Although the Hungarian political elite recognized that it is the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy which provided the country with a position of great power, from the 1890s onwards there was a noticeable increase in independent Hungarian expansionist efforts. Among the complex reasons for this were the results of the Hungarian state's modernization program, the economic development, and the emergence of a new elite of officials and politicians who had been socialised in the institutional system of Dualism, were au fait with the system, and were able to use it. The strengthening of Hungarian positions and the search for opportunities to assert the country’s interests within the common institutional system of Austria-Hungary, a series of economic policy measures, efforts to gain ground economically, mainly in the south-east, and, to a certain extent and in certain points, the goal of creating a Hungarian nation state emerged as means of achieving expansionist goals. Although the political elite could rightly feel that the country's room for manoeuvre, weight, and ability to assert its interests within the Monarchy had increased, giving rise to a certain optimism, this proved to be a kind of optical illusion. It is true that Hungary's clout within the Monarchy had increased, but the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was steadily losing its importance compared to the other great powers, so the Hungarian elite could formulate its ambitious goals as a strengthening element of a weakening Empire.
History (General) and history of Europe, History of Law
Artykuł ma na celu przedstawienie i analizę stanowiska Aleksandra Mogilnickiego na temat zasad ustroju sądownictwa w latach 1926–1929. Mogilnicki był jednym z członków Komisji Kodyfikacyjnej ds. ustroju sądów. Chciał stworzenia przepisów, które najgłębiej wyrażały, precyzowały i zabezpieczały zasadę niezawisłości, nieusuwalności i nieprzenoszalności sędziów. W pierwszej części zostały przedstawione zasady ustroju sądownictwa zawarte w Konstytucji marcowej z 1921, tj. niezawisłość, nieprzenoszalność sędziów. Prawo o ustroju sądów z 1928 r. nie wprowadziło jednak tych zasad w pełnym zakresie. Mogilnicki poddał krytyce przepisy, które dawały w rzeczywistości więcej uprawnień władzy wykonawczej niż sądowniczej. Jednocześnie przedstawił propozycje nowelizacji przepisów w celu realizacji zasady niezawisłości sędziowskiej i zwiększenia wpływu na sądy przez zgromadzenia ogólne sędziów. Mimo chwilowych zmian w prawie dokonanych w marcu 1929 r., dających pewne gwarancje sędziom, np. nieprzenoszalność, rok 1932 przyniósł ponowne ograniczenia.
History (General) and history of Europe, History of Law
Persi Diaconis, Eugenio Giannelli, Robert M. Guralnick
et al.
Let $P_n$ be a Sylow $p$-subgroup of the symmetric group $S_n$. We investigate the number and sizes of the $P_n\setminus S_n\ /\ P_n$ double cosets, showing that most double cosets have maximal size when $p$ is odd, or equivalently, that $P_n\cap P_n^x=1$ for most $x\in S_n$ when $n$ is large. We also find that all possible sizes of such double cosets occur, modulo a list of small exceptions.
In this paper we study singular limits of congestion-averse growth models, connecting different models describing the effect of congestion. These models arise in particular in the context of tissue growth. The main ingredient of our analysis is a family of energy evolution equations and their dissipation structures, which are novel and of independent interest. This strategy allows us to consider a larger family of pressure laws as well as proving the joint limit, from a compressible Brinkman's model to the incompressible Darcy's law, where the latter is a Hele-Shaw type free boundary problem.
The incessant bandits’ activities vis-à-vis kidnapping of people for ransom, robbing them of their possessions, raping and even killing them at will by groups of people officially described as bandits in parts of Nigeria is worrisome. The study examines the nexus between governance and armed bandits’ activities, as well as its effects on the people and national development. The study relies on researchers’ observation of unfolding events in the study areas and secondary data. The study revealed that the poor quality of governance offered by the successive political leaders of Nigeria was the major inducing factor of these bandits’ activities. Other factors include political and economic reasons, a high unemployment rate, and a high level of poverty. The study concluded that bandits’ activities, if not quickly nipped in the bud will continue to inhibit the political, social, and economic development of the country, also, the activities are capable of truncating the evolving democratic governance and the corporate existence of Nigeria.
Political institutions and public administration (General), Public law
After the main shock of an earthquake the aftershocks are observed. According to Omori's law, the frequency of aftershocks decreases hyperbolically over time. We noticed that, strictly speaking, Omori's law paradoxically contradicts the law of energy conservation. The contradiction is that the excitation of each aftershock consumes a finite portion of the source's energy, so that the total energy released by the source tends to infinity over time. The paradox is formally theoretical, but its analysis has proved useful. Eliminating the contradiction between Omori's law and the fundamental law of conservation of energy allowed us to further understand the nature of the phenomenological theory of aftershocks. We used the concept of deactivation of a source after the formation of a main rupture in it. We have based the theory on the original aftershock evolution equation, which has the form of a first-order linear differential equation. Two ways to eliminate the paradoxical situation are indicated. Key words: earthquake source, aftershock, evolution equation, deactivation coefficient, inverse problem, Omori epoch, source bifurcation, logistic equation, Hirano-Utsu formula.
This paper focuses on a scientific analysis of the genesis and historical development of the good faith principle as a doctrinal interpretation of Latvian regulations. It is about the evolution of attitudes toward the principle of bona fides in modern legal science and case law, starting with its origins in archaic Roman law and its rediscovery by Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis through its application in the Western medieval ius commune and its continental renaissance in the early twentieth century, considering its limited position in the Code of Civil Laws of the Baltic Provinces to its triumph in Latvian civil law. This comparative historical study shows that a clear definition of good faith can be found through a system-historical interpretation of the good faith rule. This should help to determine the nature of subjective rights and obligations under any legal rule governing specific legal relationships.
History (General) and history of Europe, History of Law
Aim of the study is to provide an overview of the issue of Church property law in Bohemia and Moravia during the Middle Ages. Specifically, we consider the territory of the Prague and Olomouc dioceses. The main founder of churches and ecclesiastical institutions in the early Middle Ages was the duke, while from the 12th century magnates also became involved in founding these institutions. In the early period of founders, the property donated to the Church was treated in the spirit of respecting the rights of the proprietary churches. The law of patronage, which was progressively implemented during the 13th century and first half of the 14th century, brought change. In order to exclude the assets of ecclesiastical institutions, including the serfs who lived there, from the general legal system, immunities were important. Bishoprics and individual monasteries received immunity documents from the mid-12th century, and to a greater extent from the early 13th century.
Steven Stalder, Michele Volpi, Nicolas Büttner
et al.
Cities around the world face a critical shortage of affordable and decent housing. Despite its critical importance for policy, our ability to effectively monitor and track progress in urban housing is limited. Deep learning-based computer vision methods applied to street-level images have been successful in the measurement of socioeconomic and environmental inequalities but did not fully utilize temporal images to track urban change as time-varying labels are often unavailable. We used self-supervised methods to measure change in London using 15 million street images taken between 2008 and 2021. Our novel adaptation of Barlow Twins, Street2Vec, embeds urban structure while being invariant to seasonal and daily changes without manual annotations. It outperformed generic embeddings, successfully identified point-level change in London's housing supply from street-level images, and distinguished between major and minor change. This capability can provide timely information for urban planning and policy decisions toward more liveable, equitable, and sustainable cities.
Im Beitrag werden Entwicklung und aktuelles Verständnis der Kompetenztatbestände „Arbeitsrecht“ und „Landarbeitsrecht“ in der österreichischen Verfassung nachgezeichnet. Die föderalistischen Ausprägungen des Arbeitsrechts werden ebenso diskutiert wie die Zurückhaltung des B-VG in der Regelung von Angelegenheiten des Koalitionsrechts, der Sozialpartner und deren kollektiver Aktivitäten, insb des Kollektivvertrags.
El propósito de este artículo consiste en evaluar la coherencia de la acción exterior de la Unión Europea entre sus relaciones con el Líbano y su política hacia los refugiados sirios. Para ello, se llevará a cabo un contraste entre los objetivos de la Política Exterior y de Seguridad Común y los del Espacio de Libertad, Seguridad y Justicia. La primera declara promover la estabilidad en ese país, además de extender hacia él las ideas europeas en materia de democratización, derechos humanos y buen gobierno. El segundo busca que los refugiados permanezcan en países vecinos (como es el caso del Líbano) y que se evite su llegada a Europa. Los resultados de este trabajo subrayan que esta notable presencia de refugiados en un país con recursos limitados, con una administración pública ineficaz y clientelista, y con un sistema político inestable está conduciendo a evidentes tensiones, que se pueden ver reforzadas si buena parte de esos refugiados permanece indefinidamente en el país. De este modo, la obsesión por tratar a los refugiados como una amenaza a su seguridad debilita la coherencia de la acción exterior de la UE y perjudica el logro de sus otros objetivos.
Recibido: 18 noviembre 2020
Aceptado: 4 mayo 2021
This work considers variational Bayesian inference as an inexpensive and scalable alternative to a fully Bayesian approach in the context of sparsity-promoting priors. In particular, the priors considered arise from scale mixtures of Normal distributions with a generalized inverse Gaussian mixing distribution. This includes the variational Bayesian LASSO as an inexpensive and scalable alternative to the Bayesian LASSO introduced in [65]. It also includes a family of priors which more strongly promote sparsity. For linear models the method requires only the iterative solution of deterministic least squares problems. Furthermore, for p unknown covariates the method can be implemented exactly online with a cost of $O(p^3)$ in computation and $O(p^2)$ in memory per iteration -- in other words, the cost per iteration is independent of n, and in principle infinite data can be considered. For large $p$ an approximation is able to achieve promising results for a cost of $O(p)$ per iteration, in both computation and memory. Strategies for hyper-parameter tuning are also considered. The method is implemented for real and simulated data. It is shown that the performance in terms of variable selection and uncertainty quantification of the variational Bayesian LASSO can be comparable to the Bayesian LASSO for problems which are tractable with that method, and for a fraction of the cost. The present method comfortably handles $n = 65536$, $p = 131073$ on a laptop in less than 30 minutes, and $n = 10^5$, $p = 2.1 \times 10^6$ overnight.
Summary
I. Approach to the problem and main purpose of this paper. II. Children’s right to respect for their private life when there is a biological tie with their commissioning father: Cases of Mennesson and Labassée v. France and Advisory Opinion requested by the French Court of Cassation. (Request no. P16-2018-001). III. Minor’s vulnerability in case of lack of biological tie between him and the commissioning parents: Case of Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy. IV. Considerations on ECHR jurisprudence: States Parties’ obligations and questions that remain unsettled. V. Spanish authorities’ response to international surrogacy arrangements in the light of ECHR’s jurisprudence. VI. Final thoughts on the matter.
Abstract
Due to the differences on the legal treatment that States give to gestational surrogacy, some couples travel from countries where these arrangements are forbidden to places where they are allowed. Determining the parentage of the child born as a result of these contracts raises some legal issues that are not easy to solve. In this scenario, minor’s rights may be at risk. It has led the European Court of Human Rights to determine that the State Parties are free not to legalize gestational surrogacy, but this decision cannot lead to leaving the minors unprotected. According to the Court (cases Mennesson and Labassée), denying every possibility of recognition of a parent-child relationship with the intended father, when he is the biological father, would entail a violation of the child’s right to respect for his private life. When it comes to recognising a parent-child relationship in cases where there is not a biological link between the born child and any of the intended parents, the Court’s jurisprudence does not give us a clear response on the State Parties’ obligations so far.
In the advisory opinion delivered recently (10 April 2019), in response to the request made by the French Court of Cassation, the ECHR has given an answer to some of the questions that remained unsettled. When a child is born abroad through a gestational surrogacy arrangement and was conceived using the gametes of the intended father and a third-party donor, the child’s right to respect for private life requires the State not only to recognise that link, but to provide a possibility of recognition of a legal parent-child relationship with the intended mother too. Such recognition may take the form of entry in the national register of births of the details of the birth certificate legally established abroad, but it may as well take another one. The State Parties are free to use other means, such as adoption of the child, as long as the procedure laid down by domestic law could be implemented promptly and effectively. However, not every mean would serve the child’s interest with a comparable degree of satisfaction. Spanish authorities’ response to these situations, for example, does not seem to be the optimal solution when it comes to covering the needs of the children.
Law of Europe, Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
Artykuł przedstawia zagadnienie roli i sytuacji prawnej ministra skarbu II Rzeczypospolitej. Analizując kompetencje ministra w zakresie gospodarki budżetowej, wskazano na specyficzne aspekty centralizacji władzy oraz dominującą rolę ministra skarbu w procedurze budżetowej i jego wpływ na gospodarkę pozabudżetową systemu finansowego. Ministrowi skarbu powierzono wiele instrumentów prawnych do planowania i wprowadzania ustaw skarbowych. O jego uprzywilejowanej pozycji świadczyły także uprawnienia w sprawach związanych z zaciąganiem i zarządzaniem długiem publicznym. Istotne znaczenie miały również funkcje nadzorcze dotyczące monopoli państwowych, przedsiębiorstw państwowych, funduszy i samorządu terytorialnego.
History (General) and history of Europe, History of Law
We introduce a new technique to constrain the line-of-sight integrated electron density of our Galactic halo $\text{DM}_\text{MW,halo}$ through analysis of the observed dispersion measure distributions of pulsars $\text{DM}_\text{pulsar}$ and fast radio bursts $\text{DM}_\text{FRB}$. We model these distributions, correcting for the Galactic interstellar medium, with kernel density estimation---well-suited to the small data regime---to find lower/upper bounds to the corrected $\text{DM}_\text{pulsar}$/$\text{DM}_\text{FRB}$ distributions: $\max[\text{DM}_\text{pulsar}] \approx 7\pm2 \text{ (stat)} \pm 9 \text{ (sys) pc cm}^{-3}$ and $\min[\text{DM}_\text{FRB}] \approx 63^{+27}_{-21} \text{ (stat)} \pm 9 \text{ (sys) pc cm}^{-3}$. Using bootstrap resampling to estimate uncertainties, we set conservative limits on the Galactic halo dispersion measure $-2 < \text{DM}_\text{MW,halo} < 123 \text{pc cm}^{-3}$ (95\% c.l.). The upper limit is especially conservative because it may include a non-negligible contribution from the FRB host galaxies and a non-zero contribution from the cosmic web. It strongly disfavors models where the Galaxy has retained the majority of its baryons with a density profile tracking the presumed dark matter density profile. Last, we perform Monte Carlo simulations of larger FRB samples to validate our technique and assess the sensitivity of ongoing and future surveys. We recover bounds of several tens $\text{pc cm}^{-3}$ which may be sufficient to test whether the Galaxy has retained a majority of its baryonic mass. We estimate that a sample of several thousand FRBs will significantly tighten constraints on $\text{DM}_\text{MW,halo}$ and offer a valuable complement to other analyses.
We consider the problem of estimating a parameter associated to a Bayesian inverse problem. Treating the unknown initial condition as a nuisance parameter, typically one must resort to a numerical approximation of gradient of the log-likelihood and also adopt a discretization of the problem in space and/or time. We develop a new methodology to unbiasedly estimate the gradient of the log-likelihood with respect to the unknown parameter, i.e. the expectation of the estimate has no discretization bias. Such a property is not only useful for estimation in terms of the original stochastic model of interest, but can be used in stochastic gradient algorithms which benefit from unbiased estimates. Under appropriate assumptions, we prove that our estimator is not only unbiased but of finite variance. In addition, when implemented on a single processor, we show that the cost to achieve a given level of error is comparable to multilevel Monte Carlo methods, both practically and theoretically. However, the new algorithm provides the possibility for parallel computation on arbitrarily many processors without any loss of efficiency, asymptotically. In practice, this means any precision can be achieved in a fixed, finite constant time, provided that enough processors are available.
We have investigated the toroidal analog of ellipsoidal shells of matter, which are of great significance in Astrophysics. The exact formula for the gravitational potential $Ψ(R,Z)$ of a shell with a circular section at the pole of toroidal coordinates is first established. It depends on the mass of the shell, its main radius and axis-ratio $e$ (i.e. core-to-main radius ratio), and involves the product of the complete elliptic integrals of the first and second kinds. Next, we show that successive partial derivatives $\partial^{n +m} Ψ/\partial_{R^n} \partial_{Z^m}$ are also accessible by analytical means at that singular point, thereby enabling the expansion of the interior potential as a bivariate series. Then, we have generated approximations at orders $0$, $1$, $2$ and $3$, corresponding to increasing accuracy. Numerical experiments confirm the great reliability of the approach, in particular for small-to-moderate axis ratios ($e^2 \lesssim 0.1$ typically). In contrast with the ellipsoidal case (Newton's theorem), the potential is not uniform inside the shell cavity as a consequence of the curvature. We explain how to construct the interior potential of toroidal shells with a thick edge (i.e. tubes), and how a core stratification can be accounted for. This is a new step towards the full description of the gravitating potential and forces of tori and rings. Applications also concern electrically-charged systems, and thus go beyond the context of gravitation.