The EU Rights Based Approach to Disability: Some Strategies for Shaping an Inclusive Society

[Excerpt] The past ten years have witnessed a marked change in the legal and policy responses of many European countries, and of the EU itself, to the issue of disability. This new (and still emerging) response is often termed the ‘rights based approach’. In this paper I will attempt to clarify the nature of this approach and to suggest a number of ways in which disability organisations might work towards establishing it in their own countries. My starting point will be a brief examination of the more traditional approach to disability, however, as it is difficult to grasp the essence of the new approach without an appreciation of its contrast with the old

Low fertility increases descendant socioeconomic position but reduces long-term fitness in a modern post-industrial society.

Adaptive accounts of modern low human fertility argue that small family size maximizes the inheritance of socioeconomic resources across generations and may consequently increase long-term fitness. This study explores the long-term impacts of fertility and socioeconomic position (SEP) on multiple dimensions of descendant success in a unique Swedish cohort of 14 000 individuals born during 1915-1929. We show that low fertility and high SEP predict increased descendant socioeconomic success across four generations. Furthermore, these effects are multiplicative, with the greatest benefits of low fertility observed when SEP is high. Low fertility and high SEP do not, however, predict increased descendant reproductive success. Our results are therefore consistent with the idea that modern fertility limitation represents a strategic response to the local costs of rearing socioeconomically competitive offspring, but contradict adaptive models suggesting that it maximizes long-term fitness. This indicates a conflict in modern societies between behaviours promoting socioeconomic versus biological success. This study also makes a methodological contribution, demonstrating that the number of offspring strongly predicts long-term fitness and thereby validating use of fertility data to estimate current selective pressures in modern populations. Finally, our findings highlight that differences in fertility and SEP can have important long-term effects on the persistence of social inequalities across generations

The Performance of Southern Hospitality within Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “every writer, when he speaks of his own approach to fiction, hopes to show that in some crucial and deep sense, he is a realist” (MM 37). In O’Connor’s short stories she depicts her observations, with a particular eye for regional manners, of the American South and the culture of Southern hospitality. Hospitality as a culture is present within Jacques Derrida’s work, he hypothesized hospitality in two factions: conditional and unconditional. Conditional hospitality functions as a performative contradiction, leaving hospitality inherently connected with its opposite, which is hostility. Any time conditional hospitality is given to a guest and enacted by the host, hostility is incorporated within that action, creating a systemic power control between host and guest. Derrida’s notion of unconditional hospitality is separate from this created power control of conditional hospitality; however, he cannot demonstrate the reins of unconditional hospitality. Derrida believes unconditional hospitality is not fully understood and is out of our reach of comprehension. With O’Connor’s keen observance of manners and the culture of Southern hospitality, this project explores encounters in her short stories that express the manners of Southern hospitality as conditional, examining if the specific gestures creates division between and further divides insiders and outsiders. More specifically, the encounters within her works will be examined to identify the masking hostility towards her characters, in order to maintain control within gender/class, race, and religion. This project will also examine if O’Connor’s works present a new 2 narrative against conditional hospitality and a viable depiction of unconditional hospitality through grace

DVR-Matroids of Algebraic Extensions

A matroid is a finite set E along with a collection of subsets of E, called independent sets, that satisfy certain conditions. The most well-known matroids are linear matroids, which come from a finite subset of a vector space over a field K. In this case the independent sets are the subsets that are linearly independent over K. Algebraic matroids come from a finite set of elements in an extension of a field K. The independent sets are the subsets that are algebraically independent over K. Any linear matroid has a representation as an algebraic matroid, but the converse is not true [7]. One tool that helps us better understand algbraic matroids is the Lindström valuation which is defined on basis sets of a matroid. This valuation is explicitly defined in [3]. In Chapter 2, we will show that the Lindström valuated matroid can be further refined to a DVR-matroid, or matroid over a discrete valuation ring as defined in [5]. In Chapter 3, we focus on a class of examples of algebraic matroids that come from homomorphisms of algebraic groups. We show that the d-vectors for the corresponding DVR-matroid can be computed in two different ways

Influential Article Review - A Research on the Organizational-Level Turnover amongst Chinese Companies

This paper examines strategic management. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: In this essay, the authors discuss the neglected state of organizational-level turnover research in the Chinese context. They provide a brief overview of the importance of turnover research in the organizational sciences, highlight the role of performance-related turnover rates research, and outline general theories and findings that appear in the Western and English-language literature. This evidence is compared with a dearth of studies using samples of Chinese organizations and in Chinese-language journals. They conclude by calling for additional theory and empirical studies on turnover rates. For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German

Reliable experimental quantification of bipartite entanglement without reference frames

Simply and reliably detecting and quantifying entanglement outside laboratory conditions will be essential for future quantum information technologies. Here we address this issue by proposing a method for generating expressions which can perform this task between two parties who do not share a common reference frame. These reference frame independent expressions only require simple local measurements, which allows us to experimentally test them using an off-the-shelf entangled photon source. We show that the values of these expressions provide bounds on the concurrence of the state, and demonstrate experimentally that these bounds are more reliable than values obtained from state tomography since characterizing experimental errors is easier in our setting. Furthermore, we apply this idea to other quantities, such as the Renyi and von Neumann entropies, which are also more reliably calculated directly from the raw data than from a tomographically reconstructed state. This highlights the relevance of our approach for practical quantum information applications that require entanglement

Update on open access and the HEFCE requirements for the REF

A presentation on UWE's response to the post 2014 HEFCE requirements for the Research Excellence Framework (REF). This presentation gives researchers the information needed to ensure their research is eligible for consideration for the next REF

Sibling configuration predicts individual and descendant socioeconomic success in a modern post-industrial society.

Growing up with many siblings, at least in the context of modern post-industrial low fertility, low mortality societies, is predictive of relatively poor performance on school tests in childhood, lower levels of educational attainment, and lower income throughout adulthood. Recent studies further indicate these relationships hold across generations, so that the descendants of those who grow up with many siblings are also at an apparent socioeconomic disadvantage. In this paper we add to this literature by considering whether such relationships interact with the sex and relative age of siblings. To do this we utilise a unique Swedish multigenerational birth cohort study that provides sibling configuration data on over 10,000 individuals born in 1915-1929, plus all their direct genetic descendants to the present day. Adjusting for parental and birth characteristics, we find that the 'socioeconomic cost' of growing up in a large family is independent of both the sex of siblings and the sex of the individual. However, growing up with several older as opposed to several younger siblings is predictive of relatively poor performance on school tests and a lower likelihood of progression to tertiary education. This later-born disadvantage also holds across generations, with the children of those with many older siblings achieving lower levels of educational attainment. Despite these differences, we find that while individual and descendant income is negatively related to the number of siblings, it is not influenced by the relative age of siblings. Thus, our findings imply that the educational disadvantage of later-born children, demonstrated here and in numerous other studies, does not necessarily translate into reduced earnings in adulthood. We discuss potential explanations for this pattern of results, and consider some important directions for future research into sibling configuration and wellbeing in modern societies

Repository metadata for diverse collections

This article looks at the range of metadata standards that are used in multi-disciplinary institutional repositories. Using the UWE Research Repository as an example repository, the Dublin Core and DCMI metadata schemas are discussed, along with other potential schemas that are used for art and design materials