Symmetry Properties of Autonomous Integrating Factors

We study the symmetry properties of autonomous integrating factors from an algebraic point of view. The symmetries are delineated for the resulting integrals treated as equations and symmetries of the integrals treated as functions or configurational invariants. The succession of terms (pattern) is noted. The general pattern for the solution symmetries for equations in the simplest form of maximal order is given and the properties of the associated integrals resulting from this analysis are given.Comment: Published in SIGMA (Symmetry, Integrability and Geometry: Methods and Applications) at http://www.emis.de/journals/SIGMA

Livelihoods, Land and Political Economy: Reflections on Sam Moyo’s Research Methodology

This article focuses on the methodological lessons from Sam Moyo’s scholarship. Sam’s research is characterised by a combination of detailed empirical investigation, deep knowledge of the technical and practical aspects of agricultural production and farming livelihoods, and bigpicture political economy analysis and theory. Sam’s method is an insightful contemporary application of the method originally set out in Marx’s Grundrisse. Many contemporary explorations of agrarian political economy fail to sustain the important tension and dialectical debate, between diverse empirical realities and their ‘multiple determinations and relations’ and wider theorisation of the ‘concrete’ features of emergent processes of change. The implications of Sam’s methodological approach for the analysis of Zimbabwe’s land reform are discussed, especially in relation to the land occupations and the politics of agrarian reform since 2000

Detection of anomalous structural behaviour using wavelet analysis

Author's manuscript version. The version of record is available from the publisher via: doi:10.1006/mssp.2001.1449 Copyright © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.Structural health monitoring (SHM) can be defined as the continuous monitoring of a bridge’s state properties, such as static and dynamic response, in order to diagnose the onset of anomalous structural behaviour. This involves measuring and evaluating the state properties and relating these to defined performance parameters. The process of measuring state properties, either continuously or periodically, produces large quantities of data and by careful analysis of these data, sudden and gradual changes in the bridge’s behaviour can be identified and characterised. The ability of wavelet transforms to detect abrupt changes, gradual change beginnings and ends of events make them well suited for the analysis of bridge health monitoring data. This paper presents the application of wavelet analysis to identify events and changes in structural state in a bridge during and after its construction

Evaluation of Asset Pricing Models in the South African Equities Market

Asset pricing models have been of interest since their origin in modern finance. The Capital Asset Pricing Model is a widely used tool and is one of the early developed asset pricing models in modern finance. There are continual improvements of this model with the evident multifactor models of Fama and French (2015), Carhart (1997) and the South African two – factor arbitrage pricing models of Van Rensburg (2002) and Laird-Smith et al. (2016). This research empirically investigates the performance of eight-different multi-factor asset pricing models in describing average portfolio returns in the South African Johannesburg Stock Exchange. We find that the Carhart (1997) four factor model comprising of the market factor, size factor, value factor and the momentum factor is the most parsimonious model and thus better explains the average portfolio returns in the South African JSE. This model is an improvement of the Fama and French (1992) three factor model. Additionally, we investigate the performance of the two factor Asset Pricing Theory (APT) model of Laird-Smith et al. (2016) and Van Rensburg (2002) that consists of the South African Financial Index (SAFI) and the South African Resources Index (SARI). We observe that the model performs better than the traditional CAPM that is widely used in industry. Adding the SAFI and the SARI to the six-factor model results in an eight-factor model that has a significant improvement in explaining average returns. The results indicate that the market factor, the South African Financial Index and the South African Resources Index (SARI) poorly explain each other but their linear combination improves the eight-factor asset pricing model in explaining average portfolio returns in the South African market. The eight – factor model comprises of the market, size, value, investment, profitability, momentum factors and the two South African indices namely, the South African Financials Index (SAFI) and the South African Resources Index (SARI)

Identification of unusual events in multi-channel bridge monitoring data

Continuously operating instrumented structural health monitoring (SHM) systems are becoming a practical alternative to replace visual inspection for assessment of condition and soundness of civil infrastructure such as bridges. However, converting large amounts of data from an SHM system into usable information is a great challenge to which special signal processing techniques must be applied. This study is devoted to identification of abrupt, anomalous and potentially onerous events in the time histories of static, hourly sampled strains recorded by a multi-sensor SHM system installed in a major bridge structure and operating continuously for a long time. Such events may result, among other causes, from sudden settlement of foundation, ground movement, excessive traffic load or failure of post-tensioning cables. A method of outlier detection in multivariate data has been applied to the problem of finding and localising sudden events in the strain data. For sharp discrimination of abrupt strain changes from slowly varying ones wavelet transform has been used. The proposed method has been successfully tested using known events recorded during construction of the bridge, and later effectively used for detection of anomalous post-construction events

Identification of unusual events in multi-channel bridge monitoring data using wavelet transform and outlier analysis

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Prosecuting gender-based international crimes: An appraisal of the ad hoc tribunals’ jurisprudence

This paper investigates the historical role of international criminal law in addressing human rights violations against women1 during armed conflict, as it obtained at Nuremberg in the 1940s through to the Yugoslavian and Rwandan conflicts in the 1990s. The extent, to which the ad hoc tribunals have contributed to holding individuals accountable for human rights violations of a sexual nature against women, is explored. This paper also defines rape and sexual violence as they obtain at international law, gives an overview of the evolution of the legal treatment of sexual violence, and evaluates the impact of the jurisprudence both from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), on gender-related crimes to the development of international law. A brief comparison is conducted of the gender legal provisions of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) with those of the Special Court of Sierra Leone (SCSL) Statute, especially insofar as the ICC seeks to improve the protection of witnesses and victims. The paper concludes by assessing the sufficiency or otherwise of the existing substantive and procedural international law safeguards in punishing perpetrators, taking into account the needs of the victims of gender-related crimes