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The counterfactual comparative account of harm (cca) faces well-known problems concerning preemption and omission. In a recent article in this journal, Daniel Immerman proposes a novel variant of cca, which he calls the worse than nothing account (wtna). According to Immerman, wtna nicely handles the preemption and omission problems. We seek to show, however, that wtna is not an acceptable account of harm. In particular, while wtna deals better than cca with some cases that involve preemption and omission, it has implausible implications in other similar cases – cases that, moreover, pose no problems for CCA.

We offer a model of scientific progress in which uncertainty resolves over time. We show that rivalry leads to less experimentation, extending results for preemption games to experimentation with uncertain outcomes. We compare experimentation duration and welfare when experimental outcomes are publicly versus privately observable. We show that public learning can generate more experimentation and higher welfare when uncertainty about the feasibility of a breakthrough is large; breakthroughs are rare even when they are feasible; and experiments produce results infrequently. Our results shed light on recent criticism of the science system.

We consider the problem of finding a minimum-length preemptive schedule for n jobs on m parallel machines. The problem is solvable in polynomial time, whether the machines are identical, uniform or unrelated. For identical or uniform machines, it is easy to obtain an optimal schedule in which the portion of a job that is assigned to a single machine is processed without interruption. We show that imposing this condition in the case of unrelated machines makes the problem NP-hard.

As rented and shared micromobility options, e-scooters are new and potentially transformative app-based modes that promise to alleviate first mile/last mile mobility issues, congestion, and more. Yet their safe deployment has not yet been systematically understood or standardized by users, cities, or operators. From 2017 to 2021, 267,700 people were treated for injuries in emergency departments and 129 were killed in micromobility product-related crashes. These devices are not yet regulated by a federal agency like the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration or the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and their use is not uniformly regulated at the municipal level. Some jurisdictions are imposing strict regulations across a region, regardless of density levels or urban design, while others have not imposed any rules at all. Without further understanding of what constitutes effective local regulation, the safe operation of these devices may not improve. This project explores what types of regulations municipalities and regions are imposing in an effort to address the safe deployment of these micromobility options.

According to the counterfactual comparative account (CCA), an event harms a person if and only if it makes things worse for her. Cases of overdetermination and preemption pose a serious challenge to CCA since, in these cases, although it is evident that people are harmed, there are no individual events that harm them. However, while there are no individual events that make people worse off in cases of overdetermination and preemption, there are pluralities of events that do so. In light of this feature of these cases, several philosophers have suggested that it is these pluralities that do the harming. In this article, I will argue that although the most prominent accounts of plural harm – e.g., Neil Feit’s account – fare better than one might initially think, they fail to deal adequately with a number of intriguing cases of preemption first introduced by Alastair Norcross. I will also introduce a new view on plural harm and argue that this view, apart from dealing with the cases of overdetermination and preemption that the other accounts of plural harm handle, also deals adequately with Norcross’s cases.

Recent American patent scholarship has begun to explore the intersection of the patent system and guarantees of expressive freedom, noting that patents may impinge on the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution and chill or prohibit protected speech. But guarantees of expressive freedom are not limited to the Federal Constitution; they are also found in state constitutional provisions, some of which offer broader protection than that guaranteed in the First Amendment. In this essay I examine the relationship between federally issued patents and the guarantees of expressive freedom found in state constitutions. State constitutions vary in their wording and interpretation, so my primary focus will be on those states that have viewed their state constitutional provisions as extending beyond the protections offered by the federal First Amendment. While the Supremacy Clause prevents states from overriding federal patent law, I argue here that state constitutional provisions can alter, shape, or even prohibit certain types of patent assertions, just as state law may moderate other uses of personal property. The discussion of this interaction highlights several previously unexplored aspects of the vertical relationship between federal patent policy and state law, and offers an alternative route to vindicating expressive rights encumbered by patents.

Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) is a set of IEEE 802.1 technologies that support real-time and reliable Ethernet communication, commonly used in automotive and industrial automation systems. Time-aware scheduling is adopted in TSN to achieve high temporal predictability. In this paper, we demonstrate that such a scheduling solution alone does not always meet all timing requirements and must be combined with network preemption support. We propose an SMT-based synthesis method for preemptive time-triggered scheduling and routing in TSN. Our experiments demonstrate that schedulability is improved significantly when using frame preemption compared to a standard time-triggered message scheduling approach.

Recent American patent scholarship has begun to explore the intersection of the patent system and guarantees of expressive freedom, noting that patents may impinge on the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution and chill or prohibit protected speech. But guarantees of expressive freedom are not limited to the Federal Constitution; they are also found in state constitutional provisions, some of which offer broader protection than that guaranteed in the First Amendment. In this essay I examine the relationship between federally issued patents and the guarantees of expressive freedom found in state constitutions. State constitutions vary in their wording and interpretation, so my primary focus will be on those states that have viewed their state constitutional provisions as extending beyond the protections offered by the federal First Amendment. While the Supremacy Clause prevents states from overriding federal patent law, I argue here that state constitutional provisions can alter, shape, or even prohibit certain types of patent assertions, just as state law may moderate other uses of personal property. The discussion of this interaction highlights several previously unexplored aspects of the vertical relationship between federal patent policy and state law, and offers an alternative route to vindicating expressive rights encumbered by patents.

Timing of market entry is one of the most important strategic decisions a firm must make, but its decision process becomes convoluted with information and payoff spillovers. The threat of competition pushes firms to enter earlier to preempt their rivals while the possibility of learning make them cautiously wait for others to take action. This combination amounts to a new class of timing games where first-mover advantage first emerges as in preemption games but second-mover advantage later prevails as in wars of attrition. Our model identifies under what conditions a firm becomes a pioneer, early follower or late entrant and shows that the timing of entry is excessively early (late) when there emerges a late entrant (early follower). We also argue that consumer inertia is often efficiency-enhancing in this environment, highlighting an elusive link between static market competition and dynamic entry competition.

The EU Regulation 1169/2011 on food information to consumers provided many exceptions to the rule which states the general irrelevance of origin in food labelling and stated that Member States have the possibility to impose further mandatory information about origin/place of provenance for some categories of quality products. On this ground, many Member States introduced in recent years national rules about origin, feeding the so-called “battle on transparency and made-in declarations”. The European Court of Justice in the judgment in comment stated that: – The general rule contained in Art. 26.2 of the Regulation, although laconic, is an absolute pre-emption of the matter. – Art. 39, which allows Member States to add some further mandatory particulars to the list of the Regulation, is limited to products whose qualities depend on the geographical origin and only at the condition that consumers consider this information essential; – The risk of deterioration of milk, due to the long-distance transport is not covered by Art. 39. In this way, a window of opportunity seems definitely closed for those who support the “made-in battle”, considering that the ECJ has adopted an orthodox approach, coherent with the rules of free circulation of goods in the internal market. This comment, starting from this point, highlights the consequences in the short term of this judgment, and envisages how in the future this fight could carry on., Le Règlement 1169/2011/UE sur l’information des consommateurs concernant les denrées alimentaires avait prévu de nombreuses exceptions à la règle générale de la tendance à la «non-pertinence» de l’indication d’origine sur l’étiquette. Par conséquence, les États membres pouvaient imposer des informations supplémentaires concernant l’origine de certaines catégories de produits de qualité. Sur cette base, nombreux États membres ont introduit des dispositions à cet effet pendant ces dernières années, alimentant la bataille sur le soi-disant «Fabriqué en» (Made in). La Cour a statué que: — La règle générale contenue à l’art. 26.2, bien que «laconique», est une forme de préemption absolue de la matière. — L’art. 39 qui autorise les États membres à ajouter certaines informations obligatoires à celles imposées par le règlement est limité aux seuls produits dont les qualités dépendent de l’origine géographique et uniquement si les consommateurs estiment que ces informations sont nécessaires. — Le risque de détérioration du lait dû au transport ne relève pas des conditions de l’art. 39. Cela ferme une fenêtre d’opportunité aux partisans de la transparence sur l’origine, étant donné que la Cour interprète le règlement de la manière la plus compatible possible avec la libre circulation des marchandises. Le commentaire, en prenant note de cela, met en évidence les répercussions à court terme de cet arrêt. En plus, on émet l’hypothèse sur comment la bataille sur le Made in pourrait se poursuivre à long terme., El Reglamento n.º 1169/2011 (UE) relativo a la información a los consumidores sobre los alimentos preveía numerosas excepciones a la regla general de la «irrelevancia» tendencial de la indicación del origen del producto en el etiquetado, así como que los Estados miembros podían imponer la obligación de añadir información adicional sobre el origen de determinadas categorías de productos con determinadas cualidades. Sobre esta base, numerosos Estados miembros han ido introduciendo disposiciones a tal efecto en los últimos años, estimulando la campaña a favor o en contra del llamado «Hecho en» (Made in). El Tribunal de Justicia dictaminó que: – La regla genera lo establecido en el art. 26.2, aunque expresada de forma sucinta, constituye una forma de preferencia absoluta en la materia. – El art. 39, que autoriza a los Estados miembros a añadir determinada información obligatoria adicional a la impuesta por el Reglamento, se limita únicamente a los productos cuyas cualidades dependen del origen geográfico y solo si dicha información puede considerarse necesaria para los consumidores. – El riesgo de deterioro de la leche debido al transporte no entra en las condiciones previstas en el art. 39. Esta decisión supone una contrariedad para los defensores de la transparencia sobre el origen, dado que, en su sentencia, el Tribunal de Justicia interpreta el reglamento en cuestión de la manera más acorde posible con la libre circulación de mercancías. Teniendo en cuenta lo dicho, nuestro comentario trata de resaltar las repercusiones a corto plazo de la sentencia y plantea la hipótesis de cómo, a largo plazo, la polémica sobre el Made in podría continuar. Palabras clave: Información a los consumidores sobre los alimentos; indicación del origen; lugar de procedencia; información obligatoria adicional; preferencia; libre circulación de productos; reglamentos nacionales; primacía; etiquetado del país de origen; made in.

The scheduler has been extensively studied from the point of view of their schedules, using operations research. However, the scheduler not only fulfils a decision-maker role but also an informational role, responding to requests and disruptions, both from the supply and the demand side. Responding in a timely manner to such requests and disruptions is paramount for the scheduling job. Using a field study with job shadowing of schedulers in a Fortune 500 chemical company, we characterise the scheduler’s workflow in a simulation model; this allows us to discriminate between contextual factors of the scheduler’s job and behavioural factors inherent to them. Furthermore, it explicitly assesses the effect of increasing the frequency sensing of the outer world on responsiveness. Our findings show that the studied schedulers prioritise sensing activities related to checking emails rather than monitoring for disruptions in a decision support system. Thus, we find a higher potential for relative improvement in terms of responding to possible disruptions shown in decision support systems rather than responding to email requests. Moreover, we show that by adjusting email frequency checking and preemption behaviours, it is possible to revert an out of control situation to finite response times.

This project examines the spatial effects of controlling security measures in places of mass gathering, specifically public squares, and develops a generalised framework for evaluating these effects in other spaces. Over the first decades of the twenty-first century there has been a rapid and transformative shift in perceptions of threat and national security, particularly in the west, towards preemption. This reactionary shift has introduced new motivations behind controlling security measures, amplifying tensions between security imperatives and rights to the city. Security in public space is not new, but in recent years there has been an increase in protective security interventions and a tightening of rules about acceptable behaviours. This project is motivated by a lack of understanding of the small-scale, spatial impacts of national security imperatives and the global doctrine of preemption on the fabric and lived experiences of urban places. This research employs a multiple case study analysis method to reveal generalised spatial conditions and security effects. The case study sites are Federation Square in Melbourne, Trafalgar Square in London, and Hashemite Plaza in Amman. Twelve security measures were investigated at each site, within three broad categories – panoptic devices, regulatory procedures and fortress measures. Primary source data was collected as spatial observations in the form of mapping, photographing and analysing. Each site was visited over several days during different conditions, times and events. At each visit the spatial layout of security measures was observed and noted, including how they interact with and effect each other, people and events in the space. Historical research into each site explains their development; the process of securitisation; and their varied historical, social and cultural contexts. This research reveals generalised patterns of control and power relations across diverse global sites, expressed through controlli

The current outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19), has spurred a large governmental response from all levels of the U.S. intergovernmental system. The emergency and disaster response system of the United States is designed to be bottom-up, meaning responses are intended to begin at the local level with state and federal governments stepping in to assist with resources and oversight as needed (Rubin and Barbee 1985; Schneider 1995, 2008). The response to the current outbreak, however, has been something else entirely, as each level of government competes with the others over dwindling resources and the authority to respond to the crisis. We examine how the U.S. intergovernmental system of emergency response is designed, how state and local governments have responded to the COVID-19 crisis thus far, and how this crisis has further exposed tensions in the state-local intergovernmental system. We use the National League of Cities’ (2020) COVID-19 Local Action Tracker to examine city and state responses to the pandemic. We argue state-local intergovernmental response is associated with many issues related to intergovernmental relations broadly, particularly conflict about the “best” emergency services provider. This leads some states to prefer a local response with state support and other states to prefer a more uniform, state-mandated response enabled by state preemption of local actions. The latter has revealed an often-dormant means of state preemption of local ordinances: the executive order preemption. Accessible through the emergency powers afforded to U.S. governors, this type of preemption is uncommon because it is overshadowed by legislative and judicial preemptions. This article seeks to explore descriptively the prevalence of executive order preemptions and discuss the implications of these preemptions in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. These preemptions var

In our fast-forward times, the special issue ‘Back to the Future: Telling and Taming Anticipatory Media Visions and Technologies’ examines the future-making capacity of networked services and digital data. Its contributions ask about the role media play in forecasting the future and their part in bringing it about. And they are interested in the expectations and anticipatory visions that accompany the formation and spread of new media. Along these lines, the eight articles in this special issue explore the future-making dimension of new media. As a whole, they provide an empirically grounded analysis of the ways media reconfigure the relations and distances among present, past, and future times. The contributions delineate imaginaries of futures related to digital media. Furthermore, they attend to interventions into the plans and efforts of making futures and they inquire about the creation of differently vast and (un)certain horizons of expectation. Together, the articles share the assumption that mediated futures are actively accomplished and enacted; they do not simply appear or wait for us to arrive in them.

According to the standard version of the counterfactual comparative account of harm, an event is overall harmful for an individual if and only if she would have been on balance better off if it had not occurred. This view faces the “preemption problem.” In the recent literature, there are various ingenious attempts to deal with this problem, some of which involve slight additions to, or modifications of, the counterfactual comparative account. We argue, however, that none of these attempts work, and that the preemption problem continues to haunt the counterfactual comparative account., Harm: The Concept and Its Relevance

As social creatures, we lean on the work of others to epistemically situate ourselves in our complex environments. A particularly important instance of our epistemic reliance on others is our dependence on epistemic authorities: those who hold some normative power over our epistemic behaviour. Often, accounts of such epistemic authority suggest that it is constituted by a connection to a certain set of true beliefs. I provide an alternative account that roots epistemic authority in an individual’s superior ability to participate in a certain kind of epistemic practice. Such a view better accounts for the variety of ways in which we engage with epistemic authorities: as sources of knowledge, as providers of understanding, as intellectual collaborators, and as pedagogues and guides. With this account in hand, I put it to work: first, in providing an account of what is required of an epistemic agent to remain epistemically autonomous, and epistemically responsible, when dealing with an epistemic authority; secondly, in establishing the role of epistemic humility in ensuring that relationships of epistemic authority function in an epistemically successful fashion.

Resumen Hoy en día, las comunicaciones han alcanzado un nivel globalizado, en el que una gran cantidad de dispositivos muy diferentes interaccionan para intercambiar información. Surge la necesidad de encontrar una solución que permita la interoperabilidad de dispositivos de diferente naturaleza. Esta globalización ha llegado al mundo industrial y a las comunicaciones entre los equipos que la componen, dando lugar a la denominada Industria 4.0. Este proyecto se basa en el desarrollo de un banco de pruebas que permite comprobar el funcionamiento de nuevos sistemas que soporten el estándar Ethernet 802.3 en redes sensibles al tiempo. El estándar concreto sobre el que se trabaja es el 802.3br que aporta una mejora a la interoperabilidad, mediante la convivencia en un mismo enlace de tráfico de alta prioridad junto a tráfico no prioritario. Este banco de pruebas supone el inicio hacia el desarrollo de esta nueva tecnología y permite verificar el cumplimiento de la normativa del estándar por parte de equipos que se desarrollen en un futuro. Además, permite conocer y analizar desde un grado más detallado el funcionamiento y las necesidades de las redes sensibles al tiempo, en las que los enlaces deben cumplir las condiciones necesarias para ofrecer un servicio adecuado, de calidad y fiable., Nowadays, communications have reached a globalized level, in which a large number of very different devices interact to exchange information. The need arises to find a solution that allows the interoperability of devices of different nature. This globalization has reached the industrial world and communications between the devices that make it up, giving rise to the so-called Industry 4.0. This project is based on the development of a testbench that allows checking the operation of new systems that support the Ethernet 802.3 standard in time sensitive networks. The concrete standard on which we work is the 802.3br that provides an improvement to interoperability, through coexistence in the same link of high priority traffic and non-priority traffic. This testbench marks the start towards the development of this new technology and allows verifying compliance with the standards of the norm that develop in the future. In addition, it allows knowing and analysing from a more detailed level the operation and the needs of time-sensitive networks, in which the links must meet the necessary conditions to offer an adequate, quality and reliable service., Laburpena Gaur egun, hedabideak maila batera heldu dira non, neurri handi batean, oso ezberdinak diren gailu askok elkarrekin izaten dituzten informazioa elkarrekin trukatzen duten. Mota ezberdineko gailuen elkarrenganako operakortasuna ahalbidetzeko konponbidea aurkitzearen beharra sortzen da. Globalizazio hori industriako mundura eta mundu hori osatzen duen tresneriaren komunikazioetara heldu da, '4.0' deitutako industria sortuz. Proiektua froga banku baten garapenean oinarritzen da, zeinean sistema berri batzuen funtzionamendua frogatu ahal dugun, Ethernet 802.3 estandarra denborarekiko sentikorrak diren sareetan onartzen dutenek. Erabiltzen den estandarra, zehazki, '802.3br'-a da, interoperabilitatearekiko hobekuntza dakarrena, lotura berean lehentasun altuko eta lehentasun baxuko trafikoaren elkarbizitzaren bidez. Froga banku horrek aipatutako teknologia berriaren garatzearen hasiera dakar, eta etorkizunean garatutako gailuak araudia betetzen duten a la ez egiaztatzera ahalbidetzen du. Bestalde, denborarekiko sentikorrak diren sareen beharrak eta funtzionamendua ezagutzea eta aztertzea baimentzen du, non loturak beharrezko baldintzak bete behar dituzten egokia, kalitatezkoa eta fidagarria den zerbitzua eskaintzeko.

Smoke-free policies prevent exposure to secondhand smoke and encourage tobacco cessation. Local smoke-free policies that are more comprehensive than statewide policies are not allowed in states with preemption, including Oklahoma, which has the sixth highest smoking prevalence in the United States. In states with preemption, voluntary smoke-free measures are encouraged, but little research exists on venue owners' and managers' views of such measures, particularly in nightlife businesses such as bars and nightclubs. This article draws from semistructured interviews with 23 Oklahoma bar owners and managers, examining perceived risks and benefits of adopting voluntary smoke-free measures in their venues. No respondents expressed awareness of preemption. Many reported that smoke-free bars and nightclubs were an inevitable societal trend, particularly as younger customers increasingly expected smoke-free venues. Business benefits such as decreased operating and cleaning costs, improved atmosphere, and employee efficiency were more convincing than improved employee health. Concerns that voluntary measures created an uneven playing field among venues competing for customers formed a substantial barrier to voluntary measures. Other barriers included concerns about lost revenue and fear of disloyalty to customers, particularly older smokers. Addressing business benefits and a level playing field may increase support for voluntary smoke-free nightlife measures.

The interactions among concurrent tasks pose a challenge in the design of real-time multi-core systems, where blocking delays that tasks may experience while accessing shared memory have to be taken into consideration. Various memory arbitration schemes have been devised that address these issues, by providing trade-offs between predictability, average-case performance, and analyzability. Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) is a well-known arbitration scheme due to its simplicity and analyzability. However, it suffers from low resource utilization due to its non-work-conserving nature. We proposed in our recent work dynamic schemes based on TDM, showing work-conserving behavior in practice, while retaining the guarantees of TDM. These approaches have only been evaluated in a restricted setting. Their applicability in a preemptive setting appears problematic, since they may induce long memory blocking times depending on execution history. These blocking delays may induce significant jitter and consequently increase the tasks' response times. This work explores means to manage and, finally, bound these blocking delays. Three different schemes are explored and compared with regard to their analyzability, impact on response-time analysis, implementation complexity, and runtime behavior. Experiments show that the various approaches behave virtually identically at runtime. This allows to retain the approach combining low implementation complexity with analyzability.

Singular causation queries require an assessment of whethera singular co-occurrence of two events c and e was causal orsimply coincidental. The current study builds on our previ-ous research (Stephan & Waldmann, 2018) in which we pro-posed a computational model of singular causation judgments.The model highlights that singular causation judgments needto take into account the power of the target cause C and ofalternative causes A, as well as the possibility of preemption.What was missing was a detailed model allowing us to esti-mate the probability of preemption of a target cause by thealternative causes. The present research fills this gap by elab-orating the temporal assumptions that might enter assessmentsof singular causation. We focus on assumptions about tempo-ral precedence between target and alternative causes, with aspecific focus on assumptions about causal latency. We reportthe results of two new experiments supporting the model.

The imminence requirement for preemption can make all the moral difference in deciding to launch a lethal strike. Influenced by Michael Walzer’s just war criteria for preemption, I provide three necessary conditions to strike first in self-defense. A commander must justifiably believe three things: that an unjust aggressor is poised to attack, that her capacity to avert an attack is constrained by an imminent decision point or last window of opportunity, and that preemption is part of a moral-risk proportionate strategy. In any event, a commander must decide to preempt or not preempt under conditions of uncertainty. As such, I incorporate and supplement Seth Lazar’s rights-based expected utility approach to lethal action., http://archive.org/details/juststrikeacomma1094559688, Outstanding Thesis, Major, United States Air Force, Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Within the United States, states are the source of remedies for most legal wrongs. State law provides remedies for common law torts, statutory violations, and constitutional rights, and state courts are available to parties seeking these remedies. May states also provide remedies for the victims of international human rights violations? With the Supreme Court closing the door on human rights litigation in U.S. federal courts under the Alien Tort Statute, and with plaintiffs therefore turning to state courts and state law to redress violations of international human rights, this question has become especially important. The dominant view among courts and commentators, however, treats human rights remedies as a foreign relations function committed to the federal government. If the federal government decides not to provide these remedies, then, this view holds, states must not provide them either. This Article challenges that position. It argues that states may provide remedies for international human rights, much as they do for torts and civil rights. States provide law and courts for the redress of wrongs as a matter of course, particularly the types of torts that most human rights litigation addresses. Within the federal system, states have independent authority to provide remedies for legal wrongs. State courts and state law therefore play a fundamental role in fulfilling the aspiration that rights entail remedies. Under state law, federal law, and international law, states have a recognized interest in providing redress for human rights violations. And in many cases, a state's interest in providing remedies for human rights violations will outweigh the business or foreign relations costs of human rights litigation that are often invoked to deny remedies. This Article's theory of state remedies for human rights has doctrinal and normative implications. The proper application of various doctrines that may limit access to state courts or the application of state law

Causal queries about singular cases are ubiquitous, yet thequestion of how we assess whether a particular outcome wasactually caused by a specific potential cause turns out to bedifficult to answer. Relying on the causal power approach,Cheng and Novick (2005) proposed a model of causal attribu-tion intended to help answering this question. We challengethis model, both conceptually and empirically. The centralproblem of this model is that it treats the presence of sufficientcauses as necessarily causal in singular causation, and thus ne-glects that causes can be preempted in their efficacy. Also, themodel does not take into account that reasoners incorporateuncertainty about the underlying causal structure and strengthof causes when making causal inferences. We propose a newmeasure of causal attribution and embed it into our structure in-duction model of singular causation (SISC). Two experimentssupport the model.

The obligation that a new jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court imposes on the ordinary judicial organs to not apply the autonomic law that contradicts the basic state regulation in application of the principle of prevalence recognized in art. 149.3 EC is an exception to the centralized model of judicial review and generates two consequences: greater legal uncertainty in relation to the constitutional system of distribution of powers and the impossibility for the autonomous parliaments to defend the conformity of the regional law with that system., La obligación que impone, con fundamento en el principio de prevalencia reconocido en el art. 149.3 CE, la nueva doctrina del Tribunal Constitucional a los órganos judiciales ordinarios de inaplicar la ley autonómica que contradiga la normativa básica estatal de manera sobrevenida supone una excepción al modelo centralizado de jurisdicción constitucional y genera dos consecuencias: una mayor inseguridad jurídica en relación con el sistema de distribución de competencias y la imposibilidad de que los parlamentos autonómicos defiendan la conformidad de la ley autonómica con aquel.

As recent examples in Texas and Colorado have shown, if local governments ban fracking, they risk pushback from state governments. This pushback, in turn, can result in preemption making an outright local ban on fracking self-defeating because it could ultimately result in less local control over the impacts of hydraulic fracturing. Given this potentially self-defeating nature of local fracking bans, local governments should address the impacts of fracking through more traditional local governance mechanisms that do not pose as great a risk to local authority. On this premise, this Article seeks to make the case for the importance of, and authority for, local leadership of fracking governance. We present an overview of the federal and state laws that address fracking and describe the traditional scope of local land use authority. We next present a list of the most salient local impacts of hydraulic fracturing, including a description of the methods we employed to catalogue these local impacts. Finally, this Article concludes with a series of case studies that demonstrate different local governance mechanisms. Because of significant gaps in the state and federal regulatory apparatus, opportunity exists for local governments to craft regulatory and non-regulatory structures that meet their communities’ needs. We believe that with more comprehensive information about the impacts of fracking, as well as regulatory and non-regulatory tools that local governments can employ, municipalities will be better able to enact policies that withstand legal scrutiny and reflect local interests.

Intel SGX is the latest processor architecture promising secure code execution despite large, complex and hence potentially vulnerable legacy operating systems (OSs). However, two recent works identified vulnerabilities that allow an untrusted management OS to extract secret information from Intel SGX's enclaves, and to violate their integrity by exploiting concurrency bugs. In this work, we re-investigate delayed preemption (DP) in the context of Intel SGX. DP is a mechanism originally proposed for L4-family microkernels as disable-interrupt replacement. Recapitulating earlier results on language-based information-flow security, we illustrate the construction of leakage-free code for enclaves. However, as long as adversaries have fine-grained control over preemption timing, these solutions are impractical from a performance/complexity perspective. To overcome this, we resort to delayed preemption, and sketch a software implementation for hypervisors providing enclaves as well as a hardware extension for systems like SGX. Finally, we illustrate how static analyses for SGX may be extended to check confidentiality of preemption-delaying programs.

This dissertation consists of two chapters of theoretical studies that investigate the effect of financial constraints and market competition on research and development (R&D) investments. In the first chapter, I explore the impact of financial constraints on two different types of R&D investments. In the second chapter, I examine the impact of market competition on the relationship between financial constraints and R&D investments. In the first chapter, I develop a dynamic monopoly model to study a firm’s R&D strategy. Contrary to intuition, I show that a financially constrained firm may invest more aggressively in R&D projects than an unconstrained firm. Financial constraints introduce a risk that a firm may run out of money before its project bears fruit, which leads to involuntary termination on an otherwise positive-NPV project. For a company that relies on cash flow from assets in place to keep its R&D project alive, early success can be relatively important. I find that when the discovery process can be expedited by heavier investment (“accelerable” projects), a financially constrained company may find it optimal to “over”-invest in order to raise the probability of project survival. The over-investment will not happen if the project is only “scalable” (investment scales up payoffs). The model generates several testable implications regarding over-investment and project values. In the second chapter, I study the effects of competition on R&D investments in a duopoly framework. Using a homogeneous duopoly model where two unconstrained firms compete head to head in an R&D race, I find that competition has no effect on R&D investment if the project is not accelerable, and the competing firms are not constrained. In a heterogeneous duopoly model where a financially constrained firm competes against an unconstrained firm, I discover interesting strategic interactions that lead to preemption by the constrained firm in equilibrium. The unconstrained competitor respo

Limited Preemptive Scheduling is an attractive paradigm that enables controlling preemption related overheads, by appropriate preemption point selection. The selection of preemption points is essential to ensure schedulability and the associated analysis accounts for upper bounded preemption overheads, thus introducing a potentially high level of pessimism in the results. In this paper we propose a probabilistic distribution model of preemption related overhead and an accompanying method for preemption point selection based on quantiles, which provides controllable probabilistic relaxations. An experimental evaluation demonstrates the improvement of the extent to which this new approach facilitates finding solutions to the preemption point selection problem.

Law and food are distinct concepts, though the discipline (Law and Food) implies a relationship worthy of study. The conjunction (“and”) creates meaning. However, its absence also conveys meaning. For example, “meat animal” suggests that animals can be both meat and animal. This conflation has powerful legal implications. National Meat Association v. Harris (2012) makes chillingly plain the law’s indifference to whether a meat animal is alive or dead. This essay examines the way supposedly humane federal practices ignore the systematic brutalization of “food animals” as those animals get processed into marketable flesh. It concludes with some observations about why this legal blindness exists.

Municipalities across Ohio are paying attention to the shale oil and gas boom. Some want to encourage it, but others want to control it. Many want to exercise their rights of self-governance to enact ordinances to protect the health and welfare of their citizens and their communities. Some are enacting drilling bans, or permit requirements. They are passing resolutions opposing what they see as the Ohio legislature’s special treatment of the oil and gas industry. Ohio is known for strong Constitutional support of its abundant local governments. The Ohio Constitution, in Article XVIII, Section 3, says: “Municipalities shall have authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws.” These words are known as the Home Rule provision. So, when an Ohio municipality wants to control land use decisions within its borders by setting spacing or set-back requirements for shale oil and gas wells, it sounds, at first blush, like that action should be allowed under the Home Rule provision. After all, Ohio values local control. But Ohio also values economic development and the application of law is sometimes values driven. So, local control? Not so much in the case of oil and gas production. The Ohio legislature has worked hard to establish tight state control over shale oil and gas operations. Ohio Rev. Code section 1509.02 grants the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR) ‘sole and exclusive authority’ to regulate oil and gas operations. It uses words like “sole and exclusive authority,” “matter of general statewide interest,” “uniform statewide regulation,” and “comprehensive plan” to indicate the legislature’s effort to enact a general law that, even under Home Rule, would preempt local regulation. The legislature was specific and inclusive in the activities it included within Ohio DNR’s authority. The statute includes

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration chose to pursue a broad, offensive, and preemptive campaign against terrorists and their purported state sponsors, versus executing a focused response against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. This monograph argues that over the course of the next decade, this broad strategy, primarily leveraging military power, diverted manpower and resources away from the immediate threat, emboldened al Qaeda, and weakened the comprehensive national power of the United States. On 9/11, bin Laden and al Qaeda were immediately identified as the perpetrators. However, as rapidly as this determination was made, President Bush made the decision to expand the scope of the nation's response. Instead of focusing on bin Laden and al Qaeda, the United States would target the entirety of terrorism, to include its state sponsors. This agenda was reinforced during numerous September 2001 Presidential speeches, and then expanded over the course of the next year to incorporate preemption as a pillar of the strategy known as the Bush Doctrine. Further, despite wide-ranging advocacy for soft power approaches in response to 9/11, the administration adopted a strategy reliant on military action. The National Security Council was unable to develop a focused and integrated whole-of-government approach to counter the threat. At the same time, the President's broad goals facilitated divergent strategic aims, such as the pursuance of regime change in Iraq. Within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, efforts began to develop and refine the Iraq war plan, diverting attention from Afghanistan and al Qaeda. Additionally, the invasion of Iraq, and eventual deployment of hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan exemplified the United States' misunderstanding of bin Laden's grievance with U.S. presence in the Middle East. After a decade of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, al Qaeda has not been contained, and instead has expanded., The original document contains color images.

The United States has lacked a definitive grand strategy since the end of the Cold War. In the wake of 9/11, the Bush Doctrine consisted of four fundamental tenets: do not discriminate between terrorists and nations that support them, engage emerging threats overseas, confront threats before they fully materialize, and advance liberty and hope as alternatives to repression and fear. Current U.S. foreign policy is consumed with crisis management rather than following a long-term game plan with a coherent set of objectives for managing the complex global environment. When viewed as a comprehensive framework for achieving U.S. objectives, the Bush Doctrine provides several critical and enduring concepts fundamental to a long-term strategy. In and of themselves, the Bush Doctrine's tenets cannot serve as the sole basis of foreign policy; but broadening their core objective from eradicating terrorism to addressing extremism and international instability imbue these tenets with an enduring utility for shaping American foreign policy. The realities of U.S. capabilities, the emerging operational environment, and the political aspirations of the nation's electorate codify certain elements of this doctrine as ideal and realistic strategic imperatives for the 21st century., Strategy Research Project.

Resource sharing environments enable sharing and aggregation of resources across several resource providers. InterGrid provides an architecture for resource sharing based on virtual machine technology between Grids. Resource providers in InterGrid serve their local requests as well as external requests assigned by InterGrid. However, resource providers would like to ensure that the requirements of their local requests are not delayed because of running external requests. This scenario leads to contention for resources between the external and local requests. In this dissertation, preemption mechanism is considered to resolve the contention, while side-effects of this mechanism are taken into account. Particularly, the number of preempted external requests, their waiting time, and imposed overhead of preemption are considered. Therefore, this dissertation investigates and categorises mechanisms for management of resource contention in the existing systems. Then, it presents a contention management scheme that includes two main strategies. The first strategy avoids the contentious situation by establishing contention-awareness in the scheduling policies. The second strategy, handles contention side-effects while considering long waiting time and energy consumption issues. These strategies are proposed within different architectural elements of the InterGrid platform. In this dissertation, first feasibility of the preemption mechanism to resolve resource contention is presented, then overhead time imposed for performing various preemption scenarios are modelled, and different policies to minimise the side-effects of resource contention are proposed. To avoid resource contention, a scheduling policy is proposed in gateway (meta-scheduling) level, that proactively disseminates external requests on resource providers. Also, a dispatch policy is proposed to decrease the likelihood of resource contention for more valuable external users. To prevent long waiting time for ext

We consider single processor preemptive scheduling with job-dependent setup times. In this model, a job-dependent setup time is incurred when a job is started for the first time, and each time it is restarted after preemption. This model is a common generalization of preemptive scheduling, and actually of non-preemptive scheduling as well. The objective is to minimize the sum of any general non-negative, non-decreasing cost functions of the completion times of the jobs -- this generalizes objectives of minimizing weighted flow time, flow-time squared, tardiness or the number of tardy jobs among many others. Our main result is a randomized polynomial time O(1)-speed O(1)-approximation algorithm for this problem. Without speedup, no polynomial time finite multiplicative approximation is possible unless P=NP. We extend the approach of Bansal et al. (FOCS 2007) of rounding a linear programming relaxation which accounts for costs incurred due to the non-preemptive nature of the schedule. A key new idea used in the rounding is that a point in the intersection polytope of two matroids can be decomposed as a convex combination of incidence vectors of sets that are independent in both matroids. In fact, we use this for the intersection of a partition matroid and a laminar matroid, in which case the decomposition can be found efficiently using network flows. Our approach gives a randomized polynomial time offline O(1)-speed O(1)-approximation algorithm for the broadcast scheduling problem with general cost functions as well.

In the (non-preemptive) Generalized Min Sum Set Cover Problem, we are given n ground elements and a collection of sets S = {S_1, S_2, ..., S_m} where each set S_i in 2^{[n]} has a positive requirement k(S_i) that has to be fulfilled. We would like to order all elements to minimize the total (weighted) cover time of all sets. The cover time of a set S_i is defined as the first index j in the ordering such that the first j elements in the ordering contain k(S_i) elements in S_i. This problem was introduced by [Azar, Gamzu and Yin, 2009] with interesting motivations in web page ranking and broadcast scheduling. For this problem, constant approximations are known [Bansal, Gupta and Krishnaswamy, 2010][Skutella and Williamson, 2011]. We study the version where preemption is allowed. The difference is that elements can be fractionally scheduled and a set S is covered in the moment when k(S) amount of elements in S are scheduled. We give a 2-approximation for this preemptive problem. Our linear programming and analysis are completely different from [Bansal, Gupta and Krishnaswamy, 2010][Skutella and Williamson, 2011]. We also show that any preemptive solution can be transformed into a non-preemptive one by losing a factor of 6.2 in the objective function. As a byproduct, we obtain an improved 12.4-approximation for the non-preemptive problem.

An examination of recent cyber attack cases illustrates the difficulties of dealing with warfare that originates from the domain of cyberspace. Proportionality, preemption, and attribution are three issues that are difficult to address when talking about cyberwarfare and cyber attacks. An isolated incident of a cyber attack, if it can be attributed to an attacker, poses the idea of a responsive attack by the victim. If it is justified, the next question regards the amount of force in the responsive attack that would be seen as internationally legitimate. The question of preemption with regard to a cyber attack is more likely to be seen as legitimate when the cyber attack is initiated as the first of other kinetic operations at the beginning of a state of war. Currently, a kinetic response to a cyber attack as a means of self-defense from follow-on kinetic attacks would be viewed as illegal preemption and/or an escalation of force. Both scenarios present interesting considerations with regard to international law, just war, and legitimacy. The idea of preemption as a means of self-defense is sensitive when the perceived threat is on the magnitude of a rogue nation with a nuclear weapon. It gets even more sensitive if the subject is the cyber attack that is preparing a nation for a kinetic invasion or one that will result in damage to vital national interests. Knowing the difference between the lone and the combined arms cyber attacks exampled in the body of this paper is typically only recognized after the kinetic invasion has begun, or if nothing succeeds the cyber attacks themselves. The following examples of cyber warfare in recent history will be examined in the context of the right to use force in retaliation or preemption as the case applies: Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion in 2003, Estonia in April 2007, Syria in September 2007, Georgia in July 2008, the United States in July 2009, and Iran in September 2010.

English: Virtualization is one of the long term solutions to face Internet ossification problem which is unable to support new services due to the lack of coordination between different Internet Service Providers. By allowing several heterogeneous networks to share a physical substrate, virtualization provides flexibility, diversity and promises security and increased manageability. In this thesis a flexible and technology independent system is presented including the required mechanisms and modules inside the network management system block to manage independently virtual networks resources. The system allows providing quality of service and traffic engineering to different traffic classes within a virtual network. An evaluation of the system is done through a set of models each one regarding a different module used, Virtual Network Control, Virtual Network Reconfiguration, Call Access Control, Background Monitoring System and Dynamic Resource Allocation, to prove that their role is needed to make the system provide the qualities mentioned. Some general recommendations are given about the system, and specifically when squatting occurs evaluating whether the use of the Squatting Kicking Model is suitable for the proposed system. Finally conclusions and future work are commented concluding the content of the present thesis., Castellano: La virtualización es una de las soluciones a largo plazo para solucionar el problema de la osificación de Internet la cual es incapaz de soportar nuevos servicios a causa de la falta de coordinación entre distintos Proveedores de Servicio. Permitiendo que varias redes heterogéneas compartan un mismo sustrato físico, la virtualización provee flexibilidad, diversidad y promete seguridad y mayor capacidad de gestión. En esta tesis se presenta un sistema independiente de cualquier tecnología y flexible incluyendo los mecanismos y módulos necesarios dentro del bloque de gestión de red para manejar independientemente recursos de las redes virtuales. El sistema permite proveer calidad de servicio e ingeniería de tráfico a distintas clases de tráfico dentro de una red virtual. Se hace una evaluación del sistema a través de un conjunto de modelos cada uno de ellos correspondiendo a un módulo distinto usado, Control de Red Virtual, Reconfiguración de Red Virtual, Control de Acceso de Llamada, Sistema de Monitorización en Segundo Plano y Asignación de Recursos Dinámicos, para demostrar que su función es necesaria para hacer que el sistem cumpla con las cualidades mencionadas. Se dan algunas recomendaciones generales sobre el sistema, y específicamente cuando sucede el squatting evaluando si el uso del Modelo de Pateo Squatting es adecuado para el sistema propuesto. Finalmente se comentan algunas conclusiones y trabajo futuro concluyendo el contenido de la presente tesis., Català: La virtualització és una de les solucions a llarg termini per tal de solucionar el problema de l'ossificació d'Internet la qual és incapaç de soportar nous serveis degut a la falta de coordinació entre els diferents Proveïdors de Servei. Permetent que diverses xarxes heterogènies comparteixin el mateix substrat físic, la virtualització proveeix flexibilitat, diversitat i promet seguretat i una major capacitat de gestió. En aquesta tesi es presenta un sistema independent de qualsevol tecnologia i flexible incloent els mecanismes i mòduls necessaris dins del bloc de gestió de xarxa per tal de manejar independentment els recursos de xarxes virtuals. El sistema permet proveir qualitat de servei i enginyeria de tràfic a diferents classes de tràfic dins d'una xarxa virtual. Es fa una evaluació del sistema a través d'un conjunt de models cada un d'ells corresponent a un mòdul diferent usat, Control de Xarxa Virtual, Reconfiguració de Xarxa Virtual, Control d'Accés de Trucada, Sistema de Monitorització en Segon Pla i Assignació de Recursos Dinàmics, per a demostrar que la seva funció és necessària per tal que el sistema cumpleixi les qualitats citades. Es donen algunes recomenacions generals sobre el sistema, i específicament quan succeeix el squatting evaluant si l'ús del Model de Puntada Squatting és adequat per al sistema proposat. Finalment es comenten algunes conclusions i treball futur concloent el contingut de la present tesi.

This paper addresses the problem of resource allocation and quality of service (QoS) management in a downlink communication system where the users are allowed to be attached to and receive data from one or several cooperating base stations (BSs) under orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). Under the assumption that only information regarding the link path loss is available at each transmitter, the problem of power and bandwidth allocation to minimize transmission power subject to minimum rate (i.e., QoS) constraints is written as a convex optimization problem. Considering that the transmission power per BS is limited, the Lagrange multipliers of the optimization problem are exploited either to ef- ficiently identify which are the candidates to be preempted whenever unaffordable power consumption arises, or to relax the target rate constraints for the ongoing connections. In the second case, the Lagrange multipliers are used in combination with the NewtonRaphson algorithm to adjust the QoS of the users in the system according to the available BS power., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

Providing QoS in home networks seems to be more and more important in triple and quadruple play service scenarios. This paper focuses on the analysis of certain aspects of UPnP QoS Architecture designed to provision QoS in home networks. Basic signaling performance is discussed and preemption algorithms are proposed and evaluated."

The purpose of this advanced research project is to analyze the threat to NATO posed by Iran's ballistic missile program and to analyze U.S. and Allies' missile defense plans for Europe. This paper argues that while U.S. and NATO missile defense plans for Europe are sufficient to defend against a medium-range ballistic missile attack from Iran for the foreseeable future, defense against a potential Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile is less certain. It also finds that the U.S. PAA avoids hard-line Russian resistance and reassures U.S. allies by investing in their nations' defense infrastructures. Finally, this paper presents potential future scenarios and provides recommendations for U.S. and NATO policy makers as they consider missile defense and options to deal effectively with the threat posed by Iran's ballistic missile program., The original document contains color images.

With the growth of population and increase of travelling requirements in metropolitan areas, public transit has been recognized as a promising remedy and is playing an ever more important role in sustainable transportation systems. However, the development of the public transit system has not received enough attention until the recent emergence of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). In the conventional public transit system, little to no communication passes between transit vehicles and the roadside infrastructure, such as traffic signals and loop detectors. But now, thanks to advancements in automatic vehicle location (AVL) systems and wireless communication, real-time and high-resolution information of the movement of transit vehicles has become available, which may potentially facilitate the development of more advanced traffic control and management systems.This dissertation introduces a novel adaptive traffic signal control system, which utilizes the real-time location information of transit vehicles. By predicting the movement of the transit vehicle based on continuous detection of the vehicle motion by the on-board AVL system and estimating the measures of effectiveness (MOE) of other motor vehicles based on the surveillance of traffic conditions, optimal signal timings can be obtained by solving the proposed traffic signal optimization models. Both numerical analysis and simulation tests demonstrate that the proposed system improves a transit vehicle's operation as well as minimizes its negative impacts on other motor vehicles in the traffic system. In summary, there are three major contributions of this dissertation: a) development of a novel AVL-based adaptive traffic signal control system; b) modeling of the associated traffic signal timing optimization problem, which is the key component of the proposed system; c) applications of the proposed system to two real world cases.After presenting background knowledge on two major types of transit operations, i.e., preempt