For several years, the official European method for deciding whether or not shellfish were fit for human consumption was the mouse bioassay, which was eventually replaced by chemical testing. In this paper, we examine the process of this change, looking at how devices of social, technical, and organisational risk management were re-negotiated locally, nationally, and across the continent. We also show how the political decision to replace a precautionary standard with a management-vigilance device was the result of various dynamics. These (...) included unpredictable events, enhanced scientific knowledge, collective mobilisations, and multi-level statutory, commercial, and ethical orders. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to study complex ecological models exhibiting simple dynamics. We consider large scale systems which can be decomposed into weakly coupled subsystems. Perturbation Theory is used in order to get a reduced set of differential equations governing slow time varying global variables. As examples, we study the influence of the individual behaviour of animals in competition and predator-prey models. The animals are assumed to do many activities all day long such as searching for food of (...) different types. The degree of competition as well as the predation pressure are dependent upon these activities. Preys are more vulnerable when doing some activities during which they are very exposed to predators attacks rather than for others during which they are hidden. We study the effect of a change in the average individual behaviour of the animals on interspecific relationships. Computer simulations of the whole sets of equations are compared to simulations of the reduced sets of equations. (shrink)

The complexity and the variability of parameters occurring in ecological dynamical systems imply a large number of equations.Different methods, more or less successful, have been described to reduce this number of equations. For instance, in the paper of Auger and Roussarie (1993), the authors describe how to obtain a reduction by considering different time-scales. They consider a system which can be sub-divided into sub-systems such that the strengths of the intra-sub-systems interactions are much larger than those of the inter-sub-systems (...) interactions. Using the Central Manifold Theorem, they obtain on the slow-manifold, a perturbation of the external dynamics by the internal dynamics. (shrink)

В книге на материале психолингвистических экспериментов рассматриваются этические взгляды современных русских и японцев, причем этика русских прослеживается в динамике: на рубежах начала 1990-х гг. и начала XXI века.

для научных работников, преподавателей, аспирантов, студентов юридических вузов и факультетов.

В книге рассматриваются проблемы, занимавшие умы ученых мыслителей и нашедшие свое выражение в различных вариантах философии истории. Для тех, кто хочет знать, что такое история, имеет ли она цель и смысл, и нужно ли ее изучать.

Frederick the Great of Prussia was hailed by many as the model of an ‘Enlightened Despot’. Historians continue to debate both the concept of ‘Enlightened Despotism’ and Frederick’s credentials as an enlightened monarch. Should we talk in terms of ‘enlightened absolutism’? Of ‘reform absolutism’? Or simply drop the use of any such terms for a monarch who used his enlightened philosophising and flute playing as window dressing for a system of governance that was essentially conventional absolutism? In light of continuing (...) debate about the nature of Frederick’s reign, it is worth revisiting the views of contemporaries. As a friend of Voltaire, Frederick’s place was well established in traditional depictions of the Enlightenment as centred on the French philosophes. In the past two decades, however, scholars have broadened and deepened our conception of Enlightenment by researching the ‘social history of ideas’ and illuminating Enlightenment in various national and cultural contexts. In this vein, an analysis of perceptions of Frederick the Great can shed light on the nature of Enlightenment in Britain. Frederick’s popularity in Britain reached dizzying heights in the late 1750s as he won spectacular victories in the Continental campaign against Britain’s enemies in the Seven Years War. From the 1760s on, however, British opinion was generally critical of his regulated and militaristic state and his aggrandisement through diplomacy. While it is not within the scope of this essay to explore broader perceptions of Frederick II in late eighteenth-century Britain, it appears that writers who can be located within ‘conservative’ enlightened thought had a more positive perception of Frederick than dissenters. Samuel Johnson declared that the King of Prussia could get away with wearing plain cloths because ‘of the dignity of his character’. On separate occasions in 1780 Edmund Burke praised Frederick for the economy and efficiency of his royal court and for his religious toleration. An article is in preparation that will explore the range of British opinion on Frederick the Great at the end of his long reign. This essay, however, will focus on how some leading Rational Dissenters perceived the self-consciously enlightened King of Prussia, and provide an exposition of the Memoirs of the life and reign of Frederick (1788) by Joseph Towers. (shrink)