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This article takes Italy’s widely-debated 2009 push-backs to Libya campaign as a point of reference to address whether bilateral agreements for technical and police cooperation provide the legal foundation for the forced return of intercepted refugees to countries of embarkation. Through a detailed analysis of both the facts and the texts of the published and unpublished bilateral accords, it conc

Abstract Aim: To study the effects of the tumor necrosis factor alpha inhibitor adalimumab on rabbit retina after injection into the vitreous body. Methods: Forty-eight rabbits of mixed strain (9-12 months old, weighing ≈ 3.5 kg) were randomized into four groups. Adalimumab was injected at one of two concentrations (1.25 mg or 2.5 mg) into the eyes of two groups, and balanced salt solution into th

Dominance by cyanobacteria hampers human use of lakes and reservoirs worldwide. Previous studies indicate that excessive nutrient loading and warmer conditions promote dominance by cyanobacteria, but evidence from global scale field data has so far been scarce. Our analysis, based on a study of 143 lakes along a latitudinal transect ranging from subarctic Europe to southern South America, shows th

The largest perturbation on upper trophic levels of many marine ecosystems stems from fishing. The reaction of the ecosystem goes beyond the trophic levels directly targeted by the fishery. This reaction has been described either as a change in slope of the overall size spectrum or as a trophic cascade triggered by the removal of top predators. Here we use a novel size- and trait-based model to ex

Large (> 1m) deformable mirrors with hundreds or thousands of actuators are attractive for extremely large telescopes. Use of force actuators coupled to the mirror via suction cups, and electret microphones for position sensing, has the potential of substantially reducing costs. However, a mirror controlled with force actuators will have many structural resonances within the desired system bandwid

Bromate, which is a potential carcinogen, should be removed from drinking water to levels of less than 10 mug/L. A chitosan-based molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) and a sol-gel ion-exchange double hydrous oxide (Fe(2)O(3).Al(2)O(3).xH(2)O) adsorbent (inorganic adsorbent) were prepared for this purpose. The sorption behavior of each adsorbent including sorption kinetics, isotherms, effect of pH

The focus in this paper is on how students experience their transition from their education to being employed as engineers in relation to the concept of employability. Four cohorts of students in a master’s programme in engineering were monitored annually with a ‘follow-up’ one year after graduation. Results show that there were differences in the way students talked about their curricular design,

Closure is a problem of defining the convective intensity in a given parameterization. In spite of many years of efforts and progress, it is still considered an overall unresolved problem. The present article reviews this problem from phenomenological perspectives. The physical variables that may contribute in defining the convective intensity are listed, and their statistical significances identi

Food manufacturers and policy makers have been tailoring food product ingredient information to consumers' self-reported preference for natural products and concerns over food additives. Yet, the influence of this ingredient information on consumers remains inconclusive. The current study aimed at examining the first step in such influence, which is consumers' attention to ingredient information o

This paper presents results of analyses by parametric methods of annual means of temperature, precipitation and discharge, and of seasonal maximum precipitation at 17, 28 and 10 Icelandic stations, respectively, for the period 1961-2000. Trends in mean seasonal temperature and precipitation are in broad agreement with results found by other authors using other methods. A positive trend appears in

Beringia is considered as an important glacial refugium that served as the main source for colonization of formerly glaciated Arctic regions. To obtain high resolution views of Arctic refugial history, we examined mitochondrial cytochrome b phylogeography in the northern genus of rodents, Lemmus ( true lemmings), sampled across its circumpolar distribution. Strong phylogeographical structure sugge

Objective: To assess the value and adverse effects of an ultrasound -guided renal biopsy technique in women with normal and pathotogic pregnancies. Method: Biopsy samples were taken from 36 women with hypertensive disease (28 with pre-eclampsia) and 18 healthy pregnant women using a thin needle and an ultrasound -guided biopsy device. Results: Gtomerutar endotheliosis, a structural change typical

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), a future treatment for type 2 diabetes, is efficiently degraded by the enzyme dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP IV), yielding the major metabolite GLP-1-(9-36)-amide. In this study, we examined the potential glucose lowering effect of GLP-1(9-36)-amide in mice and found that GLP-1-(9-36)-amide (3 and 10 nmol/kg) did not affect insulin secretion or glucose elimination wh

Box jellyfish, cubomedusae, possess an impressive total of 24 eyes of four morphologically different types. Two of these eye types, called the upper and lower lens eyes, are camera-type eyes with spherical fish-like lenses. Compared with other cnidarians, cubomedusae also have an elaborate behavioral repertoire, which seems to be predominantly visually guided. Still, positive phototaxis is the onl