Challenges and difficulties in assessing the Environmental Status under the requirements of the Ecosystem Approach in North-African countries, illustrated by eutrophication assessment

Marine ecosystems provide many ecosystem goods and services. However, these ecosystems and the benefits they create for humans are subject to competing uses and increasing pressures. As a consequence of the increasing threats to the marine environment, several regulations require applying an ecosystem-based approach for managing the marine environment. Within the Mediterranean Sea, in 2008, the Contracting Parties of the Mediterranean Action Plan decided to progressively apply the Ecosystem Approach (EcAp) with the objective of achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) for 2018. To assess the Environmental Status, the EcAp proposes 11 Ecological Objectives, each of which requires a set of relevant indicators to be integrated. Progress towards the EcAp entails a gradual and important challenge for North-African countries, and efforts have to be initiated to propose and discuss methods. Accordingly, to enhance the capacity of North-African countries to implement EcAp and particularly to propose and discuss indicators and methods to assess GES, the aim of this manuscript is to identify the practical problems and gaps found at each stage of the Environmental Status assessment process. For this purpose, a stepwise method has been proposed to assess the Environmental Status using Ecologic Objective 5-Eutrophication as example.

Challenges and difficulties in assessing the Environmental Status under the requirements of the Ecosystem Approach in North-African countries, illustrated by eutrophication assessment

Marine ecosystems provide many ecosystem goods and services. However, these ecosystems and the benefits they create for humans are subject to competing uses and increasing pressures. As a consequence of the increasing threats to the marine environment, several regulations require applying an ecosystem-based approach for managing the marine environment. Within the Mediterranean Sea, in 2008, the Contracting Parties of the Mediterranean Action Plan decided to progressively apply the Ecosystem Approach (EcAp) with the objective of achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) for 2018. To assess the Environmental Status, the EcAp proposes 11 Ecological Objectives, each of which requires a set of relevant indicators to be integrated. Progress towards the EcAp entails a gradual and important challenge for North-African countries, and efforts have to be initiated to propose and discuss methods. Accordingly, to enhance the capacity of North-African countries to implement EcAp and particularly to propose and discuss indicators and methods to assess GES, the aim of this manuscript is to identify the practical problems and gaps found at each stage of the Environmental Status assessment process. For this purpose, a stepwise method has been proposed to assess the Environmental Status using Ecologic Objective 5-Eutrophication as example.

Concrete building blocks made with recycled demolition aggregate

A study undertaken at the University of Liverpool has investigated the potential for using recycled demolition aggregate in the manufacture of precast concrete building blocks. Recycled aggregates derived from construction and demolition waste (C&DW) can be used to replace quarried limestone aggregate, usually used in coarse (6 mm) and fine (4 mm-to-dust) gradings. The manufacturing process used in factories, for large-scale production, involves a “vibro-compaction” casting procedure, using a relatively dry concrete mix with low cement content (˜100 kg/m3). Trials in the laboratory successfully replicated the manufacturing process using a specially modified electric hammer drill to compact the concrete mix into oversize steel moulds to produce blocks of the same physical and mechanical properties as the commercial blocks. This enabled investigations of the effect of partially replacing newly quarried with recycled demolition aggregate on the compressive strength of building blocks to be carried out in the laboratory. Levels of replacement of newly quarried with recycled demolition aggregate have been determined that will not have significant detrimental effect on the mechanical properties. Factory trials showed that there were no practical problems with the use of recycled demolition aggregate in the manufacture of building blocks. The factory strengths obtained confirmed that the replacement levels selected, based on the laboratory work, did not cause any significant strength reduction, i.e. there was no requirement to increase the cement content to maintain the required strength, and therefore there would be no additional cost to the manufacturers if they were to use recycled demolition aggregate for their routine concrete building block production.

Rewarding Merit in Judicial Appointments?: A research project undertaken by the School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast for the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission

This research involved carrying out an online survey using a number of vignettes/scenarios to explore understandings and attitudes to judicial appointments. This sort of survey is relatively novel in this context and provided a useful way of understanding how a range of factors such as merit and seniority, career paths and connections, as well as gender and visibility, are perceived as operating within the appointments system. The research also involved a series of focus group interviews with a number of individuals with various professional backgrounds and at different levels of seniority. These, and a limited number of individual interviews, afforded an opportunity to explore more closely some of the themes arising from the scenarios as well as a chance to look in some depth at some of the views and concerns of a range of members of the legal professions.

Building upon the previous research project, this work was less concerned with revisiting earlier themes and more interested in exploring how the idea of “merit” as a governing factor in judicial appointment is seen as working in practice, and whether it is perceived as being most likely to be found within particular career profiles. We also investigated issues such as the possible development of formal and informal pathways to a judicial career and practical problems such as how an applicant might become known to the senior judiciary, and the importance of this. Overall our interest was primarily in developing an understanding of how gender is perceived to operate in the appointments process and how any barriers to recruiting women, particularly to the senior judiciary, could be further broken down.

Eco-cities: technological showcases or public spaces?

A growing body of critical literature seeks to identify conceptual and practical problems accompanying the realisation of mainstream ‘eco-city’ initiatives around the world. However, little attention has been paid to the status of the ‘city’ itself within the broader discourse. If eco-cities are to be more than experimental ‘technological showcases’, and aim to transform urban life more generally, the question of what types of ‘cityness’ will ensue is of considerable importance. To effect a more significant sustainability transition, eco-city plans and policies may need somehow to encompass a more nuanced conceptualisation of cities as complex, unpredictable, and emergent spaces. The incompatibility of such a conceptualisation with liberal-modernist modes of planning means that radically innovative new approaches to eco-city development may need to be found. This thesis considers whether the eco-city, theorised as a multiple process of real-world experimentation, may shed some light on how ‘cityness’ might better be planned for in future. To do so, it conceptualises cityness through the lens of ‘publicness’. It makes an original contribution to knowledge by developing a new theoretical model of publicness as an ‘assemblage’ of space and behaviour, with an ‘emergent’ and ‘civic’ modality. It thereby extends recent debates over the idea of ‘urban assemblage’, and makes innovative links between theories of planning and of the public. This model informs the analysis of original empirical research, investigating the conceptualisation of the public in an international sample of official eco-city documents, and exploring the publicness of two implemented initiatives, in Portland, Oregon (US) and newly built Sejong City (South Korea). The research finds that publicness tends to be poorly articulated in mainstream eco-city plans and policies, with potentially negative implications for sustainability in the ‘urban age’. However, it also argues that state institution-led planning – even when experimental ‘governance’ approaches are adopted – may inevitably be limited in its ability to encompass the emergent public life of the city. The thesis concludes by considering the prospects for overcoming or more productively acknowledging these limits in future.

Development of CO-releasing molecular for the treatment of inflammatory diseases

Dissertation presented to obtain a Ph.D. degree (Doutoramento) in Chemistry at the Instituto de Tecnologia Quimica e Biol6gica da Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Auto-poïétique de deux expériences de montage sonore : d'une écoute à l'autre

Notre mémoire de recherche-création a pour point de départ deux conceptions sonores filmiques, auxquelles nous avons contribué en tant que monteur et concepteur sonores. Ces films – et leur bande sonore – ont, par leur forme, leur contenu, mais aussi par la dynamique ayant rythmé leur création, redéfini un aspect ou un autre de notre pratique. Ainsi, au moyen d'une auto-poïétique, nous explorons les différentes conditions de la création sonore mises en jeu, qu'elles soient d'ordre technique – le film Saint-Denys Garneau – ou d'ordre esthétique – le film Ma famille en 17 bobines. Dans chaque cas, nous cherchons aussi à explorer les problèmes poétiques et pratiques posés. Au creux de cette conjugaison de ces conditions émergent alors des outils de médiation, des relations humaines, des mouvements esthétiques et des postures d'écoute qui jettent un éclairage inédit sur notre pratique sonore.

Tactical Vehicle Routing Planning with Application to Milk Collection and Distribution

De nombreux problèmes pratiques qui se posent dans dans le domaine de la logistique, peuvent être modélisés comme des problèmes de tournées de véhicules. De façon générale, cette famille de problèmes implique la conception de routes, débutant et se terminant à un dépôt, qui sont utilisées pour distribuer des biens à un nombre de clients géographiquement dispersé dans un contexte où les coûts associés aux routes sont minimisés. Selon le type de problème, un ou plusieurs dépôts peuvent-être présents. Les problèmes de tournées de véhicules sont parmi les problèmes combinatoires les plus difficiles à résoudre. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions un problème d’optimisation combinatoire, appartenant aux classes des problèmes de tournées de véhicules, qui est liée au contexte des réseaux de transport. Nous introduisons un nouveau problème qui est principalement inspiré des activités de collecte de lait des fermes de production, et de la redistribution du produit collecté aux usines de transformation, pour la province de Québec. Deux variantes de ce problème sont considérées. La première, vise la conception d’un plan tactique de routage pour le problème de la collecte-redistribution de lait sur un horizon donné, en supposant que le niveau de la production au cours de l’horizon est fixé. La deuxième variante, vise à fournir un plan plus précis en tenant compte de la variation potentielle de niveau de production pouvant survenir au cours de l’horizon considéré. Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous décrivons un algorithme exact pour la première variante du problème qui se caractérise par la présence de fenêtres de temps, plusieurs dépôts, et une flotte hétérogène de véhicules, et dont l’objectif est de minimiser le coût de routage. À cette fin, le problème est modélisé comme un problème multi-attributs de tournées de véhicules. L’algorithme exact est basé sur la génération de colonnes impliquant un algorithme de plus court chemin élémentaire avec contraintes de ressources. Dans la deuxième partie, nous concevons un algorithme exact pour résoudre la deuxième variante du problème. À cette fin, le problème est modélisé comme un problème de tournées de véhicules multi-périodes prenant en compte explicitement les variations potentielles du niveau de production sur un horizon donné. De nouvelles stratégies sont proposées pour résoudre le problème de plus court chemin élémentaire avec contraintes de ressources, impliquant dans ce cas une structure particulière étant donné la caractéristique multi-périodes du problème général. Pour résoudre des instances de taille réaliste dans des temps de calcul raisonnables, une approche de résolution de nature heuristique est requise. La troisième partie propose un algorithme de recherche adaptative à grands voisinages où de nombreuses nouvelles stratégies d’exploration et d’exploitation sont proposées pour améliorer la performances de l’algorithme proposé en termes de la qualité de la solution obtenue et du temps de calcul nécessaire.

Trajectoires socioprofessionnelles des immigrants africains subsahariens de Montréal accédant à des fonctions socioéconomiques valorisées

Les immigrants à Montréal (Québec, Canada) connaissent des difficultés d’insertion en emploi. Parmi eux, ceux originaires de l’Afrique subsaharienne constituent des «groupes racisés» et, à ce titre, sont susceptibles d’éprouver davantage de discriminations et de difficultés que les autres (Hadiri, 2008; Nikuze, 2011). Grâce à une sociologie des "trajectoires de réussites" et grâce à des questions mobilisant l'apport de plusieurs disciplines dans une perspective de résolution de problèmes pratiques, cette thèse a pour but de proposer de possibles solutions aux différents problèmes de ces immigrants montréalais. La recherche de terrain, basée sur des entretiens compréhensifs au sens où l’entend Kaufmann (1996, 2008), propose une sociologie qualitative des "trajectoires de réussites", soit des expériences socioprofessionnelles vécues comme « valorisantes » ou « valorisées. » L’échantillon a été formé d’immigrants africains vivant de telles expériences. À travers leurs différentes trajectoires, la recherche a reposé sur cet objectif appliqué premier : partir du questionnement central sur les facteurs de réussite, rechercher des solutions et des instruments d'intervention destinés à une meilleure intégration socioéconomique des nouveaux immigrants, ou même des anciens immigrants qui connaissent encore des difficultés d’insertion en emploi. Les résultats laissent entrevoir trois catégories de facteurs contributifs à la base de la «réussite socioprofessionnelle», tous rangés au titre de « valeurs », ou façons de voir le monde capables de contribuer à cette « réussite » en s’harmonisant mieux au contexte québécois : il s’agit de valeurs personnelles, d’apports socioculturels africains ou encore de ressources socioculturelles de type québécois. Si les valeurs personnelles relèvent des caractéristiques propres à chacun, les ressources socioculturelles africaines et québécoises résulteraient plutôt de traditions ou de mœurs inhérentes aux cultures des pays concernés. L’analyse et l’interprétation de ces facteurs propices à l’intégration socioprofessionnelle des immigrants ont révélé plusieurs pistes capables de faciliter l’insertion en emploi des immigrants et cette thèse en fait état. Il demeure certain, face à des résultats qui mettent en évidence surtout le facteur individuel, que la « réussite » et l’insertion « réussie » ou vécue comme telle demeurent aussi fonction des actes des autorités publiques : quelles que soient les valeurs et les dispositions individuelles des immigrants, ces facteurs positifs demeurent sans effets si lois et politiques du domaine de l’immigration font obstacle de quelque façon.

Some concepts and models usefulninthe analysis of discrete life time data

This thesis entitled Reliability Modelling and Analysis in Discrete time Some Concepts and Models Useful in the Analysis of discrete life time data.The present study consists of five chapters. In Chapter II we take up the derivation of some general results useful in reliability modelling that involves two component mixtures. Expression for the failure rate, mean residual life and second moment of residual life of the mixture distributions in terms of the corresponding quantities in the component distributions are investigated. Some applications of these results are also pointed out. The role of the geometric,Waring and negative hypergeometric distributions as models of life lengths in the discrete time domain has been discussed already. While describing various reliability characteristics, it was found that they can be often considered as a class. The applicability of these models in single populations naturally extends to the case of populations composed of sub-populations making mixtures of these distributions worth investigating. Accordingly the general properties, various reliability characteristics and characterizations of these models are discussed in chapter III. Inference of parameters in mixture distribution is usually a difficult problem because the mass function of the mixture is a linear function of the component masses that makes manipulation of the likelihood equations, leastsquare function etc and the resulting computations.very difficult. We show that one of our characterizations help in inferring the parameters of the geometric mixture without involving computational hazards. As mentioned in the review of results in the previous sections, partial moments were not studied extensively in literature especially in the case of discrete distributions. Chapters IV and V deal with descending and ascending partial factorial moments. Apart from studying their properties, we prove characterizations of distributions by functional forms of partial moments and establish recurrence relations between successive moments for some well known families. It is further demonstrated that partial moments are equally efficient and convenient compared to many of the conventional tools to resolve practical problems in reliability modelling and analysis. The study concludes by indicating some new problems that surfaced during the course of the present investigation which could be the subject for a future work in this area.

Economics of Justice in Kerala

The focus of the present study is on issues related to Legal—Economics. The economic approach to legal issues is based on the belief held by both legal professionals and economists that law and economics are complementary disciplines and that collaboration is highly beneficial.The principles of economic analysis can help our understanding of the law. Economic approach has important effects on the costs and benefits that prospective litigants may expect from litigation and their decisions to litigate or to settle out of court. Economic consideration is also helpful to understand I 1 the significance of litigation costs, the practical problems of legal administration and the provision of legal servicesz. The economic approach to law is mainly based on the belief held by some economists that the core of economics, the theory of choice is in principle- applicable to all human and institutional behaviour.

Überwachung der Vorspannkraft Externer Spannglieder mit Hilfe der Modalanalyse

Aufgrund ihrer Vorteile hinsichtlich Dauerhaftigkeit und Bauwerkssicherheit ist in Deutschland seit 1998 die externe Vorspannung in Hohlkastenbrücken zur Regelbauweise geworden. Durch Verwendung der austauschbaren externen Vorspannung verspricht man sich im Brückenbau weitere Verbesserungen der Robustheit und damit eine Verlängerung der Lebensdauer. Trotz des besseren Korrosionsschutzes im Vergleich zur internen Vorspannung mit Verbund sind Schäden nicht völlig auszuschließen. Um die Vorteile der externen Vorspannung zu nutzen, ist daher eine periodische Überwachung der Spanngliedkräfte, z. B. während der Hauptprüfung des Bauwerks, durchzuführen. Für die Überwachung der Spanngliedkräfte bei Schrägseilbrücken haben sich die Schwingungsmessmethoden als wirtschaftlich und leistungsfähig erwiesen. Für die Übertragung der Methode auf den Fall der externen Vorspannung, wo kürzere Schwingungslängen vorliegen, waren zusätzliche Untersuchungen hinsichtlich der effektiven Schwingungslänge, der Randbedingungen sowie der effektiven Biegesteifigkeit erforderlich. Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde das Modellkorrekturverfahren, basierend auf der iterativen Anpassung eines F.E.-Modells an die identifizierten Eigenfrequenzen und Eigenformen des Spanngliedes, für die Bestimmung der Spanngliedkräfte verwendet. Dieses Verfahren ermöglicht die Berücksichtigung der Parameter (Schwingungslänge, Randbedingungen und effektive Biegesteifigkeit) bei der Identifikation der effektiven Spanngliedkräfte. Weiterhin ist eine Modellierung jeder beliebigen Spanngliedausbildung, z. B. bei unterschiedlichen Querschnitten in den Verankerungs- bzw. Umlenkbereichen, gewährleistet. Zur Anwendung bei der Ermittlung der Spanngliedkräfte wurde eine spezielle Methode, basierend auf den besonderen dynamischen Eigenschaften der Spannglieder, entwickelt, bei der die zuvor genannten Parameter innerhalb jedes Iterationsschrittes unabhängig korrigiert werden, was zur Robustheit des Identifikationsverfahrens beiträgt. Das entwickelte Verfahren ist in einem benutzerfreundlichen Programmsystem implementiert worden. Die erzielten Ergebnisse wurden mit dem allgemeinen Identifikationsprogramm UPDATE_g2 verglichen; dabei ist eine sehr gute Übereinstimmung festgestellt worden. Beim selbst entwickelten Verfahren wird die benötigte Rechenzeit auf ca. 30 % reduziert [100 sec à 30 sec]. Es bietet sich daher für die unmittelbare Auswertung vor Ort an. Die Parameteridentifikationsverfahren wurden an den Spanngliedern von insgesamt sechs Brücken (vier unterschiedliche Spannverfahren) angewendet. Die Anzahl der getesteten Spannglieder beträgt insgesamt 340. Die Abweichung zwischen den durch Schwingungs-messungen identifizierten und gemessenen (bei einer Brücke durch eine Abhebekontrolle) bzw. aufgebrachten Spanngliedkräften war kleiner als 3 %. Ferner wurden die Auswirkungen äußerer Einflüsse infolge Temperaturschwankungen und Verkehr bei den durchgeführten Messungen untersucht. Bei der praktischen Anwendung sind Besonderheiten aufgetreten, die durch die Verwendung des Modellkorrekturverfahrens weitgehend erfasst werden konnten. Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass die Verwendung dieses Verfahrens die Genauigkeit im Vergleich mit den bisherigen Schwingungsmessmethoden beachtlich erhöht. Ferner wird eine Erweiterung des Anwendungsbereiches auch auf Spezialfälle (z. B. bei einem unplanmäßigen Anliegen) gewährleistet.

Compositional data analysis: where we are and where should we be heading?

We take stock of the present position of compositional data analysis, of what has been achieved in the last 20 years, and then make suggestions as to what may be sensible avenues of future research. We take an uncompromisingly applied mathematical view, that the challenge of solving practical problems should motivate our theoretical research; and that any new theory should be thoroughly investigated to see if it may provide answers to previously abandoned practical considerations. Indeed a main theme of this lecture will be to demonstrate this applied mathematical approach by a number of challenging examples

Grain size analyses in tin-lead glazes based on 2d-sections

A problem in the archaeometric classification of Catalan Renaissance pottery is the fact, that the clay supply of the pottery workshops was centrally organized by guilds, and therefore usually all potters of a single production centre produced chemically similar ceramics. However, analysing the glazes of the ware usually a large number of inclusions in the glaze is found, which reveal technological differences between single workshops. These inclusions have been used by the potters in order to opacify the transparent glaze and to achieve a white background for further decoration. In order to distinguish different technological preparation procedures of the single workshops, at a Scanning Electron Microscope the chemical composition of those inclusions as well as their size in the two-dimensional cut is recorded. Based on the latter, a frequency distribution of the apparent diameters is estimated for each sample and type of inclusion. Following an approach by S.D. Wicksell (1925), it is principally possible to transform the distributions of the apparent 2D-diameters back to those of the true three-dimensional bodies. The applicability of this approach and its practical problems are examined using different ways of kernel density estimation and Monte-Carlo tests of the methodology. Finally, it is tested in how far the obtained frequency distributions can be used to classify the pottery

Damage rate is a predictor of fatigue life and creep strain rate in fatigue of tensile human cortical bone samples

We present results on the growth of damage in 29 fatigue tests of human femoral cortical bone from four individuals, aged 53–79. In these tests we examine the interdependency of stress, cycles to failure, rate of creep strain, and rate of modulus loss. The behavior of creep rates has been reported recently for the same donors as an effect of stress and cycles (Cotton, J. R., Zioupos, P., Winwood, K., and Taylor, M., 2003, "Analysis of Creep Strain During Tensile Fatigue of Cortical Bone," J. Biomech. 36, pp. 943–949). In the present paper we first examine how the evolution of damage (drop in modulus per cycle) is associated with the stress level or the "normalized stress" level (stress divided by specimen modulus), and results show the rate of modulus loss fits better as a function of normalized stress. However, we find here that even better correlations can be established between either the cycles to failure or creep rates versus rates of damage than any of these three measures versus normalized stress. The data indicate that damage rates can be excellent predictors of fatigue life and creep strain rates in tensile fatigue of human cortical bone for use in practical problems and computer simulations.