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The literature on electronic publishing reveals that scant attention has been paid to the area of scholarly monographs. This paper reports on a study into the nature and provision of electronic scholarly monographs and textbooks in the UK. Following a brief description of the methodology, publishing structures are reviewed; the physical characteristics of electronic scholarly monographs are analysed, and issues associated with access are discussed. The final section sets out areas for future work. The study reported on here was a supporting study for the UK Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme.

Looks at the implications of electronic scholarly monograph publishing for authors, publishers and readers. It stems from original research undertaken by the authors in 1998 as part of the JISC Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib). Since the formal completion of the work both authors have remained active in the area and have monitored new developments. The project included a comprehensive literature search and review; a survey of UK and international publishers of electronic monographs by means of an interrogation of their Web sites, and case studies conducted with selected UK publishers. A separate investigation of the publishers of national bibliographical sources and services was also undertaken, and UK university libraries were surveyed by means of an e‐mail questionnaire. Offers a description of the structure of electronic monograph publishing, including the roles of the various parties involved in the publishing process, and addresses such issues as provision, costing, authoring and editorial responsibilities and challenges. An analysis of the issues associated with the characteristics of Web monographs is provided, together with a delineation of the nature of narrative content, added value components, subject orientations and quality control. Concludes with a brief consideration of some of the challenges that confront the user of electronic scholarly monographs, including issues of access.

Many of the most important recent debates on global distributive justice take place between defenders of global egalitarian positions, on the one hand, and defenders of more sufficientarian or 'minimalist' positions on the other. This paper reviews two recent contributions to those debates, from Pablo Gilabert (in his book From Global Poverty to Global Equality) and Mathias Risse (in his book On Global Justice). It offers an account of their respective strengths, and seeks to situate their arguments within the on-going debate between egalitarianism and minimalism at the global level.

When homing from familiar areas, homing pigeons are able to exploit previously acquired topographical information, but the mechanisms behind this ability are still poorly understood. One possibility is that they recall the familiar release site topographical features in association with the home direction (site-specific compass orientation strategy), another that the spatial relationships among landmarks guide their route home (piloting strategy), without relying on the compass mechanism. The two strategies can be put in conflict by releasing clock-shifted birds at familiar locations, in order to highlight which is preferred. We analysed GPS tracks of clock-shifted pigeons, with familiarity controlled at each of three different release sites, and we observed that pigeons can display individual preferences for one of the two orientation strategies and that some characteristic features of the release site have an important role in determining the level of landmark-based homeward orientation. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

A recent Ariadne article on review service resource evaluation by Anagnostelis et al. (1997) ended with a reference to the Platform for Internet Content Selection (PICS) and added that while PICS controls neither the publication nor the distribution of information, it offers ‘individuals and organisations the option of filtering out or filtering in selected views of networked information.’ There then followed a reference to the Centre for Information Quality Management (CIQM) and its proposal to use PICS filtering in order to allow users to set constraints on the minimum quality of resources retrieved (Armstrong 1997). This article seeks to amplify this basic idea.

This comprises the interim report of the first major study of children's public library services to be undertaken in the UK. Funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre from 1996–1998, it will assess the significance of the role of the public library in supporting the reading development of children and young people and produce service criteria and performance indicators to inform future directions and policy decisions. The methods are an extensive literature review, national questionnaire survey and case studies to examine good practice. Findings will be made available in the final report.

Dozens of countries have established Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in the last decade or so, in the majority of cases employing those funds to manage the large revenues gained from selling resources such as oil and gas on a tide of rapidly rising commodity prices. These funds have raised a series of ethical questions, including just how the money contained in such funds should eventually be spent. This article engages with that question, and specifically seeks to connect debates on SWFs with debates on global justice. Just how good are national claims to the great wealth contained in SWFs in the first place? Using the example of Norway's very large SWF – derived from selling North-Sea petroleum – I show that national claims are at least sometimes very weak, with the implication that the wealth in many such funds is ripe for redistribution in the interests of global justice. I conclude by offering some guidance for how the money contained in such funds could best be spent, with the goal of advancing global justice.

An epithermal neutron imager based on detecting alpha particles created via boron neutron capture mechanism is discussed. The diagnostic mainly consists of a mm thick Boron Nitride (BN) sheet (as an alpha converter) in contact with a non-borated cellulose nitride film (LR115 type-II) detector. While the BN absorbs the neutrons in the thermal and epithermal ranges, the fast neutrons register insignificantly on the detector due to their low neutron capture and recoil cross-sections. The use of solid-state nuclear track detectors (SSNTD), unlike image plates, micro-channel plates and scintillators, provide safeguard from the x-rays, gamma-rays and electrons. The diagnostic was tested on a proof-of-principle basis, in front of a laser driven source of moderated neutrons, which suggests the potential of using this diagnostic (BN+SSNTD) for dosimetry and imaging applications.

The primary goal of Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP 2) reliability research is to improve the reliability of highway travel times by reducing the frequency and effects of events that cause travel times to fluctuate unpredictably. Seven potential sources of unreliable travel times—that is, events that cause variable travel times—have been identified: traffic incidents, work zones, demand fluctuations, special events, traffic control devices, weather, and inadequate base capacity. Traffic incidents alone are a major cause of delay. This report presents the results of a project that developed a training program for traffic incident responders and managers. The training program described in this report contains two components: training of trainers and incident responder training. The course material provides extensive training on the core competencies for interdisciplinary traffic incident response. It is designed to help responders understand and implement the national unified goal for traffic incident management: responder safety; safe, quick clearance; and prompt, reliable, and interoperable communications. The training methods include a variety of adult-learning techniques, including interactive seminar, case study analysis, tabletop role-play and scenario, and field practicum. The training was developed for delivery through a 2-day intensive format or a modular (single lesson per session) format. The train-the-trainer curriculum is designed to facilitate cost-effective cultivation of qualified trainers across the country. Core multidisciplinary competencies were identified with input from a group of experts in traffic incident management. These competencies provided a framework from which the curriculum was built and design documents created. After development of the course materials, formative evaluation was conducted by holding two pilot training sessions, and the input from participants was incorporated into the final materials. This report is intended to help transportation agencies move forward in addressing nonrecurring traffic congestion and delivering more reliable travel times on their highway networks.

This chapter introduces the idea of global distributive justice, and looks at some arguments in favour of it. Although some people might think that the gulfs in income or living standards across the various countries of the world are regrettable, this does not commit us to thinking that they are unjust . Similarly, while we might think that more privileged people – such as citizens of developed countries – have some kind of responsibility to respond to the fact that other people lack access to clean water, adequate nutrition or basic education, this does not necessarily imply that they have obligations of justice . Theories of global distributive justice do, though, pick out some such facts – say, that many people lack access to basic education, or that some have a great deal more than others simply because of the country they happen to have been born into – and declare them to be unjust. They also tell us that, at least sometimes, we have obligations of justice to respond to such facts. This chapter sets the scene, in section 1.1, with some brief facts about global poverty. How we respond to these kinds of fact, from a normative point of view, determines whether we shall be convinced by theories of global distributive justice. Section 1.2 then examines the idea of global distributive justice. Just what is a theory of global distributive justice? When is something a principle of justice as opposed to something else, like a principle of charity or humanitarianism? Although there are a number of different approaches to defining principles of distributive justice, theorists tend to converge on the idea that duties of justice are especially firm or stringent, and that they are also enforceable. So, for many theorists of global justice, saying that someone has an entitlement (to clean drinking water, say, or to a fair wage) as a matter of justice, means that we should also be prepared to say that someone else is acting unjustly if that entitlement is not delivered on. Section 1.2 also distinguishes between two important types of duty: positive and negative duties of justice.

Global distributive justice is now part of mainstream political debate. It incorporates issues that are now a familiar feature of the political landscape, such as global poverty, trade justice, aid to the developing world and debt cancellation. This is the first textbook to focus exclusively on issues of distributive justice on the global scale. It gives clear and up-to-date accounts of the major theories of global justice and spells out their significance for a series of important political issues, including climate change, international trade, human rights and migration. These issues are brought to life through the use of case studies, which emphasise the connection of theories of justice to contemporary politics, and 'Further Issues' sections, which discuss emerging debates or controversies that are likely to command increasing attention in the coming years.

When people protest or demonstrate in favour of global justice, a key element of their concerns, judging from the placards they hold, is often the justice (or injustice) of international trade. Each time the leaders of the most powerful countries meet to discuss trade issues – whether it be under the auspices of the G8 group of the largest economies, or the G20, or the World Trade Organization – the protestors give voice to profound concerns. International trade is held to be, in various ways, unjust – with the implication that we ought to redesign the rules, or allow developing countries a more equal chance to compete on global markets. Often the language used changes a little, so that instead of demanding distributive justice , activists and NGOs talk about fairness , perhaps alongside the need to avoid exploitation or a position where more powerful countries can abuse their superior bargaining power to set the terms of international trade to suit their own interests. This chapter examines just what international trade justice – or fairness in trade – might mean, and what the theories we examined in part I of this book can contribute to thinking about these issues. Why, though, do we need a theory of justice in international trade? International trade is meant to be beneficial. The argument for ‘free trade’ suggests that some countries will enjoy a comparative advantage in the production of particular goods. One country may be able to produce computers cheaply and easily, but not dairy products; another might be better at producing dairy products, and less good at producing computers. Britons might have a great taste for bananas, but be unable to grow them without very expensive greenhouses. Caribbean countries might be happy to sell them to Britain, allowing them to buy the Japanese motorbikes their citizens crave. Japanese people in turn might buy Scottish whisky. If they traded with each other, each country could get what they needed more efficiently. They could enjoy the benefits of economic specialisation. International trade is also said to encourage the spread of technology, and allow countries to take advantage of economies of scale. Trade, in sum, is usually held to increase the total amount of goods that can be produced, and to avoid a situation where countries have to toil over producing goods which they are ill-suited to make. This argument has been widely accepted since the English political economist David Ricardo advanced it in the early nineteenth century. A world without any international trade, or so the theory goes, would have less specialisation, would be much less efficient and would see much slower economic growth.

Natural resources are distributed very unevenly throughout the world. The territories of some nation states contain abundant mineral resources which can command high prices on world markets – think of Saudi Arabia and its oilfields, or South Africa and its diamonds. Likewise, the fact that Britain was the first country to undergo an industrial revolution is considered to be at least partly due to its ready supplies of coal, iron and fast-running water. But some countries possess resources in much more meagre quantities, and may not even have secure access to the essentials of life. Millions of people currently have insecure access to clean drinking water, for instance, and while the most severe problems are faced by the inhabitants of the Middle East, north Africa and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, water scarcity is a growing problem for many people elsewhere (Falkenmark and Lundqvist 1998). The unevenness of the distribution of resources has been thought by some to have implications for global justice. After all, the processes by which national borders have come to be drawn on maps and subsequently defended by military force – and as a result of which rivers, coalfields or seams of gold end up in one nation’s territory rather than another’s – are hard to defend from a normative point of view. They have often involved military conquest, colonialism, violent dispossession and even genocide. Given this murky history, can nation states be thought to deserve, or have a just claim to, the resources that happen to be found within their borders? Or should resources be seen instead as some kind of collective asset? From the point of view of distributive justice should we try to correct or compensate for the current unevenness of resource distribution? If so, how would we go about doing that?

Many of the foremost defenders of distributive egalitarianism hold that its scope should be limited to co-citizens. But this bracketing of distributive equality exclusively to citizens turns out to be very difficult to defend. Pressure is placed on it, for instance, when we recognize its vulnerability to ‘extension arguments’ which attempt to cast the net of egalitarian concern more widely. The paper rehearses those arguments and also examines some – ultimately unsuccessful – responses which ‘citizenship egalitarians’ might make. If it does turn out that citizenship egalitarianism cannot be defended, then two options are open to its adherents: to modify that position substantially in order to embrace at least some global egalitarian components, or to argue for a reorganization of citizenship regimes in such a way that citizenship might properly track the subjects of egalitarian justice. Both are radical options. Finally, the paper then briefly considers one way in which an attenuated form of citizenship e...

This chapter examines the challenge that claims for global justice have been said to pose for the nation, and the value of national self-determination in particular. A debate has arisen between defenders of global justice and defenders of national self-determination, with the latter camp sometimes arguing that although some forms of global justice are valuable, the call for global equality, if realized, would seriously endanger any meaningful form of self-determination (and as such, global egalitarianism must of necessity be ‘postnational’ in form). The first section sets out the apparent opposition between the two positions. The second section looks a little more closely at the arguments of defenders of self-determination and examines just why, in their view, their concerns rule out global egalitarianism as a theory of global justice. The third section shows why the view that a concern for national self-determination rules out global egalitarianism as an account of global justice is mistaken for a number of reasons, as I have argued in more detail elsewhere (Armstrong, 2010). Actually, global egalitarians are able to carve out space for self-determination in a variety of ways. The fourth section concludes by asking whether they should. It is claimed here that there are good reasons to reserve room for legitimate forms of self-determination. But my argument will give limited relief to nationalists, because the forms of self-determination that are likely to be valuable to individuals worldwide are likely only partly to overlap with national forms of government.

Within the debate over global distributive justice, the most challenging proposals - those forwarded by global egalitarians - have attracted the objection that their ideals are incompatible with recognising the legitimate self-determination of national communities. In response, we might say that surely global egalitarians can accord some value to the ideal of self-determination, and still be global egalitarians. There must be a range of ways in which the two values could be traded off against each other. I pursue a stronger response in this paper by revealing the many ways in which global egalitarians can make space for self-determination without trading it off against equality. Clearing room for national self-determination - assuming for the purposes of this paper that this is a worthy objective - will not be entirely straightforward for global egalitarians, though. I argue later on that global egalitarians need to be more circumspect about their argument that inequalities which track national membership should be condemned as ‘morally arbitrary’ in nature. Though this objection from moral arbitrariness supplies what can be considered the founding intuition of global egalitarianism, those who would advance it have not been clear about just when - and why - nationality-tracking inequalities should be rejected, and a lack of clarity about this stands in the way of the accommodation I am suggesting might be made.

Over the past decade, Nancy Fraser has developed a sophisticated theory of social justice. At its heart lies the principle of parity of participation, according to which all adult members of society must be in a position to interact with one another as peers. This article examines some obstacles to the implementation of that principle. Concentrating on the contemporary status order, it asks two specific questions. Is it possible to produce a precise account of how the status order might need to be ordered for parity of participation to be realized? And is it possible to derive a detailed and coherent political strategy capable of achieving such parity within the status order? The argument of this article is that, while Fraser has recognized the difficulties that the complexity of the contemporary status order poses for achieving parity of participation, she has nevertheless underestimated those difficulties. If parity of participation requires status equality, important and difficult work remains to be done in delineating the nature, and demands, of equality in the contemporary status order.

We construct and apply a stochastic Gaussian Process (GP) model of flight trajectory generation for pigeons trained to home from specific release sites. The model shows increasing predictive power as the birds become familiar with the sites, mirroring the animal's learning process. We show how the increasing similarity between successive flight trajectories can be used to infer, with increasing accuracy, an idealised route that captures the repeated spatial aspects of the bird's flight. We subsequently use techniques associated with reduced-rank GP approximations to objectively identify the key waypoints used by each bird to memorise its idiosyncratic habitual route between the release site and the home loft. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.

Following a brief introduction to the history of online and online training, this article surveys current training from the point of view of the trainers, the trainees and the media. The final section deals in depth with computer‐assisted instruction for online searching with examples drawn from a number of available packages. Some of the techniques, such as self‐testing and search simulations, as well as the advantages of this method of instruction are discussed.

Digital technologies and global electronic networks present unparalleled opportunities for international knowledge sharing and collaboration. But these same technologies and networks can also be used by authors in ways that significantly limit access and sharing for the purposes of education, innovation, and development. Through the efforts of librarians, archivists, academics and activists, vast new reserves of information and knowledge are being made available for free public consumption, and even adaptation, on the Internet. At the same time, however, electronic networks and digital technologies are being used to limit non-commercial access to some learning materials. For example, large educational publishers charge high subscription fees to universities for access to databases, with restrictions on use that are often more prohibitive than in the offline, paper-based environment. This fundamental schism present in the digital, globally-networked era - between the building of an "information commons" on the one hand, and the privatisation of knowledge on the other - is generating a variety of dynamic activist responses, including the free/libre open source software (FLOSS) movement, the "open access" movement in scholarly communication, and the "open content" approach to online sharing and collaboration among authors. The open access movement revolves mostly around the practice of academics making their research outputs and writings freely available on the Internet, either through open access online journals or online institutional repositories (archives). The open content movement is in some cases even broader than open access, encouraging online adaptation of materials by users, with the Wikipedia collaborative encyclopedia being perhaps the best-known such project. Another important open content initiative is the Creative Commons (cc) licensing system, which allows authors to adopt a "some rights reserved" approach when publishing their materials online. Under the terms of a cc licence, users are permitted unlimited copying and distribution of materials, and in some cases, are permitted to even adapt and/or derive commercial benefit from the materials. Open access and open content initiatives aim not to eliminate copyright in the online environment but rather to ensure that copyright does not restrict the potential of new technology to overcome barriers to access and innovation. The debates around the information commons and the restrictive practices of copyright rights-holders in the online environment are of particular relevance to the developing world and the African continent. Much of the world's copyrighted material is owned by developed-world multinationals, leaving developing nations as the "payers" or consumers of knowledge and culture, and the developed world as the "payees" in much of the flow of monetary value derived from copyrighted materials. This article outlines the global information commons debates and players, and then focuses on efforts to maximise the potential benefits of digital networks for the developing world, and in particular Africa.