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Medium altitude, long endurance drones are becoming a component of regular air forces. However, the extent to which manned aircraft are being replaced by such "MALE UAVs" (MALE = Medium Altitude, Long Endurance, UAV = Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) remains unclear. At present Germany is faced with determining with what means the Luftwaffe should be equipped in the medium term (up to 2020) and long-term (post-2020). Beyond military considerations, there are cooperation and industrial policy issues to be taken into account, since no one individual state in Europe can or wants to provide the financial means to develop a national MALE UAV model. Although European industry has already launched research and development projects, their governments are by no means on board. Likewise it is also unclear whether drones are to be armed in future. Discussion has been continuing for some time as to how far targeted killings are responsible and permissible. In contrast, no fundamental debate has so far taken place about what the ethical consequences are of the trend towards automated combat. Such a debate is now overdue and urgent, as the momentum of technological development conceals the danger that human beings may abdicate moral responsibility in decisions over the use of force

The classification of animal feed ingredients has become a challenging computational task since the food crisis that arose in the European Union after the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The most interesting alternative to replace visual observation under classical microscopy is based on the use of near infrared reflectance microscopy (NIRM). This technique collects spectral information from a set of microscopic particles of animal feeds. These spectra can be classified using maximum margin classifiers with good results. However, it is difficult to interpret the models in terms of the contribution of features. To gain insight into the interpretability of such classifications, we propose a method that learns accurate classifiers defined on a small set of narrow intervals of wavelengths. The proposed method is a greedy bipartite procedure that may be successfully compared with other state-of-the-art feature selectors and can be scaled up efficiently to deal with other classification tasks of higher dimensionality ; The research work by the Artificial Intelligence Center reported here is supported in part under Grant TIN2011-23558 from the Spanish Ministerio de Economı´ a y Competitividad. The SERIDA work was supported by the Spanish Project RTA2010-00128-00-00 from the INIA

Medium altitude, long endurance drones are becoming a component of regular air forces. However, the extent to which manned aircraft are being replaced by such "MALE UAVs" (MALE = Medium Altitude, Long Endurance, UAV = Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) remains unclear. At present Germany is faced with determining with what means the Luftwaffe should be equipped in the medium term (up to 2020) and long-term (post-2020). Beyond military considerations, there are cooperation and industrial policy issues to be taken into account, since no one individual state in Europe can or wants to provide the financial means to develop a national MALE UAV model. Although European industry has already launched research and development projects, their governments are by no means on board. Likewise it is also unclear whether drones are to be armed in future. Discussion has been continuing for some time as to how far targeted killings are responsible and permissible. In contrast, no fundamental debate has so far taken place about what the ethical consequences are of the trend towards automated combat. Such a debate is now overdue and urgent, as the momentum of technological development conceals the danger that human beings may abdicate moral responsibility in decisions over the use of force. (author's abstract)

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to apply a model of regional networks and governance to cross‐border cases for the purpose of identifying determinants that help local governments overcome barriers and promote interaction in border areas most susceptible to globalization realities, namely "old economy" manufacturing and industrial centers. It aims to draw together research from a variety of perspectives on regional networks and explore efforts by two local European communities and one local US community to respond to the challenges posed by the global economy by interviewing stakeholders in territories that have experienced significant deindustrialization.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with local, regional and central government officials, as well as private sector actors, in the Italian region of the Marches and in the countries of Luxembourg and the USA.FindingsThe study's preliminary findings show a range of networks across several arenas closely associated with economic development, but fail to show direct associations with economic development alone. The authors attribute this to the centrality of geographic space in development augmented by local competition and presence of the international border.Originality/valueThe authors conclude by identifying a set of determinants that will guide future research into local networking in cross‐border economic development and related arenas.

This paper explores personal assistance – a practice considered crucial for supporting the independence and social inclusion of disabled people. The starting point of the analysis is the presumption that the significance of personal assistance goes well beyond welfare, touching upon existential-ontological issues. In order to uncover these issues, a phenomenological approach is used. The aim is to highlight the understanding of human being which is mediated by an internationally prominent model of personal assistance, to wit, the one promoted by the European Independent Living advocates, as described by Adolf Ratzka (2004a). It is argued that despite its liberal-individualist assertions the scheme described by Ratzka presupposes a distributed, relational understanding of human being. A case study of recent disability-related activism in Bulgaria is developed in order to further substantiate this claim. In conceptual terms, then, the paper adds a fresh perspective to the debates on individualist vs. collectivist approaches to disability equality. This perspective is informed by the phenomenological insights of Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In policy terms the paper argues for the necessity of promoting and supporting disabled people's self-organizing, most importantly peer support and advocacy activities.

This paper builds on Granovetter's distinction between strong and weak ties [ Granovetter, M. S. 1973 . The strength of weak ties. Amer. J. Sociol. 78(6) 1360–1380] in order to respond to recent calls for a more dynamic and processual understanding of networks. The concepts of potential and latent tie are deductively identified, and their implications for understanding how and why networks emerge, evolve, and change are explored. A longitudinal empirical study conducted with companies operating in the European motorsport industry reveals that firms take strategic actions to search for potential ties and reactivate latent ties in order to solve problems of network redundancy and overload. Examples are given, and their characteristics are examined to provide theoretical elaboration of the relationship between the types of tie and network evolution. These conceptual and empirical insights move understanding of the managerial challenge of building effective networks beyond static structural contingency models of optimal network forms to highlight the processes and capabilities of dynamic relationship building and network development. In so doing, this paper highlights the interrelationship between search and redundancy and the scope for strategic action alongside path dependence and structural influences on network processes.

PurposeRegional economic integration has been a major area of research in the field of international economics and international trade, with little attention being paid to the impact of these economic collaborations on the organizational strategies of firms within the economically integrated regions. By building on the organization‐environment relationship paradigm, this paper aims to address the impact of environmental changes associated with economic integration, market commonality and currency commonality, on the patterns and structures of strategic alliances within members of the economic community.Design/methodology/approachUsing mixed linear models, the study looks at changes associated with the integration of the European Union and their effects on international alliances within the integrated area and among the various member countries.FindingsThe findings suggest that the emergence and the adoption of economic integration policies at the country level do impact the patterns and structures of strategic alliances practiced between member countries. Specifically, the adoption of common market policies among members of an economic community has implications on the pattern and structure of strategic collaborative relationships of firms within these member countries.Originality/valueWhile regional economic integrations have accelerated, theoretical and empirical research addressing their impact on multinational strategies has yet to catch up.

The main objective of this article is to study the recent Directive on the application of patients' right in cross-border healthcare by putting it into perspective with the case law that initiated it, together with the trade-offs that had to be taken into account. The drafters of the Directive have dealt with a number of trade-offs among the requirements of the respect for the freedom to receive care (as part of the freedom to provide services), the recognition of rights for the patients, the respect for the historical competence of Member States and the diversity of different healthcare models, and the protection of national financial balances. As a result of theses trade-offs, the Directive goes beyond a mere codification of the Kohll and Geraets-Smits case law. It displays an original combination of the codifying solutions derived from the free provision of services, the facilitation of the exercise of patient mobility by highlighting information in relation to such mobility, and a notable focus on several cooperating tools between States in connection with Article 168 TFEU. The article then raises some questions about the efficiency of this combination and its contribution to the realization of a genuine European Health policy.

In order to achieve the climate protection goals in the building sector, a higher rate of building refurbishment is necessary to improve the energy standard of residential building stock in the European Union. Although subsidisation seems to be necessary, optimal measures concerning cost effectiveness are unclear. Using a stylised model of the German residential building stock, we analyse different refurbishment measures by simulating every relevant investment until 2030. In particular, we compare two different options that are relevant for political measures: first, comprehensive refurbishments that are expensive but achieve the greatest reductions in energy consumption and GHG emissions and second, partial refurbishments which include only low-cost improvements but can be achieved on a wide scale. We conclude that comprehensive refurbishments will require the least amount of investment costs per ton GHG emissions and provide the highest reductions in energy consumption in 2030. Hence, partial refurbishments are never optimal. However, in terms of cumulated GHG emissions in the period considered, the difference between both options is very small. This is due to their different dynamics: comprehensive refurbishments achieve fewer results in the first years but catch up quickly, which means that the higher the refurbishment rate the higher the advantage of comprehensive refurbishments.

The aim of this paper is to test the presence of strategic interactions in government spending on Research and Development (R&D) among EU-15 countries. We add to the literature on public choice strategic interactions in general, and to work on R&D spending in particular. We take account of traditional and some overlooked factors related to countries' public R&D spending, including (i) the international context - i.e. Lisbon strategy; (ii) country characteristics - the National System of Innovation, and more specifically national similarities in relation to (a) trade and economic size and (b) sectoral specialization. Sectoral specialization is likely to affect government spending, depending on the mechanisms of complementarity or substitution between public and private R&D. Using a spatial dynamic panel model in which spatial matrices are specified both in terms of traditional Euclidean distance, and sectoral specialization proximity, we confirm the existence of strategic interactions on R&D spending among European countries with similar economic size, international trade and sectoral structure. Unlike the results emerging from the literature on strategic interactions in public choice, geographic proximity seems not to affect interactions related to public spending on R&D.

This paper describes the audio segmentation system developed by the PRHLT research group at the UPV for the Albayzin Audio Segmentation Evaluation 2012. The PRHLT-UPV audio segmentation system is based on a conventional GMM-HMM speech recognition approach in which the vocabulary set is defined by the power set of segment classes. MFCC features were extracted to represent the acoustic signal and the AK toolkit was used for both, training acoustic models and performing audio segmentation. Experimental results reveals that our system provides an excellent performance on speech detection, so it could be successfully employed to provide speech segments to a diarization or speech recognition system. ; The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 287755. Funding was also provided by the Spanish Government (iTrans2 project, TIN2009-14511; FPU scholarship AP2010-4349). ; Silvestre Cerdà, JA.; Giménez Pastor, A.; Andrés Ferrer, J.; Civera Saiz, J.; Juan Císcar, A. (2012). Albayzin Evaluation: The PRHLT-UPV Audio Segmentation System. En Proceedings IberSPEECH 2012 VII Jornadas en Tecnología del Habla and III Iberian SLTech Workshop. Ramos Castro, Daniel. 596-600. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/53699 ; S ; 596 ; 600

Artículo presentado como comunicación oral al "26th European Conference on Solid-State Transducers, EUROSENSOR 2012" celebrada en Cracovia (Polonia) del 9 al 12 de Septiembre del 2012.-- Open Access. ; It is proposed a microscopy for cell culture applications based on impedance sensors. The imagined signals are measured with the Electrical Cell-Substrate Spectroscopy (ECIS) technique, by identifying the cell area. The proposed microscopy allows real-time monitoring inside the incubator, reducing the contamination risk by human manipulation. It requires specific circuits for impedance measurements, a two-dimensional sensor array (pixels), and employing electrical models to decode efficiently the measured signals. Analogue Hardware Description Language (AHDL) circuits for cell-microelectrode enables the use of geometrical and technological data into the system design flow. A study case with 8x8 sensor array is reported, illustrating the evolution and power of the proposed image acquisition. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Project: Auto-calibración y auto-test en circuitos analógicos, mixtos y de radio frecuencia: Andalusian Government project P0-TIC-5386, co-financed with FEDER. We thank to Citoquimica Ultraestructural Group (BIO132) of Cell Biology Dep, Seville University. ; Peer Reviewed

Faced with the severest economic crisis after World War Two, the global economy is turning to new sources of growth, which should guide it on the road to economic recovery. In such circumstances, the idea of green growth, based on the belief that economic growth and care for the environment go "hand in hand," is being reaffirmed. In a way, green growth represents a step backward, i.e., going back to the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio in 1992, when environmental sustainability of economic growth was the focus of attention. On the other hand, green growth also represents a step forward, as it is a practical and flexible approach that should contribute to the implementation of the concept of sustainable development in all its dimensions:economic, environmental and also social. A large number of countries, including the European Union, follow the green growth model, respecting national idiosyncrasies, which is demonstrated in this paper. In order to communicate with Europe and the world successfully, Serbia needs to share their fundamental values and commitments, but also preserve its national economic identity. Green growth (in the context of sustainable development) is a good option for Serbia and is its strong link to the rest of the world.

This book analyzes the EU's approach to P2P, a digital age technology that highlights the tensions between the Internet and a territorial and fragmented copyright law. It aims at providing the necessary legal qualification and context to understand why the EU, while following an economic and socially onerous path, has thus far failed to achieve its deterrence goals. It is argued that a solution to this conundrum must be based on the use of copyright law and policy as tools for market organization and innovation growth, with respect for rights holders and users (sometimes) opposing interests and the existing legal framework. The best answer to mass online P2P uses seems to be that of collective rights management, as it offers an organized licensing and remuneration system compatible with the interests of stakeholders. This is especially true in the EU, home to a developed and sophisticated market of CMOs, subject to numerous ECJ and Commission decisions, as well as varying EU institutional approaches, all pointing towards a preference for multi-territorial and pan-European licensing models. In this context, this book tests the compatibility of several non-voluntary and voluntary approaches to P2P with international treaties, the acquis or simply strategic policy considerations.

В статье автор с позиций социальной философии рефлексирует современные теоретические положения и фактический материал, касающийся развития современного мира, и приходит к выводу, что наиболее вероятной формой нового мирового порядка является многополюсная модель мироустройства. На это имеется целый ряд объективных причин. В основе современного полицентризма лежит, прежде всего, распадение мира на соперничающие зоны внутренней экономической интеграции: Европейский Союз, Североамериканская зона свободной торговли (НАФТА), зона «большой китайской экономики», Япония и группа стран АСЕАН. В формировании многополярности участвуют не только экономические, но и другие факторы. ; The author from the standpoint of social philosophy analyzes contemporary theoretical concepts and factual material relating to the development of the modern world and concludes that the most likely form of new world order is a multipolar world order model. There are a number of objective reasons to this. At the heart of the modern polyentrism lies, first of all, splitting the world into rival zones of economic integration inside the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the zone of "great Chinese economy", Japan and the ASEAN group of countries. In the formation of multipolarity not only economic, but also other factors are involved.