From business 'and' human rights to human rights 'in' business

In 2011, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which set out the norm of ‘corporate responsibility to respect human rights’. This interpretive qualitative study explores the meaning-making processes of human rights and business responsibility as articulated in governmental and corporate policy documents and by a variety of staff in the hospitality sector in the United Kingdom (UK). It aims to contribute to the literature on business and human rights by studying the context-specific meaning-making and implementation of human rights responsibility principles within hospitality organisations in the UK. I conducted interviews with people working in various positions in hospitality businesses (London and Oxford), investigated the policy documents of nine leading international hotel groups and examined the policy statements of the UK Government. I used framing analysis to explore and explain how human rights and business responsibility policies and ideas are understood, interpreted and articulated across these communities of meaning. Emphasising the socio-political nature of organisations, I identified significant differences and some overlaps between the expectations and experiences of these actors. Human rights policies and language are little known or used by work-floor participants and managers, and, conversely, their local knowledge of harms and ethical practice do not seem reflected in the more generic, legally responsive, public and overseas-oriented policies of the international hotel groups and the UK Government. While all actors use the language and/or ideas of human rights as means to craft and perform identities, the meanings of, knowledge about and ability to articulate human rights all depend on their social and organisational positionalities and political objectives. To overcome critical barriers in the development of human rights practice and consciousness in business, I propose a paradigm shift to human rights in business. This enhances a more participatory and contextual approach to human rights due diligence which is inclusive of and more sensitive to local knowledge of human rights

A Flexible Privacy-preserving Framework for Singular Value Decomposition under Internet of Things Environment

The singular value decomposition (SVD) is a widely used matrix factorization tool which underlies plenty of useful applications, e.g. recommendation system, abnormal detection and data compression. Under the environment of emerging Internet of Things (IoT), there would be an increasing demand for data analysis to better human's lives and create new economic growth points. Moreover, due to the large scope of IoT, most of the data analysis work should be done in the network edge, i.e. handled by fog computing. However, the devices which provide fog computing may not be trustable while the data privacy is often the significant concern of the IoT application users. Thus, when performing SVD for data analysis purpose, the privacy of user data should be preserved. Based on the above reasons, in this paper, we propose a privacy-preserving fog computing framework for SVD computation. The security and performance analysis shows the practicability of the proposed framework. Furthermore, since different applications may utilize the result of SVD operation in different ways, three applications with different objectives are introduced to show how the framework could flexibly achieve the purposes of different applications, which indicates the flexibility of the design.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figure

Implications of movement for species distribution models - rethinking environmental data tools

Movement is considered an essential process in shaping the distributions of species. Nevertheless, most species distribution models (SDMs) still focus solely on environment-species relationships to predict the occurrence of species. Furthermore, the currently used indirect estimates of movement allow to assess habitat accessibility, but do not provide an accurate description of movement. Better proxies of movement are needed to assess the dispersal potential of individual species and to gain a more practical insight in the interconnectivity of communities. Telemetry techniques are rapidly evolving and highly capable to provide explicit descriptions of movement, but their usefulness for SDMs will mainly depend on the ability of these models to deal with hitherto unconsidered ecological processes. More specifically, the integration of movement is likely to affect the environmental data requirements as the connection between environmental and biological data is crucial to provide reliable results. Mobility implies the occupancy of a continuum of space, hence an adequate representation of both geographical and environmental space is paramount to study mobile species distributions. In this context, environmental models, remote sensing techniques and animal-borne environmental sensors are discussed as potential techniques to obtain suitable environmental data. In order to provide an in-depth review of the aforementioned methods, we have chosen to use the modelling of fish distributions as a case study. The high mobility of fish and the often highly variable nature of the aquatic environment generally complicate model development, making it an adequate subject for research. Furthermore, insight into the distribution of fish is of great interest for fish stock assessments and water management worldwide, underlining its practical relevance

Using formal concept analysis to detect and monitor organised crime

This paper describes some possible uses of Formal Concept Analysis in the detection and monitoring of Organised Crime. After describing FCA and its mathematical basis, the paper suggests, with some simple examples, ways in which FCA and some of its related disciplines can be applied to this problem domain. In particular, the paper proposes FCA-based approaches for finding multiple instances of an activity associated with Organised Crime, finding dependencies between Organised Crime attributes, and finding new indicators of Organised Crime from the analysis of existing data. The paper concludes by suggesting that these approaches will culminate in the creation and implementation of an Organised Crime ‘threat score card’, as part of an overall environmental scanning system that is being developed by the new European ePOOLICE projec

From kinetic-structure analysis to engineering crystalline fiber networks in soft materials

10.1039/c2cp43747cPhysical Chemistry Chemical Physics1593313-3319PPCP

Proton-counting radiography for proton therapy: a proof of principle using CMOS APS technology

Despite the early recognition of the potential of proton imaging to assist proton therapy (Cormack 1963 J. Appl. Phys. 34 2722), the modality is still removed from clinical practice, with various approaches in development. For proton-counting radiography applications such as computed tomography (CT), the water-equivalent-path-length that each proton has travelled through an imaged object must be inferred. Typically, scintillator-based technology has been used in various energy/range telescope designs. Here we propose a very different alternative of using radiation-hard CMOS active pixel sensor technology. The ability of such a sensor to resolve the passage of individual protons in a therapy beam has not been previously shown. Here, such capability is demonstrated using a 36 MeV cyclotron beam (University of Birmingham Cyclotron, Birmingham, UK) and a 200 MeV clinical radiotherapy beam (iThemba LABS, Cape Town, SA). The feasibility of tracking individual protons through multiple CMOS layers is also demonstrated using a two-layer stack of sensors. The chief advantages of this solution are the spatial discrimination of events intrinsic to pixelated sensors, combined with the potential provision of information on both the range and residual energy of a proton. The challenges in developing a practical system are discussed

The application of predictive modelling for determining bio-environmental factors affecting the distribution of blackflies (Diptera: Simuliidae) in the Gilgel Gibe watershed in Southwest Ethiopia

Blackflies are important macroinvertebrate groups from a public health as well as ecological point of view. Determining the biological and environmental factors favouring or inhibiting the existence of blackflies could facilitate biomonitoring of rivers as well as control of disease vectors. The combined use of different predictive modelling techniques is known to improve identification of presence/absence and abundance of taxa in a given habitat. This approach enables better identification of the suitable habitat conditions or environmental constraints of a given taxon. Simuliidae larvae are important biological indicators as they are abundant in tropical aquatic ecosystems. Some of the blackfly groups are also important disease vectors in poor tropical countries. Our investigations aim to establish a combination of models able to identify the environmental factors and macroinvertebrate organisms that are favourable or inhibiting blackfly larvae existence in aquatic ecosystems. The models developed using macroinvertebrate predictors showed better performance than those based on environmental predictors. The identified environmental and macroinvertebrate parameters can be used to determine the distribution of blackflies, which in turn can help control river blindness in endemic tropical places. Through a combination of modelling techniques, a reliable method has been developed that explains environmental and biological relationships with the target organism, and, thus, can serve as a decision support tool for ecological management strategies