Legitimacy Conditions for a European Civil Code

legitimacy; multilevel governance; competition policy; subsidiarity; judicial review; European Court of Justice

The Impact of Institutions on the Decision How to Decide

The human mind is not a general problem solving machine. Instead of deliberately, consciously and serially processing the available information, men can rely on routines, rules, roles or affect for the purpose. They can bring in technology, experts or groups. For all of these reasons, men have a plurality of problem solving modes at their disposition. Often, the meta-choice of problem solving mode matters for behavioural output. Some performance standards are only to be met if a certain problem solving mode is used, like a well-established skill. Other requirements are easier to fulfil with some problem solving modes. This explains why institutions frequently impact on the choice of problem solving mode. To show how institutions are able to do that, a model of problem solving modes is developed. It allows to systematise the access points for institutional intervention.Decision Making, Problem Solving, Institutions

Le projet d’un code civil européen et la Constitution européenne

Le projet d’un code civil européen a été débattu jusqu’ici surtout dans une optique privatiste et comparatiste. L’auteur adopte ici une perspective différente : celle de l’encadrement déjà existant du droit privé dans le système communautaire qui peut être appelé, avec la Cour de justice de Luxembourg, la « Constitution européenne ». Bien que les influences entre Constitution européenne et droit privé soient pour une large part bénéfiques, un phénomène fortement négatif ne saurait être ignoré : celui de l’instrumentalisation du droit privé pour des objectifs collectifs, le Marché commun en premier lieu. Dans cette situation, un avantage important d’un code civil européen s’impose : son potentiel, ignoré jusqu’ici, de limiter les dangers de l’instrumentalisation, en conférant au droit privé une voix propre parmi les disciplines juridiques européennes.The project of a European civil code has until now been discussed mostly from a private and comparative law point of view. In this paper, the author adopts a novel perspective : that of the already existing embed-dedness of private law in the Community system, which may be called, in the words of the European Court of Justice, the « European Constitution ». Whilst the interactions between the European Constitution and private law are mostly beneficial, a strongly negative phenomenon should not be overlooked, namely that of the instrumentalization of private law for Community interests, in particular the Common Market. Against this background, an important advantage of a European Civil Code becomes visible : its potential, until now unnoticed, to limit the dangers of instrumentalization by giving private law a voice of its own among European legal disciplines

Gamma-rays from dark matter annihilations strongly constrain the substructure in halos

Recently, it has been shown that electrons and positrons from dark matter (DM) annihilations provide an excellent fit to the Fermi, PAMELA, and HESS data. Using this DM model, which requires an enhancement of the annihilation cross section over its standard value to match the observations, we show that it immediately implies an observable level of gamma-ray emission for the Fermi telescope from nearby galaxy clusters such as Virgo and Fornax. We show that this DM model implies a peculiar feature from final state radiation that is a distinctive signature of DM. Using the EGRET upper limit on the gamma-ray emission from Virgo, we constrain the minimum mass of substructures within DM halos to be > 5x10^-3 M_sun -- about four orders of magnitudes larger than the expectation for cold dark matter. This limits the cutoff scale in the linear matter power spectrum to k < 35/kpc which can be explained by e.g., warm dark matter. Very near future Fermi observations will strongly constrain the minimum mass to be > 10^3 M_sun: if the true substructure cutoff is much smaller than this, the DM interpretation of the Fermi/PAMELA/HESS data must be wrong. To address the problem of astrophysical foregrounds, we performed high-resolution, cosmological simulations of galaxy clusters that include realistic cosmic ray (CR) physics. We compute the dominating gamma-ray emission signal resulting from hadronic CR interactions and find that it follows a universal spectrum and spatial distribution. If we neglect the anomalous enhancement factor and assume standard values for the cross section and minimum subhalo mass, the same model of DM predicts comparable levels of the gamma-ray emission from DM annihilations and CR interactions. This suggests that spectral subtraction techniques could be applied to detect the annihilation signal.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures (published version; minor corrections to figures and result, equation added

Focal-plane wavefront sensing with high-order adaptive optics systems

We investigate methods to calibrate the non-common path aberrations at an adaptive optics system having a wavefront-correcting device working at an extremely high resolution (larger than 150x150). We use focal-plane images collected successively, the corresponding phase-diversity information and numerically efficient algorithms to calculate the required wavefront updates. The wavefront correction is applied iteratively until the algorithms converge. Different approaches are studied. In addition of the standard Gerchberg-Saxton algorithm, we test the extension of the Fast & Furious algorithm that uses three images and creates an estimate of the pupil amplitudes. We also test recently proposed phase-retrieval methods based on convex optimisation. The results indicate that in the framework we consider, the calibration task is easiest with algorithms similar to the Fast & Furious.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, published in SPIE proceeding

Extremely fast focal-plane wavefront sensing for extreme adaptive optics

We present a promising approach to the extremely fast sensing and correction of small wavefront errors in adaptive optics systems. As our algorithm's computational complexity is roughly proportional to the number of actuators, it is particularly suitable to systems with 10,000 to 100,000 actuators. Our approach is based on sequential phase diversity and simple relations between the point-spread function and the wavefront error in the case of small aberrations. The particular choice of phase diversity, introduced by the deformable mirror itself, minimizes the wavefront error as well as the computational complexity. The method is well suited for high-contrast astronomical imaging of point sources such as the direct detection and characterization of exoplanets around stars, and it works even in the presence of a coronagraph that suppresses the diffraction pattern. The accompanying paper in these proceedings by Korkiakoski et al. describes the performance of the algorithm using numerical simulations and laboratory tests.Comment: SPIE Paper 8447-7

Assessment of Physical Activity Patterns in Adolescent Patients With Anorexia Nervosa and Their Effect on Weight Gain

(1) Background: Altered physical activity (PA) affects weight recovery in anorexia nervosa (AN) patients. The study aimed to objectively characterize PA patterns and their effect on weight trajectory in adolescent AN patients. (2) Methods: PA was assessed in 47 patients on admission to inpatient treatment, in n = 25 of these patients again 4 weeks after discharge (follow-up, FU), as well as in 20 adolescent healthy controls using the Sense Wear™ armband. The following PA categories were defined by metabolic equivalent (MET) ranges: sedentary behavior (SB), light (LPA), moderate (MPA), vigorous (VPA), and high-level PA (HLPA= MPA + VPA). (3) Results: LPA on admission was significantly higher in AN patients than in controls (103 vs. 55 min/d, p < 0.001), and LPA in AN decreased over time to 90 min/d (p = 0.006). Patients with higher admission LPA (n = 12) still had elevated LPA at FU (p = 0.003). High admission LPA was associated with a higher inpatient BMI percentage gain (ΔBMI%; 18.2% ± 10.0% vs. 12.0% ± 9.7%, p = 0.037) but with a loss of ΔBMI% at FU (-2.3% ± 3.6% vs. 0.8% ± 3.6%, p = 0.045). HLPA at baseline was associated with a lower inpatient ΔBMI% (p = 0.045). (4) Conclusion: Elevated LPA in AN patients decreased after inpatient treatment, and PA patterns had an impact on weight trajectory