Three Generations of Participation Rights in European Administrative Proceedings

This paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing the development of participation rights in Community administration from the early 1970\u27s to the present day. Procedural rights can be divided into three categories, each of which is associated with a distinct phase in Community history and a particular set of institutional actors. The first set of rights, the right to a fair hearing when the Commission inflicts sanctions or other forms of hardship on individuals, first emerged in the 1970\u27s in the context of competition proceedings and later in areas such as anti-dumping and structural funds. This phase was driven by the Court of Justice and an English, and to a lesser extent, German conception of the value of a fair hearing. The rise of transparency in the 1990\u27s-- the requirement of openness in all Community institutions, including administration--marks the second stage. The drive for transparency was led by certain member countries with longstanding traditions of open government--the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden--as well as the European Parliament. The most recent phase in the development of process rights is the debate on whether and under what conditions, individuals, firms, and their associations, billed civil society, should take part in Community legislative and rulemaking proceedings. The Commission and now the Convention on the Future of Europe have been the keenest proponents of giving citizens and their associations a right to participate in rulemaking and legislative proceedings. Civil society participation is then critically examined. Representation--not expertise or good management practices--is the only justification for allocating power, within the Community policymaking process, to individual citizens and their organizations. Yet there is no consensus in Europe, where republican, corporatist, and liberal traditions continue to flourish, on the legitimacy of representation outside of political parties and the electoral process. Without wider consensus, I conclude that associational participation in Community policymaking should not be entrenched and that the Commission should, in mediating the informal influence of civil society actors, act in awareness of its innate institutional bias toward liberal interest group pluralism

MPC for Propofol Anesthesia: the Noise Issue

The design of automatic control systems for general anesthesia is a challenging task due to the severe safety requirements and process constraints. This is even more complex when model-based control techniques are used due to the significant variability of the process model. Additionally, issues like noisy measurements and interference also influence the control system overall performance. In this context, adequate filtering and control system sampling period selection should be analyzed to test their influence on the controller. In this paper, an MPC system for the depth of hypnosis, where the BIS signal is used as a controlled variable, is analyzed. The main purpose is to test and evaluate how the process noise affects the performance of the control system. The analysis is performed in a simulation study using a dataset of virtual patients representative of a wide population. Results show that a satisfactory performance is obtained when the noise is explicitly taken into account in the controller tuning procedure for a specific sampling period

Event-based MPC for propofol administration in anesthesia

Background and Objective : The automatic control of anesthesia is a demanding task mostly due to the presence of nonlinearities, intra- and inter-patient variability and specific clinical requirements to be meet. The traditional approach to achieve the desired depth of hypnosis level is based on knowledge and experience of the anesthesiologist. In contrast to a typical automatic control system, their actions are based on events that are related to the effect of the administrated drug. Thus, it is interesting to build a control system that will be able to mimic the behavior of the human way of actuation, simultaneously keeping the advantages of an automatic system.Methods : In this work, an event-based model predictive control system is proposed and analyzed. The nonlinear patient model is used to form the predictor structure and its linear part is exploited to design the predictive controller, resulting in an individualized approach. In such a scenario, the BIS is the controlled variable and the propofol infusion rate is the control variable. The event generator governs the computation of control action applying a dead-band sampling technique. The proposed control architecture has been tested in simulation considering process noise and unmeasurable disturbances. The evaluation has been made for a set of patients using nonlinear pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models allowing realistic tests scenarios, including inter- and intra-patient variability.Results For the considered patients dataset the number of control signal changes has been reduced of about 55% when compared to the classical control system approach and the drug usage has been reduced of about 2%. At the same time the control performance expressed by the integrated absolute error has been degraded of about 11%.Conclusions : The event-based MPC control system meets all the clinical requirements. The robustness analysis also demonstrates that the event-based architecture is able to satisfy the specifications in the presence of significant process noise and modelling errors related to inter- and intra-patient variability, providing a balanced solution between complexity and performance. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Corporate failure prediction of construction companies in Poland : evidence from logit model

Purpose: This paper aims to develop a corporate failure prediction model for construction companies in Poland that allow assessing their financial situation and credit risk. Design/Methodology/Approach: For this purpose, the following research methods have been used, descriptive and comparative analysis, subject literature review, and logit anal-ysis. The Polish construction companies' financial data in this research come from the Emerging Markets Information Service (EMIS). To achieve the main goal of the research, the logit model was built. The significance test, error matrix, and ROC curve were used to assess the quality of the estimated binary logit model. Findings: Based on the research, we identify seven financial indicators that significantly impact the probability of poor financial condition. The following variables are current assets turnover, debt to assets ratio, operating profit to assets, gross profit to assets, oper-ating profit plus amortization to short-term liabilities, current assets to assets ratio, and equity to assets ratio. The research results show that corporate failure prediction models are interesting and important tools to assess the financial situation. Based on the devel-oped model, it has been found that the growth of debts increases the credit risk of construc-tion companies. Moreover, the increase in the share of current assets in the total assets harms the financial condition. Also, the risk of insolvency decreases with growing profita-bility measured by the rate of return on assets. Practical Implications: The built logit model can be beneficial for investment loan provid-ers, insurance companies, and entities selecting contractors in construction projects due to the possibility of the credit risk assessment. Originality/Value: The use of logit models to identify statistically significant corporate failure prediction factors for construction companies in Poland.peer-reviewe

Comparison of 4H-SiC and 6H-SiC MOSFET I-V characteristic ssimulated with Silvaco Atlas and Crosslight Apsys, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2007, nr 3

A set of physical models describing silicon carbide with fitting parameters is proposed. The theoretical I-V output and transfer characteristics and parameters of MOS transistors were calculated using Silvaco Atlas and Crosslight Apsys semiconductor device simulation environments

Simulation of Greenhouse Climate Monitoring and Control with Wireless Sensor Network and Event-Based Control

Monitoring and control of the greenhouse environment play a decisive role in greenhouse production processes. Assurance of optimal climate conditions has a direct influence on crop growth performance, but it usually increases the required equipment cost. Traditionally, greenhouse installations have required a great effort to connect and distribute all the sensors and data acquisition systems. These installations need many data and power wires to be distributed along the greenhouses, making the system complex and expensive. For this reason, and others such as unavailability of distributed actuators, only individual sensors are usually located in a fixed point that is selected as representative of the overall greenhouse dynamics. On the other hand, the actuation system in greenhouses is usually composed by mechanical devices controlled by relays, being desirable to reduce the number of commutations of the control signals from security and economical point of views. Therefore, and in order to face these drawbacks, this paper describes how the greenhouse climate control can be represented as an event-based system in combination with wireless sensor networks, where low-frequency dynamics variables have to be controlled and control actions are mainly calculated against events produced by external disturbances. The proposed control system allows saving costs related with wear minimization and prolonging the actuator life, but keeping promising performance results. Analysis and conclusions are given by means of simulation results

Analysis of the Dispersion of Electrical Parameters and Characteristics of FinFET Devices, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2009, nr 4

Extensive numerical simulations of FinFET structures have been carried out using commercial TCAD tools. A series of plasma etching steps has been simulated for different process conditions in order to evaluate the influence of plasma pressure, composition and powering on the FinFET topography. Next, the most important geometric parameters of the FinFETs have been varied and the electrical characteristics have been calculated in order to evaluate the sensitivity of the FinFET electrical parameters on possible FinFET structure variability

Effects of trans-endocardial delivery of bone marrow-derived CD133+ cells on angina and quality of life in patients with refractory angina: A sub-analysis of the REGENT-VSEL trial

Background: The REGENT-VSEL trial demonstrated a neutral effect of transendocardial injection of autologous bone marrow (BM)-derived CD133+ in regard to myocardial ischemia. The current sub-analysis of the REGENT VSEL trial aims to assess the effect stem cell therapy has on quality of life (QoL) in patients with refractory angina.Methods: Thirty-one patients (63.0 ± 6.4 years, 70% male) with recurrent CCS II–IV angina, despite optimal medical therapy, enrolled in the REGENT-VSEL single center, randomized, double-blinded, and placebo-controlled trial. Of the 31 patients, 16 individuals were randomly assigned to the active stem cell group and 15 individuals were randomly assigned to the placebo group on a 1:1 basis. The inducibility of ischemia, (≥ one myocardial segment) was confirmed for each patient using Tc-99m SPECT. QoL was measured using the Seattle Angina Questionnaire. Each patient completed the questionnaire prior to treatment and at the time of their outpatient follow-up visits at 1, 4, 6, and 12 months after cell/placebo treatment.Results: The main finding of the REGENT-VSEL trial sub-analysis was that transendocardial injection of autologous BM-derived CD133+ stem cells in patients with chronic refractory angina did not show significant improvement in QoL in comparison to the control group. Moreover, there was no significant difference between cell therapy and placebo in a number of patients showing improvement of at least 1 Canadian Cardiovascular Society class during the follow-up period.Conclusions: Intra-myocardial delivery of autologous CD133+ stem cells is safe and feasible but does not show a significant improvement in the QoL or angina pectoris symptoms in patients with chronic myocardial ischemia