Law and order in the European Union: explaining variations in compliance with the European Community treaty

"Neither the enforcement nor the management schools of compliance can explain crossnational variation in the number of violations of European Union law or in the number of cases settled by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). These patterns of non-compliance require the inclusion of the procedural dimension of compliance, which is affected by the degree of autonomy executives have vis-à-vis their national parliaments. Multivariate analysis was applied to a database of violations of the European Community Treaty from 1978 to 2002, to determine why violations may or may not be settled by the ECJ. The results show that increasing the amount of democratic legitimacy in the European governance process can limit its effectiveness in the area of compliance with EU primary legislation, namely, the EC Treaty. This has important implications for understanding the process of European integration, given the continued existence of a democratic deficit in the EU. Unless democratic pathways are created which would allow EU citizens to shape the EU legislative process via their national representatives to the European Parliament such that European law would conflict less with national law, EU membership will increasingly mean fewer privileges and more onerous legal obligations." (author's abstract)"Die Einhaltung (compliance) europäischer Normen kann durch die einschlägigen Erklärungsansätze der Enforcement- und Management-Schule nicht hinreichend erklärt werden, weder hinsichtlich der zwischen den Mitgliedsstaaten variierenden Zahl von Normverletzungen noch der Zahl, der durch den Europäischen Gerichtshof geregelter Fälle. Eine Erklärung der hier beschriebenen Muster der Nicht-Einhaltung benötigt zusätzlich eine Analyse der Verfahrensdimension, die den Grad der Autonomie der EU-Kommissare gegenüber ihren eigenen nationalen Parlamente berücksichtigt. Mit Hilfe einer multivariaten Analyse der EG-Vertragsverletzungen zwischen 1978 und 2000 wird untersucht, warum Normeinhaltung durch den Europäischen Gerichtshof in bestimmten Fällen erreicht wurde, in anderen jedoch nicht. Es wird unter anderem gezeigt, dass eine Erhöhung der demokratischen Legitimität europäischen Regierens negative Auswirkungen auf seine Effektivität im Hinblick auf die Einhaltung europäischen Primärrechts hat, das heißt der ratifizierungspflichtigen Verträge bzw. Vertragsänderungen. Die Ergebnisse haben erhebliche Implikationen für das Verständnis des europäischen Integrationsprozesses, gerade angesichts des nach wie vor bestehenden Demokratiedefizits der EU. Bevor den Bürgern nicht eine stärkere Kontrolle der EU Gesetzgebung über das europäische Parlament zugestanden wird und Europäisches Recht damit stärker dem nationalen Recht entspricht, wird eine Mitgliedschaft in der EU im immer stärkeren Maße weniger Privilegien bedeuten aber mehr lästige Rechtspflichten." (Autorenreferat

The Epistemology of Perception

An overview of the epistemology of perception, covering the nature of justification, immediate justification, the relationship between the metaphysics of perceptual experience and its rational role, the rational role of attention, and cognitive penetrability. The published version will contain a smaller bibliography, due to space constraints in the volume

Monte Carlo domain decomposition for robust nuclear reactor analysis

Monte Carlo (MC) neutral particle transport codes are considered the gold-standard for nuclear simulations, but they cannot be robustly applied to high-fidelity nuclear reactor analysis without accommodating several terabytes of materials and tally data. While this is not a large amount of aggregate data for a typical high performance computer, MC methods are only embarrassingly parallel when the key data structures are replicated for each processing element, an approach which is likely infeasible on future machines. The present work explores the use of spatial domain decomposition to make full-scale nuclear reactor simulations tractable with Monte Carlo methods, presenting a simple implementation in a production-scale code. Good performance is achieved for mesh-tallies of up to 2.39 TB distributed across 512 compute nodes while running a full-core reactor benchmark on the Mira Blue Gene/Q supercomputer at the Argonne National Laboratory. In addition, the effects of load imbalances are explored with an updated performance model that is empirically validated against observed timing results. Several load balancing techniques are also implemented to demonstrate that imbalances can be largely mitigated, including a new and efficient way to distribute extra compute resources across finer domain meshes.United States. Dept. of Energy. Center for Exascale Simulation of Advanced Reactor

The 68 kDa protein of signal recognition particle contains a glycine-richregion also found in certain RNA-binding proteins

Signal recognition particle (SRP) interacts with the signal sequence in nascent secretory and membrane proteins and directs them to the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum. Membrane targeting is mediated by the 68 and the 72 kDa proteins of SRP. We have cloned and sequenced cDNA encoding the 68 kDa protein of canine signal recognition particle (SRP68). SRP68 is a basic protein comprised of 622 amino acid residues. Close to the amino terminus there is a glycine-rich region which SRP68 has in common with some RNA-binding proteins. SRP68 shares no detectable similarity to any of the proteins in data libraries

Using natural experimental studies to guide public health action: turning the evidence-based medicine paradigm on its head.

Despite smaller effect sizes, interventions delivered at population level to prevent non-communicable diseases generally have greater reach, impact and equity than those delivered to high-risk groups. Nevertheless, how to shift population behaviour patterns in this way remains one of the greatest uncertainties for research and policy. Evidence about behaviour change interventions that are easier to evaluate tends to overshadow that for population-wide and system-wide approaches that generate and sustain healthier behaviours. Population health interventions are often implemented as natural experiments, which makes their evaluation more complex and unpredictable than a typical randomised controlled trial (RCT). We discuss the growing importance of evaluating natural experiments and their distinctive contribution to the evidence for public health policy. We contrast the established evidence-based practice pathway, in which RCTs generate 'definitive' evidence for particular interventions, with a practice-based evidence pathway in which evaluation can help adjust the compass bearing of existing policy. We propose that intervention studies should focus on reducing critical uncertainties, that non-randomised study designs should be embraced rather than tolerated and that a more nuanced approach to appraising the utility of diverse types of evidence is required. The complex evidence needed to guide public health action is not necessarily the same as that which is needed to provide an unbiased effect size estimate. The practice-based evidence pathway is neither inferior nor merely the best available when all else fails. It is often the only way to generate meaningful evidence to address critical questions about investing in population health interventions.DO, JP and NW are supported by the Medical Research Council (Unit Programme numbers MC_UU_12015/6 and MC_UU_12015/1). The paper was initially developed in the course of a visiting appointment as Thought Leader in Residence at the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, for which the intellectual environment and financial support provided by the Prevention Research Collaboration is gratefully acknowledged. It was further developed under the auspices of the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence at the University of Cambridge, for which funding from the British Heart Foundation, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust, under the auspices of the United Kingdom Clinical Research Collaboration, is gratefully acknowledge

Exosomal release of L-plastin by breast cancer cells facilitates metastatic bone osteolysis

Bone metastasis from breast and prostate carcinomas is facilitated by activation of bone-resorbing osteoclasts. Using proteomics approaches, we have identified peroxiredoxin-4 (PRDX4) as a cancer-secreted mediator of osteoclastogenesis. We now report characterization of L-plastin in the conditioned media (CM) of MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells using immunoblotting and mass spectrometry. The osteoclastogenic potential of MDAMB-231 CM with siRNA-silenced L-plastin was significantly reduced. L-plastin was detected in cancer-derived exosomes, and inhibition of exosomal release significantly decreased the osteoclastogenic capacity of MDA-MB-231 CM. When added to osteoclast precursors primed with RANKL for 2 days, recombinant L-plastin induced calcium/NFATc1-mediated osteoclastogenesis to the levels similar to continuous treatment with RANKL. Using shRNA, we generated MDA-MB-231 cells lacking L-plastin, PRDX4, or both and injected these cell populations intratibially in CD-1 immunodeficient mice. Micro-CT and histomorphometric analysis demonstrated a complete loss of osteolysis when MDA-MB-231 cells lacking both L-plastin and PRDX4 were injected. A meta-analysis established an increase in L-plastin and PRDX4 mRNA expression in numerous human cancers, including breast and prostate carcinomas. This study demonstrates that secreted L-plastin and PRDX4 mediate osteoclast activation by human breast cancer cells

Aspects of Bunuba grammar and semantics

This thesis is a study of Bunuba, a language spoken around the township of Fitzroy Crossing in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia. Chapter 1 introduces Bunuba by discussing the location and sociolinguistic information and providing the reader with background to the language and its speakers. In this Chapter details of different speech registers and dialects are introduced and a brief review is undertaken of the previous research which has been carried out on the language and its speakers. Also included is a discussion of some contemporary uses of Bunuba and a description of my fieldwork methodology. This Chapter also sets this work apart from previous research on Bunuba, particularly that undertaken by Alan Rumsey. The differences between his work and the work presented in this thesis are outlined in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 describes the structure of the language detailing phonology and morphophonological procedures, word classes and nominal morphology. Chapter 3 discusses the formal structure of Bunuba verbal morphology

Progress and Status of the Openmc Monte Carlo Code

The present work describes the latest advances and progress in the development of the OpenMC Monte Carlo code, an open-source code originating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. First, an overview of the development workflow of OpenMC is given. Various enhancements to the code such as real-time XML input validation, state points, plotting, OpenMP threading, and coarse mesh finite difference acceleration are described.United States. Department of Energy. Naval Reactors Division (Rickover Fellowship Program in Nuclear Engineering)United States. Department of Energy (Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors. Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725)United States. Department of Energy. Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357