“Soon we will be able to fit the contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica on a head of a pin,” the famous physicist Richard Feynman argued back in the 1960s. Perhaps even he would be amazed at the possibilities now offered by carbon nanotubes, several hundred thousand times tinier than a pin. Their amazing properties have been exploited in an integrated circuit developed at the Karlsruhe Institut für Technologie.
This article explores investment protection under Chinese international investment agreements (IIAs), particularly under the China-Poland bilateral investment treaty (BIT). As a state that both imports and exports foreign direct investment, China currently promotes balanced and safeguarded BITs that protect its increasing overseas investments and preserves the necessary space to regulate in the public interest. The Chinese government remains reluctant to be directly involved in investment arbitration as a respondent, while Chinese investors are active in taking advantage of the IIAs’ regime. When compared to China’s recent treaty practice and new developments in global investment governance, the China-Poland BIT is relatively outdated in terms of investment protection, promotion, social clauses, and dispute settlement. In terms of the investment protection effects of BITs, China is seemingly in a more urgent position to update the China-Poland BIT. However, if we evaluate the overall effects of a modernized BIT on investment promotion, regulation, and dispute settlement, an updated China-Poland BIT will fit the interests of both the Polish and Chinese governments. Notwithstanding the on-going negotiation between the EU and China, this article aims, along with presenting the Chinese practice regarding BITs, to describe de lege lata the state of protection offered to Chinese and Polish investors under the China-Poland BIT.
This article examines the consequences of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) ruling in Achmea concerning Investor-State Arbitration (ISA) under intra- EU Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) from a treaty law perspective. It begins by briefly setting out the arguments of Advocate General Wathelet and the CJEU supporting their different positions on whether intra-EU BITs ISA clauses are compatible with EU law. The article then proceeds to analyse Achmea’s implications for intra-EU BIT ISA. It concludes that, as a result of the CJEU’s ruling, arbitral tribunals are deprived of their jurisdiction to entertain investors’ claims brought under intra-EU BIT ISA clauses. Finally, the article argues that Achmea’s applicability to cases brought under intra-EU BIT ISA clauses is limited, using the application of EU law as a relevant qualification. In order for an arbitral tribunal to be deprived of its jurisdictional competence as a result of Achmea, it must be entitled to interpret and apply EU law directly or indirectly in determining its jurisdiction.
Code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP) algorithms are proposed for compression of speech in 8 kHz band at switched or variable bit rate and algorithmic delay not exceeding 2 msec. Two structures of Low-Delay CELP coders are analyzed: Low-delay sparse excitation and mixed excitation CELP. Sparse excitation is based on MP-MLQ and multilayer models. Mixed excitation CELP algorithm stems from the narrowband G.728 standard. As opposed to G.728 LD-CELP coder, mixed excitation codebook consists of pseudorandom vectors and sequences obtained with Long-Term Prediction (LTP). Variable rate coding consists in maximizing vector dimension while keeping the required speech quality. Good speech quality (MOS=3.9 according to PESQ algorithm) is obtained at average bit rate 33.5 kbit/sec.
A novel method to improve the performance of the frequency band is cognitive radio that was introduced in 1999. Due to a lot of advantages of the OFDM, adaptive OFDM method, this technique is used in cognitive radio (CR) systems, widely. In adaptive OFDM, transmission rate and power of subcarriers are allocated based on the channel variations to improve the system performance. This paper investigates adaptive resource allocation in the CR systems that are used OFDM technique to transmit data. The aim of this paper is to maximize the achievable transmission rate for the CR system by considering the interference constraint. Although secondary users can be aware form channel information between each other, but in some wireless standards, it is impossible for secondary user to be aware from channel information between itself and a primary user. Therefore, due to practical limitation, statistical interference channel is considered in this paper. This paper introduces a novel suboptimal power allocation algorithm. Also, this paper introduces a novel bit loading algorithm. In the numerical results sections, the performance of our algorithm is compared by optimal and conventional algorithms. Numerical results indicate our algorithm has better performance than conventional algorithms while its complexity is less than optimal algorithm.
In this study, we propose a novel keyed hash algorithm based on a Boolean function and chaotic attractor. The hash algorithm called BentSign is based on two Signature attractors and XOR function and a bent Boolean function. The provided theoretical and experimental results confirm that the novel scheme can generate output hashes with a good level of security, collision resistance, and protection against most common attacks.
A novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme is proposed to improve the throughput and the outage probability of the cognitive radio (CR) inspired system which has been implemented to adapt multiple services in the nextgeneration network (5G). In the proposed scheme, the primary source (PS) had sent a superposition code symbol with a predefined power allocation to relays, it decoded and forwarded (DF) a new superposition coded symbol to the destination with the other power allocation. By using a dual antenna at relays, it will be improved the bandwidth efficiency in such CR NOMA scheme. The performance of the system is evaluated based on the outage probability and the throughput with the assumption of the Rayleigh fading channels. According to the results obtained, it is shown that the outage probability and throughput of the proposed full-duplex (FD) in CR-NOMA with reasonable parameters can be able deploy in practical design as illustration in numerical results section.
The judgment of the Court of Justice in the Achmea case evoked significant repercussions regarding the application and operation of the bilateral investment treaties (BITs) concluded between EU Member States. As a result of this decision, EU Member States have decided to terminate almost 190 intra-EU BITs. Nevertheless, full implementation of the Achmea judgment remains a complex issue, entangled in political and legal controversies concerning intra-EU BITs which have been present for more than a decade. On a more general level, the implementation process is simultaneously entwined in two other significant debates: the specifics of the rights of investors, and the relationship between EU law and international law.
The presented work proposes a new dimming control schemes for indoor visible light communication which combines variable pulse-position modulation, colour shift keying as key schemes of IEEE 802.15.7 standard, and sub carrier-pulse-position modulation as a pulse-position modulation variant with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. These schemes are then compared with traditional merging schemes utilizing pulse-width modulation and multiple pulse-position modulation with m-ary quadrature amplitude modulation OFDM. The proposed schemes are investigated in a typical room with a different lighting layout (i.e., distinctive and uniform lighting layout), followed by an illumination investigation to evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes, especially the enhanced achieved data rates, and to determine their limitations as reliable visible light communication systems that can satisfy both communication and illumination requirements.
The dual core bit-byte CPU must be equipped with properly designed circuits, providing interface between the two processor units, and making it possible to exploit all its advantages like versatility of the byte unit and speed of the bit unit. First of all, the interface circuits should be designed in such a way, that they dont disturb maximally parallel operation of the units, and that the CPU as a whole works in the same manner as in a standard PLC. The paper presents hardware solutions supporting effective operation of PLC CPU-s. Possibilities of solving problems concerning data exchange between a CPU and peripheral circuits were presented, with a special stress on timers and counters, and also on data exchange between the bit unit and the byte unit. The objective of the proposed solutions is to decrease the time necessary for a CPU to access its peripheries.