Menschenrechtsverletzungen durch im Ausland operierende Unternehmen: Regulierungslücken in Österreich schließen

Das Gutachten schlägt konkrete Rechtsänderungen in Österreich und auf EU-Ebene vor, die zum Ziel haben, Rechtsschutzmöglichkeiten für Opfer von Menschenrechtsverletzungen im Ausland durch österreichische Unternehmen zu gewährleisten. Die Studie soll auch Jurist_innen und Anwält_innen bei deren praktischer Arbeit mit Menschenrechtsklagen helfen

Swiss multinational enterprises and transnational corruption: management matters

In 2016, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland sanctioned a Swiss corporation for having bribed a Libyan Minister. The same year, it opened a criminal proceeding against the Swiss bank BSI for its involvement in the corruption scandals surrounding the Malaysian company 1MDB. Swiss corporations are also currently under investigation in the Brazilian Petrobras scandal. At the international level, anti-corruption treaties encourage states to make corporations criminally liable for transnational corruption. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises provide a detailed standard as to the management that corporations should adopt in order to prevent transnational corruption. This article aims to clarify the OECD due diligence standard. It presents the Swiss emerging practice regarding corporate criminal liability for transnational corruption offences and compares the conditions under which management deficiencies trigger criminal liability in Switzerland, in the United Kingdom, and in the United States

From the right to work to freedom from work: introduction to the human economy

It may appear to be paradoxical to celebrate work as a human right in an economic system in which for many work is associated with activities that are rather repetitive or stressful, sometimes meaningless, and seldom freely chosen. After presenting the content and historical origins of the human right to work, as defined in Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, this article argues that the right to work cannot be universally fulfilled in the contemporary state-centred global economy. Moving beyond economic discussions placing too much attention on how to provide enough but sometimes unfulfilling work, the article examines the human potential to reduce the need to work. It outlines the theoretical and definitional foundations of the ‘human economy’, where human potential and creativity are rewarded in order to make the transition from the right to work to the freedom from work. The human economy is a potentialist approach in which the right to be free to choose work plays an increasing role

An active site loop mutant of a zinc metallo-deubiquitinase suggests the importance of loop dynamics to catalysis

AMSH is a conserved zinc metalloprotease that functions with endosomal sorting complexes required for transport (ESCRT) machinery in order to down regulate and degrade cell-surface receptors. It has been shown to have high specificity toward Lys63-linked polyubiquitin chains, a signal used for receptor down regulation by ESCRT machinery. It has previously been found that Sst2, an AMSH orthologue from fission yeast, contains a flexible loop near the proximal ubiquitin binding site, composed of residues L402 and F403. The different mobility of the side chains of these residues contribute to the opening and closing conformation of the catalytic cleft which allow access to the active-site and may contribute to linkage specificity and catalysis. More specifically, F403 has been shown to make contacts with the isopeptide bond of substrate diubiquitin during cleavage, as well as have the potential to make interactions with residues D315 and T316 across from the mobile loop. To probe role of dynamics in this area, the conserved residue F403 was mutated to a bulkier yet still hydrophobic tryptophan residue with the thought that it would slow loop mobility by having the potential to make increased contacts. An additional mutant was made in which F403 was mutated to alanine to create a more flexible mutant incapable of making these contacts for comparison. Crystallographic structures were obtained of the F403W mutant alone and bound to monoubiquitin, revealing little change in overall structure compared to that of wild type, as well as little change in the alignment with the isopeptide bond of diubiquitin through aid of molecular modeling. Kinetic measurement of the tryptophan mutant showed a decreased value in Kcat by about 10-fold from that of wild type (0.17s-1 vs. 1.5s-1 respectively), while the KM was relatively unchanged. This indicated that while catalytic activity of the mutant was significantly impaired, substrate binding affinity was not affected. To show that this decrease in catalytic activity was not due to a structural change, circular dichroism and thermal denaturation were done on the mutant. Results indicate minimal structural changes due to the tryptophan mutation, as supported by crystallographic results. ^ Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) data was obtained for the tryptophan mutant binding to monoubiquitin, showing that substrate (or product) binding of the tryptophan mutant (10.2 + 0.3 μM) is relatively unchanged when compared to that of wild type (3.6 + 0.3 μM). Finally, cleavage of chain types K11 and K48 were done and compared to K63 by the mutant was measured, as well as the cleavage ability of several surrounding loop residue mutants. Results indicate that the tryptophan mutant allows better cleavage of other chain types than WT due to dynamics and an increased flexibility in loop, as well as hint to the importance of other key residues in the protein that may impact protein stability and function

Sintomas de deficiências nutricionais em citros.

Informacoes tecnicas sobre problemas nutricionais em laranja no Estado do Amazonas (Brasil).bitstream/item/64450/1/CircTec-06-1999.pd

A Substantial Amount of Hidden Magnetic Energy in the Quiet Sun

Deciphering and understanding the small-scale magnetic activity of the quiet solar photosphere should help to solve many of the key problems of solar and stellar physics, such as the magnetic coupling to the outer atmosphere and the coronal heating. At present, we can see only ${\sim}1$ of the complex magnetism of the quiet Sun, which highlights the need to develop a reliable way to investigate the remaining 99%. Here we report three-dimensional radiative tranfer modelling of scattering polarization in atomic and molecular lines that indicates the presence of hidden, mixed-polarity fields on subresolution scales. Combining this modelling with recent observational data we find a ubiquitous tangled magnetic field with an average strength of ${\sim}130$ G, which is much stronger in the intergranular regions of solar surface convection than in the granular regions. So the average magnetic energy density in the quiet solar photosphere is at least two orders of magnitude greater than that derived from simplistic one-dimensional investigations, and sufficient to balance radiative energy losses from the solar chromosphere.Comment: 21 pages and 2 figures (letter published in Nature on July 15, 2004

Fluctuations in the electron system of a superconductor exposed to a photon flux

We report on fluctuations in the electron system, Cooper pairs and quasiparticles, of a superconducting aluminium film. The superconductor is exposed to pair-breaking photons (1.54 THz), which are coupled through an antenna. The change in the complex conductivity of the superconductor upon a change in the quasiparticle number is read out by a microwave resonator. A large range in radiation power can be chosen by carefully filtering the radiation from a blackbody source. We identify two regimes. At high radiation power, fluctuations in the electron system caused by the random arrival rate of the photons are resolved, giving a straightforward measure of the optical efficiency (48%). At low radiation power fluctuations are dominated by excess quasiparticles, the number of which is measured through their recombination lifetime