The division of public contracts into lots under Directive 2014/24:minimum harmonisation and impact on SMEs in public procurement?

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) are at the heart of the economies of all Member States. However, many deem their share of public contracts insufficient. This article provides a detailed discussion of the most important ‘innovation’ of the EU Public Sector Directive 2014/24/EU directed at increasing the participation of SMEs in public procurement: the regime on the division of larger contracts into smaller lots. The analysis considers economic theory and a selection of national laws transposing the Directive. It is argued that, due to a low level of harmonisation, no substantial change occurred compared to the previous Directive. It is thus unlikely that SME participation in public procurement will increase in many Member States through this regime on the division into lots

Working Effectively with Persons Who Are Hard of Hearing, Late-Deafened, or Deaf

This brochure on persons who are hard of hearing, late-deafened, or deaf and the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) is one of a series on human resources practices and workplace accommodations for persons with disabilities edited by Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, SPHR, Director, Program on Employment and Disability, School of Industrial and Labor Relations – Extension Division, Cornell University. Cornell University was funded in the early 1990’s by the U.S. Department of Education National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research as a National Materials Development Project on the employment provisions (Title I) of the ADA (Grant #H133D10155). These updates, and the development of new brochures, have been funded by Cornell’s Program on Employment and Disability, the Pacific Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center, and other supporters

A Generalisation of a Refutation-related Method in Paraconsistent Logics

This article describes a refutation method of proving maximality of three-valued paraconsistent logics. After outlining the philosophical background related to paraconsistent logics and the refutation approach to modern logic, we briefly describe how these two areas meet in the case of maximal paraconsistent logics. We focus on a method of proving maximality introduced in [34] and [37] that has the benefit of being simple and effective. We show how the method works on a number of examples, thus emphasising the fact that it provides a unifying approach to the search for maximal paraconsistent logics. Finally, we show how the method can be generalised to cover a wide range of paraconsistent logics. We also conduct a small experimental setting that confirms the theoretical results

Brexit and the Law School: Re-imagining EU Law

A report on the November 2017 CEPLER workshop which brought together scholars and practitioners in EU law to explore the future of EU law as a taught subject in the wake of Brexit

Molecular beam epitaxy growth of indium nitride and indium gallium nitride materials for photovoltaic applications

The objective of the proposed research is to establish the technology for material growth by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and fabrication of indium gallium nitride/gallium nitride (InxGa1-xN/GaN) heterojunction solar cells. InxGa1-xN solar cell have the potential to span 90% of the solar spectrum, however there has been no success with high indium (In) incorporation and only limited success with low In incorporation InxGa1-xN. Therefore, this present work focuses on 15 - 30% In incorporation leading to a bandgap value of 2.3 - 2.8 eV. This work will exploit the revision of the indium nitride (InN) bandgap value of 0.68 eV, which expands the range of the optical emission of nitride-based devices from ultraviolet to near infrared regions, by developing transparent InxGa1-xN solar cells outside the visible spectrum. Photovoltaic devices with a bandgap greater than 2.0 eV are attractive because over half the available power in the solar spectrum is above the photon energy of 2.0 eV. The ability of InxGa1-xN materials to optimally span the solar spectrum offers a tantalizing solution for high-efficiency photovoltaics. Using the metal modulated epitaxy (MME) technique in a new, ultra-clean refurbished MBE system, an innovative growth regime is established where In and Ga phase separation is diminished by increasing the growth rate for InxGa1-xN. The MME technique modulates the metal shutters with a fixed duty cycle while maintaining a constant nitrogen flux and proves effective for improving crystal quality and p-type doping. We demonstrate the ability to repeatedly grow high hole concentration Mg-doped GaN films using the MME technique. The highest hole concentration obtained is equal to 4.26 e19 cm-3, resistivity of 0.5 Ω-cm, and mobility of 0.28 cm2/V-s. We have achieved hole concentrations significantly higher than recorded in the literature, proving that our growth parameters and the MME technique is feasible, repeatable, and beneficial. The high hole concentration p-GaN is used as the emitter in our InxGa1-xN solar cell devices.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Doolittle, W. Alan; Committee Member: Ferguson, Ian; Committee Member: Graham, Samuel; Committee Member: Rohatgi, Ajeet; Committee Member: Shen, Shyh-Chian