Digital Commons Network^™

Agile Informationsinfrastrukturen, Hubert Oesterle

Hubert Oesterle

No abstract provided.

Germination Of Silene Regia Seeds From Four Sites In Lawrence County, Illinois, Following Scarification Or Stratification, Nicolette L. Flocca, Janice M. Coons, Henry R. Owen, Brian J. Fischer, Bob E. Edgin

Henry R. Owen

Silene regia Sims is an endangered prairie forb in Illinois where small isolated colonies are scattered. In La·wrence County, two sites (Allison Prairie and Chauncey Marsh) have fewer plants (6-23) than two other sites (Cmmty Road and Cemetery) with 26-45 plants. Information on seed germination in these isolated colonies is needed. Our goal was to evaluate seed germination of S. regia from colonies in Lawrence County, illinois. S. regia fruits were collected from these four sites on August 9 and 19, 1999. Seeds were scarified by cutting the seed coat, or they were stratified at 2 C for 12 or …

Emisja Btx Towarzysząca Produkcji Wyrobów Węglowych I Grafitowych, Marian Mazur, Przemysław Szczygłowski, Robert Oleniacz, Marek Bogacki

Robert Oleniacz

The work presents results of direct measurements of benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylenes (BTX or BTEX) emissions to the air from technological processes related with carbon and graphite manufacturing. The most important from all mentioned pollutants is benzene considered as one of the main factor of air pollution in the European Union. The highest concentrations of BTX were found in the fumes emitted from the tanks of liquid raw materials, while the highest levels of their emissions were from furnaces used for baking of green electrodes and other carbon products.

English title: BTX emission from production of graphite and …

Decreasing Relative Risk Aversion, Risk Sharing, And The Permanent Income Hypothesis, Qiang Zhang, Masao Ogaki

Qiang Zhang

This paper develops a method to test the risk sharing hypothesis (RSH) against various versions of the permanent income hypothesis (PIH) while allowing for heterogeneity in risk preferences across households. Using one-year and longer differences in household total non-durable consumption data from Indian villages, we find evidence that favors RSH rather than the PIH at the village level.

Detecting Spatiotemporal Clusters Of Accidental Poisoning Mortality Among Texas Counties, U.S., 1980 – 2001, Ella T. Nkhoma, Chiehwen Ed Hsu

Chiehwen Ed Hsu

BACKGROUND: Accidental poisoning is one of the leading causes of injury in the United States, second only to motor vehicle accidents. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rates of accidental poisoning mortality have been increasing in the past fourteen years nationally. In Texas, mortality rates from accidental poisoning have mirrored national trends, increasing linearly from 1981 to 2001. The purpose of this study was to determine if there are spatiotemporal clusters of accidental poisoning mortality among Texas counties, and if so, whether there are variations in clustering and risk according to gender and race/ethnicity. The Spatial …

Perspectives In Energy, Milan Meszaros

Milan Meszaros physicist

Historically, the mankind produced the (electric) energy through the heat energy. After all, the humanity boil the water -by any production of energy- in the power plants for the production of electric energy. (As the AGLS sees, this is an archaic technology of our age.) During this production, the scattering of the heat energy (entropy) is a giant quantity. Opposite to this enormous heat-noise dissipation, the heat-emission does not occur in any emission-table. Thus the mankind possess a "heat-noise-blindness" concerning the harmful matter emission. But this heat emission is the mostly responsible for the global warming (including some regional ice-ages). …

Mgm V. Grokster, Malla Pollack

Malla Pollack

This brief makes three aguments against copyright liability for Grokster. First, Petitioners’ request to close down offending technology is not supported by clear statutory authority. While the Court has power to create common law, in an area, such as this, where Congress has enacted detailed statutes, the Court’s common law power is minimal. Title 17 U.S.C. § 1201(c)(2) does not delegate authority for the Court to promulgate new common law. Second, In the absence of congressional action, the Copyright Clause of the Constitution sets the default position as a public right of access to copyrightable and patentable subject matter. The …

The African Charter On Human And Peoples’ Rights And Ouster Clauses Under The Military Regimes In Nigeria: Before And After September 11, Abdulmumini A. Oba

Abdulmumini A Oba

Military governments in Nigeria adopted numerous decrees that ousted the jurisdiction of courts. This article investigates the role of the African Charter in challenging such ouster clauses. Despite being incorporated into Nigerian domestic law in 1983, much uncertainty still surrounds the status of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The paper criticizes the decision in Abacha v Fawehinmi, in which the Nigerian Supreme Court held that the African Charter cannot be superior to the Constitution and upheld the validity of ouster clauses. With reference to case law in the United the paper highlights the threats to human rights …

New Frontiers, Old Problems: The War On Terror And The Notion Of Anticipating The Enemy, Jackson N. Maogoto

Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto

The old truism, that international law is not a suicide pact, is forceful in an age of destructive weaponry. Nevertheless strategically, there is little precedent for a major military offensive against a state that has not proximately used force against the interests of the belligerent state. Legally, while a number of legitimate justifications might permit the use of force, an appropriate international law doctrine, under which the United States could execute the military campaign it recently successfully launched against Iraq, does not currently exist. But that lacuna was seemingly plugged with the “Bush Doctrine” that advocates pre-emptive strikes against rogue …

The Economics Of Agency Law And Contract Formation, Eric Bennett Rasmusen

Eric Bennett Rasmusen

This article uses the economic approach to address issues that arise in agency law when agents make contracts on behalf of principals. The main issue is whether the principal should be bound when the agent makes a contract with some third party on his behalf which the principal would immediately wish to disavow. The resulting tradeoffs resemble those in tort law, so the least-cost-avoider principle is useful for deciding when contracts are valid and may be the underlying logic behind a number of different legal doctrines applied to agency cases. In particular, an efficiency explanation can be found for the …

Annual Income, Hourly Wages, And Identity Among Mexican Americans And Other Latinos, Patrick Leon Mason

Patrick L. Mason

This paper examines heterogeneity and income inequality among Hispanic Americans. Two processes that influence Hispanic heterogeneity include acculturation and labor market discrimination because of skin shade/phenotype. I focus on Hispanics because of their variation in phenotype, color, nativity, and language usage, and also because of their recent large-scale integration into a society that has been historically characterized by bi-polar racial categories that are putatively based on phenotype. This process provides a natural experiment for appraising the relative importance of acculturation, discrimination, and income inequality. I use data from two periods, 1979 and 1989, to determine the stability of identity formation …

Painting With Print: Incorporating Concepts Of Typographic And Layout Design Into The Text Of Legal Writing Documents, Ruth Anne Robbins

Ruth Anne Robbins

This article looks at the science behind what makes words readable and legible. It suggests that lawyers should be strategizing the look of the document itself as a persuasive technique. The article also contains suggetsed optimal layouts and looks at court rules around the country to determine whether lawyers can actually accomplish the visual persuasion in a particular jurisdiction (New Jersey lawyers are out of luck beyond the trial level courts). The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has the article linked from its homepage. www.ca7.uscourts.gov

Equilibrium Selection In Coordination Games: Why Do Dominated Strategies Matter?, Suren Basov

Suren Basov

In this paper I illustrate by an example that strictly dominated strategies may affect the process of the equilibrium selection in coordination games. The strategy profile that gets selected may be both Pareto and risk dominated. This distinguishes it from the examples provided in Ellison (2000) and Maruta (1997).

The Race To Patent The Sars Virus: The Trips Agreement And Access To Essential Medicines, Matthew Rimmer

Matthew Rimmer

This article considers the race to sequence the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus ('the SARS virus') in light of the debate over patent law and access to essential medicines. Part II evaluates the claims of public research institutions in Canada, the United States, and Hong Kong, and commercial companies, to patent rights in respect of the SARS virus. It highlights the dilemma of 'defensive patenting' - the tension between securing private patent rights and facilitating public disclosure of information and research. Part III considers the race to patent the SARS virus in light of wider policy debates over gene patents. …

Assessing Inequality, Dietrich Rueschemeyer

Dietrich Rueschemeyer

No abstract provided.

La Ciudad Y Su Gobierno Municipal, Fernando Carrión Mena

Fernando Carrión Mena

El Municipio en la América Latina española tuvo su origen en el cabildo colonial, constituido como instancia de gobierno local. Aunque seguía el modelo español traído por los conquistadores, tuvo mayor importancia que en España debido a la distancia que lo separaba del poder central. Sin embargo, no debe perderse de vista que, si bien esa apreciable autonomía se ejerció respecto de la Corona, era dependiente de ciertos grupos minoritarios locales (los criollos). De allí que no hubo una clara separación entre lo público y ]0 privado, al extremo de que en ambas esferas se compartía el ejercicio de la …

Productivity Effects Of Organizational Change: Microeconometric Evidence, Ulrich Kaiser, Irene Bertschek

ULRICH KAISER

No abstract provided.

The Jihad Of Alan Dershowitz, Ali Khan

Ali Khan

If to dispute well is law's chiefest end, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has honed this ability to a stunning craft. In high-profile cases, such as O. J. Simpson, Doctor Dershowitz, a seasoned criminal law jurist, serves as a media-savvy lawyer determined to defend the guilty. Less well known, however, is that this advocate thrives on inventing unpopular exceptions to international law-a subject he normally does not teach. This article is based on an interview with Professor Dershowitz.

Real-Time Enterprise - Vision Und Wirklichkeit, Hubert Oesterle

Hubert Oesterle

No abstract provided.

Pulse Multiplication In Forced-Commutated Current Source Converters By Dc Ripple Reinjection, J. Arrillaga, N. R. Watson, Lasantha B. Perera, Y. H. Liu

Lasantha Bernard Perera

A dc-ripple reinjection scheme is described that doubles the number of pulses of the forcecommutated current source converter. The reinjection circuit includes a feedback converter in series with the dc output which provides automatic adjustment of the reinjected current as the dc side current changes. The reinjection concept is also generalised to produce pulse multiplication.

Modern Mask Hides Conditions In Rural China, Lynette H. Ong

Lynette H Ong, Dr

No abstract provided.

Is That A Sexy Ad Or What? Measuring Sex In Advertising, Stephen S. Holden, Joanna Gabler

Stephen S Holden

This paper addresses the tricky issue of assessing what constitutes sex in advertising, and in particular, examines the various ways in which sexiness can be operationalised.

Reverse Translation: A Means To Ensure Idiomaticity Of Translation In C-E Dictionaries, Gang Zhao

Gang Zhao

No abstract provided.

Sex Cells : How The Use Of Sex In Advertising Varies Across Eight Countries, Stephen S. Holden, Marilyn Y. Jones, Joanna Gabler

Stephen S Holden

This study examines how the use of sex in magazine advertising varies across eight different countries – Singapore, Australia, India, South Africa, France, Germany/Austria, Brazil and the U.S. Eight magazines were collected from each country. We examined the incidence of sex in advertising and its various components in the 3,201 ads found in this assortment of magazines. Significant differences between countries were found for use of attractive models, nudity and types of sex appeal. While it is difficult to draw firm conclusions, we believe that the results support the notion that sex in advertising is driven by its novelty value …

Cleaning Ability Of Disinfectants For Dental Steel Burs, Noor Hayaty Abu Kasim Abu Kasim N.H.

Noor Hayaty Abu Kasim Abu Kasim N.H.

Dental burs are a source of bacterial contamination due to its direct contact with carious teeth, saliva and blood. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the disinfecting and cleaning ability of selected commercially available disinfectants on dental burs. Method: Size 5 round stainless steel burs were used to excavate caries from freshly extracted human molars. The burs were then immediately immersed in Grotanat Drill Bath (Shülke & Mayr, Germany), Micro 10 (Unident, Swizerland), Gigasept FF (Shülke & Mayr, Germany), Lysetol AF (Shülke & Mayr, Germany) and 70% Isopropyl alcohol (J.Y. Baker, USA) according to the manufacturer's instructions. …

Speaker Identification Using Usable Speech Concept, Ananth N. Iyer, Brett Y. Smolenski, Robert E. Yantorno, Jashmin K. Shah, Edward J. Cupples, Stanley J. Wenndt

Ananth N Iyer

Most signal processing involves processing a signal without concern for the quality or information content of that signal. In speech processing, speech is processed on a frame-by-frame basis, usually only with concern that the frame is either speech or silence. However, knowing how reliable the information is in a frame of speech can be very important and useful. This is where usable speech detection and extraction can play a very important role. The usable speech frames can be defined as frames of speech that contain higher information content compared to unusable frames with reference to a particular application. We have …

Robust Speaker Verification With Principal Pitch Components, Robert M. Nickel, Sachin P. Oswal, Ananth N. Iyer

Ananth N Iyer

We are presenting a new method that improves the accuracy of text dependent speaker identification systems. The new method exploits a set of novel speech features that is derived from a principal component analysis (PC) of voiced speech segments. The new PC features are only weakly correlated with the corresponding cepstral features. A distance measure that combines both, cepstral and PC pitch features provides a discriminative power that cannot be achieved with cepstral features alone. It is well known that the discriminative power of cepstral features declines if the dimensionality of the feature space is increased beyond its optimal value. …

Sequential K-Nn Pattern Recognition For Usable Speech Classification, Jashmin K. Shah, Brett Y. Smolenski, Robert E. Yantorno, Ananth N. Iyer

Ananth N Iyer

The accuracy of speech processing techniques degrades when operating in a co-channel environment. Co-channel speech occurs when more than one person is talking at the same time. The idea of usable speech segmentation is to identify and extract those portions of co-channel speech that are minimally degraded but still useful for speech processing application such as speaker identification. Usable speech measures are features that are extracted from the co-channel signal to distinguish between usable and unusable speech. In this paper, a new usable speech extraction technique is presented. The new method extracts features recursively and variable length segmentation is performed …

The Cmi Looks At “Marine Insurance Law”: A Unique Conflation Of Contract And “Law”, Graydon S. Staring

Graydon S. Staring

The Comité Maritime International (“CMI”) has examined “marine insurance law” to discover the possibilities of “harmonizing” selected features of it internationally. The study has been done by an International Working Group (“IWG”) of nine members of whom I am one. The proverbial committee’s risk of making a horse look like a camel has been aggravated by lack of propinquity and having never all met but conducted the important business in writing. Largely because of this we failed to seek agreement on the meaning of harmonization at the outset and, at least tentatively, on the devices by which we might realistically …

Unwanted Migration: Combating And Unwittingly Creating Irregular Migration In Ukraine, Greta Uehling

Greta Uehling

No abstract provided.