The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights: A Score Card for an Effective Enforcement of the Human Rights Regime

Europe has succeeded in principle, in moving from the stage of proclamation of inalienable Human Rights – a gesture of political intent, to that of their effective implementation. Despite a great beginning when the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (E.C.H.R) was signed in 1956, the path to effective protection of Human Rights has been long and difficult even in Europe. The European Court of Human Rights established in 1959 was the first Independent International Tribunal dedicated to the protection of Human Rights. This article examines the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Right as a panacea for an effective enforcement of the human rights regime and concludes that the European Courts of Human Rights jurisprudence reaches a good equilibrium on many matters, while on a few others, in the eyes of the present commentator, it could still be improved. Similarly, the court rather than divesting itself of its specific mistake in order to become a general court of cassation of the Council of Europe member states, have instead engaged in a middle way, assigning to itself the role of an essential milestone in the protection and constant development of that branch of law called ‘Human Rights’ and which embodies in some sort, worded general propositions and the essential political and legal commitments of the democratic state of Europe

The Supreme Court of Nigeria Decision in Lufadeju vs Johnson (2007) 8 Nwlr (Pt 1037) P. 535: Whither the Unconstitutionality of Holding Charges in Nigeria?

Pre – trial freedom is indispensable to individual citizens of the world. Nigeria has guaranteed the freedom to liberty as enshrined under section 35 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. Lagos State of Nigeria in 1994 enacted the Criminal Procedure Law and in the case of Lufadeju vs. Johnson, section 236 (3) of the law which seeks to give powers to the magistrate courts in that State to order for the remand of suspects and or accused persons to prison custody pending when the police would complete their investigations or proper arraignment, came up for interpretation before the Supreme Court of Nigeria and the said law was validated by the court. This paper examines the said decision within the context of whether it has withered the unconstitutionality of holding charges in Nigeria’s criminal justice system and the policy implication of the said decision and concludes that  the far reaching pronouncements made by the court are capable of affecting the long aged established rule of the unconstitutionality of holding charges in Nigeria thence perpetuating the incarceration  of accused persons in prison custody even  where the police are not willing to prosecute which is against the spirit and letters of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. Key words: Remand Proceedings, Holding Charges, Arraignment, Jurisdiction and Liberty.

The Unmanned Killer Machine: The Proliferation of Armed Drones Technology, Strikes and Effects on International Humanitarian and Human Rights Laws

With the advancement of technology the shape and nature of warfare has changed In recent times there has been the proliferation of armed drones technology and its usage From when drones were made operational in the Balkans war they have been used particularly by the US in places like Afghanistan Yemen Somalia and Iraq and controlled by the CIA With these rapid development and proliferations machines are starting to take the place of humans in the battlefield The proliferation and usage of these armed drones poses challenges to the principles of international humanitarian and human rights laws especially when they are operated by non- military personnel like the CIA the parameters of their detention and prosecution This paper therefore analyses the effects that the proliferation and usage of armed drones has on the basic principles of international humanitarian and human rights law and concludes that the ability of armed drones to carry out targeted killings without exercising effective control over territory and without having the individual in custody threatens or presents dangers to the protection of life which is not only a concept of humanity but a human rights violation and posit also that innocent civilians can be killed and indeed have being killed in the process of their usage thence threatening the concept of distinction and proportionality which are some of the cardinal principles of 1HL and thence recommends that there should be the regulation in the manufacture possession and usage of these weapon

Proxcache: A new cache deployment strategy in information-centric network for mitigating path and content redundancy

One of the promising paradigms for resource sharing with maintaining the basic Internet semantics is the Information-Centric Networking (ICN). ICN distinction with the current Internet is its ability to refer contents by names with partly dissociating the host-to-host practice of Internet Protocol addresses. Moreover, content caching in ICN is the major action of achieving content networking to reduce the amount of server access. The current caching practice in ICN using the Leave Copy Everywhere (LCE) progenerate problems of over deposition of contents known as content redundancy, path redundancy, lesser cache-hit rates in heterogeneous networks and lower content diversity. This study proposes a new cache deployment strategy referred to as ProXcache to acquire node relationships using hyperedge concept of hypergraph for cache positioning. The study formulates the relationships through the path and distance approximation to mitigate content and path redundancy. The study adopted the Design Research Methodology approach to achieve the slated research objectives. ProXcache was investigated using simulation on the Abilene, GEANT and the DTelekom network topologies for LCE and ProbCache caching strategies with the Zipf distribution to differ content categorization. The results show the overall content and path redundancy are minimized with lesser caching operation of six depositions per request as compared to nine and nineteen for ProbCache and LCE respectively. ProXcache yields better content diversity ratio of 80% against 20% and 49% for LCE and ProbCache respectively as the cache sizes varied. ProXcache also improves the cache-hit ratio through proxy positions. These thus, have significant influence in the development of the ICN for better management of contents towards subscribing to the Future Internet

Issued as a Documentation Report on an Investigation of Field-Made Joints in Prestressed Reinforced Concrete Highway Girder Bridges, Project IHR-303, Phase 2

A prototype bridge girder was designed, built, and tested. The 250 ft long two-span girder was made of 3 precast segments about 88, 74, and 88 ft in length. The segments were supported on 3 final and 2 temporary supports. The joints were of cast-in-place concrete, as was the composite deck. After the site-cast concrete was cured, the structure was post-tensioned to establish continuity and the temporary supports were removed. The two longer segments were pretensioned to resist the girder and deck dead loads, while the shorter segment was reinforced with deformed bars for the same loads. The structure was subjected to a series of loadings, during which deflections, reactions, and concrete strains were measured. The loads approximated AASHTO HS-20 vehicles. The first 4 tests ,were to service loads, with total applied loads of 73.6 kips. The structure remained elastic and crack free during these tests. Two tests were to the design ultimate load, 198.7 kips. A load of 328.2 kips was applied in the final test without causing failure. The final loading was applied to produce maximum shear in one splice, and a shear failure, complicated by large flexural deformations, appeared to be developing when the test ended. The final test produced a maximum deflection of 10.8 in., and a residual of about 1.0 in. The joint details used in the prototype structure were adequate, and the presence of the, joint had no influence on the behavior of the structure until extremely large overloads were reached.State of Illinois Department of TransportationU.S. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway AdministrationProject IHR-30

Applications of operation research in Zakah administration

The significance of the Zakah institution to any Islamic economy, it links to financial viability and economic progress has made it a must to modernize the sector to go in line with modern realities. Poor management of Zakah institutions has been described as detrimental to the efforts of these institutions to collect and disburse Zakah effectively. This paper looks at applications of mathematical and quantitative techniques with the view to achieving optimality and efficiency in business of collection and disbursement of Zakah. The mathematical applications tested are the techniques of contribution maximization, programming, and game theory. The potential applications of this field of mathematics to Zakah operations are vast. It calls for concerted efforts and focuses by researchers, policymakers and Islamic scholars on finding the most efficient way of deploying operation research techniques in the management of Zakah institutions. &nbsp

Numerical Evaluation of Injuries to Unrestrained Six Year Old Child Passenger in Vehicle Frontal Crash Test

Misuse and not using Child Restraint Seat (CRS) is a norm in some African countries. This work is aimed at evaluating crash injuries of unrestrained Six Year Old (6YO) child in frontal crash. Finite element (FE) crash simulation being valid and cost effective method of crash test of vehicles was employed. The unrestrained dummy model was positioned in car FE model and crash test was conducted in LS DYNA FE software at 48 km/h, in accordance with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS). The results show that unrestrained child experienced Head Injury Criteria (HIC36), HIC15, and chest acceleration (CA) that are 59%, 20% and 2% higher than National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) threshold. Head acceleration (HA) and chest severity index (CSI) were also high for the unrestrained dummy while chest deflection was 40% lower than NHTSA limit which is attributable to dummy characteristics. It was found that unrestrained dummy’s HIC36 and CA are 168% and 20% higher than experimental response of 6YO dummy restrained in Back Kid Backrest Booster from literature, . This quantifies the injury sustained by child passenger seated in a car without CRS for Safety agents to come up with policies to prevent this vulnerable population from avoidable death

Development of Child Restraint Seat Finite Element Model

Child seat is the main safety feature in vehicle meant to protect infants and toddlers in car accident in order to reduce the impact loading transferred to the child occupant in crashes. Virtual crash simulations remain the only tool to optimize safety performance of vehicles at design stage. Crash dummy and vehicles models are created by reverse engineering techniques for application in crash simulations. A restrained child seat Finite Element (FE) model that fits child anthropometry is also required for the crash test. This paper presents the FE modelling of Three Year Old (3YO) child Bebe-confort seat using anthropometric data of 3YO Nigerian child. The CAD model was produced using CATIA software and meshing is done in LS Prepost. The material properties of the child seat frame, belt and foam were extracted from the Bebe-confort seat. Validation was carried out using experimental data of 3YO Hybrid III (HIII) dummy sled test. The response of the dummy in the child FE model qualitatively corresponds well with experimental results and the acceleration time history was also comparable to HIII dummy. Child seat FE model could be used in vehicle safety design for children

NANODIAMONDS AND CARBON NANO-ONIONS CERAMIC COMPOSITES AND THEIR APPLICATIONS

Luminescent nanodiamonds are photostable non-blinking fluorescent biocompatible, non-toxic, functional Zable materials made from high-pressure high temperature (HPHT) microcrystalline diamonds. For long, the scientific community has been investigating for a clean, efficient and cost-effective technique to reduce the size of fluorescent microcrystalline diamond into nanodiamonds. Their color center, responsible for the fluorescent properties are crucial for their applications, including biomedical imaging, nano sensing, quantum computing etc, and therefore should not be affected significantly by the method of size reduction applied. A novel size reduction technique that is based on explosive fragmentation was developed and the corresponding fragmented diamonds obtained were characterized based on their size and photoluminescence properties and shows great potential as an efficient, cost effective, and commercially scalable method. Ceramics and glasses are at the cutting edge of advanced materials and provide solutions to global challenges in the environment, energy, manufacturing etc. Thus, a need for more sophisticated approach to enable quick, cheaper and superior research and development of new material compositions for future applications. Annealed nanodiamonds yield carbon nano-onions, which have unique electrical, mechanical and optical properties. In situ generated carbon nano-onion/silica glass composites with varying carbon nano-onion concentration produced via base catalyzed sol-gel chemistry were investigated for their mechanical optical and conducting properties. Homogeneous dispersion, atomic parking density, residual porosity and tightly bonded particles network within the silica glass matrix influence the properties of the resulted composites --Abstract, p. i