A little discourse on method(s). European Policy Brief No. 2, June 2011

Especially after the entry into force and subsequent implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, the traditional distinction (and opposition) between the so-called 'community' and 'inter-governmental' methods in EU policy-making is less and less relevant. Most common policies entail a 'mix' between them and different degrees of mutual contamination. Even the 'Union method' recently proposed by Chancellor Angela Merkel raises more questions than it solves – although it may trigger a constructive debate on how best to address today's policy challenges

Financiación de la Política Europea de Seguridad y de Defensa (PESD)

Un ángulo crucial desde el que enfocar las limitaciones actuales de la PESD es el relativo a su financiación. Afecta tanto a las capacidades como a las operaciones, y también resulta de importancia para cualquier futuro “grupo central” que pueda estar interesado en seguir adelante con dicha política. La Convención Europea va a centrarse en cómo mejorar las disposiciones “constitucionales” en este ámbito y, de nuevo, se espera que las principales novedades conciernan más a la PESD que a la PESC propiamente dicha. Por lo que respecta a esta segunda, el problema está claro: las cuestiones de “alta política” afectan más directamente a la soberanía y los poderes de los ministerios y gobiernos electos, y los desacuerdos en torno a las políticas (especialmente en torno a cómo tratar con Washington) sólo empeoran las cosas. En cuanto a la primera, sin embargo, los retos inmediatos de la acción y los imperativos de eficacia (independientemente de la escasa envergadura de las operaciones actuales) presionan a los dirigentes nacionales y europeos para que adopten una fórmula de cooperación. Si la PESD quiere demostrar su relevancia y, quizás, también influir positivamente en la PESC, debe fijar los incentivos políticos e institucionales adecuados para una acción común. Los recursos financieros son escasos, las capacidades adecuadas limitadas y la voluntad política intermitente, y ello en el mejor de los casos

Search for t¯t resonances in semileptonic final states at √s = 8TeV with the CMS detector

We present a search for heavy resonances decaying to a top quarkantiquark pair with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV. The analysis is performed in the semileptonic channel and corresponds to the combination of two dedicated searches, one designed for the reconstruction of top decays with well-separated decay products, the other optimized to probe the production of two high-pT top quarks, whose decay can potentially lead to the presence of merged jets and non-isolated leptons at the reconstruction level. No excess is observed in data with respect to the background expectation and 95% CL limits are set on the production cross section of resonances in the mass range from 500 GeV/c2 to 3TeV/c2 for several benchmark models

INVOLVEMENT AND ROLE OF THE PI3K/AKT NETWORK IN DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEUKEMIA CELLS BEFORE AND AFTER IN VITRO TREATMENT WITH CONVENTIONAL OR NEWLY DEVELOPED DRUGS

Alterations in the PI3K/Akt network play important roles in the etiology, maintenance and progression of acute leukemia. The analysis of the intracellular signaling profile of leukemia patients could serve to reveal novel molecular targets for treatment of this disease and to identify critical biomarkers for accurate and clinically relevant diagnosis and prognosis. This research is aimed by investigating the signaling PI3K/Akt pathway in acute leukemia cells. In particular, this work aims at investigating enzymatic and genetic alterations of the PI3K/Akt network in AML and ALL. It will be useful for diagnosis, underlying mechanisms of alterations occurring in leukemia development and progression. The Akt expression levels were very high in acute leukemia patients and cell lines, with very high activation levels, detected by the phosphorylation on the serine 473 residue, in ALL cells. Powerful activation of Akt and some main downstream targets can be observed in ALL cell lines. Moreover, it is known that the bad prognosis of some patients depends on the activation of some signaling pathways, and a bad prognosis is associated to patients that have higher activation of Akt (Kornblau et al 2006). The administration of drugs directly acting on PI3K and Akt (Perifosine, ErPC and PI3K/Erk inhibitor) was able to induce a strong reduction of proliferation and induce apoptosis. These drugs occurred via PI3K/Akt, as demonstrated by the weakened phosphorylation levels of the Akt downstream targets GSK3, mTOR and p21, involved in critical cell processes; treatment with Doxorubicin does not inhibits phosphorylation of downstream target and activity of Akt. Sequencing analysis on the AML and ALL cell lines and patients, could contribute to identify the molecular alterations underlying the leukemogenesis. We found one recurrent intronic transition, 2 cell lines out of 6 and all 4 patients, the IVS4a+30g. This mutation may be involved in mechanisms of splicing of Akt. Data on Akt alterations in acute leukemias are scarce in literature, thus, more detailed analyses in a wider group of patients are necessary to confirm the frequency of the identified change and its potential functional meaning. In this study we also addressed the work on the role of Akt during the initial steps of the human erythroid differentiation. We have shown that EPO treatment activates Akt in K562 erythroleukemia cells and induces the translocation of Akt active form in the nuclear compartment in a rapid and transient manner, suggesting that Akt plays a crucial role in EPO mediated erythroid differentiation. In vivo Akt phosphorylation and in vitro Akt kinase activity were up-regulated by EPO administration to K562 cells. Both phosphorylation and activity of Akt were down-regulated by the pharmacological PI3K inhibitors, Ly294002 or Wortmannin, thus showing that Akt activation is in the PI3K signal transduction axis. Immunoprecipitable nuclear Akt activity was detectable after 10 minutes and showed an increase that reached a maximum after 15-20 minutes. This enhancement was similar but delayed of 5 to 10 minutes when compared to Akt activation in whole cells and may be explained by the time required by Akt for translocating into this cell fraction, where almost all Akt results phosphorylated in the sites of activation. Although it is now clear that Akt migrates to the nucleus as the result of treatment with growth factors, thus, Akt nuclear translocation may be attributable to an activation of PI3K. It is worthy to note that, when nuclear Akt kinase activity is inhibited erythroid maturation is not taking place. This work provided evidences for the up-regulation of the PI3K/Akt axis in acute leukemias, and in particular in ALL type. Important step in this field will be the identification of the molecular events produced by Akt activation during erythroleukemia cells differentiation. These findings may help identifying novel target into the nucleus essential for differentiation and thus useful for anticancer therapy of hematological malignancies

The evolution of enhanced cooperation in the EU: from EnCo to PeSCo (2009-2019). Bruges Political Research Paper 80/2020.

This paper provides an analysis of the way(s) in which the intent(s) and design(s) of a multi-speed Europe have evolved and have been applied in practice since the mid-1990s. Part 1 focuses on the drive toward differentiation in the discussion in the 90s and points to Economic and Monetary Union as its first (albeit implicit) case in point. Part 2 discusses how the Lisbon Treaty framed ‘enhanced cooperation’. Part 3 offers an overview of the of the few specific cases so far in which those provisions have been triggered and used (family law, patent, taxation, European Public Prosecutor Office). Section 4 then zooms in on the configuration especially designed for defence: Permanent Structured Cooperation (PeSCo) – and the way in which it has been first activated, while Section 5 analyses its implementation. Finally, the paper presents a comparative assessment of these tools and their use to date. It highlights their correlation with one another as well as the original intent of facilitating differentiated integration within the EU

The Treaty of Lisbon: A Second Look at the Institutional Innovations

This book examines the institutional innovations that are gradually being introduced as a result of the Treaty of Lisbon

The Treaty of Lisbon: Implementing the Institutional Innovations. CEPS Special Reports, November 2007

After a long period of internal introspection and deadlock over the Constitutional Treaty, the EU can now see some light at the end of the tunnel. If successfully ratified, the new European Treaty agreed by the Head of States and Government in Lisbon may provide the appropriate institutional tools for the EU to function with 27 member states. However, the success of institutional innovations depends not only on legal provisions, but also on the way in which the provisions are implemented. Indeed, even a cursory examination indicates that the implementation of the new proposals is unlikely to be easy, and in some cases could be a source of serious difficulties in the future. In the absence of serious analysis aimed at this latter question, three Brussels-based think-tanks have joined forces in a collaborative effort to fill this gap. Our aim is to highlight potential problems and, where possible, to suggest ways to avoid or attenuate their negative effects. The analysis has focused on seven main institutional and policy domains: the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Presidency of the Council, the qualified majority voting in the Council, the role of national Parliaments, enhanced cooperation and foreign policy. These issues have been intensively debated in working groups composed of researchers, external experts, and practitioners in the field. This report reflects the substance of that collective effort

Extraction and validation of a new set of CMS PYTHIA8 tunes from underlying-event measurements

Artículo escrito por un elevado número de autores, sólo se referencian el que aparece en primer lugar, el nombre del grupo de colaboración, si le hubiera, y los autores pertenecientes a la UAMNew sets of CMS underlying-event parameters (“tunes”) are presented for the pythia8 event generator. These tunes use the NNPDF3.1 parton distribution functions (PDFs) at leading (LO), next-to-leading (NLO), or next-to-next-to-leading (NNLO) orders in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, and the strong coupling evolution at LO or NLO. Measurements of charged-particle multiplicity and transverse momentum densities at various hadron collision energies are fit simultaneously to determine the parameters of the tunes. Comparisons of the predictions of the new tunes are provided for observables sensitive to the event shapes at LEP, global underlying event, soft multiparton interactions, and double-parton scattering contributions. In addition, comparisons are made for observables measured in various specific processes, such as multijet, Drell–Yan, and top quark-antiquark pair production including jet substructure observables. The simulation of the underlying event provided by the new tunes is interfaced to a higher-order matrix-element calculation. For the first time, predictions from pythia8 obtained with tunes based on NLO or NNLO PDFs are shown to reliably describe minimum-bias and underlying-event data with a similar level of agreement to predictions from tunes using LO PDF setsIndividuals have received support from the Marie-Curie programme and the European Research Council and Horizon 2020 Grant, contract Nos. 675440 and 765710 (European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the A.P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation à la Recherche dans l’Industrie et dans l’Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); the F.R.S.-FNRS and FWO (Belgium) under the “Excellence of Science – EOS” – be.h project n. 30820817; the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission, No. Z181100004218003; the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) of the Czech Republic; the Lendület (“Momentum”) Programme and the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the New National Excellence Program ÚNKP, the NKFIA research Grants 123842, 123959, 124845, 124850, 125105, 128713, 128786, and 129058 (Hungary); the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India; the HOMING PLUS programme of the Foundation for Polish Science, cofinanced from European Union, Regional Development Fund, the Mobility Plus programme of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the National Science Center (Poland), contracts Harmonia 2014/14/M/ST2/00428, Opus 2014/13/B/ST2/02543, 2014/15/B/ST2/03998, and 2015/19/B/ST2/02861, Sonata-bis 2012/07/E/ST2/01406; the National Priorities Research Program by Qatar National Research Fund; the Programa de Excelencia María de Maeztu, and the Programa Severo Ochoa del Principado de Asturias; the Thalis and Aristeia programmes cofinanced by EU-ESF, and the Greek NSRF; the Rachadapisek Sompot Fund for Postdoctoral Fellowship, Chulalongkorn University, and the Chulalongkorn Academic into Its 2nd Century Project Advancement Project (Thailand); the Welch Foundation, contract C-1845; and the Weston Havens Foundation (USA