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Judicial institutions have become the standard solution to umpire multilevel polities across much of the European continent. However, such arrangement is not free from complexities. This paper analyses the problems associated with the construction of legitimacy regarding constitutional courts in European multilevel democracies. In these polities, constitutional courts tend to rely on three different forms of legitimacy, which are embedded into their institutional design: democratic, multilevel; and technocratic. However, these forms of legitimacy are in tension, often undermining one another when combined. Furthermore, this tension is exploited by political actors to attack the courts, resulting in reputational costs for these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should patent legislative power be allocated between central and local governments in order to construct a patent system conducive to promoting innovation? A comparative analysis of the models of the U.S. and China sheds light on this question. The early American states established their patent systems before the formation of the federal system, but the U.S. Constitution arrogated patent legislative power to the federal government, ending the era of decentralized patent systems. This centralized structure ensures uniformity in rules but migfit hinder the ystem !r adaptability and ability to experiment. In contrast, as China'spatent ystem evolved, its patent legislative power spread from the central to the local governments. This shift led to the coexistence of dual-levelpatent legislative structure. Currently, twenty-nine out of thirty-one province-level authorities (93.5%) and twenty-one out of323 city-level authorities with local legislative power (6.5%) have established localpatent laws. China's patent ystem is not entirely decentralized but rather, semi-decentralized, as the locales not only implement their localpatent laws but also must enforce the central government's national patent laws. China's semidecentralized patent legislation model embodies significant features of cooperative federalism, where the central and local governments share the nationalpower to handle affairs and collaborate to address issues. Yet, the central government maintains a dominant position in this cooperative relationship, as a consequence of China's unitary state structure. Compared to the current centralized patent legislation model in the U.S., China's semi-decentralized patent legislation model has the advantage of making statutory law more adaptable to local specificities and promoting local competition and institutional innovation. However, it also faces challenges, such as increased costs due to inconsistency; efficiency decline stemming from rent-seeking behaviors; and the risk that localprotectionism will create anti-competitive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims that digital transformation (DT) is crucial for companies to stay competitive. While research on DT has quickly gained great popularity, the intersection of trade associations (TAs) and their role in the DT of their members is not yet researched. Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, the authors conducted 20 interviews with Belgian TAs to investigate the role of a TAs in the DT of its members, and how they drive the DT of its members. In addition, the authors investigate the core tasks of TAs, the need of the different industries to digitalize, and the digital projects the different industries are working on. Findings – The findings indicate that TAs can be in a prime position to steer the DT of their members, especially for industries comprised of smaller players. Their roles can range from informing roles to true leaders of DT by creating novel products, such as online platforms and driving the entire sector forwards. Research limitations/implications – These findings call for more research into TAs and how their role can be optimized for steering DT of their members. Originality/value – This is the first study to extensively study the role of TAs on the DT of their members.

While extensive understanding of headship has emerged over the last half-century, the notion of executive headship remains under-explored. This article summarizes a systematic review of evidence relating to executive headship published since 2001. This review found the overwhelming majority of peer-reviewed articles into executive headship are small-scale or largely theoretical in nature. Meanwhile, the few larger-scale studies completed have generally been published directly by their commissioning body. Consequently, much is known about the policy and philosophical drivers behind the emergence of this role in English schools, but markedly less on its operationalization in practice. Furthermore, while few attempts have been made to assess the prevalence of this role, there is nevertheless some evidence (albeit limited) that executive headship can positively impact on organizational effectiveness and pupil outcomes. This article recommends that further research be undertaken into understanding how the role is performed in practice, its strengths and limitations, implications for governance, the characteristics it demands of leaders in practice and the support they require. Furthermore, parallels between this and similar roles in other countries (such as superintendents in the US) should also be examined to identify further lessons on how executive headship can best be utilized both strategically and operationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Universitas, Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas is the property of Universidad Politecnica Salesiana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The evolution of the Swiss Confederation from a local alliance among Imperial estates to a national entity on the European stage can be mapped by tracking the way that federal business was archived from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries. The original Diet (Tagsatzung) established after the allied cantons gained shared territories in the Aargau in the 1420s lacked the personnel or institutional identity necessary to undertake any archival activity. As the Confederation gained institutional definition and became a regional player in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire and of Central Europe, however, documentary practices became increasingly routinized, and stable federal collections began forming in parallel in the archives of the leading cantons. Consisting of durable representations of ongoing debates and negotiations and preserved in documents (Abschiede) that were circulated differentially depending on the matters and parties involved, the emerging confederal archive was distributed in that no single location possessed a complete version, and imaginary in that contemporaries regarded it as a comprehensive unity despite its very real physical and material fragmentation. In the later sixteenth century, a separate archival collection reflecting the Confederation's shared business emerged in the administrative centre of Baden (Aargau), reflecting the consolidating identity of Confederation as it moved out of the Empire's orbit. Repeated efforts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to complete and protect this collection referred to it as an archive despite its unusual characteristics. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth century, projects to create a Swiss national archive, either virtually or in print, culminated in the printed Eidgenössische Abschiede that created a documentary record of a Swiss state since the thirteenth century that had never existed historically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Education Policy Analysis Archives / Archivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas / Arquivos Analíticos de Políticas Educativas is the property of Educational Policy Analysis Archives & Education Review and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

RDF dataset profiling is the task of extracting a formal representation of a dataset's features. Such features may cover various aspects of the RDF dataset ranging from information on licensing and provenance to statistical descriptors of the data distribution and its semantics. In this work, we focus on the characteristics sets profile features that capture both structural and semantic information of an RDF dataset, making them a valuable resource for different downstream applications. While previous research demonstrated the benefits of characteristic sets in centralized and federated query processing, access to these fine-grained statistics is taken for granted. However, especially in federated query processing, computing this profile feature is challenging as it can be difficult and/or costly to access and process the entire data from all federation members. We address this shortcoming by introducing the concept of a profile feature estimation and propose a sampling-based approach to generate estimations for the characteristic sets profile feature. In addition, we showcase the applicability of these feature estimations in federated querying by proposing a query planning approach that is specifically designed to leverage these feature estimations. In our first experimental study, we intrinsically evaluate our approach on the representativeness of the feature estimation. The results show that even small samples of just 0.5 % of the original graph's entities allow for estimating both structural and statistical properties of the characteristic sets profile features. Our second experimental study extrinsically evaluates the estimations by investigating their applicability in our query planner using the well-known FedBench benchmark. The results of the experiments show that the estimated profile features allow for obtaining efficient query plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Educational Thought / Revue de la Pensée Educative is the property of University of Calgary, Faculty of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article demonstrates how the formation of new federations with power asymmetries, such as Canada at the time of Confederation—its constitutional moment—led to asymmetric representation, also referred to as malapportionment. The same power asymmetries that led to asymmetric representation also led to fiscal redistribution in which some sub-national jurisdictions obtained a share of federal government spending that was disproportionate to their share of the country's population or their contribution toward federal government revenues. This article makes use of historical institutionalism to demonstrate that Confederation can best be viewed as a critical juncture and treats Canada as a case study in which both political malapportionment and fiscal redistribution were part of the initial federal bargain. It also shows how path dependence ensures that both malapportionment and fiscal redistribution have been persistent features of the Canadian federation and have become accentuated over time. Malapportionment is measured using the Loosemore-Hanby index of electoral disproportionality, as adapted by David Samuels and Richard Snyder. This permits comparisons between institutions, including the House of Commons and Senate, various caucuses within those institutions, and the federal cabinet. It also permits comparisons between jurisdictions and between different time periods. Fiscal redistribution is measured using Statistics Canada estimates of spending by the federal government in each province and territory and the amount of revenue it collects in those same jurisdictions. Progressive forms of taxation, direct spending by the federal government, and intergovernmental grants have all expanded exponentially and have led to increased fiscal redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ITF Tennis Play and Stay campaign has been a crucial initiative to increase the number of tennis players in the world and promote tennis as easy, fun and healthy to all ages, genders, playing standard and physical abilities. The aim of this study was to find out the views on this campaign of those responsible for the participation programmes of the 35 national federations with the largest number of recreational players. These 35 experts responded to a questionnaire developed specifically for this study. The results showed that the 10-and-under competition rule change, implemented by the ITF in 2012, was well communicated to coaches and brings benefits in terms of increased participation, learning and performance improvements in beginner players. In addition, most countries reported that they have implemented the concepts of the campaign both in training and competitions, as well as in coach education programmes. Therefore, it is concluded that, in general, the opinions of the experts within national federations who are responsible for the participation directive and for implementing programmes related to the concepts of the ITF Tennis Play and Stay campaign obtained through this study are extremely positive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the political accountability of the EU's executive power (the elephant). It starts from a discussion of some recent contributions to the analysis of the EU's executive power showing their difficulties in conceptualizing its accountability patterns. Then, it analyses executive power's accountability in democratic federal systems, comparing coming-together federations, where executive power's political accountability is institutional, with holding-together federations, where executive power's political accountability is electoral. Thus, it conceptualizes the EU's executive power as consisting in a dual decision-making regime (supranational and intergovernmental) to deal with different policy areas. Using the comparative federalism perspective, the article argues that executive power's accountability is institutional in the supranational regime (although it manages issues of low domestic political salience) while it is neither institutional nor electoral in the intergovernmental regime (which manages issues of high domestic political salience). This differentiation works against the elephant's accountability in crucial policy realms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how have free movement and social citizenship been reconciled in federal settings characterised by devolved welfare responsibilities and extensive internal diversity? The EU fails to guarantee minimum social protection rights for EU citizens migrating within the Union, as access to social assistance in countries of destination is highly conditional. This situation is very similar to historical experiences in other federations, where fears of welfare migration and tensions between federal and sub-federal competencies made it difficult to guarantee social assistance rights for all citizens. A comparison of the North German Confederation, Switzerland and the USA, demonstrates that such rights nonetheless have been extended to all citizens in federations and that this occurred along two pathways: (a) a judicial pathway through the intervention of a constitutional court; or (b) a political pathway through incremental change. The conclusion considers possible implications of these findings for the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

- Since the formation of Malaysia, the Federation under the Tunku Abdul Rahman-Tun Razak leadership had to deal with the Malaysia-Indonesia confrontation and also issues in Singapore that were stirred up by Lee Kuan Yew. Continual provocation and pressure from Lee Kuan Yew on the Central Government subsequently led to the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia. Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, one of the core leaders of the Federation, viewed Singapore as a ‘thorn in the flesh’ when it was part of Malaysia. Questions were raised about cause his negative views on Singapore. This paper unveils the events which led to the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia (1963-1965), especially the roles of Tun Razak in resolving issues with Singapore when it was part of the Malaysia Federation. - Since the formation of Malaysia, the Federation under the Tunku Abdul Rahman-Tun Razak leadership had to deal with the Malaysia-Indonesia confrontation and also issues in Singapore that were stirred up by Lee Kuan Yew. Continual provocation and pressure from Lee Kuan Yew on the Central Government subsequently led to the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia. Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak, one of the core leaders of the Federation, viewed Singapore as a ‘thorn in the flesh’ when it was part of Malaysia. Questions were raised about cause his negative views on Singapore. This paper unveils the events which led to the expulsion of Singapore from Malaysia (1963-1965), especially the roles of Tun Razak in resolving issues with Singapore when it was part of the Malaysia Federation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the year 1918 marked the beginning of the great unification of Romania, and for Poles a total rebirth of statehood after 123 years of slavery, between these processes one can find both differences and similarities. This applies in particular to the problems of political and legal integration of Polish territories into one state and the „new“ Romanian provinces with the „old“ Kingdom. At the end of WW I independent Polish and Romanian national councils were established in areas inhabited by Poles and in the lands postulated by the Romanians. Some of them immediately declared their affiliation to their Homelands - this was especially visible in the Polish lands, others were more cautious, took a waiting position - the example of Bessarabia and Transylvania - which was caused by the geopolitical situation, fear of the Bolsheviks, a complex national structure in the region. They also hoped for reforms in Russia, Austria and Hungary towards the federation, and then for autonomy in their home countries. On the other hand, the Germans in Upper Silesia and Hungarians in the areas postulated by Romania were known from the typical separatist movements, who in the projects of their quasi-states created a chance to maintain their positions. The demand for autonomy by the inhabitants of some regions (Bessarabia, Transylvania, Upper Silesia) was also the result of previous experiences of life in countries with a higher civilization level. It was not easy to combine different regions in terms of economic and mental, which makes itself known to this day. Poland and Romania, as well as other Central European countries have become national states, but Romania was more centralized. There were fears about decentralization and national minorities. There were disputes between the center and the regions about how to manage them and it was often heard in such provinces as supranational slogans such as „Basarabia for Basarabian“ and „Bukovina for Bukovinians“. Similar terms appeared in Upper Silesia, although this region was the only one in Poland that gained territorial autonomy.

The unique challenges of the correctional healthcare environment are well-documented. Access to community-equivalent care, voluntary informed consent of offenders with mental disorder, violence risk, suicide risk, medication misuse, and clinical seclusion, confinement and segregation are just a few of the challenges faced by correctional psychiatric services. This paper shares experiences for dealing with the ongoing challenges for psychiatrists working in the field. It provides an overview of the current state of mental healthcare in the federal correctional system in Canada, the legislative framework and initiatives aimed at addressing the healthcare needs of federal inmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how a voluntary participation decision in international environmental negotiations affects the endogenous authority structure in a federation. In our model, the federal government of each country decides whether to delegate both the decision to participate in a negotiation that determines the abatement level of pollution (the level of the public good), and the negotiation itself, to a regional government of the polluter region. We show that there exists a subgame perfect equilibrium in which none of the federal governments chooses delegation, which is quite different from the authority structure in the absence of a voluntary participation decision. The main contribution is to explain why the federal government has an incentive not to delegate decisions to a regional government [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Injuries, the cause of an estimated 4.5 million deaths annually and many more disabilities worldwide each year, are the predictable outcome of particular circumstances. One of the most effective ways to prevent injuries is through policy and legislation. The aim of this research study was to identify and critically review all policy and legislation in Nepal that had the potential to prevent injuries.Methods: We identified legislation and policy that met inclusion criteria through a stakeholder meeting, networks and contacts, and websites and electronic resources. Each included document was critically reviewed to identify areas of strength and opportunities for improvement. We compared the included documents against WHO's recommendations of known effective interventions.Results: Sixty-two documents met the inclusion criteria for this review. Of these, 24 (38.7%) were exclusively related to road injuries, 11 (17.7%) to occupational injuries, 6 (9.7%) to injuries in the home and 5 (8.1%) to injuries at school; 30 (48.4%) documents included text related to the first response to injuries. Of 127 strategic recommendations by WHO that provided an area for policy or legislative focus, 21 (16.5%) were considered adequately met by Nepali policy and legislation, 43 (33.9%) were considered partially met and 63 (49.6%) were not met.Conclusion: We drew five conclusions from this critical policy review, which we have related to recommendations as follows: widening the scope of legislation and policy for injury prevention to emphasize injuries occurring at home or school; addressing the causes of injuries and promoting proven preventive measures; greater clarity on both individual and institutional roles and responsibilities; trustworthy data and quality evidence to inform decision-making; and financial investment and capacity-strengthening for injury prevention and first response. The current system of federal governance in Nepal has potential for strengthening injury prevention and first response at the central, provincial and local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most neopluralist studies consider how interest groups form in robust organizational environments, not during developmental periods such as the Progressive Era. In this article, we argue that neopluralist approaches, specifically the energy-stability-area (ESA) model, can provide insights on group formation in these contexts. Using the case of the General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), we illustrate how one federated, voluntary association worked to increase its area, and by extension its energy, by diversifying its issue agenda. This led to internal density in the GFWC, further enabling it to engage members and clubs from both urban and rural areas. Thus, the ESA model serves as a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale, federated voluntary associations sought to incorporate the density and diversity typical of the modern interest population into their own structure during this evolutionary period in American politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout Latin American federations, programmatic welfare spending is increasingly nationally oriented and bureaucratically delivered. By explaining the logic and the effects of combining two types of federal spending, discretionary and non-discretionary, this article uncovers an additional driver that contributes to understanding policymaking and its implementation not only in Argentina, but potentially in other robust federal systems such as Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Using original data on federal infrastructure and programmatic social welfare spending for the twenty-four provinces of Argentina between 2003 and 2015, we provide empirical evidence that both forms of spending penalize opposition districts and more populated urban provinces (regardless of partisan affinity), and thus undercut the ability of key governors to become future presidential challengers. This research suggests that presidents of territorially diverse federations with strong governors can utilize the dual-punishment spending strategy to alter the balance of power, reinforcing the dominance of the center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and their probable results in three countries: the Czech Republic, the Russian Federation, and the Slovak Republic. The article is based on a multiple case study method. It confirms that in the three countries studied, the timing of policy responses and the success in motivating compliance represent important critical factors in containing the pandemic. It discusses the innovative experiment with nationwide blanket testing in Slovakia and suggests that antigen testing should not be the single and independent policy tool to combat the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the politics of the Federal Reserve System of regional banks. While regional banks have long lacked meaningful influence over monetary policy, their leadership stands to provide a base of elite support for the Federal Reserve. To serve this role effectively, however, regional bank leadership must reflect the ideological diversity of political elites. This article provides the first quantitative empirical analysis of the ideological composition of the regional banking system, introducing a novel data set of all regional bank directors serving from 1980 to 2015 and linking each individual to a measure of political ideology derived from campaign finance contributions. With these data, I examine the degree to which regional banks are ideologically aligned with the districts and industries they are assigned to represent. The results highlight a new function for the decentralized central banking system and opportunity to address declining levels of public confidence in the Fed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defines a concept of relative trust—the gap between trust in different levels of government in a federalist system—and examines whether it influences public attitudes about which level of government holds authority in specific policy domains. While scholars have explored how trust in government affects political systems from a national perspective, little is known about how trust influences multitiered government systems in which public trust levels differ for national versus subnational governments. This article finds that greater relative trust in the state versus national level of government is associated with support for devolution in several policy areas where governing authority is shared: unemployment, health care, environmental policy, and food safety regulation. The implication is that relative trust shapes public preferences about policy centralization or decentralization and provides an individual‐level mechanism through which windows of opportunity open for changes in the allocation of policy authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1960s and 1970s are often identified as a period of tension and explosive conflict between teachers' unions and communities of color. Instances of this can be found across the United States: in New York City, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Newark, St. Louis, among others. What fails to be documented in the literature are instances of alignment between teachers' unions and communities of color. The case of the 1970 New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT) is an instance of such an alignment. This article demonstrates that this resulted from New Left teachers taking co-leadership of the NHFT, bringing in ideas of participatory democracy and preexisting neighborhood bonds from prior anti-racist social movement and community organizing work. This distinguished the NHFT from other teachers' unions of the time period, where the New Left was either absent or marginalized. Whereas teachers' unions across the United States were often in high pitched conflict with communities of color as most infamously represented by 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville, the NHFT consciously formed an anomalous alliance and an alternative vision of education, pushing for joint teacher-community control of schools. This article thereby demonstrates the importance of radical ideas for decisively shaping the direction of labor unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The program of developing the instrument base of reactor complex PIK is reviewed. This program is carried out in correspondence with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 356 on July 25, 2019 and the Federal Scientific and Technical Program for the Development of Synchrotron and Neutron Research and Research Infrastructure on the 2019–2027s. The general concept and plans of formation of the instrument base are reported in the four-volume manuscript PIK Reactor Complex (editors V.L. Aksenov and M.V. Kovalchuk), published in 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An approach was developed and tested to spatial assessment of soil organic carbon stock in uniform groups of mineral and organic (litters, peat deposits, and peaty horizons of semihydromorphic soils) soil horizons. Estimation algorithm allowed us to utilize various datasets with different scales, both spatially and attributive sparse data of different veracities, which complemented each other. A series of maps of different accuracies and scales, including coarse-scale maps covering the entire country and more detailed maps for regions well covered with field measurements. Using these maps, the total organic carbon amount and its distribution over different pools in the 30-cm topsoil layer for the entire Russia and for three administrative regions of European Russia (more detailed) were estimated. The soil organic carbon pool of mineral soil horizons was estimated at 101 Gt C, which corresponded to 62% of the total organic carbon stock within the layer of 0–30 cm; 38% is allocated in organic horizons, including 9% in litter horizons (in rapidly decomposing organic pool) and 29% in peat deposit and peaty horizons of semihydromorphic soils. The organic carbon stocks in the 30-cm soil layer gradually increase from the north to the south: from 87 t/ha in Vologda oblast to 91 t/ha in Moscow oblast and 109 t/ha in Rostov oblast. The share of organic horizons in the total carbon stock decreases from the north to the south. Information on the size and structure of organic carbon pools may facilitate more reliable assessments of soil tolerance toward natural and anthropogenic changes and the development of regionally specific land use strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work analyses the relationships between the banking sector and the economy as a whole in the United States between 1990 and 2016. The data are obtained from the Federal Reserve System (FED) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The methodology applied is canonical analysis, and this analysis will allow us to obtain composite indicators on the real and financial state of the economy, among other composite indicators. This study's main contribution and originality is centred on this new way of addressing financial and economic stability. Its contributions to macroprudential policy, as well as the financial and economic stability measures it creates, are valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the welfare effects of a revenue-neutral environmental tax reform in a federation. The reform consists of increasing a tax on a polluting input and reducing that on labor income. Households are fully mobile within the federation. Regions are unequally endowed with a nonrenewable natural resource. Resource rents are owned by regions and are redistributed to citizens on a residence basis, which generates a motive for inefficiently relocating to the resource-rich jurisdiction. Since the resource-poor region has a higher marginal product of labor than does the resource-rich region in equilibrium, the tax reform mitigates the scope of inefficient migration if labor and the natural resource are complements, but exacerbates it if they are substitutes. This welfare effect may significantly affect fiscal costs of pollution pricing and calls for an adjusted environmental tax, higher when inputs are complements, lower when they are substitutes, as compared with a model where migration is assumed away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is inspired by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) Auction. The auction was used by the FIGC from the 1950s until 2015 to resolve a 50% co-ownership between two teams in the same league with respect to the performance rights of a football player. Though FIGC banned such joint ownership in 2015, the resolution process is nevertheless interesting with respect to the received literature. In the FIGC Auction each co-owner submits a price offer for the whole asset. The highest bid wins the auction and obtains the asset, while the loser receives as payment the bid that is offered by the winner. Therefore, whether a bidder is a buyer, or a seller, can be established only after the auction has taken place—rather than before the auction. The main contribution of this paper is to investigate the set of pure strategy Nash Equilibria for two extensions of the FIGC Auction, with complete information. The first extension is the Extended Italian Football Federation Auction (EA), where asset shares can differ from 50%. The other extension is the Second Price Extended Italian Football Federation Auction (SEA), which is based on second price rather than first price. As compared to more standard auctions, though in the EA equilibria no bidder may have negative profits, in some circumstances we find that losing the auction may be more profitable than winning the auction. Finally, in the SEA we show that truthful bidding is not a weakly dominant strategy and that—somewhat surprisingly—the set of Nash Equilibria coincides with that of EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Candidaemia is associated with high mortality. In the last few years, several guidelines have been published on the management of Candida bloodstream infection. However, adherence to the practice guidelines has been suboptimal. In order to facilitate and objectively measure the adherence to good practice recommendations, a scoring criterion was published by the European Confederation of Medical Mycology (ECMM). The ECMM Quality (EQUAL) of Clinical Candidaemia Management is an audit tool that comprises of 10 quality indicators. Each quality indicator is allotted between 1 and 3 points. The maximum achievable score is 22 or 19 in patients with or without a central venous catheter, respectively. This paper reviews each of the 10 quality indicators and provides the context for improving quality within the individual domains. The review also suggests areas that are in need of further clarity or areas which merit attention in the future updates of the EQUAL scoring system so that clinicians are able to derive maximum benefit from the audit tool. The EQUAL scoring tool is an important milestone in the quality improvement aspect of the management of candidaemia and contributes to the various components of clinical governance in the management of Candida infection of the bloodstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand both how it controls inflation and how it trades off inflation with its goal of maximum employment, the Federal Reserve System uses a Keynesian framework in which monetary policy moves the unemployment rate relative to a presumed full employment value, termed the NAIRU (non‐accelerating inflation rate of unemployment). Because it does not know the value of the NAIRU, it pursues an expansionary monetary policy until inflation rises. This policy risks reviving the inflationary monetary policy of the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the territoriality of religious structures in Tatarstan, a semi-autonomous republic of the Russian Federation, using government data from 2010. Although the region is populated in roughly even numbers by Sunni Muslim Tatars and Orthodox Christian Russians, it is host to a far greater number of mosques (more than 1,100), their construction largely bankrolled in the 1990s by a political elite that pursued an aggressive sovereignty campaign, than churches (fewer than 300). In fact, Tatarstan, in spite of the titular Tatars' comparatively low level of religious observance, by a wide margin claims a greater number of officially registered mosques (both as a gross total and as a ratio of its Muslim population) than any other Muslim-majority region of Russia. Drawing on two sets of data--one on the ethno-national structure of Tatarstan at the district (raion) level, the other a database containing separates lists of all officially registered mosques and Orthodox churches in the republic--I conduct Geographic Information Systems-enabled analysis to show the spatial distribution of mosques vs. churches and their correlation to the spatial distribution of Muslims vs. Orthodox Christians in the republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Approaches to the system of radioactive waste classification in the USA and the Russian Federation were considered. The variety of sources of radioactive waste generation is shown. The necessity of radioactive waste classification and characterization is justified. The main problems in the field of radioactive waste management in two countries are outlined, the ways of development of two systems to improve the activity of radioactive waste management are presented. The basic principles of assessing the sustainability in the field of radioactive waste management INPRO and reducing the potential exposure of personnel and population of ALARA are shown. Comparisons of two national systems of radioactive waste classification were made and compliance with the IAEA recommendations was assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in non-democratic country contexts tends to be judged on their contribution to the democratisation process rather than the activities they undertake. This neglects the potential impact NPOs have on societies within such contexts. In this study, we highlight that NPOs can influence public policy deployment in the Russian Federation even if they cannot affect public policy itself. By operationalising the very restrictions placed upon them, NPOs use their relationships with the state to effect change within their immediate environment and scope of their operational remit, even if they cannot hold authorities to account or influence policy development. The key to this is strong organising capabilities and engagement with the Russian public. We reflect on the implications of our findings to the understanding of civil society development and NPOs in Russia and in other similar non-democratic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information of the Asian Pacific Federation of Societies for Surgery of the Hand (APFSSH) was formed in 1997 after much collaboration between surgeons from around the Asian Pacific Region. It mentions that the inaugural APFSSH conference was held in Perth, Australia in March 1997 under the presidency of Tatsuya Tajo.

It is well-known that Kant's short treatise Zum ewigen Frieden contains some ambiguities concerning the kind of political constellation we should strive for in order to establish perpetual peace. A first option would be to strive for an all-encompassing republican world-state. Once such a world-state has been established, the former individual states lose not only their sovereignty, but also their right of sovereignty. A second option would be to strive for a free confederation of sovereign states. In this case, the states do not abolish their sovereignty, and the confederation is the result of a contract between the states that is upheld as long as the representative power of those states decides not to withdraw from it. In this contribution, I ask whether Kant's notorious ambiguity on the question "world republic or federation of states?" can be said to be strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the nature of Australian nationalism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While post‐Second World War historiography analysed the role of class in nationalist sentiment, more recent work has examined the racialised and martial aspects of Australian nationalism and imperialism. There has been less consideration of how the nature of turn‐of‐the‐century Australian nationalism affected the Federation that was established on 1 January 1901. This article examines early debates about commemoration of the anniversary of Federation, revealing an indifference to the occasion that was common to the public and most political and civic leaders, including Prime Minister Edmund Barton. It finds that popular enthusiasm at the inauguration of the Commonwealth in January 1901 and the opening of the first parliament in May was a response to imperial pageantry and celebrity, rather than the creation of the Australian federation. The article suggests that Australians' longstanding resistance to reform of the Federation is a legacy of their historic failure to attach to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of the world, globalisation creates a phenomenon which integrates states into federal-like structures, even if they are not necessarily of the known, classical type, like the European Union, for instance. The international doctrine and practise also credit federal states with a higher potential for economic growth compared to unitary states. Starting from the undeniable fact that the economy and politics are closely linked together, some authors are trying to stretch the benefits of the federal system beyond what it can actually offer and argue that federalism may be the solution to other categories of political issues that the unitary states face. Minority population is one such category. This study aims at showing that the state structure is irrelevant to solving the problems arising from the status of belonging to a national minority. This article is the first part of the study, dedicated to the analysis of the object of regulation, represented by the rights of national minorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the federal supervision system, officers have discretion to depart from the risk designations provided by the Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA) instrument. This component of the risk classification process is referred to as the supervision override. While the rationale for allowing overrides is that actuarial scores cannot always capture an individual's unique characteristics, there is relatively limited literature on the actual effects of overrides on an actuarial tool's predictive efficacies. This study examines overrides in the federal system by assessing the extent to which risk levels are adjusted through overrides as well as the impact of overrides on the PCRA's risk prediction effectiveness. Findings show that nearly all overrides lead to an upward risk reclassification, that overrides tend to place substantial numbers of persons under federal supervision (especially those convicted of sex offenses) into the highest supervision categories, and that overrides result in a deterioration of the PCRA's risk prediction capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potato rot nematode (Ditylenchus destructor) species is an influential pathogenic potato nematode. Many countries impose quarantine restrictions on the presence of D. destructor in imported plant and soil materials. Therefore, the present investigation was conducted from 2018 to 2020 at the All-Russian Plant Quarantine Center of Russia Federation with samples collected from the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, RAS, Russia and Iran. In the current study, we developed PCR with species-specific primers for the rapid and reliable separation of D. destructor using gel electrophoresis and melting curve analysis. A species-specific primer set was designed based on the nucleotide sequence of the gene. The PCR protocol was verified using samples of D. destructor and the closely related species, D. dipsaci and D. gigas. The species-specific primer set was able to detect D. destructor from samples containing mixtures of Ditylenchus species. The PCR speciesspecific protocol should allow for more rapid identification of Ditylenchus species recovered from plant materials than previously possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Latin American Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (FLANC) is a nongovernmental, nonprofit civil association, founded to promote neurosurgery in the Latin American countries. The American College of Surgeons and American Association of Neurological Surgeons has recommended a ratio of 1 neurosurgeon/100,000 inhabitants. We aimed to estimate the neurosurgical workforce of the FLANC in 2020. We performed an internet-based survey of the presidents of the societies of the FLANC to obtain the neurosurgical workforce characteristics and demographics in their countries. We coded and blindly analyzed the information for dispersion measures and graphics using SPSS, version 25, and Microsoft Excel for map density building. We obtained ratios for the number of neurosurgeons/100,000 inhabitants and the inverse ratio (the number of inhabitants/1 neurosurgeon). We obtained information from 19 countries. The population totaled 650,008,765 inhabitants. The workforce included 9100 neurosurgeons for a composite within the FLANC of 1.4 neurosurgeons/100,000 inhabitants. The mean ratio among individual countries was 1.17, with as many as 9 countries having a ratio of <1 neurosurgeon/100,000 inhabitants. The proportion of female neurosurgeons in the FLANC was 9.54%. Seven countries had no neurosurgeons in a range of subspecialty fields. The FLANC has significant disparities in neurosurgical workforce ratios among the member countries. Central American countries probably have the greatest needs. Gender equity should also be improved among the training institutions. We encourage readers to develop future research into the local geographical distribution of neurosurgeons among the countries to better understand their needs and barriers to providing high-quality standards of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cutaneous melanoma (CM) incidence has been increasing around the world. The goal of this study is to describe geographic trends in incidence and mortality of CM in Russia between 2001 and 2017. Methods: To achieve this we used geo-informatic technique (mapping) and descriptive statistical analysis. Additionally, we studied the associations between ethnicity, geographic latitude/longitude, and CM incidence/mortality rates. We retrospectively analyzed the data from the Moscow Oncology Research Institute, Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, for the period of the study. Routine methods of descriptive epidemiology were used to study incidence and mortality rates by age groups, years, and jurisdictions (i.e., Federal Districts and Federal Subjects of Russia). Results: In total, 141,597 patients were diagnosed with melanoma in Russia over the period 2001–2017, of whom 62% were women. The overall age-standardized incidence and mortality rates were 4.27/100,000 and 1.62/100,000, respectively. Geographic mapping revealed north-to-south and east-to-west gradients. As the study was fully descriptive, retrospective, and based on official statistical reports, detailed characteristics of clinical forms, anatomic sites, Breslow depth, and treatments could not be analyzed. Conclusions: This study outlined the burden of melanoma in the Russian Federation, and the trends were similar to those observed in countries with similar latitudes and skin phenotype. The importance of the skin color gradient and recreational/cultural practices were some of the most important risk factors highlighted in this study for the development of melanoma in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A federal system represents a balance of power between the central and regional governments, especially in multi-ethnic societies. This articles relies on a historical institutional framework in order to examine the differences in the federal systems of Nigeria and Canada with regard to subnational independence and distribution of taxing powers between the levels of government in the federations. It highlights the historical formation of both federal systems and how their respective backgrounds have shaped and influenced the allocation of powers and tax authority. The analysis indicates that the federal system of Nigeria is over-centralised and thus does not meet the standards of true federalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in heterogeneous identity federation systems have heightened the need for the related trust management system. The trust management system evaluates, manages, and shares users' trust values. The service provider (SP) members of the federation system rely on users' trust values to determine which type and quality of service will be provided to the users. While identity federation systems have the potential to help federated users save time and energy and improve service experience, the benefits also come with significant privacy risks. So far, there has been little discussion about the privacy protection of users in heterogeneous identity federation systems. In this paper, we propose a trust value sharing scheme based on a proxy ring signature for the trust management system in heterogeneous identity federation topologies. The ring signature schemes can ensure the validity of the data and hide the original signer, thereby protecting privacy. Moreover, no group manager participating in the ring signature, which naturally matches with our decentralized heterogeneous identity federation topologies. The proxy signature can reduce the workload of the private key owner. The proposed scheme shortens the calculation time for verifying the signature and then reduces the overall time consumption in the process of trust sharing. Our studies prove that the proposed scheme is privacy-preserving, efficient, and effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of congruence in comparative federalism holds that institutional design will, eventually, reflect societal divisions by transferring central powers to new, autonomous entities. While this model helps to understand why many divided societies adopt federalism, it cannot explain why only certain unitary states transform into federal ones while others do not. We use a historical institutionalism approach to identify the critical junctures in the trajectory of two prominent plural polities, Belgium and Lebanon. We suggest that the politicization of identities during initial stages of state-building plays a major role in the transformation of a unitary state into a federation—which occurs in the former but not in the latter of our cases. The current contrast in both consociational democracies is explained here as a legacy of the late nineteenth century, which set in motion decisive logics of public governance that direct institutional dynamics until today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]