Implications of the Human Rights Act (1998) for schools

The Human Rights Act 1998 finally came into operation on 2 October 2000 for all jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. The Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into the UKs domestic laws, means that it will be unlawful for public authorities, which includes the DfEE and LEAs, to act in a way which is incompatible with the fundamental human rights set out in the Convention (found in Schedule 1 to the HRA). Bodies such as schools and their governing bodies, whose functions are of a public nature, are also covered by the legislation. The articles of the Act which have a particular relevance for schools and education are identified. It is probable that pupils and their legal advisers will invoke the Act in disputes over a wide range of educational issues, for example, bullying, exclusions and suspensions. Some of these issues are examined and where possible existing European human rights case law is cited. It is likely that the HRA will create interesting legal challenges involving schools and education, some of which cannot be anticipated at the moment, and that the Act will cause changes to education laws and schools regulatory procedures .     

Signs of Anthropomorphism: The Case of Natural History Television Documentaries

This article employs Peirce's triadic concept of the sign, and Deleuze's theory of the image-movement to propose a social semiotic account of the ways in which visual signs in British and US natural history anthropomorphicise 'nature'. Peirce's semiotic is employed to critique both realist and relativist accounts of anthropomorphism. Although there may be a causally indexical relation between photographic signs and object, the fact that all signs are constituted by a three-way relationship between sign, object, and interpretant means that natural history documentaries, like the scientific texts that purportedly inform them, are ineluctably anthropomorphic. Deleuze's account of the image-movement is employed to explain why, far from being a dispassionate capturing of 'any-instants-whatsoevers', natural history image-movements organise movement in ways that are mediated by the semiotics of the natural history genre. As such, image-movements also constitute a form of anthropomorphism.     

Benchmarking sustainability performance: the next step in building sustainable business models

Developing sustainable business models incorporating effects on people, profit, and planet is becoming an increasingly important strategic issue. Benchmarking with peer companies can assist a company in setting goals of improving its performance. As such, developing a methodology for effectively benchmarking sustainable business practices is an important step in the evolution of sustainability management. However, a company's sustainability performance is composed of many elements that may involve difficult tradeoffs, and its performance may vary over time. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach of innovatively adapting statistical process control charts, conventionally used in quality control, to simultaneously compare multiple performance measures and analyze variation in both trend and performance among companies in a given industry. We apply this approach to benchmarking the sustainability performance of companies in the US utility industry and demonstrate it is robust and reliable for benchmarking the performance of companies in virtually all industries. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The interpretation of elemental composition measurements from forensic glass evidence III

In this paper we introduce a permutation testing approach to the interpretation of evidence which consists of elemental composition measurements, with glass evidence as an example. This work extends previous work of Curran et al. [J.M. Curran, C.M. Triggs, J.R. Almirall, J.S. Buckleton and K.A.J. Walsh, The interpretation of elemental composition measurements from forensic glass evidence, Science and Justice 37 (1997) 241–244.] and shows how we may remove some of the constraints that limited the applicability of the previous results. We provide the reader with tools for evidence pre-screening that may aid in the direction of further analyses of the data, rather than for the presentation of evidence interpretation in a court case.