In the early 21st century, poverty, impoverishment and inequalities are increasing across the European continent. These phenomena not only weaken the social cohesion of European societies, they also ...violate human rights, including social and civil and political rights, and question the functioning of democracy. How can people living in poverty make their voices heard in polarised societies, where more than 40% of assets and 25% of revenues are held by 10% of the population?This guide is the result of two years of collective discussion held within the framework of the project "The human rights of people experiencing poverty”. It was prepared with the assistance of many individuals and organisations, including people living in poverty, researchers, associations and representatives of public authorities. As well as offering a critique of the current situation, analysing inequality and poverty through the prism of human rights, democracy and redistributive policies, the guide also invites the reader to explore the possibilities of a renewed strategy to fight poverty in order to restore a sense of social justice. It makes proposals that aim to overcome the stigmatisation and categorisation of people, opening pathways of learning to build well-being through sharing, avoiding waste and by enhancing public awareness around the principle of human dignity as a human right for all.
En ce début du XXIe siècle, la pauvreté, la précarité et les inégalités affectent un nombre croissant de personnes sur le continent européen. Ces phénomènes fragilisent non seulement la cohésion sociale des sociétés européennes mais violent les droits humains, aussi bien les droits sociaux que civils et politiques, et questionnent le fonctionnement de la démocratie. En effet, comment les personnes en situation de pauvreté peuvent-elles faire entendre leurs voix dans des sociétés polarisées, où plus de 40 % du patrimoine et 25 % des revenus sont détenus par 10 % de la population ?Ce guide est le fruit de deux années de travail collectif mené dans le carde du projet "Les droits humains des personnes en situation de pauvreté". Il a été préparé avec le concours de nombreuses personnes et organisations, dont des personnes en situation de pauvreté, des chercheurs, des associations et des représentants des autorités publiques. Outre qu'il offre une étude critique de la situation actuelle, en analysant les inégalités et la pauvreté par le prisme des droits humains, de la démocratie et des politiques de redistribution, ce guide invite également le lecteur à explorer les pistes d'une stratégie renouvelée de lutte contre la pauvreté permettant de rétablir le sens de la justice sociale. Il avance des propositions qui visent à dépasser la stigmatisation et la catégorisation, en ouvrant des voies d'apprentissage pour bâtir des biens communs par le partage, en évitant le gaspillage et en renforçant dans la conscience publique le principe de respect de la dignité humaine en tant que droit que tous.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation (ODD) for Catalyst Biosciences, Inc.'s CB 2679d/ISU304, Catalyst’s highly potent subcutaneous next-generation ...recombinant human Factor IX variant, for the treatment of hemophilia B. “Receipt of FDA orphan status will support the development of this promising subcutaneous treatment option for individuals with hemophilia B. Notable benefits of ODD include the potential for seven years of market exclusivity,” said Nassim Usman, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Catalyst. In June 2017, the Company announced that the European Commission had also granted orphan medicinal product designation to CB 2679d for hemophilia B. Catalyst and its collaborator, ISU Abxis, are evaluating CB 2679d in a Phase 1/2 proof-of-concept study in individuals with severe hemophilia B. The Companies plan to have interim, top-line results by the end of 2017 and complete trial results in early 2018.
The in progress opening of the electricity markets in the European interconnected system is leading to a consistent increase of the cross border (CB) exchanges up to the risk of congestions that ...jeopardize the most convenient exploitation of the cheapest generation resources. Aimed to send right economic signals to the transmission network users by means of a fair and efficient allocation of the CB transmission capacity, methods for the solution of the problem based on market rules are required by recent statements of the European Commission. After a brief overview of the main market based methods, the authors focus their attention on the "coordinated auctioning" approach and simulate its application to the UCTE system (the largest interconnection in Europe). A transmission network model extended up to 4200 busses is employed in the developed optimization procedure where different hypotheses on the adoptable security criteria and on the characteristics of the capacity bids are examined. The economic results of the allocation scheme are discussed, presenting the distribution of costs and revenues to the countries involved in the auction
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, told Groupement des Cartes Bancaires, which manages "CB" card payments that include Visa and MasterCard, to immediately cancel a set of charges to ...be...
Compared with graphite, silicon is a favourable alternative candidate due to a high specific capacity (3572 vs. 372 mAh g
-1
) and specific volumetric capacity (2081 vs. 779 mAh cm
-3
). However, ...large capacity fading and low cyclability of Si electrodes is a major issue. Several strategies have been undertaken to overcome these problems. One way is optimising the binder in order to cope at the molecular scale with the expansion and contraction of Si upon alloying and dealloying with Li. Since early works on CMC, several other works proposed alternative binders to CMC, most of them being polysaccharides and/or bearing COOH functional groups. Another way to improve the cycle life is using electrolytes containing a film-forming agent such as VC and/or FEC.
Besides, electro-conductive additives also display an important influence for the performance of nano Si-based electrodes with high active mass loadings of about 2.5-3.3 mAh per cm². We found a significant improvement of the electrochemical performance (2000 mAh g
-1
after 100 cycles for 2.5 mg of Si cm
-2
) by using reduced graphene oxide (rGO) or exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets instead of carbon black as the conductive additive 1,2. The influence of electro-conductive additives is not only to play on the electronic conductivity but also on the micromechanics (stress distribution) of the composite films.
In a further work, we aimed to design the formulation of these nano Si-based electrodes with high active mass loadings to wind some cylindrical cells. This way, Poly (acrylic-co-maleic) acid (PAMA) is used as a dispersant to improve the stability of electrodes slurries. Sedimentation test, electrical measurement, SEM-EDX observations as well as rheological measurements show that a more homogeneity distribution of carbon black (CB) inside the stack of Si particles is reached with presence of PAMA. However, there is an optimal amount of PAMA due to the competition in the adsorption of PAMA and Carboxylmethyl cellulose (CMC) at the surface of the CB particles. Upon cycling with capacity limitation (1200 mAh per g of Si), the optimized electrode formulation at lab scale could achieve more than 400 cycles with surface capacity ~2.5-3.3 mAh cm
-2
.
At the pilot scale, the improvement of adhesion of the tape to the current collector by using Styrene-co-Butadiene rubber copolymer latex (SB) helps to maintain long cycle life while by calendaring is detrimental to electrochemical properties. 3 On the whole, the pilot-made electrodes show a lower cycle life than the labe-made electrode as a consequence of poorer CB distribution, likely due to the larger volume and longer processing time involved.
Acknowledgements
Financial support provided by the European Commission (EC), through the project EuroLiion (NMP3-SL-2010-265368) is gratefully acknowledged.
References
1 B.P.N. Nguyen, J. Gaubicher, B. Lestriez, Electrochimica Acta, 2014, 120, 319.
2 B. P. N. Nguyen, N. A. Kumar, J. Gaubicher, F. Duclairoir, T. Brousse, O. Crosnier, L. Dubois, G. Bidan, D. Guyomard, B. Lestriez, Adv. Energy Mater., 2013, 3, 1351.
3 B. P. N. Nguyen, S. Chazelle, M. Cerbelaud, W. Porcher, B. Lestriez, submitted to J. Power Sources.
The European Commission (EC) has issued a statement of objections to Groupement des Cartes Bancaires (CB), the operator of the French bank card system, and 9 of its largest member banks, accusing ...them of conspiring to restrict new entrants and stifle innovation in the French cards market by imposing complex fees and regulations that prejudice rival issuers. The Commission sent its statement of objections to CB and to 9 banks that are on its board of directors: BNP-Paribas, Caisses d'Epargne, Credit Agricole, Credit Mutuel, CIC, Credit Lyonnais, La Poste, Natexis Banques Populaires and Societe Generale. The Commission accused CB and it members of sharing out the market for the issuance of CB cards in France in order to restrict competition from new entrants, such as the banking arms of large retailers and certain small and medium-sized banks, including foreign banks.
