Civil Society Constitutionalism: the Power of Contract Law

This article argues that the vision of a social law of contract is exhibited in the judgment of the Swiss Federal Court in Post v. Verein gegen Tierfabriken ( VgT ). The judgment is one of a law of contract that interacts with a community of the subjects instead of the individual subjects of a community. This paper contends that law today has the task of providing for the areas of social autonomy from which civil society is built up and in which, at the same time, the increasing social fragmentation can be overcome piecemeal. The article argues that conceiving contract law as civil society constitutionalism, as the constitution not of the state but of society, is the jurisprudential task for our time. Governing Contracts – Public and Private Perspectives, Symposium. Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, November 9-10, 200

RECHTSMUTATION ZU GENESE UND EVOLUTION DES RECHTS IM TRANSNATIONALEN RAUM

U nastojanju svladavanja transnacionalnog prava trebamo odbaciti hijerarhijske pravne modele, koji su sve do danas dominirali zapadnim pravnim diskursom. Pojavom novog svjetskog društva pravo se mjenja. U ovom tekstu ta se mutacija razumije kao novi oblik interakcije s pravnim tekstom. Dok je do danas pravo bilo tumačeno s obzirom na auctoritas tj. s obzirom na stanovitu izvanjsku referencu (npr. Boga, Kralja, Papu, Zakonodavca), taj se način interakcije s pravnim tekstom ne može više nositi s novim normativnim fenomenom koji se u recentnoj literaturi podvodi pod koncept transnacionalnog prava. Inspirirani ždovskim modelom tumačenja pravnih tekstova - kao primjerom alternativnog i primjerenijeg pristupa globalnom pravnom fenomenu - autori su taj argument pokušali elaborirati na primjeru europskog privatnog prava.In order to cope with transnational law, we have to abandon hierarchical legal models which, up to the present, have dominated western legal discourse. In the emergence of a new world society, law is undergoing a mutation. This mutation is here understood as a new form of interaction with legal texts. While law has been interpreted until now with regard to auctoritas, i.e. to an external reference (e. g. God, the King, the Pope, the Legislator), this mode of interaction with the legal text can no longer grasp new normative phenomena which in the recent literature have been subsumed under the concept of transnational law. The authors take inspiration from the Jewish model of interpretation of legal texts – as an example of an alternative and more adequate approach to global legal phenomena – and try to elaborate this argument on the basis of European private law

Combined proton-photon therapy for non-small cell lung cancer

PURPOSE Advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is still a challenging indication for conventional photon radiotherapy. Proton therapy has the potential to improve outcomes, but proton treatment slots remain a limited resource despite an increasing number of proton therapy facilities. This work investigates the potential benefits of optimally combined proton-photon therapy delivered using a fixed horizontal proton beam line in combination with a photon Linac, which could increase accessibility to proton therapy for such a patient cohort. MATERIALS AND METHODS A treatment planning study has been conducted on a patient cohort of seven advanced NSCLC patients. Each patient had a planning computed tomography scan (CT) and multiple repeated CTs from three different days and for different breath-holds on each day. Treatment plans for combined proton-photon therapy (CPPT) were calculated for individual patients by optimizing the combined cumulative dose on the initial planning CT only (non-adapted) as well as on each daily CT respectively (adapted). The impact of inter-fractional changes and/or breath-hold variability was then assessed on the repeat breath-hold CTs. Results were compared to plans for IMRT or IMPT alone, as well as against combined treatments assuming a proton gantry. Plan quality was assessed in terms of dosimetric, robustness and NTCP metrics. RESULTS Combined treatment plans improved plan quality compared to IMRT treatments, especially in regard to reductions of low and medium doses to organs at risk (OARs), which translated into lower NTCP estimates for three side effects. For most patients, combined treatments achieved results close to IMPT-only plans. Inter-fractional changes impact mainly the target coverage of combined and IMPT treatments, while OARs doses were less affected by these changes. With plan adaptation however, target coverage of combined treatments remained high even when taking variability between breath-holds into account. CONCLUSIONS Optimally combined proton-photon plans improve treatment plan quality compared to IMRT only, potentially reducing the risk of toxicity while also allowing to potentially increase accessibility to proton therapy for NSCLC patients

Anbindung Schweizer Tourismusorte mit öffentlichem Verkehr: Situation und Verbesserungsvorschläge entlang der Mobilitätskette

Die Arbeitsgruppe Verkehrsprotokoll der Alpenkonvention setzt aktuell einen Schwerpunkt auf die Anbindung der Tourismusorte im öffentlichen Verkehr. Die in diesem Rahmen entstandene Expertise für die Schweiz nimmt auf Basis vorhandener Studien eine Analyse und Bewertung der Erreichbarkeit der Schweizer Tourismusregionen vor. Als analytischer Rahmen für eine Bewertung von touristisch relevanten Mobilitätsangeboten wird das Konzept der Mobilitätskette verwendet. Bezogen auf die dabei unterschiedenen Phasen werden Schweizer Beispiele für gute Angebote vorgestellt, die zu einer Anreise mit öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln motivieren können. Aus den Bewertungen werden Verbesserungsvorschläge in Bezug auf die Daten- und Planungsgrundlagen, die Infrastruktur- und Verkehrsangebote sowie die Vermarktung von Angeboten in den verschiedenen Phasen der Mobilitätskette abgeleitet

Mechanical testing and comparison of porcine tissue, silicones and 3D-printed materials for cardiovascular phantoms

Background: Cardiovascular phantoms for patient education, pre-operative planning, surgical training, haemodynamic simulation, and device testing may help improve patient care. However, currently used materials may have different mechanical properties compared to biological tissue.Methods/Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the mechanical properties of 3D-printing and silicone materials in comparison to biological cardiovascular tissues. Uniaxial cyclic tension testing was performed using dumbbell samples from porcine tissue (aorta, pulmonary artery, right and left ventricle). Flexible testing materials included 15 silicone (mixtures) and three 3D-printing materials. The modulus of elasticity was calculated for different deformation ranges.Results: The modulus of elasticity (0%–60%) for the aorta ranged from 0.16 to 0.18 N/mm2, for the pulmonary artery from 0.07 to 0.09 N/mm2, and for the right ventricle as well as the left ventricle short-axis from 0.1 to 0.16 N/mm2. For silicones the range of modulus of elasticity was 0.02–1.16 N/mm2, and for the 3D-printed materials from 0.85 to 1.02 N/mm2. The stress-strain curves of all tissues showed a non-linear behaviour in the cyclic tensile testing, with a distinct toe region, followed by exponential strain hardening behaviour towards the peak elongation. The vessel samples showed a more linear behaviour comparted to myocardial samples. The silicones and 3D printing materials exhibited near-linearity at higher strain ranges, with a decrease in stiffness following the initial deformation. All samples showed a deviation between the loading and unloading curves (hysteresis), and a reduction in peak force over the first few cycles (adaptation effect) at constant deformation.Conclusion: The modulus of elasticity of silicone mixtures is more in agreement to porcine cardiovascular tissues than 3D-printed materials. All synthetic materials showed an almost linear behaviour in the mechanical testing compared to the non-linear behaviour of the biological tissues, probably due to fibre recruitment mechanism in the latter

4th ESPT summer school: precision medicine and personalised health

In September 2018, the European Society of Pharmacogenomics and Personalised Therapy (ESPT), with the support of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN), organized its 4th biennial summer school, entitled 'Precision Medicine and Personalised Health' (Campus Biotech, Geneva, Switzerland; www.esptsummerschool.eu/ ). The school's comprehensive and innovative educational program aimed to address the fundamentals of pharmacogenomics, the latest knowledge on established and new concepts in the field of precision medicine, as well as its advanced clinical applications in personalized health. The school consisted of 31 lectures, eight interactive workshops, visits to genome center and poster presentations, involving 40 speakers from distinguished international faculties. The meeting was a resounding success by generating informal environments between more than 80 participants from 26 different countries

The Law of Society: Governance Through Contract

This paper focuses on contract law as a central field in contemporary regulatory practice. In recent years, governance by contract has emerged as the central concept in the context of domestic privatization, domestic and transnational commercial relations and law-and-development projects. Meanwhile, as a result of the neo-formalist attack on contract law, governance of contract through contract adjudication, consumer protection law and judicial intervention into private law relations has come under severe pressure. Building on early historical critique of the formalist foundations of an allegedly private law of the market, the paper assesses the current justifications for contractual governance and posits that only an expanded legal realist perspective can adequately explain the complex nature of contractual agreements in contemporary practice. The paper argues for an understanding of contracts as complex societal arrangements that visibilize and negotiate conflicting rationalities and interests. Institutionally, contractual governance has been unfolding in a complex, historically grown and ideologically continually contested regulatory field. Governance through contract, then, denotes a wide field of conflicting concepts, ideas and symbols, that are themselves deeply entrenched in theories of society, market and the state. From this perspective, we are well advised to study contracts in their socio-economic, historical and cultural context. A careful reading of scholars such as Henry Sumner Maine, Morris Cohen, Robert Hale, Karl Llewellyn, Stewart Macaulay and Ian Macneil offers a deeper understanding of the institutional and normative dimensions of contractual governance. Their analysis is particularly helpful in assessing currently ongoing shifts away from a welfare state based regulation (governance) of contractual relations. Such shifts are occurring on two levels. First, they take place against the backdrop of a neo-liberal critique of government interference into allegedly private relations. Secondly, the increasingly influential return to formalism in contract law, which privileges a functionalist, purportedly technical and autonomous design and execution of contractual agreements over the view of regulated contracts, is linked to a particular concept of sovereignty. The ensuing revival of freedom of contract occurs in remarkable neglect of the experiences of welfare state adjudication of private law adjudication and a continuing contestation of the political in private relationships. The paper takes up the Legal Realists\u27 search for the \u27basis of contract\u27, but seeks to redirect the focus from the traditional perspective on state vs. market to a disembedded understanding of contractual governance as delineating multipolar and multirational regulatory regimes. Where Globalization has led to a fragmentation, disembeddedness and transnationalization of contexts and, thus, has been challenging traditional understanding of embeddedness, the task should no longer be to try applying a largely nation-state oriented Legal Realist perspective and critique to the sphere of contemporary contractual governance, but - rather - to translate its aims into a more reflexive set of instruments of legal critique. Even if Globalization has led to a dramatic denationalization of many regulatory fields and functions, it is still not clear, whether and how Globalization replaces, complements or aggravates transformations of societal governance, with and through contract