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Abstract Background The Brazilian consensus recommends a short-term treatment course with clarithromycin, amoxicillin and proton-pump inhibitor for the eradication of Helicobacter pylori ( H. pylori) . This treatment course has good efficacy, but cannot be afforded by a large part of the population. Azithromycin, amoxicillin and omeprazole are subsidized, for several aims, by the Brazilian federal government. Therefore, a short-term treatment course that uses these drugs is a low-cost one, but its efficacy regarding the bacterium eradication is yet to be demonstrated. The study's purpose was to verify the efficacy of H. pylori eradication in infected patients who presented peptic ulcer disease, using the association of azithromycin, amoxicillin and omeprazole. Methods Sixty patients with peptic ulcer diagnosed by upper digestive endoscopy and H. pylori infection documented by rapid urease test, histological analysis and urea breath test were treated for six days with a combination of azithromycin 500 mg and omeprazole 20 mg, in a single daily dose, associated with amoxicillin 500 mg 3 times a day. The eradication control was carried out 12 weeks after the treatment by means of the same diagnostic tests. The eradication rates were calculated with 95% confidence interval. Results The eradication rate was 38% per intention to treat and 41% per protocol. Few adverse effects were observed and treatment compliance was high. Conclusion Despite its low cost and high compliance, the low eradication rate does not allow the recommendation of the triple therapy with azithromycin as an adequate treatment for H. pylori infection.

International audience ; During the past two decades, international efforts to fight against HIV/AIDS have yielded important research successes for child survival in developing countries. Lessons have been learned about which prevention and care approaches are most efficient in responding to the needs of children affected by HIV/AIDS. However the transition from research to action remains largely insufficient. Without the universal access of currently available PMTCT interventions, one out of three infants born to HIV-infected mothers will continue to contract HIV and most of them will die within their first year of life. Yet, economical and cultural barriers limit severely the coverage, acceptability and use of PMTCT services. There is also enough evidence today to roll out paediatric HIV care and treatment, at least at the same speed and extent than adult care and in priority with a family-targeted approach. This however requires improving health care systems as well as long-term political commitment and funding at international, national and more local levels, which is far from guaranteed. Current knowledge indicates that orphans and vulnerable children pay a large tribute to HIV/AIDS and deserve a large-scale response, as their needs remain grossly under-met. Finally, and in line with a growing international consensus, it is more than ever obvious that the fight against HIV/AIDS requires the scaling-up and intensification of primary HIV prevention, as part of a comprehensive response that simultaneously expands access to treatment and care.

International audience ; When the journal was launched in 2001, the first issue included an article by this author, which examined the politics of `race' and identity as central ingredients in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. This current article considers how political identities have been reconstructed since the genocide, especially from above. History, law and politics are examined, as central instruments in government efforts to construct a new Rwandan society and ensure that genocide will `never again' be possible. Evidence suggests that inequalities in income and land distribution have grown rapidly since 1994. At the same time, the poor and marginalized often find it difficult to openly express their views, including their political identities outside of officially circumscribed spaces and categories. Debates continue around numbers of victims and perpetrators, and new inter-elite conflicts have emerged along language lines. The article shows how race categories have been replaced with new terms, which arise from a particular reading of the genocide. A new foundation myth for Rwanda, a form of diasporic victim nationalism, is also briefly explored. Re-labelling Rwandans from above, the state continues to exercise tight control over the public expression of political identities. Open political debate is very difficult; the government frequently feels it is being attacked, and accuses critics of divisionism or harbouring a genocide mentality. If more inclusive forms of Rwandan-ness are to emerge in future, state controls will need to be relaxed, so that more complex forms of political identities can finally emerge.

Using the model family method, we compared the social and fiscal systems in 11 EU member states for providing financial resources to households with children. We then used these comparisons to answer the following questions: After the impact of various benefits and taxes, what is the difference in the net disposable income of a childless couple compared with a family with children where both families have the same income? To what extent are certain systems of transfers utilized as an instrument of horizontal redistribution? To what extent are certain transfers used as a means of vertical redistribution? How do transfers for families with an identical number of children vary according to the families' income levels? Austria is far and away the most generous country when it comes to cash provision to families. Nevertheless, levels of fertility remain low resembling those of Germany. Bringing up the rear at the opposite end of the spectrum is the Netherlands. France, Belgium, Austria, and to a lesser degree, Germany all tend to favour large families with France and Belgium becoming rather less favourable than the other two when it comes to providing assistance to couples and lone parent families with only one child. The Nordic countries, the UK and Ireland are all distinguished by a strong emphasis on vertical redistribution, favouring families with modest revenues. Our results confirm arguments in favor of promoting measures that place greater emphasis on benefits in kind over simple cash benefits.

International audience ; The evolution of educational inequalities is difficult to measure. It is necessary to build an indicator of inequality but also to take into account the social changes which affect the social classes and the value of the diplomas. Whichever the statistical tool used, there is always "quantitative" democratization. It is not the same with "qualitative" democratization. We propose to analyze it by building a latent variable called "educational potential". We eliminate "quantitative" democratization by giving a relative value to the diplomas. The study of 19 triennial generations between 1920 and 1976 shows that "qualitative" democratization relates mainly to the children of the agricultural categories. This result is similar to that obtained with the log-multiplicative layer effect model. On the whole, can we speak about a "qualitative" democratization? ; Mesurer l'évolution de l'inégalité scolaire est un problème difficile. Il faut construire un indice d'inégalité mais aussi prendre en compte les changements sociaux qui affectent les catégories sociales et la valeur des diplômes. La démocratisation « quantitative » s'impose quel que soit l'outil statistique utilisé, il n'en est pas de même de la démocratisation « qualitative ». Nous proposons de l'analyser en construisant une variable latente « potentiel scolaire » qui élimine la démocratisation « quantitative » en donnant une valeur relative aux diplômes. L'étude de 19 générations triennales entre 1920 et 1976 montre que la démocratisation « qualitative » porte principalement sur les enfants des catégories agricoles. Ce résultat est semblable à celui obtenu avec le modèle log-multiplicatif de variation uniforme. Peut-on parler globalement d'une démocratisation « qualitative » ?

In average, statutory tax rates in OECD countries fell over 34,84% between 1982 and 2005. While the seminal papers on tax competition explain this fall in corporate tax rates by greater capital mobility, we build on the New Economic Geography literature to investigate empirically the impact of trade integration on tax competition. We use the disaggregated Trade and Production Database of the CEPII to build an index of trade phi-ness following the method of Head and Mayer (2004a). Firstly, we show that trade integration matters for the tax policy through two channels: (i) on the one hand trade integration reinforces tax interactions and accelerates the race to the bottom in corporate taxe rates, but (ii) on the other hand trade integration makes it possible for countries to set higher corporate tax rates as it improves their market access. We show that the second e¤ect becomes insigni.cant when we control for the .rst one. This indicates that the overall impact of trade integration on corporate tax rates is negative and could explain the negative relationship between trade integration and corporate tax rates that we observed in OECD countries between 1983 and 1999. Secondly, we show that countries do not have the same ability to limit their dependence on other countries'.scal policy. More precisely, the ability of a country to set a high corporate tax rate increases with its market size and its market access, but decreases with the degree of its government involvement in the wage-setting.

International audience ; In Europe 7.3 million tonnes of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) were created in 2002, and the fact that growth rate of WEEE is 3-5% per annum with a significant amount of this waste used to be dumped into landfills without any pre-treatment, has resulted in the introduction of European WEEE directive. The directive requires companies who manufacture or import electrical and electronic equipment to take financial and legal responsibility for its environmental-friendly recovery and recycling. The current recycling applications of WEEE are often developed on ad hoc basis and mainly attributable to the hidden economic value within used products. However, at present the recycling facilities are faced with the challenge to improve WEEE recycling activities to ensure that a larger proportion of components and materials are being recovered at a reasonable cost and yet at the same time legislative requirements are being met. A major assertion made in the research reported in this paper is that a systematic framework is needed to aid the decision making involved in adopting the best possible end-of-life strategies for WEEE. The paper presents one such integrated framework for the planning of the processes involved in the recycling of WEEE. Based on this framework a Computer-Aided Recycling Process Planning (CARPP) system which generates bespoke recycling process plans for WEEE has been developed which is also described and its functionality demonstrated using a typical WEEE product.

Citizens' conferences attempt to include citizens in the decisional and political process. Created to foster deliberation and public debate on disputed issues, they place ordinary citizens in the spotlight and ask them to express their views, after having debated the issues with specialists. Whereas the conferences conducted in a domestic context have been well analyzed, little attention has been given so far to the first attempts to replicate the experience at the European level, and to the specific problems that may be encountered in so doing. Two main reasons have prompted the EU to pay interest to this participatory mechanism: functional reasons (the need to take position on a socio-technological controversy whose stakes are controversial) and political legitimacy (the absence of a strong democratic legitimacy at the EU level). Based on an analysis of the first two experiments organized in the EU, devoted to "the city of tomorrow" and to brain sciences respectively, this article argues that achieving such citizen deliberation is not without problems. In many respects, these problems point to the difficulty entailed in the creation of a European public space: the elusive quest for a "European people"; the question of representation according to the size of the countries; the issue of languages. At the same time, the main potential of this instrument may lie in its cognitive impact, since the interpretations and knowledge surrounding the issues which are debate may influence both the agenda-setting and the decision-making process.

The OMES collection is a database that holds a huge amount of measurement data on stations along the Zeeschelde and Westerschelde. The data collection consists in three main types of data: historical data (1904-1991) derived from literature, more recent data (1995-2007) generated during the OMES monitoring campaigns and some additional data from incidental measurements in the same study area. The measurements vary from water quality and suspended matter to biological data.The OMES project started in 1995 and is a multidisciplinary study on the estuarine environment of the Belgian part of the Scheldt. The main aim of OMES is to create a tool for the Flemish government that can be used as scientific support for the policy on water management of the Scheldt Estuary.In the summer of 2007 the OMES data collection has been integrated as a separate context in the IMERS data system. The Flanders Marine Institute is now responsible for centralizing and management of the newly gathered OMES data and for redistributing the data towards the OMES partners and extern users.The user that is interested in access to and use of the data is presented with a web interface on the OMES website that allows querying the database based on specific search criteria. Search criteria include parameters measured and taxonomic, spatial and temporal scope. The user can visualize the resulting data in tables and export the data to The whole dataset is made available to the project partners on the restricted pages of the OMES website: http://www.vliz.be/projects/omes.

Afro-Brazilian Jewish women struggle against racism, sexism and classism within their Jewish communities, but they continue to practice Judaism and raise their children Jewish. They affirm their identities as both Black and Jewish in the face of rejection from white Jewish communities as well as their Afro-Brazilian communities. Because Brazil has consistently made efforts to make Jews into symbols of otherness and at the same time rhetorically valued the mulato identity as a symbol of brasilidade ("Brazilianness"), Jews are seen as foreign parasites, light-skinned Blacks are symbols of authentic Brazilian identity, dark-skinned Blacks are invisible, and Jews and Blacks are irreparably separated from each other. In addition the rhetorical valuation of the "mulata" and the devaluation of the Jew, places the Black Jewish women I interviewed (who are lighter-skinned black women) in between what is symbolically valued and devalued in Brazil, literally in the border between "us" and "them." The Brazilian state appropriates and utilizes beneficial aspects of racial others to advertise its modernity, while oppressing the unwanted parts. The Brazilian state portrayed Jews as "economically desirable," but "politically inexpedient," (Lesser, 2005, p. 36). "Mulata" women are sexually valorized and considered erotic, but only through commodification and objectification (Lilly, 2007, p. 61). The Brazilian state claims acceptance based on its appropriation and utilization of the Jewish or Black culture, but continues to enact racism and anti-Semitism (Barcelos, 1999, Barroso, 1999; Berdichevski, 2001; Lesser, 1995, 2005; Lilly, 2007; Reichmann, 1995).

Both major contenders in Peru's 1931 presidential contest made populist mobilization a centerpiece of their political strategies. Never before had a candidate for national office so completely flouted traditional channels of political power and so thoroughly staked his political aspirations on the mobilization of support from non-elite segments of the population. This paper asks: Why did these two candidates pursue novel populist strategies at this particular historical juncture? The first part of the paper identifies the conditions that encouraged Peruvian politicians to pursue populist mobilization in 1931; it also explains why populist mobilization had never before been undertaken in Peru. An adequate explanation of populist mobilization, however, must also trace the social processes by which objective conditions translate into the selection of specific lines of action by political leaders. The second part of this paper thus assesses the socially-conditioned strategic vision of the various political actors operating in 1931. Only by adding this second step to the inquiry is it possible to answer the question of why, if all encountered the same objective conditions, some actors in the political field pursued populist strategies while others did not. Ultimately, I identify two paths to populist mobilization: an ideological route and an accidental route. Other political actors chose not to pursue populist mobilization for one of two reasons: some saw it as going too far in undermining the elite bases of the traditional political structure; others saw it as not going far enough toward fostering revolutionary change.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit den Sonderausstellungen des Erfurter Angermuseums in der Zeit von 1945 bis 1963. Bei diesen Sonderschauen handelt es sich in der Regel um Ausstellungen zeitgenössischer Künstler der Region, die bisher in ihrer Gesamtheit noch nicht vorgestellt wurden. Gleichzeitig bietet die Untersuchung die Möglichkeit, Rückschlüsse auf die Ausstellungspraxis und Ausstellungspolitik der DDR zu ziehen. Die Arbeit verdeutlicht einerseits die Bedeutung des Museumsdirektors für die Wahrnehmung des Museums in der Öffentlichkeit und andererseits die Notwendigkeit der Präsentation von avantgardistischer Kunst für einen gelungenen Austausch zwischen dem Publikum und den Künstlern. Darüber hinaus soll die Arbeit als ein Beitrag zur rezeptionsästhetischen Grundlagenforschung wahrgenommen werden. Sie nimmt die seit einigen Jahren verstärkt in den Museen geführte Diskussion auf, die eigene mittelbare Ausstellungsgeschichte als kunsthistorisch relevanten Fakt zu begreifen. Wie jedes Museum kann auch das Angermuseum als Ort verstanden werden, an dem die drei kunsthistorisch relevanten Komponenten Künstler, Kunstwerk und Rezipient idealtypisch aufeinander treffen. ; The thesis discusses the special exhibitions of the Angermuseum in Erfurt from 1945 till 1963. These special showings usually presented the works of local contemporary artists. Besides documenting the entirety of these events for the first time the thesis examines the essentials of making exhibitions in the GDR as well as the underlying politics. The text at hand illustrates the importance of the curator for the perception of the museum in the public and at the same time the necessity of presenting avant-garde art for the successful exchange between the audience and the artist. Like any museum the Angermuseum is to be seen as an ideal place for the three main art historical components to meet: the artist, the piece of art and the recipient. The dissertation contributes to the fundamental research in the aesthetic of reception and is to bee seen as part of the discussion in how far the history of exhibitions is in itself a subject for art historical research.

Abstract
A recurrent misconception about the concept of utopia fails to realize fully that its essential endeavor constitutes a speculative act involving the distribution of power and resources. Consequently, utopian desire is closely linked to structures of power and can be manipulated by interests in positions of influence within these structures. It is these connections to the machinations of power that bring utopian visions their potential for social/political influence. However, these same types of links also provide avenues for these conceptions to be cynically influenced in ways that can usurp individual autonomy. The role of power and utopia can be analyzed in the formative process of a specific social structure as well as in their contribution to the conception of a common heritage or history. The "historical perspective" often serves as the foundation for the production of propaganda seeking to capture the imagination of a populace either to instigate positive social change or to legitimize an oppressive regime. Through the lens of Collingwood's philosophy of history, this article investigates the connection that the "historical consciousness" has to the attributes of power and utopia as well as the role that this relationship plays in the formation of a collective mentality. In short, it studies the essential characteristics of the bond between individuals that allows a community or collective to perpetuate itself. It also explores how the attributes of power and utopia can use latent historical perceptions to strengthen the process of ideological integration that underlies any social action or formal structure of authority.

The Saffron Revolution is Burma's 9/11; much will never be the same. The regime's harsh crackdown and killing of monks in fall 2007 has aroused a new generation of dissidents. Economic grievances have morphed into antigovernment political protests, and the political situation has become even more polarized. Burma's 9/11 may also be sowing dissension within the military as ostracism from the sangha (Buddhist community) and popular revulsion affects institutional interests, ones that may no longer be identical to those of the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The government's seven-step roadmap to democracy appears to have lost all credibility, and no one believes that the military or its proxies will implement the proposed Constitution in good faith. There is concern that the SPDC is only going through the motions of the UN-sponsored dialogue and still hopes to impose a democracy in shackles. Indonesia has provided inspiration for the SPDC, especially the paramount political power exercised by the Indonesian military during the New Order era (1967-98), but the junta fails to see that this model has already been overtaken by events and popular aspirations. Meanwhile, the international community debates how to break through the current impasse, given that economic sanctions and constructive engagement have not produced any progress. Transforming unprecedented international attention to Burma's plight into sustained support for alleviating severe humanitarian conditions, promoting nation building, and nurturing a time-bound dialogue for national reconciliation and democratization remains a key challenge. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

In cross-border mergers, creditor protection is important to facilitate a smooth, efficient and transparent process necessary to facilitate the single market. As all assets and liabilities are being transferred and there is a risk that the liabilities of the acquiring company will exceed the assets, creditor protection needs to be safeguarded in legal mergers. As the title suggests, creditor protection in the context of cross-border mergers and the recently adopted directive is examined in this paper, as well as the position of creditors under Dutch law and the Third Directive. The ex-ante and ex-post systems of creditor protection, both existing in the Member States of the EU, and which are both supported by strong arguments, are also discussed. The fact that differences in creditor protection rules nevertheless remain may create unjustifiable differences in the position of various groups of creditors involved in one single cross-border merger. The authors conclude that the case for leaving creditor protection to the Member States is weakening. Differences in national legislation on creditor protection, defendable as they may be, are ultimately of a technical nature and create unnecessary and unjustifiable impediments. There are strong arguments, in other words, to adopt the same provisions for all transactions for the sake of simplicity, but while this may be attractive, it can lead to undesired delay. Amending the Directive at this point in time thus seems equally unfeasible. This stresses the need to make haste with at least some further harmonization of creditor protection rules related to the Third Directive.