Coletta, Michela. Decandent Modernity: Civilization and “Latinidad” in Spanish America, 1880-1920. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2018. 190 pp.

Coletta, Michela. Decandent Modernity: Civilization and “ Latinidad ” in Spanish America, 1880-1920 . Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2018. 190 pp

An Instantiation-Based Approach for Solving Quantified Linear Arithmetic

This paper presents a framework to derive instantiation-based decision procedures for satisfiability of quantified formulas in first-order theories, including its correctness, implementation, and evaluation. Using this framework we derive decision procedures for linear real arithmetic (LRA) and linear integer arithmetic (LIA) formulas with one quantifier alternation. Our procedure can be integrated into the solving architecture used by typical SMT solvers. Experimental results on standardized benchmarks from model checking, static analysis, and synthesis show that our implementation of the procedure in the SMT solver CVC4 outperforms existing tools for quantified linear arithmetic

Embedding sustainability through systems thinking in practice: some experiences from the Open University

One initiative that has emerged during the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through the work of the Open University Systems group has been its postgraduate programme in Systems Thinking and Practice (STiP). Built on some forty years’ experience of systems teaching and research at the Open University (OU), this open learning, distance taught programme is designed to develop students’ abilities to tackle complex messy situations, to provide skills to think more holistically and to work more collaboratively to avoid systemic failures. This paper critically reviews the trajectory of this programme –its past, present and future. It discusses the STiP programme’s many boundaries with other programmes and across sectors. Challenges of epistemology, ethics and purpose are explored, in relation to education for sustainability. The programme’s many and varied teaching and learning processes are explicated. The pedagogy of the STiP programme is grounded in a diverse range of students’ experiences and needs that by no means all focus explicitly, or primarily, on sustainability or sustainable development. Many OU students study part-time alongside their other commitments, both work and community-based. STiP students are all interested in systems and learning. But what STiP is a part of for them varies considerably. Students come mainly from the UK and rest of Europe. Many of their interactions are online through several different fora. A diverse, active and critical OU STiP alumni community has developed, initiated by the early graduates of the programme. Academics responsible for the programme also participate in this community’s deliberations, at the invitation of student alumni. In this paper, the authors build on their various experiences of the STiP programme and re-explore its contexts and boundaries from an ESD point of view. They use some of the systems heuristics that they teach, to critically reflect on both what is being achieved through this programme in relation to education for sustainability and what they and some of their past students and associate lecturers think ought to be occurring in this respect as they go forward

LGBT MPs and Candidates in the British General Election May 2015: The State of Play

The UK has led the way in the inclusion of out LGBT politicians in Westminster. In this post, Andrew Reynolds presents the findings of a recent report which discusses LGBT candidates and politicians in the context of the upcoming election. You can see a full version of the report her

Transatlantic Sensationalism and the First Printing of Rubén Darío’s ‘A Roosevelt’.

Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío once posed the following question concerning the effects of U.S. domination of Cuba 15 years following the Spanish American War: “¿Qué espectáculo ofrece hoy día ese pueblo al espectador imparcial? El de una colonia disimulada donde a las aspiraciones de veinte años de lucha ha sucedido un oscuro servilismo al oro yanqui” (“Refutación” 111). Darío suggests that readers visually perceive the situation, that they trust “impartial spectators” in order to truly comprehend the U.S. domination in the region. Spectacles are events based on the optics of the consuming observers; viewers who, at their own leisure, decipher visual productions and performances. Unsurprisingly, Darío himself is the informed spectator and enlightens readers to the colonialist and financial burdens imposed on Cuba. The poet continually implemented this didactic maneuver to uncover the “spectacles” of U.S. domination following el desastre of 1898. The spectacle of the “lucha” of U.S.-Latin American relations, as construed by Darío, is no more evident than in the first printing of his seminal poem “A Roosevelt” in Madrid magazine Helios in 1904