Irregular Forces, Irregular Enforcement: Making Peace Agreements in Non-International Armed Conflicts Durable

The legal status of NIAC peace agreements is a matter that remains unresolved. While it is clear that AOGs may attain international legal personality in some contexts, authoritative sources of interpretation have not reached a consensus with respect to their capacity to create contracts. In Part I, this Article reviewed the controversy over AOG treaty-making power and the split within the courts on the issue. In Part II, it illustrated the many different areas of international law under which AOGs are held to possess legal personality, suggesting that they could be able to accede to binding treaties. Part III showed that even if AOGs cannot ordinarily enter into treaties of their own right, there are other theories that support enforcing certain agreements that they sign. Finally, Part IV recounted some of the strategies that NIAC parties have innovated to bootstrap their pacts into binding documents. How these efforts are evaluated in the future will have implications that range from the odds of compliance with NIAC peace agreements to the nature of statehood in international law. (Conclusion, p. 266

The influence of alcohol content variation in UK packaged beers on the uncertainty of calculations using the Widmark equation

It is common for forensic practitioners to calculate an individual's likely blood alcohol concentration following the consumption of alcoholic beverage(s) for legal purposes, such as in driving under the influence (DUI) cases. It is important in these cases to be able to give the uncertainty of measurement on any calculated result, for this reason uncertainty data for the variables used for any calculation are required. In order to determine the uncertainty associated with the alcohol concentration of beer in the UK the alcohol concentration (%v/v) of 218 packaged beers (112 with an alcohol concentration of ≤5.5%v/v and 106 with an alcohol concentration of >5.5%v/v) were tested using an industry standard near infra-red (NIR) analyser. The range of labelled beer alcohol by volume (ABV's) tested was 3.4%v/v – 14%v/v. The beers were obtained from a range of outlets throughout the UK over a period of 12 months. The root mean square error (RMSE) was found to be ±0.43%v/v (beers with declared %ABV of ≤5.5%v/v) and ±0.53%v/v (beers with declared %ABV of >5.5%v/v) the RMSE for all beers was ±0.48%v/v. The standard deviation from the declared %ABV is larger than those previously utilised for uncertainty calculations and illustrates the importance of appropriate experimental data for use in the determination of uncertainty in forensic calculations

Translating the 10 golden rules of reforestation for coral reef restoration

Efforts are accelerating to protect and restore ecosystems globally. With trillions of dollars in ecosystem services at stake, no clear framework exists for developing or prioritizing approaches to restore coral reefs even as efforts and investment opportunities to do so grow worldwide. Restoration may buy time for climate change mitigation, but it lacks rigorous guidance to meet objectives of scalability and effectiveness. Lessons from restoration of terrestrial ecosystems can and should be rapidly adopted for coral reef restoration. We propose how the 10 golden rules of effective forest restoration can be translated to accelerate efforts to restore coral reefs based on established principles of resilience, management, and local stewardship. We summarize steps to undertake reef restoration as a management strategy in the context of the diverse ecosystem service values that coral reefs provide. Outlining a clear blueprint is timely as more stakeholders seek to undertake restoration as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins

Textural development in sulfide-matrix ore breccias in the Aguablanca Ni-Cu deposit, Spain, revealed by X-ray fluorescence microscopy

The intrusion-hosted Ni-Cu sulfide deposit at Aguablanca in south-western Spain contains a high proportion of ores in the form of sulfide-matrix ore breccias. These are polymict, comprising autoliths and xenoliths in sulfide-rich and/or sulfide-poor matrices. Inclusion lithologies include calc-silicate skarn rocks from the adjacent marbles, ultramafic and mafic cumulates, and remelted and recrystallized mafic rocks containing spinifex-like textures. Breccia textures have been investigated at mm to cm scale using desk-top and synchrotron-based microbeam XRF mapping which reveal a number of distinctive common features: disaggregation of inclusions into adjacent sulfide along original silicate grain boundaries; complex reverse and oscillatory zoning in Cr content of clinopyroxene grains within sulfide and inside inclusions; narrow reaction rims between country rock clasts and enclosing silicates; and preferential disposition of pyroxene crystals within pyrrhotite-pentlandite aggregates (original MSS) relative to inclusion-poor chalcopyrite. The observed range of textures is explained by a model of percolation of molten sulfide through a pre-existing silicate-matrix intrusion breccia, preferentially displacing a cotectic or eutectic plagioclase-pyroxene melt. The process is analogous to that believed to have formed interspinifex ore in komatiite-hosted deposits, and also to that responsible for superficially similar sulfide matrix ore breccias at Voisey’s Bay. The preserved range of textures is interpreted as being due to late stage gravity-driven percolation of sulfide liquid from above into a pre-existing partially molten intrusion breccia. This intrusion breccia itself may have been emplaced into the neck of the Aguablanca stock, in the waning stages of magma flow

Collembolan morphospecies (Hexapoda: Collembola) in serpentine soils: a case study in a natural ecosystem in northeastern Portugal

Serpentine soils represent challenging habitats for plants and soil dwelling organisms, such as collembolans, because they typically exhibit high levels of heavy metals (e.g. chromium, cobalt, and nickel). Serpentinized areas cover about 8000 ha in Northeastern Portugal. While the plant communities are well studied, the collembolans are virtually unknown. The data presented here represent the first effort to describe the structure of a collembolan community, using morphospecies as a surrogate of species, in a serpentinized area occupied by a natural forest of Quercus rotundifolia and Quercus faginea located nearby Bragança (Portugal). Sampling was performed during the last week of September of 2008 in a serpentinized area near Bragança (Portugal). At each of the 29 sampling points (distributed along two transects) collembolans were collected with a soil core (5 cm diameter x 10 cm depth). The collembolans were extracted from the soil (using a McFadyen apparatus), sorted, counted and finally identified to morphospecies level. The number of morphospecies observed was 37. The total abundance in the mineral horizon (1862 individuals) was not significantly different from the organic horizon (1883 individuals). The Simpson Diversity Index and Richness were higher in the organic horizon (21.7 and 35 species, respectively) than in the mineral horizon (9.9 and 30 species, respectively). The species accumulation curves showed that the estimated number of morphospecies for the mineral horizon is 36 while for the organic horizon is 38

New observations by X-ray fluorescence microscopy provide insights for the origin of Aguablanca sulfide-matrix breccias in SW Spain

Depto. de Mineralogía y PetrologíaFac. de Ciencias GeológicasTRUEMinisterio de Economía y Competitividadpu