Legal Nature of the “Veto” in Ukraine and the World: historical and comparative essay.

On classical sources, the author traced and compared the history of the formation and development of the institution of veto in ancient Rome, in medieval England, France, the Commonwealth. Particular attention is paid to the development of the institution of veto on Ukrainian lands. The author comes to the conclusion about the different legal nature of the veto in the medieval Western European and Eastern European traditions. The Eastern European tradition corresponds to the veto, the peculiarity of which is consensual in nature and the use of the legislature. The principle of consensual decision-making is inherent in the Western European tradition - in the English Parliament, decision-making by consensus has always been desirable. However, in Eastern European practice, it has become mandatory. In medieval society, consensus could exist as long as it was not denied by a minority. Historical experience has demonstrated the shortcomings of this approach and the dangers to the political and legal system in the case of its instrumentalization. Subsequently, the principle of consensus evolved towards the development of the majority principle. The second type of veto should be considered in the context of ensuring a balance of power, it is part of the mechanism of checks and balances, a tool to limit the legislature and strengthen the executive branch. The purpose of this mechanism is to find a balance of power between different spheres of power, which will correspond to the balance of power in a particular society at the moment. Therefore, there is no and obviously cannot be an ideal veto mechanism - in different states the forms of its implementation differ, depending on the distribution of powers between participants in the political process.

A Study on Evaluation Mechanism for Feasibility of Shallow Geothermal Energy Exploiture Project

Based on the view that it’s not suitable for all areas to exploit shallow geothermal energy, this paper proposes in the large framwork of suitability regionalization, specific project has to be evaluated in detail. The paper discusses the cost-benefit evaluation mechanism, geological conditions and geological environment veto mechanism of shallow geothermal energy exploitation, which can be used as evaluation mechanism for feasibility of shallow geothermal energy exploiture project.

Of veto players and entity-voting: institutional gridlock in the Bosnian reform process

Entity-voting in the Bosnian Parliamentary Assembly is a veto mechanism in Bosnia's consociational institutional setting and an important reason for the country's orientation towards the political status quo. An empirical analysis of the number and nature of adopted and rejected draft laws during the legislative period 2006–2010, embedded in George Tsebelis's veto player approach, leads to the conclusion that the veto players in the parliament – either delegates from Republika Srpska or delegates from the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina – have pushed the consociational system of checks and balances to its extremes. Entity-voting enables the veto players to “hijack” the parliament for their exclusionary ethnic interests and discourages cooperation and compromise between the veto players. Significant legislation, which in the present article is defined as legislation relevant for the European Partnership, faces severe obstacles to getting passed. In the light of these findings, the article discusses three policy implications: institutional redesign, a change of the actors, and an active role of the European Union for providing the actors with a realistically achievable goal which they equally share. This should reset the current calculus of self-interest and encourage cooperation between the veto players.

Ex-Vivo Acquisition of Central Memory Phenotype Is Critical for Tolerance Induction by Donor Anti-3rd party CD8 T Cells in Allogeneic Bone Marrow Transplantation.

The robust immunity remaining after reduced intensity conditioning represents a major barrier to durable engraftment of MHC disparate T cell depleted BM transplants (TDBMT). One approach to address this challenge could be afforded by using donor CD8 CTLs, endowed with potent veto activity (the ability of a cell to specifically suppress CTL precursors directed against its antigens, while sparing other CTLs capable of affording protection against infections and malignancies). However, their use is limited due to their marked GVH reactivity. This problem can be addressed effectively by stimulation of donor CD8 T cells against 3rd party stimulators under exogenous IL2 deprivation. The anti-3rd party veto CTLs support engraftment of TDBMT without causing GVHD. Nevertheless, although these cells displayed highly efficient veto activity in vitro, they were less efficient in vivo, requiring administration in conjunction with Rapamycin. In our study we found, using in vivo imaging, that veto CTLs display poor homing to the host lymph nodes (LNs). Therefore, we hypothesized that the relatively low efficiency of veto CTLs in vivo could be attributed to their failure to co-localize with the host T cells (HTCs) at the LNs, during the critical time at which the HTCs are triggered against donor antigens. To enhance LNs homing we generated anti-3rd party CD8 T cells under culture conditions favoring the acquisition of central memory (Tcm) phenotype (CD44highCD62Lhigh). In order to monitor CTLs or Tcm cells adoptively transferred into irradiated recipients of BM allografts, we used (Host x Donor)F1 cells co-expressing host and donor MHC that can be distinguished by FACS. When CD62Lhigh Tcm cells, expanded in the presence of IL15, were administered, the number of cells located at the host LNs two days post transplant was 40-fold higher compared to that found for veto CTLs expanded in the presence of IL2, which exhibit a CD62Llow effector phenotype (p<0.05). Moreover, the total number of Tcm cells harvested from various organs was increased by 9 folds between days 2 to 6 post BMT (p<0.05) in sharp contrast to the CTLs which displayed a non significant proliferation, indicating that Tcm cells possess superior proliferative capabilities. In addition, the Tcm cells exhibited marked durable persistence in-vivo when tested 100 days post transplant, comprising 17%±9% of the total CD8 T cell compartment following infusion of 1x106 cells. When evaluated in a stringent mouse model for T cell mediated BM allograft rejection, Tcm cells displayed marked tolerizing activity. In this model, 3x106 Balb-Nude BM is transplanted into lethally irradiated C3H hosts that were previously inoculated with 1.25x104 HTC (a number sufficient to induce BM rejection and lethality). Thus, administration of 5x106 anti-3rd party Tcm cells derived from (C3H x BALB)F1 mice, with no further immunosuppression, led to overall survival of 83% (19/23) at 100 days post BMT, while administration of 107 anti-3rd party CTLs (bearing an effector phenotype) could only afford survival of 19% (3/16) (p<0.05) in the absence of Rapamycin. To evaluate the risk of GVHD, allogeneic Balb/c derived anti-3rd party Tcm cells or naive CD8 T cells were administered in conjunction with 5x106 Balb/c-Nude BM cells into lethally irradiated C3H hosts. As expected, naive CD8 cells caused lethal GVHD and only 6% (1/16) of the mice which received 2x106 naive cells survived 100 days post BMT. In contrast, the mice receiving Tcm cells displayed 83% survival (10/12 or 5/6 for 2x106 or 5x106 Tcm cells, respectively) with no signs of GVHD. Furthermore, when evaluated in the graft rejection model, 5x106 fully allogeneic donor Tcm cells induced survival, accompanied with complete donor chimerism at 100 days post transplant in 73% (11/15) of the recipients. The similar efficacy of overcoming rejection displayed by both fully allogeneic and F1 derived Tcm cells is in accordance with a veto mechanism, as opposed to potential ablation of host resistance by donor alloreactive clones. Collectively, the ability of anti-3rd party CD8 Tcm cells to expand and persist in vivo without GVHD, their marked LN homing and their capacity to overcome rejection of TDBMT in the absence of further immunosuppression, strongly suggest that these cells hold marked potential for tolerance induction in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Modeling Reverse-Phi Motion-Selective Neurons in Cortex: Double Synaptic-Veto Mechanism

Reverse-phi motion is the illusory reversal of perceived direction of movement when the stimulus contrast is reversed in successive frames. Livingstone, Tsao, and Conway (2000) showed that direction-selective cells in striate cortex of the alert macaque monkey showed reversed excitatory and inhibitory regions when two different contrast bars were flashed sequentially during a two-bar interaction analysis. While correlation or motion energy models predict the reverse-phi response, it is unclear how neurons can accomplish this. We carried out detailed biophysical simulations of a direction-selective cell model implementing a synaptic shunting scheme. Our results suggest that a simple synaptic-veto mechanism with strong direction selectivity for normal motion cannot account for the observed reverse-phi motion effect. Given the nature of reverse-phi motion, a direct interaction between the ON and OFF pathway, missing in the original shunting-inhibition model, it is essential to account for the reversal of response. We here propose a double synaptic-veto mechanism in which ON excitatory synapses are gated by both delayed ON inhibition at their null side and delayed OFF inhibition at their preferred side. The converse applies to OFF excitatory synapses. Mapping this scheme onto the dendrites of a direction-selective neuron permits the model to respond best to normal motion in its preferred direction and to reverse-phi motion in its null direction. Two-bar interaction maps showed reversed excitation and inhibition regions when two different contrast bars are presented.