Does Watching Help? In Search of the Theory of Change for Education Monitoring

Following the publication of the 2015 Global Education for All Monitoring Report, this paper examines the question of how watching and reporting on these global goals might prompt changes in education. What is the function of monitoring and publicizing of information about progress in education? What is the effect of global monitoring? How does it impact on educational policy? While recognizing that the exponential growth in education is a consequence of general social and economic progress, the paper examines how the soft power of the United Nations, and global agreements such as Education for All, may affect ideas and strategic calculations of stakeholders and thus, in turn, lead to policy change. The paper highlights the importance of watching and asserts that, although monitoring is not indicated as a source of predictable progress, it is a way to position the ideas that influence how people talk about education

Of Black Holes and Decentralized Law Making in Cyberspace

MAPS, the primary focus of this tale, is a California non-profit limited liability company. It coordinates a kind of group boycott by Internet service providers (ISPs) for the purpose of reducing the flow of what is commonly called spam - unsolicited bulk e-mail. It operates, roughly, as follows. The managers of MAPS create and maintain what they call the Realtime Blackhole List (RBL), which consists of a long list of Internet addresses. They place on the RBL any Internet address from which, to their knowledge, spam has originated. They also place on the RBL the address of any network that allows open-mail relay or provides spam support services. ... What are we to make of things like the RBL? Here we have a problem--the proliferation of unsolicited mass e-mailing operations--that is, we might agree, a serious, or at least a non-trivial, one. At just the moment that e-mail has become an indispensable form of communication, of incalculable commercial and non-commercial importance for a substantial and ever-growing segment of the world community, its value is being undermined by a barrage of unwanted and unsolicited communications. But is the RBL a reasonable means of addressing this problem? To what extent can we, and should we, rely on things like the RBL to devise a solution (however we might define a solution) to that problem

Territoriality, Jurisdiction, and the Right(s) of Publicity

When Professors Rothman and Ginsburg asked me to speak here on the issues surrounding territoriality, jurisdiction, choice of law, and the like in the law of publicity, I confessed that I knew little about the developing law of publicity rights. Having taught Copyright Law for many years, I had come across the well-known foundational publicity rights cases—the cases involving Tom Waits, Vanna White, and Bette Midler—because of the problematic relationship between those decisions (under California state law) and federal copyright law. But I had not studied the publicity doctrine, or the main corpus of cases and statutes, with any great care. I had, however, done some thinking over the years about territoriality and jurisdiction in other contexts. I was happy to have the opportunity to dive in and spend a couple of months immersing myself in the publicity cases and commentary to try to discover how those questions played themselves out in this particular corner of the legal universe. I found the results “alarming.” I use the term advisedly, so let me try to explain what I mean by it

Scanning Probe Microscopy: Applications for Genomic Research

The inauguration of the International Human Genome Initiative in the later part of the 1980’s coincided with the development of scanning probe microscopy (SPM). SPM was a good fit as one of the new technologies that might be implemented to sequence or map DNA and perhaps make a major contribution toward the goal of sequencing the entire human genome. Although the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) was invented in 1982 [Binnig 1982] and the atomic force microscope (AFM) in 1986 [Binnig 1986], it was not until 1987 that the first STM became commercially available; the AFM became available in 1989. Our group entered this exciting new scientific adventure in genome research towards the end of 1987. An interdisciplinary team was assembled that capitalized on our expertise in the fabrication and use of scanning tunneling microscopes. Additionally, we purchased one of the first commercially available scanning tunneling microscopes. Rounding out the team was expertise in imaging biomolecules such as DNA using electron microscopy. Our initial research focused on STM imaging and scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) of 1) tobacco mosaic virus adsorbed to gold surfaces [Mantovani 1990] and 2) DNA passively mounted on highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces [Allison 1990]. Our spectroscopy results with DNA encouraged speculation that the electronic signatures of nucleotide bases might be used to sequence DNA. However, in this early work we also discovered that simply adsorbing either virus or DNA to gold or HOPG surfaces resulted in substantial amounts of the sample being removed by the STM tunneling tip. In order to more firmly immobilize negatively charged DNA molecules onto surfaces for STM scanning, we created gold sample surfaces with positive functionality mediated by a self-assembled monolayer of 2-dimethylaminoethane thiol. Using this method, we produced the first reported images of entire genetically functional plasmid DNA molecules obtained by STM [Allison 1992a, Allison 1992b Allison 1993, Bottomley 1992]. Efforts initiated by our laboratory to restriction map DNA molecules by AFM imaging were successful. This was accomplished by physically mapping the location of a mutant EcoRI endonuclease that binds to but does not cleave large DNA clones. Our new AFM technology was pioneered as an alternative to conventional gel-based restriction mapping; it was first demonstrated on plasmid DNA molecules [Allison 1996] and later on larger molecules including cosmid clones [Allison 1997]. This technology should prove to be more effective than conventional mapping methods because by using AFM mapping neither the number nor the proximity of restriction sites to one another is problematic