The Strength of Strong Ties: University Spin-offs and the Significance of Historical Relations

This article investigates the relationship between universities and academic spin-offs, with special emphasis on the antecedent conditions of, and the nature of the linkages that the spin-offs form, as well as the means for sustaining them. The present research uses an instrumental case study approach, and is also an instance of a collective case study as four companies of various size and activities have been studied together. The preliminary results indicate that the network relations are characterized by a small number of strong ties to universities, with a high degree of trust and informality. Although fruitful for the transfer of complex knowledge, the strength of the ties also make them difficult to substitute, which may lead to problems as the spin-offs are highly dependent on continued basic research support. This may in turn lead to implications for policy at university, as well as higher levels.     

A Fatal Case of CO2 Intoxication in a Fermentation Tank

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) is an odorless constituent of air. Higher concentrations can be detected in geothermal and automotive emissions, fermentation, and sublimation of dry ice. An unskilled worker entered a fermentation tank to clean it, which had not been done for about 5 months allowing for high concentrations of CO₂ to build up. A second worker entered the tank to rescue the first one. Shortly after both were found the first worker was rescued directly whereas the tank had to be rotated to pull the second worker out. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was successful only for the first worker. Medico‐legal autopsy showed bruises, hematoma, myocardial hemorrhage, and edema of the lungs. The right lung was vacuum degassed in an argon atmosphere and quadrupole‐mass‐spectrometry showed an elevated CO₂ content in lung gases. Thus, CO₂ intoxication/asphyxia in a vitiated atmosphere due to fermentation of wine mash was established as the cause of death.     

Goodbye van Gend en Loos,Hello Bosman? Using Network Analysis to Measure the Importance of Individual CJEU Judgments

It is generally agreed that some judgments by the Court of Justice are more important than others, but the ability of traditional legal methods to identify such judgments is inherently limited. In this article, we apply various tools developed in network analysis to identify which judgments are the most important as legal precedents. The study reveals that certain well‐known judgments, like van Gend en Loos, have limited importance as precedents, while other judgments, like Bosman, PreussenElektra and Schumacker, are likely overlooked.     

The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Conflict: Constitutional Supremacy in Europe before and after the Constitutional Treaty

Abstract:  One of the core constitutional questions for national constitutional courts in the EU in the past decades has been whether to accept the claim made by the Court of Justice that EU law is the supreme law of the land, taking primacy even over conflicting national constitutional provisions. With the inclusion in the recently adopted Constitutional Treaty of a clause explicitly confirming the 'primacy of EU Law' appearances suggest that the EU is about to establish a characteristic of mature, vertically integrated, federal states such as the USA. This article argues that this view is mistaken. It develops a comprehensive jurisprudential framework for addressing constitutional conflicts, 'Constitutionalism Beyond the State' (CBC). CBS detaches the discussion of supremacy and constitutional conflict from a statist framework; provides a jurisprudential account that explains and justifies the highly differentiated, context-sensitive and dynamic set of conflict rules that national courts have in the past adopted; and provides the lacking theoretical basis for the more attractive, but undertheorised sui generis accounts of European constitutional practice that have recently gained ground in the literature. CBS provides a jurisprudentially grounded reconstructive account of why the issue of constitutional conflict is as rich and complicated in Europe as it is and why it is likely to remain so even if the Constitutional Treaty is ratified. The article then goes on to make concrete proposals addressed to national constitutional courts and the Court of Juctise respectively about how, in application of the developed approach, constitutional conflicts ought to be addressed doctrinally. It includes a proposal to read the new 'constitutional identity' clause as authorising Member States as a matter of EU Law to set aside EU Law on constitutional grounds under certain circumstances.     

Market introduction of innovative high risk medical devices: towards a recast of the directive concerning medical devices

The European Conformity (CE) marking grants early market introduction to innovative high risk medical devices based on safety and device performance only, without any requirement to demonstrate clinical efficacy or effectiveness. Hence healthcare providers, patients and payers are informed neither about the added clinical value compared to an existing medical device nor about the risks incurred by using such innovations. In addition there is a lack of coherence and uniformity of approach in the assessment of high risk medical devices. These gaps may put the health and safety of patients in danger. The European Commission, in concert with Competent Authorities, industry, Notified Bodies, and other stakeholders, is working on a "recast" of the directives regulating medical devices. This article identifies and discusses the critical points of the pre-market clinical evaluation of innovative high-risk medical devices in the European legal framework and compares it with the USA.     

Corrupted Estimates? Response Bias in Citizen Surveys on Corruption

Political Behavior - Measuring corruption has become a global industry. An important and commonly used data source are several large-scale multi-country projects that survey citizens directly about...     

Challenging Global Neoliberalism? The global political economy of China's capital controls

This article engages with critical ipe scholars who have examined the rise of China and its impact on the neoliberal world order by analysing whether China poses a challenge to the neoliberal norm of free movement of capital. We argue that China's capital control regime is marked by a contradiction between its domestic social relations of production and its global geo-economic ambitions. On one hand, the key raison d'être of China's capital controls is to protect and consolidate an investment-led accumulation regime that redistributes income and wealth from Chinese workers to its state-owned enterprise sector. Dismantling these controls would result in changing social relations of production that would not necessarily benefit Chinese industrial and financial capital. On the other hand, China's accumulation regime has found itself increasingly constrained by the dynamics of US monetary hegemony, making the contestation of US structural monetary power a key global geo-economic ambition of China's ruling elites. In this regard, China would have to challenge the dominance of the US dollar by promoting the international role of the renminbi and developing liquid financial markets. Since it would have to abolish its capital controls in order to achieve this, there is a plain contradiction between its domestic and global objectives. A good understanding of this contradiction is necessary in order to be able to assess whether China will be capable of challenging the neoliberal world order in general and the norm of free movement of capital in particular.     

Forensic Informativity of ~3000 bp of Coding Sequence of Domestic Dog mtDNA

The discriminatory power of the noncoding control region (CR) of domestic dog mitochondrial DNA alone is relatively low. The extent to which the discriminatory power could be increased by analyzing additional highly variable coding regions of the mitochondrial genome (mtGenome) was therefore investigated. Genetic variability across the mtGenome was evaluated by phylogenetic analysis, and the three most variable ~1 kb coding regions identified. We then sampled 100 Swedish dogs to represent breeds in accordance with their frequency in the Swedish population. A previously published dataset of 59 dog mtGenomes collected in the United States was also analyzed. Inclusion of the three coding regions increased the exclusion capacity considerably for the Swedish sample, from 0.920 for the CR alone to 0.964 for all four regions. The number of mtDNA types among all 159 dogs increased from 41 to 72, the four most frequent CR haplotypes being resolved into 22 different haplotypes.     

Sammelbesprechung: Gerechte Eugenik oder das Ende aller Moral? Zu Jürgen Habermas: Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik?; Allen Buchanan/Dan W. Brock/Norman Daniels/Daniel Wikler: From Chance to Choice. Genetics & Justice

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Curse of Knowledge? Education,Corruption, and Politics

Political Behavior - Education has consistently been found to be positively related to political participation, electoral turnout, civic engagement, political knowledge, and democratic attitudes...