The ubiquity of state fragility : fault lines in the categorisation and conceptualisation of failed and fragile states

In the last three decades, the categories of fragile and failed states have gained significant importance in the fields of law, development, political science and international relations. The wider discourse plays a key role in guiding the policies of international community and multilateral institutions and has also led to the emergence of a plethora of indices and rankings to measure and classify state fragility. A critical and theoretical analysis of these matrices brings to light three crucial aspects that the current study takes as its departure point. First, the formulas and conceptual paradigms show that fragility of states is far more ubiquitous than is generally recognised, and that the so-called successful and stable states are a historical, political and geographical anomaly. Second, in the absence of an agreed definition of a successful state or even that of a failed or fragile state, the indicators generally rely on negative definitions to delineate the failed and fragile state. They generally suggest that their reading is built on a Weberian ideal–typical state, which takes the idea of monopoly over legitimate violence as its starting point. The third and final point suggests that the indicators and rankings, misconstruing the Weberian ideal–typical state, actually end up comparing fragile states against an ideal–mythical state. The article argues that this notional state is not only ahistorical and apolitical, but it also carries the same undertones that have been the hallmark of theories of linear development, colonialism and imperialism

Metamorphosis of the ideals and the actuals : blasphemy laws in Pakistan and the transplantation of justice in British India

While a genealogical exploration of the dichotomy between the real (legal) and the Ideal (justice) may provide us with an understanding of the historical and ideological relationship(s) between the two, a focus on this binary alone acts to conceal the multiplicities inherent in each of these terms. Just as there exist multiple manifestations of legalities/realities, these manifestations correspond to diverse notions of the ideal and justice. And these realities and ideals overlap and conflict, and affect each other’s creation, transformation or transplantation. A historical glance at Pakistan’s current Blasphemy Laws provides us with an insight on how the real/legal emerging from a particular notion of the ideal/justice was mediated and transplanted through Colonialism and became the real/legal manifestation of a different kind in a different locality

Conceptualising success and failure for social movements

The paper discusses some of the most significant conceptions of success and failure present in the social movement literature, and highlights the gaps present in these theories. Through a seven-pronged critique, the paper stresses that the prevalent conceptions of movement success or failure are inherently unable to grasp the overall consequences and essence of a social struggle. Moreover, it is argued here that the problem lies not just in these conceptions, but also the concept of success or failure, because in its application to an entity as dynamic and complex as a struggle, it is unable to transcend beyond its black-and-white confines. It trivialises the concept of failure, which is an opportunity for learning from experiences, a chance for error correction and a prospect to rise higher than ever before

Path Planning for Robot and Pedestrian Simulations

The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part presents a new proposed method for solving the path planning problem to find an optimal collision-free path between the starting and the goal points in a static environment. Initially, the grid model of the robot's working environment is constructed. Next, each grid cell's potential value in the working environment is calculated based on the proposed potential function. This function guides the robot to move toward the desired goal location, it has the lowest value at the goal location, and the value increase as the robot moves further away. Next, a new method, called Boundary Node Method (BNM), is proposed to find the initial feasible path. In this method, the robot is simulated by a nine-node quadrilateral element, where the centroid node represents the robot's position. The robot moves in the working environment toward the goal point with eight-boundary nodes based on the boundary nodes' characteristics. In the BNM method, the initial feasible path is generated from the sequence of the waypoints that the robot has to traverse as it moves toward the goal point without colliding with obstacles. The BNM method can generate the path safely and efficiently. However, the path is not optimal in terms of the total path length. An additional method, called Path Enhancement Method (PEM), is proposed to construct an optimal or near-optimal collision-free path. The generated path obtained by BNM and PEM may contain sharp turns. Therefore, the cubic spline interpolation is used to create a continuous smooth path that connects the starting point to the goal point. The performance of the proposed method is compared with the other path planning methods in terms of path length and computational time. Moreover, the multi-goal path planning problem is investigated to find the shortest collision-free path connecting a given set of goal points in the robot working environment. Furthermore, to verify the performance of the proposed method, several experimental tests have been performed on the e-puck robot with different obstacle configurations and various positions of goal points. The experimental results showed that the proposed method could construct the shortest collision-free path and direct the real physical robot to the final destination point. At the end of the first part of the thesis, we investigate the multi-goal path planning problem for the multi-robot system such that several robots reach each goal. In the second part of this thesis, we proposed a new method for simulating pedestrian crowd movement in a virtual environment. The first part of this thesis concerning the generation of the shortest collision-free path is used. In this method, we assumed that the crowd consists of multiple groups with a different number and various types of pedestrians. In this scenario, each group's intention is different for visiting several goal points with varying sequences of the visit. The proposed method uses the multi-group microscopic model to generate a real-time trajectory for each pedestrian navigating in the pedestrianized area of the virtual environment. Additionally, an agent-based model is introduced to simulate pedestrian' behaviours. Based on the proposed method, every single pedestrian in each group can continuously adjust their attributes, such as position, velocity, etc. Moreover, pedestrians optimize their path independently toward the desired goal points while avoiding obstacles and other pedestrians in the scene. At the end of this part of the thesis, a statistical analysis is carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method for simulating the crowd movement in the virtual environment. The proposed method implemented for several simulation scenarios under a variety of conditions for a wide range of different parameters. The results showed that the proposed method is capable of describing pedestrian' behaviours in the virtual environment

Covid-19 and the continuity of the familiar

The outbreak of Covid-19 is billed as a ‘once in a century event’. It has appeared as the prophesised rupture in our social, economic and political fabric of the world, with the recognition that what follows may not resemble what humanity has become used to. It is posed as a discontinuity in the normality of everyday life; a panic-inducing pandemic that threatens our collective existence across political borders and socio-economic and geographical locations. But the genetic novelty of the virus is one thing; there is nothing novel in how we have individually, collectively, politically or culturally responded to this challenge. Covid-19 is a strong question, borrowing from Boaventura De Sousa Santos, which not only demands an answer but also probes the very possibility of our epistemic frames to come up with a novel answer at all. And to date, we have been unable to step out of the frames that act as ideological and political blinkers. To reiterate, there is nothing novel in our response to the virus as we have repeated, and as we were bound to repeat, the same tropes and trends that were there in our limited arsenal. Covid-19 then is more of an acceleration than a rupture – it is forcing us to race towards the destination which we have been inching towards in the last few decades

Determinants of Profitability in Banking Sector: An Evidence from Pakistan

This research explores the association of bank specific characteristics and its profitability. Profitability of bank relates to external and internal factors i.e. size, capital, loan and deposit generally. The study is mainly concerned with the internal factors which have an effect on the profitability of the banks in Pakistan. 34 Banks including 21 Local Private Banks, 9 Public Sector Commercial Banks, 4 Foreign Banks and 4 Specialized Banks operate their services in Pakistan. Data has been taken of overall banking industry from the website of the Central Bank, the State Bank Pakistan (SBP) for the period 2006-2016. Ordinary Least Square (OLS) method has been used with the help of E-View statistical software. Spread Ratio (SR) and Net Interest Margin (NIM) are considered for indicators of profitability (Dependent Variables) whereas Size, Capital, Loan and Deposit are used as explanatory variables. The result reveals that size of asset has negative and significant effects on profitability, the banks loans has positive impact on bank performance, capital associates positively with NIM but shows adverse effects on SR and Deposit does not exhibit any prominent influence on profitability of banks in Pakistan

Human rights as a contested terrain : international human rights law

The key to understanding human rights law critically and contextually lies, counterintuitively, outside the confines of the legal paradigm itself. That which we recognise as human rights law in the conventional sense of the term is primarily the ordered and structured layer, readily visible but covering a multitude of conceptual issues, ideological struggles, political interests, philosophical debates and histories of control and resistance. Although the contestation never really diminishes from the practice of human rights law itself, it is nonetheless difficult to understand the discourse of human rights in depth unless we recognise that human rights law is born of and situated in a ‘terrain of contestation’. Recognising human rights as a contested terrain takes us beyond the identification of legal rights and a discussion on their sources and enforcement; rather, we are compelled to equally acknowledge that human rights discourse is chequered with clashes between notions of humanity and in/sub-humanity; between ideas of duties and rights, entitlements and obligations; it is a space where subjectivities of various kinds have been and are created, and destroyed, made dominant or hidden away across the abyssal divide. This serves as the main insight that the current introductory chapter seeks to convey, and we will return to this point again later in the course of the discussion. In order to provide a critical overview of the field, the text that follows is divided into three subsections: the first will provide a brief overview of what is meant by human rights law; the second section will return to the idea of contestation, and the final section will highlight some other key conceptual issues affecting human rights, which will then be followed by a conclusion

Randomized controlled trial of interferon gamma versus amantadine in combination with interferon alpha and ribavirin for hepatitis C genotype 3 non-responders and relapsers

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of triple combination regimens comprising of interferon alpha-2b (IFN-alpha) and ribavirin plus either IFN-gamma or amantadine in genotype 3 patients, responders or relapsers to interferon plus ribavirin combination. METHODS: Patients were randomized to receive IFN-alpha 3MU thrice a week, ribavirin 800-1200 mg per day with either IFN-gamma 2 MU thrice a week or amantadine 100 mg twice daily. Treatment was continued for 48 weeks in patients showing complete or partial (2 log reduction) early virological response (EVR) at 12 weeks and negative PCR at 24 weeks. RESULTS: Total enrollments were 44; 25 were previously non-responders out of them 12 were in the IFN-gamma arm. Nineteen were relapsers, out of them 10 received IFN-Gamma. Overall EVR with triple regimens was 61.4% (27/44). The EVR for IFN-gamma arm was 72.7% (16/22) and for amantadine arm 50% (11/22) (p=0.089). Sustained virological response (SVR) was 50% (11/22) in the gamma arm and 27.3% (6/22) in the amantadine arm (p=0.122). This figure was 60% (6/10) and 44% (5/9) for relapsers (p=0.845), and 41.6% (5/12) and 7.7% (1/13) for non-responders (p = 0.046).Treatment was well tolerated by most of the patients in both arms. CONCLUSIONS: About one third of patients responded to the triple regimens. However IFN-gamma was a better option. Its combination with pegylated interferon and ribavirin needs further evaluation. (Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT00538811)

Atoms and Di-Atoms in Intense Laser Fields.

A series of experimental studies was carried out on diatomic molecules to understand how they interact with intense laser fields. These studies have mainly consisted of multiple photon excitation, ionization and dissociation of hydrogen, oxygen, and chlorine molecules using time of flight electron and ion spectroscopy. I took advantage of the similarities and differences in the molecular structure of these molecules in order to investigate whether different molecules interact differently with the applied fields. Clear experimental evidence of molecular Bond Softening as an intensity dependent variation in the vibrational distribution of molecular ions is being reported for the first time in H\sb2 and D\sb2. The competition between different channels in the above threshold dissociation of molecules had been predicted recently using the dressed molecular states model. My results on these branching ratios are qualitatively consistent with the theoretical predictions. The study on oxygen concentrated mainly on the anomalous intensity dependence of the final state vibrational distribution. I have used a model similar to Smith\u27s model to explain the role intermediate states play in the ionization of oxygen. In a series of arguments, I have shown that this anomalous behavior can be explained as a pure intermediate state interplay in the first approximation. Finally, in the photoelectron spectroscopy of chlorine, I have observed the positive Ponderomotive shifts known for a long time but never directly observed before. Also observed in the spectra is a very low order above threshold ionization process of highly excited atoms. These observations in chlorine suggest an unexplored mechanism of exposing atoms to intense fields without the risk of their ionization in the rising part of the laser pulses

Footwear-integrated force sensing resistor sensors: A machine learning approach for categorizing lower limb disorders

Lower limb disorders are a substantial contributor to both disability and lower standards of life. The prevalent disorders affecting the lower limbs include osteoarthritis of the knee, hip, and ankle. The present study focuses on the use of footwear that incorporates force-sensing resistor sensors to classify lower limb disorders affecting the knee, hip, and ankle joints. The research collected data from a sample of 117 participants who wore footwear integrated with force-sensing resistor sensors while walking on a predetermined walkway of 9 meters. Extensive preprocessing and feature extraction techniques were applied to form a structured dataset. Several machine learning classifiers were trained and evaluated. According to the findings, the Random Forest model exhibited the highest level of performance on the balanced dataset with an accuracy rate of 96%, while the Decision Tree model achieved an accuracy rate of 91%. The accuracy scores of the Logistic Regression, Gaussian Naive Bayes, and Long Short-Term Memory models were comparatively lower. K-fold cross-validation was also performed to evaluate the models’ performance. The results indicate that the integration of force-sensing resistor sensors into footwear, along with the use of machine learning techniques, can accurately categorize lower limb disorders. This offers valuable information for developing customized interventions and treatment plans