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Archives of the International Law Association
No full textDr Ruth Frendo, Archivist and Records Manager at the Institute of Advanced legal Studies (IALS), explores and explains the recently-catalogued treasure trove of archives and records from the International Law Association (ILA) which are held in the Archives at IALS
Wearable haptic systems for the fingertip and the hand: taxonomy, review and perspectives
No full textThe value of culture: economics, diversity and understanding in the 21st century
Get PDFThis article, drawing on a report for the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council, asks whether statistical indicators alone can capture the value cultural engagement brings to individuals and society. It broadens the approach to include diverse forms of cultural provision, emphasises personal cultural experience which shapes reflective individuals, and questions aspects of the familiar narrative with respect to economy, cities, health and education. It calls for greater use of arts and humanities methods in providing understanding, often through case studies, that can escape large-scale trawls for data
Review of García Loaeza, Pablo and Victoria L. Garrett eds. (2015) The Improbable Conquest: Sixteenth-Century Letters from the Río de la Plata. The Pennsylvania State University Press (University Park, PA).
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Langues de France et Charte européenne des langues régionales ou minoritaires : inventaire critique des arguments anti-ratification (2014-2015)
Get PDFThe deliberations in France surrounding the potential ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (from January 2014 to October 2015) resulted in a national debate unheard of since 1999, providing new insight into resistance towards promoting these languages in the public space. Despite a recent survey claiming that ‘the ideological barriers on this issue have now almost disappeared’, the virulent arguments opposing ratification eventually triumphed in the Senate. Basing ourselves on comments published in the media by a range of opponents to ratification of the Charter, we review here the various ideological strategies used to preserve the linguistic status quo in France and to maintain the supremacy of French
The perceptual categorisation of blended and single malt Scotch whiskies
No full textBackground: Although most Scotch whisky is blended from different casks, a firm distinction exists in the minds
of consumers and in the marketing of Scotch between single malts and blended whiskies. Consumers are offered
cultural, geographical and production reasons to treat Scotch whiskies as falling into the categories of blends and single malts. There are differences in the composition, method of distillation and origin of the two kinds of bottled spirits. But does this category distinction correspond to a perceptual difference detectable by whisky drinkers? Do experts and novices show differences in their perceptual sensitivities to the distinction between blends and single malts?
To test the sensory basis of this distinction, we conducted a series of blind tasting experiments in three countries with different levels of familiarity with the blends versus single malts distinction (the UK, the USA and France). In each country, expert and novice participants had to perform a free sorting task on nine whiskies (four blends, four single malts, one single grain, plus one repeat) first by olfaction, then by tasting.
Results: Overall, no reliable perceptual distinction was revealed in the tasting condition between blends and single malts by experts or novices when asked to group whiskies according to their similarities and differences. There was nonetheless a clear effect of expertise, with experts showing a more reliable classification of the repeat sample.
French experts came closest to a making a distinction between blends and single malts in the olfactory condition, which might be explained by a lack of familiarity with blends. Interestingly, the similarity between the blends and some of their ingredient single malts explained more of participants’ groupings than the dichotomy between blends and single malts.
Conclusions: The firmly established making and marketing distinction between blends and single malts corresponds
to no broad perceptually salient difference for whisky tasters, whether experts or novices. The present study indicates that successfully blended whiskies have their own distinctive and recognizable profiles, taking their place in a common similarity space, with groupings that can reflect their component parts
Frontal Functional Connectivity of Electrocorticographic Delta and Theta Rhythms during Action Execution Versus Action Observation in Humans
No full textWe have previously shown that in seven drug-resistant epilepsy patients, both reaching-grasping of objects and the mere observation of those actions did desynchronize subdural electrocorticographic (ECoG) alpha (8–13 Hz) and beta (14–30) rhythms as a sign of cortical activation in primary somatosensory-motor, lateral premotor and ventral prefrontal areas (Babiloni et al., 2016a). Furthermore, that desynchronization was greater during action execution than during its observation. In the present exploratory study, we reanalyzed those ECoG data to evaluate the proof-of-concept that lagged linear connectivity (LLC) between primary somatosensory-motor, lateral premotor and ventral prefrontal areas would be enhanced during the action execution compared to the mere observation due to a greater flow of visual and somatomotor information. Results showed that the delta-theta (<8 Hz) LLC between lateral premotor and ventral prefrontal areas was higher during action execution than during action observation. Furthermore, the phase of these delta-theta rhythms entrained the local event-related connectivity of alpha and beta rhythms. It was speculated the existence of a multi-oscillatory functional network between high-order frontal motor areas which should be more involved during the actual reaching-grasping of objects compared to its mere observation. Future studies in a larger population should cross-validate these preliminary results
Magna Carta: History, context and influence: Papers delivered at Peking University on the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta
Get PDFThis book examines the history and influence of Magna Carta in British and American history. In a series of essays written by notable British specialists, it considers the origins of the document in the political and religious contexts of the thirteenth century, the relevance of its principles to the seventeenth century disputes that led to the Civil War, the uses made of Magna Carta to justify the American Revolution, and its inspiration of the radical-democratic movement in Britain in the early nineteenth century. The introductory essay considers the celebration of Magna Carta's 800th anniversary in 2015 in relation to ceremonials and remembrance in Britain in general. Given as papers to a joint conference of British and Chinese historians in Beijing in 2015, these essays provide a clear and insightful overview of the origins and impact of a medieval document that has shaped the history of the world
Haptic Edge Detection Through Shear
No full textMost tactile sensors are based on the assumption that touch depends on measuring pressure. However, the pressure distribution at the surface of a tactile sensor cannot be acquired directly and must be inferred from the deformation field induced by the touched object in the sensor medium. Currently, there is no consensus as to which components of strain are most informative for tactile sensing. Here, we propose that shape-related tactile information is more suitably recovered from shear strain than normal strain. Based on a contact mechanics analysis, we demonstrate that the elastic behavior of a haptic probe provides a robust edge detection mechanism when shear strain is sensed. We used a jamming-based robot gripper as a tactile sensor to empirically validate that shear strain processing gives accurate edge information that is invariant to changes in pressure, as predicted by the contact mechanics study. This result has implications for the design of effective tactile sensors as well as for the understanding of the early somatosensory processing in mammals