Overview of Technology Use Against Illegal Fishing Using AIS Data

This presentation explores the issue of illegal fishing under the scope of Social Network Analysis. Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is a criminal industry estimated to account for over 10 billion dollars annually, and plays a large part in the excessive exploitation of fish stocks around the world. Research has been conducted on this matter, and researchers are now able to assess suspicious activity at sea by analyzing data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and cross-referencing that information with other sources, such as Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imaging. However, even with the success of these technologies culminating in vessel apprehensions by law enforcement agencies, the infrastructural impact this entails is dwarfed by the profits obtained from these activities. One of the factors contributing to the difficulty in end-point monitoring for marine products of illegal origins is the use of transshipment vessels. These collect products from both legal and illegal fishing vessels and transport it to ports with more lax regulations, where they can offload their untraceable cargo into mainstream markets and generate profits for the illegal organizations that coordinate these operations. This presentation proposes that we analyze the network of transshipment vessels in the ocean by visualizing it under the scope of Social Network Analysis. We create a social network graph from the vessels at sea, and define the connections between them according to encounters between these vessels. By visualizing the vessels in this manner, we can infer which are likely to be used for transshipment purposes. Determining these interactions between vessels could provide useful information to aid law enforcement efforts around the world in understanding the structure of the illegal organizations profiting off of these activities, and contribute to a data-driven approach in combating these operations worldwide

Presentment of Englishry at the Eyre of Kent, 1313

The development of the common law in medievalEnglandwas one of the most important forces driving the unification of the kingdom. Law was not always applied uniformly, however. In 1313 a panel of royal justices was sent to thecountyofKentto record crimes, collect fines, and see that justice had been served. The justices informed the people ofKentthat they would be allowed to keep their unique customs. One custom the people claimed was that they did not present the English ancestry of slain individuals, a practice which had a complex history and relationship with the murder fine. To validate this claim, the people ofKentmade an appeal to the past, to the Norman Conquest. Detailed analysis of the records from the eyre ofKent, and those of several other eyres throughout the kingdom, shows how presentment of Englishry evolved over time and space. Royal charters, legal treatises and other sources show how presentment of Englishry was defined and how it related to homicide. Ultimately, the appeal to the past was overridden in favor of recent documentation which proved to the justices that Englishry had been presented inKentat the last eyre and thus should be in the current eyre of 1313. This marks an important transition—the recent past gained the authority that the distant past once commanded

Easier Said than Done: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas in Policy and Practice

This is not to argue against core principles. There is, I think, a consensus on these: responsible and fair dealing, disclosure of personal conflicts, good faith, diligence, impartiality, confidentiality, and, certainly, honesty and integrity. I take these ethical requirements to be the sine qua non of professional mediation practice; the primary representations to be made prior to, and, indeed, to be adhered to in the course of mediation. SPIDR attempted to codify these values in its Ethical Standards of Professional Responsibility, which were adopted by the SPIDR Board in 1986 and confirmed in 1991. What we in mediation practice are debating are program goals and priorities on the one hand and critical process qualities on the other, including the fundamental quality of mediation as a process responsive to, and driven by, the parties involve

“Consolidating the New Position (1938-1940)”: A Study of the Tenure of Robert H. Jackson: March 5, 1938 to January 18, 1940

Robert H. Jackson’s service as Solicitor General has attained mythic status, prompting academics and commentators consistently to rate him as one of the greatest appointees to that office. In part, his stature reflects his extraordinary skill as an attorney. In some measure, Jackson’s legend draws upon the Supreme Court’s growing liberalism, which occurred upon his watch. As Peter Ubertaccio argues in his history of the office, Learned in the Law and Politics, the stature of the Solicitor General suffered during the early 1930s, when the court generally ruled against the government, then improved as the court sided with the Roosevelt Administration later in the decade. But it also flows from the perception that Jackson was an “apolitical” official. In The Tenth Justice, a study of the Solicitor General during the Reagan administration, Lincoln Caplan approvingly cites Archibald Cox’s ranking of Jackson as one of the three most- respected Solicitors General in the history of the office. Disagreeing with Reagan’s policies, Caplan argues that the Reagan Solicitors General, Edwin Meese and Charles Fried, corrupted the office, once a bastion of impartiality. Though political scientists like Rebecca Mae Salokar have questioned this alleged historical independence of the office, the sense that Jackson was a figure above political considerations nonetheless survives. This thesis examines Jackson’s thinking during his tenure as Solicitor General by evaluating his non-judicial writings and speeches during the time he held the office of Solicitor General, specifically examining Jackson’s thinking regarding the roles of the elected branches of the federal government and the judiciary. Though Jackson styled himself as a non-partisan, professional Solicitor General, he was actually an ardent supporter of the New Deal constitutional revolution who played a significant role in “consolidating the new position.” Jackson assumed the office on March 5, 1938, nearly one full year after the Supreme Court of the United States ceased barring progressive and New Deal legislation. This change in constitutional interpretation gave Jackson and the Roosevelt Administration a Court more sympathetic to their views, allowing Jackson to explore the new limits of governmental power. Jackson gave a number of political speeches while serving as Solicitor General, was active in Democratic Party campaigns, and briefly contemplated running for governor of New York. When he did engage the politics of his day, he discussed judicial restraint and anti-trust issues as well as the general themes of Democratic Party politics. Jackson was a politically active Solicitor General. In the area of the intersection of electoral politics and the law, Jackson was a transitional figure. He formed a transition from lawyer-politicians like William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, and Hugo Black, and a later model of non-political legal and judicial service as a background for nomination to the Court. He saw the office of Solicitor General as incompatible with active participation in electoral politics. He later wrote that his enjoyment of the office was due to the insulation from the day to day political decisions in the Department of Justice and the administration as a whole. During his tenure as Solicitor General, Robert H. Jackson’s primary concern regarded the Supreme Court’s power to nullify acts of Congress or the states, limiting the ability of the democratically elected branches of government to deal with the crisis of the Depression. He saw this not just as a matter of efficiency of government but also as a threat to a democratic society, placed at risk for failure when it did not address fundamental social problems brought on by the Depression. Jackson’s pragmatic outlook and his embrace of judicial restraint inclined him to argue that the Court should uphold experimental economic legislation. Solicitor General Jackson was not a legal theorist but rather a legal craftsman who used the law as a tool to accomplish the goals of his client, the New Deal administration. He did not explore ideas in legal theory as they related to his office. Jackson saw classical legal thought as a theoretical construct that did not work well in the Depression leading him to be critical of those on the bench who were averse to experimentation in government. Jackson saw himself as one of those legal actors for whom practical consequences were the object to their work. Jackson, during his service as Solicitor General, thought and acted in concert with the philosophy put forth by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in The Common Law, that “the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience.” Jackson expanded this philosophy from the Common Law to Constitutional Law

The benefits of examining multicultural literature with a critical lens in elementary school

The purpose of this study was to analyze the ways second grade students respond to multicultural literature when using a critical literacy approach. Three different multicultural text were chosen that contained familiar and unfamiliar social and cultural topics for students to discuss in a literature circle setting. Their conversation, questions, and connections to the literature were studied and analyzed for trends and evidence of change in students\u27 beliefs and cultural and social competence

EVALUATION OF MOBILE DEVICE INDOOR MAPS FOR ORIENTATION TASKS

This research investigates subjective user preference for using Floor Plans and Schematic Maps in an indoor environment, and how users locate and orient themselves when using these representations. We sought to verify the efficiency of these two kinds of digital maps and evaluate which elements found in physical environments and which elements found in the representations influence the user spatial orientation process. Users answered questions and performed orientation tasks which indicated their level of familiarity with the area being studied, their understanding of the symbology used, and their identification of Points of Interest (POI) in the environment. The initial results indicated a preference for the Schematic Map, because users thought that the symbology used on the map adopted was easy to understand

LANDMARKS EVALUATION WITH USE OF QR-CODE FOR POSITIONING INDOOR ENVIRONMENT

People tend to lose their sense of direction in closed environments and the role of indoor maps is to assist the user in navigating in these spaces, through understanding the environment, identifying reference points or positioning. Among the several forms of achieving positioning in indoor environments, this research used the method based on image recognition through identification of QR-Code labels, because of their low cost, easy implementation, and because their accuracy is not affected by the environment. As such, this article presents the use of QR-Code markers affixed to possible reference points to determine user positioning in an indoor environment using a mobile device. This study seeks to discover which are the most appropriate sites for placing QR-Codes in an environment, by evaluating what reference points and what type thereof are most used in indoor environments. This study is therefore based on the hypothesis that if initial positioning is obtained only through reference points this is sufficient for users to orient themselves. Through analysis of the results obtained from navigation tasks done by users we were able to obtain data regarding elements most cited as references. The results show that people orient themselves in distinct ways in the same environment and use as their main reference points structural elements of the environment such as stairways, lifts, and decision-making points; in general structural reference points were those most used to support orientation and navigation

Evaluation of subjective preferences regarding indoor maps: comparison of schematic maps and floor plans

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.In this study, we investigate subjective preferences regarding floor plans and schematic maps in the use of a map in an indoor environment. To achieve this, we performed a qualitative experiment with a random user sample; the survey was carried out remotely. The survey was conducted in Portuguese and English, and users were asked to answer questions, using two different maps:a floor plan and a schematic map. In the sequence, users were asked questions about their preferences regarding map use in an indoor environment. Users also answered questions about the positive and negative aspects of using a schematic map in an indoor environment. The initial results do not indicate a preference for one kind of map, but show that users found the symbology adopted in the schematic map easier to understand