Normative understandings: sexual identity, stereotypes, and asylum seeking

In the case of HJ and HT v Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that the previous position which held that asylum claims would not be granted in situations where discretion or concealment of an individual’s LGBT identity could remove ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ was illegal. In passing this judgment, the court has refocused the attention of decision makers, from proving that there is a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ to proving that the individual is a member of the ‘particular social group’ under which they make their claim. Since 1999, the UK has upheld the possibility of LGBT individuals making successful claims under the ‘Particular Social Group’ of the Refugee Convention (1951). However, this raises as many questions as it answers – most pressingly, who represents a member of particular social groups, such as ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’. Hathaway and Pobjoy have argued that, in the HJ and HT decision, the ‘all embracing’ decision of Lord Roger expanded the scope of the convention too far, distorting the common relationship between refugee law and international human rights practice. This article argues that, on the contrary, the judges in HJ and HT did not go far enough. Indeed, in their haste to find a decision which avoided the deeply problematic ‘discretion’ criterion, it is argued that the judges reified problematic and limiting ideas of what it means to be a gay man. This is primarily because their understanding of terms such as gay is rooted within normative, western stereotypes. This article argues for a ‘queer’ understanding of how LGBT people fit within the ‘particular social group’ framework, demonstrating that the present situation undermines the aims of the convention

The will of the people: The UK constitution, (parliamentary) sovereignty, and Brexit

‘The Will of the People’ has become a key refrain of government ministers since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. This chapter draws on the theoretical contributions of Carl Schmitt to suggest that the Brexit referendum was a manifestation of constituent power, the legitimacy of which undermines accepted norms of the UK’s unwritten constitution. Given the peculiarity of referendums within standard UK constitutional practice, the chapter focuses on the underappreciated power of rhetoric surrounding Brexit to justify executive actions contrary to established norms. Going on to examine the possibility of Parliament being stripped of its role as the final decision-maker within the UK’s constitutional setup, the chapter concludes by warning of the potential for new discourses around public sovereignty to make fundamental changes to the constitutional practice of the UK

APPLICATION OF PATTERNS TO IMAGE FEATURES

Features are described to apply visual patterns or designs to image features of an image. A pattern image depicts a pattern or design created by a user which is intended to be applied to an image feature such as a face. The pattern image is to be applied to modify an input image having detected features such as faces. For example, a face mask is determined that indicates which pixels in the input image are facial skin pixels that are suitable to receive application of the pattern. The pattern image is warped to fit a detected face, and blended pixel values are created for the facial region and provided in an output image by applying pattern image pixel values to the facial region. For example, pixel values derived from the pattern image can be blended, based on the associated face mask, with corresponding pixel values of the input image to create the output image having the blended pixel values. The resulting blended face provides a realistic match to the face in the original image. Using described techniques, patterns can be automatically, flexibly, and accurately applied to image features such as faces in target images without obscuring details of the modified image features, and preserving image noise, sharpness/focus, and other original properties of the image features

Organizational identity in the history of the Longy School of Music

Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston UniversityThe Longy School of Music existed as an independent organization from 1915 until2012, when it was acquired by Bard College. Founded to provide vocational training in music, the Longy School soon expanded by adding preparatory studies for children and continuing studies for avocationallearners. The school struggled throughout much of its history to manage its multiple identities and gain consensus, from both internal and external stakeholders, on a fundamental question: "who are we as an organization?" The lack of clarity in organizational identity and the failure to adequately manage the resulting multiple identities meant that the Longy School consistently struggled to define itself. This situation was an impediment to a thriving institution fmancially, programmatically, and culturally. Toward the end ofthe Longy School's existence as an independent entity, the long-standing issues had culminated in significant financial shortfalls, faculty dissatisfaction and the introduction ofa faculty union, and the desire to seek a larger institution with which to merge. This complex crisis raises significant questions about how the school arrived at such a crossroads, and deeper understanding of the school's history oforganizational identity provides insight into these developments. The purpose of this study was to determine the history of the Longy School' s struggle to understand and manage its organizational identity - and how and why this dilemma had long-reaching consequences. Research questions that guided this inquiry included: 1) What was Georges Longy's original vision for the Longy School, how did this evolve during his tenure as director, and how did this shape the future organizational identity of the institution? 2) Who were the primary figures that helped shape the focus and mission of the school, and what did each of these leaders envision as the direction, strategy, mission, and future for the institution? 3) What implicit and explicit strategic plans for the school have existed, and how have these related to the development of the Longy School's organizational identity? 4) What were the major developments and changes in the curricula offered by the Longy School and what motivated these developments? 5) What were the perceptions of and expectations for the Longy School from both internal and external constituents

Efficient adaptive multilevel stochastic Galerkin approximation using implicit a posteriori error estimation

Partial differential equations (PDEs) with inputs that depend on infinitely many parameters pose serious theoretical and computational challenges. Sophisticated numerical algorithms that automatically determine which parameters need to be activated in the approximation space in order to estimate a quantity of interest to a prescribed error tolerance are needed. For elliptic PDEs with parameter-dependent coefficients, stochastic Galerkin finite element methods (SGFEMs) have been well studied. Under certain assumptions, it can be shown that there exists a sequence of SGFEM approximation spaces for which the energy norm of the error decays to zero at a rate that is independent of the number of input parameters. However, it is not clear how to adaptively construct these spaces in a practical and computationally efficient way. We present a new adaptive SGFEM algorithm that tackles elliptic PDEs with parameter-dependent coefficients quickly and efficiently. We consider approximation spaces with a multilevel structure---where each solution mode is associated with a finite element space on a potentially different mesh---and use an implicit a posteriori error estimation strategy to steer the adaptive enrichment of the space. At each step, the components of the error estimator are used to assess the potential benefits of a variety of enrichment strategies, including whether or not to activate more parameters. No marking or tuning parameters are required. Numerical experiments for a selection of test problems demonstrate that the new method performs optimally in that it generates a sequence of approximations for which the estimated energy error decays to zero at the same rate as the error for the underlying finite element method applied to the associated parameter-free problem.Comment: 22 page