Economic Development at the Cost of Indigenous Land

The notion of economic development has affected the general welfare of indigenous groups worldwide. The major conflict has been on land ownership claims on which they have occupied for many years and government quest to bring about economic development. The indigenous groups have struggled to retain their lands despite appealing to both customary and international laws. The paper argues as to whether customary law and international law are vital sources for indigenous land claims. It also presents empirical cases to land claims while making these arguments within the context of economic development

El derecho como denuncia : abogados y política en los primeros ´70

El trabajo se propone una reconstrucción históricamente situada de la politización de una generación de abogados que asumieron la defensa de presos políticos en los tempranos setenta. Identifica los ámbitos y espacios de socialización profesional y política, entre fines de la década del ´50 y el ´60. Analiza las estrategias de denuncia que, junto con la defensa de presos políticos, contribuyeron a modelar la identidad del abogado políticamente comprometido y su proyección en la esfera pública a principios de los ´70. Explora las tramas y redes de relaciones forjadas por este grupo de profesionales con otros actores movilizados en favor de la defensa y la libertad de los detenidos políticos, en el marco de la conformación de un frente antirrepresivo y antidictatorial.Fil: Chama, Mauricio. Universidad Nacional de La Plat

The Study on Medicinal Plants and Their Uses to Treat Human Ailments in Damot-Gale District, Wolaita Zone, South Ethiopia

This study was conducted in Damot-gale district between October 2015 and July 2016. It was focused on the investigation of traditional uses of various medicinal plant species of the study area. A total of 80 (60 male and 20 female) informants, aged between 21-96 years old were identified from 13 kebeles. Relevant information was collected by using semi-structured interview, field observation, field guided interviews, group discussion and open ended questions. The collected data was analyzed using preference ranking and paired comparison methods. 77 medicinal plant species were identified and collected from wild (natural habitats) and home gardens. The reported medicinal plant species were distributed in 35 families. The category of reported species includes trees 19 (24.66%) species, shrubs 23 (29.87%) species, herbs 30 (38.96%) species, climbers 2 (2.59%) species and succulent 1 (1.29%) species. The most important parts utilized for preparation of remedies were leaves from 42(54.55%) species, roots from 15(19.48%) species, seeds from 15(19.48%) species, flower from 8(10.39%) species, barks from 7(9.09%) species and fruits from 6(7.79%) species.  Knowledge of medicinal plants is wider among elderly women and men while the young are comparatively less knowledgeable. This indigenous knowledge on medicinal plants was gradually disappearing due to the secrecy, unwillingness of the young generation to gain the knowledge, disinterest of the young generation in traditional medicine and the influence of modern education. Local administration, NGOs and other stockholders must involve in awareness creations on traditional healers to transfer their knowledge to the next generation without secrecy and biodiversity conservation. Keywords: Ethnobotanical knowledge, Home garden, Medicinal plants, traditional healers

Economic Development at the Cost of Human Rights: China Nonferrous Metal Industry in Zambia

The international human rights system is primarily based on the relationship between the state and its citizens. The overarching question is where the responsibility for human rights does and should lie in a world where the movement of human beings, goods, and capital are increasingly transnational in scope. The amount of responsibility that powerful actors like international corporations should have for protecting human rights is unclear. How this responsibility should be understood in relation to the responsibility of the state to protect its own people from human rights violations and also pursue strategies to hold international corporations accountable is also debated

Plant-frugivore interactions in a heterogeneous forest landscape of South Africa

Seed dispersal by animals is a very important ecological process, especially in tropical and sub-tropical forest landscapes where up to 90% of fleshy fruiting plant species depend on this process for the transportation of their propagules to suitable habitats. Frugivorous birds are among the most important vertebrates consuming fruits, thereby contributing to natural forest regeneration. However, changes in quality of forest habitats and structure of the surrounding matrix have been shown to disrupt the structure of single-pair seed dispersal interactions. Changes in forest habitats can also alter the functional diversity of dispersers within these seed dispersal communities and can have far reaching implications for natural regeneration processes of plants. To assess the overall effects of forest patch quality and matrix habitat on ecological processes and functioning, I compared (i) the structure of plant-frugivore interaction networks and (ii) functional diversity of frugivore communities within the studied networks among forest patches surrounded by dissimilar matrix habitats in and around Vernon Crookes Nature Reserve in South Africa. In addition, I experimentally tested the impact of seed ingestion and treatment in the digestive tracts of avian frugivores on germination to assess their legitimacy as seed dispersers. During the plant-frugivore networks study, I compared the network structure in a large scarp forest surrounded by a natural forest matrix with those of two small natural forest types, one surrounded by natural grassland and the other by sugarcane agriculture in relation to both forest patch quality and matrix habitat. Overall, I recorded a total of 54 avian frugivorous species involved in fruit removal activities on 31 fleshy fruiting plant species. Network structures across forest patches did not vary with matrix habitat. Instead, they were similarly robust and strongly influenced by forest patch quality. These findings suggest that the structure and stability of plant-frugivore interaction networks is rather determined by local forest patch quality than by surrounding matrix habitat. During the functional diversity study, I compiled data on three functional traits related to seed dispersal, namely body mass, gape width and degree of frugivory for the frugivore species observed in the seed dispersal networks. I then tested the effect of forest patch quality and matrix habitat on three measures of functional diversity as well as on species richness of frugivore communities. Results suggest that all forest types sustained a comparably high functional diversity among the seed disperser communities. Overall, functional diversity and shifts in functional composition were rather determined by forest patch quality than by matrix habitat. During the seed ingestion experiment, I collected fruits from sixteen woody plant species and I fed them to four avian frugivore species. Defecated seeds were planted and their seedling emergence and germination probabilities were compared with those of ripe manually depulped seeds and whole fruits. Results show no difference in seedling emergence and germination probability among the birds and remained similar across all treatments. The results suggest that the effect of frugivorous birds on natural forest regeneration is more on seed transportation, than enhancing germination of dispersed seeds per se. Overall, findings from the first two studies suggests that forest patch quality is an important driver of both network stability and functional diversity among frugivore communities. Therefore, given high habitat quality, forest patches surrounded by variable matrices can be of conservation importance in highly heterogeneous forest landscapes. Thus, as the seed ingestion experiment has shown that frugivorous birds are legitimate dispersers, the sustenance of seed dispersal processes will largely depend on maintenance of forest patches of high quality and with less restrictive matrix habitats

Economic implications of small ruminant foetal wastage: A case study of Jalingo abattoir, Taraba State

Small ruminants which are mainly sheep and goats play significant role in providing food and financial security for rural populations. However, the slaughter of breeding stock and pregnant animals serves as threat to the production of these animals because of foetal wastages. This study was conducted to determine the proportion of foetuses destroyed due to slaughter of pregnant sheep and goats in Jalingo abattoir, Taraba State, and the consequent economic implications. The abattoir was visited every day for a period of two months between August and September, 2017. The number of pregnant sheep and goats slaughtered, and foetuses wasted were recorded. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics. A total of 3,455 goats and 1554 sheep were slaughtered during the study period and 313 (22.1%) out of 1417 does, 341 (27.4%) out of 1,243 ewes were pregnant respectively. 368(23.1%) fetuses from pregnant does and 386(31.1%) foetuses from pregnant ewes were wasted. There was an estimated economic loss of ₦ 3,404,000.00 and ₦ 10,615,000.00 from goats and sheep respectively. These values hold at $9,455.55 and$29,486.11. The study revealed that foetal wastage was high in Jalingo abattoir with a consequent high economic loss in the livestock industry. Foetal waste also presents a threat on food security with resultant effects of decreased nutritional values of animal origin to humans. Proper ante mortem inspection especially, pregnancy diagnosis, should always be carried out prior to slaughter to curtail foetal wastages and most importantly, laws prohibiting the slaughter of pregnant sheep and goats be enforced, and policy efforts should concentrate on instituting routine veterinary checks at control posts and abattoirs.Keywords: Abattoir, Economic loss, Foetuses, Goat, Sheep, wastag

Explanation for defeasible entailment

Explanation facilities are an essential part of tools for knowledge representation and reasoning systems. Knowledge representation and reasoning systems allow users to capture information about the world and reason about it. They are useful in understanding entailments which allow users to derive implicit knowledge that can be made explicit through inferences. Additionally, explanations also assist users in debugging and repairing knowledge bases when conflicts arise. Understanding the conclusions drawn from logic-based systems are complex and requires expert knowledge, especially when defeasible knowledge bases are taken into account for both expert and general users. A defeasible knowledge base represents statements that can be retracted because they refer to information in which there are exceptions to stated rules. That is, any defeasible statement is one that may be withdrawn upon learning of an exception. Explanations for classical logics such as description logics which are well-known formalisms for reasoning about information in a given domain are provided through the notion of justifications. Simply providing or listing the statements that are responsible for an entailment in the classical case is enough to justify an entailment. However, when looking at the defeasible case where entailed statements can be retracted, this is not adequate because the way in which entailment is performed is more complicated than the classical case. In this dissertation, we combine explanations with a particular approach to dealing with defeasible reasoning. We provide an algorithm to compute justification-based explanations for defeasible knowledge bases. It is shown that in order to accurately derive justifications for defeasible knowledge bases, we need to establish the point at which conflicts arise by using an algorithm to come up with a ranking of defeasible statements. This means that only a portion of the knowledge is considered because the statements that cause conflicts are discarded. The final algorithm consists of two parts; the first part establishes the point at which the conflicts occur and the second part uses the information obtained from the first algorithm to compute justifications for defeasible knowledge bases

Race and crime conflict in news coverage in Britain: The Voice tabloid newspaper

The Voice tabloid newspaper was founded in 1982 by Jamaican - born accountant Val McCalla. It is a diaspora media that campaigns for black immigrants in Britain especially on matters of race discrimination at the hands of the law enforcement agencies. During the 1980s, and in the wake of the Brixton riots, the tabloid secured huge circulation figures. Over its three decade reign, it has come to be known as ‘Britain’s Best Black Newspaper’ and has served the black community by giving them a voice where other mainstream media have largely failed. It has over the years been a thorn in the side of the establishment, campaigning on numerous issues and championing the plight of black people nationwide. Its main news is a mixture of features, sports and celebrity interviews. This paper looks at how the tabloid attempts to resolve the race and crime conflicts that surrounds the coverage of the black community focusing on the 2011 London riots. It discusses its role and contributions to the diaspora black community in the resolution of conflict in news as presented by the mainstream media

Three-field mixed finite element approximations for problems in elasticity

Includes bibliographical references.This thesis is concerned with three-field mixed methods for elasticity (often referred to as Hu-Washizu formulations) in which the variables are, for small-strain problems, the displacement, stress and strain. For problems in nonlinear elasticity the corresponding variables are the displacement, first Piola-Kirchhoff stress, and deformation gradient. Of particular interest is the design and analysis of mixed formulations that are uniformly stable in the incompressible limit. The first part of the thesis deals with problems in linear elasticity. Lamichhane, Reddy and Wohlmuth (Numer. Math., 104 (2006)) have shown that the conditions for stability and uniform convergence include an ellipticity condition and, secondly, a condition that the displacement together with a discrete pressure, suitably defined, constitute a stable Stokes pair. The latter condition implies that the inf-sup condition for the three-field formulation is satisfied. In the thesis, families of new stable mixed elements are generated by the following approach. First, a stable Stokes pair is chosen. Then, the space of discrete stresses is defined such that the associated discrete pressure corresponds to that of the Stokes pressure. The space of strains is defined such that it forms a superset of the space of stresses. The final task is that of showing that the spaces chosen in this way satisfy the discrete ellipticity condition. A number of new families of mixed elements are designed and analyzed in this way, and numerical examples in two and three space dimensions are presented to illustrate the theory. The second part of the thesis comprises a short chapter in which the displacement-dilatation- pressure formulation of Taylor (Int. J. Numer. Meth. Engng, 47 (2000)) is shown to be a special case of the general three-field formulation, and is then shown to be uniformly convergent. The final part of the thesis is concerned with the extension of the earlier approach to problems of nonlinear elasticity. The problem considered is the incremental or linearized version, of the kind that forms part of a Newton-Raphson process in numerical implementations, with the unknown variables being the increments in displacement, first Piola-Kirchhoff stress, and deformation gradient. In the discrete formulation the elasticity tensor (that is, the second derivative of the strain energy with respect to deformation gradient) is approximated by its mean value on each element. Conditions are established for the resulting incremental formulation to be stable and uniformly convergent, assuming that the continuous problem is stable. The analysis is illustrated through selected numerical examples