The United Kingdom, the United Nations Human Rights Council and the first cycle of the Universal Periodic Review

The introduction of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism as an innovative component of the new Human Rights Council in 2006 has suffered little academic scrutiny. This is partly because it holds as its objective an improvement in human rights situations on the ground, a goal that is difficult to test amongst so many possible causal factors attributable to law reform and policy change, and partly due to the fact that the mechanism has only completed one full cycle of review. This article seeks to remedy this absence of analysis by examining the experience of the United Kingdom during its first review. In doing so, the article first considers the conception of the UPR, before progressing to examine the procedure and recommendations made to the UK by its peers. Finally, the article considers the five year review of the UPR which occurred as a subset of the Human Rights Council Review in 2011 and the resulting changes to the process modalities.

Reclaiming the Radical in Universal Human Rights: Universality as Universalisation

The universality of human rights has been a fiercely contested issue throughout their history. This article contributes to scholarly engagements with the universality of human rights by proposing a re-engagement with this concept in a way that is compatible with the aims of radical politics. Instead of a static attribute or characteristic of rights this article proposes that universality can be thought of as, drawing from Judith Butler, an ongoing process of universalisation. Universality accordingly emerges as a site of powerful contest between competing ideas of what human rights should mean, do or say, and universal concepts are continually reworked through political activity. This leads to a differing conception of rights politics than traditional liberal approaches but, moreover, challenges such approaches. This understanding of universality allows human rights to come into view as potentially of use in interrupting liberal regimes and, crucially, opens possibilities to reclaim the radical in rights.

Reforming civil engineering studies in recession times

The recent global economic and financial crisis has led the economies of many countries into recession, in particular at the periphery of the European Union. These countries currently face a significant contraction of both public investment in infrastructure and private investment in buildings and, as a result, the unemployment is particularly noticeable in the civil engineering and building sectors. Consequently, in all countries in recession the professional development of fresh civil engineering graduates is disproportionate to their high study effort and qualifications, since they rarely have the opportunity to gain experience in practice and their knowledge gradually becomes obsolete. Under these circumstances, it is imperative for the technical universities in countries in recession to plan and implement a substantial reform of the civil engineering studies syllabus. The objective should be to enable graduates to broaden the scope of their professional activity and increase their employability. In this paper, the widening of civil engineering studies curricula is proposed, in particular in the light of the development of the graduates’ potential on project, programme and portfolio management. In this direction, after a thorough literature review, including ASCE's Body of Knowledge for the 21st century and IPMA's Competence Baseline, it is recommended among others: to increase significantly the offered modules on project management and add new modules on strategy management, leadership behavior, delivery management, organization and environment etc; to provide adequate professional training during the university studies five year period; and to promote fresh graduates’ certification by professional bodies. The proposals are exemplified by presenting a reformed syllabus for the civil engineering studies offered currently by the National Technical University of Athens.

Explaining the success of karmic religions

One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.’s article is that supernatural monitoring and intergroup competition have facilitated the rise of large-scale prosocial religions. Although the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of karmic religions. Therefore, to test the real scope of their model, Norenzayan et al. need to seriously engage with questions concerning the evolution of karmic prosocial religions.

Elastodynamic Modeling and Analysis for an Exechon Parallel Kinematic Machine

As a newly invented parallel kinematic machine (PKM), Exechon has attracted intensive attention from both academic and industrial fields due to its conceptual high performance. Nevertheless, the dynamic behaviors of Exechon PKM have not been thoroughly investigated because of its structural and kinematic complexities. To identify the dynamic characteristics of Exechon PKM, an elastodynamic model is proposed with the substructure synthesis technique in this paper. The Exechon PKM is divided into a moving platform subsystem, a fixed base subsystem and three limb subsystems according to its structural features. Differential equations of motion for the limb subsystem are derived through finite element (FE) formulations by modeling the complex limb structure as a spatial beam with corresponding geometric cross sections. Meanwhile, revolute, universal, and spherical joints are simplified into virtual lumped springs associated with equivalent stiffnesses and mass at their geometric centers. Differential equations of motion for the moving platform are derived with Newton's second law after treating the platform as a rigid body due to its comparatively high rigidity. After introducing the deformation compatibility conditions between the platform and the limbs, governing differential equations of motion for Exechon PKM are derived. The solution to characteristic equations leads to natural frequencies and corresponding modal shapes of the PKM at any typical configuration. In order to predict the dynamic behaviors in a quick manner, an algorithm is proposed to numerically compute the distributions of natural frequencies throughout the workspace. Simulation results reveal that the lower natural frequencies are strongly position-dependent and distributed axial-symmetrically due to the structure symmetry of the limbs. At the last stage, a parametric analysis is carried out to identify the effects of structural, dimensional, and stiffness parameters on the system's dynamic characteristics with the purpose of providing useful information for optimal design and performance improvement of the Exechon PKM. The elastodynamic modeling methodology and dynamic analysis procedure can be well extended to other overconstrained PKMs with minor modifications.

The Casimir effect in the presence of compactified universal extra dimensions

The Casimir force in a system consisting of two parallel conducting plates in the presence of compactified universal extra dimensions (UXD) is analyzed. The Casimir force with UXDs differs from the force obtained without extra dimensions. A new power law for the Casimir force is derived. By comparison to experimental data the size R of the universal extra dimensions can be restricted to R⩽10 nm for one extra dimension.

Litigating Religions: Human rights, faith and pluralism

These are the podcasts of the three Alberico Gentili Lectures presented at the University of Macerata:

A box in the field: modernity and the barn in twentieth-century Ireland

This paper argues that the modern barn in Ireland is a complex social and architectural phenomena that is without, or has yet to find, a satisfactory discourse. Emerging in the middle third of the twentieth century, the modern barn – replete with corrugated iron and I-sections – continues to represent a presence in the Irish landscape whose ubiquity is as emphatic as its flexibility. It is, however, its universal properties that begin to suggest connections with wider narratives. The modernising aspects of the barn that appear in the 1920s and 30s begin to conflate with a rhetoric of architectural modernism which was simultaneously appearing across Europe. But while the relationship between high modernism’s critique of what it divined as the inspirational qualities of utilitarian buildings – Walter Gropius on grain silos, Le Corbusier on aircraft hangers etc. – has been well-documented, in Ireland this relationship perhaps contains another layer of complexity.
The barn’s consolidation as a modern type coincided with the search for a nation’s cultural identity after centuries of colonial rule. This tended to be an introspective vision that prioritised rural space over urban space, agriculture over industry, and imagined the small farm as a central tenet in the construction of a new State. This paper suggests that the twentieth-century barn – as a product of the mechanisation of agriculture promoted by the new administrations – is an iconic structure, emblematic of attempts to reconcile the contradictory forces and imagery of modernity with the mores of a traditional society. Moreover, given a cultural purview that was often ambivalent or even hostile to the ideologies and forms of modernity, the barn in Ireland is, perhaps, not so much the inspiration but the realisation of an architectural modernism in that country at its most pervasive, enduring and unself-conscious.

Internet of Things. A proposed secured network topology

The myriad of technologies and protocols working at different layers pose significant security challenges in the upcoming Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Security features and needs vary from application to application and it is layer specific. In addition, security has to consider the constraints imposed by energy limited sensor nodes and consider the specific target application in order to provide security at different layers. This paper analyses current standardization efforts and protocols. It proposes a generic secured network topology for IoT and describes the relevant security challenges. Some exploitation examples are also provided.

Review of Richard Friedli & Mallory Schneuwly Purdie (eds), L’Europe des Religions. Éléments d’analyse des champs religieux européens. Actes du programme 2002-2003 de formation doctorale.

Book Review in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Religions und Kulturgeschichte No. 100 (2006) of Richard Friedli & Mallory Schneuwly Purdie (eds), L’Europe des Religions. Éléments d’analyse des champs religieux européens. Actes du programme 2002-2003 de formation doctorale, Berne: Peter Lang, collection « Studia Religiosa Helvetica », vol.8/9, 2004, 257p.

A proposed simple method for measurement in the anterior chamber angle: biometric gonioscopy

OBJECTIVE:

To design a system of gonioscopy that will allow greater interobserver reliability and more clearly defined screening cutoffs for angle closure than current systems while being simple to teach and technologically appropriate for use in rural Asia, where the prevalence of angle-closure glaucoma is highest.

DESIGN:

Clinic-based validation and interobserver reliability trial.

PARTICIPANTS:

Study 1: 21 patients 18 years of age and older recruited from a university-based specialty glaucoma clinic; study 2: 32 patients 18 years of age and older recruited from the same clinic.

INTERVENTION:

In study 1, all participants underwent conventional gonioscopy by an experienced observer (GLS) using the Spaeth system and in the same eye also underwent Scheimpflug photography, ultrasonographic measurement of anterior chamber depth and axial length, automatic refraction, and biometric gonioscopy with measurement of the distance from iris insertion to Schwalbe's line using a reticule based in the slit-lamp ocular. In study 2, all participants underwent both conventional gonioscopy and biometric gonioscopy by an experienced gonioscopist (NGC) and a medical student with no previous training in gonioscopy (JK).

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:

Study 1: The association between biometric gonioscopy and conventional gonioscopy, Scheimpflug photography, and other factors known to correlate with the configuration of the angle. Study 2: Interobserver agreement using biometric gonioscopy compared to that obtained with conventional gonioscopy.

RESULTS:

In study 1, there was an independent, monotonic, statistically significant relationship between biometric gonioscopy and both Spaeth angle (P = 0.001, t test) and Spaeth insertion (P = 0.008, t test) grades. Biometric gonioscopy correctly identified six of six patients with occludable angles according to Spaeth criteria. Biometric gonioscopic grade was also significantly associated with the anterior chamber angle as measured by Scheimpflug photography (P = 0.005, t test). In study 2, the intraclass correlation coefficient between graders for biometric gonioscopy (0.97) was higher than for Spaeth angle grade (0.72) or Spaeth insertion grade (0.84).

CONCLUSION:

Biometric gonioscopy correlates well with other measures of the anterior chamber angle, shows a higher degree of interobserver reliability than conventional gonioscopy, and can readily be learned by an inexperienced observer.