The ethics of border guarding: a first exploration and a research agenda for the future

Although the notion of universal human rights allows for the idea that states (and supranational organizations such as the European Union) can, or even should, control and impose restrictions on migration, both notions clearly do not sit well together. The ensuing tension manifests itself in our ambivalent attitude towards migration, but also affects the border guards who have to implement national and supranational policies on migration. Little has been written on the ethics that has to guide these border guards in their work. Juxtaposing the ethics of border guarding against the ethics of the somewhat related military profession, this article attempts to (a) describe border guarding as a comparatively rule-guided profession; (b) outline the aim and basis of the ethics education that prepares border guards for their work; and (c) propose a research agenda for the future that should further our understanding of (a) and (b), but also help us improve the moral education of border guards

Vortex-ring-induced stratified mixing

There is tantalizing evidence that some mechanically driven stratified flows tend towards a state of constant mixing efficiency. We provide insight into the energy balance leading to the constant mixing efficiency and isolate the responsible mechanism. The work presented demonstrates an important mixing efficiency regime for periodically forced externally driven stratified flows. Externally forced stratified turbulent mixing is often characterized by the associated eddies within the flow, which are the dominant mixing mechanism (Turner, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 173, 1986, pp. 431–471). Here, we study mixing induced by vortex rings in order to characterize the mixing induced by an individual eddy. By generating a long sequence of independent vortex-ring mixing events in a density-stratified fluid with a sharp interface, we determine the mixing efficiency of each ring. After an initial adjustment phase, we find that the mixing efficiency of each vortex ring is independent of the Richardson number. By studying the mixing mechanism here, we demonstrate consistent features of a volumetrically confined, periodically forced external mixing regime.This work was funded through the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The experimental data associated with this study is made available at https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/249285.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Cambridge University Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2015.49

Integrity, Moral Courage and Innere Führung

The aim of this paper is to examine the usefulness of the somewhat related notions of integrity, moral courage, and Innere Führung (the leadership concept used by the German military) as a means of making military personnel behave ethically. Of these three notions, integrity is mentioned most often within military organizations, and the largest part of what follows is therefore devoted to a description of what integrity is, and what the drawbacks of this notion are for the military. This will lead us to conclude that integrity in its most common meaning is too vague and subjective to be of much use to the military. It is because of these drawbacks that this paper looks into moral courage and Innere Führung as possible alternatives for integrity

Band gap prediction for large organic crystal structures with machine learning

Machine-learning models are capable of capturing the structure-property relationship from a dataset of computationally demanding ab initio calculations. Over the past two years, the Organic Materials Database (OMDB) has hosted a growing number of calculated electronic properties of previously synthesized organic crystal structures. The complexity of the organic crystals contained within the OMDB, which have on average 82 atoms per unit cell, makes this database a challenging platform for machine learning applications. In this paper, the focus is on predicting the band gap which represents one of the basic properties of a crystalline materials. With this aim, a consistent dataset of 12 500 crystal structures and their corresponding DFT band gap are released, freely available for download at https://omdb.mathub.io/dataset. An ensemble of two state-of-the-art models reach a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.388 eV, which corresponds to a percentage error of 13% for an average band gap of 3.05 eV. Finally, the trained models are employed to predict the band gap for 260 092 materials contained within the Crystallography Open Database (COD) and made available online so that the predictions can be obtained for any arbitrary crystal structure uploaded by a user.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Verkeersleefbaarheid: voor iedereen belangrijk, maar een vaag begrip

Het begrip verkeersleefbaarheid bestaat uit onderdelen die in allerlei combinaties en in verschillende gradaties voor kunnen komen en die door verschillende mensen verschillend kunnen worden geïnterpreteerd. Die leefbaarheid bevat zowel objectieve als subjectieve elementen. Knelpunten kunnen spelen binnen en buiten de bebouwde kom. De problemen kunnen lokaal zijn, maar ook regionaal. Maar bovenal is verkeersleefbaarheid een verzamel-begrip, waarbij het van de situatie afhangt welke elementen een rol spelen. Deze bijdrage voorziet allereerst in een verkenning van dit verzamelbegrip. Aan de hand van drie praktijkvoorbeelden (Leek-Roden, Erp en Brummen) wordt inzichtelijk gemaakt wat zoal onder verkeersleefbaarheid verstaan kan worden. Daarbij worden vier elementen van verkeersleefbaarheid benoemd en uitgewerkt: verkeersdruk, oversteekbaarheid voor mens en dier, sluipverkeer en barrièrewerking. Daarna wordt uitgewerkt waarom een betere uitwerking van verkeersleefbaarheid in beleid moet worden nagestreefd. Het agenderen van verkeersleefbaarheid in beleid moet ertoe leiden dat de spanning tussen burgers en overheid in verkeersleefbaarheidskwesties kleiner wordt

Online Search Tool for Graphical Patterns in Electronic Band Structures

We present an online graphical pattern search tool for electronic band structure data contained within the Organic Materials Database (OMDB) available at https://omdb.diracmaterials.org/search/pattern. The tool is capable of finding user-specified graphical patterns in the collection of thousands of band structures from high-throughput ab initio calculations in the online regime. Using this tool, it only takes a few seconds to find an arbitrary graphical pattern within the ten electronic bands near the Fermi level for 26,739 organic crystals. The tool can be used to find realizations of functional materials characterized by a specific pattern in their electronic structure, for example, Dirac materials, characterized by a linear crossing of bands; topological insulators, characterized by a "Mexican hat" pattern or an effectively free electron gas, characterized by a parabolic dispersion. The source code of the developed tool is freely available at https://github.com/OrganicMaterialsDatabase/EBS-search and can be transferred to any other electronic band structure database. The approach allows for an automatic online analysis of a large collection of band structures where the amount of data makes its manual inspection impracticable.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figure

Overzicht van een eeuw onderzoek naar groei en opstandontwikkeling in relatie tot groeiplaats en beheer

Deze publicatie omvat een overzicht van het onderzoek naar groei en opstandontwikkeling dat gedurende de laatste honderd jaar is verricht door het toenmalige bosbouwkundig onderzoeksinstituut De Dorschkamp (later IBN, thans Alterra) en de toenmalige LH (later LUW, thans Wageningen Universiteit). Dit onderzoek bestond voor een groot deel uit groei- en opbrengstonderzoek en groeiplaatsonderzoek. Aan de orde komen de proef- en meetperkseries en de belangrijkste producten. Tenslotte wordt ingegaan op de vraag aan welke informatie op het gebied van groei en bosontwikkeling de hedendaagse en toekomstige bosbouwpraktijk behoefte heeft. Het overzicht wordt afgesloten met een lijst van publicaties over onderzoek naar groei en opstandontwikkeling in relatie tot groeiplaats en beheer

Neo-Atlantis: Dutch Responses to Five Meter Sea Level Rise

What would happen to the Netherlands if, in 2030, the sea level starts to rise and eventually, after 100 years, a sea level of five meters above current level would be reached? Two socio-economic scenarios are developed from a literature review and by interviews with researchers and practicionersin the domains of social sciences, economics, civil engineering, and land use planning. One scenario describes what would happen in a future characterised by a trend towards further globalisation, marketisation and high economic growth, while the other scenario happens in a future under opposite trends. Under both scenarios, the Southwest and Northwest of the Netherlands – already now below seal level - would be abandoned because of sea level rise. Although most experts believe that geomorphology and current engineering skills allow to largely maintain the territorial integrity of the Netherlands, there are some reasons to assume that this is not likely to happen. Social processes that precede important political decisions – such as the growth of the belief in the reality of SLR and the framing of such decision in a proper political context (policy window) – evolve slowly. Although a flood disaster would speed up decision-making, the general expectation is that decisions would come too late in view of the rate of SLR and the possible pace of construction of works.Extreme sea level rise, The Netherlands, flood defences