Introduction

This book explores the impacts of global economic, political and cultural shifts on various international legal frameworks and legal norms. The economic growth of states throughout Asia, South and Central America and Africa is having a profound effect on the dynamics of international relations, with a resulting impact on the operation and development of international law. This book examines the influence of emerging economies on international legal rules, institutions and processes. It describes recent and predicted changes in economic, political and cultural powers, flowing from the growth of emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia, and analyses the influence of these changes on various legal frameworks and norms. Expert contributors drawn from a variety of fields, including international law, politics, environmental law, human rights, economics and finance, provide a broad analysis of the nature of the shifting global dynamic in its historical and contemporary contexts, and a range of perspectives on the impact of these changes as they relate to specific regimes and issues, including climate change regulation, collective security, indigenous rights, the rights of women and girls, environmental protection and foreign aid and development. The book provides a fresh and comprehensive analysis of an issue with extensive implications for international law and politics.

Facilitating local stories in post-disaster regional communities : evaluation in narrative-driven oral history projects

Cyclone Yasi struck the Cassowary Coast of Northern Queensland, Australia, in the early hours of February 3, 2011, destroying many homes and property, including the destruction of the Cardwell and district historical society’s premises. With their own homes flattened, many residents were forced to live in mobile accommodation, with extended family, or leave the area altogether. The historical society members seemed, however, particularly devastated by their flattened foreshore museum and loss of their precious collection of material. A call for assistance was made through the Oral History Association of Australia’s Queensland branch (OHAA Qld), which along with a Queensland University of Technology (QUT) research team sponsored a trip to best plan how they could start to pick up the pieces to rebuild the museum. This chapter highlights the need for communities to gather, preserve and present their own stories, in a way that is sustainable and meaningful to them – whether that be because of a disaster, or as they go about life in their contemporary communities – the key being that good advice, professional support and embedded evaluation practices at crucial moments along the way can be critically important.

Transforming saltbush : science, mobility and metaphor in the remaking of intercolonial worlds

The movement of exotic biota into native ecosystems are central to debates about the acclimatisation of plants in the settler colonies of the nineteenth century. For example, plants like lucerne from Europe and sudan grass from South Africa were transferred to Australia to support pastoral economies. The saltbush Atriplex spp. is an anomaly-it too, eventually, became the subject of acclimatisation within its native Australia because it was also deemed useful to the pastoralists of arid and semi-arid New South Wales. When settlers first came to this part of Australia, however, initial perceptions were that the plants were useless. We trace this transformation from the desert 'desperation' plant during early settlement to the 'precious' conservation species, from the 1880s, when there were changes in both management strategies and cultural responses to saltbush in Australia. This reconsideration can be seen in scientific assessments and experiments, in the way that it was commoditised by seeds and nursery traders, and in its use as a metaphor in bush poetry to connote a gendered nationalist figure in Saltbush Bill. We argue that while initial settlers were often so optimistic about European management techniques, they had nothing but contempt for indigenous plants. The later impulses to the conservation of natives arose from experiences of bitter failure and despair over attempts to impose European methods, which in turn forced this re-evaluation of Australian species.

Joseph Maiden and the national and transnational circulation of Wattle Acacia spp

During the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth century wattle was circulated by botanists, botanical institutions, interested individuals, commercial seedsmen and government authorities. Wattle bark was used in the production of leather and was the subject of debate regarding its commercial development and conservation in Australia. It was also trialled in many other locations including America, New Zealand, Hawaii and Russia. In the process, South Africa became a major producer of wattle bark for a global market. At the same time wattle was also promoted as a symbol of Australian nationalism. This paper considers this movement of wattles, wattle material and wattle information by examining the career of one active agent in these botanical transfers: Joseph Maiden. In doing so it demonstrates that these seemingly different uses of the wattle overlap transnational and national spheres.

Lesson studies in Chinese kindergartens

Lesson studies are a powerful form of professional development (Doig and Groves, 2011). The processes of creating, enacting, analyzing, and refining lessons to improve teaching practices are key components of lesson studies. Lesson studies have been the primary form of professional development in Japanese classrooms for many years (Lewis, Perry and Hurd, 2009). This model is now used to improve instruction in many South-East Asian countries (White and Lim, 2008), as well as increasingly in North America (Lesson Study Research Group, 2004), and South Africa (Ono and Ferreira, 2010). In China, this form of professional development aimed at improving teaching, has also been adopted, originating from Soviet models of teacher professional development arising from influences post 1949 (China Education Yearbook, 1986). Thus, China too has a long history of improving teaching and learning through this form of school-based professional learning.

Innovation for Equity in Rural Education : Proceedings of the International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education

PREFACE The concept of an international symposium on rural education arose from a meeting between members of the SiMERR National Centre, Australia and the NURI Teacher Education Innovation Centre (NURI-TEIC) at Kongju National University, Korea in 2007. Despite the very different national contexts, the teams were struck by the similarities of the challenges facing rural schools in the two countries, and curious about the degree to which these challenges were shared by other countries. At a subsequent meeting in Australia in December 2007, the two centre Directors - Professor John Pegg (SiMERR) and Professor Youn-Kee Im (NURI-TEIC) - agreed on a framework for the first International Symposium for Innovation in Rural Education (ISFIRE). This volume consists of the keynotes and refereed papers presented at ISFIRE 2009. The papers provide insights into rural education in Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Korea, Norway, South Africa and the United States along the following themes: 1. Promoting rural policy initiatives; 2. Nurturing the rural teacher experience; 3. Enhancing rural student experience and growth; 4. Optimising the curriculum; 5. Improving resources in rural schools; and 6. Addressing special issues in rural education. The authors and titles of a further 23 presentations based on refereed abstracts only are listed at the end of this volume. The abstracts for these presentations can be found in the symposium Program. The academics and practitioners who came together for this symposium are passionate about rural education and have dedicated their time and capacities to working for the benefit of rural teachers, students and communities. The papers in this volume offer direction not only for Australia and South Korea, who jointly hosted this symposium, but for all countries in which rural education is contested ground. The keynotes in particular contribute rich perspectives on rural education trends, policies and practices. We hope that this volume generates a greater appreciation of the advantages of rural education and the many innovative approaches being implemented to meet its challenges.

Productivity differences, technology adoption and economic growth : the case of India

When the acronym of ëBRICí was coined in 2001 by Jim OíNeill of Goldman Sachs, it was expected that economic growth rates in India, Brazil and Russia would eventually catch up with that of China. However, China has continued to outperform the other economies in the group, even after it was renamed ëBRICSí to reflect the inclusion of South Africa in 2010. The focus of this chapter is on one of the BRICS economies, namely India. Its aim is to examine from an economic perspective, why Indiaís performance has not lived up to expectations, and comment on the key challenges it faces in meeting them. We begin with some descriptive statistics regarding the progress of the Indian economy since 1990. While it has been growing at a rapid rate since the reforms it introduced in the1990s, there has been a slowdown in its overall GDP growth rates since 2008. The rate of growth experienced in the period 2003ñ07 was an average of 10.5 per cent. However, since the recession following the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, the growth rate has fallen. From the period 2008ñ12 it has only registered an average growth rate of 6.5 per cent (World Bank, 2013). This chapter suggests that one of the major factors underpinning this slowdown is the performance of Indiaís agricultural sector. The importance of the agricultural sector is highlighted by the following stylized facts.

A multi-genome analysis approach enables tracking of the invasion of a single Russian wheat aphid (Diuraphis noxia) clone throughout the New World

This study investigated the population genetics, demographic history and pathway of invasion of the Russian wheat aphid (RWA) from its native range in Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe to South Africa and the Americas. We screened microsatellite markers, mitochondrial DNA and endosymbiont genes in 504 RWA clones from nineteen populations worldwide. Following pathway analyses of microsatellite and endosymbiont data, we postulate that Turkey and Syria were the most likely sources of invasion to Kenya and South Africa, respectively. Furthermore, we found that one clone transferred between South Africa and the Americas was most likely responsible for the New World invasion. Finally, endosymbiont DNA was found to be a high resolution population genetic marker, extremely useful for studies of invasion over a relatively short evolutionary history time frame. This study has provided valuable insights into the factors that may have facilitated the recent global invasion by this damaging pest.

A psychology student’s reflections on learning psychodynamic psychotherapy in the classroom

A graduate psychology student reflects upon the experience of learning psychodynamic psychotherapy exclusively in the classroom. The majority of undergraduate psychology students have scant, and frequently inaccurate, exposure to psychodynamic psychotherapy. This appears to heavily influence students’ choice of postgraduate programs, and to reduce the likelihood that they will expose themselves to psychodynamic therapy at any stage of their careers. It is hoped that the original insights provided by this reflection will inform the development of psychodynamic psychotherapy teaching material that can be imparted effectively in undergraduate programs, even when access to patients and supervisors is not possible, so that more students are inspired to study psychodynamic psychotherapy in postgraduate programs.

Using Web 2.0 to improve software quality

Social media tools are starting to become mainstream and those working in the software development industry are often ahead of the game in terms of using current technological innovations to improve their work. With the advent of outsourcing and distributed teams the software industry is ideally placed to take advantage of social media technologies, tools and environments. This paper looks at how social media is being used by early adopters within the software development industry. Current tools and trends in social media tool use are described and critiqued: what works and what doesn't. We use industrial case studies from platform development, commercial application development and government contexts which provide a clear picture of the emergent state of the art. These real world experiences are then used to show how working collaboratively in geographically dispersed teams, enabled by social media, can enhance and improve the development experience.

Recursive actuator fault detection and diagnosis for emergency landing of UASs

This paper presents a practical recursive fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) scheme for online identification of actuator faults for unmanned aerial systems (UASs) based on the unscented Kalman filtering (UKF) method. The proposed FDD algorithm aims to monitor health status of actuators and provide indication of actuator faults with reliability, offering necessary information for the design of fault-tolerant flight control systems to compensate for side-effects and improve fail-safe capability when actuator faults occur. The fault detection is conducted by designing separate UKFs to detect aileron and elevator faults using a nonlinear six degree-of-freedom (DOF) UAS model. The fault diagnosis is achieved by isolating true faults by using the Bayesian Classifier (BC) method together with a decision criterion to avoid false alarms. High-fidelity simulations with and without measurement noise are conducted with practical constraints considered for typical actuator fault scenarios, and the proposed FDD exhibits consistent effectiveness in identifying occurrence of actuator faults, verifying its suitability for integration into the design of fault-tolerant flight control systems for emergency landing of UASs.

Duty in the time of epidemics : what China and Zimbabwe teach us

In November 2002, a man with ‘atypical pneumonia’ treated in Foshan hospital, Guangdong Province, in the People's Republic of China, was the first known case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). However, it was not until April 2003 that the Chinese government admitted to the full scale of ‘atypical pneumonia’ cases infected with SARS, two months after the disease had rapidly spread across the world with initial infections in Hong Kong and Vietnam sourced to Guangdong. In 2008, Zimbabwe experienced one of the biggest outbreaks of cholera ever recorded. By February 2009, the disease had spread across all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces and to neighbouring countries—Botswana, South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique—causing thousands of infections amongst their populations. This article seeks to examine what duties the Chinese and Zimbabwe states had to protect their citizens and the international community from these outbreaks. The article refers to the findings of the International Law Commission's study into the role of states and international organisations in protecting persons in the event of a disaster to consider whether there is an international duty to protect persons from epidemics. The article concludes that both cases reveal a growing concept of protection that entails an international duty to assist individuals when an affected state proves unwilling or unable to assist its own population in the event of a disease outbreak.

Measuring up! Bringing everything we know together to make the researcher profile “sing”.

The search is ongoing for the perfect researcher profile with fully integrated citations, plus links to publications, research data, esteem measures, media releases, plus social media feeds and links to the researchers place of work.

Opportunities and challenges : combining distance and on-campus students in concurrent courses

Through its Electronic Delivery of Gator Engineering (EDGE) program, University of Florida (UF) offers online master’s degrees from participating departments within the UF College of Engineering. Each master’s degree requires 10 courses (3 credit hours each). One interesting and unique aspect of the EDGE pro-gram is that distance learners are registered concurrently in the same courses with traditional on-campus students. This paper examines the specific challenges involved in integrating distance students into on-campus courses, including communication, interaction, access to resources, and equal grading practices.

Social media for libraries

The social media statistics of South Africa reveal an exponential increase in the use of social media. Libraries, as part of a community, cannot ignore this! Social media provide libraries instant and direct connection with their members regardless their geographical location. This paper explores social media use in libraries. The establishment of social media for the SABC Media Libraries is discussed to demonstrate a practical implementation of social media in libraries and archives. Tips and resources, with specific mention to Twitter and Facebook, as well as social media etiquette and social media policy guidelines are supplied. The literature of published articles and Infographic show the changing role of librarians in the social media era and the need for librarians to keep learning and update their skills to accommodate users’ needs. The focus should now be on how well we do social media for the library, not on whether we should do it or not! Keywords: Social Media, Libraries, Web 2.0, Librarians, Archives, SABC, South Africa.