Religion and the Law in modern pluralist states: Towards a more balanced judicial approach to manifestation of belief in secular societies

The work presented for the Phd by publication is located within the law and religion sub-discipline and is committed to enhancing religious freedom. It focuses on manifestation of belief and is dedicated to the legal protection of religious minorities. It highlights the difficulties of adjudicating conflicts related to religious symbols in modern liberal states and aims to deepen the understanding of manifestation of belief. It shows that religious symbols contribute to the making of contemporary individual and collective identities. The thesis advocates a more contextual approach to manifestation of belief which views religion as an element of identity rather than an elective characteristic of the individual. It therefore promotes collaborations with other disciplines within the social sciences such as history, sociology, and anthropology in order to enhance the legal approach and move the field in new directions

Manifestation of Belief and the “Liberal” Law of Religion: Why It Is Time to Rethink the Status-Quo?

Manifestation of belief is a key component of religious freedom, however in modern pluralist states there are inherent conflicts between practices of the more religious minorities and those of the secular majority. In attempting to mediate those conflicts judges have been faced with the sensitive task of determining the extent to which a particular symbol or practice is worthy of protection by the law. The case law arising from this process has produced some inconsistencies and has shown that not all symbols are equal before the law. As a matter of practice, the law of religion is based on liberal values which tend to favour faith based on orthodoxy over orthopraxy. This article argues that the time has come for a remodelling of the current approach to manifestation of religion and belief and puts forward a holistic approach which considers religion as an element of identity and as such ascribed rather than merely a life choice. It explores the possibility of a modification of current legal tests which would give way to this approach. The argument is considered from three different perspectives namely the emphasis on autonomy within the “liberal law of religion,” the religious vs. secular binary present within the courts’ approach and the difficulty of defining religion and belief

Key parameters design for online battery electrochemical impedance tracker

International audienceNew applications in transport and energy storage require the use of Lithium-ion batteries. Advanced battery management systems including electrochemical impedance measurement are studied for the determination of the state of the battery, the prediction of the autonomy, the failure and security management. Taking into account constraints of cost and simplicity, we propose to use the existing electronics of current control and we evaluate the effect of the electronics design on the performance of a frequency evolutionary estimation of the electrochemical impedance. This recursive method relies on a wideband active approach and provides both an accurate estimate of the impedance in the frequency area and a tracking of its temporal variations. Benefits are the limitation of the data memory required and the amount of operations that can be completely carried out by a target such as a microcontroller. We propose a methodology to design the key parameters of electronics in function of the frequency band of interest and the desired accuracy. We highlighted that electronics of conventional BMS can host this tracking algorithm, with analog to digital converters of 10 bits or more, having an analog stage to adapt their dynamics, and that microcontrollers can be enough powerful to perform calculations, both in terms of number of operations and speed of execution. This design strategy has been applied to define a prototyping environment for a BMS based on an ARM microcontroller which is expected to provide the tracking impedance of a battery every 250 ms with less than 0,5 % of error

Religious discrimination and the ‘hierarchy of rights’: non-existent, appropriate or problematic?

In theory, there is no hierarchy of rights in the Equality Act 2010: equal weight is given to each protected characteristic. At least two, very different, critiques though have been made of this argument as it relates to religion or belief. One argument is that religious discrimination has unfairly been given a lower priority than other characteristics, particularly sexual orientation. The second is that religion is inherently different, partly because religions tend to set extensive, and possibly discriminatory, rules for behaviour. In order to keep religion or belief claims within a reasonable limit, religious discrimination claims must therefore be confined. The perceived danger of confining these claims though is that, because of the insistence that there is no hierarchy of rights, this will lead to reduced protection across all the protected characteristics since concepts which apply across the Equality Act will be reinterpreted in order to avoid unwanted results. As will be demonstrated though, both of these arguments are misconceive

The transcriptional activity of hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha is inhibited via phosphorylation by ERK1/2

Hepatocyte nuclear factor 4 alpha (HNF4alpha) nuclear receptor is a master regulator of hepatocyte development, nutrient transport and metabolism. HNF4alpha is regulated both at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels by different mechanisms. Several kinases (PKA, PKC, AMPK) were shown to phosphorylate and decrease the activity of HNF4alpha. Activation of the ERK1/2 signalling pathway, inducing proliferation and survival, inhibits the expression of HNF4alpha. However, based on our previous results we hypothesized that HNF4alpha is also regulated at the post-transcriptional level by ERK1/2. Here we show that ERK1/2 is capable of directly phosphorylating HNF4alpha in vitro at several phosphorylation sites including residues previously shown to be targeted by other kinases, as well. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that phosphorylation of HNF4alpha leads to a reduced trans-activational capacity of the nuclear receptor in luciferase reporter gene assay. We confirm the functional relevance of these findings by demonstrating with ChIP-qPCR experiments that 30-minute activation of ERK1/2 leads to reduced chromatin binding of HNF4alpha. Accordingly, we have observed decreasing but not disappearing binding of HNF4alpha to the target genes. In addition, 24-hour activation of the pathway further decreased HNF4alpha chromatin binding to specific loci in ChIP-qPCR experiments, which confirms the previous reports on the decreased expression of the HNF4a gene due to ERK1/2 activation. Our data suggest that the ERK1/2 pathway plays an important role in the regulation of HNF4alpha-dependent hepatic gene expression

Reduced costs with bisoprolol treatment for heart failure - An economic analysis of the second Cardiac Insufficiency Bisoprolol Study (CIBIS-II)

Background Beta-blockers, used as an adjunctive to diuretics, digoxin and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, improve survival in chronic heart failure. We report a prospectively planned economic analysis of the cost of adjunctive beta-blocker therapy in the second Cardiac Insufficiency BIsoprolol Study (CIBIS II). Methods Resource utilization data (drug therapy, number of hospital admissions, length of hospital stay, ward type) were collected prospectively in all patients in CIBIS . These data were used to determine the additional direct costs incurred, and savings made, with bisoprolol therapy. As well as the cost of the drug, additional costs related to bisoprolol therapy were added to cover the supervision of treatment initiation and titration (four outpatient clinic/office visits). Per them (hospital bed day) costings were carried out for France, Germany and the U.K. Diagnosis related group costings were performed for France and the U.K. Our analyses took the perspective of a third party payer in France and Germany and the National Health Service in the U.K. Results Overall, fewer patients were hospitalized in the bisoprolol group, there were fewer hospital admissions perpatient hospitalized, fewer hospital admissions overall, fewer days spent in hospital and fewer days spent in the most expensive type of ward. As a consequence the cost of care in the bisoprolol group was 5-10% less in all three countries, in the per them analysis, even taking into account the cost of bisoprolol and the extra initiation/up-titration visits. The cost per patient treated in the placebo and bisoprolol groups was FF35 009 vs FF31 762 in France, DM11 563 vs DM10 784 in Germany and pound 4987 vs pound 4722 in the U.K. The diagnosis related group analysis gave similar results. Interpretation Not only did bisoprolol increase survival and reduce hospital admissions in CIBIS II, it also cut the cost of care in so doing. This `win-win' situation of positive health benefits associated with cost savings is Favourable from the point of view of both the patient and health care systems. These findings add further support for the use of beta-blockers in chronic heart failure