Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas

The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation

Elasmobranchs as living resources: Advances in the biology, ecology, systematics, and the status of the fisheries

This report owes its genesis to the foresight and enthusiam of Dr. Kazuhiro Mizue. By happy circumstance, Professor Mizue contacted me in 1983 with his visionary ideas on cooperative programs. He noted that the time was right because the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the National Science Foundation had mutually given priority to cooperative programs in marine biology. I therefore agreed to act as the U.S. coordinator and proposed to NSF, a short trip to Japan to negotiate site visits and timing with ten previously appointed Japanese scientists and, if that trip were successful, to negotiate a joint research project, possibly followed by a joint seminar. (PDF file contains 528 pages.

Chiasmus: a phenomenon of language, body and perception

The term chiasmus and all its many variants describe a phenomenon of language, body and perception. As a syntactic-rhetorical device, the usage of which is culturally diffuse, chiasmus involves a re-ordering of elements in a sentence to produce an A-B-B-A pattern. An example of this is the well-known saying falsely attributed to Hippocrates: “Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” As a symbol, chiasmus describes a pattern with intersecting lines, the most simplistic form of which is the X. Chiasm, in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, refers to a phenomenon of body and mind. Insofar as it is used in the latter part of this work, chiasm refers to how the body and brain negotiate motor function, touch and perception: the right hemisphere of the brain corresponds with movement and function in the left side of the body, and the left hemisphere of the brain corresponds to movement and function in the right side of the body. All chiastic forms involve an intersection or crossing of the elements—whether syntactical or anatomical. The first chapter of the thesis is a literature review entitled, “Chiastic Studies and Typology,” which gives an overview of a few in-depth studies on chiasmus and of chiastic types that have been identified in semiotics and at the syntactical level. The second chapter of the thesis, “Chiastic Forms and Figures: Truths, Logic and Cross-Linguistic Usage” examines chiasmus as a semiotic and syntactic phenomenon. Part of the discussion considers whether and how chiasmus as a semiotic phenomenon is not only a symbol of self, but also a symbol of the person’s truthfulness or trustworthiness. Proceeding on, this section transitions into a broader reflection on how chiasmus overlaps with truth-functional logic and is an aspect of systematicity in language. Focusing specifically on a sub-type of chiasmus, antimetabole, this section highlights 80 different examples, in 28 different languages and family groups. Antimetabole is characterized by precise reversals of the sentence elements: “Let thy food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food” entails a repetition and reversal of the elements medicine and food. This phrase would still be chiastic if a synonym for food was used, but it would not be an example of antimetabole. The identified examples of antimetabole fit into eight types: 1) Equalization: AB equates to or is the same as BA 2) Part-whole: A is part of B, and B is part of A 3) Exclusion: A excludes B, and B excludes A 4) Dissociation: A dissociates from B, B dissociates from A 5) Combination: A and B, B and A; the elements are grouped together 6) Comparison: A and B are better than B and A; or A and B are worse than B and A 7) One Way Effects: A affects B, but B does not affect A; or A does not affect B, but B affects A 8) Multiple Effects: A affects B, and B affects A; or A affects B and B affects A; can also include more elaborate reversals with repeating C, D, E elements The third chapter of the work, “Merleau-Ponty’s Chiasm: a Theory of Perception” concerns Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s text The Visible and the Invisible, in which he develops chiasm as a concept. This is an interpretation of his text that argues that the chiasm is a five-fold bodily relation, referring to: 1) Its role in connecting the visible with the invisible – or the perceptual with mental phenomena 2) The way the two eyes work together to produce one perceptual experience 3) The experience of touch other things and touching oneself 4) A linguistic and meaning-making process, in which meaning is constantly in flux 5) The social dynamic, or interactivity between One and Other The fourth chapter, “Models of the Brain: Metaphors, Architectures and Chiastic Applications” argues that the chiasm has usefulness in describing perception and activities of the brain. Beginning with a criticism of metaphors of the brain which have been influential in defining approaches to artificial intelligence, this chapter reveals the shortcomings of calling the brain a hierarchy, and the related notion that the brain is either a top-down or bottom-up architecture. It also challenges presently held views on how information is stored in a brain. Each sub-section accomplishes this by examining a different approach, including: 1) Representational Theory of Mind and its corresponding logic-based efforts to produce an artificially intelligent computer 2) Connectionism and one of its promising descendants in deep learning, specifically the convolutional neural network underlying SPAUN (Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network); and 3) Bayesian approaches to mind, which found momentum alongside linear predictive coding, and Hidden Markov models. To complete this analysis is a more intensive argument that the architecture of the biological human brain is chiastic, rather than strictly top-down or bottom-up. The final part of this chapter draws on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, along with a body of research on the brain and bodily hemispheres. It demonstrates why scholars and engineers in artificial intelligence would be remiss to overlook the chiasm—both in developing theories of perception, and when it comes to making practical design choices in building more humanlike artificial intelligence. The last chapter in the thesis “Embodied X Figures and Forms of Thought” is intended to be a companion piece or footnote to the first. It is a review of Pelkey’s 2017 book, The Semiotics of X: Chiasmus, Cognition, and Extreme Body Memory. This review was previously published in Semiotica and is included here to provide further useful background

What is the value of women's independent business and professional networks? A comparative study of four settings in the United Kingdom and Germany

Ph

The Discursive Evolution of State Official Immunity in the International Law Commission

The House of Lords’ landmark case Pinochet triggered an extraordinary political and academic interest in the issue of immunities of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction. Do domestic law enforcement mechanisms have jurisdiction to investigate and adjudicate purported crimes committed by foreign officials, including the (former) holders of the highest offices in the State? Among contrasting calls to “end impunity” while safeguarding the stability of international relations, the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) put the topic on its agenda, with the aim of codifying and progressively developing the rules of customary international law in this field. 15 years later, the Commission approaches a contentious conclusions of its efforts: in a highly unusual non-unanimous decision, the ILC adopted a set of draft articles, containing most prominently an explicit exception to the protections granted by immunity if the most severe international crimes are at stake. This study approaches the ILC’s struggle over State official immunity through a discourse-analytical lens. The theoretical perspective on the identification and progressive development of rules of customary international law as a performative linguistic practice embedded in the dynamics of the “invisible college of international lawyers” is sketched in Part 1. Part 2 investigates the actors performing the discursive practices looked at, the legal experts elected to serve on the ILC since 2006. The profiles of these individuals are analysed through a set of personal features emerging from their CVs, such as nationality, length of tenure, professional background, expertise, education, age, sex and language skills. On this basis, the shifting characteristics of the ILC’s composition and correlations between specific features and successful election to the Commission are highlighted. Part 3 and 4 elaborate in detail on the salient issues of State official immunities as they emerge from the records of the Commission’s discursive practices, first and foremost the special rapporteurs’ reports and the minutes of the ILC’s controversial plenary debates on the topic. One main goal consists in identifying evolving positions and in tracing argumentative patterns and strategies, as the ILC members struggled over authoritative interpretations of the “accurate” meaning of terms, rules and concepts over the years. Part 5 finally analyses the discursive interaction between the ILC and its principal allies and institutional counterparts, the ICJ and the States represented in the General Assembly’s 6th Committee. Besides an analysis of these institutions’ respective views on each others’ prerogatives, a special focus is put on the patterns of positions and argumentations expressed by specific States on the topic over time. The conclusions summarise the main achievements and obstacles emerging from the analysis of the ILC’s efforts, and give an outlook on the Commission’s crucial future challenges and opportunities both within and beyond the boundaries of the topic of State official immunities

Biodiversity Conservation and Phylogenetic Systematics: Preserving our evolutionary heritage in an extinction crisis

Biodiversity; Nature conservatio

Hidden messages, gendered interaction in Israeli schools

This ethnographic study exposes hidden, sex differentiated\ud messages conveyed to boys and girls in Israeli Jewish schools.\ud The analysis of classroom interactions, the school culture,\ud school documents, extra curricular activities, and teachers'\ud reflections about sex roles and their pupils' sexuality, all\ud render valuable information about the powerful undercurrents\ud present in the Israeli educational system, that is officially\ud committed to equal opportunities.\ud The observations conducted over a full academic year in\ud three schools, are read within their cultural context.\ud References to those social constructs that both generate the\ud subtle sexist practices observed, and explain their deeper\ud meanings and far reaching implications, make this study\ud significant to the understanding of the specific Israeli scene.\ud In addition, the disparity recorded between the teachers' stated\ud commitment to equality, and their explicit and implicit gendered\ud expectations, suggests a line of enquiry relevant to other\ud educational systems too.\ud The incompatability between traditional Jewish values,\ud social constructs of modern Israel, and recent feminist\ud critique, results in an ambivalent attitude to sex equity. This\ud in turn leads to the resort to the most circuitous manner of\ud preserving traditional values, that actually contradict the\ud egalitarian ethos of each of the schools studied. Hence, the\ud teachers' belief in the complementarity of the sexes, their\ud interest in the pupils' patterns of heterosexual pairing, the\ud insensitivity noted to subtle forms of sex discrimination, to sexual harassment and to double standards in evaluations, all\ud suggest an agenda hidden from the teachers themselves.\ud The gendered interactions and the hidden messages conveyed\ud through them, are most pronounced in extra curricular\ud activities. The conclusion is that whether or not the Israeli\ud national curriculum contains or encourages sexist practices, the\ud schools, in their unique ways, convey traditional messages about\ud sex roles, in extremely subtle manners

Fungi and Fungal Metabolites for the Improvement of Human and Animal Nutrition and Health

The purpose of this book was not to provide a comprehensive overview of the vast arena of how fungi and fungal metabolites are able to improve human and animal nutrition and health; rather, we, as Guest Editors, wished to encourage authors working in this field to publish their most recent work in this rapidly growing journal in order for the large readership to appreciate the full potential of wonderful and beneficial fungi. Thus, this Special Issue welcomed scientific contributions on applications of fungi and fungal metabolites, such as bioactive fatty acids, pigments, polysaccharides, alkaloids, terpenoids, etc., with great potential in human and animal nutrition and health