Investitionsschutz durch internationale Schiedsgerichte

Dieses Papier setzt sich mit den wesentlichen Prägungen der Globalisierung auf die Entwicklung des Internationalen Investitionsrechts auseinander; es fragt, inwiefern der grenzüberschreitende Investitionsschutz durch internationale Schiedsgerichte die Rolle des Staates bei der Bereitstellung des öffentlichen Gutes ‚Rechtssicherheit‘ verändert hat und verdichtet die Schlussfolgerungen in 4 Thesen. Erstens läßt sich die Verbreitung der bilateralen Investitionsschutzverträge als Ausdruck des umfassenderen Trends begreifen, Verträge als grundlegendes völkerrechtliches ‚Gesetzgebungsinstrument’ zu nutzen („treatification“) und als einen weiteren Ausdruck der zunehmenden Verrechtlichung internationaler Beziehungen in der Globalisierung sehen. Indem moderne Investitionsschutzverträge Investoren materielle Rechte und komplementär formelle Durchsetzungsverfahren gewähren, tragen diese zweitens zu einer wesentlichen Veränderung im Völkerrecht bei: Dem Individuum bzw. der juristischen Person des Privatrechts werden durch völkerrechtlichen Vertrag unmittelbar Rechte zugewiesen und es wird damit zum partiellen Völkerrechtssubjekt aufgewertet. Drittens hat im Internationalen Investitionsrecht die Globalisierung die Rolle des Staates als Garanten für Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Rechtssicherheit verändert: Staaten setzen bei grenzüberschreitenden Investitionsstreitigkeiten Recht und Ordnung nicht mehr alleine durch, sie gewährleisten und garantieren jedoch die Herstellung des Rechtsfriedens durch die Vereinbarung von Investor-Staat-Schiedsverfahren. Viertens schließlich kann das moderne internationale Investitionsrecht in einem übergreifenden Sinn als eine Art ‚Rückkehr’ - oder anders gewendet - als Aufbruch zu einem umfassenderen und breiteren Verständnis des Völkerrechts begriffen werden

Investitionsschutz durch internationale Schiedsgerichte

Dieses Papier setzt sich mit den wesentlichen Prägungen der Globalisierung auf die Entwicklung des Internationalen Investitionsrechts auseinander; es fragt, inwiefern der grenzüberschreitende Investitionsschutz durch internationale Schiedsgerichte die Rolle des Staates bei der Bereitstellung des öffentlichen Gutes Rechtssicherheit verändert hat und verdichtet die Schlussfolgerungen in 4 Thesen. Erstens läßt sich die Verbreitung der bilateralen Investitionsschutzverträge als Ausdruck des umfassenderen Trends begreifen, Verträge als grundlegendes völkerrechtliches Gesetzgebungsinstrument’ zu nutzen (treatification) und als einen weiteren Ausdruck der zunehmenden Verrechtlichung internationaler Beziehungen in der Globalisierung sehen. Indem moderne Investitionsschutzverträge Investoren materielle Rechte und komplementär formelle Durchsetzungsverfahren gewähren, tragen diese zweitens zu einer wesentlichen Veränderung im Völkerrecht bei: Dem Individuum bzw. der juristischen Person des Privatrechts werden durch völkerrechtlichen Vertrag unmittelbar Rechte zugewiesen und es wird damit zum partiellen Völkerrechtssubjekt aufgewertet. Drittens hat im Internationalen Investitionsrecht die Globalisierung die Rolle des Staates als Garanten für Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Rechtssicherheit verändert: Staaten setzen bei grenzüberschreitenden Investitionsstreitigkeiten Recht und Ordnung nicht mehr alleine durch, sie gewährleisten und garantieren jedoch die Herstellung des Rechtsfriedens durch die Vereinbarung von Investor-Staat-Schiedsverfahren. Viertens schließlich kann das moderne internationale Investitionsrecht in einem übergreifenden Sinn als eine Art Rückkehr - oder anders gewendet - als Aufbruch zu einem umfassenderen und breiteren Verständnis des Völkerrechts begriffen werden. -- This paper presents an analysis of the most significant effects of globalization on the development of international investment law; it asks how the protection of cross-border investment by international arbitral tribunals has transformed the states’ role of providing the public good of legal certainty and summarizes the conclusions in four theses. First, the proliferation of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) is an expression of the wider trend of treaties being used as basic international “legislative” instruments and represents a further movement towards the juridification of key relationships in the global economy. Second, insofar as modern bilateral investment treaties assure investors material rights along with associated formal enforcement procedures, they contribute to a fundamental change in international law—the individual or legal person in private law is assigned individual rights through a treaty in international law and thus upgraded to the status of a partial subject of international law. Third, in international investment law globalization has caused the states to transform their role as the guarantors of legal certainty: States no longer establish law and order on their own, but rather provide for and guarantee the establishment of law and order through the provision of investor-state dispute settlement procedures. Fourth and last, in a more comprehensive sense, modern international investment law can be viewed as a sort of “return” to or else potential dawning of a much more inclusive and broader notion of public international law.

Probabilistic forecasts of the distribution grid state using data-driven forecasts and probabilistic power flow

The uncertainty associated with renewable energies creates challenges in the operation of distribution grids. One way for Distribution System Operators to deal with this is the computation of probabilistic forecasts of the full state of the grid. Recently, probabilistic forecasts have seen increased interest for quantifying the uncertainty of renewable generation and load. However, individual probabilistic forecasts of the state defining variables do not allow the prediction of the probability of joint events, for instance, the probability of two line flows exceeding their limits simultaneously. To overcome the issue of estimating the probability of joint events, we present an approach that combines data-driven probabilistic forecasts (obtained more specifically with quantile regressions) and probabilistic power flow. Moreover, we test the presented method using data from a real-world distribution grid that is part of the Energy Lab 2.0 of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and we implement it within a state-of-the-art computational framework

Intonation processing in congenital amusia: discrimination, identification and imitation

This study investigated whether congenital amusia, a neuro-developmental disorder of musical perception, also has implications for speech intonation processing. In total, 16 British amusics and 16 matched controls completed five intonation perception tasks and two pitch threshold tasks. Compared with controls, amusics showed impaired performance on discrimination, identification and imitation of statements and questions that were characterized primarily by pitch direction differences in the final word. This intonation-processing deficit in amusia was largely associated with a psychophysical pitch direction discrimination deficit. These findings suggest that amusia impacts upon one’s language abilities in subtle ways, and support previous evidence that pitch processing in language and music involves shared mechanisms

Accumulation of α-synuclein mediates podocyte injury in Fabry nephropathy

Current therapies for Fabry disease are based on reversing intracellular accumulation of globotriaosylceramide (Gb3) by enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) or chaperone-mediated stabilization of the defective enzyme, thereby alleviating lysosomal dysfunction. However, their effect in the reversal of end-organ damage, like kidney injury and chronic kidney disease, remains unclear. In this study, ultrastructural analysis of serial human kidney biopsies showed that long-term use of ERT reduced Gb3 accumulation in podocytes but did not reverse podocyte injury. Then, a CRISPR/Cas9–mediated α-galactosidase knockout podocyte cell line confirmed ERT-mediated reversal of Gb3 accumulation without resolution of lysosomal dysfunction. Transcriptome-based connectivity mapping and SILAC-based quantitative proteomics identified α-synuclein (SNCA) accumulation as a key event mediating podocyte injury. Genetic and pharmacological inhibition of SNCA improved lysosomal structure and function in Fabry podocytes, exceeding the benefits of ERT. Together, this work reconceptualizes Fabry-associated cell injury beyond Gb3 accumulation, and introduces SNCA modulation as a potential intervention, especially for patients with Fabry nephropathy.publishedVersio

Effects of Once-Weekly Exenatide on Cardiovascular Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes.

Abstract BACKGROUND: The cardiovascular effects of adding once-weekly treatment with exenatide to usual care in patients with type 2 diabetes are unknown. METHODS: We randomly assigned patients with type 2 diabetes, with or without previous cardiovascular disease, to receive subcutaneous injections of extended-release exenatide at a dose of 2 mg or matching placebo once weekly. The primary composite outcome was the first occurrence of death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke. The coprimary hypotheses were that exenatide, administered once weekly, would be noninferior to placebo with respect to safety and superior to placebo with respect to efficacy. RESULTS: In all, 14,752 patients (of whom 10,782 [73.1%] had previous cardiovascular disease) were followed for a median of 3.2 years (interquartile range, 2.2 to 4.4). A primary composite outcome event occurred in 839 of 7356 patients (11.4%; 3.7 events per 100 person-years) in the exenatide group and in 905 of 7396 patients (12.2%; 4.0 events per 100 person-years) in the placebo group (hazard ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.83 to 1.00), with the intention-to-treat analysis indicating that exenatide, administered once weekly, was noninferior to placebo with respect to safety (P<0.001 for noninferiority) but was not superior to placebo with respect to efficacy (P=0.06 for superiority). The rates of death from cardiovascular causes, fatal or nonfatal myocardial infarction, fatal or nonfatal stroke, hospitalization for heart failure, and hospitalization for acute coronary syndrome, and the incidence of acute pancreatitis, pancreatic cancer, medullary thyroid carcinoma, and serious adverse events did not differ significantly between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with type 2 diabetes with or without previous cardiovascular disease, the incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events did not differ significantly between patients who received exenatide and those who received placebo. (Funded by Amylin Pharmaceuticals; EXSCEL ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01144338 .)

Duality in hypercomplex function theory

AbstractLet A be the Clifford algebra constructed over a quadratic n-dimensional real vector space with orthogonal basis {e1,…, en}, and e0 be the identity of A. Furthermore, let Mk(Ω;A) be the set of A-valued functions defined in an open subset Ω of Rm+1 (1 ⩽ m ⩽ n) which satisfy Dkf = 0 in Ω, where D is the generalized Cauchy-Riemann operator D = ∑i = 0m ei(∂∂xi) and k ϵ N. The aim of this paper is to characterize the dual and bidual of Mk(Ω;A). It is proved that, if Mk(Ω;A) is provided with the topology of uniform compact convergence, then its strong dual is topologically isomorphic to an inductive limit space of Fréchet modules, which in its turn admits Mk(Ω;A) as its dual. In this way, classical results about the spaces of holomorphic functions and analytic functionals are generalized