Shedding New Light on Multinational Corporations and Human Rights: Promises and Limits of “Blockchainizing” the Global Supply Chain

Over the last few decades, advances in transportation and production technology, in conjunction with economic globalization and the emergence of multinational corporations, have consolidated fragmented production processes into long and complex supply chains across jurisdictions. While there are benefits to such global supply chains (“GSCs”), the prevalence of human rights violations attributable to information asymmetry, as well as rule of law gaps between different jurisdictions, has been a constant challenge. Modern slavery, child abuse, harsh working conditions, low wages, and other problems have reoccurred in the factories of upstream suppliers in the global South and have been systemically ignored by buyers in the global North. As such, how to alleviate human rights abuses along GSCs is indeed a daunting problem. Today, various public, private, and hybrid approaches have been designed and implemented at different levels by different actors to address GSC human rights challenges, such as the United Nations’ Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“UNGPs”), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (“OECD”) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act, the United States’ Dodd-Frank Act, the Responsible Business Alliance Codes of Conduct, and the Social Accountability 8000 International Standard. However, these public, private, and hybrid governance mechanisms have grown more ineffective and inefficient due to—again—information asymmetry, and rule of law gaps. A stronger approach that is premised upon transparency and traceability in the GSC is urgently needed. To fill these gaps, the recent emergence of distributed ledger technologies (commonly referred to as blockchain) may offer a promising disintermediation step toward a “technological fix” to GSCs’ human rights challenges. To assess such a possibility from both a theoretical and a practical perspective, we first examine in Section II the characteristics, benefits, and cross-border spillover effects of GSCs, as well as human rights violations by multinational corporations and their power and responsibilities. Section III illuminates the ineffectiveness of existing governance models and regulatory measures, at both the international and national levels, and identifies information asymmetry and rule of law gaps as fundamental flaws. This finding leads us to examine the extent to which blockchain can serve as a governance tool along GSCs. Section IV discusses how the key features of blockchain—transparency, traceability, data consistency and security, authenticity, and completeness—can alleviate problems of information asymmetry, rule of law gaps, and corporate compliance along GSCs, further helping to ameliorate transnational human rights issues. Nevertheless, while “blockchainizing” GSCs seems to have the potential to overcome challenges of public and private governance, some normative and technical limits and risks remain to be addressed, such as adequate infrastructural support, scalability, cybersecurity, and the “garbage in, garbage out” conundrum

Influence of Storm Surge on the Inundated Potential in the Coastland

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

AN ANALYSIS OF SPECIFIC FlTNESS TESTING IN FEMALE JUNIOR TENNIS PLAYERS

The purpose of the present study was to determine the anthropometry, physical fitness parameters and compare with USTA normative data. Seven-teen female teenage tennis players who have the Taiwan national level were included in the study. The analysis focused on the examination of muscular strength, endurance, power flexibility, speed and agility. Results showed that (a) there were excellent performances in grip strength of the nondominant hand (7.8%) and hexagon test (8.1 %) scored well relative to USTA normative data. (b) there were needs improvement performance in sit and reach (0.5%) and spider test (6.7%) relative to USTA. In conclusion, this study indicated the identification of weaknesses in flexibility, speed and agility parameters and allows designing efficient physical training programs

Beam combining using Orientational Stimulated Scattering in Liquid Crystals

Possibility of beam combining and clean-up using Orientational Stimulated Scattering in a Nematic Liquid Crystal is considered. We numerically study the dynamics of the process and find that back-conversion process tends to limit the effective interaction strength. Instability of the steady state of cross-phase modulation is demonstrated, when both waves have the same frequency. We show that high conversion efficiency can be achieved, and that the shape and wave-front of the amplified output signal are robust with respect to amplitude and phase distortions of the input pump.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, will be published in JOSA

Intra-articular injections of sodium hyaluronate (Hyalgan®) in osteoarthritis of the knee. a randomized, controlled, double-blind, multicenter trial in the asian population

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The efficacy and tolerability of 500-730 kDa sodium hyaluronate (Hyalgan^®) for treatment of osteoarthritis (OA) pain has been established in clinical trials, but few data are available in the Asian population. We conducted a randomized, double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of this preparation in a Taiwanese population.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Two hundred patients with mild to moderate OA of the knee were randomized to receive five weekly intra-articular injections of sodium hyaluronate or placebo. The primary efficacy outcome was the change from baseline to Week 25 in patients' evaluation of pain using a 100-mm visual analog scale (VAS) during the 50-foot walking test. Additional outcomes included Western Ontario and McMaster Universities (WOMAC) scores, time on the 50-foot walking test, patient's and investigator's subjective assessment of effectiveness, acetaminophen consumption, and the amounts of synovial fluid.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The Hyalgan^®treatment group showed a significantly greater improvement from baseline to Week 25 in VAS pain on the 50-foot walking test than the placebo group (p = 0.0020). The Hyalgan^®group revealed significant improvements from baseline to week 25 in WOMAC pain and function score than the placebo group (p = 0.005 and 0.0038, respectively) Other outcomes, such as time on the 50-foot walking test and subjective assessment of effectiveness, did not show any significant difference between groups. Both groups were safe and well tolerated.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present study suggests that five weekly intra-articular injections of sodium hyaluronate are well tolerated, can provide sustained relief of pain, and can improve function in Asian patients with osteoarthritis of the knee.</p> <p>Level of Evidence</p> <p>Therapeutic study, Level I-1a (randomized controlled trial with a significant difference).</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01319461">NCT01319461</a></p

Angular Velocity Analysis of an Epicyclic Gear Train Using Fundamental Circuits and a Block Diagram

The prediction of angular velocity is a prerequisite to investigate the power flow and mechanical efficiency of an epicyclic gear train. This paper presents a useful tool, which combines the fundamental circuit and a block diagram, to analyze the angular velocity of an epicyclic gear train. It is a visualized and straightforward method without manipulating tedious kinematic equations, which makes the angular velocity analysis of epicyclic gear trains more simplified. A compound epicyclic gear train used in a synchronous differential device is taken as an example to demonstrate the analysis process of the proposed approach. The velocity ratio of the epicyclic gear train is also derived

Genome-wide analysis of the cis-regulatory modules of divergent gene pairs in yeast

AbstractIn budding yeast, approximately a quarter of adjacent genes are divergently transcribed (divergent gene pairs). Whether genes in a divergent pair share the same regulatory system is still unknown. By examining transcription factor (TF) knockout experiments, we found that most TF knockout only altered the expression of one gene in a divergent pair. This prompted us to conduct a comprehensive analysis in silico to estimate how many divergent pairs are regulated by common sets of TFs (cis-regulatory modules, CRMs) using TF binding sites and expression data. Analyses of ten expression datasets show that only a limited number of divergent gene pairs share CRMs in any single dataset. However, around half of divergent pairs do share a regulatory system in at least one dataset. Our analysis suggests that genes in a divergent pair tend to be co-regulated in at least one condition; however, in most conditions, they may not be co-regulated

Wide-Angle and Broadband Polarization Converter

Apparatus and methods for a polarization converter comprising a polarization beam splitter for receiving an input light beam and allows a transverse magnetic to pass through the polarization beam splitter and reflects a transverse electric wave and a diffraction grating having a reflectivity and polarization convertible grating for receiving the transverse electric wave reflects back a reflected transverse electric wave having a polarization rotation. The broadband wide-angle polarization beam splitter can be alternative optical elements such as a prism or an optical device having multi-layered films. The diffraction grating can be a diffraction grating having alternating parallel protrusions and recesses, metallic diffraction grating, metal-coated diffraction grating, metal-coated multi-layered diffraction grating, non-metallic reflective material surface grating, volume grating, a multi-layer grating, diffractive grating having sub-wavelength grating periods or diffractive grating h