Peer Reviewing the World: Increasing Civil Society Participation in the United Nations Universal Periodic Review

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is an exceptional mechanism within the framework of international human rights. The fact that it evaluates all UN member states’ human rights records on a universal basis sets it apart from other enforcement mechanisms that do not give equal time to all countries or do not seek to cover all human rights. Following the introduction of hybrid modalities in the third cycle, the UPR faces a turning point in terms of who is included in the process and how. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with UN officials, diplomatic mission members, civil society representatives, and academics, as well as personal reflections on my experience attending the 40th session of the UPR in Geneva, this project examines the participation of states and civil society actors throughout the existence of the mechanism. In regard to state participation, it finds that as states have learned “what to expect” out of the UPR process, they have become increasingly adept at using the language of human rights to make it appear as though they are engaged while maintaining ultimate control over their fate in the outcome of their review. Conversely, while civil society actors possess extremely limited agency within the formal UPR process, their strong engagement with the mechanism through informed, specific recommendations demonstrates their potential to exert “public pressure” on states if given the platform to do so. Given these findings, as well as the solidification of the mechanism after fifteen years of existence, I argue that visible civil society participation at the review stage is a risk worth taking

Integrating Tax Law into the Business Law Classroom: A Corporate ‘Cradle to Grave’ Case Study

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing

Student Ratings and Evaluation in Undergraduate Business Law Courses: A Modest Correlative Study

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre

Thiamine diphosphate adenylyl transferase from E. coli: functional characterization of the enzyme synthesizing adenosine thiamine triphosphate

BACKGROUND: We have recently identified a new thiamine derivative, adenosine thiamine triphosphate (AThTP), in E. coli. In intact bacteria, this nucleotide is synthesized only in the absence of a metabolizable carbon source and quickly disappears as soon as the cells receive a carbon source such as glucose. Thus, we hypothesized that AThTP may be a signal produced in response to carbon starvation. RESULTS: Here we show that, in bacterial extracts, the biosynthesis of AThTP is carried out from thiamine diphosphate (ThDP) and ADP or ATP by a soluble high molecular mass nucleotidyl transferase. We partially purified this enzyme and characterized some of its functional properties. The enzyme activity had an absolute requirement for divalent metal ions, such as Mn2+ or Mg2+, as well as for a heat-stable soluble activator present in bacterial extracts. The enzyme has a pH optimum of 6.5-7.0 and a high Km for ThDP (5 mM), suggesting that, in vivo, the rate of AThTP synthesis is proportional to the free ThDP concentration. When ADP was used as the variable substrate at a fixed ThDP concentration, a sigmoid curve was obtained, with a Hill coefficient of 2.1 and an S0.5 value of 0.08 mM. The specificity of the AThTP synthesizing enzyme with respect to nucleotide substrate is restricted to ATP/ADP, and only ThDP can serve as the second substrate of the reaction. We tentatively named this enzyme ThDP adenylyl transferase (EC 2.7.7.65). CONCLUSION: This is the first demonstration of an enzyme activity transferring a nucleotidyl group on thiamine diphosphate to produce AThTP. The existence of a mechanism for the enzymatic synthesis of this compound is in agreement with the hypothesis of a non-cofactor role for thiamine derivatives in living cells

Attitudes Toward Intimate Partner Violence and Associations With Condom Use Among Men in Haiti: An Analysis of the Nationally Representative Demographic Health Survey

Although men have substantial decision-making power regarding condom use, the majority of HIV knowledge and prevention studies in the general Haitian population have been conducted among youth and women. We investigated attitudes towards intimate partner violence, knowledge of and use of condoms among 9,493 men in Haiti using data from the 2012 nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey. Only 36% of HIV-negative and 44% of HIV-positive men reported using a condom the last time they had sex. Logistic regression revealed that believing it was justified for a man to hit or beat his wife if she refuses to have sex with him was associated with a lower odds of condom use. The odds of using a condom during last sex was higher among men who reported knowing condoms can prevent HIV and who had been tested for HIV. Given the low rate of condom use among men in Haiti, these findings suggest that interventions promoting HIV knowledge, HIV testing, and gender-violence prevention among men may also increase condom use

Evaporation of Primordial Black Holes in the Early Universe: Mass and Spin Distributions

Many cosmological phenomena lead to the production of primordial black holes in the early Universe. These phenomena often create a population of black holes with extended mass and spin distributions. As these black holes evaporate via Hawking radiation, they can modify various cosmological observables, lead to the production of dark matter, modify the number of effective relativistic degrees of freedom, $N_{\rm eff}$, source a stochastic gravitational wave background and alter the dynamics of baryogenesis. We consider the Hawking evaporation of primordial black holes that feature non-trivial mass and spin distributions in the early Universe. We demonstrate that the shape of such a distribution can strongly affect most of the aforementioned cosmological observables. We outline the numerical machinery we use to undertake this task. We also release a new version of FRISBHEE that handles the evaporation of primordial black holes with an arbitrary mass and spin distribution throughout cosmic history.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures. Numerical codes released in https://github.com/yfperezg/frisbhe