Search results

The purpose of this chapter is to report some initial findings based on the WTO Dispute Settlement Data Set (Ver. 2.0) that the authors have compiled for the World Bank. The data set contains approximately 28 000 observations on the workings of the Dispute Settlement system. It covers all 351 WTO disputes initiated through the official filing of a Request for Consultations from January 1, 1995, until October 25, 2006; and for these disputes it includes events occurring until December 31, 2006. Each dispute is followed through its legal life via the panel stage, the Appellate Body stage, to the implementation stage.

The descriptive statistics in the chapter points to three observations. The first and obvious observation is the almost complete absence of least developed countries. Second, less poor and developing countries are much more active and successful than the authors would have expected. Third, the EU and the United States dominate less than expected, being much more often the subject of complaints, than a complaining party, and they have a very low share of all panelists.

Puts forward a new method for decomposing relational schemas by using semi‐equivalence relations based on pansystems methodology. A necessary and sufficient condition is obtained for determining whether there exists a subschema logically available in a given relational schema decomposition.

In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of institutional factors and the European Union (EU) accounting harmonization on the value‐relevance and comparability of dirty surplus accounting flows (DSFs) in the member countries throughout the period 1993 to 2002.

The returns‐earnings models and fixed‐effect operating income growth models are used to examine the differences in the incremental and relative relevance of DSFs between countries which have a piecemeal system of regulation with significant input from the profession and/or market participants, and the code law countries with the government being the most important institution with regard to accounting regulation. Moreover, the relevance of DSFs in the three sub‐periods is compared, each reflecting quite distinct attitudes in the EU towards international accounting harmonization.

DSFs are incrementally relevant in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and the UK, where equity market plays an important role in the country's financing system; and in comparison to comprehensive income, reported income is a dominant measure of performance in most European countries, with the exception of the five afore‐mentioned countries. There is also evidence that cross country differences in the value‐relevance and predictability of DSFs decrease in the later years of this sample period.

Future research focusing upon the specific accounting changes made by companies in the EU is needed for a better understanding of the relative importance of stock market integration and standard setting changes in explaining the characteristics of DSFs.

The results indicate that the convergence in the reporting of DSFs over time is driven by global capital market integration, and more importantly, the accounting harmonization activities carried out via self‐regulation with significant input from the profession and/or market participants at national level.

The paper seeks to explore, firstly, the extent to which differences in the reporting of DSFs across the EU may be explained by institutional differences. Secondly, it explores whether or not differences across the countries have decreased in three phases of the EU harmonization process.

The purpose of this study was to categorize the whole body shapes of overweight and obese females in the US and examine apparel fit based on the current ASTM sizing standards related to the body shapes categorized.

Body scan data from 2,672 subjects were used. To categorize their whole body shapes using 97 body measurements, principal component analysis with varimax rotation, a hierarchical cluster analysis and K-means cluster analysis were used. To compare the ASTM sizing standards for plus sizes (curvy and straight) and missy sizes (curvy and straight), five body parts (bust, under bust, waist, top hip, hip) using the formula for fit tolerance (measurement plus half of the interval) were compared with the ASTM sizing standards to determine the size appropriate for each body part.

Five whole body shapes among overweight and obese females in the US were categorized: Rectangle-curvy; parallelogram-moderately curvy; parallelogram-hip tilt; inverted trapezoid-moderately curvy and inverted trapezoid-hip tilt. When the body measurements in each body shape were compared with the current ASTM sizing systems for both misses and plus sizes, four-fifths or more of overweight and obese female adults in the US would find it difficult to obtain a perfect fit for both tops and bottoms.

Identifying whole body shapes among overweight and obese women in the US contributes significantly, as it will help apparel companies that target the markets of larger women develop a new sizing system. This study is the first attempt to analyze fit by comparing the ASTM sizing charts with body measurements in each body shape group. Further, the study contributes to the body-related literature by filling gaps in missing whole BS categories among overweight and obese females.

The purpose of this research is to study the physical and mechanical properties beside the durability of concrete as well as corrosion resistance of reinforced concrete by replacing Ordinary Portland cement (OPC) with different ratios of silica fume and meta-kaolin and applying two paint formulations to enhance corrosion resistance and mechanical properties. In this work, modified concrete mixes containing pozzolanic materials of industrial wastes such as silica fume (SF) with ratios ranging between (0, 10 and 15%) and calcined raw material such as meta-kaolin (MK) with ratios (0, 3, 5 and 10%), were introduced using water binder ratio (w/b) 0.45 to study their effect on the physico-mechanical properties and durability of concrete as well as corrosion protection performance of reinforced concrete. Two paint formulations containing the same ingredients except that one of them is free from talc (G1) and the other contains talc (G2) were applied on the rebars embedded in these modified mixes. Talc is known to offer high pH to the surrounding media.

Modified concrete mixes containing the coated reinforced concrete steel with the different paint formulations in presence and absence of talc were tested, and the corrosion behavior was studied using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in 3.5% NaCl, and the concrete mixes were also tested through their compressive strength, chloride permeability, scanning electron microscope/energy dispersive X-ray analysis and bond strength.

The results revealed that the hardened reinforced concrete mix containing 10% SF with 5% MK with embedded rebars coated with G2 (paint containing talc) was the best concrete system which offers concrete sustainability besides high corrosion protection performance, i.e. presence of talc in the paints combined with the effect of cement blended with SF and MK showed positive effect on the reinforced concrete properties that leads to more durability and workability.

The integrity of using two efficient methods of corrosion protection beside the effect of the different replacements in concrete mixes containing coated reinforced concrete steel with paint formulations free from talc (G1) and others containing talc (G2), which lead to fatal changes in the pH of the surrounding media (i.e. concrete which has high alkaline pH) to achieve good concrete properties aside with convenient paint formulations together.

Your company may find itself traveling down several different paths at once to reach its goals. The secret of success lies in making sure the roads are compatible. At one time, selecting the right options was a matter of chance. Today, finding the winning combination is almost a science.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motives a person adopts in order to engage in hate-related behaviours within a prison setting. A subsidiary aim of the study was to compare this cohort of prisoners with prisoners who have been convicted for aggravated racism in the community.

In order to gather data, an exploratory research design was adopted, utilising the method of semi-structured interviews. In total, a number of nine interviews were conducted. Qualitative analysis was then employed allowing for an examination of meaning in relation to the motives behind the commission of hate crimes to occur.

The findings revealed the presence of racist beliefs and attitudes in both groups involved in the study. Further similarities between the two groups included the perception of inequality and beliefs about racism. The differences between the two groups included poor emotional regulation and an inability to manage beliefs and subsequent behaviours about people from different ethnic groups, with those in custody seeming to be more reactive.

The findings provide a preliminary insight into enhancing inmate safety. The environmental implications begin to reveal the complexity of hate-related behaviours in custody. There are differences between the context of hate crime committed in a prison environment compared to that committed in the community that require different solutions for addressing such behaviour. Further implications are considered in the final section of the paper.

A large body of research has been conducted on prison violence, seldom does this research examine this issue within the context of hate crime. This preliminary study offers an insight into prison-based hate crime.

The purpose of this paper is to build a new hierarchical intrusion detection system (IDS) based on a binary tree of different types of classifiers. The proposed IDS model must possess the following characteristics: combine a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate, and classify any connection in a specific category of network connection.

To build the binary tree, the authors cluster the different categories of network connections hierarchically based on the proportion of false-positives and false-negatives generated between each of the two categories. The built model is a binary tree with multi-levels. At first, the authors use the best classifier in the classification of the network connections in category A and category G2 that clusters the rest of the categories. Then, in the second level, they use the best classifier in the classification of G2 network connections in category B and category G3 that represents the different categories clustered in G2 without category B. This process is repeated until the last two categories of network connections. Note that one of these categories represents the normal connection, and the rest represent the different types of abnormal connections.

The experimentation on the labeled data set for flow-based intrusion detection, NSL-KDD and KDD’99 shows the high performance of the authors' model compared to the results obtained by some well-known classifiers and recent IDS models. The experiments’ results show that the authors' model gives a low false alarm rate and the highest detection rate. Moreover, the model is more accurate than some well-known classifiers like SVM, C4.5 decision tree, MLP neural network and naïve Bayes with accuracy equal to 83.26 per cent on NSL-KDD and equal to 99.92 per cent on the labeled data set for flow-based intrusion detection. As well, it is more accurate than the best of related works and recent IDS models with accuracy equal to 95.72 per cent on KDD’99.

This paper proposes a novel hierarchical IDS based on a binary tree of classifiers, where different types of classifiers are used to create a high-performance model. Therefore, it confirms the capacity of the hierarchical model to combine a high detection rate and a low false alarm rate.