“Of Spitzenkandidaten and European Leaders”: Is the new 2014 "politicized” Presidency of the Commission going to be a real step forward in the EU legitimization process?

Thanks to ART.17.7 of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Council now has to “take into account” the results of EP Elections when selecting a candidate for the role of Commission President. The European Parliament has grabbed the opportunity to launch the first electoral race for spitzenkandidaten to the Presidency. Is this the start of a new democratizing (and thus, politicizing) process for the European Union? This dissertation will try to give a possible answer to the dilemma by constructing a comprehensive framework around EP Elections 2014 that will involve both the Commission and the Parliament and an analysis of the debate beyond legal provisions and the possibility of a politicized presidency of the Commission.

Lo que no es nuevo puede ser actual: hacia distintos puntos de mira de la didáctica del arte What is not new can be current - towards different approaches of the didactics of art

With this article we want to present a state of affairs of the didactics of art in our context, and at the same time we want todiscuss on its pluri- and interdisciplinary construction. We check the different disciplines that configure it and we analysethe paradigm of artistic education as a discipline (DBAE) and its passage to post-modernity. This example focuses thediscussion about the opportunity of adapting holistic educative models and the transition of the current educativeinnovation towards skill models

The new role of the mass media in the construction of sport and Olympic values

This paper was presented in the International Symposium on Toward the Creation of New-Sport Cultures, undertaken in Osaka, Japan, in January 28, 1996. The main purpose is to make an interpretation of the cultural values of sport and Olympism in contemporary society, considering the enormous influence that the media have on them.

Inflation dynamics and the New Keynesian Phillips curve in EU-4

The paper seeks to shed light on inflation dynamics of four new EU member states: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. To this end, the New Keynesian Phillips curve augmented for open economies is estimated and additional statistical tests applied. We find the following. (1) The claim of New Keynesians that the real marginal cost is the main inflation-forcing variable is fragile. (2) Inflation seems to be driven by external factors. (3) Although inflation holds a forward-looking component, the backward-looking component is substantial. An intuitive explanation for higher inflation persistence may be rather adaptive than rational price setting of local firms.

Conversation is the Key : A Short History of Smarthistory.org

Smarthistory.org is a proven, sustainable model for open educational resources in the Humanities. We discuss lessons learned during its agile development. Smarthistory.org is a free, creative-commons licensed, multi-media web-book designed as a dynamic enhancement or substitute for the traditional art history textbook. It uses conversation instead of the impersonal voice of the typical textbook in-order to reveal disagreement, emotion, and the experience of looking. The listener remains engaged with both the content and the interaction of the speakers. These conversations model close looking and a willingness to encounter and engage the unfamiliar. Smarthistory takes the inherent dialogic and multimedia nature of the web and uses it as a pedagogical method. This extendable Humanities framework uses an open-source content management system making Smarthistory inexpensive to create, and easy to manage and update. Its chronological timeline/chapter-based format integrates new contributions into a single historical framework, a structure applicable across the Humanities.

Key competences in the new ventures: a model for evaluating

This research studies from an internal view based on the Competency-Based Perspective (CBP), key organizational competencies developed for small new business. CBP is chosen in an attempt to explain the differences characterizing the closed companies from the consolidated ones. The main contribution of this paper is the definition of a set of key organizational competencies for new ventures from services and low technology based sectors. Using the classification proposed by [1] and a review of the entrepreneurship literature, the main competencies were defined and classified as: managerial, input-based, transformation-based, and output-based competencies. The proposed model for evaluating new ventures organizational competence is tested by means of Structural Equation

Perspectives on the green construction of the new European Energy Policy

The EU has been one of the main actors involved in the construction process of an international climate change regime, adopting it as an identity sign in the international arena. This activism has reverted in the European political agenda and in the one of its Members States. Therefore, climate change has become a driver for the EU growing participation in energy policy and for its governance evolution. In this context, much attention has been paid to the climate and energy policies integration agreed after the 2007 spring European Council. Apparently, this decision meant a decisive step towards the incorporation of the environmental variable in the energy policy-making. Moreover, the Action Plan [2007-2009] “Energy Policy for Europe” outlined priority actions in a variety of energy-related areas, implying the new European Energy Policy commencement. Against this background, there is still much left to understand about its formulation and its further development. Rooted on the Environmental Policy Integration approach, this paper traces the increasing proximity between environment and energy policies in order to understand the green contribution to the European Energy Policy construction.

The New EU’s External Action: A significant step forward towards the EU’s single voice?ction problems and rhetorical action

The aim of this paper is to analyse the main agreements on the EU’s External Action agreed within the European Convention and the IGC taking into account why, how and who reached the consensus on them. In other words, this paper will explore the principles followed in order to improve the instruments of the EU’s External Action such as authority, coherence, visibility, efficiency and credibility.

Globalization and the Symphony of the New (Post-modern) World: From Westphalia to Maastricht…passing by Washington DC

Taking on the challenge of understanding and explaining the Symphony of (today’s) New World in realistic terms (not realist), this essay aims to analyse the Post-Cold war era by devising a multi-conceptual framework that combines different theoretical contributions not yet linked in a fully explanatory way. This paper suggests two inter-related analytical contexts (or background melodies) to understand Dvorak´s "New World”. First, the socio-economic structural context that falls under the controversial category of Globalization and, second, the post-modern political structural context that is built on Robert Cooper’s threefold analysis (Pre-modern, Modern and Post-modern) of today’s world [Cooper, R: 1997, 1999]. Lastly, the closing movement (allegro con fuoco) enters the normative arena to assess American foreign policy options in the light of the theoretical framework devised in the first part of the essay.

Passive modernization? the new human development index and its components in Italy’s regions (1871-2007)

The article presents and discusses estimates of social and economic indicators for Italy’s regions in benchmark years roughly from Unification to the present day: life expectancy, education, GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, and the new Human Development Index (HDI). A broad interpretative hypothesis, based on the distinction between passive and active modernization, is proposed to account for the evolution of regional imbalances over the long-run. In the lack of active modernization, Southern Italy converged thanks to passive modernization, i.e., State intervention: however, this was more effective in life expectancy, less successful in education, expensive and as a whole ineffective in GDP. As a consequence, convergence in the HDI occurred from the late XIX century to the 1970s, but came to a sudden halt in the last decades of the XX century.

Multi-receptor binding profile of clozapine and olanzapine: a structural study based on the new beta (2) adrenergic receptor template

Schizophrenia is a devastating mental disorder that has a largeimpact on the quality of life for those who are afflicted and isvery costly for families and society.[1] Although the etiology ofschizophrenia is still unknown and no cure has yet beenfound, it is treatable, and pharmacological therapy often producessatisfactory results. Among the various antipsychoticdrugs in use, clozapine is widely recognized as one ofthemost clinically effective agents, even if it elicits significant sideeffects such as metabolic disorders and agranulocytosis. Clozapineand the closely related compound olanzapine are goodexamples ofdrug s with a complex multi-receptor profile ;[2]they have affinities toward serotonin, dopamine, a adrenergic,muscarinic, and histamine receptors, among others.

Is the PHY layer dead?

This article originates from a panel with the above title, held at IEEE VTC Spring 2009, in which the authors took part. The enthusiastic response it received prompted us to discuss for a wider audience whether research at the physical layer (PHY) is still relevant to the field of wireless communications. Using cellular systems as the axis of our exposition, we exemplify areas where PHY research has indeed hit a performance wall and where any improvements are expected to be marginal. We then discuss whether the research directions taken in the past have always been the right choice and how lessons learned could influence future policy decisions. Several of the raised issues are subsequently discussed in greater details, e.g., the growing divergence between academia and industry. With this argumentation at hand, we identify areas that are either under-developed or likely to be of impact in coming years - hence corroborating the relevance and importance of PHY research.

What is the value of joint processing of pilots and data in block-fading channels?

The spectral efficiency achievable with joint processing of pilot and data symbol observations is compared with that achievable through the conventional (separate) approach of first estimating the channel on the basis of the pilot symbols alone, and subsequently detecting the datasymbols. Studied on the basis of a mutual information lower bound, joint processing is found to provide a non-negligible advantage relative to separate processing, particularly for fast fading. It is shown that, regardless of the fading rate, only a very small number of pilot symbols (at most one per transmit antenna and per channel coherence interval) shouldbe transmitted if joint processing is allowed.

How important is the intensive margin of labor adjustment?

Using new quarterly data for hours worked in OECD countries, Ohanian and Raffo (2011) argue that in many OECD countries, particularly in Europe, hours per worker are quantitatively important as an intensive margin of labor adjustment, possibly because labor market frictions are higher than in the US. I argue that this conclusion is not supported by the data. Using the same data on hours worked, I find evidence that labor market frictions are higher in Europe than in the US, like Ohanian and Raffo, but also that these frictions seem to affect the intensive margin at least as much as the extensive margin of labor adjustment.

Real wage rigidities and the new Keynesian model

Most central banks perceive a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the gap between output and desired output. However, the standard new Keynesian framework implies no such trade-off. In that framework, stabilizing inflation is equivalent to stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. In this paper, we argue that this property of the new Keynesian framework, which we call the divine coincidence, is due to a special feature of the model: the absence of non trivial real imperfections.We focus on one such real imperfection, namely, real wage rigidities. When the baseline new Keynesian model is extended to allow for real wage rigidities, the divine coincidence disappears, and central banks indeed face a trade-off between stabilizing inflation and stabilizing the welfare-relevant output gap. We show that not only does the extended model have more realistic normative implications, but it also has appealing positive properties. In particular, it provides a natural interpretation for the dynamic inflation-unemployment relation found in the data.