The Transformation of Extralegal Principles into Legal Principles by the International Court of Justice in The Hague: Illustrated by a Peaceful Delimitation of «the Promised Land»

Source at https://www.ustb.edu.pk/burjis/.Social norms are mixtures of extralegal and legal principles. The International Court of Justice‟ in The Hague‟s (ICJ) adjudication subtracts normative structures from different sources, moral, ethical, religious etc. dogmas amplifying its case law. The failing Israel-Palestine reconciliation that results from “power asymmetries” and “supreme emergency exception”, illustrates how absence of concomitant social norms fosters extremists destined to wage war. War is not the answer to the two-state talks‟ collapse but civilized methods of dispute settlement. Neither negotiations nor “Gods divine plan” for Jews has solved the Israel-Palestine boundary conflict. Prayers, pronouncements etc. may ease tensions, but has failed to bring peace. Since territorial demarcation is a secular event, religious leaders should request ICJ adjudication. Other peaceful mechanisms, i.a. ICJ-justification, is however imminent. The courts frames are well-known legal and extralegal principles i.a. religious morals incorporated into general principles of law. Thus, i.a. the World Council of Religious Leaders (WCRL) should trust that ICJ not only propels “world peace” but also the “work of the United Nations (UN) in our common quest for peace”. Such attainments assume Council‟s diplomatic pressure on Security Council (SC)

International law and Crimean secession from Ukraine (part 2)

Journal home page at https://msupress.com/en/catalogue/magazines/politika-en/1444/.Introduction. This is an article on whether Crimea’s declaration of independence is illegal or not. Is it contradictory to international law? My working hypothesis is that “people’s” right to selfdetermination and selfgovernment are part of its “residual rights”. Referendum confirms the authenticity of the popular will; declaring independence. The main topic is whether remedial secession is contrary to international law. Materials and methods. The legal basis are the Articles 1.2, 55, 73 and 76 of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) and the practice of the International Court of justice in the Hague confirming the since ancient times “general principles of law”. Discussion. “Peoples” benefitting from principle of sovereignty and unilateral secession from other states do include diverse amalgamated groups, i.e. territory inhabited by different ethnic, linguistic and religious residents. A wide range of cases illustrates this, i.e. practice of Lithuania, Croatia, Kosovo etc. Thus, a mixed multicultural or ethnical group at a defined territory is a people. Results of the study. Therefore, the question arises whether the Crimea elected representatives declared independence, confirmed by referendum, contradicts international law. This is made evident by the cases of Armenia, Bangladesh and Kosovo, while the former is acknowledged by the international societies of states, the latter is also confirmed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. However, it does not require independence in international recognition de facto or de jure (“acting declaring political realities”). Another objection is that there is no provision for a declaration of independence. As stated by the ICJ, this cannot be justified: “Thus, the sphere of operation of the principle of territorial integrity is limited to the sphere of relations between states” [1, p. 437]. Conclusion. Thus, a geographically defined mixed multicultural or ethnic group declaring independence from its mother country, is a people that lawfully is practicing its residual rights. The Serbian constitutional rule of territorial integrity did not prevent the Kosovar Albanian population from seceding from Serbia

Water activity in polyol/water systems: new UNIFAC parameterization

International audienceWater activities of a series of polyol/water systems were measured with an AquaLab dew point water activity meter at 298K. The investigated polyols with carbon numbers from n=2-7 are all in liquid state at room temperature and miscible at any molar ratio with water. In aqueous solutions with the same molar concentration, the diols with lower molecular weight lead to lower water activities than those with higher molecular weights. For diols with four or more carbon atoms, the hydrophilicity shows considerable differences between isomers: The 1,2-isomers - consisting of a hydrophilic and a hydrophobic part - bind less strongly to water than isomers with a more balanced distribution of the hydroxyl groups. The experimental water activities were compared with the predictions of the group contribution method UNIFAC: the model predictions overestimate the water activity of water/polyol systems of substances with two or more hydroxyl groups and can not describe the decreased binding to water of isomers with hydrophobic tails. To account for the differences between isomers, a modified UNIFAC parameterization was developed, that allows to discriminate between three types of alkyl groups depending on their position in the molecule. These new group interaction parameters were calculated using water activities of alcohol/water mixtures. This leads to a distinctly improved agreement of model predictions with experimental results while largely keeping the simplicity of the functional group approach

Mapping atomic and diffuse interstellar band absorption across the Magellanic Clouds and the Milky Way

Diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) trace warm neutral and weakly-ionized diffuse interstellar medium (ISM). Here we present a dedicated, high signal-to-noise spectroscopic study of two of the strongest DIBs, at 5780 and 5797 \AA, in optical spectra of 666 early-type stars in the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, along with measurements of the atomic Na\,{\sc i}\,D and Ca\,{\sc ii}\,K lines. The resulting maps show for the first time the distribution of DIB carriers across large swathes of galaxies, as well as the foreground Milky Way ISM. We confirm the association of the 5797 \AA\ DIB with neutral gas, and the 5780 \AA\ DIB with more translucent gas, generally tracing the star-forming regions within the Magellanic Clouds. Likewise, the Na\,{\sc i}\,D line traces the denser ISM whereas the Ca\,{\sc ii}\,K line traces the more diffuse, warmer gas. The Ca\,{\sc ii}\,K line has an additional component at $\sim200$--220 km s$^{-1}$ seen towards both Magellanic Clouds; this may be associated with a pan-Magellanic halo. Both the atomic lines and DIBs show sub-pc-scale structure in the Galactic foreground absorption; the 5780 and 5797 \AA\ DIBs show very little correlation on these small scales, as do the Ca\,{\sc ii}\,K and Na\,{\sc i}\,D lines. This suggests that good correlations between the 5780 and 5797 \AA\ DIBs, or between Ca\,{\sc ii}\,K and Na\,{\sc i}\,D, arise from the superposition of multiple interstellar structures. Similarity in behaviour between DIBs and Na\,{\sc i} in the SMC, LMC and Milky Way suggests the abundance of DIB carriers scales in proportion to metallicity.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA

Improving liquid chromatography efficiency: channels structured with micro-pillars

Band dispersion has been measured in micromachined separation channels structured with orderly disposed cylindrical micropillars. It was found that with an optimal channel design the band broadening could be lower by a factor of 3 than in packed columns with a comparable particle size. The positioning of the row of pillars closest to the side wall was a decisive factor in influencing band broadening

The Effects of Possible Contamination on the Radiocarbon Dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls II: Empirical Methods to Remove Castor Oil and Suggestions for Redating

While kept at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, many Dead Sea Scroll fragments were exposed to castor oil by the original team of editors in the course of cleaning the parchments. Castor oil must be regarded as a serious contaminant in relation to radiocarbon dating. If modern castor oil is present and is not removed prior to dating, the 14C dates will be skewed artificially towards modern values. Earlier, it was shown that the standard AAA pretreatment procedure used in the 2 previous studies dating Dead Sea Scroll samples is not capable of removing castor oil from parchment samples. In the present work, we show that it is unlikely that castor oil reacts with the amino acids of the parchment proteins, a finding which leaves open the possibility of devising a cleaning method that can effectively remove castor oil. We then present 3 different pretreatment protocols designed to effectively remove castor oil from parchment samples. These involve 3 different cleaning techniques: extraction with supercritical CO2, ultrasound cleaning, and Soxhlet extraction—each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Our data show that the protocol involving Soxhlet extraction is the best suited for the purpose of decontaminating the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we recommend that this protocol be used in further attempts to 14C date the Dead Sea Scrolls. If such an attempt is decided on by the proper authorities, we propose a list of Scroll texts, which we suggest be redated in order to validate the 14C dates done earlier.

Corrigendum to "A thermodynamic model of mixed organic–inorganic aerosols to predict activity coefficients" published in Atmos. Chem. Phys., 8, 4559–4593, 2008

No abstract available

Clique-width of graph classes defined by two forbidden induced subgraphs

If a graph has no induced subgraph isomorphic to any graph in a finite family {H1,…,Hp}, it is said to be (H1,…,Hp)-free. The class of H-free graphs has bounded clique-width if and only if H is an induced subgraph of the 4-vertex path P4. We study the (un)boundedness of the clique-width of graph classes defined by two forbidden induced subgraphs H1 and H2. Prior to our study it was not known whether the number of open cases was finite. We provide a positive answer to this question. To reduce the number of open cases we determine new graph classes of bounded clique-width and new graph classes of unbounded clique-width. For obtaining the latter results we first present a new, generic construction for graph classes of unbounded clique-width. Our results settle the boundedness or unboundedness of the clique-width of the class of (H1,H2)-free graphs for all pairs (H1,H2), both of which are connected, except two non-equivalent cases, and for all pairs (H1,H2), at least one of which is not connected, except 11 non-equivalent cases. We also consider classes characterized by forbidding a finite family of graphs {H1,…,Hp} as subgraphs, minors and topological minors, respectively, and completely determine which of these classes have bounded clique-width. Finally, we show algorithmic consequences of our results for the graph colouring problem restricted to (H1,H2)-free graphs