Context-Aware Body Area Networks (CABAN) for interactive smart environments:Interference characterization

Body Area Networks are unique in that the large-scale mobility of users allows the network itself to travel across a diverse range of operating domains or even to enter new and unknown environments. This network mobility is unlike node mobility in that sensed changes in inter-network interference level may be used to identify opportunities for intelligent inter-networking, for example, by merging or splitting from other networks, thus providing an extra degree of freedom. This paper introduces the concept of context-aware bodynets for interactive environments using inter-network interference sensing. New ideas are explored at both the physical and link layers with an investigation based on a 'smart' office environment. A series of carefully controlled measurements of the mesh interconnectivity both within and between an ambulatory body area network and a stationary desk-based network were performed using 2.45 GHz nodes. Received signal strength and carrier to interference ratio time series for selected node to node links are presented. The results provide an insight into the potential interference between the mobile and static networks and highlight the possibility for automatic identification of network merging and splitting opportunities. © 2010 ACM.

Churches and the Governing of Schools in Northern Ireland: A Redistribution of Power?

This paper presents findings of research into the role of church nominees on school governing bodies. The data is drawn mainly from a wider study of school ethos and school governance undertaken in Northern Ireland in the period 1994 to 1997. The paper raises the question of the future roles and responsibilities of church nominees after legislative changes to the composition and responsibilities of school governing bodies. It also considers recent social and attitudinal change and explains how the combination of these factors have created a situation whereby the power of the churches in the individual school governing body is no longer guaranteed

Upholding the convention on the rights of the child: a quandary in cyberspace

Put in place to protect the rights of the child, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is a set of non-negotiable standards. A core principle underpinning the Convention is the child's right to participate fully in social arenas and to access sources of social support without excessive interference. Juxtaposing this is the right of the child to be shielded from harm, abuse and exploitation. Over the past several decades the Internet has emerged as a fast and easily accessible medium for people to connect and communicate. While the Internet provides children with a source of support through chat rooms, online communities and social networking sites, just as equally it can expose vulnerable children to predatory and deviant individuals exacerbating the potential for harm. Upholding the Convention in cyberspace is a challenge. The Internet is not owned or regulated by any governing body and accountability is difficult to enforce. This article discusses some of the difficulties of upholding the Convention online and provides recommendations for policy-makers to protect children as they participate in cyberspace.

Using public procurement to achieve social outcomes

The use of public procurement to achieve social outcomes is widespread, but detailed information about how it operates is often sketchy and difficult to find. This article is essentially a mapping exercise, describing the history and current use Of government contracting as a tool of social regulation, what the author calls the issue of 'linkage'. The article considers the popularity of linkage in the I 9,h century in Europe and North America, particularly in dealing with issues of labour standards and unemployment. The use of linkage expanded during the 20(th) century, initially to include the provision of employment opportunities to disabled workers. During and after World War 11, the use of linkage became particularly important in the United States in addressing racial equality, in the requirements for non-discrimination in contracts, and in affirmative action and set-asides for minority businesses. Subsequently, the role of procurement spread both in its geographical coverage and in the subject areas of social policy that it was used to promote. The article considers examples of the use of procurement to promote equality on the basis of ethnicity and gender drawn from Malaysia, South Africa, Canada, and the European Community. More recently, procurement has been used as an instrument to promote human rights transnationally, also by international organizations such as the International Labour Organisation. The article includes some reflections on the relationship between 'green' procurement, 'social' procurement, and sustainable development, and recent attempts to develop the concept of 'sustainable procurement.

'Regina v John Terry': The Discursive Construction of an Alleged Racist Event

This article explores the conformation in discourse of a verbal exchange and its subsequent mediatised and legal ramifications. The event concerns an allegedly racist insult directed by high profile English professional footballer John Terry towards another player, Anton Ferdinand, during a televised match in October 2011. The substance of Terry’s utterance, which included the noun phrase ‘fucking black cunt’, was found by a Chief Magistrate not to be a racist insult, although the fact that these actual words were framed within the utterance was not in dispute. The upshot of this ruling was that Terry was acquitted of a racially aggravated public order offence. A subsequent investigation by the regulatory commission of the English Football Association (FA) ruled, almost a year after the event, that Terry was guilty of racially abusing Ferdinand. Terry was banned for four matches and fined £220,000.

It is our contention that this event, played out in legal rulings, social media and print and broadcast media, constitutes a complex web of linguistic structures and strategies in discourse, and as such lends itself well to analysis with a broad range of tools from pragmatics, discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics. Amongst other things, such an analysis can help explain the seemingly anomalous - even contradictory - position adopted in the legal ruling with regard to the speech act status of ‘fucking black cunt’; namely, that the racist content of the utterance was not contested but that the speaker was found not to have issued a racist insult. Over its course, the article addresses this broader issue by making reference to the systemic-functional interpersonal function of language, particularly to the concepts of modality, polarity and modalisation. It also draws on models of verbal irony from linguistic pragmatics, notably from the theory of irony as echoic mention (c.f. Sperber and Wilson, 1981; Wilson and Sperber, 1992). Furthermore, the article makes use of the cognitive-linguistic framework, Text World Theory (c.f. Gavins, 2007; Werth, 1999) to examine the discourse positions occupied by key actors and adapts, from cognitive poetics, the theory of mind-modelling (c.f. Stockwell, 2009) to explore the conceptual means through which these actors discursively negotiate the event.

It is argued that the pragmatic and cognitive strategies that frame the entire incident go a long way towards mitigating the impact of so ostensibly stark an act of racial abuse. Moreover, it is suggested here that the reconciliation of Terry’s action was a result of the confluence of strategies of discourse with relations of power as embodied by the media, the law and perceptions of nationhood embraced by contemporary football culture. It is further proposed that the outcome of this episode, where the FA was put in the spotlight, and where both the conflict and its key antagonists were ‘intranational’, was strongly impelled by the institution of English football and its governing body both to reproduce and maintain social, cultural and ethnic cohesion and to avoid any sense that the event featured a discernable ‘out-group’.

Why 2014 was the year of the whistle-blower in sport

The FIFA World Cup was one of the sports highlights of 2014. Off the field, however, it has been an annus horribilis for football’s world governing body.1 FIFA has been dogged throughout by controversy relating to the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.

Employment regulation, game theory, and the lacuna in employee participation in liberal economies

Employee participation is a vital ingredient of what the International Labour Organization (ILO) calls ‘representation security’. This article provides theoretical and empirical insights relating to social policy impact of worker participation, specifically the European Information and Consultation Directive (ICD) for employee voice rights. While existing research on the ICD offers important empirical insights, there is a need for further theoretical analysis to examine the potential effectiveness of the regulations in liberal market economies (LMEs). Drawing on data from 16 case studies, the article uses game theory and the prisoner's dilemma framework to explain why national implementing legislation is largely ineffective in diffusing mutual gains cooperation in two LMEs: UK and the Republic of Ireland. Three theoretical (metaphorical) propositions advance understanding of the policy impact of national information & consultation regulations in LMEs.