Colombian legal formalism or how to prevent the protection of public interest in public-private arbitration

Arbitration in Colombia is based on an ancient stringent legal formalism that has transplanted, transformed, and mixed, Spanish and Roman laws and legacies with French exegesis. It has also been based on German jurisprudence. This paper describes how Colombian legal formalism has limited the protection of public interests in arbitral proceedings as provided in the 1991 Colombian Constitution. It also shows how it has infused Administrative Law and mainly Procedural Law over time, where formalism is more stringent, and full of useless rhetorical technicalities. As a result, it has privileged the private interest over the public one despite the Constitutional provision to safeguard the public interest over private one. The protection of the public interest is grandiloquently stated in the constitution and in administrative law but with limited practical effect. Consequently, each phase in public private arbitration is lavishly regulated by an arbitral regime and several sections of the procedure code, the administrative procedure code and the public officials code, but none are effective at protecting the public interest. Instead of protecting the public interest, all the regulations compiled under the influence of the textualist legal culture, constitute barriers to achieving it and thus administrative law leaves it unprotected.El arbitraje en Colombia se basa en un antiguo formalismo legal estricto que ha trasplantado, transformado y mezclado, legados legales españoles y romanos con la exégesis francesa, y la jurisprudencia alemana de conceptos en su sistema legal. Este artículo describe cómo el formalismo jurídico colombiano ha limitado la protección del interés público en los procedimientos arbitrales, tal y como se establece en la Constitución colombiana de 1991. También mostrará cómo esto ha infundido el derecho administrativo y principalmente el derecho procesal a través del tiempo, donde el formalismo es más estricto, lleno de tecnicismos retóricos inútiles, lo que resulta en privilegiar el interés privado sobre el público a pesar de la disposición constitucional para salvaguardar el interés público sobre el privado. Afirmo también que la protección del interés público se enuncia grandilocuentemente en la Constitución y en el derecho administrativo, pero con un efecto práctico limitado. En consecuencia, cada fase del arbitraje público-privado está profusamente regulada por un régimen arbitral y varias secciones del código de procedimiento, el código de procedimiento administrativo y el código de funcionarios públicos, pero ninguno es eficaz para dar cuenta de la protección del interés público. En lugar de proteger el interés público, todas esas reglamentaciones, compiladas bajo la influencia de la cultura jurídica textualista, constituyen barreras para su consecución, por lo que el derecho administrativo lo deja desprotegido

Legitimacy Concerns of the Proposed Multilateral Investment Court: Is Democracy Possible?

Growing concerns in Europe about international investment regimes and investor-state dispute settlement systems pushed the European Union into pursuing the creation of an investment court system and a multilateral investment court. The European Union started this reform through the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, the Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement, and by direct persuasion of other countries to start negotiations at the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law. Visible reasons for the change include concerns over the perception of a lack of transparency, coherence, and arbitrators’ partiality, all of which diminish the legitimacy of the multilateral investment court. Other reasons might be laid on the budgetary risks of more than 213 claims against EU countries. To address these legitimacy concerns, the EU wants to replace traditional party-appointed arbitrators with a two-tiered investment tribunal system comprised by a roster of members selected by the state parties on the treaty. This Essay argues that the creation of the multilateral investment court needs to follow democratic principles in order to be legitimate. History has shown us that the EU has abused its power in the past when implementing resolution systems. Foregoing negotiation, comment by member nations, and implementing a tribunal at its own behest has shown this. The EU multilateral investment court proposal has legitimacy deficiencies because the EU has relied on its power to impose its views so far, i.e. its proposal was not previously negotiated multilaterally amongst other member nations. It is thus possible that the appointment of the future judges to this court will likely be subject to the political constraints and veto that the International Court of Justice or World Trade Organization appointments suffer today. This could leave small economies at a disadvantage because they might be subject to permanent, politically biased judges. A superior solution would be to adopt better arbitrator disqualification rules, clear interpretation directives to avoid law creation, and stricter arbitrator qualifications

Unsupervised Learning for the Analysis and Detection of Fraud in the Insurance Industry

[EN] Analysis and detection of fraud in the insurance sector has traditionally been carried out through supervised learning. The main problem is that the data presents a strong imbalance and techniques are used to balance the variable. Unsupervised learning is an alternative to consider, especially anomaly detection methodologies. If the fraud variable has a significant imbalance, then it can be treated as an anomaly. That is, the behavior of the fraudsters must be different from the rest of the insured.The main methodologies used are Isolation Forest, Attribute wise learning for scoring outliers (ALSO), Trimmed K-means, Autoencoders (neural networks) and Principal Component Analysis. The objective is through dimensionality reduction techniques to obtain a model with which to make predictions. The instances that present greater differences between the real values and the values estimated with this methodology will be considered anomalies and analyzed as if they were fraud.The results obtained show that these methodologies can be used as a complement to supervised learning. The assembly of models will allow the integration of both methodologies and improve the detection of fraud in the insurance sector.Alvarez-Jareño, JA.; Pavía, JM. (2022). Unsupervised Learning for the Analysis and Detection of Fraud in the Insurance Industry. En 4th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2022). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 279-279. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/18970627927

The Influence of the Social Context on Motivation towards the Practice of Physical Activity and the Intention to be Physically Active

According toWHOdata, only around 20% of adolescents participate in physical activity (PA) during their free time. The social context can act as a support for adolescents to do PA, given the e ect that both parents, friends and teachers have on young people’s behaviour owing to the large amount of time and influence they have on them. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse the role of the social context on adolescents’ motivation to practise PA and their intention to be physically active. This study involved the participation of students in compulsory and post-compulsory secondary education. Several statistical analyses were performed, including three confirmatory factorial analyses of the scales and a structural equations model that explains the causal relationships between the variables. The results showed how support for autonomy in the social context positively predicts autonomous motivation, whereas the psychological control of the social context negatively predicts it. Autonomous motivation positively predicted intent, attitude, behavioural control and subjective norms, and consequently, the practice of physical activity. In short, the study showed how the three validated scales have adequate goodness-of-fit indices while the structural equations model demonstrated the influence of the social context on the student’s motivational processes and the adoption of active life habits

Validation of the Scale of Emotional States in the Physical Education Context

The purpose of the present study was to validate an instrument of student emotional experiences in the Spanish Physical Education context. The sample of participants consisted of 864 secondary education students from various educational institutions of Spain who ranged in age from 13 to 19 years. To assess the psychometric properties of the Scale of Emotions in Physical Education (SEPE), various types of analyses were conducted. The factor structure of the SEPE was examined through confirmatory factorial analysis in relation to two models. In the first model, it was proposed that the eight first order factors, which represented the eight emotional states, would be correlated amongst each other. In the second model, an eight-factor model with two higher order factors was proposed, with these higher order factors representing distinct sets of positive and negative emotions. The results provide support the presence of an eight-factor second order model which consisted of sets of four positive emotions and four negative emotions. These results provide evidence for the reliability and validity of the SEPE within the Spanish Physical Education context

Adaptation and Validation of the Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) in Physical Education Classes and Analysis of Its Role as Mediator between Teacher and Anxiety

Physical education (PE) classes are one of the primary means of adopting healthy lifestyles and contribute greatly to personal well-being. However, it is necessary that students pay attention and do not enter a mind-wandering state as this can be negative for the purposes of PE classes. Therefore, we adapted and validated the Mind-Wandering Questionnaire (MWQ) to the Spanish PE context and analyzed the influence of the teacher on this new variable. Two independent samples of high school students between the ages of 13 and 19 participated in the study. In order to assess the psychometric properties of the MWQ, various analyses were carried out. The results of the confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) provided support for the structure of the questionnaire. The structure of the model was gender-invariant. The Cronbach alpha value was higher than 0.70 and showed an adequate level of temporal stability. In addition, we present a second study in which high school students between the ages of 13 and 19 participated, and which are independent of the first study. The analyses in this study were mainly based on structural equation modelling, and demonstrated the teacher’s influence on mind-wandering and showed that mind-wandering acted as a predictor of anxiety in high school students. The results of this study provided evidence of the reliability and validity of the MWQ in the Spanish PE context

Mixing in convective thermal fluxes in unsteady nonhomogeneous flows generating complex three dimensional vorticity patterns

Diffusion and scaling of the velocity and vorticity in a thermoelectric driven heating and cooling experimental device is presented in order to map the different patterns and transitions between two and three dimensional convection in an enclosure with complex driven flows. The size of the water tank is of 0.2 x 0.2 x 0.1 m and the heat sources or sinks can be regulated both in power and sign [1-3]. The thermal convective driven flows are generated by means of Peltier effects in 4 wall extended positions of 0.05 x 0.05 cm each. The parameter range of convective cell array varies strongly with the Topology of the boundary conditions. Side heat and momentum fluxes are a function of Rayleigh, Peclet and Nusselt numbers, [4-6] Visualizations are performed by PIV, Particle tracking and shadowgraph. The structure of the flow is shown by setting up a convective flow generated by buoyant heat fluxes. The experiments described here investigate high Prandtl number mixing using brine and fresh water in order to form a density interface and low Prandtl number mixing with temperature gradients. The evolution of the mixing fronts are compared and the topological characteristics of the merging of the convective structures are examined for different configurations. Based on two dimensional Vorticity spectral analysis, new techniques can be very useful to determine the evolution of scales considering the multi-fractal structure of the convective flows.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

On the kinetic and allosteric regulatory properties of the ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase from Rhodococcus jostii: An approach to evaluate glycogen metabolism in oleaginous bacteria

Rhodococcus spp. are oleaginous bacteria that accumulate glycogen during exponential growth. Despite the importance of these microorganisms in biotechnology, little is known about the regulation of carbon and energy storage, mainly the relationship between glycogen and triacylglycerols metabolisms. Herein, we report the molecular cloning and heterologous expression of the gene coding for ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (EC 2.7.7.27) of Rhodococcus jostii, strain RHA1. The recombinant enzyme was purified to electrophoretic homogeneity to accurately characterize its oligomeric, kinetic, and regulatory properties. The R. jostii ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase is a homotetramer of 190 kDa exhibiting low basal activity to catalyze synthesis of ADP-glucose, which is markedly influenced by different allosteric effectors. Glucose-6P, mannose-6P, fructose-6P, ribose-5P, and phosphoenolpyruvate were major activators; whereas, NADPH and 6P-gluconate behaved as main inhibitors of the enzyme. The combination of glucose-6P and other effectors (activators or inhibitors) showed a cross-talk effect suggesting that the different metabolites could orchestrate a fine regulation of ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase in R. jostii. The enzyme exhibited some degree of affinity toward ATP, GTP, CTP, and other sugar-1P substrates. Remarkably, the use of glucosamine-1P was sensitive to allosteric activation. The relevance of the fine regulation of R. jostii ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase is further analyzed in the framework of proteomic studies already determined for the bacterium. Results support a critical role for glycogen as a temporal reserve that provides a pool of carbon able of be re-routed to produce long-term storage of lipids under certain conditions.Fil: Cereijo, Antonela Estefanía. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Asención Diez, Matías Damián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Dávila Costa, José Sebastián. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia Golfo San Jorge. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia Golfo San Jorge. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia ; ArgentinaFil: Alvarez, Hector Manuel. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia Golfo San Jorge. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro de Investigaciones y Transferencia Golfo San Jorge. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia ; ArgentinaFil: Iglesias, Alberto Alvaro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral; Argentin