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The 23rd Annual Congress of the European Consortium for Church and State Research took place in Oxford, United Kingdom from 29 September to 2 October 2011. Founded in 1989, the Consortium unites experts in law and religion from Member States of the European Union. The Oxford conference took as its theme Religion and Discrimination Law focusing on the manner in which State governments had sought to implement the non-discrimination policy of the EU by legislation and through courts and tribunals. The proceedings comprise three introductory papers considering the historical, cultural and social background; the prohibition on discrimination, and the exemptions to the general prohibition. This is followed by national reports from twenty-three countries describing the reach of discrimination law in the field of religion. These are supplemented by further papers analysing the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg Court and the background to EU Directive 2000/78/EC and by some concluding reflections. The proceedings begin with the text of a public lecture given at the opening of the Congress by Sir Nicolas Bratza, President of the European Court of Human Rights on the subject of freedom of religion under Article 9 of the Convention.
Religion, churches and religious communities have growing importance in the Law of the European Union. Since long a distinct law on religion of the European Union is developing.rnThis collection of those norms of European Union Law directly concerning religion mirrors today's status of this dynamic process.
This study focuses on the representation of British South Asian identities in contemporary British audiovisual media. It attempts to answer the question, whether these identities are represented as hybrid, heterogeneous and ambivalent, or whether these contemporary representations follow in the tradition of colonial and postcolonial racialism. Racialised depictions of British South Asians have been the norm not only in the colonial but also in the postcolonial era until the rise of the Black British movement, whose successes have been also acknowledged in the field of representation. However these achievements have to be scrutinized again, especially in the context of the post 9/11 world, rising Islamophobia, and new forms of institutionalized discrimination on the basis of religion. Since the majority of British Muslims are of South Asian origin, this study tries to answer the question whether the marker of religious origin is racial belonging, i.e. skin colour, and old stereotypes associated with the racialised representation are being perpetuated into current depictions through an examination of the varied genre of popular audio visual media texts.
The main topic of this treatise is the solution of two problems from the general theory of linear partial differential equations with constant coefficients. While surjectivity criteria for linear partial differential operators in spaces of smooth functions over an open subset of euclidean space and distributions were proved by B. Malgrange and L. Hörmander in 1955, respectively 1962, concrete evaluation of these criteria is still a highly non-trivial task. In particular, it is well-known that surjectivity in the space of smooth functions over an open subset of euclidean space does not automatically imply surjectivity in the space of distributions. Though, examples for this fact all live in three or higher dimensions. In 1966, F. Trèves conjectured that in the two dimensional setting surjectivity of a linear partial differential operator on the smooth functions indeed implies surjectivity on the space of distributions. An affirmative solution to this problem is presented in this treatise. The second main result solves the so-called problem of (distributional) parameter dependence for solutions of linear partial differential equations with constant coefficients posed by J. Bonet and P. Domanski in 2006. It is shown that, in dimensions three or higher, this problem in general has a negative solution even for hypoelliptic operators. Moreover, it is proved that the two dimensional case is again an exception, because in this setting the problem of parameter dependence always has a positive solution.
The stress hormone cortisol as the end-product of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis has been found to play a crucial role in the release of aggressive behavior (Kruk et al., 2004; Böhnke et al., 2010). In order to further explore potential mechanisms underlying the relationship between stress and aggression, such as changes in (social) information processing, we conducted two experimental studies that are presented in this thesis. In both studies, acute stress was induced by means of the Socially Evaluated Cold Pressor Test (SECP) designed by Schwabe et al. (2008). Stressed participants were classified as either cortisol responders or nonresponders depending on their rise in cortisol following the stressor. Moreover, basal HPA axis activity was measured prior to the experimental sessions and EEG was recorded throughout the experiments. The first study dealt with the influence of acute stress on cognitive control processes. 41 healthy male participants were assigned to either the stress condition or the non-stressful control procedure of the SECP. Before as well as after the stress induction, all participants performed a cued task-switching paradigm in order to measure cognitive control processes. Results revealed a significant influence of acute and basal cortisol levels, respectively, on the motor preparation of the upcoming behavioral response, that was reflected in changes in the magnitude of the terminal Contingent Negative Variation (CNV). In the second study, the effect of acute stress and subsequent social provocation on approach-avoidance motivation was examined. 72 healthy students (36 males, 36 females) took part in the study. They performed an approach-avoidance task, using emotional facial expressions as stimuli, before as well as after the experimental manipulation of acute stress (again via the SECP) and social provocation realized by means of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (Taylor, 1967). Additionally to salivary cortisol, testosterone samples were collected at several points in time during the experimental session. Results indicated a positive relationship between acute testosterone levels and the motivation to approach social threat stimuli in highly provoked cortisol responders. Similar results were found when the testosterone-to-cortisol ratio at baseline was taken into account instead of acute testosterone levels. Moreover, brain activity during the approach-avoidance task was significantly influenced by acute stress and social provocation, as reflected in reductions of early (P2) as well as of later (P3) ERP components in highly provoked cortisol responders. This may indicate a less accurate, rapid processing of socially relevant stimuli due to an acute increase in cortisol and subsequent social provocation. In conclusion, the two studies presented in this thesis provide evidence for significant changes in information processing due to acute stress, basal cortisol levels and social provocation, suggesting an enhanced preparation for a rapid behavioral response in the sense of a fight-or-flight reaction. These results confirm the model of Kruk et al. (2004) proposing a mediating role of changed information processes in the stress-aggression-link.
The complicated human alternative GR promoter region plays a pivotal role in the regulation of GR levels. In this thesis, both genomic and environmental factors linked with GR expression are covered. This research showed that GR promoters were susceptible to silencing by methylation and the activity of the individual promoters was also modulated by SNPs. E2F1 is a major element to drive the expression of GR 1F transcripts and single CpG dinucleotide methylation cannot mediate the inhibition of transcription in vitro. Also, the distribution of GR first exons and 3" splice variants (GRα and GR-P) is expressed throughout the human brain with no region-specific alternative first exon usage. These data mirrored the consistently low levels of methylation in the brain, and the observed homogeneity throughout the studied regions. Taken together, the research presented in this thesis explored several layers of complexity in GR transcriptional regulation.