Who gives a damn about intellectually disabled people and their families? Care-less spaces personified in the case of LB

On 5 October 2015 the inquest into Connor Sparrowhawk’s death began. A young autistic man, aged 18, died in the bath on 4 July 2013. He had a seizure. The rolling tweets from @LBInquest are harrowing to say the least. Unimaginable torture for Sara and Richard (his mother and step-father), as well as his siblings and others caring. Comments from the inquest such as ‘I felt that Connor should be checked on every 5 or 10 minutes when he was in the bath because of his epilepsy’ and ‘ensuring someone was outside the door when he was bathing was basic nursing care’ sound all the alarm bells for lack of care, because allegedly this did not happen. Clearly there was no one person looking out for him when he needed it the most. On 16 October 2015 the inquest jury found Connor’s death was contributed by neglect. This article will explore the absence of care in a care-less system.

Common priors for generalized type spaces

The notion of common prior is well-understood and widely-used in the incomplete information games literature. For ordinary type spaces the common prior is de�fined. Pint�er and Udvari (2011) introduce the notion of generalized type space. Generalized type spaces are models for various bonded rationality issues, for �nite belief hierarchies, unawareness among others. In this paper we de�ne the notion of common prior for generalized types spaces. Our results are as follows: the generalization (1) suggests a new form of common prior for ordinary type spaces, (2) shows some quantum game theoretic results (Brandenburger and La Mura, 2011) in new light.

The existence of an inverse limit of inverse system of measure spaces - a purely measurable case

The existence of an inverse limit of an inverse system of (probability) measure spaces has been investigated since the very beginning of the birth of the modern probability theory. Results from Kolmogorov [10], Bochner [2], Choksi [5], Metivier [14], Bourbaki [3] among others have paved the way of the deep understanding of the problem under consideration. All the above results, however, call for some topological concepts, or at least ones which are closely related topological ones. In this paper we investigate purely measurable inverse systems of (probability) measure spaces, and give a sucient condition for the existence of a unique inverse limit. An example for the considered purely measurable inverse systems of (probability) measure spaces is also given.

Generalized type spaces

Ordinary type spaces (Heifetz and Samet, 1998) are essential ingredients of incomplete information games. With ordinary type spaces one can grab the notions of beliefs, belief hierarchies and common prior etc. However, ordinary type spaces cannot handle the notions of finite belief hierarchy and unawareness among others. In this paper we consider a generalization of ordinary type spaces, and introduce the so called generalized type spaces which can grab all notions ordinary type spaces can and more, finite belief hierarchies and unawareness among others. We also demonstrate that the universal generalized type space exists.

Common priors for generalized type spaces

The notion of common prior is well-understood and widely-used in the incomplete information games literature. For ordinary type spaces the common prior is defined. Pinter and Udvari (2011) introduce the notion of generalized type space. Generalized type spaces are models for various bonded rationality issues, for nite belief hierarchies, unawareness among others. In this paper we dene the notion of common prior for generalized types spaces. Our results are as follows: the generalization (1) suggests a new form of common prior for ordinary type spaces, (2) shows some quantum game theoretic results (Brandenburger and La Mura, 2011) in new light.

Blurring the lines between public and private spaces in residential design

This thesis explores the role of public space as an integral part of residential design to promote a sense of community, where neighbors can congregate and children can play in safety. ^ Through research and analysis of successful public spaces, I evaluated relationships between dwellings and public spaces that offer progressive levels of privacy, and between indoor and outdoor spaces. Further research of published studies on child development, human behavior and relationships with nature identified a human preference for natural environments, a need for adequate recreation space for children's development and the potential of open spaces to build a strong sense of community. ^ My project develops multiple transitional spaces between the street and the interior of dwellings that provide varying degrees of privacy closely related to the community's green spaces. The result is a community-oriented pedestrian environment that encourages family and community values and contributes to the healthy living of its residents without depriving them of their privacy. ^

Law Enforcement Actions in Urban Spaces Governed by Violent Non-State Entities: Lessons from Latin America

In response to a crime epidemic afflicting Latin America since the early 1990s, several countries in the region have resorted to using heavy-force police or military units to physically retake territories de facto controlled by non-State criminal or insurgent groups. After a period of territory control, the heavy forces hand law enforcement functions in the retaken territories to regular police officers, with the hope that the territories and their populations will remain under the control of the state. To a varying degree, intensity, and consistency, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Jamaica have adopted such policies since the mid-1990s. During such operations, governments need to pursue two interrelated objectives: to better establish the state’s physical presence and to realign the allegiance of the population in those areas toward the state and away from the non-State criminal entities. From the perspective of law enforcement, such operations entail several critical decisions and junctions, such as: Whether or not to announce the force insertion in advance. The decision trades off the element of surprise and the ability to capture key leaders of the criminal organizations against the ability to minimize civilian casualties and force levels. The latter, however, may allow criminals to go to ground and escape capture. Governments thus must decide whether they merely seek to displace criminal groups to other areas or maximize their decapitation capacity. Intelligence flows rarely come from the population. Often, rival criminal groups are the best source of intelligence. However, cooperation between the State and such groups that goes beyond using vetted intelligence provided by the groups, such as a State tolerance for militias, compromises the rule-of-law integrity of the State and ultimately can eviscerate even public safety gains. Sustaining security after initial clearing operations is at times even more challenging than conducting the initial operations. Although unlike the heavy forces, traditional police forces, especially if designed as community police, have the capacity to develop trust of the community and ultimately focus on crime prevention, developing such trust often takes a long time. To develop the community’s trust, regular police forces need to conduct frequent on-foot patrols with intensive nonthreatening interactions with the population and minimize the use of force. Moreover, sufficiently robust patrol units need to be placed in designated beats for substantial amount of time, often at least over a year. Establishing oversight mechanisms, including joint police-citizens’ boards, further facilities building trust in the police among the community. After disruption of the established criminal order, street crime often significantly rises and both the heavy-force and community-police units often struggle to contain it. The increase in street crime alienates the population of the retaken territory from the State. Thus developing a capacity to address street crime is critical. Moreover, the community police units tend to be vulnerable (especially initially) to efforts by displaced criminals to reoccupy the cleared territories. Losing a cleared territory back to criminal groups is extremely costly in terms of losing any established trust and being able to recover it. Rather than operating on a priori determined handover schedule, a careful assessment of the relative strength of regular police and criminal groups post-clearing operations is likely to be a better guide for timing the handover from heavy forces to regular police units. Cleared territories often experience not only a peace dividend, but also a peace deficit – in the rise new serious crime (in addition to street crime). Newly – valuable land and other previously-inaccessible resources can lead to land speculation and forced displacement; various other forms of new crime can also significantly rise. Community police forces often struggle to cope with such crime, especially as it is frequently linked to legal business. Such new crime often receives little to no attention in the design of the operations to retake territories from criminal groups. But without developing an effective response to such new crime, the public safety gains of the clearing operations can be altogether lost.

Resistance Performances: (Re)constructing Spaces of Resistance and Contention in the 2010-2011 University of Puerto Rico Student Movement

On the night of April 20, 2010, a group of students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Río Piedras campus, met to organize an indefinite strike that quickly broadened into a defense of accessible public higher education of excellence as a fundamental right and not a privilege. Although the history of student activism in the UPR can be traced back to the early 1900s, the 2010-2011 strike will be remembered for the student activists’ use of new media technologies as resources that rapidly prompted and aided the numerous protests. This activist research entailed a critical ethnography and a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of traditional and alternative media coverage and treatment during the 2010 -2011 UPR student strike. I examined the use of the 2010-2011 UPR student activists’ resistance performances in constructing local, corporeal, and virtual spaces of resistance and contention during their movement. In particular, I analyzed the different tactics and strategies of resistance or repertoire of collective actions that student activists used (e.g. new media technologies) to frame their collective identities via alternative news media’s (re)presentation of the strike, while juxtaposing the university administration’s counter-resistance performances in counter-framing the student activists’ collective identity via traditional news media representations of the strike. I illustrated how both traditional and alternative media (re)presentations of student activism developed, maintained, and/or modified students activists’ collective identities. As such, the UPR student activism’s success should not be measured by the sum of demands granted, but by the sense of community achieved and the establishment of networks that continue to create resistance and change. These networks add to the debate surrounding Internet activism and its impact on student activism. Ultimately, the results of this study highlight the important role student movements have had in challenging different types of government policies and raising awareness of the importance of an accessible public higher education of excellence.

Inventing indigenous religious belief and practice within the spaces of Ghanaian Pentecostalism : the Mame Wata healing churches of Half Assini

Goddesses in African religions are spirits that affect humans and demand reverence from them. They are also embodiments of ideas that African people have about women, their powers and their roles in society. This study focused on Mame Wata, a goddess in Half Assini, an Nzema-speaking coastal community in western Ghana. It sought to resolve a paradox, that is, the fact that, the goddess is at the center of a Pentecostalist tradition even though traditional Pentecostalism in Ghana views her as an agent of the devil. The study involved fieldwork in this community of the goddess's female worshippers led by Agyimah, a charismatic man, and an agent of the goddess. The study interpreted the goddess as a post-colonial invented symbol personifying both pre-colonial and emerging ideas about female power. Findings from the study also show that through Mame Wata the followers celebrate the spirituality of the female.

The spectra of linear fractional composition operators on weighted Dirichlet spaces

We completely determine the spectra of composition operators induced by linear fractional self-maps of the unit disc acting on weighted Dirichlet spaces; extending earlier results by Higdon [8] and answering the open questions in this context.

On string topology of classifying spaces

Peer reviewed

DiCER: A distributed consumer experience research method for use in public spaces

Date of Acceptance: 06/03/2015 Acknowledgement: This research was funded by NCR and the Northern Research Partnership

On string topology of classifying spaces

Peer reviewed