227 research outputs found
Sheltering government support to 'green' electricity: the European Union and the World Trade Organization
Since the Canada â Renewable Energy (2013) dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) has been the focal point of academic debate on the trade-environment interface, with a growing consensus that WTO subsidy rules need to be revisited with a view to securing âpolicy spaceâ for government support for renewable energy. This article explores whether, as suggested by some scholars, the European Union (EU)âs system of justifications for renewable energy aid could serve as a source of inspiration for the WTO. While this proposition may appear attractive at first sight, it is hardly conceivable, or even desirable, that the EU's approach to sheltering government support for renewable energy could be transposed to the WTO. This is because the two systems of subsidy control are fundamentally different in both substantive and procedural terms and, importantly, these differences reflect distinct objectives and political/institutional contexts. Nonetheless, this comparative analysis sheds light on where the key challenges lie for the WTO in ensuring that international trade rules and climate change mitigation objectives are mutually supportive. It is argued that the case for reviewing the SCM Agreement cannot be made by simply forging parallels with the EU's regulatory model, but needs to be carefully construed on the basis of a proper understanding of whether and how green policy space is actually constrained under the current WTO subsidy and trade remedy rules. However, this requires better information on existing WTO membersâ practice in relation to renewable energy subsidies, as well as on their environmental effectiveness and possible trade-distortive impact. In this sense, the most valuable lesson that the WTO can draw from the EU's regulatory experience is the imperative of improving the transparency and knowledge-enhancing elements of its subsidy control system
Untangling the International Responsibility of the European Union and Its Member States in the World Trade Organization Post-Lisbon: A Competence/Remedy Model
The aim of this article is to shed light on the legally important and politically sensitive question of the respective responsibility of the European Union (EU) and its member states for the performance of World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations. Specifically, it seeks to challenge two propositions often found in the literature on the basis of a rigorous analysis of WTO dispute settlement practice. First, the claim that the EUâs exclusive responsibility for breaches of WTO law by its member states has been widely accepted by other WTO members and dispute settlement organs is not well grounded in existing WTO jurisprudence nor supported by recent post-Lisbon WTO dispute settlement practice. Second, and contrary to what some EU law scholars appear to suggest, what has been decisive in assigning international responsibility in the WTO is not the division of external (treaty-making) competences between the EU and its member states but, rather, the allocation and exercise of internal (treaty-infringing/treaty-performing) competences. In this sense, the Treaty of Lisbon has not fundamentally changed how the issue of EU/member states international responsibility is to be approached in the WTO, insofar as the EU member states remain members of that organization in their own right. With this in mind, a redefined âcompetence/remedyâ model is put forward to help us untangle âwho is responsibleâ to third parties for breaches of WTO law
Do UK universities communicate their brands effectively through their websites?
This paper attempts to explore the effectiveness of UK universitiesâ websites. The area of branding in higher education has received increasing academic investigation, but little work has researched how universities demonstrate their brand promises through their websites. The quest to differentiate through branding can be challenging in the university context, however. It is argued that those institutions that have a strong distinctive image will be in a better position to face a changing future. Employing a multistage methodology, the web pages of twenty UK universities were investigated by using a combination of content and multivariable analysis. Results indicated âtraditional valuesâ such as teaching and research were often well communicated in terms of online brand but âemotional valuesâ like social responsibility and the universitiesâ environments were less consistently communicated, despite their increased topicality. It is therefore suggested that emotional values may offer a basis for possible future online differentiation
Measurement of low-mass e + e â pair production in 1 and 2 A GeV CâC collision with HADES
HADES is a secondary generation experiment operated at GSI Darmstadt with the main goal to study dielectron production in proton, pion and heavy ion induced reactions. The first part of the HADES mission is to reinvestigate the puzzling pair excess measured by the DLS collaboration in C+C and Ca+Ca collisions at 1A GeV. For this purpose dedicated measurements with the C+C system at 1 and 2A GeV were performed. The pair excess above a cocktail of free hadronic decays has been extracted and compared to the one measured by DLS. Furthermore, the excess is confronted with predictions of various model calculations. © 2009 Springer-Verlag / Società Italiana di Fisica. 62 1 81 84 Cited By :
Study of pallial neurogenesis in shark embryos and the evolutionary origin of the subventricular zone
The dorsal part of the developing telencephalon is one of the brain areas that has suffered most drastic changes throughout vertebrate evolution. Its evolutionary increase in complexity was thought to be partly achieved by the appearance of a new neurogenic niche in the embryonic subventricular zone (SVZ). Here, a new kind of amplifying progenitors (basal progenitors) expressing Tbr2, undergo a second round of divisions, which is believed to have contributed to the expansion of the neocortex. Accordingly, the existence of a pallial SVZ has been classically considered exclusive of mammals. However, the lack of studies in ancient vertebrates precludes any clear conclusion about the evolutionary origin of the SVZ and the neurogenic mechanisms that rule pallial development. In this work, we explore pallial neurogenesis in a basal vertebrate, the shark Scyliorhinus canicula, through the study of the expression patterns of several neurogenic markers. We found that apical progenitors and radial migration are present in sharks, and therefore, their presence must be highly conserved throughout evolution. Surprisingly, we detected a subventricular band of ScTbr2-expressing cells, some of which also expressed mitotic markers, indicating that the existence of basal progenitors should be considered an ancestral condition rather than a novelty of mammals or amniotes. Finally, we report that the transcriptional program for the specification of glutamatergic pallial cells (Pax6, Tbr2, NeuroD, Tbr1) is also present in sharks. However, the segregation of these markers into different cell types is not clear yet, which may be linked to the lack of layering in anamniotesThis work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de EconomĂa y Competitividad-FEDER (BFU2014-5863-1P)S
Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality during the O3 run
The Advanced Virgo detector has contributed with its data to the rapid growth
of the number of detected gravitational-wave signals in the past few years,
alongside the two LIGO instruments. First, during the last month of the
Observation Run 2 (O2) in August 2017 (with, most notably, the compact binary
mergers GW170814 and GW170817) and then during the full Observation Run 3 (O3):
an 11 months data taking period, between April 2019 and March 2020, that led to
the addition of about 80 events to the catalog of transient gravitational-wave
sources maintained by LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA. These discoveries and the manifold
exploitation of the detected waveforms require an accurate characterization of
the quality of the data, such as continuous study and monitoring of the
detector noise. These activities, collectively named {\em detector
characterization} or {\em DetChar}, span the whole workflow of the Virgo data,
from the instrument front-end to the final analysis. They are described in
details in the following article, with a focus on the associated tools, the
results achieved by the Virgo DetChar group during the O3 run and the main
prospects for future data-taking periods with an improved detector.Comment: 86 pages, 33 figures. This paper has been divided into two articles
which supercede it and have been posted to arXiv on October 2022. Please use
these new preprints as references: arXiv:2210.15634 (tools and methods) and
arXiv:2210.15633 (results from the O3 run
Virgo Detector Characterization and Data Quality: results from the O3 run
The Advanced Virgo detector has contributed with its data to the rapid growth
of the number of detected gravitational-wave (GW) signals in the past few
years, alongside the two Advanced LIGO instruments. First during the last month
of the Observation Run 2 (O2) in August 2017 (with, most notably, the compact
binary mergers GW170814 and GW170817), and then during the full Observation Run
3 (O3): an 11-months data taking period, between April 2019 and March 2020,
that led to the addition of about 80 events to the catalog of transient GW
sources maintained by LIGO, Virgo and now KAGRA. These discoveries and the
manifold exploitation of the detected waveforms require an accurate
characterization of the quality of the data, such as continuous study and
monitoring of the detector noise sources. These activities, collectively named
{\em detector characterization and data quality} or {\em DetChar}, span the
whole workflow of the Virgo data, from the instrument front-end hardware to the
final analyses. They are described in details in the following article, with a
focus on the results achieved by the Virgo DetChar group during the O3 run.
Concurrently, a companion article describes the tools that have been used by
the Virgo DetChar group to perform this work.Comment: 57 pages, 18 figures. To be submitted to Class. and Quantum Grav.
This is the "Results" part of preprint arXiv:2205.01555 [gr-qc] which has
been split into two companion articles: one about the tools and methods, the
other about the analyses of the O3 Virgo dat
Modifiable risk factors associated with prediabetes in men and women: A cross-sectional analysis of the cohort study in primary health care on the evolution of patients with prediabetes
Background: Prediabetes is a high-risk state for diabetes development, but little is known about the factors associated with this state. The aim of the study was to identify modifiable risk factors associated with the presence of prediabetes in men and women.
Methods: Cohort Study in Primary Health Care on the Evolution of Patients with Prediabetes (PREDAPS-Study) is a prospective study on a cohort of 1184 subjects with prediabetes and another cohort of 838 subjects without glucose metabolism disorders. It is being conducted by 125 general practitioners in Spain. Data for this analysis were collected during the baseline stage in 2012. The modifiable risk factors included were: smoking habit, alcohol consumption, low physical activity, inadequate diet, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and obesity. To assess independent association between each factor and prediabetes, odds ratios (ORs) were estimated using logistic regression models.
Results: Abdominal obesity, low plasma levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-cholesterol), and hypertension were independently associated with the presence of prediabetes in both men and women. After adjusting for all factors, the respective ORs (95% Confidence Intervals) were 1.98 (1.41-2.79), 1.88 (1.23-2.88) and 1.86 (1.39-2.51) for men, and 1.89 (1.36-2.62), 1.58 (1.12-2.23) and 1.44 (1.07-1.92) for women. Also, general obesity was a risk factor in both sexes but did not reach statistical significance among men, after adjusting for all factors. Risky alcohol consumption was a risk factor for prediabetes in men, OR 1.49 (1.00-2.24).
Conclusions: Obesity, low HDL-cholesterol levels, and hypertension were modifiable risk factors independently related to the presence of prediabetes in both sexes. The magnitudes of the associations were stronger for men than women. Abdominal obesity in both men and women displayed the strongest association with prediabetes. The findings suggest that there are some differences between men and women, which should be taken into account when implementing specific recommendations to prevent or delay the onset of diabetes in adult population
- âŠ