The Chagos Islands cases: the empire strikes back

Good governance requires the accommodation of multiple interests in the cause of decision making. However, undue regard for particular sectional interests can take their toll upon public faith in government administration. Historically, broad conceptions of the good of the commonwealth were employed to outweigh the interests of groups that resisted colonisation. In the decision making of the British Empire, the standard approach for justifying the marginalisation of the interests of colonised groups was that they were uncivilised and that particular hardships were the price to be paid for bringing to them the imperial dividend of industrial society. It is widely assumed that with the dismantling of the British Empire, such impulses and their accompanying jurisprudence became a thing of the past. Even as decolonisation proceeded apace after the Second World War, however, the United Kingdom maintained control of strategically important islands with a view towards sustaining its global role. In an infamous example from this twilight period of empire, in the 1960s imperial interests were used to justify the expulsion of the Chagos islanders from the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Into the twenty-first century, this forced elision of the UK’s interests with the imperial “common good” continues to take centre stage in courtroom battles over the islanders’ rights, being cited before domestic and international tribunals in order to maintain the Chagossians’ exclusion from their homeland. This article considers the new jurisprudence of imperialism which has emerged in a string of decisions which have continued to marginalise the Chagossians’ interests

Complementarities between IT and Organizational Structure: The Role of Corporate Exploration and Exploitation

The decentralization of organizational decision authority has been shown to be complementary to Information Technology (IT) in prior research. We draw from the information processing view of organizations, the IT and de/centralization debate, and organizational learning theory to argue that IT payoffs can also be improved by greater centralization of decision authority, contingent on a firm’s corporate learning type. We argue that an exploratory learning type is best pursued with a decentralized organization design, while an exploitative learning type requires a centralized organization design. We hypothesize that under corporate exploration, IT payoffs are enhanced through greater decentralization, whereas under corporate exploitation, returns to IT are improved by greater centralization. Our study uses a novel multi‐source panel on the IT capital, the degree of de/centralization, and the performance of almost 260 German manufacturing firms. We estimate production functions to assess the contribution of combning IT with de/centralization to firmlevel productivity under different corporate learning types. Our results strongly support our hypotheses and hold up to a variety of robustness tests

Information professionals and copyright literacy: a multinational study

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a multinational survey on copyright literacy of specialists from libraries and other cultural institutions. Design/methodology/approach: This paper is based on a multinational survey of copyright literacy competencies of Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals and those who work in the cultural heritage sector (archives and museums), conducted in 13 countries, namely Bulgaria (BG), Croatia (CR), Finland (FI), France (FR), Hungary (HU), Lithuania (LT), Mexico (MX), Norway (NO), Portugal (PT), Romania (RO), Turkey (TR), UK and USA in the period July 2013-March 2015. An online survey instrument was developed in order to collect data from professionals regarding their familiarity with, knowledge and awareness of, and opinions on copyright-related issues. Findings: Findings of this study highlight gaps in existing knowledge of copyright, and information about the level of copyright literacy of LIS and cultural sector professionals. Also attitudes toward copyright learning content in academic education and continuing professional development training programs are investigated. Originality/value: This study aimed to address a gap in the literature by encompassing specialists from the cultural institutions in an international comparative context. The paper offers guidance for further understanding of copyright in a wider framework of digital and information literacy; and for the implementation of copyright policy, and the establishment of copyright advisor positions in cultural institutions. The recommendations support a revision of academic and continuing education programs learning curriculum and methods

Speciation and fate of trace metals in estuarine sediments under reduced and oxidized conditions, Seaplane Lagoon, Alameda Naval Air Station (USA)

We have identified important chemical reactions that control the fate of metal-contaminated estuarine sediments if they are left undisturbed (in situ) or if they are dredged. We combined information on the molecular bonding of metals in solids from X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) with thermodynamic and kinetic driving forces obtained from dissolved metal concentrations to deduce the dominant reactions under reduced and oxidized conditions. We evaluated the in situ geochemistry of metals (cadmium, chromium, iron, lead, manganese and zinc) as a function of sediment depth (to 100 cm) from a 60 year record of contamination at the Alameda Naval Air Station, California. Results from XAS and thermodynamic modeling of porewaters show that cadmium and most of the zinc form stable sulfide phases, and that lead and chromium are associated with stable carbonate, phosphate, phyllosilicate, or oxide minerals. Therefore, there is minimal risk associated with the release of these trace metals from the deeper sediments contaminated prior to the Clean Water Act (1975) as long as reducing conditions are maintained. Increased concentrations of dissolved metals with depth were indicative of the formation of metal HS(- )complexes. The sediments also contain zinc, chromium, and manganese associated with detrital iron-rich phyllosilicates and/or oxides. These phases are recalcitrant at near-neutral pH and do not undergo reductive dissolution within the 60 year depositional history of sediments at this site. The fate of these metals during dredging was evaluated by comparing in situ geochemistry with that of sediments oxidized by seawater in laboratory experiments. Cadmium and zinc pose the greatest hazard from dredging because their sulfides were highly reactive in seawater. However, their dissolved concentrations under oxic conditions were limited eventually by sorption to or co-precipitation with an iron (oxy)hydroxide. About 50% of the reacted CdS and 80% of the reacted ZnS were bonded to an oxide-substrate at the end of the 90-day oxidation experiment. Lead and chromium pose a minimal hazard from dredging because they are bonded to relatively insoluble carbonate, phosphate, phyllosilicate, or oxide minerals that are stable in seawater. These results point out the specific chemical behavior of individual metals in estuarine sediments, and the need for direct confirmation of metal speciation in order to constrain predictive models that realistically assess the fate of metals in urban harbors and coastal sediments

Lie algebraic treatment of linear and nonlinear beam dynamics

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