Foreign Satellite Viewing Cards and English Premier League Football: Implications of Recent Judgments for the Consumer

This article examines the impact of the outcome of a number of recently concluded judicial proceedings in the English courts and at the Court of Justice of the European Union on the use by consumers of foreign satellite television viewing cards. The article observes that while much focus has been placed on the effect of the outcome of the relevant cases on publicans and other commercial entities, not much attention has been placed on potentially serious implications that the cases have for private consumers. The article highlights difficulties with the interpretation adopted in respect of section 297(1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. In particular the article highlights the dichotomy that while use of a viewing card issued by a satellite television provider based or pursuing economic activities in the European Union is legal, using a similar card issued by an entity based outside the EU could potentially be a criminal act. The article also discusses the impact on consumers of the decision of the courts on the civil law elements relating to copyright infringement and provides a careful analysis of salient elements of the proceedings in both the Court of Justice and the English courts

Corporate social responsibility, multinational corporations and the law in Nigeria: controlling multinationals in host states

Copyright @ School of Oriental and African Studies.There is a general perception that home jurisdictions in vulnerable areas are powerless when it comes to the control of multinational corporations. While this assertion is largely correct, this article argues that there cannot be effective control of multinational corporations (“MNCs”) at international, regional or private level without the corresponding development of an effective minimum institutional framework at the domestic level. This article examines the Nigerian legal framework for the regulation of MNCs with a view to underlining the weaknesses in the domestic forum, and also examines the prospects for enhancing the capacity of a domestic framework for the effective control of MNCs. The article argues that, while corporate social responsibility practice by MNCs is becoming well entrenched, this development cannot replace the need for effective host state regulation. The article focuses on company law and human rights law and suggests viable possibilities within the local context that may enhance the control of MNCs

An Integrability Condition for Simple Lie Groups II

It is shown that a simple Lie group $G$ ($\neq {\rm SL}_2$) can be locally characterised by an integrability condition on an $\operatorname{Aut}(\mathfrak{g})$ structure on the tangent bundle, where $\operatorname{Aut}(\mathfrak{g})$ is the automorphism group of the Lie algebra of $G$. The integrability condition is the vanishing of a torsion tensor of type $(1,2)$. This is a slight improvement of an earlier result proved in [Min-Oo M., Ruh E.A., in Differential Geometry and Complex Analysis, Springer, Berlin, 1985, 205-211]

The half-lives of biological activity of some pesticides in water

In the absence of analytical methods, the half-lives of biological activity of pesticides can be estimated by bioassays. To determine the half-lives of biological acivity of pesticides to fish, static bioassays were conducted in the laboratory with ten different formulations of pesticides using Labeo rohita as a bio-indicator. The half-lives of biological activity for ten different pesticides in soft water at pH 7.5 and 27°C, ranged from 4.6 days to 11.8 days. The half-life of biological activity of Sumithion 50% EC was only 4.6 days. In contrast, Dimecron 50% EC degraded very slowly and its half-life of biological activity on L. rohita was about 11.8 days. Sumithion 50% EC, Padan 50% SP, EPN 45% EC, Diazinon 40% EC and Diazinon 10 G degraded in less than five to seven days indicating that these pesticides are desirable for rice-fish culture. Contamination by pesticides with long-term residual toxicity in waters may eventually cause high levels of fish mortality

Interacting two-state Markov chains on undirected networks

It is shown that irreducible two-state continuous-time Markov chains interacting on a network in a bilinear fashion have a unique stable steady state. The proof is elementary and uses the relative entropy function.Comment: 9 pages; minor typos correcte

Cohomogeneity One Special Lagrangian Submanifolds in the Deformed Conifold

In this paper we describe the cohomogeneity one special Lagrangian 3-folds in the cotangent bundle of the 3-sphere, also known in the physics literature as a deformed conifold. Our main result gives a global foliation of the deformed conifold by T^2-invariant special Lagrangian 3-folds, where the generic leaf is topologically T^2 X R. In the limit, these special Lagrangians asymptotically approach a special Lagrangian cone on a torus in the conifold. Using moment map techniques we also recover the family of SO(n)-invariant special Lagrangian n-folds in the cotangent bundle of the n-sphere obtained by H. Anciaux.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figure

Opinions on Riverboat Casinos and the Perceived Impacts on Community Quality by Quad Cities\u27 Residents

The purposes of the study were to determine the opinions of Quad Cities residents about legalized riverboat casinos in their communities and their perceptions on the importance of community quality attributes and impacts of legalized riverboat casinos on these attributes. Differences of opinions among respondents with different demographic characteristics also were examined. Stratified systematic random sampling method was used to draw samples from the Quad Cities telephone directory; 200 residents were selected from each city. Of the 800 questionnaires mailed, 231 were returned. Residents agreed that the presence of riverboat casinos was good for the community. The majority of community quality attributes were rated as either very important or important. Residents perceived all attributes to be either improved or having no change because of the riverboat casino operations

Switched Capacitor DC-DC Converter for Miniaturised Wearable Systems

Motivated by the demands of the integrated power system in the modern wearable electronics, this paper presents a new method of inductor-less switched-capacitor (SC) based DC-DC converter designed to produce two simultaneous boost and buck outputs by using a 4-phases logic switch mode regulation. While the existing SC converters missing their reconfigurability during needed spontaneous multi-outputs at the load ends, this work overcomes this limitation by being able to reconfigure higher gain mode at dual outputs. From an input voltage of 2.5 V, the proposed converter achieves step-up and step-down voltage conversions of 3.74 V and 1.233 V for Normal mode, and 4.872 V and 2.48 V for High mode, with the ripple variation of 20–60 mV. The proposed converter has been designed in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS technology and with conversion efficiencies up to 97–98% is in agreement with state-of-the-art SC converter designs. It produces the maximum load currents of 0.21 mA and 0.37 mA for Normal and High modes respectively. Due to the flexible gain accessibility and fast response time with only two clock cycles required for steady state outputs, this converter can be applicable for multi-function wearable devices, comprised of various integrated electronic modules