De Facto Judicial Independence and Physical Integrity Rights

Economists, political scientists, and legal scholars have argued that independent judiciaries have an important role to play in promoting economic development and protecting property rights. We argue that judicial independence can also have a positive impact on the protection of human rights. To assess the human rights impact of a de facto independent judiciary, we also argue that scholars must account for the potential of endogeneity between judicial independence and protection of human rights. We examine whether greater de facto independence improves government respect for citizens’ physical integrity rights, using a comprehensive dataset of 193 countries from 1981 to 2010. Employing an instrumental variables approach to control for endogeneity, we find strong support for the argument that greater levels of de facto judicial independence improve government respect for physical integrity rights. These findings are robust to changes in measurement, estimation techniques, and model specification. Failing to account for endogeneity will tend to overemphasize the ability of completely independent courts to improve government respect for physical integrity rights

Ebola Response: A Summary of Field Work Project

While epidemics and disease outbreaks are not uncommon world wide, the most recent outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has been the largest outbreak of the disease and the most wide spread in history. The outbreak has caused international concern and was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) in August of 2014. Since the outbreak started there have been a total of 15,351 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of EVD reported in six affected countries including Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Spain and the United States. There have been 5459 reported deaths associated with EVD worldwide. In this paper, Ebola Response: A Summary of Field Work Project, Jeffrey Schmidt’s fieldwork with San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center and the San Francisco Department of Public Health is summarized. The main objective of the fieldwork project was to assist with developing an Ebola response plan and then test the response plan through simulations

Einflüsse von Minimalbodenbearbeitung und Transfermulch auf die perennierende Beikrautflora im Kartoffelbau

Reduced tillage enhances soil fertility and can help to avoid erosion. The drawback of increased weed pressure is a challenge for organic farmers due to the prohibition of herbicides. Mulch could be a way to suppress weeds and to introduce reduced tillage systems in potato cultivation. The number of perennial weeds were monitored in a comparison of two potato cultivation systems: conventional ploughing and hilling versus reduced tillage with dead mulch. In 2014, perennial weeds in the mulch system increased to double the number compared to the ploughed system. The reverse pattern was observed in 2015. This reversed effect was due to improved application methods of mulch with smaller particle size and a closer C/N-Ratio in the mulch in 2015 in combination with a severe spring drought in 2015 but not in 2014

Saw-Cut Scanning Patterns

The scanning of surface saw cuts can yield clues both about the interaction of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) devices with samples and the ability to detect and characterize flaws of other shapes. In this case, the device is a modified AC magnetic bridge (the bridge) which has been described elsewhere [1,2,3]. Electrical bridges can be operated in two modes: Off-null operation occurs when the bridge output is minimized (nulled) and the reaction of the bridge to various samples is judged by changes in the output voltage. Off-null operation is principally used for control. Renull operation occurs when the bridge is nulled for each sample and the physical parameters required to null the bridge (usually resistance and/or resistance and capacitance) can be used to determine physical differences in the samples

Nominal Unification of Higher Order Expressions with Recursive Let

A sound and complete algorithm for nominal unification of higher-order expressions with a recursive let is described, and shown to run in non-deterministic polynomial time. We also explore specializations like nominal letrec-matching for plain expressions and for DAGs and determine the complexity of corresponding unification problems.Comment: Pre-proceedings paper presented at the 26th International Symposium on Logic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR 2016), Edinburgh, Scotland UK, 6-8 September 2016 (arXiv:1608.02534

Just health responsibility

ABSTRACT Althoug

Bounds for State Degeneracies in 2D Conformal Field Theory

In this note we explore the application of modular invariance in 2-dimensional CFT to derive universal bounds for quantities describing certain state degeneracies, such as the thermodynamic entropy, or the number of marginal operators. We show that the entropy at inverse temperature 2 pi satisfies a universal lower bound, and we enumerate the principal obstacles to deriving upper bounds on entropies or quantum mechanical degeneracies for fully general CFTs. We then restrict our attention to infrared stable CFT with moderately low central charge, in addition to the usual assumptions of modular invariance, unitarity and discrete operator spectrum. For CFT in the range c_left + c_right < 48 with no relevant operators, we are able to prove an upper bound on the thermodynamic entropy at inverse temperature 2 pi. Under the same conditions we also prove that a CFT can have a number of marginal deformations no greater than ((c_left + c_right) / (48 - c_left - c_right)) e^(4 Pi) - 2.Comment: 23 pages, LaTeX, minor change

Excited state intramolecular proton transfer in hydroxyanthraquinones: Toward predicting fading of organic red colorants in art.

Compositionally similar organic red colorants in the anthraquinone family, whose photodegradation can cause irreversible color and stability changes, have long been used in works of art. Different organic reds, and their multiple chromophores, suffer degradation disparately. Understanding the details of these molecules' degradation therefore provides a window into their behavior in works of art and may assist the development of improved conservation methods. According to one proposed model of photodegradation dynamics, intramolecular proton transfer provides a kinetically favored decay pathway in some photoexcited chromophores, preventing degradation-promoting electron transfer (ET). To further test this model, we measured excited state lifetimes of substituted gas-phase anthraquinones using high-level theory to explain the experimental results. The data show a general structural trend: Anthraquinones with 1,4-OH substitution are long-lived and prone to damaging ET, while excited state intramolecular proton transfers promote efficient quenching for hydroxyanthraquinones that lack this motif