Conditional Decisions as Instrument Guarding the Supremacy of the Constitution (Analysis of conditional decisions of Indonesian Constitutional Court in 2003 – 2017)

The function of the Indonesian Constitutional Court as the guardian of the constitution is mainly conducted through the judicial review authority. Since 2003 to April 2021, the Constitutional Court has received and decided 1392 petitions over judicial review. In its dictums, the Constitutional Court often declares conditionally constitutional or conditionally unconstitutional (conditional decision). Conditional decision is a decision of the Court that declare the reviewed norm conditionally constitutional or unconstitutional. The norm is constitutional if interpreted pursuant to the Court interpretation, or the norm is unconstitutional if interpreted in certain ways. This research is aimed to investigate the criteria of judicial review decisions which declares conditionally constitutional and conditionally unconstitutional in accordance with the characteristics of norms of the law reviewed. The analysis was limited to the Court decisions from 2003 to 2017. The research result indicates that distinguishing characters of norms reviewed have no correlation with the option between conditionally constitutional or conditionally unconstitutional. Conditionally Constitutional Decision was used by the court before replaced by Conditionally Unconstitutional Decision due to the weakness of decision implementation. For conditionally unconstitutional decisions are connected to the substance of the decision which create new norm that replace, limit, or elaborate reviewed norm. Conditional decision is still required as a consequence of the following three aspects: enforcement of the supremacy of the constitution, presumption of validity, and strengthening the execution of Constitutional Court decisions.

CORRELATION BETWEEN SARS-COV-2 ANTIBODY SCREENING BY IMMUNOASSAY AND NEUTRALIZING ANTIBODY TESTING

Background: Passive antibody therapy with convalescent plasma (CP) represents a promising alternative for the treatment of SARS CoV 2 infection. The efficacy of CP therapy has been associated with high titers of neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) in the plasma of recovered patients, but the assays for quantifying nAbs are not widely available. Our goal was to develop a strategy to predict high titers of nAbs based on the results of anti-SARS CoV 2 immunoassays and the clinical characteristics of the CP potential donors. Methods: Two hundred and fourteen CP donors were enrolled and tested for the presence of anti-SARS CoV 2 antibodies using two commercial immunoassays (IA): Anti SARS CoV 2 ELISA IgG EUROIMMUN and Anti SARS CoV 2 Chemiluminescence IgG Abbott. In parallel, quantification of neutralizing antibodies (nAbs) was performed using the Cytopathic effect-based virus neutralization test (CPE VNT). Three criteria for identifying donors with high titers of nAbs (more than 160) were tested: Criterion1: Curve ROC Method; Criterion 2: Conditional decision tree considering only the results from the IA and Criterion 3: Conditional decision tree including both the IA results and the clinical variables. Results: The performance of Abbott and EUROIMMUN immunoassays was similar referring to both S/CO and predictive value for identifying nAbs titers more than 1:160. Regarding the three studied criteria for identifying CP donors with high nAbs titers (more than 1:160): 1) Criterion 1 showed 76.1% accuracy when the S/CO cut-off of 4.65 was used, 2) Criterion 2 presented 76.1% accuracy if the S/CO more than 4.57 was applied and 3) Criterion 3 had 71.6% accuracy if either S/CO more than 4.57 or S/CO between 2.68 and 4.57 and the last COVID-19-related symptoms occurred less than 19 days from donor recruiting were used. Conclusion: The results of SARS-CoV-2 immunoassays (S/CO) can be used to predict high nAbs titers of potential CP donors. This study has proposed three different criteria for identifying donors with more than 160 nAbs titer based on either solely S/CO results or S/CO together with clinical variables, all with high efficacy and accuracy.

Optimal policy for composite sensing with crowdsourcing

The mobile crowdsourcing technology has been widely researched and applied with the wide popularity of smartphones in recent years. In the applications, the smartphone and its user act as a whole, which called as the composite node in this article. Since smartphone is usually under the operation of its user, the user’s participation cannot be excluded out the applications. But there are a few works noticed that humans and their smartphones depend on each other. In this article, we first present the relation between the smartphone and its user as the conditional decision and sensing. Under this relation, the composite node performs the sensing decision of the smartphone which based on its user’s decision. Then, this article studies the performance of the composite sensing process under the scenario which composes of an application server, some objects, and users. In the progress of the composite sensing, users report their sensing results to the server. Then, the server returns rewards to some users to maximize the overall reward. Under this scenario, this article maps the composite sensing process as the partially observable Markov decision process, and designs a composite sensing solution for the process to maximize the overall reward. The solution includes optimal and myopic policies. Besides, we provide necessary theoretical analysis, which ensures the optimality of the optimal algorithm. In the end, we conduct some experiments to evaluate the performance of our two policies in terms of the average quality, the sensing ratio, the success report ratio, and the approximate ratio. In addition, the delay and the progress proportion of optimal policy are analyzed. In all, the experiments show that both policies we provide are obviously superior to the random policy.

Anderson, Brouwer, Wendorf & Cahill (2016) Women’s Behavioral Responses to the Threat of a Hypothetical Date Rape Stimulus: A Qualitative Analysis

Objective: One in four college women experience sexual assault on campus. Campuses rarely provide the in depth self-defense programs needed to reduce sexual assault risk. Not much is known about the range of possible behaviors elicited by sexual assault threat stimuli besides assertion. To fill this gap, the aim of the current study was to explore qualitative themes in women’s intended behavioral responses to a hypothetical common sexual assault threat, date rape, by using a laboratory controlled threat. Methods: College women (N = 139) were randomly assigned to one of four different levels of sexual assault threat presented via an audio recorded vignette. Participants articulated how they would hypothetically respond to the experimentally assigned threat. Responses were blinded and analyzed using Consensual Qualitative Research methodology. Results: Six major themes emerged: assertion, compliance/acceptance, conditional decision-making, avoidance, expressions of discomfort, and allusion to future contact. Although almost all participants described assertion, a number of non-assertive responses were described that are not currently recognized in the literature. These non-assertive responses, including compliance/acceptance, conditional decision making, and avoidance may represent unique behavioral response styles and likely reflect the complex psychological process of behavioral response to threat. Discussion: The variety of themes found illustrates the great range of behavioral responses to threat. This broad range is not currently well represented or measured in the literature and better understanding of these responses can inform future interventions, advocacy efforts, and policies focused on sexual assault.

The Indonesian Constitutional Court and the Democratic Institutions in Judicial Review

This paper focuses on the relationship between the Indonesian Constitutional Court, the legislature, and the executive in judicial review. It aims to explain the Court strategies in deciding judicial review cases related to the right to work in relation with the executive and the legislature. It appears that while constitutionally the Court is granted with a strong form of judicial review (as reflected in the finality of its decisions), it also employed other approaches in deciding cases related to the right to work. These approaches include the declaration of incompatibility, conditional decision, and the invalidation of a statute in its entirety. This paper argues that Katharine G. Young’s typology of judicial review is quite helpful as an interpretive tool to understand the Court approaches when it decided cases related the right to work. The use of various approaches by the Court affected the relationship between the Court, the executive, and the legislature. This is because the executive and the legislature are the implementing agencies of the Court rulings.

Canada climate push may erode Trudeau's electoral base

Subject Trudeau government's climate policy and politics. Significance Canada's Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is sending mixed signals on climate policy. Canada ratified the Paris climate accord on October 5, following the government's conditional decision on September 27 to approve a controversial natural gas liquefaction and export facility in British Columbia. Meanwhile, Trudeau has upset federal-provincial relations by announcing that a federally mandated price on carbon will come into effect by 2018. Impacts Canada's regulatory approach may create opportunities for firms focused on upstream emissions reductions. Blockage of export-orientated energy infrastructure could build political pressure for approval of internal projects. Provincial elections in 2018 could be an early indicator of the Trudeau government's ability to retain electoral support. China will be closely watching Trudeau's ability to push through pipeline projects, with diplomatic and trade implications.