Financial inclusion and green economic performance for energy efficiency finance

Economic Change and Restructuring - Financial inclusion is fundamental for increasing the nation’s performance and green economy has emerged as one of the dominant factors to ecological...     

Interoperability from Electronic Commerce to Litigation Using XML Rules

We used the XML Rule system, earlier described in 7, 14, and16, to simulate litigation arising from electronic commercein a purchase order situation. This work is distinguished byusing XML documents that comply with standards, especially thosefrom OASIS.     

Keeping an eye on the money: third party exclusives after Douglas v Hello

The House of Lords has confirmed that the law of confidentialinformation confers rights on a third party who enters intoan exclusive contract with celebrities regarding the exploitationof their images or other confidential or private informationabout them.     

A Conceptual Framework for Modeling Automated Negotiations in Multiagent Systems

In fully automated e‐negotiation all involved parties are software agents, so negotiation takes place in a multiagent system between software agents that have been developed as a computer system for automating tasks in a specific application domain. A multiagent system is a group of agents that interact and cooperate with each other to fulfill their objectives or to improve their performance. How do these agents negotiate with each other to manage their task interdependencies? What negotiation mechanisms are needed? These are important questions. In this article, we present a conceptual framework for modeling and developing automated negotiation systems. This framework represents and specifies all the necessary concepts and entities for developing a negotiation system as well as the relationships among these concepts. This framework can also be used to model human negotiations scenarios for analyzing these types of negotiations and simulating them with multiagent systems. The work reported in this article is the first unified framework that represents all the needed elements for modeling and developing automated negotiation systems and existing relationships between them.     

Development of Latent Fingermarks on Various Surfaces Using ZnO‐SiO2 Nanopowder

Fingermarks are one of the most useful forms of evidence in identification and can provide generalized proof of identity in crime investigation. They are developed using various conventional powders. The novel nanopowder ZnO‐SiO₂ was synthesized via the conventional heating method and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy‐dispersive X‐ray (EDX) analysis, transmission electron microscope (TEM), and X‐ray diffraction (XRD). The mean particle size of ZnO‐SiO₂ nanopowder calculated through TEM was 32.9 nm. The development of fingermarks was carried out by powder dusting and small particle reagent (SPR) methods. Powder dusting method was used for the development of latent fingermarks on various dry, nonporous, and semi‐porous surfaces. The SPR method was also applied to wet nonporous surface. The developed latent fingermarks using ZnO‐SiO₂ nanopowder were found to have excellent quality with very clear third‐level ridges detail and had better visibility than commercially available white powder.     

Pakistan: the political economy of militarism

Ahmad Faruqui is an economist, who serves as a fellow with the American Institute of International Studies. He is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. Julian Schofield is an assistant professor in political science at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. His research examines the effects of arms races, particularly in relation to South Asia.