Global Governance Behind Closed Doors : The IMF Boardroom, the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, and the Intersection of Material Power and Norm Change in Global Politics

Up on the 12th floor of its 19th Street Headquarters, the IMF Board sits in active session for an average of 7 hours per week. Although key matters of policy are decided on in the venue, the rules governing Boardroom interactions remain opaque, resting on an uneasy combination of consensual decision-making and weighted voting. Through a detailed analysis of IMF Board discussions surrounding the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF), this article sheds light on the mechanics of power in this often overlooked venue of global economic governance. By exploring the key issues of default liability and loan conditionality, I demonstrate that whilst the Boardroom is a more active site of contestation than has hitherto been recognized, material power is a prime determinant of both Executive Directors’ preferences and outcomes reached from discussions. And as the decisions reached form the backbone of the ‘instruction sheet’ used by Fund staff to guide their everyday operational decisions, these outcomes—and the processes through which they were reached—were factors of primary importance in stabilizing the operational norms at the heart of a controversial phase in the contemporary history of IMF concessional lending

Native-state stability determines the extent of degradation relative to secretion of protein variants from Pichia pastoris.

We have investigated the relationship between the stability and secreted yield of a series of mutational variants of human lysozyme (HuL) in Pichia pastoris. We show that genes directly involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR), ER-associated degradation (ERAD) and ER-phagy are transcriptionally up-regulated more quickly and to higher levels in response to expression of more highly-destabilised HuL variants and those variants are secreted to lower yield. We also show that the less stable variants are retained within the cell and may also be targeted for degradation. To explore the relationship between stability and secretion further, two different single-chain-variable-fragment (scFv) antibodies were also expressed in P. pastoris, but only one of the scFvs gave rise to secreted protein. The non-secreted scFv was detected within the cell and the UPR indicators were pronounced, as they were for the poorly-secreted HuL variants. The non-secreted scFv was modified by changing either the framework regions or the linker to improve the predicted stability of the scFv and secretion was then achieved and the levels of UPR indicators were lowered Our data support the hypothesis that less stable proteins are targeted for degradation over secretion and that this accounts for the decrease in the yields observed. We discuss the secretion of proteins in relation to lysozyme amyloidosis, in particular, and optimised protein secretion, in general

Soil vs. glass: an integrated approach towards the characterization of soil as a burial environment for the glassware of Cucagna Castle (Friuli, Italy)

This research is performed on a selection of archaeological glass finds with corresponding soil samples, excavated on the site of the High Medieval castle Cucagna in Friuli/Northern Italy. In the frame of understanding medieval glass technology and the chemical-physical conditions that influenced the state of preservation of the glass finds, this study uses a multi-analytical line-up of methods to characterize the composition of the glass and basic parameters of the soil including texture, mineralogical composition, pH, redox potential (Eh) and electric conductivity (EC). The results show that glass corrosion in soil not only depends on acidity, alkalinity or glass composition but also on the texture of the soil, measurable as grain-size distribution, and the mineralogical composition. The compositional groups of the glassware from Cucagna indicate the use of various raw material sources, pointing to Northern and Central Italian glass workshops with primary or secondary glass production.[GRAPHICS].FdA – Publicaties zonder aanstelling Universiteit Leide

Atya abelei, a new atyid shrimp (Crustacea, Decapoda, Atyidae) from the Pacific slope of Panama ,

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