Multi-Culturalism in Ireland: Examining the Context of and Debates Surrounding the Citizenship Referendum

In this paper, I hope to explore Irish reactions to multi-culturalism through the highly controversial citizenship referendum. This referendum, through which the twenty-seventh amendment to the Irish Constitution will be made, is fundamentally changing Ireland’s citizenship policy from one of jus soli and jus sanguinis to one of just jus sanguinis. This change has been made amid current inflows of immigrants, many of whom are racially distinct and come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. The framing question for this paper is: Like other European countries, Ireland is making the transition from a racially homogenous society to a more heterogenous one. In light of this recent shift, how are Irish societal views on multi-culturalism reflected in the debates about citizenship in Ireland and the implications of the Citizenship Referendum? It is difficult to make a generalizations and conclusions based one facet of Irish multi-culturalism, however based on my research I have provided some insight into Irish society and how it is dealing with its new found racial and cultural diversity. In this paper, I have tried to capture some of the current dialogue surrounding multi-culturalism, citizenship, immigration, Irish identity and racism

Isolating dissent, punishing the masses: siege warfare as counter-insurgency

In Isolating Dissent, Punishing the Masses: Siege Warfare as Counter-Insurgency, Will Todman analyses the intricate relationship between the nature of the Syrian regime and the military tactics it opted to use to supress those opposed to it, both during the insurgency phase, and the subsequent civil war. Sieges were effective because they allowed the regime to make optimal use of its military advantage. Once you have a segment of the population in a restricted area, you not only control food and medical supplies, but you can also unleash an indiscriminate bombardment campaign, as the regime indeed did. Todman provides a historic context to the use of these tactics by the Syrian regime (i.e. Hama), and addresses the important question of whether or not siege warfare helped the regime surive.Publisher PD

India, China, and the headwaters of Asia: the importance of water along India’s northern border

With tensions between India and China growing along India’s northern border, Mike Todman (Lancaster University) explains how water scarcity, driven by climate change, will increasingly intersect with and exacerbate existing fissures between the two regional superpowers, ultimately becoming the primary strategic concern in the two countries’ fractious relationship

The representation of time in data warehouses

This thesis researches the problems concerning the specification and implementation of the temporal requirements in data warehouses. The thesis focuses on two areas, firstly, the methods for identifying and capturing the business information needs and associated temporal requirements at the conceptual level and; secondly, methods for classifying and implementing the requirements at the logical level using the relational model. At the conceptual level, eight candidate methodologies were investigated to examine their suitability for the creation of data models that are appropriate for a data warehouse. The methods were evaluated to assess their representation of time, their ability to reflect the dimensional nature of data warehouse models and their simplicity of use. The research found that none of the methods under review fully satisfied the criteria. At the logical level, the research concluded that the methods widely used in current practice result in data structures that are either incapable of answering some very basic questions involving history or that return inaccurate results. Specific proposals are made in three areas. Firstly, a new conceptual model is described that is designed to capture the information requirements for dimensional models and has full support for time. Secondly, a new approach at the logical level is proposed. It provides the data structures that enable the requirements captured in the conceptual model to be implemented, thus enabling the historical questions to be answered simply and accurately. Thirdly, a set of rules is developed to help minimise the inaccuracy caused by time. A guide has been produced that provides practitioners with the tools and instructions on how to implement data warehouses using the methods developed in the thesis

Induced Boredom Suppresses the Recall of Positively Valenced Information: A Preliminary Study

The mood-congruence memory (MCM) effect in the case of depressed mood is typically evidenced by enhanced recall of negatively valenced information and/or a corresponding reduction in the recall of positive information. However, the impact of the related affect of boredom on memory has been overlooked. A sample of undergraduate and graduate students (n = 28) were asked to either read an interesting story (Low Boredom condition) or complete a tedious vowel-counting task (High Boredom condition) after studying a list of neutral, negative, and positive words. Following the experimental manipulation, the participants were asked to recall as many words from the list as they could remember. The participants in the low boredom (LB) group reported (i.e., recalled words + misremembered words) significantly more positive words than participants in the high boredom (HB) condition. However, no differences were found between groups in terms of the total number words reported, total number of positive, neutral or negative words recalled, or the overall accuracy of recall. Boredom appears to inhibit the reporting and recall of positively valenced information, but seems to have less influence on the recall and reporting of emotionally negative information than what is typically reported in studies with depressed mood. This finding is consistent with a conception of boredom as an affect state that is more closely tied to the perceived depletion of potential positive reinforcement (e.g., novelty, enjoyment, meaningfulness) than the depletion of negative reinforcement (e.g., escape from suffering, loss, failure). Larger implications of the findings are discussed

The First World War Centenary in the UK: ‘A Truly National Commemoration’?

Prime Minister David Cameron has called for ‘a truly national commemoration of the First World War’. This article shows this to be problematic, politicised and contested. This is in part due to the elision of English and British histories. Scottish, Welsh and Irish responses are noted, and the role and commemorations of ‘our friends in the Commonwealth’. There are tensions around interpretations of empire and race. There has been a failure to appreciate that the debates about the legacies of the First World War are deeply entangled with those of colonialism

Empathy levels of American and Bahamian Special Education graduate students and students in other majors

This study investigated the empathy of Special Education graduate students in the USA and the Bahamas, and of Counseling and Organizational Learning students. About 180 students were administered the Interpersonal Reactivity Index to assess: fantasy, perspective taking, empathetic concern, and personal distress. Significant differences existed by major and country

Transparent In-Circuit Assertions for FPGAs

Commonly used in software design, assertions are statements placed into a design to ensure that its behaviour matches that expected by a designer. Although assertions apply equally to hardware design, they are typically supported only for logic simulation, and discarded prior to physical implementation. We propose a new HDL-agnostic language for describing latency-insensitive assertions and novel methods to add such assertions transparently to an already placed-and-routed circuit without affecting the existing design. We also describe how this language and associated methods can be used to implement semi-transparent exception handling. The key to our work is that by treating hardware assertions and exceptions as being oblivious or less sensitive to latency, assertion logic need only use spare FPGA resources. We use network-flow techniques to route necessary signals to assertions via spare flip-flops, eliminating any performance degradation, even on large designs (92% of slices in one test). Experimental evaluation shows zero impact on critical-path delay, even on large benchmarks operating above 200MHz, at the cost of a small power penalty