Beyond Disability Civil Rights

[Excerpt] This Article argues that to be effective, both domestic and international disability rights must adopt a disability human rights paradigm. Such a framework combines the type of civil and political rights provided by antidiscrimination legislation (also called negative or first-generation rights) with the full spectrum of social, cultural, and economic measures (also called positive or second-generation rights) bestowed by many human rights treaties.16 By acting holistically, this agenda accounts for factors normally exogenous to civil rights laws and ensures that individuals can flourish and participate in their societies. Accordingly, our intention is to share some thoughts on how to best provide disabled citizens with equal opportunity rather than “merely” equal treatment. Internationally, States and civil society organizations have been developing innovative and effective equality measures. We draw on their experiences in providing examples of how disability legislation and policy can be developed to implement a more holistic human rights approach. These lessons are also pertinent for invigorating the ADA

Interventions at the end of life – a taxonomy for ‘overlapping consensus’

Context: Around the world there is increasing interest in end of life issues. An unprecedented number of people dying in future decades will put new strains on families, communities, services and governments. It will also have implications for representations of death and dying within society and for the overall orientation of health and social care. What interventions are emerging in the face of these challenges? Methods: We conceptualize a comprehensive taxonomy of interventions, defined as ‘organized responses to end of life issues’. Findings: We classify the range of end of life interventions into 10 substantive categories: policy, advocacy, educational, ethico-legal, service, clinical, research, cultural, intangible, self-determined. We distinguish between two empirical aspects of any end of life intervention: the ‘locus’ refers to the space or spaces in which it is situated; the ‘focus’ captures its distinct character and purpose. We also contend that end of life interventions can be seen conceptually in two ways – as ‘frames’ (organized responses that primarily construct a shared understanding of an end of life issue) or as ‘instruments’ (organized responses that assume a shared understanding and then move to act in that context). Conclusions: Our taxonomy opens up the debate about end of life interventions in new ways to provide protagonists, activists, policy makers, clinicians, researchers and educators with a comprehensive framework in which to place their endeavours and more effectively to assess their efficacy. Following the inspiration of political philosopher John Rawls, we seek to foster an ‘overlapping consensus’ on how interventions at the end of life can be construed, understood and assessed

Nonlinear PI control of uncertain systems: an alternative to parameter adaptation

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The particulate nature of polyatomic ions: an exploratory study using molecular drawing software

The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of molecular drawing software would improve student understanding of polyatomic ions. Using software designed for producing drawings of molecules, students developed drawings of polyatomic ions during a regular activity of the state mandated core curriculum on ions. The sample consisted of students enrolled in chemistry at a rural south Louisiana high school-both Honors and Regular. Pretest and posttest scores were analyzed with a number of covariants. The statistical analysis of test scores indicated that there was no significant difference in the improved test scores between the treatment and control groups. The lack of a significant improvement in test scores fails to mirror the results of other documented studies such as that performed by Wu, Krajcik, and Soloway (2001), which made use of similar representations and produced positive gains in the understanding of formulas. However, interviews that were conducted seemed to indicate that the treatment students did obtain a greater understanding of polyatomic ions than did the control group students. More sensitive test items may be needed to detect changes in understanding caused by the intervention. Despite learning this new computer visualization skill in addition to mastering the traditional content, statistical analysis showed the intervention did not have a detrimental effect on test performance. Through personal observation of student performance in later lessons, some transfer appears to have been achieved amongst the students in the treatment group. The possibility of transfer follows some of the findings of Haskell (2001). It was also observed that students that had the opportunity to utilize the computer software had improved inquiry skills. The average test scores for all groups increased with the greatest increases in the treatment group scores. Despite these gains, there was no significant increase in test scores for the treatment group. Analysis of the Birnie-Abraham-Renner Quick Attitude Differential (Williamson, 1992) scores indicated no correlation between student attitudes and the intervention. From the analysis of the interviews, there is an indication that an improved understanding of polyatomic ion structure resulted from the intervention

Towards capabilities and desistance? Scottish prisoners’ experiences of education

Previous research has considered the role of education in the development of capabilities separately from the desistance process and there is a limited evidential base that has combined these theoretical areas. This thesis focuses on the biographical accounts of a group of Scottish prisoners in order to consider the factors that create a fluctuating state of capabilities throughout a life-time. The study utilised qualitative interpretivist research design in the form of semi-structured interviews to gain rich and detailed accounts of lives spent both within and outside of the modern criminal justice system. Participants were recruited from two adult prisons in central Scotland. They discussed their life experiences of disadvantage, marginalisation and socio-economic restrictions and so provided insights into the ways in which capability constraints can contribute to offending behaviours. The ebb and flow of education within their lives was also examined to ascertain the role this plays in upholding or improving these states of being. Experiences of imprisonment were discussed so the realities of what is lost and gained through incarceration could be determined. The position that learning can have within prison in supporting capability development and desistance was a particular focus. An interpretive paradigm was applied so that participants and I could extract significance from their life experiences, social worlds and beliefs that were discussed during interview. By using capabilities and desistance theory from the outset, this research paradigm allowed for other theoretical links to emerge from the data. This thesis found that disadvantage and restricted capabilities are complex, intergenerational and often compounded over a life-course. This makes engaging with support that could improve these conditions extremely challenging, thus potentially extending the ill-effects on wellbeing. The impoverished nature of choice and agency stunts flourishing, forcing individuals to select from ever-limiting options. For most participants, this became a direct catalyst to their offending behaviour and time in custody. While descriptions highlight the damage caused by imprisonment, this thesis also presents positive accounts of support and personal development within this environment. It demonstrates how learning and skills development can be utilised to affect capability improvement and take early steps towards desistance. This thesis establishes a link between the imagining of a crime-free future during custody with the formation of the hope and agency that is indicative of improved capabilities and central to robust and sustained desistance

Using Different Approaches to Evaluate Individual Social Equity in Transport

Inequalities not only exist in the field of economics in relation to income and wealth, but also in other areas, such as the transport sector, where access to and use of different transport modes varies markedly across population groups, and which provides the means to access everyday living activities. A key concern within the transport sector is that inequality has extended beyond the traditional measures of travel, and now covers a wide range of effects relating to social exclusion, freedom, well-being and being able to access reasonable opportunities and resources. In order to address the aforementioned issues, an important question to resolve is what type of methods can be used to measure inequalities in transport most effectively. Therefore, this study aims to apply different approaches, including the Capabilities Approach (CA) and a further six inequality indices, namely the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index, the Palma ratio, the Pietra ratio, the Schutz coefficient and the Theil index, to the case study using the relatively migrant-rich lower-income neighbourhood of Tuqiao, in Beijing, in order to assess individual transport-related social inequity issues. The findings suggest that the CA is useful in assessing transport-related inequalities where there are significant barriers to the take up of accessibility, for example where there are high levels of disadvantaged groups and disaggregated analysis can be undertaken. The Palma ratio appears to have a larger effect than the Gini coefficient and the other inequality indices when measuring transport-related social inequity. In addition, we also found that most income inequality methods adapted from econometrics may be better suited to measuring transport-related social inequity between different regions, cities or countries, or within the same area, but at different points in time, rather than to measuring a single neighbourhood as a whole. Finally, we argue that to what extent politicians or transport planners can use appropriate management tools to measure transport-related social inequalities may be significant in terms of the progress that can be made in the fight against social inequity in the transport field

The New Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

The amendments to the civil rules continue a process of transition from legal formulas toward adaptation to the practicalities of the various factual situations involved. This process was commenced with the early reform movement when the strictures of common-law, form-of-action pleading were abolished and the artificial separation of law and equity was ended. It continued through the original promulgation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which attempted to eliminate many of the legalistic but artificial restrictions that code practice perpetuated. The current amendments move closer to what Mr. Justice Goldberg termed the aims of a liberal, nontechnical application of federal procedural rules, rules that are designed to place before the court the actual substantive issues in the case with the minimum amount of formal procedural restrictions needed to ensure fair and orderly proceedings

The role of asymptotic functions in network optimization and feasibility studies

Solutions to network optimization problems have greatly benefited from developments in nonlinear analysis, and, in particular, from developments in convex optimization. A key concept that has made convex and nonconvex analysis an important tool in science and engineering is the notion of asymptotic function, which is often hidden in many influential studies on nonlinear analysis and related fields. Therefore, we can also expect that asymptotic functions are deeply connected to many results in the wireless domain, even though they are rarely mentioned in the wireless literature. In this study, we show connections of this type. By doing so, we explain many properties of centralized and distributed solutions to wireless resource allocation problems within a unified framework, and we also generalize and unify existing approaches to feasibility analysis of network designs. In particular, we show sufficient and necessary conditions for mappings widely used in wireless communication problems (more precisely, the class of standard interference mappings) to have a fixed point. Furthermore, we derive fundamental bounds on the utility and the energy efficiency that can be achieved by solving a large family of max-min utility optimization problems in wireless networks.Comment: GlobalSIP 2017 (to appear

Filter for third order phase locked loops

Filters for third-order phase-locked loops are used in receivers to acquire and track carrier signals, particularly signals subject to high doppler-rate changes in frequency. A loop filter with an open-loop transfer function and set of loop constants, setting the damping factor equal to unity are provided