Legal Issue Comparison of Piracy and Armed Robbery with Emphasis on the South China Sea-Malacca Strait and the Persian Gulf -Strait of Hormuz

International trading flows have always been the subject of geopolitical risks and conflicts. Different stages of the supply chain, trade always face inherent challenges caused by geopolitical realities along given routes. In this study, the data concerning piracy and armed robberies of ships reported to the Global Integrated Shipping Information System were considered. The statistics include the information on the incidents during the period between 1998 and 2018 on different types of ships, in two most strategic areas, namely the South China Sea (SCS) and the Strait of Malacca (area 1) and the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf (area 2). According to the GISIS reports, most of the incidents occurred in the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca are respectively 1684 and 610. Because of the importance of both the Strait of Hormuz and the Malacca Strait as the most vital waterway in the world, it is necessary to have a clear picture of the security situation in the two aforementioned Strait. This research allowed us: 1) to make a distinction between the security in two aforementioned areas; 2) to represent the source of the information for researchers

A New Maritime Security Architecture for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road: The South China Sea and the Persian Gulf

China and Iran have the ancient gate of Maritime Silk Road, as well as two new superhighways within this road, namely Strait of Hormuz and Malacca Strait. Unlike the Strait of Hormuz, maritime security in the Malacca Strait needs to be redesigned and re-established by littoral states for the safe corridor. The aim of this study is to find out the new concept and classification of maritime security, namely direct and indirect insecurity elements. This study illustrates that the most remarkable direct and indirect elements are respectively piracy, armed robbery, and external state presence. It is acknowledged that the continuous and dangerous presence of an external state is the indirect insecurity element. In the light of the USA's violation and destabilizing activities in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, its presence and passage are considered as noninnocent activities, as these are prejudicial to the good order, peace and security of states located along the coast. Therefore, a new doctrine called the "Doctrine of No Sheriff" is offered in this article to possibly prevent the uprising of hegemonies in every region in the future.

Stoichiometry relaxation in oxides with mobile oxygen vacancies, protons and holes: Temperature dependence and trapping effects

Materials with three mobile carriers (oxygen vacancies, protons, holes) are of interest as cathode materials for proton-conducting ceramic fuel cells. The incorporation of protons into such mixed-conducting oxides can occur by acid-base hydration of oxygen vacancies as well as by hydrogen uptake.[1,2] Depending on conditions, one-fold or two-fold conductivity relaxation after pH2O steps is observed.[2-6] Exact analytical relations for these processes were derived in ref. [2]. For a complete description four diffusion coefficients are required, comprising direct as well as indirect terms. The complex non-monotonic kinetic behavior is related to the fact that in a three carrier system the electroneutrality condition does not lead to a simple coupling between the carrier fluxes. Numerical simulations for a wide range of materials and conditions are presented.[2,6] They allow us to identify the conditions for the transition from one-fold to two-fold relaxation, and give a natural explanation for the moving boundary phenomenon observed in ref. [3]. The simulations also show that the assignment of the temperature dependence of the effective diffusivities for acceptor-doped (Ba,Sr)(Zr,Ce)O3-d perovskites (large set of experimental data compiled in [7]) is far from trivial. When the transference number of oxygen vacancies exceeds that of the protons, the faster of the two effective diffusivities approaches the oxygen chemical diffusion coefficient, not the hydrogen chemical diffusivity as one might expect intuitively. Furthermore, the effect of trapping reactions on the relaxation kinetics is investigated. [1] D. Poetzsch, R. Merkle, J. Maier, Faraday Discussions 182 (2015) 129 [2] D. Poetzsch, R. Merkle, J. Maier, Adv. Funct. Mater. 25 (2015) 1542 [3] J. H. Yu, J. S. Lee, J. Maier, Angew. Chem. Int.Ed. 46 (2007) 8992; Solid State Ionics 181 (2010) 154 [4] H. I. Yoo, J. Y. Yoon, J. S. Ha, C. E. Lee, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 10 (2008) 974 [5] E. Kim, H. I. Yoo, Solid State Ionics 252 (2013) 132 [6] R. Merkle, R. Zohourian, J. Maier, Solid State Ionics (2016) doi:10.1016/j.ssi.2015.12.011 [7] G. R. Kim, H. H. Seo, J. M. Jo, E. C. Shin, J. H. Yu, J. S. Lee, Solid State Ionics 272 (2015) 6

Mixed-conducting cathode materials for protonic ceramic fuel cells: Proton uptake and defect interactions

A cathode in a proton-conducting ceramic fuel cell (PCFC) should meet several criteria including high catalytic activity, electronic conductivity, sufficient proton conductivity, phase stability, etc. to achieve good performance. The proton conductivity allows the oxygen reduction reaction to extend from the triple phase boundary to the whole surface of the cathode (so-called bulk path ). Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Investigation the Trend of Changes in Precipitation Extreme Indices in Khuzestan Province

In this study, in order to investigate the trend of precipitation changes in Khuzestan Province, the data used were daily, monthly and annual data of precipitation of selected synoptic stations for a statistical period of 30 years (1987-2016). To study the trend of precipitation changes, precipitation-related indices defined by the ETCCDMI expert group were estimated using RClimDex software. Then, the ascending and descending trend of changes in precipitation limit values ​​was investigated using Mann-Kendall non-parametric test method. The age slope estimator method was also used to determine the rate of precipitation change. The results showed that all precipitation-related indicators (except for the number of days with more than 25 mm and very wet days) had significant changes at the level of 5%. In terms of stations, Dezful station with 26.41% had the highest rainfall and Shushtar station with 3.64% had the lowest rainfall. Behbahan station also had a 14.87% increase in rainfall

The minimum monitoring signal-to-noise ratio for off-axis signals and its implications for directional hearing aids

The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) benefit of hearing aid directional microphones is dependent on the angle of the listener relative to the target, something that can change drastically and dynamically in a typical group conversation. When a new target signal is significantly off-axis, directional microphones lead to slower target orientation, more complex movements, and more reversals. This raises the question of whether there is an optimal design for directional microphones. In principle an ideal microphone would provide the user with sufficient directionality to help with speech understanding, but not attenuate off-axis signals so strongly that orienting to new signals was difficult or impossible. We investigated the latter part of this question. In order to measure the minimal monitoring SNR for reliable orientation to off-axis signals, we measured head-orienting behaviour towards targets of varying SNRs and locations for listeners with mild to moderate bilateral symmetrical hearing loss. Listeners were required to turn and face a female talker in background noise and movements were tracked using a head-mounted crown and infrared system that recorded yaw in a ring of loudspeakers. The target appeared randomly at ± 45, 90 or 135° from the start point. The results showed that as the target SNR decreased from 0 dB to −18 dB, first movement duration and initial misorientation count increased, then fixation error, and finally reversals increased. Increasing the target angle increased movement duration at all SNRs, decreased reversals (above −12 dB target SNR), and had little to no effect on initial misorientations. These results suggest that listeners experience some difficulty orienting towards sources as the target SNR drops below −6 dB, and that if one intends to make a directional microphone that is usable in a moving conversation, then off-axis attenuation should be no more than 12 dB

A qualitative analysis of patients experience and reflections of communication and linguistic problems in patient and careprovider encounters

Kommunikation mellan vårdpersonal och patient är centralt vid möten i vården och för vårdandet. Språket är ett viktigt verktyg för att kommunicera. Enligt Socialstyrelsen medför brister i kommunikationen en risk för patientsäkerheten. Hur sker då kommunikation i vården när det finns språkförbistringar? Syftet med detta arbete är att beskriva patienters erfarenheter och upplevelser av kommunikation i möten med vårdpersonal när det föreligger språkförbistringar. Metoden är en litteraturöversikt och innehållsanalys av tolv vetenskapliga kvalitativa artiklar. I resultatet framkommer att patienter upplever att kommunikationen med vårdpersonal ofta brister, att de blir förbisedda och inte förstår vad som sker i vårdmötet. Patienter blir ofta beroende av anhöriga för att kunna kommunicera med vården då tolk inte anlitas. Detta leder till känsla av frustration, kontrollförlust samt bristande tillit till vården. Vi kommer till slutsatsen att språkförbistringar behöver tas på större allvar, tolk behöver anlitas i större utsträckning samt att både vårdpersonal och tolk behöver mer utbildning för att kommunikationen ska förbättras och patientsäkerheten säkerställas

Supply Chain Decision Making Under Demand Uncertainty and the Use of Control Systems: A Correlational Study

Decision making under demand uncertainty, a top priority task, has remained as the most challenging problem to many manufacturing leaders due to lack of sufficient information to establish supply chain management (SCM) standard policies. The problem was that business performance could be impeded because optimization models of existing SCM systems lacked appropriate control mechanisms to optimize inventory levels and reduce the bullwhip effect. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to investigate the extent to which SCM control mechanisms predict optimized inventory levels (OPT) and reduced bullwhip effect (BWE) based on the perceptions of supply chain (SC) senior-level managers of medium-size and large manufacturing firms in the United States. Model predictive control-based inventory optimization (MPC), internal model control-based inventory optimization (IMC), postponement (POS), and collaboration (COL) were used as predictor variables, and SCM performance was the criterion variables as measured by OPT and BWE. A survey was used to collect data from SC senior-level managers. Regression analysis resulted in two significant regression models for OPT and BWE that explained 61% and 49.7 % of the variance respectively for OPT (p < .05) and BWE (p < .05). As a result, both null hypotheses 1 and 2 were rejected, and support existed for the alternative hypotheses 1 and 2. Practical recommendations included use of MPC to optimize inventory levels, use of POS and COL strategies to reduce the bullwhip effect and optimize inventory levels, and to combine IMC, MPC, POS, and COL to synergistically reduce the bullwhip effect and optimize inventory levels. Recommendations for future research included a replicate quantitative correlation study with expansion to international manufacturing firms, a quantitative structural equation modeling study to examine relative strength and causal relationships among variables, a quantitative meta-analysis study to critically examine the findings of the study across other studies, a quantitative experimental study to further scrutinize the significant relationships between OPT and BWE, and a quantitative experimental study of archival data to reduce self-selection and self-reporting sampling biases

A New Maritime Security Architecture for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road: The South China Sea and the Persian Gulf

China and Iran have the ancient gate of Maritime Silk Road, as well as two new superhighways within this road, namely Strait of Hormuz and Malacca Strait. Unlike the Strait of Hormuz, maritime security in the Malacca Strait needs to be redesigned and re-established by littoral states for the safe corridor. The aim of this study is to find out the new concept and classification of maritime security, namely direct and indirect insecurity elements. This study illustrates that the most remarkable direct and indirect elements are respectively piracy, armed robbery, and external state presence. It is acknowledged that the continuous and dangerous presence of an external state is the indirect insecurity element. In the light of the USA's violation and destabilizing activities in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea, its presence and passage are considered as noninnocent activities, as these are prejudicial to the good order, peace and security of states located along the coast. Therefore, a new doctrine called the "Doctrine of No Sheriff" is offered in this article to possibly prevent the uprising of hegemonies in every region in the future.