Collapsing legitimacy: how the crime of aggression could affect the ICC’s legitimacy

The International Criminal Court (ICC) will gain the capacity to prosecute the crime of aggression in 2017. The Amendments to the Rome Statute are the product of a political compromise and have a complex legal structure with a high definitional threshold for an act of aggression alongside a bespoke jurisdictional arrangement. This legal structure is likely to mean that very few acts of aggression are considered crimes. Even when acts of aggression pass the threshold set out in the amendments, it is highly likely that any such prosecution would not succeed. This article argues that this is likely to significantly impact the legitimacy of the ICC as an organization. To understand this, it is necessary to look at the different meanings of legitimacy before examining how the way in which the law is configured could undermine the political legitimacy of the organization as a whole

Testing and integrating the WLCG/EGEE middleware in the LHC computing

The main goal of the Experiment Integration and Support (EIS) team in WLCG is to help the LHC experiments with using proficiently the gLite middleware as part of their computing framework. This contribution gives an overview of the activities of the EIS team, and focuses on a few of them particularly important for the experiments. One activity is the evaluation of the gLite workload management system (WMS) to assess its adequacy for the needs of the LHC computing in terms of functionality, reliability and scalability. We describe in detail how the experiment requirements can be mapped to validation criteria, and the WMS performances are accurately measured under realistic load conditions over prolonged periods of time. Another activity is the integration of the Service Availability Monitoring system (SAM) with the experiment monitoring framework. The SAM system is widely used in the EGEE operations to identify malfunctions in Grid services, but it can be adapted to perform the same function on experiment-specific services. We describe how this has been done for some LHC experiments, which are now using SAM as part of their operations

Enhancement of lysosomal glycohydrolase activity in human primary B lymphocytes during spontaneous apoptosis.

It has been shown that lysosomes are involved in B cell apoptosis but lysosomal glycohydrolases have never been investigated during this event. In this study we determined the enzymatic activities of some lysosomal glycohydrolases in human tonsil B lymphocytes (TBL) undergoing in vitro spontaneous apoptosis. Fluorimetric methods were used to evaluate the activities of β-hexosaminidases, α-mannosidase, β-mannosidase, β-galactosidase, β-glucuronidase and α-fucosidase. Results show that in TBL during spontaneous apoptosis, there is a significant increase in the activity of β-hexosaminidases, α-mannosidase, β-mannosidase and β-galactosidase. Also β-glucuronidase and α-fucosidase activities increase but not in a significant manner. Further studies on β-hexosaminidases revealed that also mRNA expression of the α- and β-subunits, which constitute these enzymes, increases during spontaneous TBL apoptosis. When TBL are protected from apoptosis by the thiol molecule N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), there is no longer any increase in glycohydrolase activities and mRNA expression of β-hexosaminidase α- and β-subunits. This study demonstrates for the first time that the activities and expression of some lysosomal glycohydrolases are enhanced in TBL during spontaneous apoptosis and that these increases are prevented when TBL apoptosis is inhibited

HEPCloud, a New Paradigm for HEP Facilities: CMS Amazon Web Services Investigation

Historically, high energy physics computing has been performed on large purpose-built computing systems. These began as single-site compute facilities, but have evolved into the distributed computing grids used today. Recently, there has been an exponential increase in the capacity and capability of commercial clouds. Cloud resources are highly virtualized and intended to be able to be flexibly deployed for a variety of computing tasks. There is a growing nterest among the cloud providers to demonstrate the capability to perform large-scale scientific computing. In this paper, we discuss results from the CMS experiment using the Fermilab HEPCloud facility, which utilized both local Fermilab resources and virtual machines in the Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud. We discuss the planning, technical challenges, and lessons learned involved in performing physics workflows on a large-scale set of virtualized resources. In addition, we will discuss the economics and operational efficiencies when executing workflows both in the cloud and on dedicated resources.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Effects of β2-receptor stimulation by indacaterol in chronic heart failure treated with selective or non-selective β-blockers: a randomized trial

Alveolar \u3b22-receptor blockade worsens lung diffusion in heart failure (HF). This effect could be mitigated by stimulating alveolar \u3b22-receptors. We investigated the safety and the effects of indacaterol on lung diffusion, lung mechanics, sleep respiratory behavior, cardiac rhythm, welfare, and exercise performance in HF patients treated with a selective (bisoprolol) or a non-selective (carvedilol) \u3b2-blocker. Study procedures were performed before and after indacaterol and placebo treatments according to a cross-over, randomized, double-blind protocol in forty-four patients (27 on bisoprolol and 17 on carvedilol). No differences between indacaterol and placebo were observed in the whole population except for a significantly higher VE/VCO2 slope and lower maximal PETCO2 during exercise with indacaterol, entirely due to the difference in the bisoprolol group (VE/VCO2 31.8\u2009\ub1\u20095.9 vs. 28.5\u2009\ub1\u20095.6, p\u2009<\u20090.0001 and maximal PETCO2 36.7\u2009\ub1\u20095.5 vs. 37.7\u2009\ub1\u20095.8\u2009mmHg, p\u2009<\u20090.02 with indacaterol and placebo, respectively). In carvedilol, indacaterol was associated with a higher peak heart rate (119\u2009\ub1\u200934 vs. 113\u2009\ub1\u200930 bpm, with indacaterol and placebo) and a lower prevalence of hypopnea during sleep (3.8 [0.0;6.3] vs. 5.8 [2.9;10.5] events/hour, with indacaterol and placebo). Inhaled indacaterol is well tolerated in HF patients, it does not influence lung diffusion, and, in bisoprolol, it increases ventilation response to exercise

Multivariate analysis of the influence of peri-implant clinical parameters and local factors on radiographic bone loss in the posterior maxilla: a retrospective study on 277 dental implants

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to investigate whether peri-implant clinical parameters (modified plaque index (mPI), bleeding and/or suppuration on probing (B/SOP)) and local factors (type of prostheses, screw emergence, platform diameter, and abutment angulation) might contribute to the development of additional bone loss and peri-implantitis around dental implants. Materials and methods: Two hundred seventy-seven external hex connection implants placed in the posterior maxilla of 124 patients were retrospectively evaluated. They were divided into two groups: physiologic bone loss < 2 mm (PBL) or additional bone loss ≥ 2 mm (ABL). GEE logistic regression was applied to evaluate the influence of type of prostheses (implant-supported single crown (ISSC), fixed partial denture (ISFPD), and full denture (ISFD)) and clinical parameters (mPI and S/BOP) on bone loss. Results: Among the 277 implants, 159 (57.4%) presented PBL and 118 (42.6%) presented ABL. Within the ABL group, 20.6% implants were diagnosed with peri-implantitis. mPI significantly correlated with the type of prosthesis and the highest value of mPI (index = 3) was observed in ISFD (23.8%). Moreover, peri-implantitis was more frequently associated with ISFD (32.79%) than ISSC and ISFDP (13.79% and 13.48, respectively) Conclusions: ISFD in the posterior maxilla presented high rates of ABL and showed a higher prevalence of peri-implantitis. None of the local factors seemed to contribute to the development of these conditions. Further investigations are needed to prospectively support the results of the present study. Clinical relevance: Patients rehabilitated with ISFD should be carefully monitored and have more frequent maintenance visits to prevent or control peri-implant bone loss

The commissioning of CMS sites: improving the site reliability

The computing system of the CMS experiment works using distributed resources from more than 60 computing centres worldwide. These centres, located in Europe, America and Asia are interconnected by the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid. The operation of the system requires a stable and reliable behaviour of the underlying infrastructure. CMS has established a procedure to extensively test all relevant aspects of a Grid site, such as the ability to efficiently use their network to transfer data, the functionality of all the site services relevant for CMS and the capability to sustain the various CMS computing workflows at the required scale. This contribution describes in detail the procedure to rate CMS sites depending on their performance, including the complete automation of the program, the description of monitoring tools, and its impact in improving the overall reliability of the Grid from the point of view of the CMS computing system

Beneficial prognostic effects of aspirin in patients receiving sorafenib for hepatocellular carcinoma: A tale of multiple confounders

Case–control observational studies suggested that aspirin might prevent hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in high-risk patients, even if randomized clinical trials are lacking. Information regarding aspirin in subjects who already developed HCC, especially in its advanced stage, are scarce. While aspirin might be a low-cost option to improve the prognosis, multiple confounders and safety concerns are to be considered. In our retrospective analyses of a prospective dataset (n = 699), after assessing the factors associated with aspirin prescription, we applied an inverse probability treatment weight analysis to address the prescription bias. Analyses of post-sorafenib survival were also performed to reduce the influence of subsequent medications. Among the study population, 133 (19%) patients were receiving aspirin at the time of sorafenib prescription. Aspirin users had a higher platelet count and a lower prevalence of esophageal varices, macrovascular invasion, and Child–Pugh B status. The benefit of aspirin was confirmed in terms of overall survival (HR 0.702, 95% CI 0.543–0.908), progression-free survival, disease control rate (58.6 vs. 49.5%, p &lt; 0.001), and post-sorafenib survival even after weighting. Minor bleeding events were more frequent in the aspirin group. Aspirin use was associated with better outcomes, even after the correction for confounders. While safety concerns arguably remain a problem, prospective trials for patients at low risk of bleeding are warranted