The Preliminary Ruling Procedure, Today: Revisiting Article 267 TFEU’s Constitutional Backbone

As the title of the Special Issue suggests, its main purpose is to shed new light on the content, scope, extent, and limits of Article 267 TFEU in today’s Union and, in turn, on the nature of this procedure and the European Court of Justice (ECJ)’s role as a sui generis supranational court. Such role has been played first and foremost through the rulings rendered in the context of the preliminary ruling procedure, which has been defined as the ‘keystone’ of the EU judicial system,2 the ‘most important aspect of the work of the Court’,3 the ‘jewel in the Crown’ of the Court’s jurisdiction,4 and the ‘genius’ without which core principles, such as direct effect and primacy, could have not been conceived.5 Indeed, the procedure enshrined in Article 267 TFEU has shaped and continues to shape profoundly the EU legal order and the relationship between the EU and the Member States.Moreover, this procedure shall not be seen simply as a tool used by the Court of Luxembourg to strengthen the evolution of EU law. In fact, the way Article 267 TFEU has been constantly interpreted, redesigned, and materially reformed over the decades is also a symptom of the dynamics underpinning such evolution. This transformative and mimetic nature of Article 267 TFEU explains the evergreen interest in the procedure despite the absence of any amendment to the Treaties since the 1950s, confirmed by the large number of studies published on the subject over the last few years

The Early Bronze Age II City-Gate at Khirbet al-Batrawy, Jordan

Rapporto sui risultati degli scavi a Khirbet al-BatrawyReport on the results of the excavations at Khirbet al-Batraw

A note on the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation with discontinuity

In this work we consider differential equations of the type $$pm, u^{(k)}=f(u),$$ and study the extinction profile of their solutions. Emphasis is placed on the special case $-u^{(4)}=sign(u)$, which is related to the Kuramoto-Sivashinsky equation. In this case we describe in more detail the extinction phenomenon and prove a conjecture by Galaktionov and Svirshchevskii

Skandinaviens Ureinwohner und die Delikatessen der Wikinger

With the expansion of the Germanic tribes from the Southernmost part of Scandinavia, it seems that the natives gradually retreated to the less hospitable areas in the North and on the mountains, less attractive for the newcomers due to a rigid climate and scarcity of arable land. Being predominantly hunters-gatherers, natives could hardly grow cereals in their areas of residence and therefore they may have relied entirely on trade with Vikings to acquire beer or bread. Some kinds of meat (pork, beef, mutton) were equally exotic to these tribes who had specialized in hunting and herding reindeer. About dairy products, reindeer milk is far less suited to be processed than cow milk, there is only one kind of traditional cheese. The diet of the natives must have been quite monotone (but for the short arctic summer) and Viking gastronomy must have been a more than welcome change in their usual nourishment – when they managed to get some. Even though the natives were often in contact with Vikings, they were also ready to steal food, when trade was not an option. Unlike Vikings, who could simply extort what they wanted from natives by force, the latter would rather recur to cunning and their superior ability to move through the hostile landscape (hence the Norse belief, these peoples must possess magical powers) for a taste of Viking delicacies. Gradually, their contacts would go much farther than gastronomy alone: the integration of natives into the modern nations proceeded throughout the modern era.Con l’espansione delle tribù germaniche dalla parte più meridionale della Penisola scandinava, sembra che i nativi gradualmente si siano ritirati nelle aree meno ospitali del Nord e sulle montagne, meno attraenti per i nuovi venuti a causa del clima rigido e la scarsità di terra coltivabile. Prevalentemente cacciatori e raccoglitori, i nativi non sapevano coltivare cereali e perciò dovevano affidarsi interamente al commercio con i vichinghi per acquistare birra o pane. Le carni di alcuni animali (maiale, manzo, pecora) erano ugualmente esotiche per queste tribù che si erano specializzate nella caccia e nell’allevamento della renna. La produzione del formaggio era piuttosto modesta, dal momento che dal latte di renna si può tuttora ricavare solo un tipo tradizionale di formaggio. La dieta dei nativi deve essere stata piuttosto monotona, tranne che nella breve estate artica, e la gastronomia dei vichinghi doveva rappresentare un cambiamento molto gradito nel solito cibo, quando riuscivano a procurarsene. Per quanto i nativi fossero spesso in contatto con i vichinghi, erano anche pronti a rubare cibo, quando l’acquisto non era possibile. A differenza dai vichinghi, che potevano semplicemente prendere con la forza ciò che desideravano dai nativi, questi ultimi sarebbero piuttosto ricorsi all’astuzia, alla loro superiore capacità di muoversi in un paesaggio ostile (da qui la credenza nordica, che queste popolazioni fossero dotate di poteri magici) per assaggiare leccornie vichinghe. Gradualmente, i contatti sarebbero andati ben oltre la sola gastronomia: l’integrazione dei nativi nelle nazioni moderne è un processo che è continuato fino all’età moderna

Recovery of erection after pelvic urologic surgery: our experience

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Identification of circulating lncRNAs associated with gallbladder cancer risk by tissue-based preselection, cis-eQTL validation, and analysis of association with genotype-based expression

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play key roles in cell processes and are good candi dates for cancer risk prediction. Few studies have investigated the association between individual genotypes and lncRNA expression. Here we integrate three separate datasets with information on lncRNA expression only, both lncRNA expression and genotype, and genotype information only to identify circulating lncRNAs associated with the risk of gallbladder cancer (GBC) using robust linear and logistic regression techniques. In the first dataset, we preselect lncRNAs based on ex pression changes along the sequence “gallstones → dysplasia → GBC”. In the second dataset, we validate associations between genetic variants and serum expression levels of the preselected lncR NAs (cis-lncRNA-eQTLs) and build lncRNA expression prediction models. In the third dataset, we predict serum lncRNA expression based on individual genotypes and assess the association between genotype-based expression and GBC risk. AC084082.3 and LINC00662 showed increasing expression levels (p-value = 0.009), while C22orf34 expression decreased in the sequence from gallstones to GBC (p-value = 0.04). We identified and validated two cis-LINC00662-eQTLs (r2 = 0.26) and three cis-C22orf34-eQTLs (r2 = 0.24). Only LINC00662 showed a genotyped-based serum expression associ ated with GBC risk (OR = 1.25 per log2 expression unit, 95% CI 1.04–1.52, p-value = 0.02). Our results suggest that preselection of lncRNAs based on tissue samples and exploitation of cis-lncRNA-eQTLs may facilitate the identification of circulating noncoding RNAs linked to cancer risk

Privacy and Transparency in Blockchain-based Smart Grid Operations

In the past few years, blockchain technology has emerged in numerous smart grid applications, enabling the construction of systems without the need for a trusted third party. Blockchain offers transparency, traceability, and accountability, which lets various energy management system functionalities be executed through smart contracts, such as monitoring, consumption analysis, and intelligent energy adaptation. Nevertheless, revealing sensitive energy consumption information could render users vulnerable to digital and physical assaults. This paper presents a novel method for achieving a dual balance between privacy and transparency, as well as accountability and verifiability. This equilibrium requires the incorporation of cryptographic tools like Secure Mul- tiparty Computation and Verifiable Secret Sharing within the distributed components of a multi- channel blockchain and its associated smart contracts. We corroborate the suggested architecture throughout the entire process of a Demand Response scenario, from the collection of energy data to the ultimate reward. To address our proposal’s constraints, we present countermeasures against accidental crashes and Byzantine behavior while ensuring that the solution remains appropriate for low-performance IoT devices