University of Westminster

About: University of Westminster is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 2944 authors who have published 8426 publications receiving 200236 citations. The organization is also known as: Westminster University & Royal Polytechnic Institution.

The Rise of Resilience

Abstract: As considered in the previous chapter, by the 2010s, there had been a shift towards critical understandings of international peacebuilding approaches which argued that local culture held the key to the impasse of peacebuilding interventions. In this ‘bottom-up’ approach, peace, reconciliation, and a ‘culture of law’ were understood to be secondary effects of sociocultural norms and values. However, these critiques of peacebuilding (the ‘turn to the local’) remained trapped in the impasse of international peacebuilding-as-statebuilding: the inability to go beyond the binaries of liberal universalism (the liberal telos of building ‘peace’) and cultural relativism (the understanding of the barriers to ‘peace’ as an essentialised product of ‘difference’). This understanding will be contrasted in this chapter with an analysis of the rise of ‘resilience’ approaches to intervention – which built on this attention to the particular context of application but moved beyond this impasse through philosophical pragmatism and the positive focus on concrete social practices. This chapter clarifies the nature of this shift through the focus on the shifting understanding of peacebuilding in addressing community conflicts and stresses caused by the failure of ‘war on drugs’ peacebuilding interventions in the Americas.

Macular Pigment and Percentage of Body Fat.

Abstract: Purpose. To Investigate the relationship between percentage of body fat and macular pigment (MP) optical density. Methods. One hundred healthy subjects of ages between 22 and 60 years volunteered to participate in this study. MP optical density was measured psychophysically, serum lutein and zeaxanthin were quantified by HPLC, and dietary intake of lutein and zeaxanthin was assessed using a validated food frequency questionnaire. Body fat was measured by dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA); body mass index (BMI) was also calculated fro each subject. Clinical and personal details were recorded, with particular attention directed towards putative risk factors for AMD.

The number of discernible colours

Abstract: How many colours can the eye distinguish? The published literature is remarkably inefficient at providing an answer to this important question. An often quoted reference states that “10 million surface colours can be distinguished by the normal human eye under optimum observing conditions.” Unfortunately, the authors fail to provide any further information as to the origin of this figure. This short contribution describes some of the historical attempts at answering the question, and then suggests a realistic solution. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Col Res Appl, 23, 52–54, 1998