United States-Anti-Dumping Measures on Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) from Mexico: a legal-economic assessment of sunset reviews

This paper reviews the WTO Appellate Body Report on United States-Anti-Dumping Measures on Oil Country Tubular Goods (OCTG) from Mexico (WT/DS282/AB/R 2 November 2005). This dispute concerns the disciplines imposed by the Anti-Dumping Agreement on WTO Members seeking to extend their anti-dumping measures beyond the original five-year period through a so-called sunset review. Our analysis focuses on the Appellate Body's finding in this case that no causation analysis is required in sunset reviews, and addresses the AB's approach towards the legal instrument that provides for the US policy in terms of sunset reviews, the Sunset Policy Bulletin. We conclude that the Anti-Dumping Agreement, as interpreted by the Appellate Body in this and other similar cases, imposes only minimal disciplines of a general nature on Members wishing to extend the anti-dumping measure beyond its original five-year period. We argue that the ‘textual' argument relied on to support this deferential approach is weak and has resulted in undermining the practical effect of, what was considered to be, one of the major achievements of the Uruguay Round Anti-Dumping Agreement: limiting the life span of an anti-dumping measure to five years. From an economic perspective, Panels and the Appellate Body are simply debating the wrong type of questions. The prospective nature required by a sunset review analysis raises questions such as why exporters engaged in dumping in the first place, and what the conditions of the industry were so that the dumped imports caused injury. At the moment, sunset reviews seem adrift as panels and the Appellate Body fail to give guidance to Members on how to do a more economically sound and informed revie

Role of protein adsorption on haemodialysis-induced complement activation and neutrophil defects

The present clinical study investigated the role of protein adsorption on complement activation and neutrophil functions during in vivo haemodialysis. The parameters were measured simultaneously at the arterial and venous sites of a cuprophan (CU) dialyser with or without pretreatment with human albumin, human immunoglobulins or human total plasma proteins (PLP). Leukocyte count, complement activation (C3a des arg), oxygen radical production and chemotaxis were measured at time zero and 15 min at the arterial and venous sites of the dialyser. Leukopenia observed at both sites was prevented only with PLP treatment. Complement activation was maximal at the venous site, but was not prevented by any of the treatments. Neutrophil oxygen radical production and chemotaxis were significantly decreased only at the venous site and restored to normal with any of the three treatments. Complement activation was maximal at the venous site, but was not prevented by any of the treatments. Protein adsorption on the dialyser membrane seems to modulate the bioincompatibility parameters in a different way. Depending on the functions tested, the protein fractions have different protecting effects, indicating the multifactorial mechanism implicated in the CU haemodialysis-induced leukopenia, complement activation and neutrophil defec

Prunus serotina unleashed: invader dominance after 70 years of forest development

Propagule pressure and disturbance have both been found to facilitate invasion. Therefore, knowledge on the history of introduction and disturbance is vital for understanding an invasion process, and research should focus on areas in which the invasive species has not been deliberately introduced or managed to study unconfounded colonization patterns. Comparing the outcome of such spontaneous colonization processes for different ecosystems might provide a useful framework for setting management priorities for invasive species that enter new, uninvaded areas. We focused on the 70-year spontaneous spread of the invasive tree species Prunus serotina in a pine forest in the Netherlands. To reconstruct the invasion pattern, we combined historical maps, tree ring analysis, spatially explicit tree inventory data, seed density data, and regeneration data for both native and non-native species. Prunus serotina was the only species that showed successful regeneration: the species was present throughout the forest in the tree, shrub, and herb layer. Native species were not able to outgrow the seedling stage. Our data demonstrate that P. serotina is a gap-dependent species with high seed production that builds up a seedling bank. We also compared the results of this study with a similar study on P. serotina colonization in a deciduous forest in Belgium, where P. serotina invasion was not successful. The sharp contrast between the outcomes of the two invasion processes shows the importance of studying an invasive species and the recipient ecosystem jointly and made us raise the hypothesis that herbivore pressure may facilitate P. serotina invasio

Performance of Geant4 in simulating semiconductor particle detector response in the energy range below 1 MeV

Geant4 simulations play a crucial role in the analysis and interpretation of experiments providing low energy precision tests of the Standard Model. This paper focuses on the accuracy of the description of the electron processes in the energy range between 100 and 1000 keV. The effect of the different simulation parameters and multiple scattering models on the backscattering coefficients is investigated. Simulations of the response of HPGe and passivated implanted planar Si detectors to \beta{} particles are compared to experimental results. An overall good agreement is found between Geant4 simulations and experimental data

Seasonal and site-specific variation in vapour and aerosol phase PAHs over Flanders (Belgium) and their relation with anthropogenic activities

Peer reviewe

Shape Coexistence in Pb186: Beyond-mean-field description by configuration mixing of symmetry restored wave functions

We study shape coexistence in Pb186 using configuration mixing of angular-momentum and particle-number projected self-consistent mean-field states. The same Skyrme interaction SLy6 is used everywhere in connection with a density-dependent zero-range pairing force. The model predicts coexisting spherical, prolate and oblate 0+ states at low energy.Comment: 5 pages REVTEX4, 4 eps figures, accepted by Phys. Lett. B. Revised version with some polishing of the text without changing its conten