Promises and Pitfalls in UN Regulation of Judicial Independence

This article investigates the current mechanisms and power of the UN to ensure judicial independence in the UN Member States. First, it surveys the UN bodies which play a role in creating international regulations for judicial independence and monitoring Member States’ compliance with them. Second, it analyzes the responses of these bodies to challenges to judicial independence by conducting case studies of Venezuela and Poland, and how these actions compare to those of other international organizations and tribunals. The central questions it seeks to answer are which mechanisms of review and enforcement have so far been the most effective in reaching the goal of judicial independence, where they fall short, and how they can improve. The case studies show that the UN General Assembly (GA) and Human Rights Council (HRC) generally use the mechanisms available to them effectively and fully. UN action has been crucial to bringing continued attention to human rights violations occurring internationally—even if the UN’s enforcement mechanisms are weak because its resolutions generally lack legally binding authority. The greatest obstacle to achieving international goals of judicial independence, however, is not a lack of UN action, but rather a lack of Member State compliance and collaboration. Without the full cooperation of each of its Member States and engagement of individual citizens, the UN’s attempts to solve this issue will continue to fall short

Inferring Concept Hierarchies from Text Corpora via Hyperbolic Embeddings

We consider the task of inferring is-a relationships from large text corpora. For this purpose, we propose a new method combining hyperbolic embeddings and Hearst patterns. This approach allows us to set appropriate constraints for inferring concept hierarchies from distributional contexts while also being able to predict missing is-a relationships and to correct wrong extractions. Moreover -- and in contrast with other methods -- the hierarchical nature of hyperbolic space allows us to learn highly efficient representations and to improve the taxonomic consistency of the inferred hierarchies. Experimentally, we show that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance on several commonly-used benchmarks

Vaarallisten aineiden kuljetus : Case Aspokem Oy

Tämän opinnäytetyön aiheena on vaarallisten aineiden kuljetukset. Tutkimuksemme tarkoituksena oli selvittää, millaisia säännöksiä ja asetuksia vaarallisten aineiden kuljetuksiin liittyy. Teoriaosassa tutkimme yleisesti vaarallisiin aineisiin liittyviä aihealueita, kuten pakkaamista, merkitsemistä, luokittelua sekä kuljetuksien vaatimuksia eri kuljetusmuodoilla. Tutkimusosassa perehdyimme tarkemmin vaarallisten aineiden merikuljetuksen prosessiin ja sen vaiheisiin. Tutkimus suoritettiin valitsemalla merikuljetuksen prosessista neljä ongelmakohtaa. Jokainen kohta pisteytettiin arviointiasteikolla 1-5. Valittuamme nämä neljä tutkimusongelmaa, aloimme kartoittaa niiden sisältöä. Vierailimme Aspokemillä, jossa vapaamuotoisen keskustelun puitteissa selvitimme valittujen tutkimuskohteiden taustoja. Mietimme mistä ongelmat johtuvat ja mitä niistä seuraa. Valitsemamme ongelmakohdat ovat tietojenkäsittely, laatuvirheet, lastaus- ja toimitusajat sekä toimitusvarmuus. Tietojenkäsittelyyn liittyviä virheitä Aspokemillä tapahtuu harvoin. Mikäli virhe kuitenkin syntyy, huomataan se yleensä välittömästi. Laatuvirheet, jotka ovat tuotteissa esiintyviä spesifikaatiosta poikkeavia muutoksia, ei ole tapahtunut Aspokemillä koskaan. Lastaus ja -toimitusajat sekä niiden muutokset johtuvat aina Aspokemistä riippumattomista syistä. Kuitenkin niistä aiheutuvat ongelmat vaikuttavat suoraan Aspokemin toimintaan. Aspokemin suurin ongelma liittyy toimitusvarmuuteen. Varastot saattavat tyhjentyä joidenkin tuotteiden osalta ennen uuden lastin saapumista. Toimitusvarmuutta voitaisiin parantaa tehostamalla varastonhallintaa. Varastonhallinnan tehostamisen apuna voidaan käyttää ABC-analyysia, oikean tilausrytmin ja optimiostoerän määrittelyä, varaston täyttöasteen säännöllistä seurantaa sekä asiakastarpeiden tarkkaa määrittelyä.The topic of this thesis is transport of dangerous goods. The aim of this study was to find out what kind of rules and regulations are included in the transport of dangerous goods. The theoretical part is done with common aspect and the research focused on topics like packing, marking, classification and demands in different mode of transports. The qualitative part of the research focused on the transport of dangerous goods by sea. The research was performed by choosing four black spots from transporting of dangerous goods by sea. Every spot was marked in grading system from 1 to 5. After choosing these four black spots, we started to chart the contents of problems. We visited Aspokem, where we had a free discussion and tried to find out the backrounds of the black spots. We considered the problems and what the consequences are. The black spots that we pointed out were data processing, defect in quality, loading and delivery times and reliability in delivery. Problems in data processing at Aspokem occure rarely. If a mistake transpires, it is perceived immediately. Defects in quality, which are modifications in product spesification, have never happened. Changes in loading and delivery times result from reasons which are beyond Aspokem’s control. However, the problems that are caused by those changes influence directly to Aspokem’s business operations. The biggest problem in Aspokem is reliability in delivery. Warehouses might run out of some products before the new charge arrives. Reliability in delivery could be improved by intensifying warehouse control. When controlling the warehouse instruments like ABC-analysis, right rhythm of orders and defining the optimal purchasing batch, regular follow-up of warehouses filling grades and specific defining of customers needs can be used