Rebalancing Judicial Protection in Criminal Matters after Lisbon and Stockholm

While EU measures related to criminal and security law have been adopted for the past 20 years, the legal framework of the Treaty of Lisbon and the political impetus behind the Stockholm Programme have given them a new direction. This chapter explores the basis of protection of fundamental rights enshrined in Title V, Chapter 4 of the TFEU entitled ‘Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters and the Stockholm Programme’. This analysis is all the more important in the light of the new legal status attributed to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the EU’s prospective accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

Four layer bandage compared with short stretch bandage for venous leg ulcers: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials with data from individual patients

<p><b>Objective:</b> To compare the effectiveness of two types of compression treatment (four layer bandage and short stretch bandage) in people with venous leg ulceration.</p> <p><b>Design:</b> Systematic review and meta-analysis of patient level data.</p> <p><b>Data:</b> sources Electronic databases (the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Cochrane Wounds Group Specialised Register, Medline, Embase, CINAHL, and National Research Register) and reference lists of retrieved articles searched to identify relevant trials and primary investigators. Primary investigators of eligible trials were invited to contribute raw data for re-analysis.</p> <p><b>Review:</b> methods Randomised controlled trials of four layer bandage compared with short stretch bandage in people with venous leg ulceration were eligible for inclusion. The primary outcome for the meta-analysis was time to healing. Cox proportional hazards models were run to compare the methods in terms of time to healing with adjustment for independent predictors of healing. Secondary outcomes included incidence and number of adverse events per patient.</p> <p><b>Results:</b> Seven eligible trials were identified (887 patients), and patient level data were retrieved for five (797 patients, 90% of known randomised patients). The four layer bandage was associated with significantly shorter time to healing: hazard ratio (95% confidence interval) from multifactorial model based on five trials was 1.31 (1.09 to 1.58), P=0.005. Larger ulcer area at baseline, more chronic ulceration, and previous ulceration were all independent predictors of delayed healing. Data from two trials showed no evidence of a difference in adverse event profiles between the two bandage types.</p> <p><b>Conclusions:</b> Venous leg ulcers in patients treated with four layer bandages heal faster, on average, than those of people treated with the short stretch bandage. Benefits were consistent across patients with differing prognostic profiles.</p&gt

Illustrating the Geometry of Coherently Controlled Quantum Channels

We extend standard Markovian open quantum systems (quantum channels) by allowing for Hamiltonian controls and elucidate their geometry in terms of Lie semigroups. For standard dissipative interactions with the environment and different coherent controls, we particularly specify the tangent cones (Lie wedges) of the respective Lie semigroups of quantum channels. These cones are the counterpart of the infinitesimal generator of a single one-parameter semigroup. They comprise all directions the underlying open quantum system can be steered to and thus give insight into the geometry of controlled open quantum dynamics. Such a differential characterisation is highly valuable for approximating reachable sets of given initial quantum states in a plethora of experimental implementations.Comment: condensed and updated version; 14 pages; comments welcom

Twisted Conjugacy Classes in Abelian Extensions of Certain Linear Groups

Given an automorphism $\phi:\Gamma\to \Gamma$, one has an action of $\Gamma$ on itself by $\phi$-twisted conjugacy, namely, $g.x=gx\phi(g^{-1})$. The orbits of this action are called $\phi$-twisted conjugacy classes. One says that $\Gamma$ has the $R_\infty$-property if there are infinitely many $\phi$-twisted conjugacy classes for every automorphism $\phi$ of $\Gamma$. In this paper we show that SL$(n,\mathbb{Z})$ and its congruence subgroups have the $R_\infty$-property. Further we show that any (countable) abelian extension of $\Gamma$ has the $R_\infty$-property where $\Gamma$ is a torsion free non-elementary hyperbolic group, or SL$(n,\mathbb{Z})$, Sp$(2n,\mathbb{Z})$ or a principal congruence subgroup of SL$(n,\mathbb{Z})$ or the fundamental group of a complete Riemannian manifold of constant negative curvature