The collapse of Rana Plaza and the limits, options and challenges of transnational labour regulation

The collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh on 24 April 2013 resulted in the death of over 1,100 workers and many more injured workers. Consequently, it has again raised the debate about the social responsibility of multinational companies (MNCs) for their full production chain. European and North-American MNCs have responded to this with the adoption of two agreements. Although these agreements have been welcomed, being transnational private agreements, from a legal point of view, they raise some questions, especially about their legal status. This paper describes in brief the main legal challenges of these transnational, private agreements and how they can be (partially) be met. Secondly, the two agreements are analysed to what extent they meet those challenges. The paper concludes with some general considerations about their promises and limits to actually make a difference

The Open Methods of Coordination as Amplifier for EU Soft Law

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/[insert DOI

Observations of atmospheric rivers with CloudSat CPR and Aqua AMSR-E

Includes bibliographical references."Atmospheric rivers" are filamentary water vapor structures, occurring primarily over oceans, thousands of kilometers long that form along the leading edge of cold fronts. These "rivers" are an important link between weather and climate by transporting large amounts of moisture (on the order of 108kgs-1) through the middle latitude regions and causing heavy precipitation events along coastal regions. The CloudSat satellite, launched 28 April 2006, is designed to measure vertical cloud structure and fill a long-existing gap in satellite observations. CloudSat and Aqua observed 22 river events (with multiple overpasses for each river) over a period from November 2006 to April 2007. In this project, CloudSat CPR observations of cloud location and cloud type are used along with moisture observations from Aqua AMSR-E to create a preliminary average profile of vertical cloud structure within atmospheric rivers. The CloudSat observations (using Aqua moisture and precipitation measurements as references) are first presented for case studies of four river events out of the total 22 events. The observations show deep convective (vertical extent more than 7km) and nimbostratus cloud (vertical extent more than 4km) bands more than 100km in horizontal width occurring in three of the four cases, and shallow convection (vertical extent less than 4km) occurring in the fourth case. Deep layer clouds occur most frequently during the river's early and middle stages, and these deep clouds usually erode into low and (sometimes) high cloud bands in the river's later life. The CloudSat measurements are then combined into composite frequency plots to show the typical cloud locations within and near the river with respect to the river's water vapor structure. Frequency plots are presented for all 92 overpasses along with categories of overpasses based on time of occurrence within the rivers' life spans to give a preliminary time evolution of cloud structure. Then, scatter plots comparing moisture structure properties with cloud structure properties are displayed to show any possible relationship between moisture and clouds. Finally, some statistics about the frequency of occurrence of different cloud types within the rivers are presented.This work was sponsored by the following: NOAA/NESDIS Grant NA17RJ1228, entitled "Applications of satellite altimetry data to statistical and simplified dynamical tropical cyclone intensity forecast models"; NOAA/NESDIS Grant NA17RJ1228, entitled "A satellite analysis of atmospheric rivers"; and NASA Grant NAS5-99237, entitled "CloudSat"

Artery/vein classification using reflection features in retina fundus images

Automatic artery/vein (A/V) classification is one of the important topics in retinal image analysis. It allows the researchers to investigate the association between biomarkers and disease progression on a huge amount of data for arteries and veins separately. Recent proposed methods, which employ contextual information of vessels to achieve better A/V classification accuracy, still rely on the performance of pixel-wise classification, which has received limited attention in recent years. In this paper, we show that these classification methods can be markedly improved. We propose a new normalization technique for extracting four new features which are associated with the lightness reflection of vessels. The accuracy of a linear discriminate analysis classifier is used to validate these features. Accuracy rates of 85.1, 86.9 and 90.6% were obtained on three datasets using only local information. Based on the introduced features, the advanced graph-based methods will achieve a better performance on A/V classification.</p

Ubiquity of optical activity in planar metamaterial scatterers

Recently it was discovered that periodic lattices of metamaterial scatterers show optical activity, even if the scatterers or lattice show no 2D or 3D chirality, if the illumination breaks symmetry. In this Letter we demonstrate that such `pseudo-chirality' is intrinsic to any single planar metamaterial scatterer and in fact has a well-defined value at a universal bound. We argue that in any circuit model, a nonzero electric and magnetic polarizability derived from a single resonance automatically imply strong bianisotropy, i.e., magneto-electric cross polarizability at the universal bound set by energy conservation. We confirm our claim by extracting polarizability tensors and cross sections for handed excitation from transmission measurements on near-infrared split ring arrays, and electrodynamic simulations for diverse metamaterial scatterers.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Spectroscopy on two coupled flux qubits

We have performed spectroscopy measurements on two coupled flux qubits. The qubits are coupled inductively, which results in a $\sigma_1^z\sigma_2^z$ interaction. By applying microwave radiation, we observe resonances due to transitions from the ground state to the first two excited states. From the position of these resonances as a function of the magnetic field applied we observe the coupling of the qubits. The coupling strength agrees well with calculations of the mutual inductance

Optimal trap shape for a Bose gas with attractive interactions

Dilute Bose gas with attractive interactions is considered at zero temperature, when practically all atoms are in Bose-Einstein condensate. The problem is addressed aiming at answering the question: What is the optimal trap shape allowing for the condensation of the maximal number of atoms with negative scattering lengths? Simple and accurate analytical formulas are derived allowing for an easy analysis of the optimal trap shapes. These analytical formulas are the main result of the paper.Comment: Latex file, 21 page

Relationship between brachycephalic airway syndrome and gastrointestinal signs in three breeds of dog

Objectives: To assess the breed-specific prevalence of, and effects of corrective airway surgery on, gastrointestinal signs in French bulldogs, English bulldogs and pugs presenting with brachycephalic airway syndrome to a referral teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: In this retrospective study, ptyalism, regurgitation and vomiting were graded at presentation using a previously established scoring system. Staphylectomy and nares resection were performed on all dogs. Gastrointestinal signs were re-assessed via telephone follow-up at least 6 weeks after surgery. Results: Ninety-eight dogs were included: French bulldogs (n=43), English bulldogs (n=12) and pugs (n=43). Overall population prevalence of all gastrointestinal signs was 56%. Breed-specific prevalence for French bulldogs was 93%, English bulldogs 58% and pugs 16%. There was post-surgical clinical improvement in gastrointestinal signs for the whole study population, especially in French bulldogs. Clinical Significance: The prevalence of gastrointestinal signs in dogs presenting with brachycephalic airway syndrome and improvement in these clinical signs following corrective surgery may vary between breeds