This article contributes to the growing literature on Art. 7 TEU by showcasing the strong and weak points of this provision in the context of the on-going rule of law backsliding in Hungary and Poland – backsliding which threatens the very fabric of EU constitutionalism. The article presents the general context of the EU’s institutional reactions to the so-called “reforms” in Poland and Hungary, which are aimed at hijacking the state machinery by the political parties in charge. Next it introduces the background of Art. 7 TEU and the hopes the provision was endowed with by its drafters before moving on to analysis of its scope and all the mechanisms made available through this instrument, including the key procedural rules governing their use. The author posits that it may be necessary to put our hopes in alternative instruments and policies to combat the current rule of law backsliding, and the article concludes by outlining three possible scenarios to reverse the backsliding, none of which are (necessarily) connected with Art. 7 as such.
The paper presents the results of assessment studies of the time course for technical wear in masonry buildings located in the area of mining-induced ground deformations. By using fuzzy inference system (FIS) and the “if-then” rule, corresponding language labels describing actual damage recorded in structure components were translated into scalar outputs describing the degree of damage to the building. Adopting this approach made it possible to separate damage resulting from additional effects coming from mining-induced ground deformations and the natural wear and tear of masonry structure. By using statistical analysis an exponential function for the condition of building damage and the function of natural wear and tear were developed. Both phenomena were subject to studies as a function of time regarding the technical age of building structure. The results obtained were used to develop a model for the course of technical wear of traditionally constructed buildings used within mining areas.
In the course of natural wear and tear buildings located in mining areas are additionally exposed to forced ground deformations. The increase of internal forces in structure components induced by those effects results in creating an additional stress factor and damage. The hairline cracks and cracks of building structure components take place when the intensity value of mining effects becomes higher than the component stress resistance and repeated effects result in the decrease of structure rigidity. The observations of building behaviour in mining areas show that the intensity of mining activity and the multiplicity of its effect play a substantial role in the course of technical wear of buildings. The studies show that the level of damage resulting from mining effects adds up to natural wear and tear of the building and impairs the global technical condition as compared to similar buildings used outside mining areas.
The goal of the article is the description and analyze of the exclusions of the maritime carrier’s liability, regulated in international conventions, known as the Hague-Visby Rules and the Hamburg Rules. Their construction is basically different and indicates, that their creators had quite the opposite approach in the way of regulation of the negative scope of maritime carrier’s liability.
In the article it has been compared each exclusion of liability in both conventions, especially with the consideration of the genuine differences with the carrier’s scope of liability. It has been analyzed the examples of the real cases, that have been ruled on the grounds of the maritime carrier’s liability. It has been also take a try to evaluate if the court’s sentence would be the same on the grounds of both conventions, or rather would be different.
This article analyses the capacity of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance to counteract the democratic governance shortfall. It argues that the tangible impact of the treaty on the states’ practice has been limited by various endogenous and exogenous factors. The former are identified as directly linked to content of the document and refer to the accuracy of the drafting. The latter are rooted outside the text and beyond the character of the Charter and include issues relating to the states’ reluctance to ratify the document, certain constitutional constraints undermining implementation on the national level, and the weak international guarantees of enforcement.
The objective of this paper is to derive the characteristics of an effective governance framework ensuring incentives for conducting a prudent fiscal policy.We study this problem with the use of econometric tools and a sample of 28 European Union Member States between 2003 and 2017. By looking at specific reforms and measures, not only we verify the synthetic effectiveness of fiscal constraints but also we analyse specific elements of the governance framework.Our study shows that fiscal balances are affected not only by the economic cycle, but, among others, by the level of public debt and its cost. We find that the existence of numerical fiscal rules, in that specifically revenue and expenditures rules, their strong legal entrenchment, surveillance mechanisms, sanctions, and flexibility with respect to business cycle have a significant impact on curbing deficits.
Power big data contains a lot of information related to equipment fault. The analysis and processing of power big data can realize fault diagnosis. This study mainly analyzed the application of association rules in power big data processing. Firstly, the association rules and the Apriori algorithm were introduced. Then, aiming at the shortage of the Apriori algorithm, an IM-Apriori algorithm was designed, and a simulation experiment was carried out. The results showed that the IM-Apriori algorithm had a significant advantage over the Apriori algorithm in the running time. When the number of transactions was 100 000, the running of the IM-Apriori algorithm was 38.42% faster than that of the Apriori algorithm. The IM-Apriori algorithm was little affected by the value of supportmin. Compared with the Extreme Learning Machine (ELM), the IM-Apriori algorithm had better accuracy. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the IM-Apriori algorithm in fault diagnosis, and it can be further promoted and applied in power grid equipment.
This paper presents a multidisciplinary model built across linguistics and selected research and hypotheses in the field of quantum physics and molecular biology. The conceptual link between the biological concept of protein sequencing and the anthropocentric assumptions concerning the operationalization of language rules will be discussed. The multidisciplinary model shows the link between the concept of sequencing language rules and constructing textemes.
The concept of a general average is the oldest institution of maritime law. Its usefulness in modern shipping relations has long been criticized. Nevertheless, the general average, despite the fact that it is not the subject of any international agreement, occupies a prominent place in the internal legal systems of maritime states, and the international community continues to show great interest in it, regularly changing the principles of accounting established in the second half of the 19th century in York and Antwerp. During the work on the draft of the new Polish Maritime Code, the Maritime Law Codification Commission made some changes in the regulations concerning the general average, adapting the provisions of Polish law to new solutions proposed by participants of international maritime trade and non-governmental organizations, including Comité Maritime International.
In this paper, the issue related to control of the plant with nonconstant parameters is addressed. In order to assure the unchanged response of the system, an adaptive state feedback speed controller for permanent magnet synchronous motor is proposed. The model-reference adaptive system is applied while the Widrow-Hoff rule is used as adjustment mechanism of controller’s coefficients. Necessary modifications related to construction of the cost function and formulas responsible for adjustment of state feedback speed controller’s coefficients are depicted. The impact of adaptation gain, which is the only parameter in proposed adjustment mechanism, on system behaviour is experimentally examined. The discussion about computational resources consumption of the proposed adaptation algorithm and implementation issues is included. The proposed approach is utilized in numerous experimental tests on modern SiC based drive with nonconstant moment of inertia. Comparison between adaptive and nonadaptive control schemes is also shown.
The report encompasses the activity of the Committee on Ethics in Science in the year 2018.