EU Competition Law Devours Its Children: The Proliferation of Anti-Competitive Object and the Problem of False Positives

In the last decade, EU competition law reached a major turning point in its history. Anti-competitive object became an elusive and unpredictable rule, which boosts the risk of false positives and has a significant chilling effect. This article analyses this metamorphosis and the social damages it is causing, and proposes an alternative conception. The article demonstrates that the emerging new concept of anti-competitive object erroneously conflates ‘contextual analysis’, which has been part of the object-inquiry from the outset, and ‘effects-analysis’, which has no role to play here. It submits that both doctrinal and policy reasons confirm that anti-competitive object should be a category-building principle of ‘judicial rule-making’ (‘definition of the definition’) and not applicable to individual arrangements directly.

Chronological Evolution of the Urashima Taro Story and its Interpretation

<p>The present thesis examines the evolution of the Urashima story. In modern Japan traditional Japanese tales have been presented in the form of illustrated books for young children. It is generally regarded that these tales contain common motifs or moral lessons; however, the Urashima story, one of the most well-known stories in Japan, seems to differ greatly from other folktales. Scholars believe that the Urashima story was a popular pre-written orality-based story among the coastal dwelling ama group of people in ancient times in Japan. The introduction of a writing system from China made it possible to record the Urashima story as a written text. However, the first recorded version of the Urashima story, putatively in the late seventh century, was quite different from later versions in terms of plot, purpose and the characters. The ideology of immortality, suggesting Chinese Daoist origins, was the main purpose of the story for several centuries, overlain by Buddhist influences. The present study finds that the major turning point in the tale from an orality-based story to a literary text was in Otogizōshi in the Muromachi Period (14th–16th centuries), when people still seemed to be attuned to orality-based puns and the satirical and witty use of word plays through the exchange of songs. During the ensuing Edo Period, the Urashima story was transformed into a book for reading material. It changed at this time due to social developments, such as the widespread manufacture of paper and the technological development of woodblock printing. A shift in its themes and motifs such as immortality to Buddhist and social moral lessons occurred along with changing the cultural values of society, increase in literacy, and the appearance of new genres of literature and their writers in the Edo Period. The establishment of the formal compulsory education system in the Meiji Period, accompanied by a shift in readership from educated adults to school children, further changed the story and its purpose, and resulted in the standardisation of the Urashima Tarō story that is well known today. Much of the well-known content of the current Urashima story in modern day Japan has appeared only within the last 150 years. Therefore, from this thesis it is apparent that the Urashima story evolved as a reflection of Japanese society’s changing views. In short, this study identifies and analyses significant changes to the original recorded story that have appeared over the past fourteen hundred years.</p>

Chronological Evolution of the Urashima Taro Story and its Interpretation

<p>The present thesis examines the evolution of the Urashima story. In modern Japan traditional Japanese tales have been presented in the form of illustrated books for young children. It is generally regarded that these tales contain common motifs or moral lessons; however, the Urashima story, one of the most well-known stories in Japan, seems to differ greatly from other folktales. Scholars believe that the Urashima story was a popular pre-written orality-based story among the coastal dwelling ama group of people in ancient times in Japan. The introduction of a writing system from China made it possible to record the Urashima story as a written text. However, the first recorded version of the Urashima story, putatively in the late seventh century, was quite different from later versions in terms of plot, purpose and the characters. The ideology of immortality, suggesting Chinese Daoist origins, was the main purpose of the story for several centuries, overlain by Buddhist influences. The present study finds that the major turning point in the tale from an orality-based story to a literary text was in Otogizōshi in the Muromachi Period (14th–16th centuries), when people still seemed to be attuned to orality-based puns and the satirical and witty use of word plays through the exchange of songs. During the ensuing Edo Period, the Urashima story was transformed into a book for reading material. It changed at this time due to social developments, such as the widespread manufacture of paper and the technological development of woodblock printing. A shift in its themes and motifs such as immortality to Buddhist and social moral lessons occurred along with changing the cultural values of society, increase in literacy, and the appearance of new genres of literature and their writers in the Edo Period. The establishment of the formal compulsory education system in the Meiji Period, accompanied by a shift in readership from educated adults to school children, further changed the story and its purpose, and resulted in the standardisation of the Urashima Tarō story that is well known today. Much of the well-known content of the current Urashima story in modern day Japan has appeared only within the last 150 years. Therefore, from this thesis it is apparent that the Urashima story evolved as a reflection of Japanese society’s changing views. In short, this study identifies and analyses significant changes to the original recorded story that have appeared over the past fourteen hundred years.</p>

The Capitanian Minimum: A Unique Sr Isotope Beacon of the Latest Paleozoic Seawater

The long-term trend in the Paleozoic seawater 87Sr/86Sr was punctuated by a unique episode called the “Capitanian minimum” at the end of the Guadalupian (Permian; ca. 260 Ma). This article reviews the nature and timing of this major turning point in seawater Sr isotope composition (87Sr/86Sr, δ88Sr) immediately before the Paleozoic-Mesozoic boundary (ca. 252 Ma). The lowest value of seawater 87Sr/86Sr (0.7068) in the Capitanian and the subsequent rapid increase at an unusually high rate likely originated from a significant change in continental flux with highly radiogenic Sr. The assembly of the supercontinent Pangea and its subsequent mantle plume-induced breakup were responsible for the overall secular change throughout the Phanerozoic; nonetheless, short-term fluctuations were superimposed by global climate changes. Regarding the unidirectional decrease in Sr isotope values during the early-middle Permian and the Capitanian minimum, the suppression of continental flux was driven by the assembly of Pangea and by climate change with glaciation. In contrast, the extremely rapid increase in Sr isotope values during the Lopingian-early Triassic was induced by global warming. The unique trend change in seawater Sr isotope signatures across the Guadalupian-Lopingian Boundary (GLB) needs to be explained in relation to the unusual climate change associated with a major extinction around the GLB.

Let’s go fishing: A quantitative analysis of subsistence choices with a special focus on mixed economies among small-scale societies

The transition to agriculture is regarded as a major turning point in human history. In the present contribution we propose to look at it through the lens of ethnographic data by means of a machine learning approach. More specifically, we analyse both the subsistence economies and the socioecological context of 1290 societies documented in the Ethnographic Atlas with a threefold purpose: (i) to better understand the variability and success of human economic choices; (ii) to assess the role of environmental settings in the configuration of the different subsistence economies; and (iii) to examine the relevance of fishing in the development of viable alternatives to cultivation. All data were extracted from the publicly available cross-cultural database D-PLACE. Our results suggest that not all subsistence combinations are viable, existing just a subset of successful economic choices that appear recurrently in specific ecological systems. The subsistence economies identified are classified as either primary or mixed economies in accordance with an information-entropy-based quantitative criterion that determines their degree of diversification. Remarkably, according to our results, mixed economies are not a marginal choice, as they constitute 25% of the cases in our data sample. In addition, fishing seems to be a key element in the configuration of mixed economies, as it is present across all of them.

The 2020 Research on Problematic Information on the COVID19 Pandemic. A Systematic Literature Review

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a major turning point in scholarly attention to information-related problems, including the infodemic and fake news. The paper presents a systematic and comprehensive literature review on multidisciplinary research into problematic information around COVID-19 published in 2020, with a view to identifying the main trends from a disciplinary, methodological, and substantive perspective. We collected 862 records in English from three leading scientific databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and EBSCOhost) by searching, in the title and abstract, a set of keywords related to COVID-19 and information problems. After removing the duplicates and documents other than scientific papers published in scientific journals (such as magazine articles and letters), the three authors screened the records to retain the empirical articles which dealt more than just incidentally with the topic, ending up with 378 papers. The three coders analyzed the results and applied a number of pre-defined categories related to the disciplinary, methodological, and substantive characteristics of the papers. Analysis of frequencies and computational methods, including social network analysis and text mining, were used to analyze the data. The corpus of 378 papers published in 2020 on problematic COVID-19 information revealed considerable contributions from Medicine and Social Sciences and a disciplinarily and geographically interconnected field. Quantitative methods and especially surveys stand out as the most popular approaches, with a considerable number of more discursive papers offering expert views on pandemic-related informational problems. The main trends from a substantive perspective were conspiracy theories and their impact on norm compliance, and the attention to informational problems defined though the concept of infodemic.

Internal Audit and the Modernization of Moroccan Public Administrations

The new constitution of 2011 and the Organic Law n ° 130-13 related to the Finance law constituted for Morocco a major turning point in the modernization’s path of the public administration. A much desired objective, that can only be achieved by the dissemination within public administrations of a set of management principles and techniques allowing Morocco to set up an effective and efficient management of administrative affairs. The same goes for the advent of currents that promote the application of the principles of good governance and new public management, through the adoption of management standards and practices borrowed from the private sector. According to this logic, Moroccan public administrations have become aware of the importance of adopting internal audit as a mean to improvt their performance.

Management of Significant Airway Bleeding during Robotic Assisted Bronchoscopy: A Tailored Approach

Robotic assisted bronchoscopy represents a major turning point in bronchoscopic history. The management strategies to address significant airway bleeding in this “robotic era” are not well documented, and further guidance is required. We present a case report that exemplifies our approach and management strategy using a combined and simultaneous flexible/robotic bronchoscopy if this complication is encountered.

Monitoring the propagation of SARS CoV2 variants by tracking identified mutation in wastewater using specific RT-qPCR

Since the end of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has experienced a major turning point with the appearance and rapid spread of new variants, causing a significant increase in the number of new cases requiring hospitalization. These so-called UK, South African or Brazilian variants are characterized by combinations of mutations which allow them to be distinguished from the variants which have circulated since the start of the epidemic. The impact of these variants on the functioning of healthcare systems requires monitoring the spread of these variants, which are more contagious, more lethal and may reinfect people who are already immune to a natural infection or to a vaccination. Monitoring the viral genome in wastewater has shown great value in early detection of the dynamics of virus spreading in populations. The sequencing of viral genomes is used in humans, but its application and interpretation on wastewater matrices are much more complex due to the diversity of circulating strains. Also this study demonstrates the possibility of following certain mutations found in these new variants by targeted RT-qPCR. This study is the first carried out in France demonstrating the spreading dynamics of the 69-70 deletion in the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.

Transcendence as Reflexive Sacredness

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the debate on the so-called Axial Age. It presents the major contributors from Karl Jaspers on, but also the predecessors in the 18th and 19th centuries. , It explores concepts such as the age of transcendence that have been used to characterize the fundamental innovation of that age. It particularly emphasizes the emergence of moral universalism in that period. The chapter also attempts to bring the different perspectives together by interpreting a reflexive view of the sources of sacredness as a major turning point in the global history of religion.