Context at the International Criminal Court

In this article, I propose a contextual approach to ICC jurisdiction normatively to be adopted by the Court’s Office of the Prosecutor and Pre-Trial Chamber in investigating and eventually prosecuting crimes under the Rome Statute. Under this contextual approach, I contend that both the Prosecutor and Pre-Trial Chamber are able to consider evidence outside the traditional notions of territorial and temporal jurisdiction to conceptualize a conflict in its entirety. The totality of cross-border and inter-temporal evidence should be considered when deciding whether to investigate attacks that the Prosecutor has a reasonable basis to believe fall within the Court’s jurisdiction. Procedurally, the multi-step jurisdictional framework, the “Funnel Approach,”—beginning with the preliminary examination of a situation and proceeding to issuing an arrest warrant—provides flexibility to admit extra-jurisdictional evidence. Textually, the open-ended ‘gravity’ threshold does not limit the Prosecutor in considering evidence within the Rome Statute’s territorial or temporal limitations

Ways to Improve the Supply Chain Management Mechanism of the Firm's Competitiveness

In the era of globalization and internationalization of the economy, competitiveness is one of the main criteria for its effectiveness. Today it is impossible to find a market in which there is no competition, so the problem of competitiveness of the firm is relevant and requires constant research. There are many definitions of the concept of managing a firm's competitiveness. In this article, after analyzing the different approaches, a generalized definition is derived. In unstable market conditions, the success of the firm in the market depends on its competitiveness, timely establishment of strategic goals, flexibility of the production system, which is ensured by the accuracy and timeliness of management decisions.Effective management of the firm in the market conditions is essentially reduced to the management of its competitiveness (to the assessment and analysis of factors that increase or decrease the competitiveness of the firm, the choice and implementation of appropriate strategies and tactics to achieve a particular goal). Since today in the world of high technology it is more difficult for a firm to survive, the firms themselves, which use as many methods of management as possible, will be more interesting for investors, what is the result of the introduction of certain innovations. The purpose of management in this situation is to react to innovations and changes in time. The article highlights a number of key factors affecting the competitiveness of the firm and management decision-making, the management tools of competitiveness management

Foreign Ownership, Governance Practices and Gearing Level: Evidence from Pakistan Stock Exchange

The aim of this study is to find out the impact of ownership structure and corporate governance on capital structure of the 56 companies of PSE 100 index. It explores the impact of foreign ownership and corporate governance factors on capital structure. In this research secondary data is used by annual reports of the companies of Pakistan. In this study, foreign ownership is negatively related to debt ratio and statistically significant. This finding suggests that higher the foreign ownership in the firm lower will be the debt ratio of the firm. Previous studies like Gedajlovic et al. (2005) supported previous studies that there exist negative relationship between foreign ownership and capital structure. This finding suggests that large board size favors higher debt ratio Large companies have large board size and such companies with giant assets take debt on favorable terms. Large board size results in low debt cost because creditors think that the firm is under strict supervision of the diversified board. Coles et al. (2008) reports a positive relationship between board size and capital structure in American context.  They provide a possible explanation for this is that firm with high gearing ratio may have larger advising requirements then firms with low gearing levels. (2004) also found positive relationship between board size and debt ratio, he argues that firm with higher boards have easy access to debt at favorable terms. This finding suggests that CEO duality leads to firm’s lower debt usage. Higher the board independence higher the leverage of the firm. Firm size is positively related to the leverage of the firm and has a significant positive impact on leverage. This means that larger the firm size higher will be the debt Keywords: Foreign Ownership, Board Size, Board Independence, CEO Duality Capital Structure1. Heading

Phase Change Materials for Thermal Regulation of Building Integrated Photovoltaics

In outdoor deployed photovoltaics (PV), standard test conditions (STC) of 25 °C PV temperature, 1000 Wm-2 solar radiation intensity and 1.5 air-mass rarely prevail. PV temperature can rise 40-100 °C above STC inducing a power drop in crystalline silicon PV with a coefficient of -0.4 to -0.65 %/K above STC. Increased operating temperature also results in accelerated PV degradation due to cell delamination allowing moisture ingress. vConventional building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) cooling techniques using passiveor active heat removal by air or water flow are limited by (i) very low heat transfer or (ii) large capital as well as maintenance costs respectively. A PV cooling technique employing phase change materials (PCM) exploits latent heat absorption during solidliquid phase change in a very narrow range of PCM transition temperature was investigated. The current research aims to investigate suitable PCM materials through experimental characterization in terms of melting point, heat of fusion, thermal conductivity, densityand specific heat capacity to determine the suitability of different PCMs for PV cooling in different climatic conditions indoors and outdoors employed at small scale cell size PV systems as well as larger PV panel size system through extensive experimental work supported by the reasonable numerical modeling to determine the associated power improvement of PV through cooling produced by PCM.Indoor experiments were conducted at small scale cell size PV at 500 Wm-2, 750 Wm-2 and 1000 Wm-2 insolation representative PV operating condition that would require PV cooling in most cases. The effect of (i) thermal mass of PCM (ii) melting point of PCM and (iii) thermal conductivities of PCM and PV-PCM system on temperature regulationperformance of PCM was observed. Two out of five PCM, a salt hydrate (CaCl2.6H2O) and a eutectic mixture of capric -palmitic acid (CP), , an aluminium alloy based PVPCM systems were found optimum for PV temperature regulation at most of the solar radiation intensities. To extend experiments on PV panel size systems, A larger scale PVPCM system with dimensions 700 cm x 600 cm with metallic fins was fabricated. PCMCaCl2.6H2O and CP found optimum through cell size experiments were characterized at 500 Wm-2, 750 Wm-2 and 1000 Wm-2 insolation contained in the large scale PV-PCM system. The experiments on large scale PV-PCM systems showed promise for PV cooling provided by PCM and associated power gain. PV-PCM systems were then characterized outdoors in Dublin, Ireland (53.33 N, 6.25 W) and Vehari, Pakistan (30.03 N, 72.25 E) to observe their performance in real time outdoor condition in different climates. Higher PV cooling and associated power savings were observed in climate of Vehari than that of Dublin. Out of the two PCMs, CaCl2.6H2O achieved higher PVcooling and power saving than CP. In the best case, peak PV cooling of 21.5 °C with associated measured peak power saving of 13 % and predicted peak power saving of 14 % were recorded in Vehari on 30-10-2009. The results show that PCM are an effective way to cool PV and maintain higher power outputs in higher insolation climates

Information Technology Project Prioritization

This thesis provides a contemporary review of several topics related to information technology project prioritization, which will help managers create their own custom methodology. Traditional prioritization tools such as weighted average scoring models are used for simultaneous comparison of a number of proposed projects on multiple dimensions, to facilitate alignment with organization goals. These methods are used for the analysis of information related to the weight preferences over criteria used. If used correctly with this procedure, it is possible to bring forward an authentic figure of merit, which is used as the projects strategic potential. This allows the projects to be ranked and the highest-ranking projects to be considered for selection. Visual tools can then be used for selection of optimum project portfolio. The literature dedicates less time on tools beyond the selection of projects. This study aims to bridge this gap by proposing a final phase of project prioritization as Project Portfolio Management