The Departmental Graded Lessons

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A consideration of certain aspects of South African civil procedural law and civil jurisdiction

A salient defect of South African civil procedural law is its lack of a formally recognised fact-discovery mechanism for the purpose of complimenting the process of pre-trial litigation. This defect comes to the fore when the South African discovery model is compared with those of other Anglo-American jurisdictions. In common with other Anglo-American civil procedural systems, South African civil procedural law has formally incorporated within its rules of court a system of discovery, but its discovery model is restricted to that of documentary discovery. 1 In contradistinction with the South African model, the scope of the discovery models of the United Kingdom,2 Austraiia3 and New Zealand4 is far wider in that they include not only documentary discovery but also fact-discovery in the form of interrogatories. The discovery models of the United States5 and Canada6 are even more liberal than the aforementioned because, apart from the practice of documentary discovery and the exchange of interrogatories, oral depositions as a mode of discovery are also permitted. Seen in this context, there is a notional difference between the South African model and the discovery models of other Anglo-American systems in that the latter recognise and apply fact-discovery as a procedure distinct from documentary discovery. Why is this so

The Evolving Landscape of Internet Control

Over the past two years, we have undertaken several studies at the Berkman Center designed to better understand the control of the Internet in less open societies. During the years we've been engaged in this research, we have seen many incidents that have highlighted the continuing role of the Internet as a battleground for political control, including partial or total Internet shutdowns in China, Iran, Egypt, Libya, and Syria; many hundreds of documented DDoS, hacking, and other cyber attacks against political sites; continued growth in the number of countries that filter the Internet; and dozens of well documented cases of on- and offline persecution of online dissidents. The energy dedicated to these battles for control of the Internet on both the government and dissident sides indicated, if nothing else, that both sides think that the Internet is a critical space for political action. In this paper, we offer an overview of our research in the context of these changes in the methods used to control online speech, and some thoughts on the challenges to online speech in the immediate future

Multi-View Region Adaptive Multi-temporal DMM and RGB Action Recognition

Human action recognition remains an important yet challenging task. This work proposes a novel action recognition system. It uses a novel Multiple View Region Adaptive Multi-resolution in time Depth Motion Map (MV-RAMDMM) formulation combined with appearance information. Multiple stream 3D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are trained on the different views and time resolutions of the region adaptive Depth Motion Maps. Multiple views are synthesised to enhance the view invariance. The region adaptive weights, based on localised motion, accentuate and differentiate parts of actions possessing faster motion. Dedicated 3D CNN streams for multi-time resolution appearance information (RGB) are also included. These help to identify and differentiate between small object interactions. A pre-trained 3D-CNN is used here with fine-tuning for each stream along with multiple class Support Vector Machines (SVM)s. Average score fusion is used on the output. The developed approach is capable of recognising both human action and human-object interaction. Three public domain datasets including: MSR 3D Action,Northwestern UCLA multi-view actions and MSR 3D daily activity are used to evaluate the proposed solution. The experimental results demonstrate the robustness of this approach compared with state-of-the-art algorithms.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, 13 tables. Submitte

Exploring Russian Cyberspace: Digitally-Mediated Collective Action and the Networked Public Sphere

This paper summarizes the major findings of a three-year research project to investigate the Internet's impact on Russian politics, media and society. We employed multiple methods to study online activity: the mapping and study of the structure, communities and content of the blogosphere; an analogous mapping and study of Twitter; content analysis of different media sources using automated and human-based evaluation approaches; and a survey of bloggers; augmented by infrastructure mapping, interviews and background research. We find the emergence of a vibrant and diverse networked public sphere that constitutes an independent alternative to the more tightly controlled offline media and political space, as well as the growing use of digital platforms in social mobilization and civic action. Despite various indirect efforts to shape cyberspace into an environment that is friendlier towards the government, we find that the Russian Internet remains generally open and free, although the current degree of Internet freedom is in no way a prediction of the future of this contested space

Political Change in the Digital Age: The Fragility and Promise of Online Organizing

We conclude that policymakers and scholars that have been most optimistic about the impact of digital tools have over-emphasized the role of information, specifically access to alternative and independent sources of information and unfiltered access to the Internet. We argue, in contrast, that more attention should be paid to the means of overcoming the difficulties of online organization in the face of authoritarian governments in an increasingly digital geopolitical environment

A Selective Approach to Bleeding Esophageal Varices

It is possible that the best results of treatment for bleeding esophageal varices will come when a selective approach is used. In patients bleeding acutely and in patients with poor liver function shunt operations should be avoided, and a direct attack on the varices with either sclerosant therapy, percutaneous obliteration, or staple gun gastro-esophageal transsection should be carried out. In patients who have stopped bleeding, or those in whom elective treatment is being undertaken, the best operation at present appears to be selective distal splenorenal shunt

New microplanktonic biostratigraphy and depositional sequences across the Middle-Late Eocene and Oligocene boundaries in eastern Jordan

The first detailed calcareous nannofossil and planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphic and integrated lithofacies analyses of the Eocene–Oligocene transition at the Qa’ Faydat ad Dahikiya area in the Eastern Desert of Jordan, on the border with Saudi Arabia, is presented. Three calcareous nannofossil zones namely: Discoaster saipanensis (NP17), Chiasmolithus oamaruensis (NP18) and Ericsonia subdisticha (NP21), and three planktonic foraminiferal zones: upper part of Truncorotaloides rohri (E13), Globigerinatheka semiinvoluta (E14) and Cassigerinella chipolensis/ Pseudohastigerina micra (O1) are identified. Calcareous nannofossil bioevents recorded in the present study show numerous discrepancies with the Standard biostratigraphic zonal schemes to detect the Middle/Upper Eocene boundary (e.g. the highest occurrences (HOs) of Chiasmolithus solitus, C. grandis, and lowest occurrences (LOs) of C. oamaruensis, Isthmolithus recurvus are not considered reliable markers for global correlation). The Middle/Upper Eocene boundary occurs in the current study above the extinctions of large muricate planktonic foraminifera (large Acarinina and Truncorotaloides spp.) which coincide within the equivalent calcareous nannofossil NP18 Zone. These microplanktonic bioevents seem to constitute more reliable markers for the base of the Upper Eocene in different provinces. The uppermost portion of the Middle Eocene is characterized by an observed drop in faunal content and, most likely, primarily denotes the effect of the major fall in eustatic sea level. A major unconformity (disconformity) marked by a mineralized hardground representing a lowstand is recorded in the present study at the Eocene–Oligocene transition that reveals an unexpected ca. 2.1 Myr duration, separating Eocene (NP18/E14 zones) from Oligocene (NP21/O1 zones). Furthermore, the microfossil turnover associated with a rapid decline of the microfossil assemblages shows a distinct drop in diversity and abundance towards the Eocene/Oligocene unconformity and is associated with a sharp lithological break marked, at the base, by a mineralized hardground representing a major sequence boundary. These bioevents, depositional sequences and the depositional hiatus correlate well with different parts of the Arabian and African plates, but the magnitude of the faunal break differs from place to place as a result of intraplate deformation during the regional Oligocene regression of Neo-Tethys on the northern Arabian Plate. The presence of the Lower Oligocene shallow-marine calcareous planktonic assemblages in the study area indicate that communication between the eastern and western provinces of the western Neo-Tethys region still existed at this time