To Complicity… and Beyond! Passive Assistance and Positive Obligations in International Law

Despite an apparent determination by the International Court of Justice that complicity under Article 16 ASR can only result from positive acts, it will be argued that a State may be responsible for complicity through passive assistance. Though complicity by omission has received academic acknowledgement, the concept is unduly restricted; posited as contingent on a pre-existing positive obligation to act, and thus necessarily entailing a violation of this primary norm. If this is so, complicity creates a duality of responsibility and is arguably rendered redundant, as it will always be easier to show that a State violated this positive obligation, than successfully leap the many hurdles of Article 16 ASR. This understanding of passive complicity will be challenged on a number of grounds, ultimately leading to the assertion that international law does recognise a useful concept of passive assistance, distinct and untethered from positive obligations. This is termed ‘complicity by inaction’ – passive assistance that is not per se wrongful

Chronic pulmonary arterial hypertension in children

Pulmonary arterial hypertension, although not common in children, has a poor prognosis. The definition, modern classification, causes and pathogenesis are discussed. Although the pathogenesis is complex and not completely understood, we now have a better understanding of it. The mechanisms and structural alterations underlying vasoconstriction of the pulmonary vasculature, remodelling of the pulmonary vessel wall and progressive obstruction and obliteration of the vascular bed with thrombosis are set out with the different mediators involved. Diagnosis can be difficult and a high level of suspicion is necessary to achieve an early diagnosis. The approach to management includes a methodical workup. The medication options discussed are based on an understanding of the pathophysiology

#cutting: non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) on Instagram

Social media presents an important means for social interaction, especially among adolescents, with Instagram being the most popular platform in this age-group. Pictures and communication about non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) can frequently be found on the internet. During 4 weeks in April 2016, n = 2826 (from n = 1154 accounts) pictures which directly depicted wounds on Instagram were investigated. Those pictures, associated comments, and user accounts were independently rated for content. Associations between characteristics of pictures and comments as well as weekly and daily trends of posting behavior were analyzed. Most commonly, pictures depicted wounds caused by cutting on arms or legs and were rated as mild or moderate injuries. Pictures with increasing wound grades and those depicting multiple methods of NSSI generated elevated amounts of comments. While most comments were neutral or empathic with some offering help, few comments were hostile. Pictures were mainly posted in the evening hours, with a small peak in the early morning. While there was a slight peak of pictures being posted on Sundays, postings were rather evenly spread across the week. Pictures of NSSI are frequently posted on Instagram. Social reinforcement might play a role in the posting of more severe NSSI pictures. Social media platforms need to take appropriate measures for preventing online social contagion

Antimatter in the Universe

Cosmological models which predict a large amount of antimatter in the Universe are reviewed. Observational signatures and searches for cosmic antimatter are briefly considered. A short discussion of new long range forces which might be associated with matter and antimatter is presented.Comment: 17 pages + 2 figure

Simultaneous Optimisation of Dynamic Power, Area and Delay in Behavioural Synthesis

Concern over power dissipation coupled with the continuing rise in system size and complexity means that there is a growing need for high-level design tools capable of automatically optimising systems to take into account power dissipation, in addition to the more conventional metrics of area, delay and testability. Current methods for reducing power consumption tend to be ad-hoc: for example, slowing down, or turning off idle parts of the system, or a controlled reduction in power supply. The behavioural synthesis system described in this paper features an integrated incremental power estimation capability, which makes use of activity profiles, generated automatically through simulation of a design on any standard VHDL simulator; accurate circuit-level cell models (generated, again automatically, via Spice simulation); and a comprehensive system power model. This data, along with similar estimators for area and delay, guides the optimisation of a design towards independent, user-specified objectives for final area, delay, clock speed, and energy consumption. In addition, a range of power reducing features are included encompassing: supply voltage scaling, clock gating, input latching, input gating, low-power cells, and pipelined and multicycle units. These are automatically exploited during optimisation as part of the area/delay/power dissipation trade-off process. The resulting system is capable of reducing the estimated energy consumption of several benchmark designs by factors of between 3.5 and 7.0 times. Furthermore, the design exploration capability enables a range of alternative structural implementations to be generated from a single behavioural description, with differing area/delay/power trade-offs

Optimisation in behavioural synthesis using hierarchical expansion: module ripping

During behavioural synthesis, an abstract functional description of a system is mapped automatically onto a physical structure. In a competitive setting, this mapping will be highly optimised - the dataflow is re-arranged, units and registers are multiplexed and so on - to deliver a final structure that meets some overall user supplied specification. Ultimately, however, the physical functional units are drawn from some predefined (human designed) library - these may be thought of as the leaf-level modules in the design hierarchy. Design re-use and increasing sophistication of module libraries inevitably leads to leaf modules becoming larger and more complex. As these modules are, by definition, atomic, a synthesis system is unable to capitalise on any internal similarities the leaf modules may possess. This paper describes the design, construction and effects of using a hierarchically defined module library. The set of leaf-level modules made available to the synthesis environment is conventional - add, subtract, multiply and so on - but the optimiser is capable of ?ripping apart? these modules to manipulate their inner structures. Two advantages accrue from this technique: (1) it is possible to optimise behavioural designs far more effectively, with up to a 65% reduction in area, and a 46% reduction in delay reported, and (2) it is possible to build library modules that have tightly controllable internal timing relationships. This is essential when designing systems that communicate externally via low-level protocols, but behavioural synthesis, by its very nature, usually distorts timing information. Using this technique, it is possible to create ?islands of fixed timing? embedded in the synthesised design

Percutaneous closure of ventricular septal defects in childhood

Ventricular septal defect is the most common congenital cardiac lesion. Surgery was, until recently, the only modality of treatment available. Since the first percutaneous closure was attempted, new devices have been developed and used to close these defects. The procedure is safe and effective if the defects are selected correctly with closure being achieved in more than 90% of patients. Morbidity and mortality are acceptable and comparable to surgery. However, percutaneous ventricular septal defect closure is difficult, technically challenging and should only be attempted in units with adequate experience, equipment and support

QCD with dynamical Wilson fermions at β=5.5\beta=5.5

We study QCD with two flavors of dynamical Wilson fermions at $\beta = 5.5$ and three values of $\kappa$. The corresponding pion masses are 0.375, 0.324 and 0.262 in lattice units, with pion to rho mass ratios of 0.76, 0.71 and 0.62, respectively. We use the configurations to compute the heavy quark potential, leading to lattice spacings of 0.110, 0.105 and 0.099 fm, and to compute spectroscopy for several different valence quark $\kappa$'s.Comment: LaTex 4 pages, 4 figures. Talk presented at LATTICE96(spectrum

Transverse electrokinetic and microfluidic effects in micro-patterned channels: lubrication analysis for slab geometries

Off-diagonal (transverse) effects in micro-patterned geometries are predicted and analyzed within the general frame of linear response theory, relating applied presure gradient and electric field to flow and electric current. These effects could contribute to the design of pumps, mixers or flow detectors. Shape and charge density modulations are proposed as a means to obtain sizeable transverse effects, as demonstrated by focusing on simple geometries and using the lubrication approximation.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Open inflation and the singular boundary

The singularity in Hawking and Turok's model (hep-th/9802030) of open inflation has some appealing properties. We suggest that this singularity should be regularized with matter. The singular instanton can then be obtained as the limit of a family of ``no-boundary'' solutions where both the geometry and the scalar field are regular. Using this procedure, the contribution of the singularity to the Euclidean action is just 1/3 of the Gibbons-Hawking boundary term. Unrelated to this question, we also point out that gravitational backreaction improves the behaviour of scalar perturbations near the singularity. As a result, the problem of quantizing scalar perturbations and gravity waves seems to be very well posed.Comment: 7 page