Suchergebnisse

Abstract: This essay addresses the status of the Belgian Civil Code in the twenty-first century. If the French revision process should have a successful outcome, Belgium will be one of the last countries to use a nineteenth century code. Does Belgium also need a revision of its Civil Code, or are there suitable alternatives? If a revision is advisable, a more fundamental question arises: How can a revised Belgian Civil Code cope with the stratification of private law and the multiple challenges every European legal system faces today? The first part of this essay briefly elucidates the challenges for the Belgian Civil Code. The second part looks for suitable responses, including (but not limited to) a possible revision of the aforementioned code. The third part will argue that a modernization of the Belgian Civil Code is essential to restore its central position in private law. Since two of the key advantages of codes are their durability and their comprehensive scope, a modern Belgian Civil Code's content should be limited to concepts, basic principles, and general rules. Any attempt to offer an overview of private law in its entirety in a single civil code can only be detrimental to those two key advantages. Because of the limited powers of a national legislature, the further development of the law can only result from collaboration between many different actors. An unremitting emphasis on the facts underlying hard legal questions and on the legal discourse is a necessary element of such a collaborative contribution.

Setting specifications for the electronic implementation of biological neural-network-like vision systems on-chip is not straightforward, neither it is to simulate the resulting circuit. The structure of these systems leads to a netlist of more than 100.000 nodes for a small array of 100×150 pixels. Moreover, introducing an optical input in the low level simulation is nowadays not feasible with standard electrical simulation environments. Given that, to accomplish the task of integrating those systems in silicon to build compact, low power consuming, and reliable systems, a previous step in the standard analog electronic design flux should be introduced. Here a methodology to make the translation from the biological model to circuit-level specifications for electronic design is proposed. The purpose is to include non ideal effects as mismatching, noise, leakages, supply degradation, feedthrough, and temperature of operation in a high level description of the implementation, in order to accomplish behavioural simulations that require less computational effort and resources. A particular case study is presented, the analog electronic implementation of the locust's Lobula Giant Movement Detector (LGMD), a neural structure that fires a collision alarm based on visual information. The final goal is a collision threat detection vision system on-chip for automotive applications. ; European Union IST-2001-38097, TIC2003 - 09817-C02-01

The Judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Slovenia v. Croatia marks the anticlimax of a long-running territorial dispute. It is also only the sixth time the CJEU has issued a judgment in a case instituted by one European Union member against another. Among these cases, it is the first to consider an arbitral award in a dispute between members, the first to consider a boundary dispute between members, and the first to be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. The Court found that it cannot rule on alleged infringements of European Union law when these arise from the breach of a treaty falling outside of the Union's subject-matter competence. Most directly, the Judgment may pose significant consequences for European Union internal affairs in the near term, such as Croatia's ambitions to join the Schengen Area and the Eurozone. More broadly, several of the Court's findings will be relevant beyond the European legal order, particular those concerning the meaning and effect of "ancillary" legal questions, and the bilateral or multilateral character of a dispute involving admission to an international organization.

This study of the uses of Europe by the leaders of the Front National shows how the opening of a new European political space can have indirect effects, supporting political parties at the domestic level and strengthening specific actors within political organizations. The theme of Europe, together with European elections and the European Parliament, are transformed by Front National leaders into material as well as symbolic resources which they mobilize in the national political space at both inter and intra-party level. These uses of Europe reinforce the capacities and resources of the party as well as its legitimacy and visibility. It helps Front National actors to widen their electoral support and allows party presidents to strengthen their position. The article reveals the specificity of the Front National relationship to the European arena and underlines the strong continuity of the practices developed by the new leadership. Finally the study provides a detailed account of the process of Front National Europeanization and advances understanding of the impact of European integration on domestic political competition.

In the past few decades there has been increased integration of communicable disease policies in Europe. The historical roots of this process date back to the mid-nineteenth century, when national authorities realized that the cross-boundary spread of diseases cannot be only a matter of national governance but requires common agreements and regulations. In the early 1950s the structuring of the World Health Organization in regional offices further contributed to the definition of Europe as a unit for risk assessments and international health cooperation. More recently the consolidation of the European Union has provided new institutional bases for shaping communicable disease policies at the supranational level. This article reviews these different attempts to protect the European space from diseases. It is argued that changing modes of communicable disease control not only have reflected shifts in public health priorities and institutional contexts but have also been important loci where different understandings of Europe and European political identity emerged and were negotiated. Against this background the article then examines past achievements and future challenges of the current European framework and discusses implications for the wider process of European integration.

Looks at how the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have intensified debates about reforming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) regarding its strategic & capabilities agenda; its relationship with the European Union; & possible enlargement. The impact of NATO's relative inactivity following 9/11 is explored, along with conflicts between Atlantic & European sides of the alliance created by the 1991 New Strategic Concept; the possibility of global coalitions that extend beyond the territory of NATO members; & European efforts to improve security. The US military response to 9/11 suggests that it no longer wants to be bound by coalition partners & is pushing European states to update their own military capabilities to make them more compatible with the US. It is argued that the nature of terror & the appropriateness of NATO as a tool with which to challenge terror lie at the heart of the NATO reform debate, which is ultimately about power in international institutions, the US-European relationship, & whether or not the US is willing to act multilaterally. J. Lindroth

Taking as its starting point the major issues of democracy which are the ongoing concerns of every liberal Western political system, this volume offers a wide-ranging review of democracy in the European Union. It treats the EU as a new type of political system within the tradition of parliamentary democracies, a system which is neither federal nor intergovernmental, and which consequently has unique problems of how to handle democratic requirements. Part One deals with the two major challenges of interest articulation in the EU, political parties and lobbying. The second part discusses how dem

Introduction / Katherine Fierlbeck, Janice Graham, and Matthew Herder -- Transparency, Pharmaceuticals, and the Problem of Policy Change / Katherine Fierlbeck -- Data Transparency and Pharmaceutical Regulation in Europe: Road to Damascus, or Room without a View? / Courtney Davis, Shai Mulinari, and Tom Jefferson -- The FDA and Health Canada: Similar Origins, yet Divergent Paths and Approaches to Transparency / Margaret E. McCarthy and Joseph S. Ross -- Clinical Trial Data Transparency in Canada: Mapping the Progress from Laggard to Leader / Marc-André Gagnon, Matthew Herder, Janice Graham, Katherine Fierlbeck, and Anna Danyliuk -- The Limits of Transparency and the Role of Essential Medicines / Nav Persaud -- Speak No Secrets: (Non)transparency in Health Canada's Communications about Pharmaceutical Regulation / Joel Lexchin -- The Political Economy of Influence: Ghost-Management in the Pharmaceutical Sector / Marc-André Gagnon -- Data Transparency and Rare Disease: Privacy versus Public Interest? / Kanksha Mahadevia Ghimire and Trudo Lemmens -- The European Registration of the Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Pandemrix: A Case Study of the Consequences of Poor Clinical Data Transparency / Tom Jefferson -- The Road Forward: How Researchers Can Sustain an Ethical and Transparent Health System / Rita Banzi -- Conclusion / Katherine Fierlbeck, Janice Graham, and Matthew Herder.

Does regional decentralization threaten the commitment to regional equality in government outcomes? We attempt to shed light on this question by drawing on unique evidence from the largest European unitary states to have engaged in countrywide health system decentralization: Italy and Spain. We estimate, decompose, and run counterfactual analysis of regional inequality in government output (health expenditure per capita) and outcome (health system satisfaction) during expansion of health care decentralization in both countries. We find no evidence of increase in regional inequalities in outcomes and outputs in the examined period. Inequalities are accounted for by differences in health system design.

This work presents a novel navigation system for social collaborative virtual environments populated with multiple characters. The navigation system ensures collision free movement of avatars and agents. It supports direct user manipulation, automated path planning, positioning to get seated, and follow-me behaviour for groups. In follow-me mode, the socially aware system manages the mise en place of individuals within a group. A use case centred around on an educational virtual trip to the European Parliament created for the REVERIE FP7 project, also serves as an example to bring forward aspects of such navigational requirements.

With the liberalisation of the European electricity market, new instruments are searched for in order to co-ordinate climate change initiatives with competition. This paper analyses the potential of a system of green electricity certificates to regulate the introduction of renewable energy sources. Based on Dutch experiences from a similar system of Green Labels, potential problems and possible solutions are presented. Furthermore, the system of Green Certificates is compared with the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol in order to discuss their common features and assess the compatibility of these instruments.

In the wake of an emerging knowledge society, universities around the world have come under severe institutional pressure from changing national research policies, financing organizations´ new strategies and turbulent research dynamics. This study examines how Lund University in Sweden manages these institutional pressures. The study explores how the university leadership ? rector and the governing board ? have (1) articulated the normative foundations of the university, (2) experimented with and structured the research organization, (3) explored new internal governance structures and steering strategies, and (4) developed institutional structures for closer integration with industry and commercialization of research results. The study develops a conceptual framework focusing on processes of institutional change and on how organizations react on these processes. Especially, I elaborate on the notion of institutional evolution developed within the tradition of historical institutionalism, and the processes and mechanisms behind different evolutionary paths. In the empirical parts of the study, I first analyze processes of institutional change within modern science. The study departures from and criticizes three popular frameworks of contemporary science and research dynamics: the ?Triple Helix? framework, the concept of ?post-academic? science and the transition from a ?Mode-1? to a ?Mode-2? type of knowledge production. The study then continues by analyzing international research policy trends, the developments within Swedish research policy and the governing structures within the field of higher education. The analysis of Lund University over more than two decades reveals an organization using a growing number of different normative foundations and organizational models and structures in its daily operations. The study also demonstrates the gradual transformation of the internal governance structure with recurrent attempts to strengthen the steering core at the central university level. The analysis also points to the successive integration with regional industry, as well as the building up of technology transfer structures and mechanisms within the university during the last 10 to 15 years. The case study demonstrates how the university loyally tries to adapt to a complex and changing environment by elaborating its hybrid character. In conclusion, the analysis in this study shows, on the one hand, the emergence of a ?post-academic? research system containing new institutional logics, governance structures and borders. On the other, hand the case study of Lund University illustrates the evolutionary transformation of a Swedish ?Humboldtian? university. This is a transformation where elements of the ?Entrepreneurial University? are added on to and fused with classical European university norms and structures.

In contemporary environment effective management of education process, including financial management, is one the most important tasks at government level. Reforms of higher education in Russia have tendency to establish major universities with large quantity of students and great variety of educational programs. This article presents approach to management in educational organizations built on information technologies rather than on functional automatization and describes basic management tools using under proposed approach. In the core of such approach there is an idea to transfer most of management functions from human to an automated system, which becomes a center of management activities while human stays as data provider, controller and decision maker. ; В современных условиях эффективное управление учебным процессом на всех уровнях, включая финансовое управление, является одной из основных задач. При реализации образовательных реформ в России формируются крупные университеты с большим количеством студентов и образовательных программ. В статье рассматривается применение подхода к управлению на основе информационных технологий в противовес функциональной автоматизации и показываются основные механизмы решения управленческих задач с применением данного подхода. Этот подход основной квинтэссенцией своей реализации определяет передачу максимального количества функций от человека автоматизированной системе, где система является ключевым элементом управленческой деятельности, а человек выступает в качестве источника данных, контролера работы информационной системы и лица, принимающего окончательные ключевые управленческие решения.

В современных условиях эффективное управление учебным процессом на всех уровнях, включая финансовое управление, является одной из основных задач. При реализации образовательных реформ в России формируются крупные университеты с большим количеством студентов и образовательных программ. В статье рассматривается применение подхода к управлению на основе информационных технологий в противовес функциональной автоматизации и показываются основные механизмы решения управленческих задач с применением данного подхода. Этот подход основной квинтэссенцией своей реализации определяет передачу максимального количества функций от человека автоматизированной системе, где система является ключевым элементом управленческой деятельности, а человек выступает в качестве источника данных, контролера работы информационной системы и лица, принимающего окончательные ключевые управленческие решения. ; In contemporary environment effective management of education process, including financial management, is one the most important tasks at government level. Reforms of higher education in Russia have tendency to establish major universities with large quantity of students and great variety of educational programs. This article presents approach to management in educational organizations built on information technologies rather than on functional automatization and describes basic management tools using under proposed approach. In the core of such approach there is an idea to transfer most of management functions from human to an automated system, which becomes a center of management activities while human stays as data provider, controller and decision maker.

The improvement of water use efficiency is one of the priorities of the Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC. In order to pursue this objective, the European Union suggests member countries adopt a direct pricing method, in which each user is charged proportionally to water consumption. However, since the implementation cost and the operational costs of the volumetric pricing method are usually higher than those related to other methods the present paper is aimed at verifying whether the volumetric pricing is capable of achieving a higher efficiency. Two aspects of the efficiency are considered and evaluated with a two-step Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA): the technical efficiency, depending on the profitability of the crops, and the ecological efficiency, affected by environmental externalities of the irrigation practice. The results prove that the gain of efficiency due to direct pricing method is rather limited, compared to other methods. ; Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Policy,University of Cordoba, Spain. Department of Production and Innovation in Mediterranean Agriculture and Food System (PrIME), University of Foggia, Italy. Department of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Italy.