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The historically growing awareness of human rights violations is attributable in large part to advocacy by nongovernmental human rights organizations (NGOs). Human rights advocacy techniques and the availability of information have not been constant, however. The use of NGO sources for information on human rights levels has implications for recent scholarly debates over information availability and human rights measurement. How have appeals on behalf of individuals changed as human rights concepts and legal standards have expanded? One way to get at this question is by taking advantage of event-based features of activist-generated data. We discuss the uses of such data with regard to a collection of documents on human rights advocacy for individuals, consisting of Amnesty International's Urgent Action bulletins on Latin America from 1975 to 2007. An illustrative case study focuses on changes in the use of legal standards in the human rights appeals addressing torture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary goal of this project is to understand how each National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center library, and all libraries that support cancer research, function within their institutions. Through an in-depth survey focused on three major areas (staff, content and tools procurement, and user services), the research team hopes to determine how a cancer-centric library can be successful in supporting quality patient care, research excellence, and education. Additionally, the survey will examine the necessary minimum staffing levels for librarians and information professionals based on organizational size and degree of research focus. The survey will seek out the new skills librarians will need to deliver optimal services. The survey will also explore how content libraries purchase reflects and maps to constituents' current medical and research activities. Libraries within a research intense environment have a responsibility to align with researchers and health care professionals to provide resources and services that support their workflows. Cancer libraries need to be attuned to their institutions' missions, whether that includes excellent patient care, research endeavors, or cutting-edge educational programs. The information gathered from the survey will provide data for this research team to define the vision and standards of excellence for a cancer specialized research library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treaty ratification and human rights criticism, along with democratic change, are key underpinnings of international human rights in practice. Using a treaty-specific human rights indicator in a dynamic panel data framework, I estimate how states' human rights behavior changes in response to ratification of the Convention against Torture (CAT) and criticism launched through United Nations (UN) procedures from 1985 to 2005, and whether response differs by a government's democratic status. Prior CAT ratifiers generally respond more positively to country-specific UN human rights criticism than do nonratifiers. When criticized, the difference between ratifiers and nonratifiers is greater with higher democratic governance ratings; however, ratification combined with criticism is likely to stabilize or improve human rights levels even in countries scoring poorly on democratic indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors comment to an article by David Richards about their paper "Information Effects and Human Rights Data". They discuss the argument by Richards on how word counts are related to coding, the use of Latin American cases as illustrations of how coding responds to the changes in human rights conditions, and the global averages of Cingranelli-Richards data presented by Richards.

At Purdue University Libraries, a project involving the digitization of Amnesty International Urgent Action Bulletins from 1974-2007 combined the strengths of political science and library science researchers. The political science research was centered on transnational human rights advocacy and legal instrumentation changes over time, while the Libraries' research related to data management, data lifecycle and curation, metadata, and collaborative research modeling. The conceptual framework of this case study is rooted in the literature on embedded librarianship and lifecycle models of data curation. We investigate the intersections and alignments between scholarly workflow and curatorial workflow, and the implications of these intersections and alignments in collaborative research and curatorial lifecycles. The case study also examines how library resources supported research, and how library science and political science experts collaborated in research through the development of a conceptual model. A research collaboration model was developed specifically for the human rights texts project, but was then generalized to be applicable for a variety of practitioner-librarian collaboration projects. The research resulted in data production, data curation, data management, data publication, and scholarly communication and dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and describes two new norm-based strategies for institutional change to address intractable social problems. In both strategies, advocates “foreground” and criticize norms supporting the institutional status quo before either promoting an alternative existing norm via normative reframing of the issue, or creating and promoting an entirely new norm via normative innovation to build support for new institutional arrangements. Drawing on examples of institutional change addressing the problems of climate change and violence against women, the analysis illustrates how these strategies are especially effective in the face of opposition from vested interests or problematic existing norms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Changes in quality and availability of information related to human rights violations raise questions about how best to use existing data to assess human rights change. Information effects are discernible both in primary sources of information and data coded by two prominent human rights datasets, the Political Terror Scale (PTS) and the Cingranelli-Richards Human Rights Data Set (CIRI). The authors discuss ways that human rights information has changed for the better, evaluate the scales and their primary text sources for countries in Latin America, and compare them with information drawn from regional truth commission data. Extra caution is advised when using summary data to make inferences about human rights change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes a somewhat unorthodox collection development practice and its evolution. The authors examine their idiosyncratic environment as well as external factors that influenced methods over the turbulent and eventful period following the emergence of electronic resources. Finally, they detail the methods used today to achieve their constant goal: the most responsible stewardship of collection funds and timely access to the most relevant content for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species of management concern that have been affected by human activities typically are characterized by low genetic diversity, which can adversely affect their ability to adapt to environmental changes. We used 18 microsatellite markers to genotype 362 Florida manatees (Trichechus manatus latirostris), and investigated genetic diversity, population structure, and estimated genetically effective population size (Ne). The observed and expected heterozygosity and average number of alleles were 0.455 ± 0.04, 0.479 ± 0.04, and 4.77 ± 0.5 respectively. All measures of Florida manatee genetic diversity were less than averages reported for placental mammals, including fragmented or nonideal populations. Overall estimates of differentiation were low, though significantly greater than zero, and analysis of molecular variance revealed that over 95% of the total variance was among individuals within predefined management units or among individuals along the coastal subpopulations, with only minor portions of variance explained by between group variance. Although genetic issues, as inferred by neutral genetic markers, appear not to be critical at present, the Florida manatee continues to face demographic challenges due to anthropogenic activities and stochastic factors such as red tides, oil spills, and disease outbreaks; these can further reduce genetic diversity of the manatee population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use microsatellite loci to examine genetic structure of the Florida scrub lizard (Sceloporus woodi) and test for the effects of landscape variables at the scale of neighboring patches. We evaluate ecological metrics of connectivity with genetics data, which to our knowledge is the first application of these particular metrics to landscape- level genetics studies in Florida scrub. Florida scrub is a highly threatened ecosystem in which habitat patches are remnants of a previously widespread xeric landscape. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has shown that landscape structure influenced the evolutionary history of the Florida scrub lizard (S. woodi) across its range. Our results concur with these mtDNA studies in documenting divergence between xeric ridge systems and also demonstrate divergence at very local scales. Both least-cost distance and pairwise isolation (a metric used in ecological studies that includes patch size, quality and a modified isolation index) were better predictors of genetic distance than Euclidean distance, indicating that mesic and hydric habitat influence spatial patterns in genetic variation. Our results support the need for focusing on spatial distribution of scrub habitat at the scale of neighboring patches, as well as regionally, in conservation management and restoration. Also, our study points to the value of integrating landscape ecology metrics into landscape genetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the need to develop an empirically-based understanding of the use of dialogue in teaching by discussing theory and research related to a pedagogical approach called collaborative reasoning (CR). CR is an instructional method designed to engage elementary school children in group discussions about controversial issues raised in their readings. CR is grounded in social learning and schema-theoretic views of cognition, which are integrated to form a new model, called argument schema theory (AST). According to AST, students acquire generalizable knowledge of argumentation, or an argument schema, through participating in dialogic discussions with their peers. The article reviews empirical evidence from a variety of studies designed to evaluate the educational potential of dialogic interactions. The studies investigated group processes during CR discussions, individual student outcomes following participation in discussions, and the connections between the features of social interaction and individual student performance. We conclude that, despite its complexity, classroom dialogue can serve as a useful mechanism for promoting the development of individual argumentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Florida manatees ( Trichechus manatus latirostris) are marine mammals that inhabit the coastal waters and rivers of the southeastern USA, primarily Florida. Previous studies have shown that Florida manatees have low mitochondrial DNA variability, suggesting that nuclear DNA loci are necessary for discriminatory analyses. Here we report 10 polymorphic microsatellite loci with an average of 4.2 alleles per locus, and average heterozygosity of 50.1%. These loci have been developed for use in population studies, parentage assignment, and individual identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergent leadership was examined in 12 discussion groups in 4 fourth-grade classrooms. Children's leadership moves were coded from transcripts of 10 free-flowing, open-format discussions of each of the 12 groups. The transcripts encompassed 26,000 turns for speaking, including 22,000 child turns of which 1,700 were judged to serve one of five leadership functions: Turn Management, Argument Development, Planning and Organizing, Topic Control, and Acknowledgment. Comparison of the number and kind of leadership moves made by the children showed that 1 primary child leader emerged in 6 out of the 12 groups and that, in all but 1 of the remaining groups, leadership was shared among several children. Even in groups with a dominant leader, leadership functions were widely distributed among group members. A three-level generalized hierarchical linear model, with multiple discussions nested within students and students nested within groups, showed that the frequency of leadership moves increased with the progression of the discussions, suggesting that the emerging leaders were learning how to lead. Girls who received stratagem instruction, and who were frequently nominated by their peers as having good ideas and seldom nominated as being too quiet, exhibited more leadership than other children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a framework to help teachers facilitate small group discussions about stories children read. Basic steps for Collaborative Reasoning (CR) discussions; Characteristics of CR as shown from a study of 12 fourth-grade classrooms in rural, urban and suburban settings; Examples from CR discussions; Analysis of limitations.

Analyzes states' claims and bargains at the United Nations Conferences on the environment (1992), human rights (1993), and women (1995). Revision and extension of Litfin's (1997) notion of bargains among components of sovereignty; Sovereignty claims and bargains.

Discusses the increasing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements, with emphasis on world politics, while looking at a global civil society. Definition of the term global civil society; What are NGOs; Reference to several United Nations conferences which were attended by NGOs; Roles of NGOs at these conferences; In-depth look at NGOs.

Discusses theoretical factors most relevant for explaining the Amnesty International's (AI) heavy impact on the actions of government. Aspects of AI's activity that have enabled it to be effective; Expansion of the scope of conflict; Resources for mobilization; Just resolution of conflict.