Mandatory Protection Research Articles

Open and Shut: Circulating People and Goods, Pollution, and History in the Canals of Suzhou

This article considers the twentieth- and twenty-first-century reinterpretation and reconfiguration of Suzhou’s canals in light of their use as a means of transport and flood control, and as a source of pollution. Throughout the Maoist period (1949-1976), the regime considered canals to be anachronistic impediments to urban renewal and filled in many urban waterways to create modern streets, industrial land, and fall-out shelters. Remaining canals were exploited for a variety of uses, including drains for pollutants as the city industrialized. In the Reform Era, from 1978 onwards, environmental protection mandates, fines for polluting paper mills and chemical plants, and the diversion of industrial and population growth to new sites restored Suzhou’s canals and public gardens as tourism and recreation assets. The archaic origin and historicity of the city’s canals, which previously inspired their destruction, now impels their refurbishment and validation as essential infrastructure of the modern city.

Rwanda Towards the Implementation of Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. the Current Status of ODS, Ods Alternatives, and HFCS Alternatives.

In August 2003, Rwanda ratified both the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, along with all the subsequent amendments, including the Kigali Amendment, which was most recently ratified in May 2017. Within this context, by the Law n°63/2013 of 27/08/2013, Rwanda Environment Management Authority (REMA) was created with the legal mandate for national environmental protection, conservation, promotion and overall management, including advisory to the government on all matters pertinent to the environment and climate change. According to Decision XIX/6 of the 19th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on accelerated phase-out of HCFCs, Rwanda is committed to phase-out use of HCFCs by 2030 except for 2.5% for servicing essential use appliances up to 2040. The Hydro chloro fluorocarbons Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP) Stage-I for Rwanda was approved at the 64th Meeting of the Executive Committee for the period 2011 to 2020 to meet a 35% reduction of HCFC by 2020. The HPMP Stage-II has been approved by the 86th meeting of the Executive Committee of the Multilateral Fund Secretariat, to be implemented by UNEP, UNIDO and REMA to enable Rwanda achieve phase-out targets on consumption of Annex C Group 1 Substances of the Montreal Protocol by 2030. The HPMP Stage-II has prioritized key activities to be implemented which include: establishment and implementation of a robust certification scheme for refrigeration technicians, development and implementation of national technical standards in the Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning (RAC) sector that will promote safe use of natural refrigerants and further promote use of highly energy efficiency technologies, capacity building of refrigeration technicians on handling natural refrigerants, training of customs and other enforcement officers on controlling and monitoring HCFC trade and strengthening the Refrigeration Association of Rwanda, technical training institutes and the consumers.The implementation of HPMP Stage-II activities will enable RWANDA reduce consumption of HCFC-22 from the baseline of 4.1 ODP tonnes to 80 percent by 2025 and 100 percent by 2030.This paper represents the results of the national survey conducted to inform the preparation of the project proposal for Kigali HFC Implamentation plan as well as the strategic KIP/HFC phase-down plan.

Effect of lead-free glass on the current transmission method at the Ag/Si interface in crystalline silicon solar cells.

Environmental protection mandates have spurred the widespread adoption of lead-free glass in electronic material adhesion. Glass powder, crucial for solar silver paste, notably affects the ohmic contact at the Ag-Si interface of crystalline silicon solar cells. This study examines how TeO2 content influences the high-temperature flowability and wettability of lead-free Bi2O3-TeO2-based glass powder, alongside the interplay between the glass's thermal properties and interface contact. Additionally, it investigates the Bi2O3-TeO2 ratio's impact on current transmission through the interfacial glass layer. Experimental results show that the synthesized glass powder exhibits superior high-temperature flowability and wettability, with a low contact resistance of 1.5 mΩ cm2 in silver paste applications. This study also proposes an optimal approach for enhancing current transmission through the interfacial glass layer. Consequently, this glass powder is highly valuable for c-Si solar cell silver paste applications, offering novel insights into improving current transmission efficiency.

Renewable energy in Morocco: Assessing resource curse risks

Renewable energy development and export creates an opportunity for low- and middle-income countries to foster green economic growth while supporting global decarbonisation. However, without careful assessment of risks, a renewable energy boom could create a resource curse which paradoxically slows growth and development. Here, the likelihood of a resource curse driven by renewable energy development in Morocco is evaluated. Specifically, 14 potential negative impacts of the resource curse (i.e. “symptoms”) relevant to renewable energy are studied. Through surveys with 21 Moroccan energy experts, the highest-risk (i.e. most likely and highest-impact) symptoms are found to be: (1) increased economic dependence on other countries and international organisations, (2) increased dependence on other countries for technology and expertise, and (3) damage to local flora, fauna, and landscape. The risks associated with these symptoms, while serious, are preventable via policy strengthening or intervention. Through 10 follow-up semi-structured interviews and subsequent complex systems analysis, the following policy interventions are identified to mitigate resource curse risks: careful negotiation of robust co-funding arrangements to safeguard Moroccan autonomy; the development of local renewable energy innovation capability, including technology manufacturing and test-bedding; and continuation and enhancement of environmental protection mandates.

Addressing Regulatory Failures in the Draft Revised Consumer Credit Directive

New forms of consumer credit, alongside the use of big data and macroeconomic developments, necessitate the revision of the 2008 Consumer Credit Directive (‘CCD’). The impact assessment conducted by the European Commission should collect and use relevant evidence that help lawmakers identify and address problems for the internal market and consumer protection. The impact assessment acknowledges that CJEU case law and legal literature are relevant sources of evidence that should inform the revision of the CCD. An analysis of CJEU case law and legal literature reveals three possible regulatory failures: firstly, it is more complicated for legislators to address new forms of credit under maximum harmonization, especially as the scope of maximum harmonization is unclear, which renders the CCD more vulnerable to obsolescence. Secondly, the emphasis on information obligations does not reflect consumers actual decision-making, and thirdly, there appears to be insufficient enforcement of consumer rights under the CCD. The impact assessment rarely directly refers to CJEU case law and legal literature but reflects the existence of these regulatory problems. However, the problem analysis with regard to maximum harmonization and enforceability remains superficial and one-sided, and the draft CCD continues to allow for divergences. While the draft CCD further harmonizes enforcement, it does not indicate which civil law sanctions, as developed in CJEU case law, are effective, proportionate and dissuasive. Further, the impact assessment fails to benefit fully from behavioural insights and the draft CCD accordingly contains obligations to provide consumers with considerable, but not timely and salient, information. The impact assessment does convincingly address the shortcomings in the creditworthiness check, and the draft CCD accordingly proposes more stringent provisions on this topic, which, coupled with mandatory protection, which may well help to address overindebtedness

The Super App and Children – China’s Challenges and Answers to Very, Very Large Internet Platforms and Very Small Users — How WeChat navigates the mandatory protection of children and especially their data privacy

The Super App and Children – China’s Challenges and Answers to Very, Very Large Internet Platforms and Very Small Users — How WeChat navigates the mandatory protection of children and especially their data privacy

Diagnosing Sun Protection Behavioral Barriers and Identifying Interventions for Public Health and the Environment

Common chemicals in sunscreen pose risks to corals and a wide range of other coastal species. To fulfill natural resource protection mandates, government agencies promote voluntary sun protection behaviors (SPBs) that protect human health while limiting chemical pollution. Yet little research on this topic exists to help inform program design. This article addresses that gap by identifying relevant behavioral barriers and associated interventions that agencies should consider in developing research-based public sun protection programs to lower environmental impacts. Natural resource managers can increase the effectiveness of their programs and outreach by adopting those that reduce informational complexity, impart ways social norms are changing, provide sunscreen product information at the time of the decision, and take steps to increase the probability of spillover of new behaviors to other locations.

Switzerland's good offices in light of the American hostage-taking in Iran (1979-1981)

Switzerland's neutrality during the Cold War allowed it, without joining any of the opposing blocs, to take an active part in international politics. This, in particular, was reflected in the so-called good offices and a series of protective mandates of Switzerland in Iran. The article presents a brief historical digression into the process of development of diplomatic relations between Switzerland and Iran. The purpose of the article is to determine the role of Swiss diplomacy in negotiations on the release of American hostages in Iran (1979-1981). The study was carried out on the basis of declassified archival documents, a significant part of which is being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time (documents of the US State Department and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs devoted to the settlement of the crisis with American hostages). This determined the scientific novelty of the study. The use of the historical-genetic method allowed us to study the genesis of bilateral relations between Switzerland and Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. A narrative (descriptive-narrative) method was used to describe Switzerland's diplomatic services to the United States in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Through the structural and functional method, it was possible to identify the mechanisms of Swiss diplomacy during secret meetings between the American and Iranian sides and the execution of the protective mandate to represent the interests of the United States in Iran. The historical-retrospective method helped to evaluate the results of Switzerland's "good offices" in Iran from the perspective of time distance.

Facial expression recognition of masked faces using deep learning

Facial expression recognition (FER) represents one of the most prevalent forms of interpersonal communication, which contains rich emotional information. But it became even more challenging during the times of COVID, where face masks became a mandatory protection measure, leading to the challenge of occluded lower-face during facial expression recognition. In this study, deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) represents the core of both our full-face FER system and our masked face FER model. The focus was on incorporating knowledge distillation in transfer learning between a teacher model, which is the full-face FER DCNN, and the student model, which is the masked face FER DCNN via the combination of both the loss from the teacher soft-labels vs the student soft labels and the loss from the dataset hard-labels vs the student hard-labels. The teacher-student architecture used FER2013 and a masked customized version of FER2013 as datasets to generate an accuracy of 69% and 61% respectively. Therefore, the study proves that the process of knowledge distillation may be used as a way for transfer learning and enhancing accuracy as a regular DCNN model (student only) would result in 46% accuracy compared to our approach (61% accuracy).

BGCFI: Efficient Verification in Fine-Grained Control-Flow Integrity Based on Bipartite Graph

Control-flow integrity (CFI) is considered a principled mitigation against control-flow hijacking even under the most powerful attacker who can arbitrarily write and read memory. However, existing schemes still demonstrated limitations in either guaranteeing high security level or achieving low performance and memory overhead. These limitations have restricted the application of CFI in real software. To improve its applicability similar to mandatory protection schemes such as DEP and ASLR, it is essential to improve both high security guarantee and low overhead. In this paper, we propose “BGCFI”, which is a fine-grained CFI based on a Bipartite Graph. The relationship between an indirect branch and a valid target address at the branch is represented by an edge in the bipartite graph. The verification of the indirect branch is achieved by checking the existence of the corresponding edge in the bipartite graph. The verification method for fine-grained CFI results in more efficiency on both computational and memory overhead, while completely preserving high security guarantee. We demonstrate our results through the implementation of a proof-of-concept module and evaluation on the SPEC CPU 2017 suite and the Firefox browser.

Cyber Security of Smart Watches : A Review of the Vulnerabilities with Recommendations Presented to Protect the Wearables

This paper will explore the security of smart watches that have seen significant growth over the past few years. As smart watches gain popularity in society, addressing privacy and security concerns to keep sensitive information safe from malicious exploitation must be important. In an industry with limited focus from academic researchers, governments, or leading security companies, I will examine whether smart watches should have mandatory security protection governed by security regulations and policies that protect data privacy and exposure from potential attacks.

People First, Data Second: A Humanitarian Research Framework for Fieldwork with Refugees by War Zones.

War begets crises that are among the most urgent areas requiring help from the international HCI/CSCW community; yet too few scientists address it using context-based, participatory field methods and by engaging in country and regionally based, longitudinal partnerships. Drawing on the author’s ongoing eight-year engagement as a design ethnographer with UNHCR Jordan and region for the Syrian War, this paper discusses Humanitarian Research as a framework for guiding HCI/CSCW research in conflict zones with displaced persons. Based on the principle of “People First, Data Second,” Humanitarian Research is explained with illustrative examples along with the nature of war and UNHCR’s protection mandate, the research challenges and ethical roles of HCI scientists in conflict zones and how these roles entwine with refugee stakeholders, NGOs, country actors, and university IRBs.

Introducing the Peacekeeping Mandates (PEMA) Dataset

Research on UN peacekeeping operations has established that operations' size and composition affect peacekeeping success. However, we lack systematic data for evaluating whether variation in tasks assigned to UN peacekeeping mandates matters and what explains different configurations of mandated tasks in the first place. Drawing on UN Security Council resolutions that establish, extend, or revise mandates of 27 UN peacekeeping operations in Africa in the 1991–2017 period, the Peacekeeping Mandates (PEMA) dataset fills this gap. It records 41 distinct tasks, ranging from disarmament to reconciliation and electoral support. For each task, the PEMA dataset also distinguishes between three modalities of engagement (monitoring, assisting, and securing) and whether the task is requested or merely encouraged. To illustrate the usefulness of our data, we re-examine Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon’s (2013) analysis of operations’ ability to protect civilians. Our results show that host governments and rebel groups respond differently to civilian protection mandates.

On an optimal testing strategy for workplace settings operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.

High quality daily testing for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 in workplace settings has become part of the standard and mandatory protection measures implemented widely in response to the current pandemic. Such tests are often limited to a small fraction of the attending personnel due to cost considerations, limited availability and processing capabilities and the often cumbersome requirements of the test itself. A maximally efficient use of such an important and frequently scarce resource is clearly required. We here present an optimal testing strategy which minimises the presence of pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic infected members of the population in a workplace setting, derived under a series of simplifying statistical assumptions. These assumptions however, retain many of the generalities of the problem and yield robust results, as verified through a number of numerical simulations. We show that reduction in overall infected-person-days, IPD, by significant percentages can be achieved, for fixed numbers of tests per day of 5% and 10% of the population, of 30% and 50% in the IPD numbers, respectively.

North Carolina Board of Nursing's Alternative Program COVID-19 Response.

The North Carolina Board of Nursing (NCBON) implemented an alternative-to-discipline program (AP) in 1995 for nurses experiencing a substance use disorder. There have been programmatic changes since the inception of the AP. However, COVID-19 posed significant challenges related to balancing the NCBON's public protection mandate against COVID-19 impacts on the nurse's ability to comply with the AP conditions. The changes to the AP structure in response to COVID-19 included transition from in-person orientation interviews to virtual, drug screening process modifications, acceptance of virtual treatment and 12-step meeting attendance, and specific employment condition waiver accommodations. The NCBON identified modifications facilitated opportunities for nurses to remain compliant with the conditions of the AP while meeting the mandate of public protection.

Legal and practical dimensions of the protection of areas, facilities and devices important for state security

The article discusses the legal obligations of heads of units included in the register of areas, facilities and devices subject to mandatory protection in the voivodeship. The obligation of the head of the unit to provide physical or technical protection of an object. Significant items for state security with the use of internal security services or personal and property protection agencies – that is often criticized. However, it should be remembered that the cooperation of services, guards and inspections with the private sector is necessary to obtain an appropriate level of security. In addition, practical ways to ensure the safety of areas, facilities and devices subject to mandatory protection are also presented. The current technological development does not reduce the protection of the facility only to physical protection, allowing the use of modern technical security systems in order to support the activities of specialized employees of armed security formations. Due to the above, the authors described the operation of selected technical security systems in protected facilities.

The International Organization for Migration: The New ‘UN Migration Agency’ in Critical Perspective

When I first joined the staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1987, I was quickly informed by my new colleagues that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was an agency that I need not take too seriously. Its budget and field presence were considerably smaller than those of our own agency. IOM was not a part of the United Nations (UN) system and was largely under the control of the United States (US) and its Western allies. It lacked a protection mandate and much of its work consisted of preparing and transporting refugees who had been selected for resettlement by UNHCR. It was, in a dismissive phrase regularly used by UNHCR staff at that time, ‘just a glorified travel agency’. Fast forward to 2021, and that scenario has changed out of all recognition. Over the past 30 years, IOM has grown considerably in size and...

Challenges of State Institutions in Environmental Protection: A Case of Taraba State, Nigeria

This study examined the challenges of state institutions in environmental protection in Nigeria using the case of Taraba state. The institution theory was used as a theoretical framework for the study. The study adopted a descriptive design method using desktop review of secondary materials. Content analysis was used in analyzing the data. The findings of the study revealed that some of the challenges of the state environmental protection institutions include lack of political will, inadequate funding, inadequate qualified personnel, inadequate environmental protection infrastructures, poor condition of environmental protection laboratory, lack of office buildings for staff and poor capacity development. The study also revealed that since the creation of the Ministry of Environment in year 2000 in Taraba state, it is only in 2001, 2013 and 2014 that the ministry received up to 4% of the budgetary allocation of the state. The myriad of challenges have greatly constrained the capacity of the state institution to effectively achieve its mandate of environmental protection. Based on the findings, the study recommends the need for more political commitment to the issues of environmental protection through increased funding, employment of qualified personnel, establishment of environmental protection laboratories and increased capacity development. Environmental protection, institutional framework, Ministry of environment, State Institution and Taraba state.

Work-related stressors accompanying school social workers while assessing children’s well-being: A comparative study between Germany and Finland

This article presents the results of a comparative study investigating work-related stressors (WRSs) that accompany German and Finnish school social workers (SSWs) while assessing children’s well-being. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in combination with the case vignette technique. The interview data were subjected to a coding process and visualized with the MAXQDA software program. The findings are embedded in the respective country-specific socio-political and legislative context and suggest that the SSWs are confronted with several, but different WRSs, depending on whether they have a child protection mandate (Germany) or not (Finland). Recommendations are generated based on the findings.

Protection through peacebuilding in South Sudan

ABSTRACT Protecting civilians has been the primary raison d’être of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) since civil war erupted in late 2013. Since then, UN efforts to protect vulnerable civilians have focused on a handful of so-called protection of civilians (PoC) sites. While they have unquestionably saved lives, the PoC sites have also absorbed the lion’s share of mission resources, severely limiting UNMISS’ ability to protect civilians elsewhere. The signing of the still-fragile Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) has enabled a reconsideration of the UNMISS protection mandate in light of what remains an uncertain transition. Given the systemic constraints on the UN’s ability to project force in the name of PoC, we argue that UNMISS’ most constructive and lasting contribution to both protection and peace in South Sudan will be through sustained investments in inclusive local-level peacebuilding. Re-orienting the PoC mandate along these lines offers an opportunity to at least partially counteract the decidedly exclusive nature of the country’s current peace process, and to support bottom-up conflict resolution processes that could eventually interact in constructive ways with top-down dynamics.