Are diplomatic assurances adequate guarantees of safety against torture and ill-treatment? The pragmatic approach of the strasbourg court

The use of diplomatic assurances against torture and other ill-treatment has increased in recent years in response to the continued growth of international terrorism. However, this practice is controversial because it engages the Contracting States’ obligation not to extradite or expel a person where there are substantial grounds for believing that he or she would face a real risk of being subjected to treatment contrary to Article 3 ECHR in the receiving State. The Strasbourg Court’s pragmatic approach suggests that in certain circumstances, following an analysis of the quality of the assurances and their practical effect, diplomatic assurances can be adequate guarantees of safety. As a result, it will be argued that the Strasbourg Court cannot be accused of circumventing the absolute prohibition found in Article 3 ECHR by accepting the diplomatic assurances policy of the Contracting States. The author will conclude by arguing that the Strasbourg Court’s approach is effective as it reinforces the absoluteness of Article 3 ECHR while at the same time allowing States to protect their national security from terrorism

Optimal location and size of distributed generation to reduce power losses based on differential evolution technique

An electric power system generate electricity to meet demands. Distributed Generation (DG) allows electricity to be generated in a small capacity where the customer is located. In this paper, multi-objective functions based on the indices of system performance are formulated and used to determine the best location. The Differential Evolution technique (DE) has been employed to calculate optimal sizing for each location. Unity power factor DG model have been studied in this work and the problems solved with one DG unit. IEEE 14 bus has been used as a test system

Momentum returns, market states, and market dynamics: Are Islamic stocks different?

Recent studies suggest that momentum returns are conditioned by market states and market dynamics. We ask if Islamic stocks behave differently from Non-Islamic stocks. Using data from the Malaysian stock market from 1991 to 2015, we find no significant difference in Islamic versus Non-Islamic stocks either in their level of momentum returns or in the behaviour of momentum returns in response to market states and market dynamics, irrespective of whether we use time-series or cross-sectional momentum returns. Interestingly, we find that the behaviour of momentum returns in Malaysia is broadly consistent with that in the US market in that momentum returns are higher following UP markets compared with momentum returns following DOWN markets. We also find that momentum returns are larger when the market continues in same state than when it transitions to a different state, consistent with results in the US market and that the absence of momentum returns following DOWN market states is due to market dynamics. Our results suggest that investors in Islamic stocks can execute momentum strategies without loss of efficacy compared with Non-Islamic stocks

Radiation-Induced Polymerization of Polymethacrylic Gel for Dosimetry

The aim of the present work is to investigate the effect of radiation on methacrylic acid (MAA) crosslinked with N, N’-methylene-bisacrylamide (BIS) for the purpose of developing a polymer gel dosimeter, namely, polymethacrylic gel (PMAAG). PMAAG of different concentrations of MAA and BIS were irradiated with the absorbed doses ranging from 0 Gy to 19 Gy. Using Raman spectrophotometer, five peak intensities were identified and represents the assigned bonding for C=C (2238 cm-1) of MAA, C=C (1634 cm-1) of BIS, C-C (2110 cm-1) of PMAA, C=O (1795 cm-1) of PMAA, CH2 (2905 cm-1) of PMAA, which have strong modes of vibration in the band positions. The Raman peak intensity y as a function of absorbed dose D was found to have a monoexponential expression in the form; −+=−010DDeAyy. The dose sensitivity D0 and half dose D1/2 were obtained and found to increase with the concentrations of MAA monomer and BIS crosslinker. The dose correlation factor of BIS, kBIS is always higher than kMAA of MAA (kBIS > kMAA) for all C-C, C=C, C=O and CH2 stretching modes, indicating BIS is a very significant parameter in the polymerization process. Additionally, a Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer was used in order to measure the relaxation time of polymethacrylic (PMAA) gel dosimeters. The relaxation rate (ΔR2) dose sensitivity value (12.5 + 0.1 Gy) of MAA monomer by Lepage, et al 2001 is comparable with PMAAG experimental value gained which are 12.6 + 0.1 Gy. A comparison between and indirect measurements of polymer formed along with consumptions of monomer and crosslinker are also obtained from this experimental work. Finally, a UV-Vis spectrophotometer was used to records PMAAG degree of absorption in order to determine the accuracy of PMAAG. The PMAAG has a mean value of absorption of 0.614 at 375 nm. The dose derived from PMAAG is comparable to Fricke dosimeter and ionization chamber readings between 4.7 ± 0.1% and 11.6 ± 0.1%. The dose errors of less than 10 ± 0.1% are considered acceptable in radiation processing, an improvement of accuracy less than 5.0 ± 0.1% is acceptable in radiotherapy

One-Dimensional Consolidation of Kelang Clay

A study on the consolidation behaviour of Kelang clay is presented in this paper. The soil samples taken near the Port of Kelang showed that the clay can be divided into upper marine and the lower river clays. The initial distinction was based on the existence of sea shells in the upper deposits and none in the lower deposits. It has been shown that these two clays have different consolidation properties as well as other basic geotechnical characteristics. Consolidation history indicated that Kelang clay is normally consolidated and may be classified as a high compressibility clay. The overburden pressure due to fill must be neglected in order to obtain the true over consolidation ratio. It was also found that the correlation given by Terzaghi and Peck (1967) provided the best estimates for the compression index, particularly that of the marine clay

Clustering Arabic Tweets for Sentiment Analysis

The focus of this study is to evaluate the impact of linguistic preprocessing and similarity functions for clustering Arabic Twitter tweets. The experiments apply an optimized version of the standard K-Means algorithm to assign tweets into positive and negative categories. The results show that root-based stemming has a significant advantage over light stemming in all settings. The Averaged Kullback-Leibler Divergence similarity function clearly outperforms the Cosine, Pearson Correlation, Jaccard Coefficient and Euclidean functions. The combination of the Averaged Kullback-Leibler Divergence and root-based stemming achieved the highest purity of 0.764 while the second-best purity was 0.719. These results are of importance as it is contrary to normal-sized documents where, in many information retrieval applications, light stemming performs better than root-based stemming and the Cosine function is commonly used

Majlis Anugerah Sukan MASUM 2008

Detik-detik penubuhan MASUM adalah pada tahun 1974 atas dorongan dan inisiatif pegawai-pegawai sukan universiti pada ketika itu untuk mengadakan pertandingan sukan di kalangan kakitangan universiti tempatan. Pertandingan mi adalah merupakan permulaan terhadap perhubungan kesukanan di antara universiti tempatan dan pada tahun berikutnya (1975), sukan di antara pelajar-pelajar universiti telah diadakan. Pada ketika itu, sukan antara pelajar dan permainan yang dipertandingkan dibincangkan secara ad-hoc dan pembiayaan sukan tersebut diagihkan sama rata di kalangan ahli melalui yuran caruman ketika itu