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Extraterritoriality in East Asia: extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction in China, Japan, and South Korea.
No full textExtraterritorial criminal jurisdiction is a seemingly novel, arcane subject. Belgium's efforts in relatively recent years to try and punish persons accused of some of the most serious crimes may help create this impression. It is, however, only partially true. Jurisprudentially and academically the topic is arguably approaching its centenary, whereas the subject's practical importance and relevance have today never been greater. Together, these facts underlie Danielle Ireland-Piper's book on extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction in East Asia
Comparative analysis of trust taxation: a deep dive into Australian and Canadian regimes.
No full textThis paper examines trust taxation in Australia and Canada, focusing on the Australian Income Tax Assessment Act 1936's Section 97(1) and the Canadian Income Tax Act's Section 94.1. It explores the Australian Carter and the Canadian Fundy Settlement cases, highlighting their implications for tax avoidance strategies. The paper employs a comparative methodology to provide insights into the policy and legislative nuances shaping trust distribution taxation in these jurisdictions. The goal is to bridge traditional legal frameworks with modern fiscal challenges and inform future reforms in common-law countries
Transdisciplinary and arts-centred approaches to stewardship and sustainability of urban nature.
Get PDFThis paper explores case studies of how artists working with scientists and land managers affiliated with the Urban Field Station Collaborative Arts Program (UFS Arts) are fostering new relations of care with urban nature and thereby informing landscape decisions. The 'wicked' problems related to sustainability demand novel, holistic approaches to transformation that engage multiple ways of knowing. We present 4 examples from UFS Arts by triangulating data across programmatic documentation, evaluation, and ethnographic materials from 2016-present. Matthew López-Jensen's Tree Love and Nikki Lindt’s Underground Sound Project sensitise us to the capacities of trees and forests through image and sound. Mary Mattingly’s Swale is a floating food forest that enacts new forms of community stewardship. The exhibition Who Takes Care of New York? maps the stories and practices of civic environmental groups. Three themes in these works suggest opportunities for transformation throughout the knowledge production cycle: posing novel questions, engaging multiple methodologies, and communicating ideas with the public. Through these transdisciplinary works, we learn things we could not have learned via traditional disciplinary or interdisciplinary work and assert that stewardship offers a pathway towards sustainability transforming management practices and landscape decisions by reshaping our relationships to community and the land
Co-gasification study of blends of municipal solid waste with sugarcane bagasse and rice husk using the Coats-Redfern method.
No full textRapid development in the current economic situation has led to an increase in carbon emissions and to find sustainable solution to deal with this problem. Co-gasification of biomass with municipal solid waste is gaining significant importance to utilize the energy content of both raw materials judiciously and efficiently. This current work includes the study of physico-chemical characterization, thermal decomposition of MSW, sugarcane bagasse, rice husk, and their blends with 30:70, 50:50, and 70:30 ratios. Employing a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) under controlled conditions, the Coats-Redfern approach integrated sixteen reaction models to determine kinetic and thermodynamic parameters. This study intends to interpret the influence of mixtures on activation energy and synergy effect of mixing two different materials to check its market compatibility. The physicochemical properties of the feedstocks showed good agreement and suitability to be utilized for thermal conversion. Thermal degradation mainly appeared in the temperature range of 150–500 °C for all 99.4 % total weight loss for all parent samples as well as their blends. Linear regression coefficients (R2) were in the range of 0.90–0.99 for all sixteen calculated models. The lower activation energies were obtained from the 50:50 blend for sugarcane bagasse and MSW while 70:30 for rice husk with MSW respectively which proved a great affinity to thermal degrading under a gasification environment
Detection-driven exposure-correction network for nighttime drone-view object detection.
Get PDFDrone-view object detection (DroneDet) models typically suffer a significant performance drop when applied to nighttime scenes. Existing solutions attempt to employ an exposure-adjustment module to reveal objects hidden in dark regions before detection. However, most exposure-adjustment models are only optimized for human perception, where the exposure-adjusted images may not necessarily enhance recognition. To tackle this issue, we propose a novel Detection-driven Exposure-Correction network for nighttime DroneDet, called DEDet. The DEDet conducts adaptive, non-linear adjustment of pixel values in a spatially fine-grained manner to generate DroneDet-friendly images. Specifically, we develop a Fine-grained Parameter Predictor (FPP) to estimate pixel-wise parameter maps of the image filters. These filters, along with the estimated parameters, are used to adjust pixel values of the low-light image based on non-uniform illuminations in drone-captured images. In order to learn the non-linear transformation from the original nighttime images to their DroneDet-friendly counterparts, we propose a Progressive Filtering module that applies recursive filters to iteratively refine the exposed image. Furthermore, to evaluate the performance of the proposed DEDet, we have built a dataset NightDrone to address the scarcity of the datasets specifically tailored for this purpose. Extensive experiments conducted on four nighttime datasets show that DEDet achieves a superior accuracy compared with the state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, ablation studies and visualizations demonstrate the validity and interpretability of our approach. Our NightDrone dataset can be downloaded from https://github.com/yuexiemail/NightDrone-Dataset
The climate‐induced changes in the life history of the common cuttlefish in the English Channel.
No full textThe population of common cuttlefish Sepia officinalis in the English Channel recently developed two life cycles: annual (spawning 1 y.o.) and biennial (spawning 2 y.o.) instead of the biennial strategy known before, associated with increasing environmental temperatures in recent decades because of climate changes. Both groups differ in the size of mature animals (110–196 mm mantle length vs. 140–262 mm) and the number of chambers in the cuttlebone (60–97 in annual vs. 93–152 in biennial). The annual group represented some 15%–20% of the population, and the proportion of early spawners increased during the reproductive period, from 3%–5% in February/March to 50%–70% in June/July. Among spawning cuttlefish males predominated as ~2:1. Such environmentally driven changes in historical ecology as exemplified by the cuttlefish might be a critical link in the adaptation of the cephalopod life cycles to changing ecosystems
Give it a rest: a systematic review with Bayesian meta-analysis on the effect of inter-set rest interval duration on muscle hypertrophy.
Get PDFWe systematically searched the literature for studies with a randomized design that compared different inter-set rest interval durations for estimates of pre-/post-study changes in lean/muscle mass in healthy adults while controlling all other training variables. Bayesian meta-analyses on non-controlled effect sizes using hierarchical models of all 19 measurements (thigh: 10; arm: 6; whole body: 3) from 9 studies meeting inclusion criteria analyses showed substantial overlap of standardized mean differences across the different inter-set rest periods [binary: short: 0.48 (95%CrI: 0.19–0.81), longer: 0.56 (95%CrI: 0.24–0.86); Four categories: short: 0.47 (95%CrI: 0.19–0.80), intermediate: 0.65 (95%CrI: 0.18–1.1), long: 0.55 (95%CrI: 0.15–0.90), very long: 0.50 (95%CrI: 0.14–0.89)], with substantial heterogeneity in results. Univariate and multivariate pairwise meta-analyses of controlled binary (short vs. longer) effect sizes showed similar results for the arm and thigh with central estimates tending to favor longer rest periods [arm: 0.13 (95%CrI: −0.27 to 0.51); thigh: 0.17 (95%CrI: −0.13 to 0.43)]. In contrast, central estimates closer to zero but marginally favoring shorter rest periods were estimated for the whole body [whole body: −0.08 (95%CrI: −0.45 to 0.29)]. Subanalysis of set end-point data indicated that training to failure or stopping short of failure did not meaningfully influence the interaction between rest interval duration and muscle hypertrophy. In conclusion, results suggest a small hypertrophic benefit to employing inter-set rest interval durations >60 s, perhaps mediated by reductions in volume load. However, our analysis did not detect appreciable differences in hypertrophy when resting >90 s between sets, consistent with evidence that detrimental effects on volume load tend to plateau beyond this time-frame. Systematic Review Registration: OSF, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YWEVC
Examining the influence of customers, suppliers and regulators on environmental practices of SMEs: evidence from the United Arab Emirates.
Get PDFThis study explores which stakeholders have more substantial influence than others and which combinations of stakeholders will have the greatest impact on small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises' environmental practices. A quantitative survey of 150 manager‐owners of SMEs found that while customers and suppliers significantly influence SMEs' sustainability behaviors, the demands and expectations set by regulatory bodies have a more substantial impact on how SMEs shape their environmental practices. Further, the presence of regulatory pressures does more than directly influence SMEs. Pressure from regulatory bodies also amplifies the effect of other forces on SMEs' environmental practices. In other words, when regulatory pressures exist, the impact of customer and supplier pressures on SMEs' sustainability behaviors becomes even more substantial. This synergistic effect underscores the pivotal role of regulatory pressures in shaping and enhancing SMEs' commitment to environmental sustainability
Bridging the divides: a case study of collective action across Scottish university business schools to support small business.
Get PDFSupport for small business is widely acknowledged as a complex issue of interrelated economic resilience and sustainability. Despite an established literature on the mechanisms through which university business schools support business, few studies have focused on relations between business schools in matters of such national importance. Our qualitative case study contributes to this limited stock of empirical knowledge by following a consortium of 16 university business schools and associated public bodies in Scotland, as they develop a national business support programme. A Networks of Practice (NofP) lens allows us to identify three processual components crucial in developing relations between entrepreneurial universities: acknowledging drivers, establishing relationships, and building a vision-based reference. These three components reveal tensions and challenges as a network of common interest forms. Fresh theoretical insights are offered on the nature of the entrepreneurial university and role of vision to bridge a fragmented higher education environment
Supernatural cities: placing urban identities, memory and cultural crises.
Get PDFThis special issue builds upon a body of scholarship already developed from the Supernatural Cities project led by Karl Bell at the University of Portsmouth and his edited collection of essays, Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality, published in 2019. The articles and creative pieces in this issue present and examine a series of case studies of material and fictional cities, exploring the symbiotic relationship between the supernatural and the city. The aim of the issue is threefold: first, to identify how the supernatural becomes entangled in a city’s identity, its storytelling, and its materiality; second, to showcase examples of how a city is consumed, toured and/or performed as a supernatural space; third, to explore how and why supernatural cities are constructed in response to social and cultural trauma