THE NEW APPROACH TO WATER SCARCITY DEVELOPED BETWEEN 2003 AND 2006 BY THE REGIONAL AUTHORITY IN THE PARIS REGION

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Nguyen

For the first time in its modern history, water restriction measures were implemented during the summer 2006 in Paris. This article describes the weather conditions and the decision making of such an unprecedented event. Furthermore, the new approach to solidarity with the areas where water is extracted and derived to supply the urbanized region of Paris.

Author(s):  
Leyla Ates ◽  
Alex Cobham ◽  
Moran Harari ◽  
Petr Janský ◽  
Markus Meinzer ◽  
...  

In this chapter, we set out a new approach to the geography of profit shifting, based on a range of objectively verifiable criteria. These are combined in the Corporate Tax Haven Index, published for the first time in 2019. We present the technical argument for the index as a meaningful representation of the global distribution of the risks of corporate tax abuse and explore the new geography that emerges. Our findings show the UK’s dominant responsibility for corporate tax avoidance risks and the colonial roots of many exploitative double tax treaties. We discuss the index’s political implications for the immediate process of international tax reform, and for the longer-term prospects for global governance in this area. Greater clarity about the geography of profit shifting is likely to support growing demands for redistribution not only of taxing rights but also of decision-making power in the global architecture for tax governance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Slobodan Nickovic ◽  
Bojan Cvetkovic ◽  
Slavko Petković ◽  
Vassilis Amiridis ◽  
Goran Pejanović ◽  
...  

AbstractIce particles in high-altitude cold clouds can obstruct aircraft functioning. Over the last 20 years, there have been more than 150 recorded cases with engine power-loss and damage caused by tiny cloud ice crystals, which are difficult to detect with aircraft radars. Herein, we examine two aircraft accidents for which icing linked to convective weather conditions has been officially reported as the most likely reason for catastrophic consequences. We analyze whether desert mineral dust, known to be very efficient ice nuclei and present along both aircraft routes, could further augment the icing process. Using numerical simulations performed by a coupled atmosphere-dust model with an included parameterization for ice nucleation triggered by dust aerosols, we show that the predicted ice particle number sharply increases at approximate locations and times of accidents where desert dust was brought by convective circulation to the upper troposphere. We propose a new icing parameter which, unlike existing icing indices, for the first time includes in its calculation the predicted dust concentration. This study opens up the opportunity to use integrated atmospheric-dust forecasts as warnings for ice formation enhanced by mineral dust presence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-109
Author(s):  
Lynda M. Warren

In January 2021 the UK government granted an application for authorisation to use thiamethoxam, a neonicotinoid pesticide, to protect commercial sugar beet crops from attack by viruses transmitted by aphids. This was the first time such an authorisation had been granted in the United Kingdom (UK) and there were concerns that it signalled a weakening of environmental standards now that the UK was no longer part of the European Union. In fact, similar authorisations had been granted by several European Member States in the last 2 years, despite the ban on the use of neonicotinoids introduced in 2018. Nevertheless, the reasons for granting the authorisation do suggest that the balance between adopting a precautionary approach to environmental protection and taking emergency action to protect economic interests may have shifted. It was acknowledged that the proposed mitigation to safeguard bees and other wildlife was not entirely satisfactory. In the end, due to unforeseen weather conditions it meant that the pesticide is not necessary, which in itself demonstrates that short-term emergency measures are unsuitable for dealing with the problem. If the sugar beet industry is to continue to prosper in the UK, it will need to be managed in a way that provides resistance to virus infection without the use of controversial chemicals.


2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamid Yilmaz ◽  
Mustafa Yilmaz

Purpose – Within team-oriented approaches, tasks are assigned to teams before being assigned to workstations as a reality of industry. So it becomes clear, which workers assemble which tasks. Design/methodology/approach – Team numbers of the assembly line can increase with the number of tasks, but at the same time, due to physical situations of the stations, there will be limitations of maximum working team numbers in a station. For this purpose, heuristic assembly line balancing (ALB) procedure is used and mathematical model is developed for the problem. Findings – Well-known assembly line test problems widely used in the literature are solved to indicate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach in practice. Originality/value – This paper draws attention to ALB problem in which workers have been assigned to teams in advance due to the need for specialized skills or equipment on the line for the first time.


Author(s):  
Mark Wiggins ◽  
David O'Hare

Inappropriate and ineffective weather-related decision making continues to account for a significant proportion of general aviation fatalities in the United States and elsewhere. This study details the evaluation of a computer-based training system that was developed to provide visual pilots with the skills necessary to recognize and respond to the cues associated with deteriorating weather conditions during flight. A total of 66 pilots were assigned to one of two groups, and the evaluation process was undertaken at both a self-report and performance level. At the self-report level, the results suggested that pilots were more likely to use the cues following exposure to the training program. From a performance perspective, there is evidence to suggest that cue-based training can improve the timeliness of weather-related decision making during visual flight rules flight. Actual or potential applications of this research include the development of computer-based training systems for fault diagnosis in complex industrial environments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 2150013
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abu-Arqoub ◽  
Wael Hadi ◽  
Abdelraouf Ishtaiwi

Associative Classification (AC) classifiers are of substantial interest due to their ability to be utilised for mining vast sets of rules. However, researchers over the decades have shown that a large number of these mined rules are trivial, irrelevant, redundant, and sometimes harmful, as they can cause decision-making bias. Accordingly, in our paper, we address these challenges and propose a new novel AC approach based on the RIPPER algorithm, which we refer to as ACRIPPER. Our new approach combines the strength of the RIPPER algorithm with the classical AC method, in order to achieve: (1) a reduction in the number of rules being mined, especially those rules that are largely insignificant; (2) a high level of integration among the confidence and support of the rules on one hand and the class imbalance level in the prediction phase on the other hand. Our experimental results, using 20 different well-known datasets, reveal that the proposed ACRIPPER significantly outperforms the well-known rule-based algorithms RIPPER and J48. Moreover, ACRIPPER significantly outperforms the current AC-based algorithms CBA, CMAR, ECBA, FACA, and ACPRISM. Finally, ACRIPPER is found to achieve the best average and ranking on the accuracy measure.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Pegah Alizadeh ◽  
Emiliano Traversi ◽  
Aomar Osmani

Markov Decision Process Models (MDPs) are a powerful tool for planning tasks and sequential decision-making issues. In this work we deal with MDPs with imprecise rewards, often used when dealing with situations where the data is uncertain. In this context, we provide algorithms for finding the policy that minimizes the maximum regret. To the best of our knowledge, all the regret-based methods proposed in the literature focus on providing an optimal stochastic policy. We introduce for the first time a method to calculate an optimal deterministic policy using optimization approaches. Deterministic policies are easily interpretable for users because for a given state they provide a unique choice. To better motivate the use of an exact procedure for finding a deterministic policy, we show some (theoretical and experimental) cases where the intuitive idea of using a deterministic policy obtained after “determinizing” the optimal stochastic policy leads to a policy far from the exact deterministic policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 2692-2701
Author(s):  
Vu T. Tan ◽  
La The Vinh ◽  
Vu Minh Khoi ◽  
Huynh Dang Chinh ◽  
Pham Van Tuan ◽  
...  

For the first time, the BaTiO3 nano-sized particles were obtained through solid-state reaction by employing the titanium oxide nanoparticle. Meanwhile, by using TiO2 with micro-sized particles, the synthesized BaTiO3 shows the micro-sized. The XRD pattern confirms that both BaTiO3 nano-sized and micro-sized particles display the tetragonal structure. Both SEM and TEM analysis revealed that the size of the nano-sized material is in the range of 30–50 nm; in the meantime, the microsized material shows a size of 500 nm. The Eg of both BaTiO3 micro-sized and nano-sized were calculated by using the Kubelka-Munk function. The shifted bandgap of BaTiO3 nano-sized particle is nearly 0.24 eV larger than that of BaTiO3 miro-sized particle due to the particle size effect. The P-E measurement of n-BaTiO3 proved that the obtained BaTiO3 nano-sized is ferroelectric material. The result may provide a new route for the fabrication of barium titanate nanoparticle with ferroelectric properties.


Author(s):  
J. Nathan Yarnall ◽  
Carl Seashore ◽  
Carrie A. Phillipi ◽  
Joseph E. Hatch ◽  
Beth King ◽  
...  

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