El panorama legislativo del derecho internacional privado chino tras la publicación de la nueva ley para la determinación de la ley aplicable a las relaciones con los extranjeros en materia civil

La Ley de la República Popular China para la determinación de la ley aplicable a las relaciones con los extranjeros en materia civil es la norma más reciente y completa de Derecho internacional privado que se ha promulgado en China hasta el momento. Muchas de sus disposiciones han tomado como modelo y referente las regulaciones de distintos países europeos, así como diversos Convenios internacionales, incluidos los elaborados en el seno de la Conferencia de La Haya de Derecho internacional privado. Aunque esta ley no es perfecta y presenta algunos aspectos ciertamente discutibles, ha logrado alcanzar el objetivo de modernizar, en cuanto a su alcance y contenido, la técnica legislativa existente. Esta Ley es, en defi nitiva, un resultado más del movimiento de renovación legal del Derecho internacional privado que está teniendo lugar en China, como parte del proceso de integración de este país en la comunidad internacionalThe Law of the PRC for the determination of the law applicable to relations with foreigners in civil matters is the most recent and comprehensive rule of private international law that has been enacted in China so far. Many of its provisions were modeled, taking the regulations of different European countries and several international conventions, including those developed within the Hague Conference on Private International Law as a reference. Although this law is not perfect and certainly has some questionable aspects, it has achieved the goal of modernizing, in scope and content, the existing legislative technique. This Act is, in short, another result of the movement of legal renewal of private international law that is taking place in China, as part of the integration process of the country in the international communit

Optimizing Vaccine Supply Chains with Drones in Less-Developed Regions: Multimodal Vaccine Distribution in Vanuatu

In recent years, many less-developed countries (LDCs) have been exploring new opportunities provided by drones, such as the capability to deliver items with minimal infrastructure, fast speed, and relatively low cost, especially for high value-added products such as lifesaving medical products and vaccines. This dissertation optimizes the delivery network and operations for routine childhood vaccines in LDCs. It analyzes two important problems using mathematical programming, with an application in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. The first problem is to optimize the nation-wide multi-modal vaccine supply chain with drones to deliver vaccines from the national depot to all health zones in an LDC. The second problem is to optimize vaccine delivery using drones within a single health zone while considering the synchronization of drone deliveries with health worker outreach trips to remote clinics. Both problems consider a cold chain time limit to ensure vaccine viability. The two research problems together provide a holistic solution at the strategic and operational levels for the vaccine supply chain network in LDCs. Results from the first problem show that drones can reduce cost and delivery time simultaneously by replacing expensive and/or slow modes. The use of large drones is shown to save up to 60% of the delivery cost and the use of small drones is shown to save up to 43% of the delivery cost. The research highlights the tradeoff between delivery cost and service, with tighter cold chain limits providing faster delivery to health zones at the expense of added cost. Results from the second problem show that adding drones to delivery plans can save up to 40% of the delivery cost and improve the service time simultaneously by resupplying vaccines when the cold chain and payload limit of health workers are reached. This research contributes to both literature and practice. It develops innovative methodologies to model drone paths with relay stations and to optimize synchronized multi-stop drone trips with health worker trips. The models are tested with real-world data for an island nation (Vanuatu), which provides data for a geographic setting new to the literature on drone delivery and vaccine distribution

First forays into research data dissemination: a tale from the Kansas City Fed.

The Federal Reserve System has a longer tradition of doing economic research than disseminating data from economic research. Each of the 12 Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors have research departments that together publish nearly 1,000 working papers and journal articles annually. Unfortunately, researchers have not often made the data from their papers publicly available until recently. A new program at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City aims to correct this imbalance and make such data available for reuse in other research. As a pilot participant in a new dissemination platform, we have educated economists, built metadata specifications, recruited contributors, collaborated with technology and legal staff, and coordinated and built coalitions across multiple functions at our institution and others. This paper outlines the challenges faced and obstacles overcome as we created the infrastructure and workflow, and took steps toward making the publication of research data a regular part of the research life cycle

Quantifying the major mechanisms of recent gene duplications in the human and mouse genomes: a novel strategy to estimate gene duplication rates

By studying two mechanisms of gene duplication, unequal crossover and retrotranspostion, and looking at both small gene families and the entire genome, a new estimate for the rate of gene duplication is made which is more accurate for both small and large gene families