The Ulster Covenant and the Pulse of Protestant Ulster

The signing of the Ulster Covenant on 28 September 1912 by almost 450,000 men and women was a powerful act of defiance on the part of Unionists in the context of what they perceived as the threat to their way of life represented by the Liberal Government's policy of Irish Home Rule. This article attempts to look beyond the well-studied leadership figures of Carson and Craig in order to fashion insights into the way Ulster Protestant society was mobilised around the Covenant and opposition to Home Rule. It draws attention to hitherto over-shadowed personalities who can be said to have exerted crucial local influence. It also contends that although pan-Protestant denominational unity provided the basis for the success of the Covenant, the Presbyterian community was particularly cohesive and purposeful in the campaign. The article further argues that the risk-taking defiance that came more easily to the Presbyterians, on account of a troubled history, largely evaporated in the new political circumstances of Northern Ireland when it became a separate devolved political entity within the UK from 1921.

Equality, justice and feasibility: an ethical analysis of the WBGU’s budget approach

According to the Budget Approach proposed by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), allocating CO2 emission rights to countries on an equal per-capita basis would provide an ethically justified response to global climate change. In this paper, we will highlight four normative issues which beset the WBGU’s Budget Approach: (1) the approach’s core principle of distributive justice, the principle of equality, and its associated policy of emissions egalitarianism are much more complex than it initially appears; (2) the “official” rationale for determining the size of the budget should be modified in order to avoid implausible normative assumptions about the imposition of permissible intergenerational risks; (3) the approach heavily relies on trade-offs between justice and feasibility which should be stated more explicitly; and (4) part of the approach’s ethical appeal depends on policy instruments which are “detachable” from the approach’s core principle of distributive justice.

Oil and Dependency::The Case of Kazakhstan

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent oil-rich country of Kazakhstan has become a major recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI). Although international organisations such as the IMF and UNCTAD have claimed that FDI could be considered an engine in the transition from state socialism and as a powerful force for integration of this region into the global economy; this investment also poses significant risks to Kazakhstan. These risks fall into two broad categories: The first category can be broadly described as issues associated with the “resource curse” or the “Dutch Disease”. The term Dutch Disease describes a situation where booming demand in oil exporting countries, due to high oil revenues, leads to shift of an economy’s productive resources from the tradeable sector to the non-tradeable sector. The second category is associated with the over-dependency of oil exporting countries on a relatively small number of large multinational corporations (MNCs). This over-dependency can lead to a situation where licenses and concessions are granted at less favourable conditions than if they were auctioned in an efficient market. Examining the licensing policy of the Kazakhstani Energy and Mineral Resource Ministry, this paper notes that the latter issue of over-dependency has become less of a risk due to deliberate efforts to diversify investment relationships. Notwithstanding this situation there is some evidence that it remains difficult for oil exporting nations such as Kazakhstan to ensure that oil revenues are channelled into sustainable economic development.

On the performance of LDPC and turbo decoder architectures with unreliable memories

In this paper, we investigate the impact of faulty memory bit-cells on the performance of LDPC and Turbo channel decoders based on realistic memory failure models. Our study investigates the inherent error resilience of such codes to potential memory faults affecting the decoding process. We develop two mitigation mechanisms that reduce the impact of memory faults rather than correcting every single error. We show how protection of only few bit-cells is sufficient to deal with high defect rates. In addition, we show how the use of repair-iterations specifically helps mitigating the impact of faults that occur inside the decoder itself.

Ritual, identity and nation: when the historian becomes the high priest of commemoration

This paper questions the use of 'memory', 'remembering' and 'collective memory' as a conceptual tool in historical study. It will ague that a synchronic model for commemorative practice needs to be highlighted, and in doing so questions the role of historians in commemorative practice.

Complete framework for efficient characterisation of non-Markovian processes

A non-Markovian process is one that retains `memory' of its past. A systematic understanding of these processes is necessary to fully describe and harness a vast range of complex phenomena; however, no such general characterisation currently exists. This long-standing problem has hindered advances in understanding physical, chemical and biological processes, where often dubious theoretical assumptions are made to render a dynamical description tractable. Moreover, the methods currently available to treat non-Markovian quantum dynamics are plagued with unphysical results, like non-positive dynamics. Here we develop an operational framework to characterise arbitrary non-Markovian quantum processes. We demonstrate the universality of our framework and how the characterisation can be rendered efficient, before formulating a necessary and sufficient condition for quantum Markov processes. Finally, we stress how our framework enables the actual systematic analysis of non-Markovian processes, the understanding of their typicality, and the development of new master equations for the effective description of memory-bearing open-system evolution.

"Mulheres Novas Com Cabeças Limpas": Pitfalls of the Revolution in Licínio Azevedo's Virgem Margarida

In this article, I focus on Licínio de Azevedo’s 2012 film, Virgem Margarida, in relation to Frelimo’s policy of forced re-education camps and their effects on marginalized women in 1980s Mozambique. I also examine the recent political instability in Mozambique and the gendered legacies of regional sentiments on Mozambican national identity