our capabilities. What we can and instead do is to summarise the contributed papers to inform your reliable inference to read them all in great detail. (shrink)

The Ottoman State contains many different ethnic elements which constituted a legal perspective. In this regard, the necessary precautions were taken to ensure that Muslims and non-Muslims live together peacefully in Vidin, a border city that was very important for the Western military expeditions of the Ottoman State known as “dār al-jihad wa-l-mujāhidīn” during the 18th century which set a historical example. The economic and social dimensions of the relations between the Muslim and non-Muslim population comprising the society in Vidin (...) who have shared the same city, neighborhood and public space during 1700-1750 were examined in this study and the conflicting subjects with regard to the ongoing relations between these two communities were tried to be determined. A total of 15 shari‘aregistries kept by the qāḍī (Muslim Judge) court for the related period located at the Oriental Department of National Library of Bulgaria constitute the main resources of the study. The shari‘aregistries that are the main resources of urban historical studies are full of countless examples that provide information on the relations between Muslims and non- Muslims in Vidin. The examination of these examples is of significant importance for putting forth the methods with which the nation system is applied by the Ottoman Empire as well as their opinions towards the non-Muslims they rule.SummaryVidin, located today in northwest Bulgaria was founded during the 1stcentury BC to the right of the River Danube by the Romans and named as Bononia. This settlement which was named as V’dinby the Muslims throughout the Middle Ages was transformed into a castle about 800 years after its foundation. The city that continuously changed hands due to its location at the border fell under the Ottoman rule after Battle of Nicopolis dated 1396. Vidin became one of the important border cities of the Ottoman against Serbia, Walachia and Hungary until the beginning of the 16thcentury. This importance of Vidin gradually decreased after the Ottoman Empire conquered Belgrade, Budin and Timişoara. Vidin retrieved its status as a border city against the Hungarians and the Wallachians after the Habsburgs dominated the region following the Great Turkish Wars that took place during 1683-1699, and thus regained its past importance. Even though the pressure influenced Vidin as a result disappeared with the 1739 Treaty of Belgrade, the conflicts between Austria and the Ottoman Empire did not end completely and continued throughout the 18thcentury. Vidin preserved its status as a first-degree border city for the Ottomans during the period of time, as examined in this study, which was also known as “dār al-jihad wa-l-mujāhidīn” starting from the beginning of the new century. Majority of the settled public were comprised of military classes in Vidin due to its geographical location where the Muslims and non-Muslims lived together. While the Muslim population was higher during the period of time following the establishment of the Ottoman rule, the non-Muslim population continued to increase throughout the 17thcentury reaching 23.961 taxpayer non-Muslim men in the 18thcentury. The Ottoman Empire based its ruling in Vidin, where almost the same number of Muslim and non-Muslims lived, on the principles of Islamic Law rules for non-Muslims. Since this legal system takes into consideration religious differences, non-Muslims were not held responsible from the prayers of Muslims and the actions that were not prohibited in their religion did not pose any contradictions with regard to Islamic law. The Ottoman Empire did not apply the Islamic Law on its non-Muslim citizens living in Vidin and allowed them to continue their social and religious lives based on their own religious principles in a special legal stance. Thanks to the system applied, the Muslim and non-Muslim community in Vidin were able to continue their daily lives without serious conflicts.The main purpose of this study is to explain how the Muslim and non-Muslim population related with each other in the city of Vidin during the second half of the 18thcentury and the dynamics with which they continued these relationships. Following this purpose, the cases between Muslims and non-Muslims in court records kept by the Vidin sharia court during 1700-1750 are examined. The relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are subject to two different classifications as economic and social issues, and each topic is supported and explained as sub-titles using different case examples. Majority of the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the city are economic according to Vidin court records. In this regard, it seems that there is no religious discrimination between the artisan groups in the city. In addition, many home, land, store and vineyard sales took place between the Muslims and non-Muslims which were resolved in the court mostly for registration purposes. It can also be understood from the court records that there were commercial relations between the Muslims and non-Muslims, that they had partnerships and that they lent money to each other which can be seen as an example of interpersonal support. Various social relationships were also established between the Muslim and non-Muslim population in Vidin during the period examined in this study. Even though non-Muslims had the right to carry out marriages and resolve their issues at their own community courts, it was observed that they frequently applied to the sharia courts for these purposes. They have developed witnessing relationships in such cases with the Muslims. The non-Muslim community did not experience any issues in finding Muslim witnesses for their cases with the Muslims; many Muslims acted as witness against their fellow Muslims without any hesitation. Two cases of injuries and few robbery issues were reflected in the courts of Vidin between the Muslims and non-Muslims during the fifty-year period examined in the study and no incident ending with death took place. Various singular cases took place between the two groups which were resolved at the sharia courts without escalating into severe conflicts. When all court records are taken into consideration, it can be understood that the Muslim judge of Vidin did not make any distinctions between the non-Muslims and Muslims and that he did not compromise from the principle of fairness. Both the Muslims and non-Muslims managed to live comfortably by acting carefully so as to not cross their own lines in both their economic and social relations in Vidin. When the faith-related conflicts that are taking place in our day in many regions of the world despite the level of education and culture are taken into consideration, it is very meaningful that people living in Vidin during the first half of the 18thcentury managed to live in peace. (shrink)

This article analyzes the evolution of the land ethic re-presented by J. Baird Callicott over the last two decades under pressure from the charge of misanthropy and ecofascism. It also traces the development of Callicott?s own ethical system, and examines its most current phase both in itself and in relation to his other theoretical commitments, including his particular version of moral monism, and his communitarian critique of egalitarianism. It concludes that Callicott?s communitarianism is by itself insufficient to fund an (...) adequate environmental ethic, and that for the sake of self-consistency he should either discard his moral monism or else further revise his ethical system. (shrink)

This paper discusses the suitability of using systemic thinking for teaching environmental rehabilitation to undergraduate students at Federal Universityof Viçosa. This is a predominantly agricultural sciences-based institution located in southeast Brazil. Student receptivity is discussed given concurrent campus paradigms of positivism, Marxism, and individualistic utilitarianism. Student projects using causal-loop diagrams to model degradation and land reclamation are presented. Eight archetypes common to systemic thinking are explained in reclamation contexts. Limitations of systemic thinking are discussed, including theoretical modeling problems and (...) practical teaching considerations. (shrink)

Land is becoming increasingly scarce relative to the demands of the global economy; a problem significantly exacerbated by climate change. In response, some have suggested that land should be conceptualised as a global commons. This framing might seem like an appealing way to promote sustainable and equitable land use. However, it is a poor fit for the worldʼs land because global commons are generally understood as resources located beyond state borders. I argue that land can (...) be seen to fit the definition of a global commons, if viewed in a particular way; namely, as a biogeochemical resource system that sequesters carbon emissions. The question then arises whether land should be conceptualised as a global commons. I consider this question by reference to three contemporary problems of land justice (land grabbing, forced displacement, and unfairness in land-based climate mitigation); arguing that the global-commons framing will not be conducive to understanding or responding to these problems. I leave the question of how the global community should conceptualise land in the context of climate change open, claiming that any answer must include the voices and perspectives of those whose livelihoods and identities are closely connected to the land. (shrink)

From 1538 the new Protestant church of Henry VIII provided a system of registration of baptisms, marriages, and burials in all parishes of England and Wales. This chapter re-examines the original motives behind the creation of this system, and explores the reasons for its effectiveness and persistence over the ensuing three centuries in Britain by surveying the comparative history of identity registration systems among the British overseas in the early modern period. A review of the variety of (...) measures for registration set up in the North American and Caribbean colonies during the course of the seventeenth century confirms the importance of the security of property-holding in an increasingly commercial world as a motive for creating such systems. However, this review also indicates the importance of whether or not effective social security systems, giving entitlements to relief, accompanied these early identity registration schemes. (shrink)

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the ethical considerations relevant to the use of nudges in organ donation policy. We do not defend a position on the permissibility of nudging in this context, but instead aim to clearly outline the strongest arguments on the different sides of this issue that have been presented in the English-language scholarly bioethics literature. We also highlight the questions that are in need of further investigation. In part 1, we briefly discuss nudging before (...) considering proposals to use nudges to increase the number of registered organ donors, including opt-out donor registration systems and the use of “nudge statements.” In part 2, we discuss the use of nudges to influence the decision-making of family members in circumstances where they have a veto over the donation of their loved one’s organs. (shrink)

In the article I argue for replacing the opt-out system of organ donation, currently applied in Poland, with the Active Donor Registration system. The basic idea of the ADR system is to send a special form to all adult citizens, which would give them an opportunity to consent or dissent to the removal of organs, or to delegate their decision to their next of kin. Granting priority to declared donors – an additional assumption of ADR – would make it (...) possible for them to acquire better access to transplantation if they ever contract a disease whose effective treatment will require transplantation. I highlight the basic assumptions of both systems and describe the functioning of the Polish opt-out regulations. I also analyze the statistical data illustrating the scale of organ shortage in Poland, and I present and criticize the basic ethical principles of evaluating organ procurement systems and compare the Polish system with the ADR system from the perspective of those principles. (shrink)

Dutch municipalities are confronted with an increased number of prescribed environmental tasks and also with a growing demand, both from the central government and environmental pressure groups, to undertake environmental activities on their own initiative. This development over-taxed the information management of most municipalities. In the past few years, computer technology was introduced to relieve part of this pressure (e.g., by automation of registration systems). In this article we present a classification of computer applications for environmental management, investigate (...) their possible impact on the environmental knowledge and information system, and distinguish between a formal and informal knowledge domain. Special attention will be paid to expert systems. (shrink)

The connection of the structure of statistical selection procedures with measure theory is investigated. The methods of measure theory are applied in order to analyze a mathematical description of preparation and registration of physical systems that is used by G. Ludwig for a foundation of quantum mechanics.

In this paper we use a critically reflective research approach to analyze our efforts at transformative learning in food systems education in a land grant university. As a team of learners across the educational hierarchy, we apply scholarly tools to the teaching process and learning outcomes of student-centered inquiries in a food systems course. The course, an interdisciplinary, lower division undergraduate course at the University of California, Davis is part of a new undergraduate major in Sustainable Agriculture (...) and Food Systems. We provide an overview of the course’s core elements—labs, exams, assignments, and lectures—as they relate to social constructivist learning theory and student-centered inquiries. Then, through qualitative analysis of students’ reflective essays about their learning experiences in the course, we demonstrate important transformative outcomes of student-centered inquiries: (1) most students confronted the commodity fetish and tried to reconcile tensions between what the food system is and ought to be, and (2) students repositioned themselves, their thinking, and social deliberation in relation to the food system. Students’ reflections point to the power of learning that emerges through their inquiry process, including in the field, and from critical self-reflection. We also highlight the importance of reflective essays in both reinforcing experiential learning and in helping instructors to better understand students’ learning vis-à-vis our teaching. (shrink)

Communitarians have alleged a connection between according specialrights to community groupings and preserving the indigenous cultureand the social cohesion of the original community. This paperconcentrates upon special group rights associated with land tenurenow maintained by Fijian Mataqali and traditional land owninggroups in Papua New Guinea. The first section of the paper assessesand compares the social consequences of each of these systems withspecial attention to the preservation of traditional culture.However, in the case of Fiji, it is undeniable that (...) the mataqaliland tenure system has given indigenous Fijians politicaladvantages over non-indigenous Fijians, most specifically theFijian Indians. Though special land rights can possibly bejustified on the grounds of cultural preservation, their existencedoes raise this further issue of fairness. Moral considerations basedupon the territorial sovereignty of indigenous nations, rather thancommunitarian arguments, may offer a more convincing justificationof the advantages of indigenous Fijians. (shrink)

This paper was inspired by the intersection of Tom Lyson’s interest in how power is concentrated in society’s institutions and his concern for the role of the land-grant system in revealing and addressing inequities that occur as a result of such concentration. This study examines the power structure that governs land-grant universities by presenting social and demographic information on 635 trustees at the 50 US land-grant universities established by the Morrill Act of 1862. Along with these data, (...) Fortune 1000 companies with which land-grant universities are connected through board member interlocks are listed and charted out. The research found that land-grant governing boards are characterized by some degree of demographic homogeneity, but they are less corporately interconnected than their private university counterparts. (shrink)

The principle of publicity is one of the fundamental principles of property law: property rights should be made public in order to inform third parties about the existence of the property right and its holder and thereby to foster legal certainty and efficiency. The publicity of ownership in immovable property is achieved through registration of ownership in the public register. However, the problem arises because of the unavoidable discrepancies between the data contained in the public register and the factual (...) situation. Different states choose different models to solve the practical problems arising out of the aforementioned discrepancies. On the one hand, Lithuania belongs to the group of states that implement the so-called declaratory system of registration, i.e. the transfer of ownership is based on an agreement or other legal grounds and the registration is not mandatory but provides the transfer with a third-party effect. This can be seen as a proof of priority of a factual situation over the registered data. On the other hand, Lithuanian laws provide the data of the register with some positive reliance, i.e. third parties are not only protected from claims arising out of unregistered rights (negative reliance), but they can also rely on the transcripts in the register. This is especially true in the case of bona fide transferee of immovable property which with some minor exceptions acquires ownership even from a non-owner, if the latter honestly relied on the data of the register. This regulatory framework is further adopted and transformed by the case law of the Lithuanian courts. The analysis of the latter shows that courts are inclined to rely more on the factual situation and easily deny the meaning of the registered rights. In various ways, the concept of the bona fide transferee is restricted and there are instances of positive duties ascribed to them. Besides, the existing case law demonstrates equivocal attitude towards the legal effects of registered data. Such tendencies of case law may hinder the rule of positive reliance and cause greater legal uncertainty. (shrink)

In recent years it has been demonstrated that the use of the traditional property registry models involves the risk of corruption along with long waiting times. This paper points out the main problems associated with conventional models and makes a survey of the new ones that are based on blockchain technology. This type of model is already being developed as a proof of concept by different countries. With the use of this technology in land registry systems, it is (...) possible to improve the transparency of the processes as well as optimize costs and execution time. To show the theoretical results of this study, the Spanish land registry has been taken as an example of a use case scenario. (shrink)

Lands and bodies are often conceptualized as exhaustible objects and property within settler-colonial and neoliberal ideologies. These conceptualizations lead to underdevelopment of understandings of lands and bodies that fall outside of these ascriptions, and also attempt to actively obscure the pervasive ways in which settler colonialism violently reinscribes itself on the North American landscape through the murder and disappearance of Black and Brown women's bodies. In this article, I will argue that the continual murder and disappearance of Black and Brown (...) women in North America facilitate the successful functioning of ongoing settler-colonial systems and projects. This violence creates and reinforces the functionality of Black/Brown bodies as the territory upon which settler identity and futurity gains traction, indeed, requires. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for (...) investment, I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

Throughout the developing world, it is a well-documented fact that women farmers tend to get lower yields than their male counterparts. Typically this is attributed to disproportionate access to high-quality inputs and labor, with some even arguing there could be a skills-gap stemming from unbalanced access to training and education. This article examines the gender-based yield gap in the context of Zambian maize producers. In addition to the usual drivers, we argue that Zambia’s patriarchal and multi-tiered land distribution system (...) could disfavor women with respect to accessing quality soils. We are uniquely able to control for soil characteristics using farm data from a sample of 1573 fields with accompanying soil analysis. We find an expected difference in yields, but no evidence of a gap in unobserved characteristics, like skill, after controlling for access to inputs, especially quality soil, suggesting women are indeed disproportionately disadvantaged. We discuss how our findings could be used to develop self-targeting policy interventions that could empower women and would be consistent with the government’s stated equity goals. (shrink)

Because the number of organs available for transplantation does not meet the needs of potential recipients, some have proposed that a potentially effective way to increase registration is to offer a self‐benefit incentive that grants a 'preferred status' or some degree of prioritization to those who register as potential donors, in case they might need organs. This proposal has elicited an ethical debate on the appropriateness of such a benefit in the context of a life‐saving medical procedure. In this (...) paper we review arguments and ethical concerns raised by scholars, and studies of views of members of the public regarding the prioritization incentive system. We also report on our study of the views of those involved in organ transplant and of other medical professionals in Israel, as over half a decade ago Israel implemented a prioritization incentive system. Bioethicists propose that key stakeholders' views can provide additional arguments and perspectives on controversial issues. Proponents justify the prioritization incentive drawing mainly on arguments related to its potential effectiveness, reciprocity and fairness. Opponents point to the fact that registering is not binding and not an actual donation, and raise concerns regarding equity, autonomy and gaming the system. Ethical concerns raised by the practitioners in the study were examined in light of scholars' arguments and actual registration and donation data. Practitioners involved in transplantation raised ethical concerns corresponding to those raised by scholars as well as additional concerns. They also challenged proponents' assumptions regarding the utility of the incentive system from their own experience and argued that proponents obscure the meaning of reciprocity. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated electroencephalogram (EEG) changes in response to low-odor concentrations, resulting in near-chance detection. Such findings have been taken as evidence for olfaction without awareness. We replicated and extended previous work by examining EEG responses to water-water control, 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, and 1 ppm isoamyl acetate (IAA) in water paired with water only. Detection was above chance (>50%) for .001 and above, and alpha decreased only to those concentrations, suggesting that EEG changes corresponded to IAA awareness. However, when (...) correct trial EEGs were compared to incorrect trial EEGs during .001 ppm, right posterior/central alpha decreased during incorrect trials and alpha decreased more globally (including frontal sites) during correct trials. These data may not reflect awareness or unawareness per se. Instead, results are discussed regarding activation of perceptual systems in the posterior region during incorrect trials and the activation of frontal action systems during a subset of correct trials. (shrink)

As concerns heighten over links between biomass production and land grabs in the global south, attention is turning to understanding the role of governance of biofuels systems, whereby decision-making and conduct are not solely determined through government regulations but increasingly shaped by non-state actors, including multi-stakeholder initiatives. Launched in 2005, Bonsucro is the principal MSI that focuses on sustainability standards for sugar and sugarcane ethanol production. Bonsucro claims that because it is free from government interference and draws on (...) scientific metrics, their standards transcend localized, political–economic contexts. In this paper, we illustrate how the local context shapes the prospects for Bonsucro sustainably certified biofuel production in relation to land and water grabs. To accomplish this, our case focuses on Colombia, which has used a range of national policy mandates to establish itself as one of the larger producers of agrofuels in Latin America. We draw on interviews with stakeholders in the sugar and ethanol industries, paired with an examination of Bonsucro principles on land rights and water use, to illustrate how the sugar industry is framing their participation in Bonsucro, and the effects of the increasing intensification of sugarcane for ethanol production on land and water access for communities. We find that within the context of Colombia, efforts such as Bonsucro provide a veil of legitimacy and authority to a system that is premised on deeply entrenched historical patterns of inequitable land ownership patterns and access to natural resources. (shrink)