170 research outputs found
There is nothing honourable about honour killings: gender, violence and the limits of multiculturalism
'Honour killings' are extreme acts of domestic violence culminating in the murder of a woman by her family or community. However only in relation to religious and ethnic communities is the concept of 'honour' invoked as motivation for domestic violence. In this paper we argue that ethnicised women are caught up in a collision of discourses. Women who are victims of honour killings are invisible within the cultural relativism of the British multicultural discourse and the private/public divide which characterises the domestic violence discourse. But since September 11, while ethnicised women have become highly visible, they are now contained and constructed in the public consciousness within a discourse of fear and risk posed by the presence of the Muslim alien 'other'. By developing an effective human rights approach to honour killings it could be possible to move away from the 'gender trap' of cultural relativism within the liberal democratic discourse on multiculturalism
Shrewd Selection Speeds Surfing: Use Smart EXP3!
In this paper, we explore the use of multi-armed bandit online learning
techniques to solve distributed resource selection problems. As an example, we
focus on the problem of network selection. Mobile devices often have several
wireless networks at their disposal. While choosing the right network is vital
for good performance, a decentralized solution remains a challenge. The
impressive theoretical properties of multi-armed bandit algorithms, like EXP3,
suggest that it should work well for this type of problem. Yet, its real-word
performance lags far behind. The main reasons are the hidden cost of switching
networks and its slow rate of convergence. We propose Smart EXP3, a novel
bandit-style algorithm that (a) retains the good theoretical properties of
EXP3, (b) bounds the number of switches, and (c) yields significantly better
performance in practice. We evaluate Smart EXP3 using simulations, controlled
experiments, and real-world experiments. Results show that it stabilizes at the
optimal state, achieves fairness among devices and gracefully deals with
transient behaviors. In real world experiments, it can achieve 18% faster
download over alternate strategies. We conclude that multi-armed bandit
algorithms can play an important role in distributed resource selection
problems, when practical concerns, such as switching costs and convergence
time, are addressed.Comment: Full pape
Negotiating the diversity of 'everyday' multiculturalism: teachers' enactments in an inner city secondary school
This paper explores the presence of multiculturalism in teachersâ professional practice in a British inner city co-educational secondary school, which featured in two predominant ways: first, as a form of âdiversity managementâ through interventions including a formalised staffing structure to ârespondâ to the schoolâs ethnically mixed student body, representation of difference, and same âraceâ role models; and second, through its sedimentation into everyday practices, whereby teachers enacted multicultural approaches in varied ways. The multiple meanings teachers attached to multiculturalism and its subsequent translations into âeverydayâ professional practice suggest that the term âeveryday multiculturalismâ should be used beyond its âconvivialâ meaning of living in/with ethnic diversity to also reflect the diverse professional enactments of multiculturalism through everyday practice in institutional settings. Further, an analytical focus on professionals in âeverydayâ multiculturalism elucidates how teachersâ diverse enactments of multiculturalism perpetuate micro-processes of racialisation in schools
Donor Tracker: An Innovative Real-Time Tracking System for Blood Donors in Mauritius
In Mauritius, caravans are sent around the island to collect blood from volunteers. This ensures that storage of pints of blood does not get depleted. However, in cases of urgent requirement of fresh blood, for instance an open heart surgery, it is very hard to quickly find a blood donor. The problem is even worse if the blood group is rare. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using location-aware computing to track blood donors in Mauritius and locate the nearest donor in cases of emergencies and whenever fresh blood is required. A number of blood donor management systems exist but none of them tracks the real-time location of blood donors. DonorTracker, the proposed innovative system, provides an easy and fast way to find a blood donor, thus saving time and saving lives.Keywords: Context-awareness, location-awareness, mobile and ubiquitous computing, location sensing technique, real-time
Empowering Muslim girls? Postfeminism, multiculturalism and the production of the 'model' Muslim female student in British schools
This article draws on an analysis of the narratives of teachers, policy-makers and young Muslim working-class women to explore how schools worked towards producing the model neoliberal middle-class female student. In two urban case-study schools, teaching staff encouraged the girls to actively challenge their culture through discourses grounded in western post-feminist ideals of female âempowermentâ. The production of the compliant âmodel Muslim female studentâ appeared to be a response to the heroic western need to âsaveâ the young women from backward cultural and religious practices. While this approach had many positive and liberating effects for the young women, it ironically produced forms of post-feminist âgender friendlyâ self-regulation. The article concludes with a black feminist intersectional analysis of race, religion, gender, sexuality and class in the context of British multiculturalism and rising Islamophobia, exploring the contradictions of gendered social justice discourses that do not fully embrace âdifferenceâ in educational spaces
C-Arc: A Novel Architecture for Next Generation Context- Aware Systems
Computing is becoming increasingly mobile and ubiquitous. This implies that applications and services must be aware and adapt to highly dynamic environments. However, building contextaware mobile services is currently a complex and time consuming task. The emergence of truly ubiquitous computing, enabled by the availability of mobile and heterogeneous devices and an increasing number of commercial off-the-shelf sensing technologies, is hampered by the lack of standard architectural support for the development of context-aware systems. In this paper, the common architecture principles of context-aware systems are presented and the crucial contextaware architecture issues to support the next generation context-aware systems which will enable seamless service provisioning in heterogeneous, dynamically varying computing and communication environments are identified and discussed. Furthermore, a novel architecture, CArc,is proposed to aid in the development of the next generation context-aware systems. A prototype implemented of C-Arc is also presented to demonstrate the architecture. C-Arc provides support for most of the tasks involved in dealing with context, namely acquiring context from various sources, interpreting context and disseminating context.Keywords: Context-aware architecture, context-aware systems, context-aware mobile services,mobile and ubiquitous computing
Precarious Care and (Dis)Connections
Adult stakeholders who work with separated child migrants (SCMs) face a substantial challenge to their capacity or remit to care amid increasingly hostile immigration environments. This paper explores a diverse range of adult stakeholders' understandings of the care of SCMs, filling an important gap in understanding how care is conceptualized by those working in often complex and contradictory positions. Drawing on the care literature, this study focuses on 15 qualitative semistructured interviews with state and nonstate adult stakeholders in England (e.g., social work, law, police, and NGO workers). We argue that stringent immigration practices, policies, and bureaucratic and structural challenges undoubtedly present personal tensions and professional constraints for those whose role is meant to foreground âcare.â Importantly, when taking into account a range of different perspectives, roles, and responsibilities across professions and sectors, our respondents were constrained in varying ways or had varying room to maneuver within their institutional contexts. Our analysis suggests that amid a hostile immigration environment, care connections with and between SCMs are treated with mistrust and are unstable over space and time. We argue that how care is conceptualized and experienced is mutually constituted by hostile policies and procedures, adult stakeholders' roles within or out-with those systems, and their personal values and perspectives. It is within this space where constraints, enablers, and resistances play out. Care is subjectively experienced, and care relationships are open to potential (dis)connection across space and time
Smart tattoo: technology for monitoring blood glucose in the future
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.New ways of measuring blood glucose bring hope of easing the burden of
diabetes management for patients living with the conditions. The smart tattoo
is an innovation that represents a nascent nanotechnology, which is designed
to be implanted within the skin to provide continuous and reliable glucose
detection for individuals diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. The potential
benefits of the smart tatto are compelling not only due to the potential of these
nanodevices to prevent diabetic complications and decrease the related social
costs, but also due to ease of use and relative user comfort. However, despite
the advantages of the smart tattoo, it is important that health professionals, in
embracing nanotechnology, understand the ethical implications of using these
innovative devices
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