Participation, Democratic Deficit and Good Regulation: a Case Study of Participatory Strategies in the European Regulation of GMO Products

In the European Union, the institutional reform that risk regulation system has undergone in the last decade has emphasised the need for fostering public participation and stakeholder involvement in decision making processes. Citizen scrutiny, in theory, ought to bring about better governance, and greater participation in public policy decisions is usually regarded as a symptom of a healthy democracy. By presenting evidence from two case studies in the field of bio-technology regulation, this paper aims to prove that taking participation as a tout court advantage is a mistake

Avaliação comparativa da sobrevivência e do crescimento de ostras da espécie Crassostrea gigas com o emprego de diferentes estruturas de cultivo

TCC (graduação em Agronomia) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Ciências Agrárias, 2008A Crassotrea gigas é a ostra mais cultivada no mundo e no Brasil. Seu crescimento no Brasil é rápido, atingindo o tamanho comercial de 10 cm em 8 meses, a partir de sementes de 1 mm. Os métodos mais empregados de cultivo no Brasil para ostras são os espinhéis e fixos, com os animais colocados em lanternas verticais. Apesar disso, os ambientes de cultivo em Santa Catarina e no Brasil são rasos com alta quantidade de matéria total particulada e, fundos areno-lodosos ou lodosos, com alta concentração de matéria orgânica. Esse tipo de ambiente leva ao aumento da incidência de parasitas e predadores que podem causar grandes mortalidades nos cultivos e redução de crescimento. Técnicas de cultivo que permitam minimizar esses problemas e ainda, aumentar a produtividade com diminuição de custos e mão-de-obra são extremamente importantes para manter a qualidade e a quantidade de produção. Assim, este trabalho teve por objetivo avaliar o rendimento e a sobrevivência de ostras em diferentes fases de cultivo (intermediária e definitiva) ubmetidas a diferentes estruturas de cultivo (caixas flutuantes, lanternas verticais e lanternas horizontais), com e sem tratamento de manejo por lavação. As ostras apresentaram bom crescimento, de até 20 mm por mês na fase intermediária e 10 mm na fase definitiva, sempre menores nas caixas flutuantes e as mortalidades foram abaixo de 10 % para as diferentes fases e tratamentos empregues. Assim, as ostras passam de 50 mm até 100 mm em quatro meses de cultivo, com dois meses para cada fase. No caso das ostras nas lanternas verticais e horizontais, não foi observado nenhum comportamento padrão, havendo, para as diferentes fases e tratamentos, resultados hora melhores para as verticais, outros melhores para as horizontais e, da mesma forma, comportamentos variados para ostras com e sem manejo de lavação. Os parâmetros físico-químicos da água do mar não apresentaram grandes variações no período e as temperaturas, durante as duas fases experimentais, foram iguais variando de 19,5 a 22,8 oC. Assim, as variações e diferenças observadas para os diferentes parâmetros analisados nos diferentes tratamentos, foram atribuídas aos efeitos dos tratamentos e não de fatores ambientais. Além disso, nas condições do experimento, com as densidades utilizadas e o manejo de troca de estruturas e redução de densidade após dois meses, os resultados mostram que não há necessidade de lavação das estrutura e das ostras. Novas tecnologias de cultivo de ostras nas diferentes etapas, como o uso das lanternas horizontais deste trabalho, podem auxiliar a viabilizar os cultivos em áreas do Brasil onde hoje é difícil cultivar e podem ser aproveitadas como modelo para o cultivo de outras espécies de moluscos

Liberal Democratic Institutions and the Damages of Political Corruption1

This article contributes to the debate concerning the identification of politically relevant cases of corruption in a democracy by sketching the basic traits of an original liberal theory of institutional corruption. We define this form of corruption as a deviation with respect to the role entrusted to people occupying certain institutional positions, which are crucial for the implementation of public rules, for private gain. In order to illustrate the damages that corrupt behaviour makes to liberal democratic institutions, we discuss the case of health care professionals' abuse of their right to conscientious objection to abortion services. We show that the conscience clause can be instrumentally abused to sabotage democratically established public rules and thus exert undue private influence on their implementation. In this sense, from a liberal democratic perspective, institutional corruption is problematic because it is disruptive of such fundamental liberal ideals as the impartiality of public institutions and citizens' political equality

Social injustice, essays in political theory

There are many situations and policies that strike us as unjust and make us look for alternatives. Yet in the absence of a clear definition, we may end up by equating injustice with everything that is evil in the worl

Sustainability in Peripheral and Ultra-Peripheral Rural Areas through a Multi-Attribute Analysis: The Case of the Italian Insular Region

Italy has adopted the strategy of inner areas, mainly based on physical distance from public services. The strategy promotes a multi-level and multi-fund governance approach and the local partnership of mayors. Our paper focuses on rural areas, identified by the national strategy of inner areas, as peripheral and ultra-peripheral, in the Italian insular region (Sicily and Sardinia). It analyzes, at the municipality level, socio-demographic, economic, and environmental sustainability using appropriate indicators. Aiming at discovering the underlying relationship portrayed by multi-attribute data in an information system, we applied rough set theory. The inductive decision rules obtained through this data mining methodology reveal the simultaneous presence or absence of important characteristics aiming at reaching different levels of sustainability. Without the requirement of statistical assumptions regarding data distribution or structures for collecting data, such as functions or equations, this method ensures the description of patterns exhibited by data. Of particular interest is the assessment of conditional attributes (i.e., the selected indicators), and the information connecting them to sustainability, as a decision attribute. The most important result is rule generation, specifically, decision rules that are able to suggest tools for policy makers at different levels

Accountability or Good Decisions

Civil society participation in international and European governance is often promoted as a remedy to its much-lamented democratic deficit. We argue in this paper that this claim needs refinement because civil society participation may serve two quite different purposes: it may either enhance the democratic accountability of intergovernmental organisations and regimes, or the epistemic quality of rules and decisions made within them. (...

Repeated successful use of eltrombopag in chronic primary immune thrombocytopenia: description of an intriguing case.

Thrombopoietin receptor agonists (TPO-RAs) are used as effective alternative treatments in ITP patients unresponsive to first-/second-line therapies. TPO- RAs can also be used to normalize platelet count to safely perform invasive pro- cedures and chemotherapy, in case of malignancies. In few responsive patients, TPO-RAs can be suspended maintaining a sustained respons

Steering the magnetic properties of Ni/NiO/CoO core-shell nanoparticle films: The role of core-shell interface versus interparticle interactions

Supported core-shell Ni/NiO/CoO nanoparticle (NP) films were obtained by deposition of preformed and mass-selected Ni NPs on a buffer layer of CoO, followed by a top CoO layer. The resulting NPs have core/shell morphology, with a McKay icosahedral Ni core and a partially crystalline CoO shell. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy evidenced the presence of a thin NiO layer, which was shown to be between the Ni core and the CoO shell by elemental TEM mapping. CoO and NiO shells with different thickness values were obtained, allowing us to investigate the evolution of the magnetic properties of the NP assemblies as a function of the oxide shell thickness. Both exchange-coupling and magnetostatic interactions significantly contribute to the magnetic behavior of Ni/NiO/CoO NP films. After the Ni/NiO/CoO NPs are cooled in a weak magnetic field, they have blocking temperature higher than room temperature because of strong magnetostatic interactions, which support the formation of a spin-glass-like state below similar to 250 K. Exchange coupling dominates the magnetic behavior after the NPs are cooled in a strong magnetic field. The exchange bias (EB) is in the 0.17-2.35 kOe range and strongly depends on the CoO thickness (0.4-2.7 nm), showing the onset of the EB at the few-nanometer scale. The switching field distribution showed that the EB opposes the magnetization reversal from the direction along the cooling field but it does not significantly ease the opposite process. The EB depends on t(CoO) only for t(NiO) <= 0.5 nm, but when NiO is 0.7 nm thick it strongly interacts with CoO and a large increase of the EB and coercivity is observed

Liver toxicity after treatment with gefitinib and anastrozole: drug-drug interactions through cytochrome p450?

No abstract availabl