The 50th anniversary of the Declaration on Friendly Relations and its Role in the Jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice

In commemoration of the fifty-year anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations General Assembly resolution 2625 (XXV), Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, it is fitting to assess the current relevance of this document in the international legal order. An indepth study of the contentious cases and the advisory opinions of the International Court of Justice allows to demonstrate that this instrument is not a mere declaration. On the contrary, it will be shown that, in the present day, it is a key instrument in the resolution of disputes between States.En conmemoración de los cincuenta años de la adopción de la resolución 2625 (XXV) de la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas, Declaración sobre los principios de derecho internacional referentes a las relaciones de amistad y a la cooperación entre los Estados de conformidad con la Carta de las Naciones Unidas, es pertinente valorar la relevancia actual de este documento en el ordenamiento jurídico internacional. Un detallado estudio de los casos contenciosos y las opiniones consultivas de la Corte Internacional de Justicia permite demostrar que este instrumento no es una mera declaración. Muy por el contrario, se demostrará que, hoy en día, es un instrumento clave en la resolución de disputas entre los Estados

A SPATIAL DATABASE MODEL FOR MOBILITY MANAGEMENT

Abstract. In urban and metropolitan context, Traffic Operations Centres (TOCs) use technologies as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) to tackling urban mobility issue. Usually in TOCs, various isolated systems are maintained in parallel (stored in different databases), and data comes from different sources: a challenge in transport management is to transfer disparate data into a unified data management system that preserves access to legacy data, allowing multi-thematic analysis. This need of integration between systems is important for a wise policy decision.This study aims to design a comprehensive and general spatial data model that could allow the integration and visualization of traffic components and measures. The activity is focused on the case study of 5T Agency in Turin, a TOC that manages traffic regulation, public transit fleets and information to users, in the metropolitan area of Turin and Piedmont Region.The idea is not to replace the existing implemented and efficient system, but to built-up on these systems a GIS that overpass the different software and DBMS platforms and that can demonstrate how a spatial and horizontal vision in tackling urban mobility issues may be useful for policy and strategies decisions. The modelling activity take reference from a review of transport standards and results in database general schema, which can be reused by other TOCs in their activities, helping the integration and coordination between different TOCs. The final output of the research is an ArcGIS geodatabase, which enable the customised representation of private traffic elements and measures.</p

Road network comparison and matching techniques. a workflow proposal for the integration of traffic message channel and open source network datasets

The rapid growth of methods and techniques to acquire geospatial data has led to a wide availability of overlapping geographic datasets with different characteristics. Road network data sources are today a significant number, with high differences in level of detail and modelling schemas, depending on the main purpose. In addition, continuous information about people and freight movement is today available also in real-time. This type of data is today exchanged between traffic operators using referencing standards as Traffic Message Channel. Integrating these heterogeneous databases, in order to build an added value product, is a serious task in geographical data management. The paper is focus on techniques to conflate the Traffic message Channel logical network on Open Source road network dataset, in order to allow the precise visualisation of traffic data also in real-time. A first step of the research was the quality assessment of available Open Source (OS) road network dataset, then, a specific procedure to conflate data was set up, using an iterative process in order to reduce at every step the number of possible matching features. A first application of the enhanced OTM dataset is shown for the city of Turin: real-time open data of traffic flows recorded by road network fixed sensors, made available by the metropolitan Traffic Operation Centre (5T) and based on the TMC location referencing, are matched on the OTM road network, allowing a detailed real-time visualisation of traffic state

Evaluation of tree-based routing Ethernet

Tree-based Routing (TRE) revisits Tree-based Routing Architecture for Irregular Networks (TRAIN)—a forwarding scheme based on a spanning tree that was extended to use some shortcut links.We propose its adaptation to Ethernet, using a new type of hierarchical Ethernet addresses and a procedure to assign them to bridges. We show that compared to RSTP, TRE offers improved throughput. The impact of transient loops in TRE is lower compared to the application of the classical shortest path routing protocols to Ethernet. Finally, TRE is self-configuring and its forwarding process is simpler and more efficient than in standard Ethernet and shortest path routing proposals.Publicad

DEFINITION OF A METHODOLOGY TO DERIVE ROAD NETWORK FUNCTIONAL HIERARCHY CLASSES USING CAR TRACKING DATA

Road network functional hierarchy classifies individual roads into several levels, for efficient traffic management and road network generalization purposes. Automatic and semi-automatic road network extraction methods exist, but the generated products normally lack information on its functional hierarchy. This paper presents a methodology for automatically retrieve functional hierarchy for an OpenStreetMap derived road network from Floating Car Data, obtaining evenly distributed (e.g. for generalization purposes) or dynamic (e.g. to take into account differences in traffic volumes in different moments of the day) classifications. Road network elements are classified in function of vehicle speed values: the class distribution generated with the proposed methodology follows a linear distribution that can be better exploited for generalization purposes. Furthermore, the methodology allows to clearly distinguish different distributions in different moments of the day and days of the week, supporting traffic management activities

Hierarchical Up/Down Routing Architecture for Ethernet backbones and campus networks

We describe a new layer two distributed and scalable routing architecture. It uses an automatic hierarchical node identifier assignment mechanism associated to the rapid spanning tree protocol. Enhanced up/down mechanisms are used to prohibit some turns at nodes to break cycles, instead of blocking links like the spannning tree protocol does. The protocol performance is similar or better than other turn prohibition algorithms recently proposed with lower complexity O(Nd) and better scalability. Simulations show that the fraction of prohibited turns over random networks is less than 0.2. The effect of root bridge election on the performance of the protocol is limited both in the random and regular networks studied. The use of hierarchical, tree-descriptive addresses simplifies the routing, and avoids the need of all nodes having a global knowleddge of the network topology. Routing frames through the hierarchical tree at very high speed is possible by progressive decoding of frame destination address, without routing tables or port address learning. Coexistence with standard bridges is achieved using combined devices: bridges that forward the frames having global destination MAC addresses as standard bridges and frames with local MAC frames with the proposed protocol.Publicad

Floating car data (fcd) for mobility applications

Floating car data (FCD) is becoming more and more relevant for mobility domain applications, overcoming issues derived by the use of physical sensors (e.g. inductive loops, video observation, infrared and laser vehicle detection etc.), such as limited geographical distribution, measure inhomogeneities, limited or null coverage of minor roads. An increasing number of vehicles are equipped with devices capable of acquiring GPS positions and other data, transmitted in almost real-time to traffic control centres. Based on FCD data, several traffic analysis in support to mobility services can be performed: vehicle density, speed, origin-destination matrices, different patterns in function of vehicle type. If currently the representativeness of FCD can be considered an issue, current growing trend in FCD penetration should naturally overcome this issue. FCD are also higher sensitive to traffic events (e.g. traffic jams) than model-based approaches

SPATIO TEMPORAL DATA CUBE APPLIED TO AIS CONTAINERSHIPS TREND ANALYSIS IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE BELT AND ROAD INITIATIVE – FROM GLOBAL TO LOCAL SCALE

Maritime trade represents a significant part of all global import-export trade. The traffic of containerships can be monitored through Automatic Identification System (AIS), due to the fact that the International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation requires AIS to be fitted aboard all ships of 300 gross tonnage and upwards engaged on international voyages. The approach proposed by the authors aimed to extract value added information from an AIS dataset, with a focus on maritime economy. Using an AIS dataset of global position of containerships from 01/01/2012 to 31/12/2016, the paper focuses on space-time data cube creation and analysis for a better understanding of maritime trades trends. Data cube creation has been tested at different spatio-temporal bins dimension and on different specific topics (TEU classes, alliances, chokepoints and port areas), analysing the sensitivity on trend results, and highlighting how appropriate spatio-temporal bins dimensions are important to effectively highlight relevant trends. Results of the trend analysis are discussed and validated with the main data and information found over the period 2012–2016. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the suitability of this approach applied to AIS data and to highlight its limitations. The authors can conclude that the approach used has proved to be adequate in describing the evolution of the global import-export trade

Metallic magnetic nanoparticles

In this paper, we reviewed some relevant aspects of the magnetic properties of metallic nanoparticles with small size ( below 4 nm), covering the size effects in nanoparticles of magnetic materials, as well as the appearance of magnetism at the nanoscale in materials that are nonferromagnetic in bulk. These results are distributed along the text that has been organized around three important items: fundamental magnetic properties, different fabrication procedures, and characterization techniques. A general introduction and some experimental results recently obtained in Pd and Au nanoparticles have also been included. Finally, the more promising applications of magnetic nanoparticles in biomedicine are indicated. Special care was taken to complete the literature available on the subject

Oferta de implantes de prótesis total de cadera en Cataluña

El crecimiento exponencial de la oferta de implantes de prótesis total de cadera hace difícil para el cirujano ortopédico establecer criterios de elección, por este motivo hemos realizado un análisis de la oferta actual de los mismos. Se han identificado 67 modelos de implantes de prótesis total de cadera primaria y 19 modelos de revisión comercializados en la comunidad catalana por 24 empresas. El número de variables, de material o diseño de los distintos modelos, sin tener en cuenta las diversas medidas de vástagos, cuellos y cótilos, ha sido de 55. Hemos encontrado referencias bibliográficas de resultados clínicos de un 25% de las prótesis. El rango de coste de los implantes ha sido de 70.000 a 300.570 pesetas para las prótesis cementadas, con un precio medio de 172.805 pesetas; de 375.654 a 648.606 pesetas para las no cementadas, con un precio medio de 480.301 pesetas, y de 412.552 a 713.000 pesetas de las prótesis de revisión, con una media de 568.138 pesetas. Esta dispersión de modelos y precios es mayor que la de otros países de nuestro entorno, y el porcentaje de publicaciones de resultados clínicos encontrado es algo menor que el reportado por algunos autores. Frente a esta situación creemos que serían necesarios estudios clínicos a largo término y sistemas de evaluación estandarizados para poder decidir con criterios rigurosos si los nuevos implantes que aparecen en el mercado con costes más elevados tienen ventajas suficientes para cambiar indicaciones de implantes largamente probados.The exponential growth of the different models of THA actually in offer makes difficult to the orthopaedic surgeon to find sound criteria for the selection of the proper implant. This paper is an attempt to analyse the models actually in offer. We have identified 67 primary THAs types and 19 revision models, commercialised by 24 companies at the catalonian community. The number of variables, materials or designs between different patterns, independently of the size of femoral and acetabular components, has been of 55. Only 25% of implants are supported by reports in the orthopaedic literature. The cost range of implants varied from 70,000 to 300,570 pts. for cemented prosthesis (average: 172,895); from 375,654 to 648,606 pts. for cementless models (average: 480,391); the cost range for revision models varied from 412,552 to 713,000 pts., with an average of 568,138 pts. Such a variety of designs and prices is greater than in other countries of our environment, and the percentage of reports about clinical results that we have found is smaller than the noticed by some authors. We believe that it would be necessary some long term prospective studies and standarized evaluation systems in order to decide if the newer implants, with more expensive price, have enough advantages to substitute the classic implants widely used