Lenient Approach Research Articles

Refining Research Diagnostic Criteria for Catatonia Among Delirium, Medical, Affective, and Psychosis Patient Groups.

The authors proposed catatonia diagnostic criteria that require the presence of three neuropsychiatric symptom clusters, rated over 24 hours; this system differs from other symptom clustering proposals and is intended to increase diagnostic rigor over Bush-Francis Catatonia Rating Scale (BFCRS) or DSM-5 criteria. By applying new BFCRS item score thresholds, symptoms were clustered into three categories to comprise the Research Diagnostic Criteria for Catatonia (RDCC): akinesia (criterion A), unusual motor signs (criterion B), and behavioral signs (criterion C). RDCC symptom clusters were analyzed in four prospectively evaluated patient groups (delirium, medical, affective, and psychosis) (N=341). Use of the RDCC, compared with the DSM-5-TR and BFCRS, resulted in far fewer diagnoses of catatonia in the four patient groups: medical, N=1 out of 42 (2%); affective, N=1 out of 45 (2%); psychosis, N=3 out of 53 (6%); and delirium, N=0 out of 201. Permutations of the RDCC with more relaxed criteria were assessed, requiring either symptom thresholds or numbers of symptoms to meet criteria, resulting in catatonia rate gradations between those obtained with the RDCC and those obtained with current systems. The Cochrane Q test found that the DSM-5-TR was not dissimilar to the RDCC, if fulfilling numerical thresholds for criteria A-C, although any level of symptom severity was allowed. Confirmatory factor analysis with three goodness-of-fit indexes validated the RDCC. The RDCC requires akinetic symptoms on the basis of literature demonstrating their high BFCRS prevalence and exploratory factor analysis co-loadings, plus symptoms from unusual motor and behavioral signs. Compared with current lenient diagnostic approaches, having the symptoms required by the RDCC produced lower catatonia rates in the psychosis, affective, and medical groups and revealed no patients with catatonia in the delirium group. Subdividing DSM-5-TR symptoms into several different criteria may improve diagnosis. RDCC symptom clusters are both research data-based and amenable to further research for validation.

7067 A Pilot Study on Levothyroxine Administration- Understanding the Effects on Thyroid Hormone Levels and Patient Compliance Without Restrictions on Food or Time

Abstract Disclosure: R. Patel: None. K. Pandya: None. D. Olson: None. Background- Hypothyroidism is one of the most common treatable endocrinological disorders that can be managed by replacement therapy. In most cases, compliance is a major hindrance for maintenance medications to express the intended effect. Thus, prescribing medications in a more convenient way would make it easier for the patients to remember and hence amplify compliance. Traditional practice dictates thyroid replacement medication to be administered early in the morning on an empty stomach for optimum absorption. This mandates some patients to set an alarm clock for early morning to take their thyroid medication, which can not just be cumbersome but also increase the chances of having a fall and can alter sleep hygiene as well. We aimed to identify if allowing patients with a more lenient approach in medication timing can help increase compliance while still maintaining thyroid hormone levels with fewer side effects. Methods- As an initial single-arm pilot study, we retrospectively looked at thirteen patients from a single center, for whom patient preference was respected in allowing them to take thyroid replacement in conjunction with any other medication, food, coffee, or any combination of those, as long as it was consistently taken the same way and at the same time each day. In this study, the patient population ranged in age from 44 to 95, with a mean age of 77.38. Most of these patients had follow-ups for over a decade while their TSH levels were observed with minimum follow-up duration being 4 years. Results- On the serial measurement of TSH on this patient cohort, it was discovered that patients were still euthyroid, ranging from 0.36 to 5.28 with a mean of 2.654. This euthyroid state was achieved without requiring any frequent monitoring or extraordinarily high doses of thyroid supplement hormones compared to patients following traditional measures for the same. The highest dose required to achieve Euthyroid status was no more than 125 mcg once/day without any major hormonal fluctuations or adverse events during their treatment course. Thus, indicating that the proposed amendment to thyroid replacement instructions did not negatively impact thyroid function Conclusion- Hence, we propose a more lenient approach to taking Thyroids supplements allowing the patients to take them more conveniently and hence improving the compliance, improving overall outcomes. This can primarily be applied to the elderly population, minimising potential harm, i.e., falls, and other limitations in an attempt to take it consistently. However, this will be further investigated through a clinical trial to gather more comprehensive data on outcomes as well as identify any potential limitations of this concept. Presentation: 6/2/2024

Metodologi Kritikan Sanad Riwayat Sirah: Satu Kajian Terhadap Akram Ḍiyā’ Al-ʿumarī Dalam Karyanya Al-Sīrah Al- Nabawiyyah Al-Ṣaḥīḥah

Criticism (naqd) of hadith narrations is one of the ways to determine the authenticity of a hadith. This method has also been employed in the compilation of the Prophet's biography (sirah) by scholars in their work known as al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah. Through research conducted on this work, it was found that scholars critiqued certain narrations in the sirah based on two main aspects of hadith, namely the sanad (chain of narrators) and the matan (content). Therefore, this article constitutes a methodological analysis study of the scholars' use of criticism (naqd) solely from the perspective of the sanad in narrations of the sirah. It uses Akram Ḍiyā’ al-ʿUmarī, a contemporary scholar in the field of sirah and history, as a sample for the study through his work, al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah al-Ṣaḥīḥah. A qualitative research approach employing library analysis methods is utilized to extract the methodology employed by Akram Ḍiyā’ al-ʿUmarī in his criticism (naqd) of the sanad of sirah narrations and to analyze his criticism based on the recognized methods of Takhrīj al-Ḥadīth and al-Ḥukm ʿAlā al-Riwāyah, as established by hadith scholars. The results of this study show that Akram Ḍiyā’ al-ʿUmarī critiques the sanad of sirah narrations with a lenient approach towards accepting weak narrations, in accordance with the methodology proposed by hadith scholars.

Restrictive measure reduction in psychiatric wards: A snapshot of China's mental health law reform under the new era of disability rights convention

This article examines the reasons behind the limited impact of China's mental health law reform in 2013 on reducing the use of restrictive measures in mental health services, focusing on the analysis of case law from Chinese courts. The analysis of collected rulings from the official database indicates that Chinese courts have adopted a lenient approach in scrutinizing the application of restrictive measures. Furthermore, the interpretation and application of the provisions related to restrictive measures in the law have led to service providers being held liable in numerous cases for not implementing such measures. Based on these findings, the article offers policy recommendations.

Legal knowledge management for prosecutors based on judgment prediction and error analysis from indictments

Legal AI aims to provide improved knowledge management services based on legal documents. Existing legal judgment prediction datasets mainly use court verdicts. However, for prosecutors, the use of indictments for judgment predictions can help detecting inconsistencies between predictions and prosecution, providing prosecutors with more accurate references to laws and charges through error analysis. In this study, we collect a dataset called TWLJP, which contains 342,754 indictments. We compared three possible messaging passing architectures among the law, regulation, and accusation cause prediction tasks, i.e. independent, topological, and interactive. The result shows that interactive message passing among the three tasks achieved the best Macro-F1 performance of 95.2 %, 79.62 %, and 65.84 % for laws, regulations, and accusation cause prediction, respectively. We further improve the prediction of accusation cause from 8.8 % macro-F1 to 62.3 % for underperformed accusation causes via Prompt-Based Learning. Finally, in view of the situation where the charge prediction are written in various ways, we adopted a lenient approach to assess the accusation and improved the accusation performance to 77.2 %.

Photoinduced Regioselective Chalcogenation and Thiocyanation of 4H‐Pyrido[1,2‐a] pyrimidin‐4‐ones Under Benign Conditions

AbstractA lenient approach for regioselective C3−H chalcogenation and thiocyanation of 4H‐pyrido[1,2‐a] pyrimidin‐4‐ones is developed using visible light photocatalysis. This operationally straightforward method furnishes a broad array of C‐3, Ar−S/Ar−Se and ‐SCN functionalized derivatives in moderate to high yields. This protocol employs visible light as an environmentally friendly energy source, cost effective inorganic persulfate‐based oxidant and easily procurable dichalcogenides for regioselective C−H chalcogenation of the substrate at room temperature. Further, regioselective thiocyanation of 4H‐pyrido[1,2‐a] pyrimidin‐4‐ones was also developed. Mechanistic path for these transformations has been proposed based on light on/off and Stern‐Volmer studies as well as quantum yield calculations.

The CJEU’s give-and-give relationship with executive actors in times of crisis

AbstractIn a crisis, ordinary rules must often give way to a more expedient approach. Such emergency competences tend to favour executive decision-making over legislative procedures. In a European Union (EU) shaken by successive crises, this situation risks leading to permanent competence creep. While considerable attention has been devoted to the impact of crisis on legal and political decision-making within the Union, the position of the Court of Justice (CJEU) – and its impact on the distribution of powers within the EU – has been less researched. This Article fills the gap by exploring how the Court reviews the exercise of power in times of crisis by executive actors at the Union and Member State levels. Using migration law as a case study, it qualitatively and quantitatively examines how the CJEU has responded to crisis both in its scrutiny of measures of containment, and through its adjudication of migration cases in general before and after the acute phase of the 2015 refugee crisis. The Article shows that the crisis has led the CJEU to take a more lenient approach towards the executive powers at both the Union and the Member State level. It argues that this effectively amounts to a withdrawal from the judicial control function and enables an expansion of executive power that is likely to have effects lasting beyond any given emergency.

Cannabis Regulation Through the “Without Right” Clause in Article 2(1) of EU Framework Decision 2004/757/jha on Illicit Drug Trafficking

Abstract Several EU states have shown initiatives towards a more lenient approach to the regulation of cannabis cultivation and trade for recreational use. One possibility that is being investigated is whether a national regulatory system for controlled trade of recreational cannabis can be developed in accordance of the EU Framework Decision 2004/757/jha. The ‘without right’ -clause in Article 2(1) of this decision, from a linguistic point of view, does seem to allow the introduction of such a licensing system. In fact, such a system would not cross the system or the purpose of the Framework Decision, if such licensing system does not result in cross-border effects or the hindering of transnational cooperation in combatting cross-border drug trafficking. However, this possibility is only of theoretical nature considering the clear and strict obligations ensuing from the UN narcotic drugs conventions. In order to regulate recreational cannabis within the boundaries of public international law, states can: (1) denounce the UN narcotic drugs conventions; (2) deviate from the obligations of the UN conventions on the basis of positive human rights obligations; (3) create an inter se agreement between like-minded states that deviates from the UN conventions; and (4) denounce the UN drugs conventions and re-access subsequently with a reservation allowing for regulation of recreational cannabis. We argue that these options can have a combined strengthening effect and indeed present a legally sound and politically viable opportunity to regulate recreational cannabis without denouncing the whole UN drug control system.

Differential testing for machine learning: an analysis for classification algorithms beyond deep learning

Differential testing is a useful approach that uses different implementations of the same algorithms and compares the results for software testing. In recent years, this approach was successfully used for test campaigns of deep learning frameworks. There is little knowledge about the application of differential testing beyond deep learning. Within this article, we want to close this gap for classification algorithms. We conduct a case study using Scikit-learn, Weka, Spark MLlib, and Caret in which we identify the potential of differential testing by considering which algorithms are available in multiple frameworks, the feasibility by identifying pairs of algorithms that should exhibit the same behavior, and the effectiveness by executing tests for the identified pairs and analyzing the deviations. While we found a large potential for popular algorithms, the feasibility seems limited because, often, it is not possible to determine configurations that are the same in other frameworks. The execution of the feasible tests revealed that there is a large number of deviations for the scores and classes. Only a lenient approach based on statistical significance of classes does not lead to a huge amount of test failures. The potential of differential testing beyond deep learning seems limited for research into the quality of machine learning libraries. Practitioners may still use the approach if they have deep knowledge about implementations, especially if a coarse oracle that only considers significant differences of classes is sufficient.

Challenging Folk-Linguistics: Grammatical and Spelling Variation in Students’ Writing in Hebrew on WhatsApp and in Essays

Abstract With the increasing use of mobile phones among young people, there is growing public concern about possible detrimental effects of digital writing on learners’ literacy and language skills. We ask whether and to what extent nonstandard forms typical of spoken Hebrew and of digital communication are also found in the formal writing of high-school students. To this end, we compare between two corpora of Modern Hebrew: a naturalistic corpus of 7,120 WhatsApp messages (35,085 words) written by 80 students in three classroom WhatsApp groups and a corpus of 291 school essays (34,700 words) written by 291 students. The findings indicate that a rather clear distinction is maintained between adherence to traditional formal writing in school essays as opposed to a more lenient approach on WhatsApp. The findings thus provide empirical linguistic evidence challenging the predominant folk-linguistic public ideology.

United States Foreign Policy: Peace Agreement with the Taliban in 2020

The events of 9/11 of 2001 led the United States to issue a Global War on Terror (GWOT) policy. One implementation of this policy is the war against Al-Qaeda groups under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The U.S. has launched several attacks against the Taliban, killing many U.S. soldiers and civil society in the region. After decades of fighting the Taliban with military force, the U.S. ultimately signed a peace treaty with the Taliban on February 29, 2020. Although the U.S. military is still at the forefront of warfare, it chooses to use a lenient approach to its war opponents. This research aims to determine the factors influencing the United States to enter a peace agreement with the Taliban in 2020. The theory used is the decision-making theory. This research will use the qualitative research method and data from scientific writings and credible news that discuss related or similar topics. The findings in this research imply that three factors impacted the peace agreement with the Taliban signed by The U.S. in 2020. They are domestic politics, economic and military capacity, and international context.

Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands

Paul Barba's Country of the Cursed and the Driven narrates the intertwined development of two systems of bondage—one of Indigenous peoples, the other of people of African descent—in the Texas borderlands from the sixteenth century to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Based on sources in Texas, this longue durée study raises important questions about what defines slavery and how two coercive labor systems shaped one another in a region marked by nearly four centuries of violent contestation.By enslaving Native peoples in war and ransoming captives during peacetime, Spaniards sought to control—and in the process transform—the Texas borderlands. But by the mid-eighteenth century, the Comanche began to threaten Spanish rule in Texas. Incentivized to participate in the slave trade by the Spanish demand for labor, the Comanche kidnapped Apache women and children, selling them into an ever-expanding commercial market in the Southwest. The lucrative trade in stolen horses, mules, and people attracted the attention of traders from the United States, at the same time that Comanche raiding forced Spanish and, later, Mexican officials to recruit Anglo-Americans like Moses Austin to “civilize” Texas. The Anglo-Americans who had settled in Mexican Texas believed that slavery was essential to their enterprise. When the Mexican government abolished slavery and took a more lenient approach to Native peoples, the Anglo-Americans revolted, establishing an independent republic. The number of enslaved African Americans skyrocketed after Texas secured its independence from Mexico. With trading opportunities expanding, Comanche also extended their slaving operations into Mexico but ultimately found themselves threatened by the settler colonial ambitions of white Texans.This book is part of an important trend in United States borderlands history to consider Black and Native peoples together—an approach pioneered by Latin American historians like Rachel O'Toole, Marcela Echeverri, and Yuko Miki, among others. Barba does not simply compare the experiences of Black and Native peoples: he argues that their experiences in bondage and captivity both qualified as slavery. To make this argument, Barba defines slavery “as a personal condition of subjugation that is (1) sustained by the use and threat of violence and by sociocultural stigma and (2) forced upon victims for the purposes of enhancing the disposition (social, psychic, economic, or otherwise) of the slaver” (p. 9; emphasis in original). From this perspective, slavery arose less from structural racism or legal regimes that defined people as property—one of the factors on which scholars have focused—than from diverse economic and cultural factors.Country of the Cursed and the Driven contributes to a long-standing debate among historians over whether, and to what extent, Indigenous peoples practiced slavery. Generally, the debate turns on kin incorporation: captives who retained a marginal or subordinate status are called slaves, while those who were incorporated into Indigenous societies are not. Barba, however, rejects this distinction, arguing that kin incorporation was one of the defining features of both Native and Black slavery. Spaniards “adopted” Native slaves as godchildren. Comanche men married enslaved women though these relationships were founded on and often consummated by violence. Even chattel slavery in the United States was based on the fiction, and occasionally the reality, of kin incorporation. Enslavers not only styled themselves as paternalistic figures but also established more literal family ties with African American women through rape.This expansive definition of slavery reveals interesting connections between Native and Black slavery and the ways in which both systems influenced one another. At the same time, Country of the Cursed and the Driven collapses some important distinctions between casta in New Spain and race in the United States. The book applies the racial categories that developed in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century United States—Black, Indigenous, and white—to Spanish and Mexican Texas. Español, for instance, is translated as white, even though Spaniards were also trigueños, morenos, and even oscuros, as Joanne Rappaport, Christina Sue, and Jorge Delgadillo Núñez have shown (pp. 51, 77). The book might have benefited from greater attention to scholarship on Latin America, particularly by Latin American historians, and from deeper work in Latin American archives. Although Barba has conducted extensive research in Texas repositories, including municipal records that date back to the colonial era and transcriptions of documents from the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico and the Archivo General de Indias, Spanish and Mexican archives are surprisingly absent for a book that is primarily about Spanish- and Mexican-era Texas. Nonetheless, Country of the Cursed and the Driven is a thought-provoking book whose strengths outweigh its weaknesses.

Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882-1955 by Ying Jia Tan (review).

Reviewed by: Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882–1955 by Ying Jia Tan Zhaojin Zeng (bio) Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882–1955 By Ying Jia Tan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. Pp. 294. China, the largest fossil energy consumer today, recently vowed to decarbonize its economy. The country has announced plans to reach peak emissions in 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. These ambitious goals have once again drawn wide attention to the development trajectory of China as a carbon economy. In Recharging China in War and Revolution, 1882–1955, Ying Jia Tan offers a timely account of China's energy history, detailing its electrical development from the late Qing to the early Mao periods. Tan discusses three interrelated aspects of China's electrification: local efforts to secure electricity supply, national strategies to pursue energy independence and economic sovereignty, and, at the planetary level, China's entry through accelerated industrial growth into the Anthropocene Epoch. Framing electrical industries as a central site for power struggles and technological competition, Tan argues that the intertwined processes of infrastructure development and state-building gave rise to resilient political and economic institutions in China after war and revolution. A multilevel analysis of individuals, agencies, and regimes pioneering China's electrical growth, Tan's book sheds new insights on the complex relationship between energy, politics, and state-making in the early twentieth century. [End Page 921] As Tan reveals, China's path toward a carbon-intensive economy stemmed from constant energy crises. Chronic power shortages in everyday life and power loss during wartime became the major impetus for governments and elites to build and control the electrical infrastructure. The engineer-bureaucrats, in particular, brokered the electrification process. They did so while vying for dominance over the new infrastructure. In the Lower Yangtze areas, where cotton mills and silk filatures were concentrated, newly built power stations and grids generated not only electricity but also tensions and conflicts between local elites, government officials, and factory workers. The grip on energy supply allowed the Shanghai Municipal Council to intervene in the labor strikes at the British and Japanese mills. Local power stations also became a weapon for Huzhou industrial elites to fend off the Nationalist government's nationalization efforts. In these two cases, Tan highlights the crucial role of electricity production and consumption in the shaping of everyday politics and nation-building in the early Republican era. Tracing the footsteps of engineer-bureaucrats, Tan continues to examine how wartime electrification centralized state power. The Sino-Japanese War and World War II witnessed a new wave of energy-infrastructure development spearheaded by different authorities: Nationalist China, Imperial Japan, and the United States. In the north, the Japanese regime rationalized coal distribution and reorganized the regional power networks. The Nationalists in the southwest also resorted to a greater degree of state intervention. Tan shows that the Electrical Works represented the Chinese state's remarkable efforts to improve energy efficiency by applying advanced technology, optimizing resource use, and establishing industrial standards. China's wartime energy story also involves the transnational flow of human capital. American dam builders and Chinese engineers made the joint—albeit unsuccessful—attempt to survey the Yangtze Gorges in the hope of reconfiguring China's energy geography. Nevertheless, the war deepened China's coal reliance, making the country march further toward a carbon-intensive economy. Electrical industries transformed into political assets in the postwar years. Failing to appropriate major power plants doomed the Nationalist regime's plan to restore economic and social order. The Communists, by contrast, chose a more cooperative and lenient approach toward engineering elites. In so doing, the new regime turned the electrical infrastructure into the economic foundation for its political rule. Following the founding of the People's Republic, electricity supply further increased, but mostly through labor mobilization and social control rather than new capital investments. Those practices strengthened the state's control over the industries, paving the way for a state-led, labor-intensive developmental approach that descended on the country after 1955. Tan's narrative, ending on the eve of China's accelerated industrial growth, thus invites scholars to [End Page 922] explore how energy continued to propel China...

Prostitution in socialist Yugoslavia: from Stalinism to the Yugoslav way

ABSTRACT This article explores how Yugoslav communists formulated their ideas about prostitution, and how these ideas informed their approach towards sex workers. Yugoslav communists’ attitudes towards prostitution were a complex combination of Stalinist gender policies, the Partisan experience of the Second World War, and attempts to find a Yugoslav path following conflict with the Soviet Union. The first postwar Yugoslav laws closely resembled Soviet models of the 1930s, but transferring a Soviet approach also meant adaptation for the Yugoslav setting. Yugoslav communists expected prostitution to disappear after the revolution and introduced harsh measures to punish sex workers. These punishments included forced labour, detainment in centres of ‘re-education’ and expulsion from their hometowns. Broader changes in attitudes towards women’s sexuality, however, led to a more lenient approach in the 1950s. The state opted to abolish labour colonies, ‘re-education’ centres and harsh administrative measures, but prostitution remained illegal. Finally, this article examines how prostitution was depicted in films, often the only platform within which sex workers were visible.

Incorporating climate justice into legal reasoning: shifting towards a risk-based approach to causation in climate litigation

This article examines whether the widely accepted political theory contributions on fair burden sharing, harm avoidance and a just distribution of the remaining carbon budget can (and ought to) be incorporated or reflected in judicial reasoning on causation in systemic rights-based climate litigation. It explores whether a wider use of the European Court of Human Rights’ lenient approach to causation at the national level could help overcome some of the causal difficulties that might otherwise excuse wealthy developed country governments that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights from responsibility. The article also considers how rights-based arguments might be a way of operationalizing climate justice in judicial reasoning in systemic rights-based climate cases in Europe.

In Silico Characterisation of Putative Prophages in Lactobacillaceae Used in Probiotics for Vaginal Health.

While live biotherapeutics offer a promising approach to optimizing vaginal microbiota, the presence of functional prophages within introduced Lactobacillaceae strains could impact their safety and efficacy. We evaluated the presence of prophages in 895 publicly available Lactobacillaceae genomes using Phaster, Phigaro, Phispy, Prophet and Virsorter. Prophages were identified according to stringent (detected by ≥4 methods) or lenient criteria (detected by ≥2 methods), both with >80% reciprocal sequence overlap. The stringent approach identified 448 prophages within 359 genomes, with 40.1% genomes harbouring at least one prophage, while the lenient approach identified 1671 prophages within 83.7% of the genomes. To confirm our in silico estimates in vitro, we tested for inducible prophages in 57 vaginally-derived and commercial Lactobacillaceae isolates and found inducible prophages in 61.4% of the isolates. We characterised the in silico predicted prophages based on weighted gene repertoire relatedness and found that most belonged to the Siphoviridae or Myoviridae families. ResFam and eggNOG identified four potential antimicrobial resistance genes within the predicted prophages. Our results suggest that while Lactobacillaceae prophages seldomly carry clinically concerning genes and thus unlikely a pose a direct risk to human vaginal microbiomes, their high prevalence warrants the characterisation of Lactobacillaceae prophages in live biotherapeutics.

The Relationship Between State Aid and Nuclear Energy and A Legal Analysis of Nuclear Energy State Aid Cases in Terms of European Union State Aid Rules

State aid to the nuclear energy sector has increased significantly within the last decade and in parallel to this increase, controversy about giving state aid to nuclear energy has soared. In addition to this controversy, the existence of a special treaty for nuclear energy, called the Euratom Treaty, exclusion of nuclear energy from the ‘Guidelines on State aid for environmental protection and energy 2014-2020’ and very intrinsic risks and market failuresrelated to the nuclear energy sector distinguish nuclear state aid cases from other energy state aid cases. Considering the scarcity of research dealing with increasing nuclear state aid cases in detail, this research intended to focus on the relationship between state aid and nuclear energy and analyse prominent nuclear state aid cases. During the research, prominent nuclear state aid cases which have shaped the case law and related legislations were analysed. It could be briefly concluded that nuclear state aid cases will likely continue to increase as energy markets become more competitive. But it is very clear that intrinsic risks of nuclear energy and related market failures stemming from imperfect market conditions are keenly appreciated by the European Commission and the European Courts, and nuclear cases are treated more leniently in line with these conditions. This sends a very clear message that the lenient approach of the Commission and the Courts toward the nuclear state aid cases will remain as long as market failures and the Euratom Treaty exist and in this regard, the absence of guidelines for nuclear energy, while it seems like a disadvantage, will ensure the needed flexibility of the Commission when making its state aid assessment in nuclear state aid cases.

MISTAKE AND SURETYSHIP: AVOIDING THE SPECTRE OF BRINK V HUMPHRIES & JEWELL (PTY) LTD

The nettlesome matter of operative mistake and suretyships tucked away in credit applications tends to find its way into the law reports on a rather frequent basis. This phenomenon is hardly surprising because in the cut and thrust of modern commerce, and even more so in lean times, individuals are keen to apply for credit on behalf of the corporate entities which they represent, but less eager to stand in for these debts when they cannot be serviced. From the contractual perspective of mistake, these cases tend tofollow a familiar pattern. Commonly, a member of a close corporation or director of a private company applies on behalf of the close corporation or company, as the case may be, for some or other form of credit from another party. Usually, within a business context, credit will not be granted without some form of security, and in these instances more often than not the representative is required to agree to a personal suretyship in favour of the creditor, which is often embodied in the credit application form itself. Oncethe representative has appended him or her signature to the application form, he or she inexorably finds himself or herself simultaneously bound as surety and co-principal debtor, the formal requirements for a suretyship agreement having been complied with (as prescribed by s 6 of the General Law Amendment Act 50 of 1956). On the whole older case law displays a reluctancy on the part of the judiciary to excuse a surety on the basis of material mistake in such circumstances, but in Brink v Humphries & Jewell (Pty) Ltd (2005 2 SA 419 (SCA)) the Supreme Court of Appeal adopted a far more lenient approach in favour of the surety, and perhaps heralded a not too subtle change in the law. This note examines the way in which the courts have adjudicated similar cases, and specifically whether more recently they have reinforced the generally stricter approach of old or been prepared to follow the path which Brink seemed to have cleared.

ONCE AGAIN IUSTUS ERROR AND SURETYSHIPS Absa Bank Ltd v Trzebiatowsky 2012 (5) SA 134 (ECP)

In Absa Bank Ltd v Trzebiatowsky (2012 (5) SA 134 (ECP)) the court was faced with a defence that has become all too common within the context of suretyship agreements, namely that of iustus error, or rather material and reasonable mistake rendering the contract void. Traditionally the courts have been wary of releasing a signatory of a contractual document from liability in the absence of some form of misrepresentation on the part of the contract assertor, but in Brink v Humphries & Jewell (Pty) Ltd (2005 (2) SA 419 (SCA)) the Supreme Court of Appeal adopted a far more lenient approach, one which opened the door for potential abuse of this defence, especially it seems so where suretyships are involved. The Trzebiatowsky decision is relevant for confirming the more traditional approach as opposed to the one largely ushered in by Brink and for sensibly reflecting the issues relevant to adjudicating these cases.

A Stress Test for German Nationalism: Protective Custody in Alsace-Lorraine during the First World War

Abstract When the First World War broke out, the French government declared the return of Alsace-Lorraine its only public war aim, arguing that the population was ‘French in spirit’. In an age rife with claims of national self-determination, trapped in a protracted war of attrition and facing a nationally ambivalent population, the German state soon came under enormous pressure to ensure the loyalty and patriotism of the inhabitants of its western borderland. This article examines why Imperial Germany failed to meet this ‘stress test’. It focuses on the crucial but hitherto neglected issue of protective custody (Schutzhaft), whereby police and military authorities were able to arrest and detain ‘suspect’ civilians without charge or trial. The article finds that protective custody, an emergency measure under martial law, played a central role in the failure of German policy in Alsace-Lorraine: it undermined the rule of law, shifted the focus onto national dissent and gave rise to an atmosphere of suspicion and fear. The article also demonstrates that the Reichstag successfully put limits on protective custody in the second half of the war. Yet leaving the authoritarian doctrine of enforcing national loyalty in place, the more lenient administrative approach had a disintegrative rather than a stabilizing effect, preparing the ground for widespread disaffection with German rule months before the war ended.