Maximizando las herramientas utilizadas en la litigación internacional sobre derechos humanos: el papel del consenso

En el conjunto de instrumentos que componen las estrategias de litigación interna-cional sobre derechos humanos, la noción de consenso constituye una herramienta que el Derecho internacional público pone al servicio de las partes. Manejado con la suficiente pericia, el consenso puede ser muy útil tanto para quienes, invocando una interpretación evolutiva, desean ampliar el al-cance de alguno de los derechos tutelados por un tratado internacional de derechos humanos, como para quienes pretenden justificar la necesidad y la proporcionalidad de las restricciones impuestas a un derecho. A partir de una sistematización de la práctica del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Huma-nos y la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, el trabajo ofrece un conjunto de recomenda-ciones finales dirigidas a los operadores jurídicos interesados en invocar la noción de consenso en la litigación internacional sobre derechos humanos

Shaping the EU investment regime: choice of forum and applicable law in international investment agreements

Abstract: The paper examines the interplay between European Union Law and the internationalforeign investment protection regime. While the European institutions and its Member States shape the content of the future investment agreements and define the investment policy, it is worth analyzing in light of recent practice the eventual participation formulas of the European Union in investment arbitration, and the consideration of European Union Law as applicable Law in investment arbitration.   Key words: European investment regime; Applicable Law to investment arbitration; Participation of the European Union in investment arbitration; Bilateral Investment Treaties; International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes; European Court of Justice; self-contained regimes; principle of systemic integration.   Resumen: El trabajo examina la interacción entre el Derecho de la Unión Europea y el régimen internacional de protección de las inversiones exteriores. Mientras las instituciones de la UniónEuropea y sus Estados miembros modelan el contenido de los futuros acuerdos europeos de inversión y definen el alcance de la política europea de inversiones, es importante analizar a la luz de la práctica más reciente, las posibles fórmulas de participación de la Unión Europea en el arbitraje de inversiones y la consideración del Derecho de la Unión Europea como derecho aplicable en el arbitraje de inversiones.   Palabras clave: Régimen europeo de inversiones; Derecho aplicable al arbitraje de inversiones; Participación de la Unión Europea en el arbitraje de inversiones; Tratados bilaterales de inversión; Centro Internacional para el Arreglo de Diferencias relativas a Inversiones; Tribunal de Justicia de la Unión Europea; regímenes autónomos; principio de integración sistémica.

Fiscal data revisions in Europe

Public deficit figures are subject to revisions, as most macroeconomic aggregates are. Nevertheless, in the case of Europe, the latter could be particularly worrisome given the role of fiscal data in the functioning of EU’s multilateral surveillance rules. Adherence to such rules is judged upon initial releases of data, in the framework of the so-called Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) Notifications. In addition, the lack of reliability of fiscal data may hinder the credibility of fiscal consolidation plans. In this paper we document the empirical properties of revisions to annual government deficit figures in Europe by exploiting the information contained in a pool of real-time vintages of data pertaining to fifteen EU countries over the period 1995-2008. We build up such real-time dataset from official publications. Our main findings are as follows: (i) preliminary deficit data releases are biased and non-efficient predictors of subsequent releases, with later vintages of data tending to show larger deficits on average; (ii) such systematic bias in deficit revisions is a general feature of the sample, and cannot solely be attributed to the behaviour of a small number of countries, even though the Greek case is clearly an outlier; (iii) Methodological improvements and clarifications stemming from Eurostat’s decisions that may lead to data revisions explain a significant share of the bias, providing some evidence of window dressing on the side of individual countries; (iv) expected real GDP growth, political cycles and the strength of fiscal rules also contribute to explain revision patterns; (v) nevertheless, if the systematic bias is excluded, revisions can be considered rational after two years. JEL Classification: E01, E21, E24, E31, E5, H600data revisions, fiscal statistics, news and noise, Rationality, real-time data

Deep-HiTS: Rotation Invariant Convolutional Neural Network for Transient Detection

We introduce Deep-HiTS, a rotation invariant convolutional neural network (CNN) model for classifying images of transients candidates into artifacts or real sources for the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS). CNNs have the advantage of learning the features automatically from the data while achieving high performance. We compare our CNN model against a feature engineering approach using random forests (RF). We show that our CNN significantly outperforms the RF model reducing the error by almost half. Furthermore, for a fixed number of approximately 2,000 allowed false transient candidates per night we are able to reduce the miss-classified real transients by approximately 1/5. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time CNNs have been used to detect astronomical transient events. Our approach will be very useful when processing images from next generation instruments such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). We have made all our code and data available to the community for the sake of allowing further developments and comparisons at https://github.com/guille-c/Deep-HiTS

The Effect of the Electronic Nature of Spectator Ligands in the C–H Bond Activation of Ethylene by Cr(III) Silicates: An ab initio Study

The Phillips catalyst, chromium oxides supported on silica, is one of the most widely used catalysts for the industrial production of polyethylene (PE). We recently synthesized a well-defined mononuclear Cr(III) silicate as active site model of the Phillips catalyst. The catalytic activity of this well-defined catalyst was similar to the industrial Phillips catalyst. We proposed that C–H bond activation of ethylene over a Cr–O bond initiates polymerization in this Cr(III) catalyst. Our results also showed that the presence of a second ethylene olefin in the coordination sphere of Cr decreases the intrinsic energy barrier of the C–H activation of ethylene. In order to understand the effect of this additional ligand in the C–H activation of ethylene by the Cr(III) catalyst, we evaluated the energetics of this step with different spectator ligands (C2H4, C2F4, N2 and CO) coordinated to the Cr center. The Charge Decomposition Analysis (CDA) of the bonding interactions between the Cr(III) catalyst and the ligands showed that the intrinsic energy barrier for the C–H activation of ethylene decreases with the increasing electron-donor properties of the spectator ligand