The Political De-Determination of Legal Rules and the Contested Meaning of the ‘No Bailout’ Clause

Traditional debates on legal theory have devoted a great deal of attention to the question of the determinacy of legal rules. With the aid of social sciences and linguistics, this article suggests a way out of the ‘determinate-indeterminate’ dichotomy that has dominated the academic debate on the topic so far. Instead, a dynamic approach is proposed, in which rules are deemed to undergo processes of political ‘de-determination’ and ‘re-determination’. To illustrate this, the article uses the example of Art. 125 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the ‘no bailout’ provision, which played a major role in the management of the Euro-crisis. As will be shown, with the start of the crisis, this provision, whose meaning was once scarcely controversial, became the object of intense interpretative disagreement. As it became politically relevant, the rule also became the site of interpretative competitions, until the intervention of the European Court of Justice disambiguated and redefined its meaning

The small GTPase Rab29 is a common regulator of immune synapse assembly and ciliogenesis

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Jorge Galán, Gregory Pazour, Derek Toomre, Giuliano Callaini, Joel Rosenbaum, Alessandra Boletta and Francesco Blasi for generously providing reagents and for productive discussions, and Sonia Grassini for technical assistance. The work was carried out with the financial support of Telethon (GGP11021) and AIRC.Peer reviewedPostprin

Political Polarization as a Constraint on Corruption: A Cross-National Comparison

Efforts to explain corruption have increased dramatically in recent years. The interest stems from the increasing weight economists assign to corruption when explaining economic growth. Much research focuses on how political institutions influence perceptions of corruption. We move this debate in a new direction by addressing a previously ignored dimension: ideological polarization. We contend perceptions of corruption are determined not only by specific institutional features of the political system–such as elements of voting systems, ballot structures, or separation of powers–but by who sits at the controls. We employ panel data from a broad variety of countries to test our theoretical argument. Contrary to recent findings by both economists and political scientists, we show that ideological polarization predicts perceptions of corruption

Socio-Economic Instability and the Scaling of Energy Use with Population Size

The size of the human population is relevant to the development of a sustainable world, yet the forces setting growth or declines in the human population are poorly understood. Generally, population growth rates depend on whether new individuals compete for the same energy (leading to Malthusian or density-dependent growth) or help to generate new energy (leading to exponential and super-exponential growth). It has been hypothesized that exponential and super-exponential growth in humans has resulted from carrying capacity, which is in part determined by energy availability, keeping pace with or exceeding the rate of population growth. We evaluated the relationship between energy use and population size for countries with long records of both and the world as a whole to assess whether energy yields are consistent with the idea of an increasing carrying capacity. We find that on average energy use has indeed kept pace with population size over long time periods. We also show, however, that the energy-population scaling exponent plummets during, and its temporal variability increases preceding, periods of social, political, technological, and environmental change. We suggest that efforts to increase the reliability of future energy yields may be essential for stabilizing both population growth and the global socio-economic system

Herringbone Pattern and CH–π Bonding in the Crystal Architecture of Linear Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

The herringbone pattern is a pervasive structural motive found in most molecular crystals involving aromatic compounds. A plot of the experimental sublimation enthalpies of members of increasing size of the acene, phenacene and p-phenyl families versus the number of carbons uncovers a linear relationship between the two magnitudes, suggesting a major role of CH–π bonding. In this work we undertake the task of evaluating the relevance of the edge-to-face interaction (or CH–π bond) in the overall reticular energy of the crystal, to quantitatively assess the importance of this structural element. Following a heuristic approach, we considered the series of acenes, phenacenes and p-phenyls and analyzed the edge-to-face interaction between the molecules as they occur in the experimental crystal network. Isolation of the relevant molecular dimers allows to incorporate some of the most sophisticated tools of quantum chemistry and get a reliable picture of the isolated bond. When compared to the experimental sublimation energy, our results are conclusive: this sole interaction is the largest contribution to the lattice energy, and definitively dictates the crystal architecture in all the studied cases. Elusive enough, the edge-to-face interaction is mainly dominated by correlation interactions, specifically in the form of dispersion and, to a less extent, of charge-transfer terms. A suggestive picture of the bond has been obtained by displaying the differences in local electron densities calculated by either correlated or non-correlated methods.Financial support by the spanish “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MICINN” (grants CTQ2011-24165, FIS2012-33521 and FIS2012-35880) and the Universidad de Alicante is gratefully acknowledged. We also acknowledge support from the DGUI of the Comunidad de Madrid under the R&D Program of activities MODELICO-CM/S2009ESP-1691

Panoptica -- instance-wise evaluation of 3D semantic and instance segmentation maps

This paper introduces panoptica, a versatile and performance-optimized package designed for computing instance-wise segmentation quality metrics from 2D and 3D segmentation maps. panoptica addresses the limitations of existing metrics and provides a modular framework that complements the original intersection over union-based panoptic quality with other metrics, such as the distance metric Average Symmetric Surface Distance. The package is open-source, implemented in Python, and accompanied by comprehensive documentation and tutorials. panoptica employs a three-step metrics computation process to cover diverse use cases. The efficacy of panoptica is demonstrated on various real-world biomedical datasets, where an instance-wise evaluation is instrumental for an accurate representation of the underlying clinical task. Overall, we envision panoptica as a valuable tool facilitating in-depth evaluation of segmentation methods.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 3 table

Dimensionality of Carbon Nanomaterials Determines the Binding and Dynamics of Amyloidogenic Peptides: Multiscale Theoretical Simulations

Experimental studies have demonstrated that nanoparticles can affect the rate of protein self-assembly, possibly interfering with the development of protein misfolding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and prion disease caused by aggregation and fibril formation of amyloid-prone proteins. We employ classical molecular dynamics simulations and large-scale density functional theory calculations to investigate the effects of nanomaterials on the structure, dynamics and binding of an amyloidogenic peptide apoC-II(60-70). We show that the binding affinity of this peptide to carbonaceous nanomaterials such as C60, nanotubes and graphene decreases with increasing nanoparticle curvature. Strong binding is facilitated by the large contact area available for π-stacking between the aromatic residues of the peptide and the extended surfaces of graphene and the nanotube. The highly curved fullerene surface exhibits reduced efficiency for π-stacking but promotes increased peptide dynamics. We postulate that the increase in conformational dynamics of the amyloid peptide can be unfavorable for the formation of fibril competent structures. In contrast, extended fibril forming peptide conformations are promoted by the nanotube and graphene surfaces which can provide a template for fibril-growth

Mitigation of Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Venture Capital Financing: The Influence of the Country’s Institutional Setting

A venture capitalist (VC) needs to trade off benefits and costs when attempting to mitigate agency problems in their investor-investee relationship. We argue that signals of ventures complement the VC’s capacity to screen and conduct a due diligence during the pre-investment phase, but its attractiveness may diminish in institutional settings supporting greater transparency. Similarly, whereas a VC may opt for contractual covenants to curb potential opportunism by ventures in the post-investment phase, this may only be effective in settings supportive of shareholder rights enforcement. Using an international sample of VC contracts, our study finds broad support for these conjectures. It delineates theoretical and practical implications for how investors can best deploy their capital in different institutional settings whilst nurturing their relationships with entrepreneurs

Modulation of Dnmt3b function in vitro by interactions with Dnmt3L, Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b splice variants

DNA methylation, an essential regulator of transcription and chromatin structure, is established and maintained by the coordinated action of three DNA methyltransferases: DNMT1, DNMT3A and DNMT3B, and the inactive accessory factor DNMT3L. Disruptions in DNMT3B function are linked to carcinogenesis and genetic disease. DNMT3B is also highly alternatively spliced in a tissue- and disease-specific manner. The impact of intra-DNMT3 interactions and alternative splicing on the function of DNMT3 family members remains unclear. In the present work, we focused on DNMT3B. Using a panel of in vitro assays, we examined the consequences of DNMT3B splicing and mutations on its ability to bind DNA, interact with itself and other DNMT3's, and methylate DNA. Our results show that, while the C-terminal catalytic domain is critical for most DNMT3B functions, parts of the N-terminal region, including the PWWP domain, are also important. Alternative splicing and domain deletions also influence DNMT3B’s cellular localization. Furthermore, our data reveal the existence of extensive DNMT3B self-interactions that differentially impact on its activity. Finally, we show that catalytically inactive isoforms of DNMT3B are capable of modulating the activity of DNMT3A–DNMT3L complexes. Our studies therefore suggest that seemingly ‘inactive’ DNMT3B isoforms may influence genomic methylation patterns in vivo