1,021 research outputs found
Public Participation and the Private Sector: The Role of Multilateral Development Banks in the Evolution of International Legal Standards
__Abstract__
This paper systematically describes the public participation standards currently applied by multilateral development banks (MDBs) to the private sector and seeks to identify emerging trends and areas for further development or improvement. It begins by outlining the developing body of international law on public participation and its relationship to good development practice. Thereafter, the paper describes the two principle models for standards attached to MDB funding and assistance to the private sector: (1) the World Bank policies applicable to the public sector; and (2) the International Finance Corporation (IFC) standards that are applicable to the private sector and how these are utilized in each of the principal regional MDBs: Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); the African Development Bank (AfDB); the Asian Development Bank (AsDB); and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Each sub-section devoted to a regional MDB focuses on the substantive public participation standards with which private sector funding recipients must comply; and on the oversight and review mechanisms by which the MDB promotes and enforces compliance with these policies. The final part of the paper argues that the MDBs have taken a critical first step in extending public participation requirements to the private sector and are making important progress in enforcing such requirements. It urges the MDBs to recognize that they are, in fact, becoming creators of evolving international standards and norms or soft law. Consequently, in developing and interpreting their policies and standards, they should pay closer attention to other, more formal sources of international and domestic law on public participation
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Near-Earth asteroid sample return missions
The rate of discovery of new NEAs and the success of D-S 1 and NEAR-Shoemaker, suggest that sample return from NEAs is now technically feasible. Here we present a summary of a recent workshop on the topic
Exotic Heavy Fermion State in the Filled Skutterudite PrFeP Uncovered by the de Haas-van Alphen Effect
We report the de Haas-van Alphen (dHvA) experiment on the filled skutterudite
PrFeP exhibiting apparent Kondo-like behaviors in the transport and
thermal properties. We have found enormously enhanced cyclotron effective mass
in the high field phase (HFP), which
indicates that PrFeP is the first Pr-compound in which really heavy
mass has been unambiguously confirmed. Also in the low field non-magnetic
ordered phase (LOP), we observed the dHvA branch with that is quite heavy taking into account its small Fermi surface volume
(0.15% of the Brillouin zone size). The insensitivity of mass in LOP against
the magnetic field suggests that the quadrupolar interaction plays a main role
both in the mass renormalization and the LOP formation.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, Phys. Rev. B (01 October 2002) in pres
Action principle formulation for motion of extended bodies in General Relativity
We present an action principle formulation for the study of motion of an
extended body in General Relativity in the limit of weak gravitational field.
This gives the classical equations of motion for multipole moments of arbitrary
order coupling to the gravitational field. In particular, a new force due to
the octupole moment is obtained. The action also yields the gravitationally
induced phase shifts in quantum interference experiments due to the coupling of
all multipole moments.Comment: Revised version derives Octupole moment force. Some clarifications
and a reference added. To appear in Phys. Rev.
Atom focusing by far-detuned and resonant standing wave fields: Thin lens regime
The focusing of atoms interacting with both far-detuned and resonant standing
wave fields in the thin lens regime is considered. The thin lens approximation
is discussed quantitatively from a quantum perspective. Exact quantum
expressions for the Fourier components of the density (that include all
spherical aberration) are used to study the focusing numerically. The following
lens parameters and density profiles are calculated as functions of the pulsed
field area : the position of the focal plane, peak atomic density,
atomic density pattern at the focus, focal spot size, depth of focus, and
background density. The lens parameters are compared to asymptotic, analytical
results derived from a scalar diffraction theory for which spherical aberration
is small but non-negligible (). Within the diffraction theory
analytical expressions show that the focused atoms in the far detuned case have
an approximately constant background density
while the peak density behaves as , the focal distance or
time as , the focal spot size as
, and the depth of focus as .
Focusing by the resonant standing wave field leads to a new effect, a Rabi-
like oscillation of the atom density. For the far-detuned lens, chromatic
aberration is studied with the exact Fourier results. Similarly, the
degradation of the focus that results from angular divergence in beams or
thermal velocity distributions in traps is studied quantitatively with the
exact Fourier method and understood analytically using the asymptotic results.
Overall, we show that strong thin lens focusing is possible with modest laser
powers and with currently achievable atomic beam characteristics.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figure
Complementarity, quantum erasure and delayed choice with modified Mach-Zehnder interferometers
Often cited dictums in Quantum Mechanics include "observation disturbance
causes loss of interference" and "ignorance is interference". In this paper we
propose and describe a series of experiments with modified Mach-Zehnder
interferometers showing that one has to be careful when applying such dictums.
We are able to show that without interacting in any way with the light quantum
(or quanta) expected to behave "wave-like", interference fringes can be lost by
simply gaining (or having the potential to gain) the which-path knowledge.
Erasing this information may revive the interference fringes. Delayed choice
can be added, arriving to an experiment in line with Wheeler's original
proposal. We also show that ignorance is not always synonym with having the
interference fringes. The often-invoked "collapse of the wavefunction" is found
to be a non-necessary ingredient to describe our experiments.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; to appear in EPJ
Sequence specificity for uridylylation of the viral peptide linked to the genome (VPg) of enteroviruses
Bio-organic Synthesi
From Lurker to Active Participant
The original publication is available from www.springerlink.com.
Sloep, P. B., & Kester, L. (2009). From Lurker to Active Participant. In R. Koper (Ed)., Learning Network Services for Professional Development (pp. 17-26). Berlin, Germany: Springer Verlag.In this chapter we will specifically go into the question of how prospective Learning Network users may be convinced of these benefits, for that is likely to be the necessary condition for their active participation in any Learning Network. Their question would be ‘Why should I participate?’, this chapter inventories an-swers to that question, which are then translated into a few guidelines for those contemplating to set up a particular, topic-bound Learning Network. Two kinds of answer are distinguished. Proximate answers, which affect the decision to partici-pate here and now; and ultimate answers, which motivate participation, but only in the long run, after the decision to participate has already been taken. Both are im-portant, the former to persuade people to participate, the latter to persuade people to keep participating. Before going into them, we’ll introduce a concrete example to add some realism to the discussion.The work on this publication has been sponsored in part by the TENCompetence Integrated Project that is funded by the European Commission's 6th Framework Programme, priority IST/Technology Enhanced Learning. Contract 027087 [http://www.tencompetence.org
A-dependence of nuclear transparency in quasielastic A(e,e'p) at high Q^2
The A-dependence of the quasielastic A(e,e'p) reaction has been studied at
SLAC with H-2, C, Fe, and Au nuclei at momentum transfers Q^2 = 1, 3, 5, and
6.8 (GeV/c)^2. We extract the nuclear transparency T(A,Q^2), a measure of the
average probability that the struck proton escapes from the nucleus A without
interaction. Several calculations predict a significant increase in T with
momentum transfer, a phenomenon known as Color Transparency. No significant
rise within errors is seen for any of the nuclei studied.Comment: 5 pages incl. 2 figures, Caltech preprint OAP-73
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