The relevance of the study is determined by the problem of responsibility for receiving sexual services from minors, which is extremely relevant for the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (hereinafter the CIS). Despite the adoption of a number of international conventions and protocols aimed at combating the sexual exploitation of children, this criminal act continues to spread widely in the region. The high level of poverty, social inequality and the lack of effective social protection measures for children create favorable conditions for the involvement of minors in the field of commercial sex. In addition, the lack of elaboration of criminal law norms governing responsibility for receiving sexual services from children makes it difficult to bring perpetrators to justice. The main purpose of this study is a comprehensive analysis of the criminal legislation of the CIS countries in the context of establishing responsibility for receiving sexual services from minors. Within the framework of this goal, it is planned to study the existing criminal law norms concerning responsibility for the sexual exploitation of minors in the CIS countries, as well as compare the approaches of different states to the definition and qualification of this crime, identifying similarities and differences in legislative initiatives. In addition, it is necessary to assess the effectiveness of the application of these norms in practice and identify existing problems in law enforcement. In conclusion, recommendations will be proposed to improve the criminal legislation of the CIS countries aimed at strengthening the protection of the rights of minors and increasing responsibility for receiving sexual services from minors. The methodological basis of the study was the methods of formal logic (analysis, comparison, generalization). As conclusions , recommendations are proposed to improve the criminal legislation of the CIS countries in terms of establishing responsibility for receiving sexual services from minors.
The viscosity of lubricating oil is a critical indicator for assessing both its performance and degradation, and it plays a vital role in the monitoring of equipment condition. To meet the need for portable and automated viscosity measurement of lubricant oil in engineering applications, this paper presents a novel device based on Newton’s law of viscosity and strain-based sensing principles. The device detects the minute deflection of a cantilever beam under fluid impact and converts the induced strain into an electrical signal via bonded strain gauges to measure viscosity. Then, a finite element simulation was performed to optimise the structure of the cantilever beam and determine the placement of the strain gauges. Experimental validation using glycerol-water mixtures and 4050 lubricating oil demonstrated that the device exhibited a strong linear correlation between its output and reference viscosity values, and that it maintained high measurement accuracy and strong applicability under critical temperature conditions, such as the ISO standard temperature of 40 °C, as well as in high-viscosity regimes. Finally, the comparison between the proposed device and the representative commercial products indicated that the device is well suited for on-site industrial viscosity measurement requiring portability, automation, and cost-effectiveness. This work provides a technical reference and practical foundation for viscosity measurement in engineering applications.
Guanzhong Pan, Vishal Chodnekar, Abinas Roy
et al.
Large language models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly widespread. Organizations that want to use AI for productivity now face an important decision. They can subscribe to commercial LLM services or deploy models on their own infrastructure. Cloud services from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are attractive because they provide easy access to state-of-the-art models and are easy to scale. However, concerns about data privacy, the difficulty of switching service providers, and long-term operating costs have driven interest in local deployment of open-source models. This paper presents a cost-benefit analysis framework to help organizations determine when on-premise LLM deployment becomes economically viable compared to commercial subscription services. We consider the hardware requirements, operational expenses, and performance benchmarks of the latest open-source models, including Qwen, Llama, Mistral, and etc. Then we compare the total cost of deploying these models locally with the major cloud providers subscription fee. Our findings provide an estimated breakeven point based on usage levels and performance needs. These results give organizations a practical framework for planning their LLM strategies.
The growth of wafer-scale van der Waals (vdW) thin films and heterostructures by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is important for future applications in quantum technologies, next generation optoelectronic devices, and fundamental physics investigations. When grown using co-deposition methods that are typically used for compound semiconductor MBE, vdW materials typically show a high density of structural defects including twin or antiphase domains, spiral growth, and pyramidal growth. These defects are caused by the relatively weak film/substrate interaction and/or the poor wettability of typical substrates by many vdW materials. These difficulties can be mitigated using a multi-step growth procedure in which growth stages including nucleation and coalescence can be rigorously controlled, resulting in high-quality deposition of vdW thin films. This article will describe a general recipe for the growth of highly-crystalline wafer-scale vdW thin films by MBE.
This research aims to determine and analyze legal protection for overtime wages at PT. Madani National Capital (PNM) Kota Baru Jambi Branch, and to find out and analyze what obstacles cause non-payment of overtime wages at PT. Madani National Capital (PNM) Kota Baru Jambi Branch. The problem in this research is: How is the legal protection for overtime wages at PT. Madani National Capital (PNM) Kota Baru Jambi Branch?, and what are the obstacles causing non-payment of overtime wages at PT. Madani National Capital (PNM) Kota Baru Jambi Branch?, The research method is Empirical Juridical combining legal materials (secondary data) with primary data obtained on legal facts that occurred between workers and PT. Madani National Capital City New Branch. The results of the research are the implementation of the rights and obligations of parties in the cooperation agreement between workers and PT. Madani National Capital City Baru Branch has not been implemented in accordance with the provisions of the Law on Wages, the Employment Law and the agreement, where the core point of the agreement is that workers who work at PT. Civil National Capital must be paid wages in accordance with the Law on Wages and the Employment Law as well as the work contract agreement that has been agreed upon by both parties. The obstacles faced by these workers are that their wages do not match expectations, there is overtime pay that is not given to workers by PT. Civil National Capital.
Negotiorum gestio is a legal institute that originates from Roman law. It still exists today and in the legal literature we find a term that defines it as: the unauthorized performance of another’s affairs, i.e., agency without authority. The institute of negotiorum gestio has been continuously used and is the subject of legal regulation in most countries of the continental, European legal systems, including the law of the Republic of Serbia, for more than two millennia. The aim of this paper is to compare the solutions from Roman and contemporary law of obligations using the normative, descriptive, comparative and analytical-synthetic scientific methods. The paper is divided into three parts: the first part, which deals with the Roman understanding of the negotiorum gestio institute, the second part, which presents the current solutions regarding this institute contained in the Law of Contract and Torts of the Republic of Serbia, and the third part, which, using a comparative and the historical method, draws conclusions about whether current solutions contained in contemporary law are better than those that were applied in the ancient period.
Central banks are actively exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) by conducting research, proofs of concept and pilots. However, adoption of a retail CBDC can risk fragmenting both payments markets and retail deposits if the retail CBDC and commercial bank money do not have common operational characteristics. In this paper we focus on a potential UK retail CBDC - the "digital pound" - and the Bank of England's "platform model". We first explore how the concept of functional consistency could mitigate the risk of fragmentation. We next identify the common operational characteristics that are required to achieve functional consistency across all forms of regulated retail digital money. We identify four design options based on the provision of these common operational characteristics by the central bank, payment interface providers, technical service providers or a financial market infrastructure. We next identify architecturally significant use cases and select key capabilities that support these use cases and the common operational characteristics. We evaluate the suitability of the design options to provide these key capabilities and draw insights. We conclude that no single design option could provide functional consistency across digital pounds and commercial bank money and, instead, a complete solution would need to combine the suitable design option(s) for each key capability.
Child sexual abuse is a growing social concern. Today, online communication chiefly facilitates access to vulnerable children and increases cases of child sexual abuse. The current article also aims to highlight digital platforms’ role in prevailing online child sexual abuse worldwide. The researchers conducted a Systematic Review of existing literature and selected a sample of n = 42 articles witnessing the Internet's role in facilitating child sexual abuse. The cited literature indicated that online child sexual abuse widely involves child pornography for commercial and non-commercial purposes. Several online platforms provide scheduled online child sexual abuse sessions that are mostly unidentifiable for law enforcement agencies. Similarly, for non-commercial purposes, predators use different strategies and fulfill their objectives. These predators not only entice children, but also continue extorting the victims. Although the online child sexual abuse method may vary from person to person, the purpose is the same for all. In this regard, the current study gives practical recommendations to mitigate online child sexual exploitation in a better possible manner. Especially in developing countries, counteracting against online child sexual abuse to alleviate the deliberate online exploitation can remarkably decrease children’s rights violation.
Jimiama Mafeni Mase, Direnc Pekaslan, Utkarsh Agrawal
et al.
Commercial driving is a complex multifaceted task influenced by personal traits and external contextual factors, such as weather, traffic, road conditions, etc. Previous intelligent commercial driver-assessment systems do not consider these factors when analysing the impact of driving behaviours on road safety, potentially producing biased, inaccurate, and unfair assessments. In this paper, we introduce a methodology (Expert-centered Driver Assessment) towards a fairer automatic road safety assessment of drivers' behaviours, taking into consideration behaviours as a response to contextual factors. The contextual moderation embedded within the intelligent decision-making process is underpinned by expert input, comprising of a range of associated stakeholders in the industry. Guided by the literature and expert input, we identify critical factors affecting driving and develop an interval-valued response-format questionnaire to capture the uncertainty of the influence of factors and variance amongst experts' views. Questionnaire data are modelled and analysed using fuzzy sets, as they provide a suitable computational approach to be incorporated into decision-making systems with uncertainty. The methodology has allowed us to identify the factors that need to be considered when moderating driver sensor data, and to effectively capture experts' opinions about the effects of the factors. An example of our methodology using Heavy Goods Vehicles professionals input is provided to demonstrate how the expert-centred moderation can be embedded in intelligent driver assessment systems.
Nowadays, commercial music has extreme loudness and heavily compressed dynamic range compared to the past. Yet, in music source separation, these characteristics have not been thoroughly considered, resulting in the domain mismatch between the laboratory and the real world. In this paper, we confirmed that this domain mismatch negatively affect the performance of the music source separation networks. To this end, we first created the out-of-domain evaluation datasets, musdb-L and XL, by mimicking the music mastering process. Then, we quantitatively verify that the performance of the state-of-the-art algorithms significantly deteriorated in our datasets. Lastly, we proposed LimitAug data augmentation method to reduce the domain mismatch, which utilizes an online limiter during the training data sampling process. We confirmed that it not only alleviates the performance degradation on our out-of-domain datasets, but also results in higher performance on in-domain data.
While many visualization researchers have attempted to define data insights, little is known about how visualization users perceive them. We interviewed 23 professional users of end-user visualization platforms (e.g., Tableau and Power BI) about their experiences with data insights. We report on seven characteristics of data insights based on interviewees' descriptions. Grounded in these characteristics, we propose practical implications for creating tools that aim to automatically communicate data insights to users.
Search heuristics, particularly those that are evaluation-driven (e.g., evolutionary computation), are often performed in simulation, enabling exploration of large solution spaces. Yet simulation may not truly replicate real-world conditions. However, search heuristics have been proven to be successful when executed in real-world constrained environments that limit searching ability even with broad solution spaces. Moreover, searching in situ provides the added benefit of exposing the search heuristic to the exact conditions and uncertainties that the deployed application will face. Software engineering problems can benefit from in situ search via instantiation and analysis in real-world environments. This paper introduces Search@Home, an environment comprising heterogeneous commercial off-the-shelf devices enabling rapid prototyping of optimization strategies for real-world problems.
The goal of Inductive Logic Programming (ILP) is to learn a program that explains a set of examples in the context of some pre-existing background knowledge. Until recently, most research on ILP targeted learning Prolog programs. Our own ILASP system instead learns Answer Set Programs, including normal rules, choice rules and hard and weak constraints. Learning such expressive programs widens the applicability of ILP considerably; for example, enabling preference learning, learning common-sense knowledge, including defaults and exceptions, and learning non-deterministic theories. In this paper, we first give a general overview of ILASP's learning framework and its capabilities. This is followed by a comprehensive summary of the evolution of the ILASP system, presenting the strengths and weaknesses of each version, with a particular emphasis on scalability.
Many researchers have explored tools that aim to recommend data insights to users. These tools automatically communicate a rich diversity of data insights and offer such insights for many different purposes. However, there is a lack of structured understanding concerning what researchers of these tools mean by "insight" and what tasks in the analysis workflow these tools aim to support. We conducted a systematic review of existing systems that seek to recommend data insights. Grounded in the review, we propose 12 types of automated insights and four purposes of automating insights. We further discuss the design opportunities emerged from our analysis.
The purpose of the article is to reveal the essence of the attracted capital, to clarify the legal, economic, and legal content of the liabilities, to justify the relationship between the categories of “liabilities”, “arrears”, “calculations” and “liabilities” and “attracted capital”, assess domestic and foreign experience in the classification of liabilities, justify information management of the attracted capital, taking into account the step-by-step accounting process of current liabilities, introduce proposals for the classification of current liabilities with the aim to improve the management of current liabilities as a part of debt capital. Methodology. The methodological basis for the disclosure of the research goal was the scientific advancement of scientists, legislative and regulatory acts on issues of accounting obligations. Results. The study found that, in the conditions of unstable economic development, one of the important tasks of enterprise management is a rational choice of the asset formation sources structure. The article reveals the essence of the term “capital” and it is found out that the basis of the definition is the material-real form. Problems of the contents of attracted and borrowed capital are outlined. The study of legislative documents, which defined the content of the category “liabilities”, was conducted. Legal components of current liabilities characteristic are explored and discussed issues are defined. The legal and economic aspects of liabilities are investigated. As a result of the research, the theoretical substantiation of the essence of the categories “liabilities”, “debt” and “settlements” was conducted. It is proved that all current liabilities are divided into real and potential ones. The order of displaying information about current liabilities at all stages of the accounting process is substantiated. It is confirmed that the basis of the management accounting for the attracted capital is the primary documents, accounting data, and generalized forms of internal and external reporting. Practical implication. The analytical data of the composition and the structure of attracted capital of agricultural enterprises with detailed analysis of structure of current liabilities are presented. It is confirmed that liabilities occupy a significant share in the structure of capital and are a source of economic activity financing of enterprises. It is determined that not all liabilities arising in civil and commercial law are recorded in the accounts. We substantiated the characteristic features of liabilities. It is determined that all liabilities that are the subject of accounting are legal and economical. The opinion on the content of the definition of “commitment” is taken into account with the accounting, economic, and legal constituents. As a result of the study of foreign experience in the classification of current liabilities, the author’s interpretation of the classification of current liabilities is presented. Value/originality. An important objective for the management system is the objective classification of liabilities, their assessment and reliability of accounting. It is proposed to distinguish certain classifications of current liabilities for the purpose of managing borrowed capital in terms of current liabilities.