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The article examines the relationship between third-party countermeasures and the Security Council's powers to adopt measures under Chapter vii of the United Nations Charter in response to breaches of obligations erga omnes. It is shown that the resort to third-party countermeasures is neither precluded nor subject to limitations as a result of the relationship to the Security Council's Chapter vi

Identifying optimal inspection and repair strategies for offshore jacket structures is a challenging task. We present an approach, which is based on recent developments in the field of risk-based operation and maintenance planning at the structural system level. The approach utilizes heuristics to define inspection and repair strategies at the system level and to reduce the search space of possibl

Over the last decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been used for monitoring construction and operation of civil infrastructure, as well as industrial facilities and power plants. Their operational simplicity along with time-and-cost-related benefits have already rendered them attractive for structural surveying. Nevertheless, the field of UAV research currently lacks a targeted employment

A software prototype is developed for assessing and updating the reliability of single-cell prestressed concrete box girders subjected to chloride-induced reinforcement corrosion. The underlying system model consists of two integrated sub-models: a condition model for predicting the deterioration state of the box girder and a structural model for evaluating the overall system reliability. The cond

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems are designed for assisting owners and operators with information and forecasts concerning the fitness for purpose of structures and building systems. The benefit associated with the implementation of SHM may in some cases be intuitively anticipated or proven by past experiences but in general there appears to be no rational or systematic approach for asse

This paper describes a structural reliability analysis utilizing monitoring data in the ultimate limit state with consideration of the uncertainties of the monitoring procedure. For this purpose the uncertainties of the monitoring data are modeled utilizing a new framework for the determination of measurement uncertainties. The approach is based on a process equation and statistical models of obse

Prototypes of wind turbines of the megawatt class are to be built and tested starting from 2008 at the German offshore wind energy test site in the North Sea. To ensure a high operational reliability of future generations of offshore wind conversion systems (OWEC) with economically acceptable repair and maintenance efforts, comprehensive diagnosis and supervision concepts are required. Automatic m

Understanding implications on firm performance from the emergence of Internet of Things (IoT) is critical in order for firms to make rational decisions regarding business model configurations and investments in IoT. The transition between the current state and widespread adoption and diffusion of IoT is expected to be complex, and standardization is one of multiple barriers discussed in research r

We extend a thermodynamically consistent finite strain micro-sphere framework elaborated by Carol et al. towards the modelling of phase-transformations to allow for the simulation of polycrystalline solids such as, e.g., shape memory alloys and shape memory polymers undergoing large deformations. The considered phase-transformation mechanism is based on statistical physics and allows the considera

In spite of an Enterprise Systems Implementation Methodology's (ESIM's) potential and significance for Enterprise Systems implementation, little attention has been paid to its evolution in ES literature. Moreover, current studies reveal contradictory findings and provide a fragmented understanding. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework underpinned by a morphogenetic approach for expl

This paper uses matched employer-employee data set for Sweden to study the relationship between firm age and wages, systematically addressing a variety of possible explanations for observing a firm age-wage effect. Results show considerable heterogeneity across years, along segments of the firm age distribution and across industries. For 1995, a positive relationship is found between firm age and

It is tractable to increase the torque for an HCCI engine and one way is to add a turbocharger. Operating in HCCI mode requires accurate control of the combustion phasing, CA50. The higher the engine torque, the narrower the CA50 window becomes where HCCI operation is maintained. As the CA50 varies stochastically between cycles this requires improved CA50 control for turbo HCCI engines. The main f

The paper is an experimental study of using the rough sets based rule induction algorithm MODLEM in the framework of multiple classifiers. Particular attention is paid to using a meta-classifier called combiner, which learns how to aggregate answers of component classifiers. The experimental results confirm that the range of classification improvement for the combiner depends on the independence o

Molecular dynamics is used to simulate nanometer-sized copper strips. The strips are highly constrained and chosen to mimic thin films between two stiff layers. Further, the strips hold centrally placed straight through crack shaped voids, and are subjected to tensile displacement controlled mode I loading. The tensile stresses and displacements are studied. It is found that if a copper strip is 2