2.3 The Industrial Revolution and its environmental impacts The environmental issues you have identified in your answer to the first exercise are likely to be complex and difficult to unravel, yet alone resolve. Rather than attempt that at this stage I'd like to start this section with another question. Where does our material prosperity come from? To which one short answer would be ‘The Industrial Revolution’. In the space of less than 100 years between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, first Britain, then several other count
6.4 International retributive justice A further difference between communitarians and cosmopolitans arises over the question of retributive justice. Communitarians think that it is the responsibility of each state to uphold justice. Collectively, states can pursue international justice through the auspices of the UN, and are answerable to each other, to public opinion and to NGOs. However, there is no basis for claims to universal jurisdiction, and to deal with matters not found in specific states (such as piracy), or that cross
5.4 The influence of the Western perspective With regard to the first set of problems – that the rights discourse is not universal but is deeply informed by a Western perspective – it is striking that many actors and commentators on the international stage now frame their arguments and assertions in terms of the language of rights and justice. Yet we need to ask to what extent this language of rights and justice really underpins shared understandings and values. There is a strong case for saying that if there are shared understandin
3.4 Debates about rights There are at least four big debates about modern individual rights. The aim in putting these before you is to introduce these hotly contested issues to which there are no conclusive answers, but which help frame discussions about human rights. Considering these debates is designed to help you weigh up the different arguments and form your own opinions about the meaning and effectiveness of rights claims. The first debate concerns how our rights are grounded. One view is that our
1 International human rights: an introduction There are many examples of claims for rights in the international sphere. One example was reported in September 2002. The British government was asked to make efforts to have a British man held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay deported to Britain to face charges of terrorism there in connection with the attacks on 11 September 2001. Concerns were expressed about the denial of this man's human rights at Guantanamo Bay. Are alleged terrorists entitled to human rights? Can the denial of
Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: understand the different interpretations of internationally recognised notions of rights and justice; give examples of implementing justice in an international sphere; investigate questions in international studies; analyse the different agencies of change in the international system.
Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this book.
Author(s):
2.3 Divisions that matter: thinking through territories Without losing our focus on the planet as a whole, it is time now to return to what Paani Laupepa from Tuvalu refers to as the ‘front line’ of climate change: those islands that are particularly vulnerable to rising sea level and associated climatic hazards (Lynas, 2003). It has often been said that low-lying coral islands like Tuvalu or Kiribas in the Pacific Ocean, or the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, are acting as a kind of early warning system for global climate change. Sea level is e
1 Dividing the planet A good globe can set you back quite a lot of money. Of course, I don't mean the little moulded plastic planets or the globes you can blow up as if the world were a beach ball, but the decent sized ones that sit solidly on turned wooden bases and quietly emanate authority from the corner of a room. Yet these days, it hardly seems worthwhile making such an investment. Countries appear to change their colour, their shape or their name with remarkable rapidity. It has become a cliché to po
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able to: understand some of the key ways in which globalisation is shaping the world today; give examples of how ideas of 'proximity' and 'distance' can be used to understand an increasingly demanding world; illustrate the importance of recognising the liveliness of the natural world.
1.3.1 Parts consolidation The most obvious use of polymers is for enclosures for working equipment, such as power and garden tools as well as cooking devices, and electronic products such as computers, video recorders and fax machines (as well as the products used in those machines). They are not just boxes for containment; such plastic enclosures can incorporate carefully designed ribs, webs and flanges on the hidden, inner sides to hold working components securely in place when in operation (Figure 9). 5.1 Introduction: the general framework The general framework of systems engineering adopted in the course consists of: a hierarchy of elements; aims associated within its outputs and process; a set of principles; a division into technical and managerial components of the process. The lexicon of system engineering used in the course contains the hierarchy of elements:
strategy: meaning the accumulated decisions concerning the areas in which an organisation operates and its lon 3.3 Optical amplifiers
Figure 22 shows in outline one possible structure for an Erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA). 2.4.3 Polarization mode distortion Because light is an electromagnetic wave, it has a ‘state of polarization’, which, for light in single-mode fibre, is at right angles to the path of the fibre. If you've not encountered electromagnetic waves before, all you need to appreciate is that as light travels down the fibre the electromagnetic field has an orientation across the fibre (Author(s): 2.4.1 Multimode distortion With multimode fibre, the main cause of pulses spreading is the multiple paths that signals can traverse as they travel along the fibre. This phenomenon of multimode distortion is illustrated in Figure 5. 2.2 Fibre types A strand of glass (or plastic, but the best performance comes from glass) has a core surrounded by a cladding, where the refractive index of the glass in the core is higher than that of the cladding (see the box on ‘Refractive index>’). Light is contained within the core by < 1.1 Uses of optical fibre in communication Using optical fibres, very high data rates (gigabits per second and higher) can be transmitted over long distances (tens of kilometres) without amplifiers or regenerators. As a consequence, optical fibre has completely superseded copper wires as the primary medium for cabled transmission over long distances. Until recently, however, optical fibre has been used less in LANs, where twisted-pair copper cable has been dominant. Similarly, fibre has been slow to penetrate the access network, from Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able to: convert between wavelengths and frequencies; describe the main differences between lasers and LEDs as used as light sources for optical-fibre communications systems; describe the difference between direct and external modulation of a laser; describe the difference in structure and performance of step-index multimode, graded-index multimode and single-mode optical fibres; d Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material within this unit: 5.3 Ethics and ethos: ‘does mum know?’ In Act 1 we are presented with a fairly naïve Ned, who initially believes himself to be in control. We discover he is very proud of his intellectual achievements and less concerned with money. He explains his inventions and, when he does so, he finds analogies that highlight the aesthetics of what he is designing. At a crucial point in the conversation, his brother Dan asks: ‘does mum know?’ This is a really significant point in the play because it draws in another relationship and, as I
