Competition Between National Economies and Competition Between Businesses--A Response to Judge Pescatore

This Article challenges the validity of Judge Pescatore’s theory [that Member States of the ECC are prevented by Community law from intervening in the marketplace by legislation]

Determining the contribution of volcanic ash and boundary layer aerosol in backscatter lidar returns: a three‐component atmosphere approach

A solution of the lidar equation is discussed, that permits combining backscatter and depolarization measurements to quantitatively distinguish two different aerosol types with different depolarization properties. The method has been successfully applied to simultaneous observations of volcanic ash and boundary layer aerosol obtained in Exeter, United Kingdom, on 16 and 18 April 2010, permitting the contribution of the two aerosols to be quantified separately. First a subset of the atmospheric profiles is used where the two aerosol types belong to clearly distinguished layers, for the purpose of characterizing the ash in terms of lidar ratio and depolarization. These quantities are then used in a three‐component atmosphere solution scheme of the lidar equation applied to the full data set, in order to compute the optical properties of both aerosol types separately. On 16 April a thin ash layer, 100–400 m deep, is observed (average and maximum estimated ash optical depth: 0.11 and 0.2); it descends from ∼2800 to ∼1400 m altitude over a 6‐hour period. On 18 April a double ash layer, ∼400 m deep, is observed just above the morning boundary layer (average and maximum estimated ash optical depth: 0.19 and 0.27). In the afternoon the ash is entrained into the boundary layer, and the latter reaches a depth of ∼1800 m (average and maximum estimated ash optical depth: 0.1 and 0.15). An additional ash layer, with a very small optical depth, was observed on 18 April at an altitude of 3500–4000 m. By converting the lidar optical measurements using estimates of volcanic ash specific extinction, derived from other works, the observations seem to suggest approximate peak ash concentrations of ∼1500 and ∼1000 mg/m3,respectively, on the two observations dates

Topological Additive Numbering of Directed Acyclic Graphs

We propose to study a problem that arises naturally from both Topological Numbering of Directed Acyclic Graphs, and Additive Coloring (also known as Lucky Labeling). Let $D$ be a digraph and $f$ a labeling of its vertices with positive integers; denote by $S(v)$ the sum of labels over all neighbors of each vertex $v$. The labeling $f$ is called \emph{topological additive numbering} if $S(u) < S(v)$ for each arc $(u,v)$ of the digraph. The problem asks to find the minimum number $k$ for which $D$ has a topological additive numbering with labels belonging to $\{ 1, \ldots, k \}$, denoted by $\eta_t(D)$. We characterize when a digraph has topological additive numberings, give a lower bound for $\eta_t(D)$, and provide an integer programming formulation for our problem, characterizing when its coefficient matrix is totally unimodular. We also present some families for which $\eta_t(D)$ can be computed in polynomial time. Finally, we prove that this problem is \np-Hard even when its input is restricted to planar bipartite digraphs

Interconnect Challenges in Highly Integrated MEMS/ASIC Subsystems

Micromechanical devices like accelerometers or rotation sensors form an increasing segment beneath the devices supplying the consumer market. A hybrid integration approach to build smart sensor clusters for the precise detection of movements in all spatial dimensions requires a large toolbox of interconnect technologies, each with its own constraints regarding the total process integration. Specific challenges described in this paper are post-CMOS feedthroughs, front-to-front die contact arrays, vacuum-compliant lateral interconnect and fine-pitch solder balling to finally form a Chip-Scale System-in-Package (CSSiP).Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/EDA-Publishing

Soil solarization for weed control in carrot.

Soil solarization is a technique used for weed and plant disease control in regions with high levels of solar radiation. The effect of solarization (0, 3, 6, and 9 weeks) upon weed populations,carrot (Daucus carota L. cv. Brasília) yield and nematode infestation in carrot roots was studied in São Luís (2o35' S; 44o10' W), MA, Brazil, using transparent polyethylene films (100 and 150 mm of thickness). The maximum temperature at 5 cm of depth was about 10oC warmer in solarized soil than in control plots. In the study 20 weed types were recorded. Solarization reduced weed biomass and density in about 50% of weed species, including Cyperus spp., Chamaecrista nictans var. paraguariensis(Chod & Hassl.) Irwin & Barneby,Marsypianthes chamaedrys (Vahl) O. Kuntze, Mitracarpus sp.,Mollugo verticillata L., Sebastiania corniculata M. Arg., and Spigelia anthelmia L. Approximately 40% of species in the weed flora were not affected by soil mulching. Furthermore, seed germination of Commelina benghalensis L. was increased by soil solarization. Marketable yield of carrots was greater in solarized soil than in the unsolarized one. It was concluded that solarization for nine weeks increases carrot yield and is effective for controlling more than half of the weed species recorded. Mulching was not effective for controlling root-knot nematodes in carrot

On Langley plots in the presence of a systematic diurnal aerosol cycle centered at noon : A comment on recently proposed methodologies

[1] This short paper contains a discussion on the use of Langley plots for Sun photometer and Brewer spectroradiometer calibration in the presence of a diurnal aerosol cycle. It is shown that with Langley plots alone, it is impossible to correctly identify or remove atmospheric variations having a 24-hour periodicity with an extreme at local noon. Therefore experimentalists must either be able to exclude such a periodicity using additional measurements, or approach different calibration techniques such as the approximation by linear sections

An integer programming approach for the hyper-rectangular clustering problem with axis-parallel clusters and outliers

We present a mixed integer programming formulation for the problem of clustering a set of points in Rd with axis-parallel clusters, while allowing to discard a pre-specified number of points, thus declared to be outliers. We identify a family of valid inequalities separable in polynomial time, we prove that some inequalities from this family induce facets of the associated polytope, and we show that the dynamic addition of cuts coming from this family is effective in practice

Imagined futures of work in the making: the politics of platform workers’ contract classification in Denmark, France, Italy, and the Netherlands

A vibrant debate on the digitalisation of the economy has taken place over the last decade. Among the various manifestations of digitalisation, the rise of platform companies has divided scholars over whether a ‘platformised’ future of work would be desirable. The contract classification of platform workers, i.e. whether they should qualify as independent contractors or employees, has been among the top-debated issues. While some have stressed that coverage of freelancer platform workers should be strengthened regardless of their contract classification, others have highlighted how platform work has all the features of dependent work and should therefore qualify as such. Various national regulatory processes resulted in numerous statutory measures and collective agreements. Starting from these developments, and unsatisfied with existing institutionalist accounts of platform work regulation, this dissertation asks two research questions: i) How have national actors problematised and responded to the question of platform workers’ contract classification? ii) What were the drivers of such problematisation and responses? To address such queries, this thesis investigates the politics of platform workers’ contract classification by concentrating on i) the (evolution of) actors’ positions, ii) the building of actor coalitions, iii) the content of regulatory measures in cases they were adopted. It focuses on four actor types, namely governments, social partners, platforms, and independent platform worker organisations. It adopts a qualitative comparative case-study design to study the cases of Denmark, France, Italy and the Netherlands. Such countries represent different ‘varieties of liberalisation’: ‘dualisation’ countries (France – Italy), ‘embedded flexibilisation’ countries (Denmark – Netherlands). Methodologically, this work combines 68 semi-structured elite interviews with selected policy documents and quality newspaper articles. Data was analysed through a thematic analysis using MAXQDA software. Theoretically, an ‘Imaginative Institutional Work’ approach is developed. Such an approach adopts the concept of ‘institutional work’ to understand how ‘uncertain’ actors affect institutions. In this work, institutions are the rules linking contract classification and employment/social protection. To account for the drivers of such an institutional work, this work theorizes learning mechanisms of three kinds, i.e. ‘learning by puzzling’, ‘learning by experimenting’, and ‘learning by researching’. In turn, such mechanisms are conceived of as cognitively bounded by ‘imagined futures’, i.e. expectations on future states of the world. Thus, this dissertation unveils institutional work objectives and practices and associated learning mechanisms that have shaped the rules linking contract classification and employment/social protection. Further, it finds that learning mechanisms were anchored in three ‘imagined futures of work’, i.e. ‘Start-up Nation’, ‘Creative digitalisation’, and ‘Embedded digitalisation’. While the ‘start-up nation’ future was especially relevant in France and to some extent in the Netherlands, ‘creative digitalisation’, and ‘embedded digitalisation’ were prominent in the Italian, Danish and Dutch cases. This shows how processes of imaginative institutional work were often not in line with expectations deriving from the variety of liberalisation profile of selected countries. More broadly, this thesis contributes to the understanding of how the implications of technology are socially shaped by providing a fine-grained account of how future-oriented actors affect the rules governing the use of such a technology. In so doing, actors do not merely enact institutional dictates. Rather, they creatively navigate the uncharted waters of novel technologies, seeking to realize their preferred ‘imagined futures of work’