Essays on International Disputes

Book review of: International Dispute Settlement (Mary Ellen O'Connell ed.). Aldershot, UK & Burlington, VT: Dartmouth/Ashgate Publishing, 2003.Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

Factors affecting nontraditional African American students' participation in online world literature classes

The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how communication preferences, learning preferences, and perceptions about online learning affect nontraditional African American students' participation in online world literature courses at a historically Black university (HBCU) in the southeastern United States. An instrumental case study was the research design used. Data were collected from individual interviews of participants and non-participatory observations of Blackboard course shells and analyzed through content analysis (Babbie, 2003). Chen's Learner-to-Learner Transactional Distance, Learner-to-Content Transactional Distance, and Learner-to-Interface Transactional Distance theory (2001), along with Moore's Theory of Transactional Distance (1996) informed the data analysis. Analysis occurred in two stages. Within-case analysis was used to understand the experiences of online learning with individual participants. Later, a cross-case analysis was used "to build abstractions across cases" (Merriam, 1998, p. 195) as well as to compare participants' experiences to ascertain a grander view of participation of African American nontraditional students in online world literature classes. The findings of the study explained nontraditional African American student preferences for frequent oral communication among students, preferably face-to-face. In addition, students wished to make oral contact with online instructors; however, they desired to have the instructor to communicate with them via email. In addition, findings also revealed how African American students could often be overwhelmed with long reading requirements. Their preferences were to have content condensed for learning. They also preferred to have study guides which highlighted key information to which one's focus should be placed. Furthermore, students preferred to work and learn in groups. In order to enhance their enjoyment and participation in the course, participants preferred to make connections with subject matter, topics, and peers. For the most part, participants were drawn to online learning for the convenience, though their learning preferences were not often met in the online learning environment. While many participants found learning to be accessible and convenient through online courses, many of them were frustrated by slow response and feedback by online instructors and technical problems which may have occurred due to lack of savvy with online learning or Blackboard technicalities. Implications for higher education administrators, university professors, and students as related to online learning are provided

The Protection of Animals through Human Rights. The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights

The chapter discusses the potential of a human rights framework to contribute to the growth and development of global animal law. It takes as example the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, and examine the major trends in the Court’s judgments and admissibility decisions that directly or indirectly concern the rights or welfare of animals. It is concluded that the Court is not indifferent to the welfare of animals, but that animal welfare is instrumentalised: it is understood not as a good in itself, but is instead valued for its implications for human welfare and rights. The chapter then considers the obstacles that the anthropocentrism of the human rights idea and the instrumentalisation of animal concerns present to the use of human rights frameworks to further the development of global animal law, as well as the opportunities that exist in the meeting of these paradigms. It concludes that although the telos of human rights law is different from that of animal law, nevertheless there exist many overlapping concerns within which mutually beneficial interactions are possible

Glass groups, glass supply and recycling in late Roman Carthage

Carthage played an important role in maritime exchange networks during the Roman and late antique periods. One hundred ten glass fragments dating to the third to sixth centuries CE from a secondary deposit at the Yasmina Necropolis in Carthage have been analysed by electron microprobe analysis (EPMA) to characterise the supply of glass to the city. Detailed bivariate and multivariate data analysis identified different primary glass groups and revealed evidence of extensive recycling. Roman mixed antimony and manganese glasses with MnO contents in excess of 250 ppm were clearly the product of recycling, while iron, potassium and phosphorus oxides were frequent contaminants. Primary glass sources were discriminated using TiO2 as a proxy for heavy minerals (ilmenite/spinel), Al2O3 for feldspar and SiO2 for quartz in the glassmaking sands. It was thus possible to draw conclusions about the chronological and geographical attributions of the primary glass types. Throughout much of the period covered in this study, glassworkers in Carthage utilised glass from both Egyptian and Levantine sources. Based on their geochemical characteristics, we conclude that Roman antimony and Roman manganese glasses originated from Egypt and the Levant, respectively, and were more or less simultaneously worked at Carthage in the fourth century as attested by their mixed recycling (Roman Sb-Mn). In the later fourth and early fifth centuries, glasses from Egypt (HIMT) and the Levant (two Levantine I groups) continued to be imported to Carthage, although the Egyptian HIMT is less well represented at Yasmina than in many other late antique glass assemblages. In contrast, in the later fifth and sixth centuries, glass seems to have been almost exclusively sourced from Egypt in the form of a manganese-decolourised glass originally described and characterised by Foy and colleagues (2003). Hence, the Yasmina assemblage testifies to significant fluctuations in the supply of glass to Carthage that require further attention