The illusion of choice: the European Union and the trade-labour linkage

Why has the European Union refrained from pushing for economic sanctions in the promotion of labor standards? In this paper we argue that a cost-effectiveness approach is not fully capable to grasp this decision. The effectiveness of the different instruments the EU has at its disposal are constrained by the internal and external context where decisions on labor-standards have been taken. The internal context suggests that what we observe is the emanation of the ‘lowest common denominator’ on which a consensus could be found, i.e. the normative underpinnings on which all member states can agree. Alternatively, the EU’s decisions are shaped by the perceptions that negotiating partners hold on the motivations behind such decisions. In this paper, we focus mostly on the discussions held at the multilateral level

Quantitative NMR monitoring of liquid ingress into repellent heterogeneous layered fabrics

Fabrics which are water repellent and repellent to other liquids are often constructed using multiple layers of material. Such a construction is preferable to a single layer of a liquid-repellent textile because, under the action of an applied pressure, ingress of a liquid through the first layer can be halted by the second or subsequent layers. In the quantitative investigation of this problem, current techniques provide limited information on the progress and distribution of the liquid as it ingresses into a fabric. Moreover, many techniques require that the material is delaminated prior to analysis, and cannot be conducted in real time to measure the progress of a liquid through the textile substrate. In this work we demonstrate that unilateral NMR, which allows signal to be collected from a volume of interest in a material residing above the instrument, can be a powerful tool to quantitatively monitor the ingress of a liquid through a layered sample exhibiting pronounced heterogeneities in repellency. A known volume of oil was placed on the top of a model textile sample composed of three 80 μm thick layers. Spatially resolved one dimensional vertical NMR profiles of the system were acquired as a function of the pressure vertically applied to the top of the sample. These profiles show that the absolute liquid volume present in each layer of textile can routinely be measured within 4 min with a spatial resolution of 15 μm. If each individual layer exhibits different repellency to the test liquid, the complexity of the dynamics of the ingress can be investigated in great detail. An elegant application of the unilateral instrument was obtained in which the sensitive volume matched the region of interest of the individual layers of the textile under investigation

Irony, Humour and Cynicism in Relation to Memory: a Contrastive Analysis between the Argentinian and the Mexican Literary Field

Making fun of traumatic experiences is a delicate issue. However, Freud has worked on the cathartic function of the joke (1905), and Andréa Lauterwein, in her edited volume Rire, Mémoire, Shoah (2009) insisted on the presence and relevance of laughter in the memory of the Shoah. In the context of Latin American literature, the presence of laughter and irony is still less prominent than in the context of the Holocaust, both in the cultural field and in the academic context. A logical reason is that the experiences of violence in the subcontinent are recent or even ongoing. In this paper I focus on the way in which irony, humour and cynicism manifest themselves in two different cases: the Argentinean memory of the last dictatorship (1976-1983) and the Mexican war on drugs as it was declared by Felipe Calderón (2006-2012)

The future of EU trade negotiations: what has been learned from CETA and TTIP?

What lessons have been drawn by the EU from the CETA and TTIP trade negotiations? Johan Adriaensen argues that the trade package contained in Jean-Claude Juncker's State of the Union speech presented a coherent vision for how EU trade negotiations could move forward, with avenues for discontent at future agreements to be channelled through representative institutions. However, implementing these ideas will be far from straightforward, and it is unclear whether the EU will be able to prevent the kind of opposition to future trade agreements that it experienced in both the CETA and TTIP cases

Stability of Erd\H{o}s-Ko-Rado Theorems in Circle Geometries

Circle geometries are incidence structures that capture the geometry of circles on spheres, cones and hyperboloids in 3-dimensional space. In a previous paper, the author characterised the largest intersecting families in finite ovoidal circle geometries, except for M\"obius planes of odd order. In this paper we show that also in these M\"obius planes, if the order is greater than 3, the largest intersecting families are the sets of circles through a fixed point. We show the same result in the only known family of finite non-ovoidal circle geometries. Using the same techniques, we show a stability result on large intersecting families in all ovoidal circle geometries. More specifically, we prove that an intersecting family $\mathcal F$ in one of the known finite circle geometries of order $q$, with $|\mathcal F| \geq \frac 1 {\sqrt2} q^2 + 2 \sqrt 2 q + 8$, must consist of circles through a common point, or through a common nucleus in case of a Laguerre plane of even order.Comment: 18 page

Dynamic spatially resolved unilateral NMR measurements of liquid ingress and vapour adsorption and desorption in heterogeneous layered fabrics

This thesis presents investigations of liquid ingress and vapour uptake in different porous media including textile fabrics and activated carbons, monitored by means of a unilateral NMR instrument. The aim of this work is to assess protective materials which prevent toxic liquid ingress and toxic vapour uptake from contaminating materials and personnel. A high performance fabric made of a combination of coated and not coated fibres can provide extremely high protection against toxic liquids. By incorporating an adsorbent layer between two highly repellent layers, an “intelligent” fabric that can prevent complete penetration through the composite system by toxic vapours can be constructed. This project was undertaken with a low-field unilateral profile NMR Mouse® (MObile Universal Surface Explorer) which can collect signal from a thin and flat sensitive volume (ca. 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm x 0.6 mm) up to 10 mm above it, and in a non-invasive manner. The instrument uses a strong inherent magnetic field gradient (11.38 T.m-1) in conjunction with pulsed radio frequency waves. The method makes use of Fourier Transformed NMR in order to spatially resolve 1D vertical profiles for each measurement over a field of view exceeding 500 µm and with a spatial resolution of 15 µm. One system investigated was a laminate heterogeneous layered fabric, made of a horizontal stack of three individual layers, each 70 μm thick, constructed from entangled fibres of 10 µm in diameter. The top and bottom layers are strongly repellent to the oil used as a model that represents a simulant for a toxic liquid, whilst the middle layer is non-repellent and allows oil to absorb inside

Controlling covert integration in EU politics

Without the prospect of new treaty revisions, integration in the European Union is often believed to come at a standstill. However, recent research suggests that deepening integration still continues, albeit in more covert ways. The risk associated with such covert integration is that it is not mandated by the member states and may thus have a major backlash on the legitimacy of the European project. This paper argues that such fears may be unfounded. Building on prior insights of the principal-agent model in the context of European integration, we argue that any shift in the nexus of decision-making towards the supranational level is accompanied with the installation of control mechanisms. This takes the form of informal governance and increased oversight. The plausibility of this argument is probed on the EU’s propensity to negotiate deep and comprehensive trade agreements. Insights are complemented from the Open-Skies agreement and the role of the European Central Bank during the Eurozone-crisis