Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the Controversy of the Russian Propaganda Laws: is the IOC Buckling Under the Pressure of its own Incoherence in Thought?

The Sochi Winter Olympics were a triumph in the eyes of Russia and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Yet, a controversy around the introduction of anti-propaganda laws in Russia that had been criticised for being discriminatory marred the efforts of the IOC to fulfil its self proclaimed aspiration of ‘encouraging the harmonious development of man’. This article discusses the controversy utilising a legally pluralist approach to sports governance, and providing a critical reading of the practices of neoliberal globalisation that marked the issue of sexuality at the Sochi games. The paper argues that the legal influence of the IOC on domestic and international legal norms is contradictory and inconsistent. This, when considered alongside the aspirations of the IOC is significantly problematic and demonstrates the importance of investigating the underlying power structures of this influential international governing body.

Facing the Face of the Other: The Case of the Nia Centre

Until comparatively recently there has been little systematic effort to record the contribution to British theatre history of the diversity represented by Black British and British South and East Asian theatre makers. That failure to ‘see’ and acknowledge this lacuna within the academy reflected what in 2001 was condemned as widespread institutional racism within the theatre industry itself. The other ‘faces’ had been rendered effectively invisible. This chapter considers the ethical and evidential challenges associated with the task of recovering the history of a project created to enhance an important concept of cultural identity: the little-documented failure in the 1990s of the Nia Centre, the UK’s first black arts centre which opened in Hulme, Manchester in 1991. My exploration raises a number of key ethical challenges: How in the aftermath of the Nia’s collapse and in the almost complete absence of archival records, is the historian to mediate what inevitably are multiple truths coming from different perspectives? Whose, and what values were, and remain, at stake both at the time of the project itself, and in the telling of the history? How does the historian deal with failure especially if the circumstances were obscure and little regarded? The dream of the Nia died more than a decade ago, but the participants in that history are very much alive and their sensitivities have to be respected as part of the ethical challenge.

THE ROLE OF DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES IN THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF MEDIUM SIZED FINNISH MANUFACTURING FIRMS - A case for Sormat Oy

A rapidly changing business environment has necessitated most small and medium sized enterprises with international ambitions to reconsider their sources of competitive advantage. To survive in the face of a changing business environment, firms should utilize their dynamic organizational capabilities as well as their internationalization capabilities. Firms develop a competitive advantage if they can exploit their unique organizational competences in a new or foreign market and also if they can acquire new capabilities as a result of engaging in foreign markets. The acquired capabilities from foreign locations enhance the existing capability portfolio of a firm with a desire to internationalize. The study combined the research streams of SME organizational dynamic capability and internationalization capability to build a complete picture on the existing knowledge. An intensive case study was used for empirically testing the theoretical framework of the study and compared with the literature on various organizational capability factors and internationalization capabilities. Sormay Oy was selected because it is a successful medium sized company operating in Finland in the manufacturing industry which has a high international profile. In addition, it has sufficient rate of growth in sales that warrants it to engage internationally in matters such as, acquisitions, joint ventures and partnerships. The key findings of the study suggests that, medium sized manufacturing firms have a set of core competences arising from their organizational capabilities which were identified to be employee know how and relationship with stakeholders which aid the firm in its quest for attaining competitive advantage, ensuring production flexibility and gaining benefits present in a network. In addition, internationalization capabilities were identified under both the RAT test and CAT test whereby the primary findings suggests that, firms that outperform their competitors produce products that meet specific customer and country requirements, foresee the pitfalls of imitation brought about by the foreign local companies and members of a particular network through joint ventures, acquisitions or partnerships as well as those firms that are capable to acquire new capabilities in the foreign markets and successfully use these acquired capabilities to enhance or renew their capability portfolio for their competitive advantage. Additional significant findings under internationalization capabilities were discovered whereby, Sormay Oy was able to develop a new market space for its products despite the difficult institutional environment present in Russia.

Functional Programming With Relations

While programming in a relational framework has much to offer over the functional style in terms of expressiveness, computing with relations is less efficient, and more semantically troublesome. In this paper we propose a novel blend of the functional and relational styles. We identify a class of "causal relations", which inherit some of the bi-directionality properties of relations, but retain the efficiency and semantic foundations of the functional style.

Women, workplace militancy and political subjectivity in Britain, 1968-1985

This thesis examines the experiences and political subjectivity of women who engaged in workplace protest in Britain between 1968 and 1985. The study covers a period that has been identified with the ‘zenith’ of trade-union militancy in British labour history. The women’s liberation movement also emerged in this period, which produced a shift in public debates about gender roles and relations in the home and the workplace. Women’s trade union membership increased dramatically and trade unions increasingly committed themselves to supporting ‘women’s issues’. Industrial disputes involving working-class women have frequently been cited as evidence of women’s growing participation in the labour movement. However, the voices and experiences of female workers who engaged in workplace protest remain largely unexplored. This thesis addresses this space through an original analysis of the 1968 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford, Dagenham; the 1976 equal pay strike at Trico, Brentford; the 1972 Sexton shoe factory occupation in Fakenham, Norfolk; the 1981 Lee Jeans factory occupation in Greenock, Inverclyde and the 1984-1985 sewing-machinists’ strike at Ford Dagenham. Drawing upon a combination of oral history and written sources, this study contributes a fresh understanding of the relationship between feminism, workplace activism and trade unionism during the years 1968-1985. In every dispute considered in this thesis, women’s behaviour was perceived by observers as novel, ‘historic’ or extraordinary. But the women did not think of themselves as extraordinary, and rather understood their behaviour as a legitimate and justified response to their everyday experiences of gender and class antagonism. The industrial disputes analysed in this thesis show that women’s workplace militancy was not simply a direct response to women’s heightened presence in trade unions. The women involved in these disputes were more likely to understand their experiences of workplace activism as an expression of the economic, social and subjective value of their work. Whilst they did not adopt a feminist identity or associate their action with the WLM, they spoke about themselves and their motivations in a manner that emphasised feminist values of equality, autonomy and self-worth.

Panika moralna w dyskursie publicznym. Rosjanie wobec współczesnej imigracji z Chińskiej Republiki Ludowej.

Wydział Nauk Społecznych: Instytut Socjologii

Ecology, physiology and performance in high-rate anaerobic digestion

The design demands on water and sanitation engineers are rapidly changing. The global population is set to rise from 7 billion to 10 billion by 2083. Urbanisation in developing regions is increasing at such a rate that a predicted 56% of the global population will live in an urban setting by 2025. Compounding these problems, the global water and energy crises are impacting the Global North and South alike. High-rate anaerobic digestion offers a low-cost, low-energy treatment alternative to the energy intensive aerobic technologies used today. Widespread implementation however is hindered by the lack of capacity to engineer high-rate anaerobic digestion for the treatment of complex wastes such as sewage. This thesis utilises the Expanded Granular Sludge Bed bioreactor (EGSB) as a model system in which to study the ecology, physiology and performance of high-rate anaerobic digestion of complex wastes. The impacts of a range of engineered parameters including reactor geometry, wastewater type, operating temperature and organic loading rate are systematically investigated using lab-scale EGSB bioreactors. Next generation sequencing of 16S amplicons is utilised as a means of monitoring microbial ecology. Microbial community physiology is monitored by means of specific methanogenic activity testing and a range of physical and chemical methods are applied to assess reactor performance. Finally, the limit state approach is trialled as a method for testing the EGSB and is proposed as a standard method for biotechnology testing enabling improved process control at full-scale. The arising data is assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Lab-scale reactor design is demonstrated to significantly influence the spatial distribution of the underlying ecology and community physiology in lab-scale reactors, a vital finding for both researchers and full-scale plant operators responsible for monitoring EGSB reactors. Recurrent trends in the data indicate that hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis dominates in high-rate anaerobic digestion at both full- and lab-scale when subject to engineered or operational stresses including low-temperature and variable feeding regimes. This is of relevance for those seeking to define new directions in fundamental understanding of syntrophic and competitive relations in methanogenic communities and also to design engineers in determining operating parameters for full-scale digesters. The adoption of the limit state approach enabled identification of biological indicators providing early warning of failure under high-solids loading, a vital insight for those currently working empirically towards the development of new biotechnologies at lab-scale.

Transmission Easement and Adverse Possession of Transmission Easement in the Polish Law

The object of analysis in the text are the issues concerned with the transmission easement and the adverse possession thereof on the grounds of the Polish law. The text features: (1) a historical outline of the solutions concerned with easements in the Polish law following 1945, (2) the institution of transmission easement introduced in 2008 and the solutions concerned with the claims for the establishment thereof at court, (3) the institution of adverse possession of transmission easement pursuant to civil law regulations, judicature and the legal doctrine. On account of the need to elaborate the wide-ranging legal issues concerned with the transmission easement in this text, the analysis embraces two research questions giving rise to the following conclusions: (1) What function is performed by the institution of transmission easement in the system of civil-law relations in the Polish law? The legislator in the articles introducing a transmission easement ossified the solutions functioning in the judicature of the Polish courts before 2008. The legal interpretation took a turn for clarification, that is for the establishment of a norm in the situation where its comprehension was dubious. It is noteworthy that in the period prior to 2008, the law provided for easement appurtenant, and on account of the usual course of judicial decisions also for easement appurtenant with the content corresponding to transmission easement. In 2008 these two “legal existences” were supplemented with a transmission easement, which nevertheless failed to resolve all the legal problems; nay, this gave rise to even more problems, e.g. the one of non-establishment of interpolar norms which would address the issues arising in connection with the use of various easement institutions in legal transactions. While amending the civil law, the legislator aimed to bring order to legal transactions by streamlining the unregulated actual state of easement in relation to transmission infrastructure, but also in relation to the situations where an easement was yet to be established and a facility yet to be constructed. Thus, such action is intended to regulate the disorderly legislation in force as well as to safeguard investment processes. This is of particular significance, for example, for energy companies which are burdened with statutory public-law obligations as regards securing energy supplies and providing for the development of energy infrastructure. Hence, the de facto introduced civil-law solutions indirectly served to realise the principles of the doctrine of easement in the public interest. (2) What legal problems in the civil-law relations does the application of the institution of transmission easement by adverse possession entail? On account of the functioning of various institutions of easement, that is (1) an easement appurtenant, (2) an easement appurtenant with the content corresponding to a transmission easement, and as of 2008 (3) a transmission easement, a problem arose as to which of the given easements companies exercised in particular periods, all the more so because before 1989 the State Treasury owned them and many of the transmission facilities were put in place by virtue of administrative decisions. The commonly held belief is that in the period of “society-oriented economy” as well as up to 2008 infrastructure companies could exercise an easement appurtenant which corresponded to the content of a transmission easement. Therefore, in such a case the running of the prescriptive period should allow for the general rules laid down for an easement appurtenant. Apart from the problem of the relation of a capacity to exercise a right to property and the free development of civil-law relations before 1989, the recognition of the running of prescriptive periods – given the functioning of the three various easements as legal institutions – became a significant legal problem. By way of illustration, the recognition – against the period of exercising transmission easement – of the period required for the acquisition thereof by adverse possession, whereby before 3 August 2008 the real estate featured the legal state corresponding to the content of this right, is debatable. One cannot recognise that within that period a transmission easement was exercised, because such a right was not in existence as yet. Therefore, the institution that might be employed is the running of the period as regards the adverse possession in relation to an easement appurtenant with the content of a transmission easement. Still, the problem remains as to whether the period of the exercise of the easement appurtenant with the content corresponding to a transmission easement can be recognised against the period of possession required for the adverse possession of a transmission easement pursuant to the regulations introduced in 2008. One might incline to the position whereby in such a case it would be right to fully recognise – against the period of exercising a transmission easement – the period of exercising an easement appurtenant corresponding thereto in respect of its content. That being so, the adverse possession of a transmission easement might ensue in such a situation on 3 August 2008 at the earliest, that is the moment the regulations governing this right come into effect. Conversely, if the prescriptive period expires before that date, the entrepreneur would acquire an easement appurtenant with the content corresponding to the transmission easement. Such an interpretation is aligned with the purpose intended by the legislator, which is to bring order to the actual state of the broadest scope with the aid of a new legal instrument. The text, while analysing the issue of a transmission easement and an adverse possession thereof as a institution of the civil law, presents only some selected problems. Hence, the analysis does not include, for example, the issues concerned with claims for remuneration (for usufruct without contractual basis or usufruct fees), or claims for compensation (redress or amends). Furthermore, the text does not conduct a more profound analysis of the relation between the provisions regulating public-law relations (e.g. acts of law introducing the institution of dispossession) and the provisions regulating civil-law relations (the easements in question).

Fatalism, Attributions of Failure and Academic Performance in Mapuche and Non-Mapuche Chilean Students

This study investigated the role of fatalism as a cultural value orientation and causal attributions for past failure in the academic performance of high school students in the Araucania Region of Chile. Three thousand three hundred and fourty eight Mapuche and Non-Mapuche students participated in the study. Consistent with the Culture and Behavior model that guided the research, the test of causal models based on the analysis of structural equations show that academic performance is in part a function of variations in the level of fatalism, directly as well as indirectly through its influence in the attribution processes and failure-related emotions. In general, the model representing the proposed structure of relations among fatalism, attributions, and emotions as determinants of academic performance fit the data for both Mapuche and non-Mapuche students. However, results show that some of the relations in the model are different for students from these two ethnic groups. Finally, according to the results from the analysis of causal models, family SES appear to be the most important determinant of fatalism.

Adaptability, Transformation and Complex Changes in Namibia and Tanzania: Resilience and Innovation System Development in Local Communities

This thesis is a research about the recent complex spatial changes in Namibia and Tanzania and local communities’ capacity to cope with, adapt to and transform the unpredictability engaged to these processes. I scrutinise the concept of resilience and its potential application to explaining the development of local communities in Southern Africa when facing various social, economic and environmental changes. My research is based on three distinct but overlapping research questions: what are the main spatial changes and their impact on the study areas in Namibia and Tanzania? What are the adaptation, transformation and resilience processes of the studied local communities in Namibia and Tanzania? How are innovation systems developed, and what is their impact on the resilience of the studied local communities in Namibia and Tanzania? I use four ethnographic case studies concerning environmental change, global tourism and innovation system development in Namibia and Tanzania, as well as mixed-methodological approaches, to study these issues. The results of my empirical investigation demonstrate that the spatial changes in the localities within Namibia and Tanzania are unique, loose assemblages, a result of the complex, multisided, relational and evolutional development of human and non-human elements that do not necessarily have linear causalities. Several changes co-exist and are interconnected though uncertain and unstructured and, together with the multiple stressors related to poverty, have made communities more vulnerable to different changes. The communities’ adaptation and transformation measures have been mostly reactive, based on contingency and post hoc learning. Despite various anticipation techniques, coping measures, adaptive learning and self-organisation processes occurring in the localities, the local communities are constrained by their uneven power relationships within the larger assemblages. Thus, communities’ own opportunities to increase their resilience are limited without changing the relations in these multiform entities. Therefore, larger cooperation models are needed, like an innovation system, based on the interactions of different actors to foster cooperation, which require collaboration among and input from a diverse set of stakeholders to combine different sources of knowledge, innovation and learning. Accordingly, both Namibia and Tanzania are developing an innovation system as their key policy to foster transformation towards knowledge-based societies. Finally, the development of an innovation system needs novel bottom-up approaches to increase the resilience of local communities and embed it into local communities. Therefore, innovation policies in Namibia have emphasised the role of indigenous knowledge, and Tanzania has established the Living Lab network.

Using importance-satisfaction analysis in evaluating student satisfaction: a case study of economics and administration Faculty of Qafqaz University

Education is one of the main industries in the world, which needs to focus more than other types of industries. As Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world” (www.brainyquote.com). Global economic recession era put serious pressure on private Higher Education Institutions (HEI), which resulted as decrease in the university spending`s budget. Therefore, HEI forced to develop more competitive ways to find new financial resources for rapid technological and organizational changes (Savsar, 2012). Students are the motive of being of Higher Education. The aim of this study is to implement İmportance-Satisfaction Analysis (IPA) matrix to evaluate the student`s satisfaction and assess importance of different attributes in terms of student`s perception. The students that participated in this study enrolled in the present academic year, 2015/2016, in the Economics and Administration Faculty-Qafqaz University. In order to perform study, survey method applied to collect the data and number of received valid questionnaire were 266. Questionnaire used to collect demographic information of students, identify importance given to each attribute and satisfaction degree of each attribute. Descriptive analysis used to identify profile of respondents, also find satisfaction and importance degree for each attributes. To evaluate differences between groups, built association between variables, find relation between variables and answering to the research hypothesis inferential analysis applied. Moreover, IPA matrix was been used to explore the attributes that needs improvement that perceived as attributes that are more important for the students. The result showed that generally students are satisfied with service quality offered by HEI-on sample of the Qafqaz University. In addition, research found that there are no differences in overall satisfaction and importance by department, gender, academic year and grade point average. IPA matrix highlighted the main attributes, which performs well, namely Academic Services and Teaching aspects, and in another hand needs to concentrate in Undergraduate program and External Relations. In addition, research found that loyalty of students is very low and there is a negative correlation between loyalty and satisfaction.

Optimisation of a crossdocking distribution centre simulation model

This paper reports on continuing research into the modelling of an order picking process within a Crossdocking distribution centre using Simulation Optimisation. The aim of this project is to optimise a discrete event simulation model and to understand factors that affect finding its optimal performance. Our initial investigation revealed that the precision of the selected simulation output performance measure and the number of replications required for the evaluation of the optimisation objective function through simulation influences the ability of the optimisation technique. We experimented with Common Random Numbers, in order to improve the precision of our simulation output performance measure, and intended to use the number of replications utilised for this purpose as the initial number of replications for the optimisation of our Crossdocking distribution centre simulation model. Our results demonstrate that we can improve the precision of our selected simulation output performance measure value using Common Random Numbers at various levels of replications. Furthermore, after optimising our Crossdocking distribution centre simulation model, we are able to achieve optimal performance using fewer simulations runs for the simulation model which uses Common Random Numbers as compared to the simulation model which does not use Common Random Numbers.

A Fuzzy Decision Strategy for Topic Identification and Dynamic Selection of Language Models

International audience

Contested Play and Clean Water: McMillan Park, Race, and the Built Environment in Washington, D.C., 1900-1941

This study focuses on the intersection of the politics and culture of open public space with race relations in the United States from 1900 to 1941. The history of McMillan Park in Washington, D.C. serves as a lens to examine these themes. Ultimately, the park’s history, as documented in newspapers, interviews, reports, and photographs, reveals how white residents attempted to protect their dominance in a racial hierarchy through the control of both the physical and cultural elements of public recreation space. White use of discrimination through seemingly neutral desires to protect health, safety, and property values, establishes a congruence with their defense of residential property. Without similar access to legal methods, African Americans acted through direct action in gaps of governmental control. Their use of this space demonstrates how African-American residents of Washington and the United States contested their race, recreation, and spatial privileges in the pre-World War II era.

STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHER INSTRUMENTAL SUPPORT AS A PREDICTOR OF MOTIVATION IN READING AND MATH AND ACHIEVEMENT FROM SECOND THROUGH TWELFTH GRADE

In this study, relations among students’ perceptions of instrumental help/support from their teachers and their reading and math ability beliefs, subjective task values, and academic grades, were explored from elementary through high school. These relations were examined in an overall sample of 1,062 students from the Childhood and Beyond (CAB) study dataset, a cohort-sequential study that followed students from elementary to high school and beyond. Multi-group structural equation model (SEM) analyses were used to explore these relations in adjacent grade pairs (e.g., second grade to third grade) in elementary school and from middle school through high school separately for males and females. In addition, multi-group latent growth curve (LGC) analyses were used to explore the associations among change in the variables of interest from middle school through high school separately for males and females. The results showed that students’ perceptions of instrumental help from teachers significantly positively predicted: (a) students’ math ability beliefs and reading and math task values in elementary school within the same grade for both girls and boys, and (b) students’ reading and math ability beliefs, reading and math task values, and GPA in middle and high school within the same grade for both girls and boys. Overall, students’ perceptions of instrumental help from teachers more consistently predicted ability beliefs and task values in the academic domain of math than in the academic domain of reading. Although there were some statistically significant differences in the models for girls and boys, the direction and strength of the relations in the models were generally similar for both girls and boys. The implications for these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.