Security Applications for Converging Technologies - Impact on the Constitutional State and the Legal order

In this study we investigate the impact of converging technologies on legal practice and criminology in a forward looking study intended for practitioners and policy makers in the field of legislation, crime prevention, and law enforcement. We look at a 15 years timeframe and discuss the scientific and technical progress in various domains as well as the ethical, legal, and policy dilemmas involved.

Reducing the environmental impact of surgery on a global scale: systematic review and co-prioritization with healthcare workers in 132 countries

Background Healthcare cannot achieve net-zero carbon without addressing operating theatres. The aim of this study was to prioritize feasible interventions to reduce the environmental impact of operating theatres. Methods This study adopted a four-phase Delphi consensus co-prioritization methodology. In phase 1, a systematic review of published interventions and global consultation of perioperative healthcare professionals were used to longlist interventions. In phase 2, iterative thematic analysis consolidated comparable interventions into a shortlist. In phase 3, the shortlist was co-prioritized based on patient and clinician views on acceptability, feasibility, and safety. In phase 4, ranked lists of interventions were presented by their relevance to high-income countries and low–middle-income countries. Results In phase 1, 43 interventions were identified, which had low uptake in practice according to 3042 professionals globally. In phase 2, a shortlist of 15 intervention domains was generated. In phase 3, interventions were deemed acceptable for more than 90 per cent of patients except for reducing general anaesthesia (84 per cent) and re-sterilization of ‘single-use’ consumables (86 per cent). In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for high-income countries were: introducing recycling; reducing use of anaesthetic gases; and appropriate clinical waste processing. In phase 4, the top three shortlisted interventions for low–middle-income countries were: introducing reusable surgical devices; reducing use of consumables; and reducing the use of general anaesthesia. Conclusion This is a step toward environmentally sustainable operating environments with actionable interventions applicable to both high– and low–middle–income countries

Security Applications for Converging Technologies - Impact on the Constitutional State and the Legal order

In this study we investigate the impact of converging technologies on legal practice and criminology in a forward looking study intended for practitioners and policy makers in the field of legislation, crime prevention, and law enforcement. We look at a 15 years timeframe and discuss the scientific and technical progress in various domains as well as the ethical, legal, and policy dilemmas involved

Beta-delayed proton decay of proton-rich nuclei 23Al and 31Cl and explosive H-burning in classical novae

Submitted on Oct. 6, 2008 for the Proceedings of the 10th Symposium on Nuclei in the Cosmos Mackinac Island, Michigan, USA 27 July - 1 August, 2008 Acceptance pendingWe have developed a technique to measure beta-delayed proton decay of proton-rich nuclei produced and separated with the MARS recoil spectrometer of Texas A&M University. The short-lived radioactive species are produced in-flight, separated, then slowed down (from about 40 MeV/u) and implanted in the middle of very thin Si detectors. The beam is pulsed and beta-p decay of the pure sources collected in beam is measured between beam pulses. Implantation avoids the problems with detector windows and allows us to measure protons with energies as low as 200 keV from nuclei with lifetimes of 100 ms or less. Using this technique, we have studied the isotopes 23Al and 31Cl, both important for understanding explosive H-burning in novae. They were produced in the reactions 24Mg(p,2n)23Al and 32S(p,2n)31Cl, respectively, in inverse kinematics, from stable beams at 48 and 40 MeV/u, respectively. We give details about the technique, its performances and the results for 23Al and 31Cl beta-p decay. The technique has shown a remarkable selectivity to beta-delayed charged-particle emission and would work even at radioactive beam rates of a few pps. The states populated are resonances for the radiative proton capture reactions 22Na(p,g)23Mg and 30P(p,g)31S, respectively

Automatic assembly sequence exploration without precedence definition

Today the assembly sequence for the products is often carried out manually and its definition, typically, is very expensive, not guaranteeing optimal solutions. Coming up with an efficient assembly sequence is the essential step to improve process productivity and reduces the time and costs related to assembly machines and equipment. The issue related to the assembly sequence of a product depends on the total number of the its components. In particular, the number of the possible sequences can be obtained through the calculus of the factorial of the number of the product components. This work presents an automatic approach intended to define assembly sequences, based on the information regard the contacts and the interferences existing among the components, which is obtained by the assembly CAD model of the product. The level of the information required by this approach allows its implementation at early stages of design, as soon as the layout of the conceptual solution of the product is defined, independently by the method used to model the CAD assembly. The procedure proposed is focused to obtain a reduced number of assembly sequences, guaranteeing that there is at least one feasible assembly sequence among them. The procedure is oriented to iteratively identify independent and important subassemblies into the CAD assembly, then merge them to specific assembling nodes and generate sequences until the whole product is analyzed. After a brief review of current methodologies developed for assembly planning, in this paper, the automated procedure for assembly sequence generation is explained and applied on an example, obtaining feasible solutions. © 2012 Springer-Verlag

Security Applications for Converging Technologies

The impact of converging technologies on legal practice and criminology is being investigated in a forward looking study intended for practitioners and policy makers in the field of legislation, crime prevention, and law enforcement. This report consists of three parts. The first part describes the state of the art and future expectations on nano-, bio-, ICT and cognitive science and technology, as well as their convergence. The second part describes the (future) applicability of converging technologies to our application domain, in particular in three cases. This part ends with scenarios that are used as a means to ‘visualize’ the developments and an input for the impact analysis. In the third part the scenarios are analysed on their ethical, legal and social implications. This part describes the major social and normative trends that are observed. CONTENT: 1. Introduction 2. Nanotechnology 3. Biotechnology 4. Information technology 5. Cognitive sciences 6. NBIC convergence 7. Relevance of converging technologies for security applications 8. Scenarios for the application of converging technologies in the security sector 9. Major trends and social and normative impact assessment 10. Conclusions 11. Addendum: The trends and the normative framework of the Dutch criminal la

Specific interaction of hepatitis C virus glycoproteins with mannan binding lectin inhibits virus entry

Mannan-binding lectin (MBL) is a soluble innate immune protein that binds to glycosylated targets. MBL acts as an opsonin and activates complement, contributing to the destruction and clearance of infecting microorganisms. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) encodes two envelope glycoproteins E1 and E2, expressed as non-covalent E1/E2 heterodimers in the viral envelope. E1 and E2 are potential ligands for MBL. Here we describe an analysis of the interaction between HCV and MBL using recombinant soluble E2 ectodomain fragment, the full-length E1/E2 heterodimer, expressed in vitro, and assess the effect of this interaction on virus entry. A binding assay using antibody capture of full length E1/E2 heterodimers was used to demonstrate calcium dependent, saturating binding of MBL to HCV glycoproteins. Competition with various saccharides further confirmed that the interaction was via the lectin domain of MBL. MBL binds to E1/E2 representing a broad range of virus genotypes. MBL was shown to neutralize the entry into Huh-7 cells of HCV pseudoparticles (HCVpp) bearing E1/E2 from a wide range of genotypes. HCVpp were neutralized to varying degrees. MBL was also shown to neutralize an authentic cell culture infectious virus, strain JFH-1 (HCVcc). Furthermore, binding of MBL to E1/E2 was able to activate the complement system via MBL-associated serine protease 2. In conclusion, MBL interacts directly with HCV glycoproteins, which are present on the surface of the virion, resulting in neutralization of HCV particles