19 research outputs found
Affirmative Action in the Educational Sector: A Discriminative Practice or for Promoting Peaceful Living?
No full textThe article discusses the admission process for Unity schools in Nigeria, which uses affirmative action to ensure the representation of students from all regions of the country. The policy promotes fairness, equity, and justice in education by compensating disadvantaged groups without equal access to opportunities, rights, and ‘social bases of self-respect’. Affirmative action removes obstacles that prevent individuals from pursuing their goals and ensures that all parts of the country are represented. They might not be the most intelligent students, but they are the best in their region. The evidence shows that affirmative action is not discriminatory but relatively justifiable as a temporary measure to reduce the educational imbalance between the northern and southern parts of the country. With limited school spaces and numerous applicants, the admission policy prioritizes diversity, equity, and unity. Without this policy, the schools would be dominated by students from the south of Nigeria, which could lead to conflict and a lack of positive peace. Educational achievement discrepancies, such as disparities in access to quality education, resources, and opportunities, have the potential to breed distrust and conflict within communities
Affirmative Action in the Educational Sector: A Discriminative Practice or for Promoting Peaceful Living?
No full textYesThe article discusses the admission process for Unity schools in Nigeria, which uses affirmative action to ensure the representation of students from all regions of the country. The policy promotes fairness, equity, and justice in education by compensating disadvantaged groups without equal access to opportunities, rights, and ‘social bases of self-respect’. Affirmative action removes obstacles that prevent individuals from pursuing their goals and ensures that all parts of the country are represented. They might not be the most intelligent students, but they are the best in their region. The evidence shows that affirmative action is not discriminatory but relatively justifiable as a temporary measure to reduce the educational imbalance between the northern and southern parts of the country. With limited school spaces and numerous applicants, the admission policy prioritizes diversity, equity, and unity. Without this policy, the schools would be dominated by students from the south of Nigeria, which could lead to conflict and a lack of positive peace. Educational achievement discrepancies, such as disparities in access to quality education, resources, and opportunities, have the potential to breed distrust and conflict within communities
Integrated Approach to Human Rights in a Post Conflict Niger Delta
No full text It is the responsibility of Government to provide social guarantees protect the rights of all citizens; the weak and vulnerable in the Niger Delta should not be victims of social forces, which they have no control over. Shue summarized this argument with the Transitivity Principle; he stated: “if everyone has a right to y, and the enjoyment of x is necessary for the enjoyment of y, then everyone has also had a right to x” (p.32). The implication and adaptation of this argument to the Niger Delta situation should be that the people of the Niger Delta has a right and desire political rights, but the enjoyment of the political rights depends on the availability of subsistence. It then follows from the transitivity principle that everybody to enjoy political rights need to have economic rights as well as a right to environmental sustainability. Therefore, as a matter of human rights and social justice the fundamental rights should be urgently addressed in the Niger Delta. The journey of transformation in the post-conflict Niger Delta should be in the integration of the CP and ESC rights. Priority should be given to ESC rights. There is a need for a proactive engagement, speaking out against violation is not enough, there has to be a concerted effort at empowerment to achieve and sustain an integrated structure of human rights in the Niger Delta
Statistical Research of the Colour Component ЧОРНИЙ (BLACK) in Roman Ivanychuk’s Text Corpus
No full textThe article considers the statistical analysis of word combinations with colour component
ЧОРНИЙ (BLACK) in Roman Ivanychuk’s fiction. The research is based on Roman
Ivanychuk’s and Ukrainian prose fiction text corpora to compare statistical parameters and
qualitative indicators and to detect the specific characteristics of the author’s idiolect.
Colour nominations are important elements for modeling the world by a linguistic personality.
The colour ЧОРНИЙ (BLACK) forms the core of colours in linguistic studies and is the most
frequent colour nomination in Roman Ivanychuk’s text corpus. Corpus-based approach,
absolute / relative frequency, statistical association measures MI-score and t-score are used to
describe and analyze the author’s word combinations with colour nomination ЧОРНИЙ
(BLACK) as a marker of his idiolect.
Structural and semantic models of collocations and collocations with colour component
ЧОРНИЙ (BLACK) are found out; thematic groups of typical collocates for colour ЧОРНИЙ
(BLACK) as an attribute in the model Adj. + N. are described; high-frequency collocates of the
node ЧОРНИЙ (BLACK) are presented; statistical association measure MI-score allowed to
extract author-individual collocations in Roman Ivanychuk's text corpus
The censor without, the censor within: the resistance of Johnstone’s improv to the social and political pressures of 1950s Britain
No full textKeith Johnstone's improv, popularly known through the Theatresports format, was forged in the cultural and historical context of 1950s Britain. In this paper I will argue that Johnstone's incarnation of theatrical improvisation was defined by its reaction to the normalising forces exerted by the social elite upon the broader population and by civilised society upon the individual.
Johnstone's improv was a reaction against the Lord Chamberlain’s power to censor the British stage and a challenge to the internalised 'censor' British society of the time implanted in the minds of his students, stunting their creative imaginations. Johnstone borrowed elements of professional wrestling to break down the regimented conventions of the theatre space and enliven the spectator-performer relationship. As well as echoing Roland Barthes’ idealistic analysis of professional wrestling (Barthes, 1984: n.p.), Johnstone’s improv shares Barthes’ critique of the authority of the author and allows meaning to be generated out of the encounter between performers and spectators in the instant of the performance’s emergence. Through these processes, Johnstone’s improv defies the censor without (The Lord Chamberlain) by rooting out the censor within (the socially learnt inhibitions to the creative imagination).
By delineating the political and social pressures at play in the historical context of 1950s Britain and the ways that the stylistic conventions of Johnstone's improv resist and subvert these forces, I will demonstrate the emancipatory power latent in this mode of popular performance. This is a particularly timely analysis given the increasing authority of free market economics to dictate what appears on contemporary British stages, and the internalised censor that panoptical CCTV and social media is implanting within the minds of British citizens today
Mathematical modeling of intestinal iron absorption using genetic programming
No full text© 2017 Colins et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Iron is a trace metal, key for the development of living organisms. Its absorption process is complex and highly regulated at the transcriptional, translational and systemic levels. Recently, the internalization of the DMT1 transporter has been proposed as an additional regulatory mechanism at the intestinal level, associated to the mucosal block phenomenon. The short-term effect of iron exposure in apical uptake and initial absorption rates was studied in Caco-2 cells at different apical iron concentrations, using both an experimental approach and a mathematical modeling framework. This is the first report of short-term studies for this system. A non-linear behavior in the apical uptake dynamics was observed, which does not follow t
The spontaneity drain: the social pressures that shaped and then exiled Keith Johnstone's improvisation
No full textKeith Johnstone’s Improvisation had an oppositional relationship to the social and historical conditions of 1950s Britain under which it developed. Its structure and performative dynamic were protests against the normalising forces exerted by the social elite upon the broader population and by civilised society upon the individual. Within this context, the Royal Court Theatre acted as an incubator that allowed Johnstone to develop his subversive theories of performance, drawing on elements of professional wrestling to break down the regimented conventions of the theatre space and enliven the spectator-performer relationship. Eventually Johnstone entered a self-imposed exile from the society that shaped this form of performance and established The Loose Moose Theatre in Calgary, Canada.
This paper will analyse three relationships vital to this narrative: The oppositional reaction of Johnstone's improvisation to the social pressures of 1950's Britain, the creative glasshouse that The Royal Court Theatre provided for Johnstone within this broader cultural context, and the effects that the new social situation of Calgary, Canada had on Johnstone's practice.
At the conclusion of the paper I will draw out the consequences of these analyses for contemporary British society and attempt to identify the normalising forces at work within this context, how our arts institutions and creative incubators might foster novel reactions to these pressures, and how public policy might be shaped in order to encourage artists to remain in Britain so that we might benefit from their continued contribution to our cultural discourses
Design Inspired by Digital Fabrication
No full textabstract: Digital Fabrication has played a pivotal role in providing reality to industrial designers' ideas since its first commercial use in late 80's. Making the final prototype of a design project has been the initial assumed use for these technologies in the design process. However, new technology advances in this area offer further opportunities for designers. In this research these opportunities have been carefully explored. This research will be conceptualized through discussing the findings of a case study and theories in the areas of Industrial Design methodology, digital fabrication, and design pedagogy. Considering the span of digital fabrication capabilities, this research intends to look into the design-fabrication relation from a methodology perspective and attempts to answer the question of how the digital fabrication methods can be integrated into the Industrial Design process to increase the tangibility of the design process in very first steps. It will be argued that the above is achievable in certain design topics - i.e. those with known components but unknown architecture. This will be studied through the development of series of hypothetical design processes emphasizing the role of digital fabrication as an ideation tool rather than a presentation tool. In this case study, two differing processes have been developed and given to Industrial Design students to design specific power tools. One of them is developed based on the precedence of digital fabrication. Then the outcome of the two processes is compared and evaluated. This research will introduce the advantages of using the digital fabrication techniques as a powerful ideation tool, which overcomes the imagination problems in many of complicated design topics. More importantly, this study suggests the criteria of selecting the proposed design methodology. It is hoped that these findings along with the advances in the area of additive and subtractive fabrication will assist industrial designers to create unique methodologies to deal with complicated needs both in practice and design education.Dissertation/ThesisM.S. Design 201
Fiji's proposal for an 'Ocean of Peace' in the Pacific: Analysis and reflections from a peace studies perspective
No full textNoIn 2023 the Prime Minister of Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka, proposed designating the Pacific a region-wide ‘Ocean of Peace’. Two years later in 2025, after a series of wider regional deliberations, the Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration was adopted at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting. This Pacific-led peacebuilding proposal has attracted global attention but remains less examined within the peace studies literature. Drawing on public communications by Rabuka, listening sessions with Pacific Islander stakeholders, and the authors’ diverse peace studies expertise, this article examines how the Ocean of Peace was initially framed by Rabuka and how peace studies might support and learn from its development. We explore how diverse understandings of peace can address the region’s security threats; how inclusive peacebuilding approaches can strengthen engagement and practice; and how confronting violent legacies may advance peace. This article is not a prescription for what the Ocean of Peace should be. Rather, we aim to illuminate opportunities and challenges for the concept and to highlight an opportunity for transdisciplinary and transnational peace learning and dialogue.UK Government Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) via the British High Commission in Fiji. FCDO through a United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Research Fellowship. Gender, Justice, and Security Hub through UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) grant number AH/S004025/1
