The pastoral home school: rural,vernacular and grassroots literacies in early Soviet Mongolia

Literacy before and after the 1921 People's Revolution in Mongolia has been largely represented by socialist historiography and post-socialist urban perspectives, which have rendered unofficial and non-pragmatic literacies invisible. This study explores rural, vernacular and grassroots literacy theories to recontextualize the pre-revolutionary category of Mongolian home schooling and to offer a new perspective – pastoral literacy – which enables historians and other researchers of Central Asia to represent the literacy practices of non-urban semi-nomads more accurately and vividly. This study applies the pastoral literacy perspective to literacy narratives extracted from University of Cambridge Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia interviews and demonstrates that pastoral home schooling was a socially and culturally salient domain for acculturating young Mongolians into the 1960s. Mongolian pastoral home schooling consisted largely of personal, male teacher–student relationships, authoritative teaching models, alphabet-based curricula, as well as texts and materials adapted from dominant religious and state literacies.     

Qualification for design right: 'springing interests'

Legal context. An unregistered design can qualify for protectionunder the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 in a numberof ways. However, as the European Community expands the qualificationprovisions in the Act come into conflict with Community lawand the European Convention of Human Rights. This article setsout those issues and seeks a solution to them. Key points. This article begins by examining how a design qualifiesfor protection, by reason of the designer, the commissioneror the employer; or alternatively by reason of the person whofirst markets it. It then looks at the impact of new membersjoining the European Community and how this might create springinginterests in design right. It then tries to reconcile the rightin the EC Treaty not to be discriminated against on the groundsof nationality with the right to quiet enjoyment of propertyunder the ECHR. Practical significance. This article considers the ownershipof design right and springing interests. It will therefore beof interest to anyone who owns a design right by reason of thedesign being first marketed in the United Kingdom.     

APEC labour markets: Structural change and the Asian financial crisis

This study examines the impacts of longer-term structural changes on the labour markets of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies, as well as the short-run labour market consequences of the Asian financial crisis. All APEC economies have experienced significant structural change in the process of development. A major factor in this structural change has been increased trade intensity (increase in exports and imports as a share of GDP) that has occurred over the last 20 years. Because these structural changes have been extensively induced by trade liberalisation, this study provides insights into the likely consequences of the implementation of APEC's agenda on trade and investment liberalisation and facilitation. The impact of structural change is examined using a range of data, such as disaggregated changes in output and employment by industry and occupation over the period 1980 to 1997, and data on changes in trade intensity for each of the APEC nations. Other data, such as changes in rates of urbanization, are also used to indicate the other important concomitant effects of economic transformation. For several Asian economies, the linear path of growth and structural change was severely disrupted by the Asian financial crisis. This article examines the impact of this crisis on Asian labour markets, in general, and those most affected by the crisis, in particular. In many countries within the region, a failure of education and training systems to respond to often rapid shifts in the skill composition of labour demand is leading to industry and occupation specific labour shortages. International labour migration within the APEC region is viewed as a product of these structural changes and a mechanism that assists in filling gaps in the labour markets of the region's economies.     

Development of a Protein‐based Human Identification Capability from a Single Hair

Shed human hair (lacking root nuclear DNA) frequently contributes important information to forensic investigations involving human identification. Detection of genetic variation observed in amino acid sequences of hair proteins provides a new suite of identity markers that augment microscopic hair analysis and mitochondrial DNA sequencing. In this study, a new method that completely dissolves single hairs using a combination of heat, ultrasonication, and surfactants was developed. Dissolved proteins were digested and genetically variant peptide (GVP) profiles were obtained for single hairs (25 mm) via high‐resolution nanoflow liquid chromatography‐based mass spectrometry and a novel exome‐driven bioinformatic approach. Overall, 6519 unique peptides were identified and a total of 57 GVPs were confirmed. Random match probabilities ranged between 2.6 × 10^?2 and 6.0 × 10^?9. The new bioinformatic strategy and ability to analyze GVPs in forensically relevant samples sizes demonstrate applicability of this approach to distinguish individuals in forensic contexts.