The quality of elections in African small island developing states

Abstract: There are six African small island developing states: the Union of the Comoros; the Republic of Guinea‐Bissau; the Republic of Cabo Verde; the Republic of Mauritius; the Seychelles and the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe. Apart from Mauritius, the other five states are relatively new to democracy with several of these states only transitioning from one party states to multi‐party states in the early 1990s. International and domestic observers declared the last round of elections in all ASIDS free and fair, but this reveals little of the quality of elections in these small island developing states. All six states are members of the African Union (AU) and are therefore obliged to adhere to its election principles. Therefore, this article examines the quality of elections in the ASIDS by analysing the extent to which they are free and fair using the principles of the AU’s Declaration on the Principles Governing Democratic Elections in Africa. Findings reveal that despite continued logistical and other problems that persist, the election process is generally well managed and violence relatively minimal, a remarkable achievement given the volatile political histories in all save one of these small island states. Challenges appear to centre on continued inter‐institutional instability in some cases, failure to adhere to constitutional amendments in others, some instances of continued harassment and a lack of financial and technical resources, all of which have to some extent impacted electoral qualit

Has Russia Killed Article 2(4)? Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Prohibition of the Use of Force in the Conduct of International Affairs

The February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia represents an unambiguous breach of the United Nations Charter´s prohibition of the use of force. The significance of the prohibition of the use of force between States cannot be overstated and is recognised in practice and legal doctrine as being “one of the core values of the international community”. However, argument has been made that the United Nations Charter´s rules prohibiting the use of force are no longer relevant to the conduct of international affairs, especially involving major powers. It could be argued that by their conduct States have repudiated the Charter´s use of force rules on so many occasions so as to make them wholly ineffective. One could see Russia´s invasion of Ukraine as the latest sorry example of this. This Article evaluates the question of whether the United Nations Charter´s rules prohibiting the use of force are effective and relevant to the conduct of international affairs

Promoting Academic Integrity Through Programme Focused Assessment

This presentation was delivered as part of a series on unintentional academic impropriety organised by HECA\u27s HAQEF series as part of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning\u27s Seminar Series 2021/22. The recording can be viewed at: https://vimeo.com/653752556. The full series can be viewed at: https://heca.ie/heca-professional-development/the-challenge-of-unintentional-academic-impropriety-in-a-global-he-world/.https://arc.cct.ie/fac_presentations/1007/thumbnail.jp

Engineering: Cleaning Water, Producing Food, Building Shelters

Human survival requires that we drink water, eat food, breath sufficiently oxygenated air, and enjoy a safe shelter. Historically, shelter was perhaps the most important since, as hunter-gathers, wild animals, fish, and uncultivated plants provided the food sources while rivers, streams, lakes, and surface pools supplied the drinking water. Shelter protected against the vagaries of weather, climate, and possible animal attacks, including other humans. In the provision of these needs, artisans, skilled trades, technicians, and engineers have played pivotal roles since erect human beings first populated the Earth. In a global survey seven out of ten people think engineers’ societal contributions are undervalued and largely unrecognized. However, the same people also believe engineering’s first priority is to solve the world’s problems by 2035, including improving renewable energy and healthcare, and they are equally expectant that as the global population continues to increase, water, food, and housing scarcities can be addressed by engineering. These challenging responsibilities, long familiar to engineering undertakings, invariably encountered political, cultural, geographical, and economic obstacles in the pursuit of providing societies with acceptable, sustainable, and affordable solutions. In this paper, the challenges faced, both in the past and now, by engineering with regard to improving drinking water quality, increasing food quantity and quantity, and providing adequate housing are discussed along with some observations on how and why some of the present obstacles may be exacerbated in the futur

Open-Hearted Flesh: Burn Injuries and Interpretation

This paper aims to describe the interpretive nature of burn care nursing using an example from the first author’s practice. It asserts how burn injuries are uniquely situated from a hermeneutic perspective as an embodied change that alters the way a burn injured person lives in the world. This paper was written for an assignment in a hermeneutic methodology class, focused on the role of the burns nurse, and further expanded in relation to the hermeneutic significance of burn injuries. It demonstrates the fit of hermeneutics as a way of understanding nursing practice and burn injuries, and serves as a support to the use of hermeneutics in the authors' Master of Nursing thesis project exploring the experiences of burn survivors.             Keywords: nursing, burns, hermeneutics, embodimen

Effective Compiler Error Message Enhancement for Novice Programming Students

Programming is an essential skill that all computing students must master. However programming can be difficult to learn. Compiler error messages are crucial for correcting errors, but are often difficult to understand and pose a barrier to progress for many novices. High frequencies of errors, particularly repeated errors, have been shown to be indicators of students who are struggling with learning to program. This study involves a custom IDE that enhances Java compiler error messages, intended to be more useful to novices than those supplied by the compiler. The effectiveness of this approach was tested in an empirical control/intervention study of approximately 200 students generating almost 50,000 errors. The design allows for direct comparisons between enhanced and non-enhanced error messages. Results show that the intervention group experienced reductions in the number of overall errors, errors per student, and several repeated error metrics. This work is important for two reasons. First, the effects of error message enhancement have been recently debated in the literature. This study provides substantial evidence that it can be effective. Second, these results should be generalizable at least in part, to other programming languages, students and institutions, as we show that the control group of this study is comparable to several others using Java and other languages

Transforming the news value chain in the social era: a technical perspective

Purpose: This paper develops a conceptual framework to unde rstand the influence that the social era is having on the value chain of the local news industry. We theoretically advance value chain theory by firstly, considering the influence of community type and age on consumption and secondly exploring the role that consumers can play in value adding activities. Our theoretical contribution lies in moving from a transactional approach towards consumer relationships in the value chain towards managing consumers as a source of relational value (e.g. co-creation and integrated perspectives). Design: The conceptual framework is theoretically positioned in relation to community and digital community practices in the social era. A series of research questions are presented, then these questions are explored drawing on empirical data from the PEW database. We then advance the framework further to consider news firm strategy towards its consumers. 15 in-depth executive interviews were conducted with local news organizations in the Manchester area of the UK. Findings: We illustrate that different types of communities (merging cohorts and locations) are influencing levels of technological and social connectivity within the value chain. We also find that the news industry is experimenting with reconfiguring its consumer relations from a purely transactional to a co-created and participatory value added activity in the social era. In terms of its policy impact our findings show that the whole strategic value chain ideology of the news industry needs to change radically; away from its largely transactional (and lack of trust) approach in the ability of consumers to create value in the supply chain (other than to buy a product) and, move towards much greater consumer involvement and participation in value chain processes (creation, production and distribution of news products and services). Originality/value: The change associated with social media and connec tivity is changing the way that different community types and consumer groups are now consuming and participating in news content creation. Unlike previous studies we show that there is variance and complexity in the levels of consumer participation by community type/age group. Using the PEW data we contribute to knowledge on the value creation strategy of news firms in the social era, by identifying how communicative, social and communicative logics influence value and co-creation activities in the local news supply chain. Through our interviews we advance value co-creation theory from its strategic and marketing origins to operational and supply chain implementation

FirstLight: Pluggable Optical Interconnect Technologies for Polymeric Electro-Optical Printed Circuit Boards in Data Centers

The protocol data rate governing data storage devices will increase to over 12 Gb/s by 2013 thereby imposing unmanageable cost and performance burdens on future digital data storage systems. The resulting performance bottleneck can be substantially reduced by conveying high-speed data optically instead of electronically. A novel active pluggable 82.5 Gb/s aggregate bit rate optical connector technology, the design and fabrication of a compact electro-optical printed circuit board to meet exacting specifications, and a method for low cost, high precision, passive optical assembly are presented. A demonstration platform was constructed to assess the viability of embedded electro-optical midplane technology in such systems including the first ever demonstration of a pluggable active optical waveguide printed circuit board connector. High-speed optical data transfer at 10.3125 Gb/s was demonstrated through a complex polymer waveguide interconnect layer embedded into a 262 mm × 240 mm × 4.3 mm electro-optical midplane. Bit error rates of less than 10-12 and optical losses as low as 6 dB were demonstrated through nine multimode polymer wave guides with an aggregate data bandwidth of 92.8125 Gb/s

Potential Psychoactive Effects of Microalgal Bioactive Compounds for the Case of Sleep and Mood Regulation: Opportunities and Challenges

Sleep deficiency is now considered an emerging global epidemic associated with many serious health problems, and a major cause of financial and social burdens. Sleep and mental health are closely connected, further exacerbating the negative impact of sleep deficiency on overall health and well-being. A major drawback of conventional treatments is the wide range of undesirable side-effects typically associated with benzodiazepines and antidepressants, which can be more debilitating than the initial disorder. It is therefore valuable to explore the efficiency of other remedies for complementarity and synergism with existing conventional treatments, leading to possible reduction in undesirable side-effects. This review explores the relevance of microalgae bioactives as a sustainable source of valuable phytochemicals that can contribute positively to mood and sleep disorders. Microalgae species producing these compounds are also catalogued, thus creating a useful reference of the state of the art for further exploration of this proposed approach. While we highlight possibilities awaiting investigation, we also identify the associated issues, including minimum dose for therapeutic effect, bioavailability, possible interactions with conventional treatments and the ability to cross the blood brain barrier. We conclude that physical and biological functionalization of microalgae bioactives can have potential in overcoming some of these challenges