Prevention of arthritis by interleukin 10-producing B cells

In this study we have shown that activation of arthritogenic splenocytes with antigen and agonistic anti-CD40 gives raise to a B cell population that produce high levels of interleukin (IL)-10 and low levels of interferon (IFN)-{gamma}. Transfer of these B cells into DBA/1-TcR-ß-Tg mice, immunized with bovine collagen (CII) emulsified in complete Freund's adjuvant inhibited T helper type 1 differentiation, prevented arthritis development, and was also effective in ameliorating established disease. IL-10 is essential for the regulatory function of this subset of B cells, as the B cells population isolated from IL-10 knockout mice failed to mediate this protective function. Furthermore, B cells isolated from arthritogenic splenocytes treated in vitro with anti–IL-10/anti–IL-10R were unable to protect recipient mice from developing arthritis. Our results suggest a new role of a subset of B cells in controlling T cell differentiation and autoimmune disorders

The Use of CBRN Weapons in Armed Conflict

The contribution deals with the use of CBRN weapons in the context of hostilities

On American Drone Strikes And (Possible) European Responsibilities: Facing The Issue Of Jurisdiction For “Complicity” In Extraterritorial Targeted Killings

States Party to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) regularly provide third States with key aid or assistance in performing extraterritorial targeted killings through armed drones: by doing so, they can be said to engage in conduct amounting to “complicity” for the purposes of international law of State responsibility. Strictly speaking, however, ECHR provisions do not apply to such conduct, which cannot be included into existing models of “jurisdiction” as per Article 1 ECHR – namely, “spatial” and “personal”. This results in a troublesome legal vacuum. The present article proposes an appraisal of such conduct through the lenses of a third jurisdictional model, already acknowledged by other human rights systems but largely ignored (or even discarded) by the European Court of Human Rights: the so-called “impact” model, which covers extraterritorial effects of territorial conduct. It will be demonstrated that to a limited extent the ECHR case-law already resorts to such model, as in several cases jurisdiction is believed to arise when impugned events, albeit taking place extraterritorially, are the consequence of State’s conduct (thus through a “causation” test) or when third States’ conduct can somehow be attributed to a State Party (through an “attribution” test). Albeit implicitly, this is an endorsement of the “impact” model of jurisdiction. It is argued that the Court should fully recognize this third model, and consequently apply it to extraterritorial conduct amounting to “complicity” in order to ensure a principled scrutiny over States Party’s conduct

Life Imprisonment Without Prospect of Release: Comparative Remarks from a Human-Rights Perspective

Life imprisonment without prospect of release is a penalty experiencing remarkable success today, especially in Europe. However, certain human rights bodies have recently begun to assert that this penalty runs counter the so-called ‘right to hope’, derived by way of interpretation from the right not to be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment. The purpose of the present contribution is to shed light on the potential and the limits of such trend by analyzing the case-law of universal (such as the UN system) and regional (the European system, the Inter-American system; the African system) bodies

An Only Child without “Younger Brothers”: Contrada v. Italy (No. 3) and the Never-Ending Saga of the Relationship between Italian Courts and the ECtHR

Corte di Cassazione (Sezioni Unite Penali), 3 March 2020, No. 8544 Criminal proceedings against Stefano Genc

ANALISI TERMO-MECCANICHE DI DIAFRAMMI ENERGETICAMENTE ATTIVI

I diaframmi energeticamente attivi sono un particolare tipo di opera di sostegno all’interno dei quali è installato uno scambiatore di calore che sfrutta l’energia geotermica del terreno. Scopo di questo lavoro è stato individuare le condizioni termiche estive più gravose per un diaframma durante l’esercizio dell’impianto geotermico e, mediante analisi numeriche termo-meccaniche, studiare l’influenza dello scambio termico sul comportamento dell’opera di sostegno in termini di spostamenti, deformazioni e sforzi indotti nel diaframma

On type II degenerations of hyperk\"ahler manifolds

We give a simple argument to prove Nagai's conjecture for type II degenerations of compact hyperk\"ahler manifolds and cohomology classes of middle degree. Under an additional assumption, the techniques yield the conjecture in arbitrary degree. This would complete the proof of Nagai's conjecture in general, as it was proved already for type I degenerations by Koll\'ar, Laza, Sacc\`a, and Voisin and independently by Soldatenkov, while it is immediate for type III degenerations. Our arguments are close in spirit to a recent paper by Harder proving similar results for the restrictive class of good degenerations

Lagrangian fibrations

We review the theory of Lagrangian fibrations of hyperk ̈ahler manifoldsas initiated by Matsushita. We also discuss more recent work of Shen–Yin andHarder–Li–Shen–Yin. Occasionally, we give alternative arguments and comple-ment the discussion by additional observations

Star product and the general Leigh-Strassler deformation

We extend the definition of the star product introduced by Lunin and Maldacena to study marginal deformations of N=4 SYM. The essential difference from the latter is that instead of considering U(1)xU(1) non-R-symmetry, with charges in a corresponding diagonal matrix, we consider two Z_3-symmetries followed by an SU(3) transformation, with resulting off-diagonal elements. From this procedure we obtain a more general Leigh-Strassler deformation, including cubic terms with the same index, for specific values of the coupling constants. We argue that the conformal property of N=4 SYM is preserved, in both beta- (one-parameter) and gamma_{i}-deformed (three-parameters) theories, since the deformation for each amplitude can be extracted in a prefactor. We also conclude that the obtained amplitudes should follow the iterative structure of MHV amplitudes found by Bern, Dixon and Smirnov.Comment: 21 pages, no figures, JHEP3, v2: references added, v3: appendix A added, v4: clarification in section 3.