The long and the short of it: negotiating the right space for Asian theatre in the university drama curriculum

This article compares two approaches to teaching Asian theatre at undergraduate level in the United Kingdom. One approach samples a variety of different traditions as a means to challenge students to produce performance for a combined audience of hearing and deaf, whereas the other focuses on the effect of exploring one geographical area intensively over the course of one academic year. The article seeks to highlight the merits and pitfalls of both approaches, and questions whether student work that actively questions ethnicity and identity, as well as the tension between innovation and tradition, might be considered diasporic in character.

Environmental evaluation of agri-environment schemes using participatory approaches: experiences of testing the Agri-Environmental Footprint Index

The Agri-Environment Footprint Index (AFI) has been developed as a generic methodology to assess changes in the overall environmental impacts from agriculture at the farm level and to assist in the evaluation of European agri-environmental schemes (AES). The methodology is based on multicriteria analysis (MCA) and involves stakeholder participation to provide a locally customised evaluation based on weighted environmental indicators. The methodology was subjected to a feasibility assessment in a series of case studies across the EU. The AFI approach was able to measure significant differences in environmental status between farms that participated in an AES and nonparticipants. Wider environmental concerns, beyond the scheme objectives, were also considered in some case studies and the benefits for identification of unintentional (and often beneficial) impacts of AESs are presented. The participatory approach to AES valuation proved efficient in different environments and administrative contexts. The approach proved to be appropriate for environmental evaluation of complex agri-environment systems and can complement any evaluation conducted under the Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework. The applicability of the AFI in routine monitoring of AES impacts and in providing feedback to improve policy design is discussed.

Walled in: ordinary East Germans' responses to 13 August 1961

The building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 had repercussions not only on the international scene, but also for the power relationship between state and society in the German Democratic Republic. This article considers the short-, medium- and long-term reactions of the East German population to the border closure from a personal and political perspective, examining key groups such as educated elites, workers, and young people. The closed society elicited a new deference in the short term, but the author argues for considerable continuities of low-level disruptive behavior before and after 13 August. In the longer term, there was a generation born behind the Wall which by simple habituation rather than a conscious decision was forced to accept the new contours of the geopolitical landscape created by the Wall.

Strengthening artisanal mining research and policy through baseline census activities

Over the past 10-15 years, several governments have implemented an array of technology, support-related, sustainable livelihoods (SL) and poverty-reduction projects for artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). In the majority of cases, however, these interventions have failed to facilitate improvements in the industry's productivity and raise the living standards of the sector's subsistence operators. This article argues that a poor understanding of the demographics of target populations has precipitated these outcomes. In order to strengthen policy and assistance in the sector, governments must determine, with greater precision, the number of people operating in ASM regions, their origins and ethnic backgrounds, ages, and educational levels. This can be achieved by carrying out basic and localized census work before promoting ambitious sector-specific projects aimed at improving working conditions in the industry.

Improvement of link failure restoration utilising multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) as a means to maintain quality of service (QOS)

This paper proposes a practical approach to the enhancement of Quality of Service (QoS) routing by means of providing alternative or repair paths in the event of a breakage of a working path. The proposed scheme guarantees that every Protected Node (PN) is connected to a multi-repair path such that no further failure or breakage of single or double repair paths can cause any simultaneous loss of connectivity between an ingress node and an egress node. Links to be protected in an MPLS network are predefined and a Label Switched path (LSP) request involves the establishment of a working path. The use of multi-protection paths permits the formation of numerous protection paths allowing greater flexibility. Our analysis examined several methods including single, double and multi-repair routes and the prioritization of signals along the protected paths to improve the Quality of Service (QoS), throughput, reduce the cost of the protection path placement, delay, congestion and collision. Results obtained indicated that creating multi-repair paths and prioritizing packets reduces delay and increases throughput in which case the delays at the ingress/egress LSPs were low compared to when the signals had not been classified. Therefore the proposed scheme provided a means to improve the QoS in path restoration in MPLS using available network resources. Prioritizing the packets in the data plane has revealed that the amount of traffic transmitted using a medium and low priority Label Switch Paths (LSPs) does not have any impact on the explicit rate of the high priority LSP in which case the problem of a knock-on effect is eliminated.

Cinnamate ester containing liquid crystalline side chain polymers

The synthesis of methacrylate esters of 4-cyanophenyl-(4-(ω-hydroxyalkyloxy)) cinnamates, with spacer lengths of 2 and 6 methylene units and the synthesis of the corresponding acrylate ester with a spacer of 2 methylene units are described. The methacrylate monomers were polymerized by free radical polymerization, both as homopolymers and as copolymers with the analogous benzoate monomer of spacer length 6. The acrylate ester could not be polymerized successfully under the same reaction conditions. Polymers were characterized by NMR spectroscopy, gel permeation chromatography, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermo-optic observations. Of the monomers prepared, only the cinnamate with a hexamethylene spacer shows a mesophase, seen on supercooling of the melt. All of the polymers prepared were liquid crystalline, with smectic behavior predominating in the polymethacrylates with the longer spacer group. A narrow nematic region is seen just below the clearing temperature with a range of 3–9°C, nematic character is increased in the copolymer series with the degree of incorporation of the cinnamate monomer with the spacer group of length 2.

Legal outlier, again? U.S. felon suffrage: comparative and international human rights perspectives

The judiciousness of American felon suffrage policies has long been the subject of scholarly debate, not least due to the large number of affected Americans: an estimated 5.3 million citizens are ineligible to vote as a result of a criminal conviction. This article offers comparative law and international human rights perspectives and aims to make two main contributions to the American and global discourse. After an introduction in Part I, Part II offers comparative law perspectives on challenges to disenfranchisement legislation, juxtaposing U.S. case law against recent judgments rendered by courts in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and by the European Court of Human Rights. The article submits that owing to its unique constitutional stipulations, as well as to a general reluctance to engage foreign legal sources, U.S. jurisprudence lags behind an emerging global jurisprudential trend that increasingly views convicts’ disenfranchisement as a suspect practice and subjects it to judicial review. This transnational judicial discourse follows a democratic paradigm and adopts a “residual liberty” approach to criminal justice that considers convicts to be rights-holders. The discourse rejects regulatory justifications for convicts’ disenfranchisement, and instead sees disenfranchisement as a penal measure. In order to determine its suitability as a punishment, the adverse effects of disenfranchisement are weighed against its purported social benefits, using balancing or proportionality review. Part III analyzes the international human rights treaty regime. It assesses, in particular, Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”), which proclaims that “every citizen” has a right to vote without “unreasonable restrictions.” The analysis concludes that the phrase “unreasonable restrictions” is generally interpreted in a manner which tolerates certain forms of disenfranchisement, whereas other forms (such as life disenfranchisement) may be incompatible with treaty obligations. This article submits that disenfranchisement is a normatively flawed punishment. It fails to treat convicts as politically-equal community members, degrades them, and causes them grave harms both as individuals and as members of social groups. These adverse effects outweigh the purported social benefits of disenfranchisement. Furthermore, as a core component of the right to vote, voter eligibility should cease to be subjected to balancing or proportionality review. The presumed facilitative nature of the right to vote makes suffrage less susceptible to deference-based objections regarding the judicial review of legislation, as well as to cultural relativity objections to further the international standardization of human rights obligations. In view of this, this article proposes the adoption of a new optional protocol to the ICCPR proscribing convicts’ disenfranchisement. The article draws analogies between the proposed protocol and the ICCPR’s “Optional Protocol Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty.” If adopted, the proposed protocol would strengthen the current trajectory towards expanding convicts’ suffrage that emanates from the invigorated transnational judicial discourse.