Saray Robayo, representante, habló nsobre quién estaría detrás del cobro de impuestos al Banco de Alimentos de La Guajira 

The Political Economy of Inequality, Democracy & Oligarchy, on Friday, November 13, 2020 at 5:00 pm eastern time.

This panel discussion will focus upon the erosion of democratic institutions and the rise of oligarchy that has followed in the wake of unprecedented economic inequality. The panel will address elite efforts to entrench themselves politically as well as economically, including the consequences of such efforts in terms of human development. The panel will focus upon the specific context of election 2020 and the uncertainty it is creating. The subversion of democracy and the law governing our democracy naturally holds many costs, and each panelist will address such costs. Each panelist will also seek to articulate some mechanism for a path forward.  Register here

PANELISTS:

Emma Coleman Jordan, Georgetown Law Center

andré douglas pond cummings, Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law

Atiba Ellis, Marquette University Law School

Steven Ramirez, Loyola University of Chicago School of Law

Gerald Torres, Yale Law School

As we know, American attorneys regularly represent clients in mediation.  There’s a ton of theory about mediation generally but much less about mediation representation. I just posted an article, Theory and Practice of Mediation Representation, which presents a theoretical analysis based on Real Practice System Theory.  The following graphic provides an overview, which the article … Continue reading Theory and Practice of Mediation Representation →

In the lead-up to Remembrance Day, hundreds of young Bermudians are gaining a deeper appreciation of Bermuda’s historical role through engaging presentations by the Royal Bermuda Regiment. A spokesperson said, “A group of officers and soldiers has been visiting primary schools over the past two weeks in the lead-up to November 11. “The engaging and […]

Derrick Brangman, the St David’s captain, won five awards at the Bermuda Cricket Board’s annual prize presentation at Gosling’s Wine Cellar at the weekend. The slow left-arm bowler claimed the MVP and most wickets [33] in the 50 Overs Premier Division. He was also named MVP in the Athene T20 First Division, picking up awards […]

Andrew Stevenson, who started the Humpback Whale Research Project in 2007, will be giving two presentations on Tuesday [Mar 19] at BUEI Tradewinds Auditorium. This illustrated lecture will include never-before witnessed, extraordinary underwater video of humpback behavior here in Bermuda as well as their breeding grounds in the Caribbean. Underwater video footage of a mother […]

The Cup Match 2024 awards presentation was held after the match, which saw Somerset claim yet another victory in the annual Cup Match classic. For all our coverage of Cup Match click here and for comprehensive coverage of all aspects of Cup Match please see our dedicated website BernewsCupMatch.com. For extensive coverage of Cup Match spanning over a decade, visit our […]

The Friends of the College of Library will host a virtual presentation on Solar Energy: The Power of Nature tomorrow [Thursday] at 6.30 pm. The discussion, presented by Cameron Smith of Greenlight Energy, will focus on the “intersectionality of sustainability, renewable energy, and the economy within the context of our island community”. Moderated by Dr […]

[Written by Dale Butler] ‘Gold Bermudians’ is a new project launched by the Department of Culture in 2023 and, on March 25th, five new films were presented to a full house that left everyone very satisfied but wanting to know why there was such a strict time limit on such important topics. With a new […]

Yesterday [Sept 11], the Mirrors Programme celebrated the talents of Bermuda’s young artists at its 8th Annual Art & Digital Competition Prize Presentation. A Government spokesperson said, “This year’s theme, ‘Feels Like Home,’ invited students to explore and express what home means to them through their art. A total of 160 art entries and 10 […]

We have added presentation sample design ideas for you to use in businesses and corporate offices including display graphs for a e-commerce warehouse distribution and electrical distribution companies.

Republicans have solidified their control of Washington by retaining control of the House of Representatives. President-elect Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory in the presidential race, coupled with GOP control of the […]

The post Breaking: Republicans Retain Control Over House of Representatives, Handing Trump the Keys to His Agenda appeared first on The Western Journal.

Michal Bassani-Sternberg
Mar 1, 2015; 14:658-673
Research

The US election could create the need for a G7 alternative – without American representation Expert comment jon.wallace 15 October 2024

Traditional allies of the US need to find a way to work together on some global policy issues even when the US itself is not engaged. A ‘G6 plus’ group could provide an answer.

When Jamaica pulled out of the nascent West Indies Federation in 1961, Trinidad and Tobago’s then prime minister, Dr Eric Williams, famously said ‘One from ten leaves nought’. In the run up to the US elections on 5 November, the US’s longstanding allies need to ask themselves if the same logic must apply to the G7. 

A Donald Trump victory will result in stark differences between the US and its closest partners on key global economic issues. US allies would no doubt try and persuade the new president to moderate his position, but experience suggests that this will have little, if any, effect.  

They may then want to work around the US, or on a parallel track. But doing so will be very hard unless they have a framework for discussing and developing ideas collectively. Could some form of ‘G6 plus’ forum help?

The role of the G7 today

The G7 no longer acts as a steering group for the global economy. However, it remains a critical forum for the US and its allies to coordinate their efforts to help solve global problems, to defend common Western interests, to resolve internal disputes and to underpin information exchange. 

In the past two years, the G7 has come to be seen by the US and other members as one of the most effective international mechanisms. It has played a critical role coordinating Western efforts to recover from the last pandemic and prepare for future ones.  

It has been pivotal in weakening Russia’s economy following the attack on Ukraine and has acted to strengthen Western economic security and resilience more broadly.  

The G7 has also responded to ‘Global South’ calls for help in dealing with the pandemic aftermath and the Ukraine war. 

Trump’s approach to the G7

The problem is that the G7’s effectiveness depends critically on full US engagement, sometimes as a leader of initiatives (such as the decision to impose an ‘oil price cap’ on Russia in autumn 2022) or as an essential partner. 

If elected, former President Trump is likely to abandon the G7 as an instrument of international economic policy. This is effectively what happened during his first presidency and there are reasons to expect this to be repeated. 

Many of Trump’s international economic policies are highly controversial with US allies, including his apparent determination to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, impose across the board 10-20 per cent tariffs and even punish countries for not using the dollar. His domestic policies, including mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and aggressive deregulation and fiscal easing could lead to further sharp disagreements.  

Furthermore, Trump demonstrates general antipathy towards multilateralism. Under his presidency, US representatives in the G7 and G20 sought to weaken core values and policies that have underpinned international economic cooperation for decades – including the importance of a rules based international system, the IMF’s global safety net role, and the responsibility of the advanced world to assist the poorest countries financially.  

Other G7 and G20 countries tried to preserve as much as possible of the previous consensus. But in the case of climate change, the only solution was to have a separate text for the US. Critically, such efforts diverted time and attention from the enormous challenges facing the world at the time. 

Trump went through four different G7/G20 Sherpas during his presidency and disowned the final declaration of the 2018 Canadian G7 summit after hundreds of hours of negotiation, and despite previously signing off on the text. The US failed to host a final leaders’ summit, even virtually, during his administration’s G7 presidency.  

Of course, how far Trump carries through his most radical policies will depend, among other things, on the outcome of the Congressional elections and the stance taken by US courts. 

He may also have second thoughts if elected. His first administration sometimes supported significant multilateral economic initiatives, notably the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative and ‘Common Framework’ for debt rescheduling. 

But, in the event of a second Trump administration, the most likely scenario for the G7 is a repeat of the paralysis of 2017-20, which would be even more costly today.

Should Vice President Kamala Harris win on 5 November, the situation should in theory be very different. She will likely continue with President Joe Biden’s collaborative approach to the G7.

Nonetheless, major issues may still arise where America’s allies want to take a fundamentally different approach and need a mechanism to do so. These could include policy on the WTO, de-risking the economic relationship with China, restricting carbon leakage, and regulating US-dominated big tech.  

How should US allies respond?

No US ally will want to be seen to be leading development of a new ‘G6’ that excludes the US. The top priority will be securing the best possible relationship with the incoming president. Political weakness and/or new governments in France, Germany, the UK and Japan will add to this hesitancy.

Any new forum will therefore need to be as low profile as possible. The concept should initially be discussed in private by sherpas from each participating country. Once established, officials should as far as possible meet online. Leaders should only meet online, at least initially.  

Participants should be fully transparent about the forum’s existence and avoid any grand ‘framing’ along the lines of the EU’s ‘strategic autonomy’. Instead, it should be described as a practical, largely technocratic forum intended to coordinate activity among Western economic powers in those areas where the US chooses not to engage. A suitably innocuous name – such as the ‘the sustainable growth club’ could help.

Topics should be limited to those requiring urgent collective global action, such as climate, health, tech governance, development finance and trade – and where the US federal government is not an ‘essential’ partner. Such a forum should not therefore address defence.  

A. V. Silantyev
Trans. Moscow Math. Soc. 83 (), 75-149.
Abstract, references and article information

A. P. Starovoitov and N. V. Ryabchenko
Trans. Moscow Math. Soc. 83 (), 15-31.
Abstract, references and article information

High-throughput sequencing of hematologic malignancies and other cancers has revealed recurrent mis-sense mutations of genes encoding pre-mRNA splicing factors. The essential splicing factor U2AF2 recognizes a polypyrimidine-tract splice-site signal and initiates spliceosome assembly. Here, we investigate representative, acquired U2AF2 mutations, namely N196K or G301D amino acid substitutions associated with leukemia or solid tumors, respectively. We determined crystal structures of the wild-type (WT) compared with N196K- or G301D-substituted U2AF2 proteins, each bound to a prototypical AdML polypyrimidine tract, at 1.5, 1.4, or 1.7 Å resolutions. The N196K residue appears to stabilize the open conformation of U2AF2 with an inter-RNA recognition motif hydrogen bond, in agreement with an increased apparent RNA-binding affinity of the N196K-substituted protein. The G301D residue remains in a similar position as the WT residue, where unfavorable proximity to the RNA phosphodiester could explain the decreased RNA-binding affinity of the G301D-substituted protein. We found that expression of the G301D-substituted U2AF2 protein reduces splicing of a minigene transcript carrying prototypical splice sites. We further show that expression of either N196K- or G301D-substituted U2AF2 can subtly alter splicing of representative endogenous transcripts, despite the presence of endogenous, WT U2AF2 such as would be present in cancer cells. Altogether, our results demonstrate that acquired U2AF2 mutations such as N196K and G301D are capable of dysregulating gene expression for neoplastic transformation.

10 September 2020

The justices declined to take up a major challenge to exclusive-bargaining arrangements for teachers' unions and other public employee labor organizations.

Umut Güçlü
Jul 8, 2015; 35:10005-10014
BehavioralSystemsCognitive

Neural responses are naturally variable from one moment to the next, even when the stimulus is held constant. What factors might underlie this variability in neural population activity? We hypothesized that spontaneous fluctuations in cortical stimulus representations are created by changes in arousal state. We tested the hypothesis using a combination of fMRI, probabilistic decoding methods, and pupillometry. Human participants (20 female, 12 male) were presented with gratings of random orientation. Shortly after viewing the grating, participants reported its orientation and gave their level of confidence in this judgment. Using a probabilistic fMRI decoding technique, we quantified the precision of the stimulus representation in the visual cortex on a trial-by-trial basis. Pupil size was recorded and analyzed to index the observer's arousal state. We found that the precision of the cortical stimulus representation, reported confidence, and variability in the behavioral orientation judgments varied from trial to trial. Interestingly, these trial-by-trial changes in cortical and behavioral precision and confidence were linked to pupil size and its temporal rate of change. Specifically, when the cortical stimulus representation was more precise, the pupil dilated more strongly prior to stimulus onset and remained larger during stimulus presentation. Similarly, stronger pupil dilation during stimulus presentation was associated with higher levels of subjective confidence, a secondary measure of sensory precision, as well as improved behavioral performance. Taken together, our findings support the hypothesis that spontaneous fluctuations in arousal state modulate the fidelity of the stimulus representation in the human visual cortex, with clear consequences for behavior.

Different people listening to the same story may converge upon a largely shared interpretation while still developing idiosyncratic experiences atop that shared foundation. What linguistic properties support this individualized experience of natural language? Here, we investigate how the "concrete–abstract" axis—the extent to which a word is grounded in sensory experience—relates to within- and across-subject variability in the neural representations of language. Leveraging a dataset of human participants of both sexes who each listened to four auditory stories while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, we demonstrate that neural representations of "concreteness" are both reliable across stories and relatively unique to individuals, while neural representations of "abstractness" are variable both within individuals and across the population. Using natural language processing tools, we show that concrete words exhibit similar neural representations despite spanning larger distances within a high-dimensional semantic space, which potentially reflects an underlying representational signature of sensory experience—namely, imageability—shared by concrete words but absent from abstract words. Our findings situate the concrete–abstract axis as a core dimension that supports both shared and individualized representations of natural language.

Santiago, Chile- The declaration of the XXI Specialized Meeting on Family Farming of MERCOSUR (REAF, in Spanish) held last week in Argentina, acknowledged the advances promoted by FAO’s Director General, [...]

Vientiane.- A delegation of seven Permanent Representatives to the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N (FAO) concluded a week-long visit to Lao PDR, during which they held meetings [...]

2024-25 Penn State Laureate Michele Dunleavy, professor of dance at the University Park campus, will give a presentation and performance, “Improvising a Life,” at Penn State Shenango in the Shenango Auditorium at 12:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 18.

A multi-disciplinary group of Penn State Shenango faculty presented the results of a research study about diversity topics being included as part of general education curricula.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a case that held the potential to deal a further blow to public-employee unions after last year's "Janus" decision.

Penn State Laureate Michele Dunleavy, professor of dance at the University Park campus, will continue her tour of the Commonwealth Campuses with a visit to Penn State Abington on Nov. 11. She will present “Improvising a Life” at 12:15 p.m. in 9 Sutherland Auditorium with musician Jennifer Peacock.

A series of free public presentations, each focused on a different aspect of consuming news and related information, highlight a U.S. Media Literacy Week Celebration, scheduled Oct. 23 on the University Park campus, and will be held in-person and online.

Aumento de tarifa es uno de los más grandes solicitados por la empresa El 15 de diciembre de 2022, Delmarva Power presentó una solicitud ante la Comisión de Servicios Públicos para aumentar sus tarifas de distribución eléctrica en $72,3 millones. De conformidad con la ley estatal, este aumento entrará en vigencia de manera temporal el […]

DOJ-CLASI agreement covers most disputes with community owners Attorney General Kathy Jennings announced Monday that manufactured home owners in disputes with their community owners will be eligible for free legal representation by the non-profit Delaware Community Legal Aid Society, Inc. (CLASI), under a contract it entered with the Delaware Department of Justice. “Constituents in all three counties have […]

DOVER, Del. (December 13, 2023) – The Delaware Association for Environmental Education (DAEE) is holding its 15th Annual Conference with a focus on “Nature Access for All!” on February 24, 2024, at Fred Fifer III Middle School in Camden. The keynote speaker will be Dr. McKay Jenkins, noted author and University of Delaware professor. Todd […]

Sardar Popalzai, president of the Balochistan Economic Forum, talks about the blue economy and the Pakistani province’s tourism potential.

This is a list of individuals currently serving in the United States House of Representatives as of the 117th Congress

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:

Overuse of CT-based cerebrovascular imaging in the emergency department and inpatient settings, notably CTA of the head and neck for minor and nonfocal neurologic presentations, stresses imaging services and exposes patients to radiation and contrast. Furthermore, such CT-based imaging is often insufficient for definitive diagnosis, necessitating additional MR imaging. Recent advances in fast MRI may allow timely assessment and a reduced need for head and neck CTA in select populations.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a heterogenous group of lymphoid malignancies. Based on gene expression profiling, it has been subdivided into germinal center (GC)-derived and activated B-cell (ABC) types. Advances in molecular methodologies have further refined the subclassification of DLBCL, based on recurrent genetic abnormalities. Here, we describe a distinct case of DLBCL that presented in leukemic form. DNA sequencing targeting 275 genes revealed pathogenically relevant mutations of CD79B, MyD88, TP53, TBL1XR1, and PIM1 genes, indicating that this lymphoma would be best classified as MCD/C5 DLBCL, an ABC subtype. Despite an initial good clinical response to BTK inhibitor ibrutinib, anti-CD20 antibody rituxan, alkylating agent bendamustine, and hematopoietic stem-cell transplant, the lymphoma relapsed, accompanied by morphologic and molecular evidence of disease progression. Specifically, the recurrent tumor developed loss of TP53 heterozygosity (LOH) and additional chromosomal changes central to ABC DLBCL pathogenesis, such as PRDM1 loss. Acquired resistance to ibrutinib and rituxan was indicated by the emergence of BTK and FOXO1 mutations, respectively, as well as apparent activation of alternative cell-activation pathways, through copy-number alterations (CNAs), detected by high-resolution chromosomal microarrays. In vitro, studies of relapsed lymphoma cells confirmed resistance to standard BTK inhibitors but sensitivity to vecabrutinib, a noncovalent inhibitor active against both wild-type as well as mutated BTK. In summary, we provide in-depth molecular characterization of a de novo leukemic DLBCL and discuss mechanisms that may have contributed to the lymphoma establishment, progression, and development of drug resistance.

The National Commission for Allied Health Professionals (NCAHP), constituted by the Union ministry of health and family welfare in the beginning of this year, will have its official representative in the National

CrissCross Representative Payee Services

Algiz-RT7 rugged tablet product presentation

XVIII Habanos Festival Opens with Cohiba

El avance de Habla Men

Rodillas sin dolor

Jon recently started a new project. When setting up his dev environment, one of his peers told him, "You can disable verbose logging by setting DEBUG_LOG=false in your config file."

Well, when Jon did that, the verbose logging remained on. When he asked his peers, they were all surprised to see that the flag wasn't turning off debug logging. "Hunh, that used to work. Someone must have changed something…" Everyone had enough new development to do that tracking down a low priority bug fell to Jon. It didn't take long.

const DEBUG_LOG = process.env.DEBUG_LOG || true

According to the blame, the code had been like this for a year, the commit crammed with half a dozen features, was made by a developer who was no longer with the company, and the message was simply "Debugging". Presumably, this was intended to be a temporary change that accidentally got committed and no one noticed or cared.

Jon fixed it, and moved on. There was likely going to be plenty more to find.

Matt needed to add a new field to a form. This simple task was made complicated by the method used to save changes back to the database. Let's see if you can spot what the challenge was:

public int saveQualif(String docClass, String transcomId, String cptyCod, String tradeId, String originalDealId, String codeEvent, String multiDeal,
            String foNumber, String codeInstrfamily, String terminationDate, String premiumAmount, String premiumCurrency, String notionalAmount,
            String codeCurrency, String notionalAmount2, String codeCurrency2, String fixedRate, String payout, String maType, String maDate,
            String isdaZoneCode, String tradeDate, String externalReference, String entityCode, String investigationFileReference,
            String investigationFileStartDate, String productType, String effectiveDate, String expiryDate, String paymentDate, String settInstrucTyp,
            String opDirection, String pdfPassword, String extlSysCod, String extlDeaId, String agrDt) throws TechnicalException, DfException

That's 36 parameters right there. This function, internally, creates a data access object which takes just as many parameters in its constructor, and then does a check: if a field is non-null, it updates that field in the database, otherwise it doesn't.

Of course, every single one of those parameters is stringly typed, which makes it super fun. Tracking premiumAmount and terminationDate as strings is certainly never going to lead to problems. I especially like the pdfPassword being stored, which is clearly just the low-security password meant to be used for encrypting a transaction statement or similar: "the last 4 digits of your SSN" or whatever. So I guess it's okay that it's being stored in the clear in the database, but also I still hate it. Do better!

In any case, this function was called twice. Once from the form that Matt was editing, where every parameter was filled in. The second time, it was called like this:

int nbUpdates = incoming.saveQualif(docClass, null, null, null, null, null, multiDeal, null,
                null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null,
                null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null, null);

As tempted as Matt was to fix this method and break it up into multiple calls or change the parameters to a set of classes or anything better, he was too concerned about breaking something and spending a lot of time on something which was meant to be a small, fast task. So like everyone who'd come before him, he just slapped in another parameter, tested it, and called it a day.

Refactoring is a problem for tomorrow's developer.

Some time ago, poor Keith found himself working on an antique Classic ASP codebase. Classic ASP uses VBScript, which is like VisualBasic 6.0, but worse in most ways. That's not to say that VBScript code is automatically bad, but the language certainly doesn't help you write clean code.

In any case, the previous developer needed to make an 8 element array to store some data. Traditionally, in VBScript, you might declare it like so:

Dim params(8)

That's the easy, obvious way a normal developer might do it.

Keith's co-worker did this instead:

Dim params : params = Split(",,,,,,,", ",")

Yes, this creates an array using the Split function on a string of only commas. 7, to be exact. Which, when split, creates 8 empty substrings.

We make fun of stringly typed data a lot here, but this is an entirely new level of stringly typed initialization.

We can only hope that this code has finally been retired, but given that it was still in use well past the end-of-life for Classic ASP, it may continue to lurk out there, waiting for another hapless developer to stumble into its grasp.

A youth agenda for sustainable agricultural transformation in an era of climate change and out-migration.

The post Call for youth representatives first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

Youssef Brouziyne, the IWMI Regional Representative in the Middle East and North Africa, featured on Al Etihad News Centre on Abu Dhabi TV.

The post IWMI’s MENA representative on Abu Dhabi TV first appeared on International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

[s.l.] : Universitaire Pers Leuven, 2023.