Overview of Labor Enforcement Issues in Free Trade Agreements

[Excerpt] Since 1993, the Administration has negotiated and Congress has approved 10 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that contain labor provisions with different degrees of enforceability. Three more (with Colombia, Peru, and South Korea) await congressional consideration. This report identifies two types of enforcement issues: (1) those that relate to the FTA provisions themselves, including their definitions and their enforceability, and (2) those that relate to executive branch responsibilities, such as resource availability and determining dispute settlement case priorities. This report will be updated as events warrant

Free Trade Agreements with Singapore and Chile: Labor Issues

This report discusses the United States free trade agreements with Singapore and Chile that include labor provisions

Tilted and crossing vortex chains in layered superconductors

In the presence of the Josephson vortex lattice in layered superconductors, a small c-axis magnetic field penetrates in the form of vortex chains. In general, the structure of a single chain is determined by the ratio of the London [$\lambda$] and Josephson [$\lambda_{J}$] lengths, $\alpha= \lambda/\lambda_{J}$. The chain is composed of tilted vortices at large $\alpha$'s (tilted chain) and at small $\alpha$'s it consists of a crossing array of Josephson vortices and pancake-vortex stacks (crossing chain). We study chain structures at intermediate $\alpha$'s and found two types of phase transitions. For $\alpha\lesssim 0.6$ the ground state is given by the crossing chain in a wide range of pancake separations $a\gtrsim [2-3]\lambda_J$. However, due to attractive coupling between deformed pancake stacks, the equilibrium separation can not exceed some maximum value depending on the in-plane field and $\alpha$. The first phase transition takes place with decreasing pancake-stack separation $a$ at $a=[1-2]\lambda_{J}$, and rather wide range of the ratio $\alpha$, $0.4 \lesssim \alpha\lesssim 0.65$. With decreasing $a$, the crossing chain goes through intermediate strongly-deformed configurations and smoothly transforms into a tilted chain via a second-order phase transition. Another phase transition occurs at very small densities of pancake vortices, $a\sim [20-30]\lambda_J$, and only when $\alpha$ exceeds a certain critical value $\sim 0.5$. In this case a small c-axis field penetrates in the form of kinks. However, at very small concentration of kinks, the kinked chains are replaced with strongly deformed crossing chains via a first-order phase transition. This transition is accompanied by a very large jump in the pancake density.Comment: Proceeding of the NATO ARW "Vortex dynamics in superconductors and other complex systems", Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine, 13-17 September 2004, To be published in the Journ. of Low Temp. Phys., 16 pages, 6 figure

International Cooperation on Trade and Labor Issues

The relationship between the labor market and international trade is a broad and complex subject that has been the focus of significant attention in recent years. Discussion and analysis in this area has covered a number of discrete issues, including the effect of shifting trade patterns on employment levels and earnings in domestic markets, the impact of wage levels and labor legislation on the location of production facilities, and the positive and negative aspects of the cross-border movement of workers, among others. The continuing importance of labor issues within the larger trade debate is highlighted by the inclusion of measures relating to labor standards and/or the cross-border movement of workers in recent bilateral and multilateral trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and the U.S.–Oman Free Trade Agreement. This paper aims to provide background for future work on trade-related labor issues by describing how labor issues such as internationally recognized labor standards and the cross-border movement of workers have been addressed by international organizations, as well as in U.S. trade legislation and recent trade agreements

Meer bevuiling bij strogebruik in aangepaste vleesvarkenshokken

In aangepaste gangbare vleesvarkenshokken geeft gebruik van stro meer hokbevuiling dan wanneer geen stro gebruikt wordt

On Using Gait in Forensic Biometrics

Given the continuing advances in gait biometrics, it appears prudent to investigate the translation of these techniques for forensic use. We address the question as to the confidence that might be given between any two such measurements. We use the locations of ankle, knee and hip to derive a measure of the match between walking subjects in image sequences. The Instantaneous Posture Match algorithm, using Harr templates, kinematics and anthropomorphic knowledge is used to determine their location. This is demonstrated using real CCTV recorded at Gatwick Airport, laboratory images from the multi-view CASIA-B dataset and an example of real scene of crime video. To access the measurement confidence we study the mean intra- and inter-match scores as a function of database size. These measures converge to constant and separate values, indicating that the match measure derived from individual comparisons is considerably smaller than the average match measure from a population

Detection of setting and subject information in documentary video

Interpretation of video information is a difficult task for computer vision and machine intelligence. In this paper we examine the utility of a non-image based source of information about video contents, namely the shot list, and study its use in aiding image interpretation. We show how the shot list may be analysed to produce a simple summary of the \u27who and where\u27 of a documentary or interview video. In order to detect the subject of a video we use the notion of a \u27shot syntax\u27 of a particular genre to isolate actual interview sections