This paper addresses the question of the autonomy of managers of entities that provide local public services (companies established by local self-government units for the performance of communal activities), inspired by the principles of new public management. It analyzes the extent of their autonomy, with particular emphasis on the influence of political factors and managerial capacities. On the theoretical level, the paper examines the relationship (dichotomy) between public authorities and the governing bodies of local utility companies, as well as the types of autonomy that arise from this relationship. The empirical part of the study is based on data collected through a survey conducted in 36 utility companies in the Republic of Croatia during 2023. The aim of the paper is to answer whether public authorities influence the managerial activities and autonomy of local public service managers, and how their roles and functions are interconnected. It has been concluded that clearly defined goals, the establishment of accountability, and constructive cooperation are crucial for the effective delivery of quality and accessible services that meet the needs of the local community.
Una vez más, el uso de las nuevas tecnologías obliga a mantenerse al tanto de los efectos que conlleva su utilización en el ámbito comercial y, especialmente, de los efectos jurídicos que repercuten trasversalmente a todas las áreas del derecho. En este caso, se observa cómo la implementación de la tecnología en una plataforma centralizada de gestión para las facturas electrónicas de venta, administrado por la Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales (DIAN), se convierte en la única herramienta válida en el territorio colombiano para llevar a cabo la negociabilidad de estas facturas electrónicas entendidas como títulos valores netamente electrónicos. En consecuencia, dicha plataforma tecnológica, denominada “RADIAN”, es el objeto de análisis de este artículo, ya que la negociabilidad nacional e internacional de los títulos valores registrados en ella dependen de su funcionalidad.
SOMMARIO: 1. Le competenze giurisdizionali sulle quali s’innesta(effettivamente o virtualmente) il ruolo “creativo” della Corte di giustizia UE nella formazione del diritto contrattuale uniforme. – 2. Le sentenze della Corte di giustizia UE che individuano le pretese intersoggettive azionabili dalle parti di un contratto tramite un’interpretazione “adeguatrice” del diritto eurounitario derivato e (per
la proprietà transitiva) del diritto interno di recepimento. – 3. Le sentenze della Corte di giustizia UE dalle quali affiora l’opportunità di desumere i diritti/poteri e obblighi/doveri dei contraenti da un’applicazione “diretta” dei principi fondanti dell’Unione europea. – 4. La maggior rispondenza alle sfide poste dalla globalizzazione di un sistema giurisdizionale di applicazione (soprattutto) “indiretta” dei principi eurounitari a competenza diffusa/multilevel, il quale si sviluppi con la tecnica dei precedenti di principio, rispetto ad un sistema, a
competenza accentrata, basato sulla configurazione di precedenti-
regola.
Foreign trade is an indispensable activity in the globalization era. Researching the liabilities of parties in performing the sale contracts and the avoidance right of parties in the contracts is a vital issue. Therefore, this article compared Vietnamese Commercial Law 2005 with the United Nations Convention for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) and Principles of International Commercial Contracts (PICC) regarding the avoidance of sale contracts, including the three aspects, fundamental breach, failure in performance obligations of contract at the end of adding time, and anticipatory breach. The findings not only enable Vietnamese merchants to master international rules in establishing foreign trading but also show differences and similarities between Vietnamese law and international rules. By doing that, this article puts forward some implications for rebuilding the definition of “fundamental breach” in Vietnamese commercial law. Also, this paper suggested that the avoidance clause of the Vietnamese law should include the claim to terminate the agreement of the innocent party due to the non-performance party’s failure to fulfill contractual duties at the end of adding time, and the other party will be constituted an “anticipatory breach”.
The disappearance of a natural person, especially when he or she is also a sole proprietor of a business, causes legal problems. Such situations are not directly regulated by legal acts, i.e., the legislators do not refer to the impact and consequences of the disappearance on the performed business activity. Meanwhile, the fact that a sole proprietor goes missing may have a negative impact on his or her situation, including the content of the obligations binding on him or her. This paper discusses how the relatives, in particular the spouse of the missing person, may behave in such circumstances. The considerations carried out concern Polish law and Slovak law, as there is no specific regulation of the declaration of missing person who is a sole proprietor introduced on the model of foreign regulations, the article places emphasis on the comparison of both selected regulations. The conclusion indicated that until the missing person is recognised as dead, family members or other relatives do not have any competence to take any action on behalf of the missing sole proprietorship circumstances, other entities may operate, i.e., attorney-in-fact, proxy, according to Polish law custodian established pursuant to Art. 184 of the Family Code, the custodian established pursuant to Art. 144 of the Code of Contentious Civil Procedure, or prosecutor. Similarly, under the Slovak law, until the missing person is declared dead, a guardian, or a representative appointed by the court pursuant to Section 68 of the Civil Procedure Code, acts for such person.
Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) is crucial for safe and correct driving automation. Recent works revealed a general vulnerability of TSR models to physical-world adversarial attacks, which can be low-cost, highly deployable, and capable of causing severe attack effects such as hiding a critical traffic sign or spoofing a fake one. However, so far existing works generally only considered evaluating the attack effects on academic TSR models, leaving the impacts of such attacks on real-world commercial TSR systems largely unclear. In this paper, we conduct the first large-scale measurement of physical-world adversarial attacks against commercial TSR systems. Our testing results reveal that it is possible for existing attack works from academia to have highly reliable (100\%) attack success against certain commercial TSR system functionality, but such attack capabilities are not generalizable, leading to much lower-than-expected attack success rates overall. We find that one potential major factor is a spatial memorization design that commonly exists in today's commercial TSR systems. We design new attack success metrics that can mathematically model the impacts of such design on the TSR system-level attack success, and use them to revisit existing attacks. Through these efforts, we uncover 7 novel observations, some of which directly challenge the observations or claims in prior works due to the introduction of the new metrics.
In the realm of globalized financial markets, commercial banks are confronted with an escalating magnitude of credit risk, thereby imposing heightened requisites upon the security of bank assets and financial stability. This study harnesses advanced neural network techniques, notably the Backpropagation (BP) neural network, to pioneer a novel model for preempting credit risk in commercial banks. The discourse initially scrutinizes conventional financial risk preemptive models, such as ARMA, ARCH, and Logistic regression models, critically analyzing their real-world applications. Subsequently, the exposition elaborates on the construction process of the BP neural network model, encompassing network architecture design, activation function selection, parameter initialization, and objective function construction. Through comparative analysis, the superiority of neural network models in preempting credit risk in commercial banks is elucidated. The experimental segment selects specific bank data, validating the model's predictive accuracy and practicality. Research findings evince that this model efficaciously enhances the foresight and precision of credit risk management.
In commercial autonomous service robots with several form factors, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is an essential technology for providing proper services such as cleaning and guidance. Such robots require SLAM algorithms suitable for specific applications and environments. Hence, several SLAM frameworks have been proposed to address various requirements in the past decade. However, we have encountered challenges in implementing recent innovative frameworks when handling service robots with low-end processors and insufficient sensor data, such as low-resolution 2D LiDAR sensors. Specifically, regarding commercial robots, consistent performance in different hardware configurations and environments is more crucial than the performance dedicated to specific sensors or environments. Therefore, we propose a) a multi-stage %hierarchical approach for global pose estimation in embedded systems; b) a graph generation method with zero constraints for synchronized sensors; and c) a robust and memory-efficient method for long-term pose-graph optimization. As verified in in-home and large-scale indoor environments, the proposed method yields consistent global pose estimation for services in commercial fields. Furthermore, the proposed method exhibits potential commercial viability considering the consistent performance verified via mass production and long-term (> 5 years) operation.
In recent years, discussions of responsible AI practices have seen growing support for "participatory AI" approaches, intended to involve members of the public in the design and development of AI systems. Prior research has identified a lack of standardised methods or approaches for how to use participatory approaches in the AI development process. At present, there is a dearth of evidence on attitudes to and approaches for participation in the sites driving major AI developments: commercial AI labs. Through 12 semi-structured interviews with industry practitioners and subject-matter experts, this paper explores how commercial AI labs understand participatory AI approaches and the obstacles they have faced implementing these practices in the development of AI systems and research. We find that while interviewees view participation as a normative project that helps achieve "societally beneficial" AI systems, practitioners face numerous barriers to embedding participatory approaches in their companies: participation is expensive and resource intensive, it is "atomised" within companies, there is concern about exploitation, there is no incentive to be transparent about its adoption, and it is complicated by a lack of clear context. These barriers result in a piecemeal approach to participation that confers no decision-making power to participants and has little ongoing impact for AI labs. This papers contribution is to provide novel empirical research on the implementation of public participation in commercial AI labs, and shed light on the current challenges of using participatory approaches in this context.
Whales are an important part of the oceanic ecosystem. Although historic commercial whale hunting a.k.a. whaling has severely threatened whale populations, whale researchers are looking at historical whaling data to inform current whale status and future conservation efforts. To facilitate this, we worked with experts in aquatic and fishery sciences to create WhaleVis -- an interactive dashboard for the commercial whaling dataset maintained by the International Whaling Commission (IWC). We characterize key analysis tasks among whale researchers for this database, most important of which is inferring spatial distribution of whale populations over time. In addition to facilitating analysis of whale catches based on the spatio-temporal attributes, we use whaling expedition details to plot the search routes of expeditions. We propose a model of the catch data as a graph, where nodes represent catch locations, and edges represent whaling expedition routes. This model facilitates visual estimation of whale search effort and in turn the spatial distribution of whale populations normalized by the search effort -- a well known problem in fisheries research. It further opens up new avenues for graph analysis on the data, including more rigorous computation of spatial distribution of whales normalized by the search effort, and enabling new insight generation. We demonstrate the use of our dashboard through a real life use case.
Credit risk is a crucial topic in the field of financial stability, especially at this time given the profound impact of the ongoing pandemic on the world economy. This study provides insight into the impact of credit risk on the financial performance of 26 commercial banks in Vietnam for the period from 2006 to 2016. The financial performance of commercial banks is measured by return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and Net interest margin (NIM); credit risk is measured by the Non-performing loan ratio (NPLR); control variables are measured by bank-specific characteristics, including bank size (SIZE), loan loss provision ratio (LLPR), and capital adequacy ratio (CAR), and macroeconomic factors such as annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth and annual inflation rate (INF). The assumption tests show that models have autocorrelation, non-constant variance, and endogeneity. Hence, a dynamic Difference Generalized Method of Moments (dynamic Difference GMM) approach is employed to thoroughly address these problems. The empirical results show that the financial performance of commercial banks measured by ROE and NIM persists from one year to the next. Furthermore, SIZE and NPLR variables have a significant negative effect on ROA and ROE but not on NIM. There is no evidence found in support of the LLPR and CAR variables on models. The effect of GDP growth is statistically significant and positive on ROA, ROE, and NIM, whereas the INF is only found to have a significant positive impact on ROA and NIM.
Marania Hopuare, Tao Manni, Victoire Laurent
et al.
In order to achieve France’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, the French Polynesian administration has set the objective of producing 100% of the local electricity requirements from renewable energy resources. To this end, we present the wind characteristics at six selected locations in Tahiti. Surface wind observations from 2008 to 2020 obtained from the Meteorological Service of French Polynesia are analysed in terms of wind speed, dominant wind direction and power density to identify the most suitable locations for the deployment of wind farms. The Weibull distribution is used to fit the wind speed data recorded at 10 m above ground level, as it is widely used by turbine manufacturers. Then, wind speed is extrapolated vertically up to the hub height with the power law, which is also commonly used in wind energy studies. The theoretical annual energy output and capacity factor of four selected commercial wind turbines are assessed for each site in order to provide stakeholders with the relevant information regarding wind energy harvesting in Tahiti. Power law indices lower than 0.2 were chosen. Our results show that all year round, two sites, Faaa and Tautira, are suitable to host wind turbines, even with a power law index as low as 0.1.
Contexto: O presente trabalho localiza-se no contexto de transição entre o antigo e o novo regime geral de licitações e contratos administrativos, promulgada em 1º de abril de 2021, a Lei nº 14.133/2021.
Objetivo: O trabalho pretende identificar possíveis desafios concorrenciais decorrentes da modalidade de diálogo competitivo trazida pela Nova Lei de Licitações e Contratos Administrativos e evidenciar pontos de atenção para o controle de condutas anticompetitivas.
Método: Método dedutivo.
Conclusões: O Diálogo Competitivo está sujeito a práticas já conhecidas de cartéis em licitações, como a retirada ou cobertura de propostas e as promessas de subcontratação. Para além da possibilidade de cartelização, o desenho jurídico da modalidade também aponta para o risco de troca de informações sensíveis entre os licitantes e para o risco de direcionamento da contratação.
El debate sobre la aplicación de los CDI a las “agrupaciones de personas” se ha acotado con la modificación del artículo 1.º del Instrumento Multilateral y el MCOCDE 2017. La inclusión expresa del Régimen de Transparencia para las “agrupaciones de personas” dejó de reconocer como beneficiarios del CDI a las agrupaciones de personas que no sean contribuyentes del impuesto a la renta y por lo mismo no detentan la calidad de residente fiscal para efectos de la aplicación de los CDI. Por otra parte, los CCE no tienen la capacidad de configuran por sí mismos un establecimiento permanente, sin embargo, los aportes hechos a un CCE por parte de sus asociados sí lo pueden hacer. Para ellos debe revisarse cada caso y establecer si los aportes cumplen los requisitos de configuración del EP de la regla base, el de obra o construcción o el de servicios o representación.
Since tax authorities have very wide powers within the scope of legislation regarding tax inspections, tax privacy for a legal person is as important as for a natural person. It is a fact that legal persons and natural persons are not protected equally in respect of personal data protection. Since a legal person has to comply with extensive public disclosure, limited protection for a legal person is understandable. However, it could not be possible to claim that a legal person is out of the application of personal data protection law. This study is aimed to underline the importance of the protection of the privacy right of legal person taxpayers despite the public disclosure. However, legal disclosure of banking secrecy for the exchange of tax information is out of the scope of this study. Examining the decisions of the Turkish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, we try to determine in which subject and from what perspective the privacy right of legal person taxpayer is protected. Contrary to the belief that a legal person taxpayer has no sensitive information like the natural taxpayer, specifically, the protection of commercial secrets is very important and vital for them. Also, in many decisions rendered by the Turkish Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, it is admitted that a legal person has a right to privacy.
Detection and recognition of a licence plate is important when automating weighbridge services. While many large databases are available for Latin and Chinese alphanumeric license plates, data for Indian License Plates is inadequate. In particular, databases of Indian commercial truck license plates are inadequate, despite the fact that commercial vehicle license plate recognition plays a profound role in terms of logistics management and weighbridge automation. Moreover, models to recognise license plates are not effectively able to generalise to such data due to its challenging nature, and due to the abundant frequency of handwritten license plates, leading to the usage of diverse font styles. Thus, a database and effective models to recognise and detect such license plates are crucial. This paper provides a database on commercial truck license plates, and using state-of-the-art models in real-time object Detection: You Only Look Once Version 7, and SceneText Recognition: Permuted Autoregressive Sequence Models, our method outperforms the other cited references where the maximum accuracy obtained was less than 90%, while we have achieved 95.82% accuracy in our algorithm implementation on the presented challenging license plate dataset. Index Terms- Automatic License Plate Recognition, character recognition, license plate detection, vision transformer.
Jacob Crossley, A. N. M. Taufiq Elahi, Mohammad Ghashami
et al.
In this article, we present a cost-effective approach to the precision measurement of heat flux using commercial thermoelectric modules (TEMs). Two different methods of measuring heat flux with TEMs are investigated, namely passive mode based on the Seebeck effect and active mode based on the Peltier effect. For both modes, a TEM as a heat fluxmeter is calibrated to show a linear relation between the voltage across the TEM and the heat flow rate from 0 to 100 mW. While both modes exhibit sufficiently high sensitivities suitable for low heat flow measurement, active mode is shown to be $\sim$7 times more sensitive than passive mode. From the speculation on the origin of the measurement uncertainty, we propose a dual TEM scheme by operating the top TEM in passive mode while its bottom temperature maintains constant by the feedback-controlled bottom TEM. The dual-TEM scheme can suppress the sensitivity uncertainty by up to 4 times when compared to the single-TEM passive mode by stabilizing the bottom temperature. The response time of a 1.5 cm $\times$ 1.5 cm TEM is measured to be 8.90 $\pm$ 0.97 seconds for heating and 10.83 $\pm$ 0.65 seconds for cooling, which is slower than commercial heat fluxmeters but still fast enough to measure heat flux with a time resolution on the order of 10 seconds. We believe that the obtained results can facilitate the use of a commercial TEM for heat flux measurement in various thermal experiments
Existing literature on digital signage is growing but has not always emphasized the cognitive processes of the audience. This research aims to address this gap by studying how young women in Singapore cognize commercial digital signage in shopping malls and what cause them to do so. Using cognitive ethnography and taking the situated action approach, our findings suggest a comprehensive list of factors, both external and internal, that influence young women's cognition of commercial digital signage in both positive and negative ways. The research's practical implications are discussed.