An advanced 10.6-micro laser communication experiment

Carbon dioxide laser capability of high data rate intersatellite communicatio

The Right to Say No: Customary Land Rights, Extractive Industries and the Need for Free, Prior and Informed Consent

Compared to the more “traditional” Civil or socio-economic rights, which are regarded as being held by individuals; the notion that communities can also be holders of particular rights is still relatively new. And yet, the suffering inflicted on customary communities by states, corporations and even individuals dates back to the colonial modes of production, wherein colonial authorities would extract raw materials from colonies. This being the case, it is important for any modern system for the protection of human rights – especially on the African continent - to take the unique circumstances of communities adversely affected by extractive industries into account. It is with this in mind, that my dissertation aims to offer an in depth analysis of the legal relationship between the interests of extractive projects and the rights of communities affected by such projects. As I am writing from a South African context, a significant percentage of my research is concerned with how this relationship plays out in South Africa – with particular attention being paid to the cases of: the Xolobeni Community1 in the rural Eastern Cape, the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela in the North West2 and the Somkhele Community in Kwa-Zulu Natal3 . However, I do also address the broader context by spending an entire chapter dealing with the international, regional and sub-regional mechanisms which can have an impact on the rights of mining affected communities. I also spend a significant part of my research arguing in favour of the standard of Free, Prior and Informed Consent as the minimum standard of community involvement in the decision making process relating to project that might affect them (colloquially known as “FPIC”). These arguments are based on the findings of a number of theorists and legal practitioners who have found that the lack of FPIC is one of the most significant stumbling blocks for the promotion and protection of the rights of mining affected and other marginalised communities. It is my hope that this research will serve as the basis for discussions around these issues in academia and practice with the end goal of advancing the rights of communities affected by mining or other extractive operation

Integrating musicology's heterogeneous data sources for better exploration

Musicologists have to consult an extraordinarily heterogeneous body of primary and secondary sources during all stages of their research. Many of these sources are now available online, but the historical dispersal of material across libraries and archives has now been replaced by segregation of data and metadata into a plethora of online repositories. This segregation hinders the intelligent manipulation of metadata, and means that extracting large tranches of basic factual information or running multi-part search queries is still enormously and needlessly time consuming. To counter this barrier to research, the “musicSpace” project is experimenting with integrating access to many of musicology’s leading data sources via a modern faceted browsing interface that utilises Semantic Web and Web2.0 technologies such as RDF and AJAX. This will make previously intractable search queries tractable, enable musicologists to use their time more efficiently, and aid the discovery of potentially significant information that users did not think to look for. This paper outlines our work to date

Orchestrating musical (meta)data to better address the real-world search queries of musicologists

The dispersal of musicology’s diverse array of primary and secondary sources across countless libraries and archives was once an enormous obstacle to conducting research, but this has largely been overcome by the digitisation and online publication of resources in recent years. Yet, while the research process has undoubtedly been revolutionised, the current situation is far from perfect, as the digitisation of resources has often been accompanied by their segregation—according to media type, date of publication, subject, language, copyright holder, etc.—into a myriad of discrete online repositories, often with little thought having been given to interoperability. Given that musicological research typically cuts across such artificial divisions, this segregation of data means that accessing basic factual information or running multi-part search queries remains endlessly complicated, needlessly time consuming, and sometimes impossible. This barrier to tractability is only exacerbated by the limited capabilities of currently deployed search interfaces. There is one seemingly obvious solution to this query dilemma: enable integrated real-time querying over all the available metadata from as many sources as possible, and allow users to use that metadata to guide their queries. This solution implies that all data that could feasibly be construed as useful, but which is buried in the records, is extracted in some way, and that there is an interaction approach that enables metadata to be explored effectively and allows for the formulation of rich compound queries. The musicSpace project has taken a dual approach towards realising this solution. At the back-end we are developing services to integrate and, where necessary, surface (meta)data from many of musicology’s most important online resources, including the British Library Music Collections catalogue, the British Library Sound Archive catalogue, Cecilia, Copac, Grove Music Online, Naxos Music Library, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), and Répertoire International des Sources Musicale (RISM) UK and Ireland. While at the front-end, in order to optimise the exploration of this integrated dataset, we are developing a modern web-based faceted browsing interface that utilises Semantic Web and Web2.0 technologies such as RDF and AJAX, and which is based on the existing ‘mSpace’ codebase. Our poster outlines the approach we have taken to importing, enriching and integrating the metadata provided by our data partners, and gives examples of the real-world musicological research questions that musicSpace has enabled

Discrete and fuzzy dynamical genetic programming in the XCSF learning classifier system

A number of representation schemes have been presented for use within learning classifier systems, ranging from binary encodings to neural networks. This paper presents results from an investigation into using discrete and fuzzy dynamical system representations within the XCSF learning classifier system. In particular, asynchronous random Boolean networks are used to represent the traditional condition-action production system rules in the discrete case and asynchronous fuzzy logic networks in the continuous-valued case. It is shown possible to use self-adaptive, open-ended evolution to design an ensemble of such dynamical systems within XCSF to solve a number of well-known test problems

Population-Level Benefits from Providing Effective HIV Prevention Means to Pregnant Women in High Prevalence Settings

Background:HIV prevalence among pregnant women in Southern Africa is extremely high. Epidemiological studies suggest that pregnancy increases the risk of HIV sexual acquisition and that HIV infections acquired during pregnancy carry higher risk of mother-to-child transmission (MTCT). We analyze the potential benefits from extending the availability of effective microbicide to pregnant women (in addition to non-pregnant women) in a wide-scale intervention.Methods and Findings:A transmission dynamic model was designed to assess the impact of microbicide use in high HIV prevalence settings and to estimate proportions of new HIV infections, infections acquired during pregnancy, and MTCT prevented over 10 years. Our analysis suggests that consistent use of microbicide with 70% efficacy by 60% of non-pregnant women may prevent approximately 40% and 15% of new infections in women and men respectively over 10 years, assuming no additional increase in HIV risk to either partner during pregnancy (RRHIV/preg = 1). It may also prevent 8-15% MTCT depending on the increase in MTCT risk when HIV is acquired during pregnancy compared to before pregnancy (RRMTCT/preg). Extending the microbicides use during pregnancy may improve the effectiveness of the intervention by 10% (RRHIV/preg = 1) to 25% (RRHIV/preg = 2) and reduce the number of HIV infections acquired during pregnancy by 40% to 70% in different scenarios. It may add between 6% (RRHIV/preg = 1, RRMTCT/preg = 1) and 25% (RRHIV/preg = 2, RRMTCT/preg = 4) to the reduction in the residual MTCT.Conclusion:Providing safe and effective microbicide to pregnant women in the context of wide-scale interventions would be desirable as it would increase the effectiveness of the intervention and significantly reduce the number of HIV infections acquired during pregnancy. The projected benefits from covering pregnant women by the HIV prevention programs is more substantial in communities in which the sexual risk during pregnancy is elevated. © 2013 Dimitrov et al

Transition probabilities in highly ionized p2 and p4 configurations

Line strengths of magnetic dipole and electric quadrupole transitions in the configurations 2p2, 2p4, 3p2 and 3p4 are calculated using interpolated values of spin-orbit interaction parameters and unperturbed energies of the levels. Probabilities of the important ground state transitions are tabulated in the four isoelectronic sequences through the following net charges: 17(2p2), 13(2p4), 15(3p2), 13(3p4).Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31969/1/0000011.pd