Financing Options for Devolved Government in the UK

This study provides a comprehensive overview of the financing options for devolved government in the UK. Starting with a discussion of the present situation, the consequences and the possible future of the Barnett formula, the key economic and political principles for devolution finance are examined and then applied to possible financing options. The conclusion draws together the main points of the analysis and comments on the alternatives for funding the devolved administrations. While currently there appears to be considerable cross-party support for the Barnett system, it continues to be a contentious arrangement, with some observers even talking of a “fiscal crisis” (McLean (2005)). The paper therefore reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the present system, together with suggestions for possible changes.

Stability of axial flow between concentric and eccentric circular cylinders disturbed asymmetrically and nonlinearly

Imperial Users onl

Forming Aggregations using Virtual Sharding: Lessons Learned from Simple Scalable Storage (S3)

Data aggregation is the ability to combine separate datasets to form a single new logical dataset provides users with a powerful abstraction. The advantage of an aggregate dataset is that the users are freed from having to understand, and incorporate into their workflow, knowledge about the (ad hoc) organization of the constituent datasets. However, aggregating large numbers of files can be computationally complex with data server systems performing many repetitive operations. As part of the authors work on subsetting data stored on Amazon Web Service (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), we developed technology to read portions of otherwise monolithic data files. This enables the formation of virtual shards for user in subsetting data stored in HDF5 (hierarchical data format, version 5) files. This same tool can be used to form aggregations that combine data stored in many HDF5 files when those files are stored on S3. The nature of the virtual sharding and the algorithm that exploits it for subsetting is such that it can also be used for aggregation with the need for many of the repetitive operations required by the per file aggregation techniques. We will present timing information that demonstrates the flexibility of this approach. However, the lessons learned is that while this is a useful result in and of itself, these very same techniques can be applied in other contexts where data are stored in services and on media other than S3. For example, this same technique can be applied to data stored on spinning disk. Pushing the envelope for S3 forced a reexamination of our data access techniques which lead to unexpected positive benefits

Means and methods of combat - differing parameters and requirements of military necessity in international humanitarian law and international criminal law

The concept of military necessity is of fundamental importance for International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Criminal Law (ICL) and International Law, generally. States and individuals have used military necessity as a justification when extraordinary situations “require the adoption of measures departing from the normally applicable law in order to protect basic values and fundamental interests.”1 Measures adopted on the grounds of necessity have been accepted at international law by international courts and tribunals, state practice, and international legal doctrine. This paper will analyse and explain the origins of military necessity under IHL, and how military necessity’s use has developed and influenced the behaviour of actors at international law, primarily during times of armed conflict. Furthermore, this paper will seek to establish the role that military necessity plays at ICL. This will be done by analysing various case law examples of international tribunals where the tribunals have been asked to determine whether military necessity constituted a legitimate justification for a particular course of action taken by an individual, primarily in positions of command. This paper will highlight the circumstances where a legitimate finding of military necessity existed, and will contrast this to occasion where actions did not meet the required threshold. It will also seek to determine how military necessity is interpreted and understood by various international organisations such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United Nations (UN), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The paper will begin with by providing an overview of the origins of military necessity under IHL and how it has evolved in its interpretation and usage by authors writing on military necessity, and states seeking to utilise it

Global administrative law: The Basel Committee revisited

Global Administrative Law is the branch of Global Governance that seeks to provide guidance and structures for decision‐making bodies and international organisations that rely on co‐operation between a range of international actors to achieve various objectives or implement policy agendas. In 2006, Michael S. Barr and Geoffrey P. Miller critically analysed the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Their article Global Administrative Law: The View from Basel sought to dispel the critiques that international‐law making processes lacked democratic accountability and oversight by offering the Basel Committee’s own processes as a model for international law‐making with greater accountability and legitimacy. This article examines the Basel Committee since Barr and Miller’s 2006 article, in light of the global financial crisis and the development of ‘Basel III’. It will seek to determine whether the processes described by Barr and Miller proved to be effective, and if Global Administrative Legal theory is appropriately applied to the Basel Committee. Finally, the article will ask whether the Basel Committee still serves as a model for international law‐making with greater accountability and legitimacy, or if more work is needed to fulfill this model

An Encomium for Community College Students in Five Scenes

Books start arriving at my apartment by the boxful. As part of the committee judging the CCCC Outstanding Book Contest, I am inundated with books, and I am excited to get down to reading them. I feel like a graduate student all over again, reading things I would never read if I weren’t “made” to (New Materialisms, anyone?). Most of the books excite me and make me think about how I can move forward as a teacher of first year writing. Some of them hurt my brain. Some of them annoy me

Sedimentology, diagenesis and geochemistry of the Great Limestone, Carboniferous, northern England.

Yoredale type cyclothems of the Mid-Carboniferous of north east England were deposited as a result of glacio-eustatic fluctuations arising from waxing and waning of the Gondwana ice sheets present in the southern hemisphere. Rhythmic alternations of areas of maximum cyclothem thickness have been recognised in the Scar to Little Cyclothems which are attributed to localised differential subsidence, flexuring and uplift of the Alston Block of the northern Pennines. A detailed study of one cyclothem, the Great Limestone Cyclothem of the Alston Block, reveals that within the transgressive carbonates, the beds form two and a half thinning-upward to thickening-upward bed-sets with the individual beds and the bed-sets being correlatable across the region. Inevitable diagenetic alteration of the Great limestone has occurred and resulted in resetting of some initial geochemical values. However, it is proposed that in the case of δ18O and several trace elements their trends through the limestone do in fact track an original pattern, namely that of the bed-thickness pattern. It is suggested here that the cyclothems are attributable to the short eccentricity Milankovitch rhythm, the bed-sets, within the Great Limestone, to the range of either the obliquity and precession rhythms, with the beds in the Great Limestone being deposited in periods of the sub-Milankovitch millennial time-scales. The biostromes within the Great Limestone, the Chaetetes band, Brunton band and the Frosterly band are typical of shallow-marine environments as are all grains seen in thin-section analysis. All limestone beds are a similar bioclastic wackestone to packstone with no observable changes in the proportions of the various elements throughout the thickness of the Great Limestone

Trigger Questions: Their Role In Problem Based Learning; Do They Add To The Quality Of Interactive Business Case Study Solutions?

This paper examines, not the use or appropriateness of business case studies in the learning process but rather, the efficacy of the questions that trigger the learning process within the case study