Direct Participation in Hostilities and Its Effect on Proportionality

Unlike members of the armed forces and combatants who can be targeted, civilians are protected from direct attack. However, civilians do not always enjoy protection. When civilians take a direct part in the hostilities, such as by taking up arms against the enemy, they lose their civilian protection and can be lawfully targeted. Classifying a civilian who is directly participating in hostilities as such is relevant to proportionality as well as to the principle of distinction, as it changes the proportionality analysis in two complementary ways. First, an attack on a civilian that is taking a direct part in hostilities would arguably augment the expected military advantage of the strike. Second, such civilians do not enjoy protection from attack and are also not considered civilians in the proportionality assessment. This means that classifying civilians as direct participants in hostilities might make an otherwise disproportionate attack proportionate, and vice versa. This chapter explains the concept of direct participation in hostilities, and its relevance to the proportionality analysis.

Features of establishing liability for crimes involving the use of doping in the field of sports

The article analyzes the content of those innovation norms in the Russian criminal legislation that establish liability for the use of doping drugs in the field of amateur and professional sports. The article provides evidence of the high social and political significance of social relations that have developed in the field of sports. The promotion of a sports lifestyle is one of the conditions for protecting the health of the nation, as a result of which the health safety of persons taking direct part in sports at various levels should be provided with special criminal law means, which implies the allocation of a separate object in the structure of the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. On the basis of the results of the study of the anti-doping sphere of criminal law protection, as well as the content of special norms of the criminal law, assumptions are made about the presence of gaps in the content of the current norms on liability for the use of doping drugs and other prohibited drugs (substances). On this basis, the work identifies possible directions for the implementation of further scientific research in the field of health protection of persons taking part in sports competitions at various levels.

5 Combatants and Non-Combatants

This chapter examines the regulation of combatant status in treaty law and the many challenges for combatant status in recent armed conflicts. The primary status under international law of persons in an international armed conflict will be one of two categories of persons: ‘combatants’ and ‘civilians’. Combatants may fight within the limits imposed by international law applicable in international armed conflict, that is, they may participate directly in hostilities, which members of medical or religious personnel and ‘non-combatants’ may not do because they are excluded—by international law and by a legal act of their party to the conflict—from the authorization to take a direct part in hostilities. The chapter then discusses ‘unlawful combatants’, or what may be considered the better term: ‘unprivileged belligerents’. The term ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ was particularly used after 11 September 2001, to introduce a third category of persons which under existing law may be either combatants or civilians, but are denied such status as not fulfilling essential conditions. To use this third category in order to reduce the individual protection below the minimum standard of human rights is under no circumstances legally acceptable.

Intertextuality of the Small Texts of the French Film Discourse

This article analyses the intertextuality of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text (film title, synopsis, slogan) that are a direct part of the film text’s semiotic space. The pragmatic orientation of the film title, synopsis and slogan with their main task (targeted audience capture) largely determines the pragmatic nature of intertextual allusions that occur in these film text elements. The purpose of this work is to prove the presence of intertextual connections in the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text and to consider in depth the internal intertextuality of these elements. In the course of the study, we made the following conclusions: the most acceptable for the analysis of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text is the theory of transtextuality by G. Genette, through which the intertextuality of the film title, synopsis and slogan must be considered on the basis of the paratextuality, metatextuality and hypertextuality. The intertextuality of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text consists in the interaction of film title, synopsis and slogan with the precedent texts and events, as well as the intertextual connection inside the class of these elements. The internal intertextuality of the functional and pragmatic elements of the film text allows the movie title, synopsis, and slogan to ensure the fulfillment of their main function that is to attract to watch the movie as many viewers as possible.

Topological Stationarity and Precompactness of Probability Measures

We prove the precompactness of a collection of Borel probability measures over an arbitrary metric space precisely under a new legitimate notion, which we term $topological$ $stationarity$, regulating the sequential behavior of Borel probability measures directly in terms of the open sets. Thus the important direct part of Prokhorov's theorem, which permeates the weak convergence theory, admits a new version with the original and sole assumption --- tightness --- replaced by topological stationarity. Since, as will be justified, our new condition is not vacuous and is logically independent of tightness, our result deepens the understanding of the connection between precompactness of Borel probability measures and metric topologies.

Characterization, Thermal and Biological Properties of PCL/PLA/PEG/N-HA Composites

Initially, the use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology is mainly for the production of prototypes of a new invention and design. However, the AM technology had extended to the tooling industry, medical scaffolding, and direct part production. This is due to the extensive research and development carried out around the globe regardless of the material, equipment, and technology of AM. In this study, characterization and properties of PCL/PLA/PEG/Nano-HA polymer composites were investigated. Polycaprolactone (PCL), polylactic acid (PLA), polyethylene glycol (PEG), and nano-hydroxyapatite (n-HA) composites were prepared by melting and compounding the mixture using a Brabender machine. The composition of the materials was determined by previous research that it is the optimum recipe, with the ratio of PCL:PLA is 7:3 while the composition of PEG and nano-HA is 5% per hundred resin each. The temperature of the Brabender machine was set at 160°C, and the speed of the mixer was set at 30 rpm. After the mixing, the composites were characterized by using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) to determine the spectrum and quality of the composite mixed. Based on the spectrum, it can be verified that the characteristic of n-HA powder had been incorporated well into the PCL/PLA/PEG polymer blend. The thermal properties of the composites were investigated by using Thermogravimetry Analyzer (TGA). The results showed that the addition of n-HA lowered the initial degradation temperature and peak degradation temperature. Apparently, the addition of n- HA did not increase the degradation temperature of the composites. Furthermore, Simulated Body Fluid (SBF) test was carried out to access the bioactivity properties of the composites after the addition of n-HA. The results had proved that the addition of n-HA had triggered the growth of apatite layer on the surface of the samples treated with SBF. The growth of the apatite layer was verified by the X-ray Diffraction pattern, and the results proved the initial assumptions.