Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Role of the Judiciary in a Divided Society

This paper analyzes the role of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the promotion of social justice under the conditions of a triple transformation from war to peace and from a communist regime based on the Titoist self-management ideology to a liberal-democratic political regime and economic market system in three parts. The first section describes the political, constitutional and economic context during and after the collapse of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The second section describes and analyzes the constitutional and institutional arrangements established under the General Framework Agreement for Peace, concluded in Dayton/Ohio and Paris, 1995. The third section deals with the role of the Constitutional Court and analyzes with reference to its case law the interpretative doctrines developed in its adjudication of the right to property concerning different concepts of property and the right to work in the context of the constitutionally guaranteed right to return of refugees and restitution of property

Electroorganic Chemistry. VII. The Role of Mercuric Salts in the Electroreduction of Benzylic Bromides

Electroduction of a variety of benzylic mono- and 1,3-dibromides and of benzylmer curie halides at stirred mercury pool cathode leads to products that support a mechanism for the electro- duction of bromides that involves organomercury(I) intermediates and perhaps mercury (I) dimers. Products f ormed in the presence or absence of strongly adsorbed but eleotrochemically indifferent species suggest that monomolecular versus bimolecular reactions of the adsorbed organomercury(I) intermediates or dimers are strongly influenced by the presence of such species and that in some cases the reaction can be directed to one or another final product, providing a measure of control in synthetic applications

Integrating species traits into species pools

Despite decades of research on the species‐pool concept and the recent explosion of interest in trait‐based frameworks in ecology and biogeography, surprisingly little is known about how spatial and temporal changes in species‐pool functional diversity (SPFD) influence biodiversity and the processes underlying community assembly. Current trait‐based frameworks focus primarily on community assembly from a static regional species pool, without considering how spatial or temporal variation in SPFD alters the relative importance of deterministic and stochastic assembly processes. Likewise, species‐pool concepts primarily focus on how the number of species in the species pool influences local biodiversity. However, species pools with similar richness can vary substantially in functional‐trait diversity, which can strongly influence community assembly and biodiversity responses to environmental change. Here, we integrate recent advances in community ecology, trait‐based ecology, and biogeography to provide a more comprehensive framework that explicitly considers how variation in SPFD, among regions and within regions through time, influences the relative importance of community assembly processes and patterns of biodiversity. First, we provide a brief overview of the primary ecological and evolutionary processes that create differences in SPFD among regions and within regions through time. We then illustrate how SPFD may influence fundamental processes of local community assembly (dispersal, ecological drift, niche selection). Higher SPFD may increase the relative importance of deterministic community assembly when greater functional diversity in the species pool increases niche selection across environmental gradients. In contrast, lower SPFD may increase the relative importance of stochastic community assembly when high functional redundancy in the species pool increases the influence of dispersal history or ecological drift. Next, we outline experimental and observational approaches for testing the influence of SPFD on assembly processes and biodiversity. Finally, we highlight applications of this framework for restoration and conservation. This species‐pool functional diversity framework has the potential to advance our understanding of how local‐ and regional‐scale processes jointly influence patterns of biodiversity across biogeographic regions, changes in biodiversity within regions over time, and restoration outcomes and conservation efforts in ecosystems altered by environmental change

On the Emancipation of PLS-SEM: A Commentary on Rigdon (2012)

Rigdon's (2012) thoughtful article argues that PLS-SEM should free itself from CB-SEM. It should renounce all mechanisms, frameworks, and jargon associated with factor models entirely. In this comment, we shed further light on two subject areas on which Rigdon (2012) touches in his discussion of CB-SEM and PLS-SEM. Rigdon (2012) highlights ways to make better use of PLS-SEM's predictive capabilities, for example, by reverting to set correlations. We discuss this issue in more detail, highlighting the need to examine the predictive capabilities of models when developing and testing theories, and broach the issue of confirmatory versus exploratory modeling. As a result of our discussion, we call for the continuous improvement of the PLS-SEM method to uncover its capabilities for theory testing while retaining its predictive characte

Prevalence of pulmonary arterial hypertension in patients with connective tissue diseases: a systematic review of the literature

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a progressive and life-threatening disease. Understanding of PAH prevalence remains limited, but PAH has been reported as a frequent complication in connective tissue diseases. This study estimated prevalence of PAH in patients with connective tissue diseases and prevalence of idiopathic PAH using a systematic review of the literature. We searched PubMed through May 19, 2012 for all studies on prevalence of PAH in patients with connective tissue diseases or prevalence of idiopathic PAH. To be included, studies had to be in English, have humans as subjects, and determine prevalence within a time interval of up to 2 years. Studies only investigating pediatric patients were excluded. Pooled prevalence estimates were calculated. Twenty studies were identified in the review. Seventeen of the 20 studies reported prevalence of PAH in connective tissue diseases and three reported prevalence of idiopathic PAH. The pooled prevalence estimate of idiopathic PAH was 12 cases per million population (95 % CI 5 cases per million to 22 cases per million) with estimates ranging from 5.9 cases per million population to 25 cases per million population. The pooled prevalence estimate of PAH in patients with connective tissue diseases was 13 % (95 % CI, 9.18 % to 18.16 %) with reported estimates ranging from 2.8 % to 32 %. Prevalence of PAH in patients with connective tissue diseases was substantially higher than that of idiopathic PAH based on pooled prevalence estimates. Comparisons of PAH prevalence in persons with connective tissue disease and idiopathic PAH using a large observational study would be helpful in better assessing relative prevalence

Electroorganic Chemistry. VI. Mechanism and Product Studies in the Electroreductoin of 1,3-Dibromides

Products of the electroreduction of 1,3-dihromopropane, 1, 3-dibromo-1 -phenylpropane, 1,3-dibromo-1,3 -diphenylpropane, enđo-4-syn-8-dibromodibenzobicyclo[3.2.1] octadiene, and 1,8-bis- (bromomethyl)naphthalene at a mercury cathode were examined. The influence of change in potential, of addition of radical and carbanion scavengers, of added adsorbable species on product distribution, and the presence of organomercurial species in the products implicate a reaction path which involves sequential one electron reductions with the intervention of organomercury(l) radicals and possible dimeric mercury(l) species

Elasticity of semi-flexible polymers

We present a numerical solution of the Worm-Like Chain (WLC) model for semi-flexible polymers. We display graphs for the end-to-end distance distribution and the force-extension relation expected from the model. We predict the expected level of fluctuations around the mean value in force-extension curves. Our treatment analyses the entire range of polymer lengths and reproduces interesting qualitative features seen in recent computer simulations for polymers of intermediate length. These results can be tested against experiments on single molecules. This study is relevant to mechanical properties of biological molecules.Comment: five pages revtex five figures, slightly improved version with recent references adde