Does a Sovereign State Immunity Say More than We Think? ITLOS’s Decision in ARA LIBERTAD Case

Nation’s immunity from the jurisdiction of other nations’ Courts has been recognized and codified by many nations under the term of ‘Sovereign States Immunity’. But, States still have to emphasize on the scope of this immunity in order to prevent conflicts of States’ sovereignty from enjoyment of other States immunity on their territory. Thus, many nations have provided for a ‘restrictive immunity’ in their domestic law. Following the path of these nations, the 2004 UNCSI has also provided for a ‘restrictive immunity’. However, the 1982 UNCLOS has addressed the issue of Sovereign State Immunity too. Surprisingly or interestingly, the interpretation of UNCLOS Article 32 by ITLOS in Libertad Case demonstrates that unlike to many pretentions or understandings, UNCLOS provides Sovereign States for an ‘absolute immunity’ for warships. This paper will try to find out some justifications for ITLOS’s position before coming to the conclusion that rather than a creative role, ITLOS played its role of interpretation. Keywords: Sovereign State Immunity; Warship; Restrictive immunity; Absolute immunity; ITLOS

Computational models for stuctural analysis of retinal images

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonThe evaluation of retina structures has been of great interest because it could be used as a non-intrusive diagnosis in modern ophthalmology to detect many important eye diseases as well as cardiovascular disorders. A variety of retinal image analysis tools have been developed to assist ophthalmologists and eye diseases experts by reducing the time required in eye screening, optimising the costs as well as providing efficient disease treatment and management systems. A key component in these tools is the segmentation and quantification of retina structures. However, the imaging artefacts such as noise, intensity homogeneity and the overlapping tissue of retina structures can cause significant degradations to the performance of these automated image analysis tools. This thesis aims to provide robust and reliable automated retinal image analysis technique to allow for early detection of various retinal and other diseases. In particular, four innovative segmentation methods have been proposed, including two for retinal vessel network segmentation, two for optic disc segmentation and one for retina nerve fibre layers detection. First, three pre-processing operations are combined in the segmentation method to remove noise and enhance the appearance of the blood vessel in the image, and a Mixture of Gaussians is used to extract the blood vessel tree. Second, a graph cut segmentation approach is introduced, which incorporates the mechanism of vectors flux into the graph formulation to allow for the segmentation of very narrow blood vessels. Third, the optic disc segmentation is performed using two alternative methods: the Markov random field image reconstruction approach detects the optic disc by removing the blood vessels from the optic disc area, and the graph cut with compensation factor method achieves that using prior information of the blood vessels. Fourth, the boundaries of the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) are detected by adapting a graph cut segmentation technique that includes a kernel-induced space and a continuous multiplier based max-flow algorithm. The strong experimental results of our retinal blood vessel segmentation methods including Mixture of Gaussian, Graph Cut achieved an average accuracy of 94:33%, 94:27% respectively. Our optic disc segmentation methods including Markov Random Field and Compensation Factor also achieved an average sensitivity of 92:85% and 85:70% respectively. These results obtained on several public datasets and compared with existing methods have shown that our proposed methods are robust and efficient in the segmenting retinal structures such the blood vessels and the optic disc.Brunel University Londonhttp://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/10387/1/FulltextThesis.pd

Local sports public policies put to the test by the COVID 19 pandemic

COVID-19 has had a negative impact on different sectors of social life in Senegal, not sparing the public sports policies. This naturally prompted players in the field to adapt to the new context of the pandemic. It was, therefore, necessary to reflect on the readjustments of public sports policies in local communities using a mixed, quantitative and qualitative methodological approach. It was noted, on the one hand, a lethargy of public sports policies, following the advent of COVID-19, and, on the other hand, a redeployment of local sports policies towards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. These strategies for readjusting public sports policies at regional level have been based on adaptation strategies focused on available resources, on resources to be acquired and on capacities to be transformed

Les relations Union européenne-OTAN

L’analyse des relations entre l’Union européenne et l’Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique Nord nécessite une démarche chronologique afin de saisir la nature et l’ampleur des relations développées entre les deux institutions. Le contexte historique dans lequel elles ont été créé détermine largement l`objectif visé dans le cadre de cette coopération. Cette coopération s’est développée non seulement dans le temps mais aussi et surtout dans l`espace avec les différents élargissements intervenus depuis leur création respective. Ainsi donc, au lendemain de la deuxième guerre mondiale, l’Europe se trouve profondément divisée par une opposition idéologique et politique de la guerre froide

Information feedback to local communities of HDSS sites using infographics: the case of niakhar HDSS site

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science (MSc) in Epidemiology - Research Data Management June 2017Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) sites are institutions that primarily collect periodic demographic and health related data within a defined geographical area. The data are then analysed and the research findings are published in peer-reviewed journals or presented at conferences and workshops. However, In some sites there are processes for disseminating the research findings to the participating communities. The dissemination of research findings using infographics can enable health care service providers and community decision makers to make effective use and incorporate such findings into their strategies, policies and planning to improve heath outcome of the population. In this project, we have implemented a visualization web platform that can be used by researchers, community decision makers and public health policy-makers to better identify trends associated with the research findings. We implemented this platform on top of the core HDSS dataset. An Extract Transform and Load (ETL) process feeds processed data to our layer which then provides the requisite utility tools for visualization. We have provided a framework that allows other cohort studies that utilize the HDSS core dataset as baseline data to be plugged in for additional infographics displays. We tested and prototyped our tool using Niakhar HDSS Site core HDSS datasets. The project also provides some generic guidelines that allow this tool to be used in other HDSS sites.MT201