A Partnership At Risk

The article focuses on issues regarding transatlantic partnership with urgency of climate change, sharing the impact of a growing migrant crisis, regulating the cyber anarchy, digging out of massive imbalances, and more. It mentions U.S. President Donald Trump\u27s approach about the world is four-dimensional and improbable promise of a bilateral trade agreement with Great Britain. It also mentions Trump\u27s consensus to re-embrace the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, with the expectation of a broader round of multilateral negotiations with Iran; a return to the Paris Treaty on Climate Change, with shared goals of further progress in many of its specific dimensions; and to negotiate a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact for completion

La nueva coreografía europea: pas de deux y pas de quatre

Las elecciones francesas de esta primavera –primero para la Presidencia y posteriormente para la Asamblea Nacional– han sido las más significativas que se han celebrado en Francia desde el triunfo socialista en 1981. En términos generales, su resultado ha sido positivo, tanto para Francia como para Europa, puesto que han reestablecido una coherencia política que había estado ausente durante siete de los últimos nueve años, cuando el sistema político francés vivía en un tenso estado de cohabitación política (1993-1995 y 1997-2002). Además, estas elecciones también confirman el cambio de orientación política de Europa hacia tendencias centro-derechistas, que probablemente se completará con el triunfo de Edmund Stoiber en los comicios alemanes a finales de septiembre. Esta homogeneidad política del centro-derecha sin precedentes, básicamente pro-europea, e incluso posiblemente atlantista, brinda interesantes oportunidades diplomáticas para España como uno de los colíderes de Europa en la Unión Europea (UE) y como uno de los socios más creíbles de Estados Unidos en la Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte (OTAN)

Crises in European Integration: Challenges and Responses, 1945-2005

The theme of this short collection of essays is stated early and plainly: “In the end, crises have strengthened European integration” (p. 3), and “There has never been more European integration than in the context or aftermath of crisis” (p. 6). These statements are true but are hardly new. The same point has been made by many in the past. This is perhaps why the process “causes both fascination and frustration” (p. 79), resulting in too much crisis talk that, Jurgen Elvert notes, is “inspired by staunch euro-skeptics to back up their respective points of view” (p. 53). “Of all the international bodies I have known,” Belgium’s Paul-Henry Spaak once thundered, “I have never found any more timorous and more impotent.” This was when the European project was small and rather modest, not yet even a Common Market. Even so, the theme is worth repeating, especially now when an existential crisis threatens Europe’s capacity to sustain its past achievements, let alone proceed with new steps toward institutional ªnality

Ginzburg-Landau vortex dynamics with pinning and strong applied currents

We study a mixed heat and Schr\"odinger Ginzburg-Landau evolution equation on a bounded two-dimensional domain with an electric current applied on the boundary and a pinning potential term. This is meant to model a superconductor subjected to an applied electric current and electromagnetic field and containing impurities. Such a current is expected to set the vortices in motion, while the pinning term drives them toward minima of the pinning potential and "pins" them there. We derive the limiting dynamics of a finite number of vortices in the limit of a large Ginzburg-Landau parameter, or \ep \to 0, when the intensity of the electric current and applied magnetic field on the boundary scale like \lep. We show that the limiting velocity of the vortices is the sum of a Lorentz force, due to the current, and a pinning force. We state an analogous result for a model Ginzburg-Landau equation without magnetic field but with forcing terms. Our proof provides a unified approach to various proofs of dynamics of Ginzburg-Landau vortices.Comment: 48 pages; v2: minor errors and typos correcte

Antidepressants for pain management in adults with chronic pain:a network meta‐analysis

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the comparative efficacy and safety of antidepressants for adults with chronic pain. We will achieve this by: assessing the efficacy of antidepressants by type, class and dose in improving pain, mood, patient global impression of change, physical functioning, sleep quality and quality of life; assessing the number of adverse events of antidepressants by type, class and dose; ranking antidepressants in the efficacy of treating pain, mood and adverse events

Antidepressants for pain management in adults with chronic pain:a network meta-analysis

Background: Chronic pain is common in adults, and often has a detrimental impact upon physical ability, well-being, and quality of life. Previous reviews have shown that certain antidepressants may be effective in reducing pain with some benefit in improving patients’ global impression of change for certain chronic pain conditions. However, there has not been a network meta-analysis (NMA) examining all antidepressants across all chronic pain conditions. Objectives: To assess the comparative efficacy and safety of antidepressants for adults with chronic pain (except headache). Search methods: We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, LILACS, AMED and PsycINFO databases, and clinical trials registries, for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of antidepressants for chronic pain conditions in January 2022. Selection criteria: We included RCTs that examined antidepressants for chronic pain against any comparator. If the comparator was placebo, another medication, another antidepressant, or the same antidepressant at different doses, then we required the study to be double-blind. We included RCTs with active comparators that were unable to be double-blinded (e.g. psychotherapy) but rated them as high risk of bias. We excluded RCTs where the follow-up was less than two weeks and those with fewer than 10 participants in each arm. Data collection and analysis: Two review authors separately screened, data extracted, and judged risk of bias. We synthesised the data using Bayesian NMA and pairwise meta-analyses for each outcome and ranked the antidepressants in terms of their effectiveness using the surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA). We primarily used Confidence in Meta-Analysis (CINeMA) and Risk of Bias due to Missing Evidence in Network meta-analysis (ROB-MEN) to assess the certainty of the evidence. Where it was not possible to use CINeMA and ROB-MEN due to the complexity of the networks, we used GRADE to assess the certainty of the evidence. Our primary outcomes were substantial (50%) pain relief, pain intensity, mood, and adverse events. Our secondary outcomes were moderate pain relief (30%), physical function, sleep, quality of life, Patient Global Impression of Change (PGIC), serious adverse events, and withdrawal. Main results: This review and NMA included 176 studies with a total of 28,664 participants. The majority of studies were placebo-controlled (83), and parallel−armed (141). The most common pain conditions examined were fibromyalgia (59 studies); neuropathic pain (49 studies) and musculoskeletal pain (40 studies). The average length of RCTs was 10 weeks. Seven studies provided no useable data and were omitted from the NMA. The majority of studies measured short-term outcomes only and excluded people with low mood and other mental health conditions. Across efficacy outcomes, duloxetine was consistently the highest-ranked antidepressant with moderate- to high-certainty evidence. In duloxetine studies, standard dose was equally efficacious as high dose for the majority of outcomes. Milnacipran was often ranked as the next most efficacious antidepressant, although the certainty of evidence was lower than that of duloxetine. There was insufficient evidence to draw robust conclusions for the efficacy and safety of any other antidepressant for chronic pain. Primary efficacy outcomes. Duloxetine standard dose (60 mg) showed a small to moderate effect for substantial pain relief (odds ratio (OR) 1.91, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.69 to 2.17; 16 studies, 4490 participants; moderate-certainty evidence) and continuous pain intensity (standardised mean difference (SMD) −0.31, 95% CI −0.39 to −0.24; 18 studies, 4959 participants; moderate-certainty evidence). For pain intensity, milnacipran standard dose (100 mg) also showed a small effect (SMD −0.22, 95% CI −0.39 to 0.06; 4 studies, 1866 participants; moderate-certainty evidence). Mirtazapine (30 mg) had a moderate effect on mood (SMD −0.5, 95% CI −0.78 to −0.22; 1 study, 406 participants; low-certainty evidence), while duloxetine showed a small effect (SMD −0.16, 95% CI −0.22 to −0.1; 26 studies, 7952 participants; moderate-certainty evidence); however it is important to note that most studies excluded participants with mental health conditions, and so average anxiety and depression scores tended to be in the 'normal' or 'subclinical' ranges at baseline already. Secondary efficacy outcomes. Across all secondary efficacy outcomes (moderate pain relief, physical function, sleep, quality of life, and PGIC), duloxetine and milnacipran were the highest-ranked antidepressants with moderate-certainty evidence, although effects were small. For both duloxetine and milnacipran, standard doses were as efficacious as high doses. Safety. There was very low-certainty evidence for all safety outcomes (adverse events, serious adverse events, and withdrawal) across all antidepressants. We cannot draw any reliable conclusions from the NMAs for these outcomes. Authors' conclusions: Our review and NMAs show that despite studies investigating 25 different antidepressants, the only antidepressant we are certain about for the treatment of chronic pain is duloxetine. Duloxetine was moderately efficacious across all outcomes at standard dose. There is also promising evidence for milnacipran, although further high-quality research is needed to be confident in these conclusions. Evidence for all other antidepressants was low certainty. As RCTs excluded people with low mood, we were unable to establish the effects of antidepressants for people with chronic pain and depression. There is currently no reliable evidence for the long-term efficacy of any antidepressant, and no reliable evidence for the safety of antidepressants for chronic pain at any time point.</p

Sum rules via large deviations

International audienceIn the theory of orthogonal polynomials, sum rules are remarkable relationships between a functional defined on a subset of all probability measures involving the reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence with respect to a particular distribution and recursion coefficients related to the orthogonal polynomial construction. Killip and Simon (Killip and Simon (2003)) have given a revival interest to this subject by showing a quite surprising sum rule for measures dominating the semicircular distribution on [−2, 2]. This sum rule includes a contribution of the atomic part of the measure away from [−2, 2]. In this paper, we recover this sum rule by using probabilistic tools on random matrices. Furthermore, we obtain new (up to our knowledge) magic sum rules for the reverse Kullback-Leibler divergence with respect to the Marchenko-Pastur or Kesten-McKay distributions. As in the semicircular case, these formulas include a contribution of the atomic part appearing away from the support of the reference measure

"Dual enlargement: NATO and the EU go east"

Decisions about the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) come together. Neither institution can ignore what the other does as each proceeds with both the reform of its structures and the enlargement of its membership. The synchronization of NATO and EU enlargement will occur only in the out years. After NATO has grown to nineteen members, it will be best for NATO to seek its new members out of the EU states that are not yet in NATO. As this next wave of NATO enlargement unfolds, the slow pace of EU enlargement will help justify the postponement of a further eastern enlargement of NATO after January 2003, the earliest date for EU enlargement from fifteen to 18-21. Such progressive overlap of NATO and EU membership will also help complete a much-needed reform of NATO, including a more significant contribution to the common defense by a Western European Union that would achieve its "progressive but full" integration in the EU

A World Recast: An American Moment in a Post-Western Order

The end of the unipolar moment completes the passing of a Western era that was prolonged for half a century when the United States took over for a defeated and exhausted group of European states after World War II. Distinguished scholar Simon Serfaty vigorously argues that while it is possible, and even desirable, to acknowledge the passing of the Western era, it is exaggerated to present it as an irreversible decline of the West relative to an irresistible rise of the Rest. Rather, he shows that the unfolding post-Western moment will be messy. In addition to the United States and the states of Europe as a Union, the new cast of significant powers will involve a dozen or more countries: emerging powers like China and India, post-imperial powers such as Japan and Russia, new influentials like Brazil and Turkey, pivot states like Egypt and Pakistan, nuisance states like Iran, failed or failing states like North Korea and Sudan, and others. Echoes of a Sarajevo moment played out this time in the greater Middle East, the new global Balkans for the twenty-first century. But Serfaty convincingly contends that even during a zero-polar moment of geopolitical transition, American power remains superior, and thus indispensable though no longer decisive; Western power stands on top and thus is inescapable though no longer exclusive; and even as the Rest gains broadly in stature and reach it is unlikely to achieve preponderance any time soon. This powerful and provocative book should be read by all who share a deep concern for the future of America—and a recast world. [From Amazon.com]https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/politicalscience_geography_books/1027/thumbnail.jp