Unionists as 'court sceptics': exploring elite-level unionist discourses about a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights

One of the most significant characteristics of the peace process in Northern Ireland has been the profound importance attached by a range of academic, political and non-governmental actors to the concept of human rights. However, unionists, more so than other elite-level political actors in Northern Ireland, have expressed scepticism about proposals from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) for a Northern Ireland Bill of Rights. This article explores how unionists relied on a ‘court sceptic' narrative to argue against the Bill of Rights proposals. It argues that at one level unionist reliance on ‘court sceptic' arguments can be conceived of as instrumental in the sense that it was a mere tactical response to, as unionists argue, the inflation by the NIHRC of their mandate contained in the Good Friday Agreement to devise a Bill of Rights. However, at another level unionists reliance on ‘court sceptic' arguments can also be traced to their constitutional experience within the British polity

Reconfigurable acceleration of genetic sequence alignment: A survey of two decades of efforts

Genetic sequence alignment has always been a computational challenge in bioinformatics. Depending on the problem size, software-based aligners can take multiple CPU-days to process the sequence data, creating a bottleneck point in bioinformatic analysis flow. Reconfigurable accelerator can achieve high performance for such computation by providing massive parallelism, but at the expense of programming flexibility and thus has not been commensurately used by practitioners. Therefore, this paper aims to provide a thorough survey of the proposed accelerators by giving a qualitative categorization based on their algorithms and speedup. A comprehensive comparison between work is also presented so as to guide selection for biologist, and to provide insight on future research direction for FPGA scientists

Food Court

This article, focusing on produce and grain, discusses the environmental and climate change impacts of food production, processing, packaging, and distribution, which ultimately contribute to both economic and social costs. The article addresses environmental energy costs in the food supply. Figure 1 shows, for example, the significant amount of energy used in various aspects of food production, transportation, and processing. Much of this article\u27s focus will be on commodity crops. Along with wheat and rice, corn and soybeans constitute the world\u27s most popular planted and consumed crops. The United States is the leading producer of corn, growing nearly 40 percent of the world\u27s total, with more than half of that production coming from only 20 percent of U.S. corn growers. In 2008 over 85 million acres of corn and more than 75 million acres of soybeans were planted in the United States, and the crops have faced increasing demand in the world market over the past ten years as they are sources of both human and animal food.

An exploration of knowledge and understanding – the eighth flow

The argument for understanding Lean construction as a socio-technical field is growing and the need to better consider the role of human beings within construction systems is becoming the dominant factor in project success. Many current attributes of lean already focus on people and on human engagement approaches but the field of lean construction addresses project environments that are often complex and highly variable. The authors argue that the successful delivery of these projects relies on the creation of a common understanding of the project objectives within the diverse value systems of project participants and wider society. Additionally, many of the new ways of working that lean thinking brings already support the creation of a common understanding and could be harnessed to better effect. Based on a literature review and supported by case study examples the authors explore the nature of knowledge and understanding and position them within an eight flow model for construction production. The findings indicate a need to reconsider the development of a common understand for each project due to the tacit nature of experiential knowledge held within the project team and the specificity and complexity of the project environment. As a result effort is required to generate and maintain a common understanding throughout the project duration. The continued attention and action required to maintain this common understanding elevates it to a flow of equal status to those identified in Koskela’s flow production model thus increasing the number of flows to eight. A significant lean construction case study is revisited and examined to identify interventions undertaken to achieve this generation and management of common understanding thus demonstrating that this development already exists, albeit intuitively, as an element of “lean thinking”

Insights into secondary reactions occurring during atmospheric ablation of micrometeoroids

Ablation of micrometeoroids during atmospheric entry yields volatile gases such as water, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide, capable of altering atmospheric chemistry and hence the climate and habitability of the planetary surface. While laboratory experiments have revealed the yields of these gases during laboratory simulations of ablation, the reactions responsible for the generation of these gases have remained unclear, with a typical assumption being that species simply undergo thermal decomposition without engaging in more complex chemistry. Here, pyrolysis–Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy reveals that mixtures of meteorite-relevant materials undergo secondary reactions during simulated ablation, with organic matter capable of taking part in carbothermic reduction of iron oxides and sulfates, resulting in yields of volatile gases that differ from those predicted by simple thermal decomposition. Sulfates are most susceptible to carbothermic reduction, producing greater yields of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide at lower temperatures than would be expected from simple thermal decomposition, even when mixed with meteoritically relevant abundances of low-reactivity Type IV kerogen. Iron oxides were less susceptible, with elevated yields of water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide only occurring when mixed with high abundances of more reactive Type III kerogen. We use these insights to reinterpret previous ablation simulation experiments and to predict the reactions capable of occurring during ablation of carbonaceous micrometeoroids in atmospheres of different compositions

Alaska Trial Court Case Filing Statistics, 2005–2012

This fact sheet describe case filings, caseloads, and types of cases filed in Alaska’s trial courts (Superior Court and District Court) during fiscal years (FY) 2005–2012. Data were extracted from Alaska Court System annual statistical reports. The report examines data on case filings, caseloads, and types of cases filed in Superior and District courts.Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of JusticeSuperior Court Filings / Superior Court Caseloads / Types of Cases / District Court Filings / District Court Caseloads / Types of Cases / Not