Suchergebnisse

Nowadays, social reorganization of rural territories is topical issue. More and more people, who don't belong to agricultural corporations, live on these territories. This phenomenon creates some disagreements. On the one hand, new residents think that landscape is only their living environment. According to them, landscape must be suitable for hobbies. New residents wish this landscape not to evolve. On the other hand, farmers don't understand these new expectations, which sometimes contradictory their activity. This situation results from a lack of knowledge about the processes of landscape evolution. For agronomist point of view, these processes are deeply linked to agricultural system changes. One cannot see landscape just as a picture of a territory, but more as the result of economic activities. The main objective of our model is to clarify and to explain relationships between public policies, agricultural system changes and landscape changes. Two stages are necessary for this modelling. Firstly, we must understand how public policies are applied and how these policies change strategies of agricultural systems. Secondly, we try to assess landscape evolutions, which are due to the reorganization of agricultural systems. Our modelling is based on medium altitude areas where the main part of land is managed by agricultural systems. The Paysagri model is based on three concepts: The landscape is the measured variable. Considering geoagronomy, landscape can be seen as a puzzle made of many pieces. According to this point of view, each piece is both a component and a consequence of a sociological and economical system. In our model, landscape is a puzzle made of all agricultural plots of the studied territory. The plot is the elementary object in the model. That's why it is assumed homogeneous; i.e. the model doesn't handle phenomena that occur inside the plot. We keep the only information that is essential for the farmer's decisions. Texture and age characterize a plot. The textures are " natural meadow ", " artificial meadow ", " crop " or " unused ". The transition for one texture to another is the result of agricultural practices on the plot during a year. The agricultural practices are the factors that modify the texture of the plots. In the present version of our model, we only implemented the dairy farming functioning. This choice is due to the fact that dairy farming is the most important activity of the studied areas (north of the Massif central). The model is based on the point of view of the breeder. The herd and its feeding are of great importance to the farmer's decision process. We modelled two kinds of farming activities: the usual ones and exceptional ones. The usual ones are fodder production and herd grazing. To do that, the breeder must carefully choose the plots for each activity, according to production capacities of each plot. The second ones correspond to the agricultural system adaptations. The breeder can give up some plots, for example because of their lack of production capacities. He can also use new plots that he recently inserted in the agricultural system or that were unused for some time. These exceptional practices are essential in the Paysagri model. They represent the most important variations of area used by the agricultural systems. In our model, a special attribute named "landscape perception" is associated with each breeder. That's why the breeder has a key role in his agricultural system changes. The "landscape perception" attribute guides the farmer's choice concerning the exceptional practices. This attribute is an original point of our model, because technical and economical facets of the farmers are not only aspects taken into account. The breeder's feeling about his occupation, his living environment, his way of life. are numerous elements considered in the model. Public policies are the first cause of agricultural system changes. They influence the breeder's strategy and the impact of the farming activities on landscape. Therefore, those policies often act indirectly on landscape. They are not included in the model, but there are outside factors that modify the behaviour of the model. To build Paysagri, we used an object oriented approach. Although our model is not a Multi Agent Model yet, our object-oriented approach will allow the implementation of agents as soon as it will be necessary. Presently, it is based on discrete event simulation method. We used the "Unified Modelling Language" to formalize the model. Then we chose the "Python" language for computer implementation, because it is a powerful object-oriented programming language with very clear syntax. Starting from a given landscape, the software performs simulations. Each year, it computes the choices of every breeder and their consequences on the territory. It produces a new landscape, which is the gathering of simulated plot textures. As an example, the simulation of 15 years, with 100 plots and 2 breeders takes about 3 minutes on a PIII 800 Mhz computer. We inserted the Paysagri model into a larger project that allows us to work with "Geographic Information System" data. We generate both maps or 3D realistic landscape images. We plan to use the data resulting from our model into two different ways. Firstly, we would like to use Paysagri as a research model. We think it could help to better understand the relationships between landscape production and agricultural system development. Secondly, results will be used as a basis for discussion in the frame of construction of shared territory projects. For example, our model could be used to put the emphasis on the farmer's role in landscape evolution.

People who want to start their own business often try to survive or to die again on their own. The very fact that "others", apart from family, friends and fools who invest in their venture, are quickly seen as probable competitors, who want the steal the idea, prevent start ups from cooperation with partners. Setting up a personal network might even cause more risk, since one has to share ideas for technological development of the idea or look for a market for it. The consequence is that within 5 years most new start ups are already out of business (OECD, 1998). The key would be cooperation with others, but with whom and to what extent? Since most of the engineers know that they to develop an innovation, they might need up to a whole R&D lab to help, they might be less reluctant to cooperate than others. On the other hand, they might forget to look for a market or cooperate with a potential customer to design the product, for instance in the ICT-sector (see Van Luxemburg et al.), because of a technology push syndrome? Authors, such as Birley (Several publications from 1985 on) have not failed during the last ten years to develop the idea of and study the effect of networking and strategic alliancing between start ups, entrepreneurship as team work and at least a shared concept for starters who have the same objective in mind. University incubators, such as the one of the Imperial College in London are very successful in promoting the idea (see Theunissen, 2002), but is this the case only in the UK or the US, where the culture of free enterprise is more strongly developed? What about countries, such as France, The Netherlands, and Germany? What is the position, for instance of the entrepreneurial and innovative engineer who wants to start his/her own business? May a lack or a fear to cooperate with others be a result of how engineers traditionally educated in those countries? In 1998 Albert Rubinstein identified "technical entrepreneurship in the firm" as the focus of the future of our intellectual discourse on technology and innovation management. How entrepreneurial are French, German and Dutch engineers and what is their innovation culture and that of the firms they work for? Are those who are leaving those firms to start their own business, willing to cooperate with others, not to fade away in splendid isolation? This chapter certainly cannot answer all those questions, but it can try to develop a model of the entrepreneurial and innovative European engineer and his/her interaction with the environment through networks and cooperation illustrated with examples from the selected countries. This is backed up with some answers to 8 research questions related to data about the general economic environment the entrepreneur works in, the rate and difficulty of self-employment, such as the costs, satisfaction levels, and the possible effect of national culture on willingness to start and the profile traits of the successful innovator and entrepreneur from different empirical sources for France, The Netherlands and Germany. Cooperation between start ups in Europe is certainly not a question of only national culture, a merge or a clash between professional and corporate cultures might foster or hamper as well. Entrepreneurial and innovative engineers build up their experiences of such kind through life time. This chapter is based upon data from 3 different European countries which includes a survey among French engineers (questionnaires and interviews from entrepreneur and non entrepreneur engineers) and a case comparison of 12 innovative German and Dutch firms. How does this transition take place in different parts of Europe? How may engineers become successful entrepreneurs through a happy reconciliation of technological and marketing orientations within a given historical context. Finally this chapter addresses the question how to foster cooperation between European start ups for a better enterprising and innovative culture. Research projects aiming at this issue, might start as comparing national entrepreneurship phenomena, such as suggested partly by Lichtenberger and Naullean (1993) and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1999), followed by studying cooperation, networks and alliances (Aliouat, 2000) including globalisation (Birley and Stockley, 1998) and the heterogeneity of teams, for instance by mixing marketers and engineers (Bantel and Jackson, 1989, Geletkanycz and Hambrick, 1997, and Shaw and Shaw, 1998). Cooperation requires more mobility. Within the European Union, the individual member states face rather an influx of economic refugees (who might create excellent start ups, by the way) than that they can welcome an invasion of entrepreneurial and innovative engineers from another member state. Which French engineer would like to start a business with a German colleague who could implement his idea perfectly? Which German engineer seeks a market-oriented partner in Britain or The Netherlands to fulfill his dream of a successful start up? Which Dutch engineer looks for technology entrepreneurship in France and vice versa? It seems as if new virtual borders prevent start ups also to cooperate. That why this chapter presents a summarizing model of a new cultural identity of Europe based upon Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Mobility using the onion culture metaphor by Hofstede and Schein (both 1991) to increase the mobility of the European engineer (Ulijn and Gould, 2002). A new culture is needed to foster the cooperation between high, low and other tech start ups to facilitate a truly European technology entrepreneurship.

People who want to start their own business often try to survive or to die again on their own. The very fact that "others", apart from family, friends and fools who invest in their venture, are quickly seen as probable competitors, who want the steal the idea, prevent start ups from cooperation with partners. Setting up a personal network might even cause more risk, since one has to share ideas for technological development of the idea or look for a market for it. The consequence is that within 5 years most new start ups are already out of business (OECD, 1998). The key would be cooperation with others, but with whom and to what extent? Since most of the engineers know that they to develop an innovation, they might need up to a whole R&D lab to help, they might be less reluctant to cooperate than others. On the other hand, they might forget to look for a market or cooperate with a potential customer to design the product, for instance in the ICT-sector (see Van Luxemburg et al.), because of a technology push syndrome? Authors, such as Birley (Several publications from 1985 on) have not failed during the last ten years to develop the idea of and study the effect of networking and strategic alliancing between start ups, entrepreneurship as team work and at least a shared concept for starters who have the same objective in mind. University incubators, such as the one of the Imperial College in London are very successful in promoting the idea (see Theunissen, 2002), but is this the case only in the UK or the US, where the culture of free enterprise is more strongly developed? What about countries, such as France, The Netherlands, and Germany? What is the position, for instance of the entrepreneurial and innovative engineer who wants to start his/her own business? May a lack or a fear to cooperate with others be a result of how engineers traditionally educated in those countries? In 1998 Albert Rubinstein identified "technical entrepreneurship in the firm" as the focus of the future of our intellectual discourse on technology and innovation management. How entrepreneurial are French, German and Dutch engineers and what is their innovation culture and that of the firms they work for? Are those who are leaving those firms to start their own business, willing to cooperate with others, not to fade away in splendid isolation? This chapter certainly cannot answer all those questions, but it can try to develop a model of the entrepreneurial and innovative European engineer and his/her interaction with the environment through networks and cooperation illustrated with examples from the selected countries. This is backed up with some answers to 8 research questions related to data about the general economic environment the entrepreneur works in, the rate and difficulty of self-employment, such as the costs, satisfaction levels, and the possible effect of national culture on willingness to start and the profile traits of the successful innovator and entrepreneur from different empirical sources for France, The Netherlands and Germany. Cooperation between start ups in Europe is certainly not a question of only national culture, a merge or a clash between professional and corporate cultures might foster or hamper as well. Entrepreneurial and innovative engineers build up their experiences of such kind through life time. This chapter is based upon data from 3 different European countries which includes a survey among French engineers (questionnaires and interviews from entrepreneur and non entrepreneur engineers) and a case comparison of 12 innovative German and Dutch firms. How does this transition take place in different parts of Europe? How may engineers become successful entrepreneurs through a happy reconciliation of technological and marketing orientations within a given historical context. Finally this chapter addresses the question how to foster cooperation between European start ups for a better enterprising and innovative culture. Research projects aiming at this issue, might start as comparing national entrepreneurship phenomena, such as suggested partly by Lichtenberger and Naullean (1993) and Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner (1999), followed by studying cooperation, networks and alliances (Aliouat, 2000) including globalisation (Birley and Stockley, 1998) and the heterogeneity of teams, for instance by mixing marketers and engineers (Bantel and Jackson, 1989, Geletkanycz and Hambrick, 1997, and Shaw and Shaw, 1998). Cooperation requires more mobility. Within the European Union, the individual member states face rather an influx of economic refugees (who might create excellent start ups, by the way) than that they can welcome an invasion of entrepreneurial and innovative engineers from another member state. Which French engineer would like to start a business with a German colleague who could implement his idea perfectly? Which German engineer seeks a market-oriented partner in Britain or The Netherlands to fulfill his dream of a successful start up? Which Dutch engineer looks for technology entrepreneurship in France and vice versa? It seems as if new virtual borders prevent start ups also to cooperate. That why this chapter presents a summarizing model of a new cultural identity of Europe based upon Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Mobility using the onion culture metaphor by Hofstede and Schein (both 1991) to increase the mobility of the European engineer (Ulijn and Gould, 2002). A new culture is needed to foster the cooperation between high, low and other tech start ups to facilitate a truly European technology entrepreneurship.

Am Beispiel Nanotechnologien widmet sich die vorliegende Arbeit der Frage, wie Ver-sicherungsunternehmen neue Technikrisiken (Emerging Risks) bewerten, wie sie sich angesichts vielseitiger Wissenslücken verhalten und wie sich dies auf das gesamtgesellschaftliche Risikomanagement von Technologien auswirkt. Um den Umgang mit Nanotechnologien im Kontext unterschiedlicher Organisationstypen und Erwartungen zu untersuchen, wird eine neo-institutionalistische Theorieperspektive verwendet. Für den empirischen Teil der Arbeit wurden 39 leitfadengestützte Interviews mit Vertreterinnen und Vertretern von Erst- und Rückversicherern, Industrieunternehmen, Versicherungsbrokern, Investoren und Ratingagenturen, zentralen Einrichtungen der breiten Öffentlichkeit und der staatlichen Regulierung sowie Forschungseinrichtungen geführt. Emerging Risks sind Versicherungsrisiken, die sich durch ein hohes Maß an Nichtwissen und Schadenspotenzial auszeichnen. Beide Merkmale ergeben sich aus dem Zusammenwirken technischer Bedingungen und der sozialen Einbettung von Versicherungsunternehmen. Nanotechnologien als Emerging Risks sind primär durch zahlreiche Wissenslücken hinsichtlich Technologiemerkmalen, künftigen sowie bereits aufgetretener Schäden geprägt. Das Schadenspotenzial wird in den meisten Fällen als weniger problematisch eingeschätzt. Bedenken hinsichtlich möglicher Schäden richten sich verstärkt an künftige, aktive Nanotechnologiegenerationen. Erwartet wird, dass vorrangig die Industrieversicherung betroffen ist. Gleichzeitig wird bei einer zunehmenden Verbreitung der Technologien eine Ausweitung auf die Sparten der Sach- und Lebensversicherung für wahrscheinlich gehalten. Die bisherigen Aktivitäten der Versicherer beschränken sich fast ausschließlich auf Monitoringbemühungen, insbesondere die Erstellung von Risikomatrizen. Abschließende Risikobewertungen liegen momentan auch nach teilweise mehrjähriger Aktivität bei keiner der Organisationen vor. Das Verhalten der Versicherungsunternehmen wird durch vier Institutionen bestimmt: Versicherbarkeit, Konkurrenz am Markt, Risikopartnerschaft und -wahrnehmung. Entscheidungen über Versicherbarkeit sind im Fall von Nanotechnologien durch die Abwesenheit quantitativer, empirischer Daten gekennzeichnet. Diese werden durch subjektive, qualitative Expertenurteile und Informationsmittel ersetzt und sind abhängig von der Ausgestaltung der Versicherungsverträge. Ein Faktor, der einer engeren Vertragsgestaltung entgegenwirkt, ist die Konkurrenzsituation unter Versicherern. Im Kontext unsicherer Handlungssituationen und der Abwesenheit vollständiger vertraglicher Erfassung spielt zudem Vertrauen in die "Risikopartnerschaft" eine wichtige Rolle für die Beteiligten. Die vierte Institution bilden branchenweit geteilte Wahrnehmungsmuster ("frames"), die sich durch frühere Schadensfälle und Debatten herausbilden. Diese bestehen zum einen in Analogien zu früheren Risiken (Asbest und Gentechnologie), zum andern in geteilten Risikobegriffen und Konzepten, die Risikosachverhalte sinnhaft erschließen. Die künftige Entwicklung des Themas Nanotechnologien hängt von Ereignissen ab, die die Aufmerksamkeit für das Thema erhalten oder verstärken. Die wichtigsten Ereignisse im weiteren Versicherungsumfeld, die zu Veränderungen in der aktuellen Situation führen können, sind wissenschaftliche Befunde zu Risikopotenzialen, neue Gesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung und ein Wandel der öffentlichen Meinung zu Nanotechnologierisiken. Treten in der Zukunft keine signifikanten Ereignisse ein, die belegen, dass Nanotechnologien als Risiko ein hohes Schadenspotenzial bergen, wird das Thema aller Voraussicht nach in den kommenden Jahren kontinuierlich an Bedeutung verlieren. Dem gegenüber steht ein diskontinuierliches Szenario bei Schadenseintritten, bei dem die Versicherer aufgrund der veränderten Risikobewertung und bisherigen Framings des Themas zu einer Verengung des Versicherungsschutzes bis hin zu Ausschlüssen angehalten wären. Aktuell scheint eine Verengung der Zeichnungsbedingungen für Nanotechnologien weder notwendig noch durchsetzbar. Stattdessen ergeben sich drei Handlungsmöglichkeiten: Monitoring, Dialog mit dem engeren und Dialog mit dem weiteren Versicherungsumfeld. Monitoring im Hinblick auf Bedingungen der Versicherbarkeit bildet die momentan vorrangige Handlungsstrategie in der Versicherungswirtschaft. Dialoge mit dem engeren Versicherungsumfeld können neben einem Mehr an Informationen zur Versicherbarkeit zu einer Steigerung wechselseitigen Vertrauens sowie einer Mitgestaltung der Risikoframes führen. Eine zweite Dialogform bezieht das weitere Versicherungsumfeld in den Austausch von Informationen und Positionen mit ein. Beide Formen des Dialogs fanden aber in der Vergangenheit nur in begrenztem Umfang statt. Betrachtet man die Rolle der Versicherer im gesamtgesellschaftlichen Risikomanagement, wird deutlich, dass eine Vielzahl von Akteuren das Verhalten der Versicherer beeinflusst und ein zunehmendes Bewusstsein für diese Wechselwirkungen und gegenseitigen Rollenzuweisungen besteht. Versicherer wirken bei Nanotechnologien jedoch nicht gezielt auf die Entwicklung von Technologierisiken ein, sondern verhalten sich vorrangig reaktiv. Gegenwärtig ist alleine die Risikominderung bei Industrieunternehmen durch die Übertragung finanzieller Risiken von gesamtgesellschaftlicher Bedeutung. Versicherer haben in der Vergangenheit zum Framing des Risikos beigetragen. Aktuell sind sie diesbezüglich aber nicht mehr aktiv und wirken auch nicht an der Vorbeugung von Risiken im Rahmen des technischen Risikomanagements mit. Als eines der gegenwärtig bedeutsamsten Technologiefelder werden Nanotechnologien in den kommenden Jahren in der Industrie wie für den Verbraucher weiter an Bedeutung zunehmen. Bei Versicherern ist inzwischen ein Problembewusstsein etabliert, und erste Risikomanagementmaßnahmen wurden ergriffen. Wie sich das Thema in der Versicherungsindustrie weiterentwickeln wird, ist aber von der noch offenen Risikobewertung und dem Verhalten der Versicherer abhängig. Hinsichtlich der Informationsgewinnung, aber auch hinsichtlich stabilisierender Faktoren, wie der Risikopartnerschaft mit den Kunden und einer erhöhten Risikowahrnehmung, ist ein aktiver Austausch im Sinne eines offenen Dialogs mit dem primären Versicherungsumfeld der effektivste, wenn auch nicht einfachste Weg. Ein Dialog mit dem weiteren sozialen Umfeld wäre im Hinblick auf das gesellschaftliche Risikomanagement zu wünschen, ist aber in der aktuellen Situation von den Versicherungsunternehmen nicht zu erwarten. ; Using the example of nanotechnologies, the dissertation attends to the question how insurance companies assess the risks of emerging technologies, how they react in view of numerous knowledge gaps and how this has an effect on the technological risk management of society as a whole. In order to analyse the handling of nanotechnologies in the context of different types of organisations, a neo-institutional perspective is applied. The empirical part of the dissertation consists of 39 guided interviews with representatives of direct insurance companies and reinsurers, industrial enterprises, insurance brokers, investors and rating agencies, public institutions, governmental regulation authorities and research institutions. Emerging risks are insurance risks, which are characterised by a high level of ignorance and damage potential. Both arise from the combination of technical conditions and the social embeddedness of insurance companies. Nanotechnologies as emerging risks are primarily marked by a high degree of knowledge gaps with regards to characteristics of the technologies, present and future damages. The second feature of emerging risks, the damage potential, usually is estimated as less problematic. Concerns about possible damages are to an increasing extend directed at future nanotechnology generations. It is expected that industrial insurance is primarily affected. At the same time, with an increasing dispersal of nanotechnologies, an expansion towards other classes of insurance such as property and life is considered probable. The previous activities of insurance companies limit themselves to risk monitoring, particularly risk matrixes. However, even after several years of risk management activities, final risk assessments do not exist. The behaviour of insurance companies is determined by four institutions: insurability, competition in the market, risk partnership, and risk perception. In the case of nanotechnologies, decisions about insurability are characterized by the absence of empirical, quantitative data. These data are replaced by subjective, qualitative judgements of experts and information tools that depend on the form of the insurance contracts. One factor which opposes stricter underwriting rules is provided by the competition in the insurance markets. In the context of uncertain decision making and the absence of complete contractual coverage, trust in the so-called risk partnership is of central importance for those involved. The fourth institution is constituted by collective perception frames, which are developed because of earlier insurance damages and risk debates. These frames are provided on the one hand by analogies with prior risk cases (such as asbestos and genetically modified organisms), on the other hand by collectively shared notions and concepts of risk. The future development of the topic nanotechnology in the insurance industry depends on events that preserve or increase the awareness for risk issues. The most important events in the wider social setting of insurances that can lead to changes are scientific evidence about risk potentials, new legislation and jurisdiction and a change in the public opinion towards the risks of nanotechnologies. The most significant event in the closer social environment would be an industrial accident. Factors internal to the insurance industry are the framing of nanotechnologies as emerging risk similar to asbestos and genetic engineering, the behaviour of competitors, and the imitation of risk-monitoring activities. If there are no significant events in the future proving, that nanotechnologies as a risk hold a high damage potential, it is most likely that the issue will continuously become less significant in the years to come. This scenario can be contrasted with a development caused by extensive insurance damages. Because of a change in the risk assessment and because of existing framing patterns, stricter underwriting rules to the extend of excluding the coverage of nanotechnologies from the insurance contracts are possible. Currently, a narrowing of underwriting rules for nanotechnologies seems to be neither necessary nor enforceable. Instead, three different management options exist: Risk monitoring, a dialogue with the closer, and a dialogue with the wider social environment of insurance companies. Risk monitoring with regard to conditions of insurability represents the primary strategy applied by the insurance industry at the moment. Because of the extensive knowledge gaps in the case of nanotechnologies, these efforts, however, come up against their limits. Dialogues with the close insurance setting can help to broaden the information base, increase mutual trust and impact the collective risk frames. The second form of dialogue can include the wider social environment of insurance companies for the exchange of information and opinions. However in the past both forms of dialogue were limited in time and extend. Focusing on the role of insurance companies in the societal governance of risks, it becomes clear that a multitude of actors involved impact on their behaviour, and that there is a growing consciousness for the interdependencies and mutual expectations. However, insurance companies do not try to influence the development of technology risk directly but mostly portray a reactive behaviour. At the moment, the only contribution to the societal management of nanotechnology risks is constituted by the transfer of financial risks for industrial enterprises. Insurance companies contributed to the framing endeavours, primarily on the socio-economic dimension, in a period from 2002 to 2006. Currently though, insurance companies are not active in this field and do not contribute to the prevention of risk with regard to the technological risk management. Constituting one of the most important fields of technological development, nanotechnologies will become of major importance in the industrial sector as well as for consumers in the years to come. Insurance companies have established a consciousness for the risks and initiated first risk management activities. These however have declined in recent years. How the topic will develop for the industrial insurance depends on the behaviour of the insurance companies and the risk assessment that is still very much uncertain. With regard to the gathering of information and stabilising factors, such as the trust in partnership and heightened levels of risk perception, an open dialogue in the closer social environment seems to be the most promising strategy for insurance companies. A dialogue with the wider social surroundings would be desirable for the societal risk governance process but is unlikely to be carried out in the near future.

Some Rwandan youth show symptoms of trauma associated with the 1994 genocide despite being born after the traumatic events. Such symptoms suggest that young people have unlived memories haunting their minds, leading them to feel and behave similarly to adults who went through past traumas. How can one make sense of and treat those suffering from unlived traumatic pasts? This is a challenge for the hundreds of thousands of youths with no first-hand memories of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda but are still living in the shadow of trauma etched into the fabric of Rwandan society.The 1994 genocide in Rwanda took more than one million lives in just 100 days. Those who witnessed the genocide were deeply traumatized by its horrific acts. Even though the genocide happened before many of today's Rwandan youth were born, the personal experiences of parents, families, and communities continue to breed lasting pain, grief, anger, and disbelief in the generations that have followed. The latter may determine how this generation makes sense of this unlived past, which is crucial for peacebuilding.Factors to Help Make Sense of Traumatic MemoriesDespite the passage of time, family, social, and cultural narratives continue to influence how post-genocide youth interpret and understand the 1994 genocide. Sensemaking is processing the meaning of past, ongoing, and future events. To make sense of the past, younger generations in Rwanda depend on knowledge transmitted through family stories, collective memories, school curricula, and the cultural environment in which they grow. The media, material representations, and symbols found at memorial sites commemorating the genocide also play a pivotal role in shaping the understanding and unlived memories of post-genocide Rwandan youth.Intergenerational trauma and memory transmission are other means through which post-genocide youth interpret and internalize the events of the 1994 genocide—transmitted emotional and psychological scars from one generation to another influence how younger generations perceive and interpret historical trauma. Moreover, verbal communication of experiences in post-genocide societies, such as oral history and storytelling, strongly impacts the perspectives and cognitive frameworks of post-genocide youth. Barriers to Rwandan Youth's Ability to Understand an Unlived PastMaking sense of the dark chapter of violence that continues to mark Rwanda's identity remains a struggle for younger generations. As mentioned in my previous blog, parental silence, the ability of elders to disclose the horrific details of the past, and efforts to prevent children from developing feelings of hatred or desires for revenge have developed a mindset among older-generation Rwandans that children cannot or should not comprehend that past. Rwandan parents who were perpetrators of the genocide shy away from talking about the past to present a positive image of themselves to avoid shame for themselves and their children. Other parents harbor anger, which prevents them from moving beyond agonizing memories and providing truthful accounts of the traumatic past. Youth may also struggle to make sense of unlived traumatic pasts due to their perceptions that parents' experiences are made-up stories. An example from the Cambodian context shows that some parents avoid conveying past experiences to their progeny because they imagine that their children do not believe the genocide memories shared with them through transmitted knowledge. When parents share experiences, their accounts sometimes sound unbelievable to the next generations due to the temporal horizon: youth did not witness the past with their own eyes, and therefore, they cannot understand this past in the same way as those who have directly experienced it. Youth disbelief can lead to denial of the past as history seems implausible. The youth cannot concretely grasp it and imagine such traumatic events being carried out by human beings towards other human beings, especially in their own country and communities. Discourse about the past could help younger generations learn from history while developing a sense of positive self-identity and ensuring youth develop into adults who will champion the prevention of future violence. However, parents continue to remain silent as disclosing the past brings back painful memories. Consequently, descendants of both genocide survivors and perpetrators develop confusion instead of having a clear sense of what happened during the genocide. The inability to make a clear sense is heightened by incongruities between messages delivered at home, those taught in schools, and those transmitted in public remembrances and communities. As a result, people who suffer from psychological trauma—including Rwandan children who did not live through the genocide—are likely to develop negative perspectives about themselves and the world, which portends the risk of continued violence in Rwanda in the future.ConclusionThe experiences and perceptions of Rwanda's post-genocide youth reflect the enduring impact of the 1994 genocide. The inability of older generations to appropriately communicate memories affects Rwandan youth's ability to make sense of the unlived past, which could cause these memories to disappear from history. Yet, its disappearance may hinder youth from constructing their complete knowledge of the past and affect their identity construction, thus struggling to contribute to a peaceful society in the future. Space and approaches to promote intergenerational communication of the genocidal past memories from older generations to younger ones should be prioritized to facilitate young Rwandans to construct coherent narratives about the past and, thus, their identity. Families, at school, public debates about genocide history, and other settings would enable intergenerational communication of the past. And it is by having enough knowledge about this past that they can participate in the prevention of violent conflicts in the future. Marie Grace Kagoyire is a Rwandan researcher interested in understanding how young people make sense of the genocide memories as they navigate them in everyday life. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She was a Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholar for the Fall 2023 term in Washington, DC.The opinions expressed on this blog are solely those of the authors. They do not reflect the views of the Wilson Center or those of Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Wilson Center's Africa Program provides a safe space for various perspectives to be shared and discussed on critical issues of importance to both Africa and the United States.

Die vorliegende Arbeitbehandelt Signalverarbeitungsverfahren für drahtloseKommunikationssysteme mit sehr hohen Datenraten. Dabei werden zumeinen Funksysteme und zum anderen Infrarot-basierte optischeÜbertragungssysteme als Anwendungsgebiete betrachtet. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wird das Konzept des "resource sharing"beleuchtet, was die willentliche und koordinierte gemeinsame Nutzungvon Ressourcen zwischen mehreren Betreibern beschreibt. Dieses Zielwurde im Rahmen des europäischen Forschungsprojektes SAPHYREeingehend untersucht. Die Arbeit beschreibt die Vision desSAPHYRE-Projektes und geht auf zwei konkrete Topologien näher ein:die gemeinsame Nutzung der Spektren ("spectrum sharing") sowie diegemeinsame Nutzung der Spektren und der Infrastruktur wie etwa derRelay-Stationen ("spectrum and infrastructure sharing"). In der ersten Topologie teilen sich mehrere Betreiber Teile desSpektrums. Hierfür wird die Abwärtsstrecke betrachtet, in welcherdie Basisstationen (BS) der verschiedenen Betreiber jeweils zu einemeigenen User-Terminal (UT) senden und sich dafür denselben Kanalteilen. Zuerst werden für dieses Modell geschlossene Lösungen fürdie Antennengewichte der Sender entwickelt. Basierend auf diesemAnsatz wird dann ein iteratives Verfahren namens "FlexibleCoordinated Beamforming (FlexCoBF)" für den Spectrum-Sharing-Fallentwickelt, welches es erlaubt, die Interferenz zwischen denBetreibern effektiv auszunutzen, um so die Summenrate des Systems zusteigern. Im Anschluss wird die zweite Topologie betrachtet, in der sowohl dasSpektrum als auch Teile der Infrastruktur gemeinsam genutzt werden.Insbesondere wird dabei ein Relay-basiertes Kommunikationssystemuntersucht, für welches mehrere Betreiber sowohl das Spektrum alsauch die Relay-Station gemeinsam nutzen. Das Relay wird im "Amplifyand Forward" (AF)-Betrieb verwendet und ist mit mehreren Sende- undEmpfangsantennen ausgestattet. Zunächst wird der Fall betrachtet,dass die direkte Verbindung zwischen BS und UT zu schwach ist unddaher vernachlässigt werden kann. Für diesen Fall werdenSendestrategien für die Relay-Station untersucht. Dabei wird zuersteine Gruppe von Verfahren namens "efficient relay sharing ratemaximization (EReSh-RM)" entwickelt, welche die Summenrate desSystems, unter Berücksichtigung einer Sendeleistungsbeschränkung desRelays, steigern. Im Anschluss wird der systematische Entwurf derSendestrategien für energieeffiziente Übertragungen beleuchtet. Fürden Spezialfall, in dem alle Basisstationen und alle User-Terminalsnur eine Antenne besitzen, wird zunächst die global optimale Lösungunter Verwendung von konvexer Optimierung hergeleitet. Diese Lösungdient als Benchmark zur Bewertung einfacher suboptimaler Lösungen,die im Anschluss vorgeschlagen werden. Diese stellen einenKompromiss zwischen der erreichbaren Energieeffizienz und demnötigen Rechenaufwand dar, beispielsweise die geschlossene Lösungnamens "Efficient Resource Sharing Power Minimization (EReSh-PM)"sowie Ansätze die auf dem "Block Diagonalization (BD)"-Verfahrenbasieren. Darüber hinaus wird eine neuartige robuste Sendestrategiefür das Relay vorgeschlagen, die die Unsicherheiten über den genauenKanalzustand am Relay berücksichtigt. Schließlich werden dieKonzepte auf den allgemeinen Fall erweitert, in dem jedeBasisstation und jedes User-Terminal mehrere Antennen besitzenkönnen. Für dieses Szenario wird ebenfalls eine Sendestrategie amRelay hergeleitet, die die Übertragung mehrerer Datenströme zwischenjedem Paar von BS und UT erlaubt. Für den Fall, dass die direkteVerbindung zwischen BS und UT nicht vernachlässigbar schwach ist,werden im Anschluss ebenfalls Übertragungsverfahren beleuchtet,wobei BS, UT und das Relay mehrere Antennen besitzen können. Hierbeiwird unterschieden zwischen der Übertragung von jeweils einemDatenstrom und mehreren Datenströmen von jeder BS zu dem zugehörigenUT. Um den Vorteil des Resource-Sharings zu quantifizieren wird der"SAPHYRE sharing gain" verwendet welcher die erreichbareSummenrate mit und ohne Sharing ins Verhältnis setzt. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird das Design der physikalischenÜbertragungsschicht für schnelle Infrarot (IR)-basierteIndoor-Übertragungssysteme untersucht. Dies geschah im Rahmen deseuropäischen Forschungsprojektes OMEGA. Die jüngsten Entwicklungenin Indoor-IR-Übertragungssystemen haben gezeigt, dass IR hochratigeDatenübertragung unterstützt und im Indoor-Bereich entscheidendeVorteile besitzt. Deshalb wird erwartet, dass IR Technologien fürzukünftige drahtlose Netzwerke eine wichtige Rolle spielen werden.Das Ziel des OMEGA-Projektes war die IR-Übertragung bei einemGigabit pro Sekunde (Gbps), welches im Hinblick auf Ausleuchtung undDatenrate eine große Herausforderung darstellt. In der Arbeit wirdder Entwurf der physikalischen Übertragungsschicht für den Fall derInfrarot-Übertragung mit direkter Sichtverbindung ("Line ofSight") untersucht. Zunächst wird das Systemmodell für schnelle IR-Übertragungeingeführt und die für Gbps in Frage kommenden Komponentenspezifiziert und analysiert. Insbesondere werden für Gbps-IRgeeignete Modulationsverfahren diskutiert. Danach wird der"Baseline Wander"-Effekt betrachtet, der durch die Einkopplung desWechselstroms im Empfangs-Vorverstärker entsteht. Um diesem Effektzu entgegnen wird ein neues Leitungs-Kodierverfahren namens"Concatenated Flipped Bit Insertion (CFBI)" ausführlichbeschrieben. Im Anschluss wird die Implementierung eines analogenBessel-Tiefpassfilters zur Rauschunterdrückung betrachtet. EinHochpassfilter für das Gbps-IR-System zur Unterdrückung desGleichanteils des Photodioden-Stroms, welcher durch das empfangeneUmgebungslicht entsteht, wird sorgfältig ausgewählt. Dieser Filterkann gleichzeitig die harmonischen Komponenten abschwächen, diedurch Leuchtstoffröhren entstehen. Die Photodioden für schnelleIR-Systeme werden in der Folge diskutiert, wobei sowohl aufPIN-Dioden als auch auf "Avalanche"-Photodioden eingegangen wird.Dabei ist es entscheidend, die unterschiedlichen Rauschquellen inIR-Systemen zu betrachten, insbesondere das Schrot-Rauschen und dasthermische Rauchen mit konstanter spektraler Leistungsdichte, sowiedas sogenannte f-Quadrat-Rauschen, dessen spektrale Leistungsdichte mitdem Quadrat der Frequenz ansteigt. Diese Rauschquellen werden in derArbeit eingehend analysiert. Darauf basierend, sowie unterBerücksichtigung der Spezifikationen der einzelnen Komponenten, wirddas Link-Budget für Gbps-IR-Übertragung mit Sichtverbindung undeinem entsprechend schmalen Sichtfeld (Field of View) hergeleitet.Abschließend wird noch die Nutzung von Raumdiversität am Sender undam Empfänger untersucht mit dem Ziel, das Sichtfeld des Systems zuvergrößern. ; In this thesis, we deal withadvanced signal processing for wireless communications at very highdata rates and consider two application areas in the radio frequencyrange and the infrared range.In the first part of this thesis, the concept of sharing the radiospectrum and the infrastructure between multiple operators isillustrated, which is within the vision of the European's seventhframework research project SAPHYRE. We introduce the SAPHYREconcept, which defines two topologies including the spectrum sharingas well as both spectrum and infrastructure (relay) sharingscenarios.In the first topology, the spectrum is shared between multipleoperators. The downlink of this spectrum sharing scenario isconsidered, where the base stations (BSs) of different operatorstransmit over the same channel, each dedicated to its own userterminal (UTs). Two closed-form transmit beamformers are firstdeveloped for this model. Based on that, an iterative transmitbeamforming technique, named as flexible coordinated beamforming(FlexCoBF) for spectrum sharing is designed to exploit theinter-operator interference in a more effective manner so as tofurther enhance the system sum rate performance.Concerning the second topology, both the spectrum and infrastructuresharing are taken into account. To be more specific, the relayassisted communications are investigated for this topology, wherethe relay as well as the spectrum are shared between multipleoperators. We employ a multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) amplifyand forward (AF) relay to assist the transmission between multiplepairs of BSs and UTs, where two cases are studied. In the firstcase, the direct link between the BSs and the UTs is too weak andcan be neglected. We propose several algorithms for the relayprecoder design to further improve the system performance. First aset of algorithms named efficient relay sharing rate maximization(EReSh-RM) are designed to improve the system sum rate under therelay transmit power constraint. After that, the relay precoderdesign is systematically studied for power efficient transmission.When the BSs and UTs are equipped with single antennas, a globaloptimum solution is firstly derived, which uses a convexoptimization tool to exploit the structure of the relay precoder.Taking this as a benchmark, several suboptimal beamformingalgorithms are proposed to find a compromise between the achievablepower efficiency and the computational complexity, including aclosed-form algorithm named Efficient Resource Sharing PowerMinimization (EReSh-PM) and block diagonalization (BD) basedsolutions. Further, a novel robust relay precoder design is proposedby considering imperfect channel state information at the relay. Atlast, we extend our work to a general study where each pair of BSsand UTs are equipped with multiple antennas and a novel relay matrixdesign is derived for multiple stream transmission between multiplepairs of BSs and UTs. Furthermore, another relay application casestudy is discussed, when the direct link is not negligible. Weconsider the linear precoding design for the AF relaying strategy,assuming multiple antennas employed at all BSs, UTs, and the AFrelay. The single stream and multiple stream transmission arestudied. Moreover, the SAPHYRE sharing gain is exploited, showingthe advantage of spectrum and relay sharing in comparison with theexclusive access of the resources.In the second part of this thesis, the physical layer design for ahigh speed infrared (IR) system in indoor environment is developed,which is within the scope the European Union's seventh frameworkresearch project OMEGA. The recent developments in an indoorinfrared (IR) systems prove that IR has emerged as a strongcandidate for high speed indoor communications, which is expected toplay an important role in the future wireless networks. The infraredtransmission operating at one Gigabit per second (Gbps) in theindoor environment is quite challenging, with a requirement toprovide coverage as well as high data rate. The physical layerdesign for a high speed IR system is considered, which is focused onthe line-of-sight (LOS) data transmission using IR wavelengths.The system model of the high speed IR transmission is firstintroduced, where individual components suitable for Gbps IR systemsare analyzed and specified. In particular, the modulation schemethat is appropriate for the Gbps IR transmission is brieflydiscussed. Thereafter, the baseline wander effect is considered,which is induced by the alternating current (AC) coupling inherentin the receiver's preamplifier. In order to overcome this, a novelline coding named concatenated flipped bit insertion (CFBI) code iselaborately addressed. Following that, the implementation of ananalog Bessel low-pass filter is specified for noise rejection. Ahigh-pass filter for the Gbps IR system is carefully selected, whichis applied to block the direct current (DC) photocurrent generatedby the received ambient light as well as to reduce the harmonicscaused by the fluorescent lighting. Then the photodiode detectorsfor high speed IR transmission are discussed, includingpositive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) photodiodes and the Avalanchephotodiodes. It is important to notice various noise sourcesgenerated in the IR system, including the shot noise and the thermalnoise with constant power spectrum density (PSD), as well as the socalled f-square noise whose PSD increases with the square of thefrequency. All these types of noise are analyzed in this thesis.Based on this analysis and the specification of the individualcomponents, the link budget for a LOS Gbps IR transmission with anarrow angle field of view (FOV) is given. Finally, the transmit andreceive angle diversity are discussed in order to further extend thesystem FOV.

When Joe Biden was running for U.S. president, he promised to reverse many of his predecessor's decisions on foreign policy, generally hewing towards more restraint and diplomacy, and less bluster, militarism, and unilateralism. That included restoring the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) from which Donald Trump withdrew in 2018 — despite evidence, shared even by his own officials, that the deal was delivering on its core objective to block Iran's pathways to a nuclear weapon. On December 7, 2023, Biden's nominee for deputy secretary of state, the current National Security Council Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell, effectively declared the JCPOA dead. "I don't think anyone sees that there's any chance in the current environment to go back to the JCPOA. It's not up for discussion," Campbell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his confirmation hearing. Pushed by Republicans who also expressed outrage over the "cash for hostages" deal (which conditionally grants Tehran access to its own $6 billion for strictly humanitarian use in exchange for a prisoner swap), Campbell also noted that the U.S. "must be sending a military message that provocations will be met, and met with stern responses. We must isolate them diplomatically, internationally."Although the prospects for a revived JCPOA have been dim since at least 2022 — for which Iran carries a fair share of blame — officials from the Biden administration until now have largely refrained from using such threatening language against Iran. Conclusively abandoning any effort to revive the JCPOA does not serve U.S. interests and is in fact counterproductive.Addressing students at Tehran University a few days after Campbell's Senate testimony, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian downplayed the relevance of the JCPOA by reportedly saying that the "more we move forward, the more JCPOA becomes pointless. We will not force ourselves to remain in the narrow tunnel of the JCPOA forever."So, the Biden administration finds itself in the rather awkward position of effectively agreeing with Tehran, but this was a self-inflicted problem: by refusing, for three years now, to engage with its critics and the broader public on the agreement's benefits to the U.S. and global security, it has allowed the notion that the JCPOA was some kind of reward for Iran, rather than a deal that strictly curbed Tehran's nuclear ambitions, to become conventional wisdom. As is evident in Abdollahian's remarks, Iranians today certainly do see the JCPOA as a "narrow tunnel" that limits their options. Indeed, Abdollahian's references to "mov[ing] forward" are about advances in Iran's nuclear program. In mid-November, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, voiced alarm that Iran had amassed enough uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity for three atomic bombs, even as Tehran continued to bar several IAEA inspectors from carrying out their tasks, a step the agency deplored as "extreme and unjustified." As a result of Iranian actions following the U.S. exit from the deal, the IAEA currently estimates that Tehran's stockpile of enriched uranium is 22 times greater than it would have been if the JCPOA had remained in effect. Clearly, Iran is now far closer to being able to produce an actual bomb in a very short time if it decided to do so.If ever there was a mechanism that would prove effective in preventing Iran from acquiring a bomb, it was the JCPOA. In light of Abdollahian's remarks (which clearly reflect a growing skepticism about the JCPOA in Iran), the Biden administration, by publicly disowning the deal, is in fact removing obstacles to further Iranian nuclear escalation.Unless Biden is prepared to accept the advice of the late international relations scholar Kenneth Waltz, who, in an influential 2012 Foreign Affairs article, argued that an Iranian bomb would stabilize the Middle East, it is not clear what his administration would do in place of a revived JCPOA to check additional Iranian nuclear advances. Campbell emphasized the "current environment" as an additional factor rendering a JCPOA revival infeasible. In fact, if he was referring to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, then it is precisely such a conflict that makes some sort of a direct dialogue between Washington and Tehran — on nuclear, but also regional security issues — all the more urgent if a wider war is to be avoided. Substituting such a dialogue with military threats at a moment when the U.S. is providing Israel virtually unconditional support, including the lavish replenishment of its arms stocks, the deployment of marines and two aircraft carrier task forces to the region, and the veto of a U.N. Security Council Resolution calling for a ceasefire, could do more to incentivize Iranians to seek a nuclear deterrent than anything else. Vows to isolate Iran "internationally and diplomatically" are also unwarranted as Iran, despite its rhetorical support for Hamas, has so far demonstrated considerable restraint. While hardline ideological hostility to Israel is wired into the Islamic Republic's identity, the actual position Tehran adopted towards the Israel-Palestine conflict is much more nuanced, more in line with the Arab and Islamic (and indeed broad international) mainstream consensus that insists on a viable two-state solution. Instead of building on these shifts, however modest and tentative, Washington seems to prefer to double down on confrontation.The sad irony is that this explosive situation could have been avoided had Joe Biden had the courage and wisdom to deliver on his own election campaign promise to restore the nuclear agreement with Iran. It would not have solved all the problems between Washington and Tehran, but a working agreement would have removed one major source of instability in the Middle East. By building on it, both countries may have even been brought to engaging on regional discussions which would have not only further normalized their relationship, but also contributed to the prevention of a wider war in the Middle East.

Este artículo traza una breve genealogía de mis investigaciones socioantropológicas sobre la corporalidad en Argentina, partiendo del entrecruzamiento entre ciertas experiencias intersubjetivas que involucraron intensamente la corporalidad desde lo sensorial y emotivo, las performances artísticas y las etnografías realizadas desde mediados de los años noventa. A partir de esta travesía inicial, que vincula experiencias personales y producción artística e intelectual, en un contexto geopolítico e histórico determinado, discuto tres problemáticas teórico-metodológicas claves en el campo actual de los estudios sobre el cuerpo en América Latina, por cuanto constatamos que también otros colegas de nuestros países las comparten. En primer lugar, sobre los modos en que nuestras corporalidades y, agregaría, nuestras producciones intelectuales sobre el cuerpo son el resultado de un complejo entramado de materialidades biológicas, tecnologías, procesos psicológicos, intersubjetivos, históricos y político-culturales que entrelazan sensaciones, movimientos, afectividades, imágenes, representaciones y discursos. Por ello, creemos que el desafío ante tal complejidad es evitar caer en un reduccionismo del cuerpo que lo someta a la mirada unilateral de una sola disciplina, y tratar de avanzar, en cambio, hacia una progresiva interdisciplinariedad. En segundo lugar, planteamos cómo esa corporalidad compleja es fruto de una historia y un contexto afectivo-familiar y social que se inscriben poderosamente en nuestra carne y la delimitan a partir de múltiples, reiteradas y sutiles relaciones, a la vez que esa misma carne es sede de nuestra agencia, creatividad, singularidad subjetiva e incluso de nuestra resistencia político cultural. Esto nos enfrenta al desafío de analizar estas complejas dimensiones de un cuerpo que es objeto de poder y a la vez encarnación de nuestra agencia. Una vez más, intentando evitar reduccionismos, reseñaremos cómo nuestras investigaciones han buscado articular diferentes abordajes teórico-metodológicos en una perspectiva dialéctica que confronta abordajes fenomenológicos con los semióticos y posestructuralistas. El tercer desafío que aquí desarrollaremos está vinculado a nuestra doble trayectoria en el campo académico-intelectual y en las artes de la performance, intentando demostrar que los cuerpos en movimiento, los cuerpos expresivos de los juegos creativos, los rituales compartidos y las artes son también "buenos para pensar". Reseñaremos entonces cómo, en estos últimos años, con nuestro equipo hemos comenzado a ensayar prácticas cognoscitivas que involucran más decididamente las experiencias corporales, estético-sensibles y emocionales intersubjetivas, incluidas aquellas provenientes de los modos de saber-hacer propios de nuestras tradiciones socioculturales indígenas y afroamericanas. De este modo, intentamos una "antropología de y desde los cuerpos" en los modos de practicar la etnografía, difundir nuestras investigaciones y desarrollar los procesos de enseñanza-aprendizaje con nuestros estudiantes. Finalmente, desde una perspectiva latinoamericana decolonial, destacamos la importancia epistemológica y también política de construir nuevos modos de generar conocimientos en nuestras academias, revalorizando el rol de las experiencias corporales, los vínculos colectivos y los intercambios interculturales, a la manera de compañeros dialécticos de las formas de lectoescritura y oralidad individual que heredamos de la colonialidad-modernidad occidental. ; This article draws a brief genealogy on my socio-anthropological researches on embodiment in Argentina, starting from the crosslinking among some inter-subjective experiences which involve, in an intense way, the corporality, from the sensorial and the emotional, the artistic performances and the ethnographies realized since mid-90s. From this initial travel, linking personal experiences with artistic and intellectual production in a specific geopolitical and historical environment, I discuss three key theoreticalmethodological problems in the current field of the studies about the body in Latin America, as soon as we find they are shared with other colleagues of our countries. In the first place, the way our corporality and I will add, our intellectual production about the body, is the result of a complex network among biologic materiality, technologies, psychological, inter-subjective, historical and politic-cultural processes, which intertwine sensations, movements, affectivities, images, representations and speeches. Therefore, we belief, the challenge before such a complexity involves to avoid fall down in the reductionism of the body, submitting it to a onesided sight of one discipline, and in the contrary, to attempt go ahead into a progressive interdisciplinary work. Second, how that complex corporality is the result of a history and an environment familiar a social, powerfully inscribed in our flesh, and delimited it from multiples, reiterated and subtle relations. But at the same time, that same flesh is the site to our agency, creativity, subjective singularity, and even our politic-cultural resistance. This confronts us with the challenge about how to analyze these complex dimensions of a body which is object of power and at the same time embodiment of our agency. And one more time trying to avoid reductionisms, we will outline how our researches have look for the articulation of different theoretical-methodological approaches in a dialectic perspective which confronts some Phenomenology with the Semiotics and Post-structuralisms. The third challenge we will develop here, is related to our double trajectory in the scholar-intellectual field and in the performance arts, trying to demonstrate that the moving bodies, the expressive bodies of creative plays, share rituals and arts, are also "good to think". We will outline then how in these last years, we have begun to rehearse cognitive practices with our team, which decidedly involve the estheticsensible and emotional-inter-subjective corporal experiences, included those coming from the ways to know-to do belonging to our Indigenous and Afro-American socio-cultural traditions. In this way, we try an "anthropology of and from the bodies" in the ways of practicing the ethnography, spreading our researches, and developing the teaching-learning process with our students. Finally, from a Latin American De-colonial perspective, we outstand the epistemology and also politic importance of building new ways of create knowledge in our academics, revaluing the role of body experiences, the collective relationships and the inter-cultural exchanges, as dialectic partners of the individual reading-writing ways we inherit of the Western ColonialModernity. ; Fil: Citro, Silvia Viviana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras; Argentina

On December 14, 2023, the European Council adopted an historic decision to open membership negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, and to grant candidate status to Georgia. All three nations were once part of the Soviet empire, all three share the ill-fortune to live next to Russia, a belligerent nuclear-armed state that sees them as instrumental in reconstructing its imperial past. All three have followed a long and arduous path toward European integration. Of the three, however, Ukraine is paying the most exorbitant price, in blood and treasure, for its European choice. That the war currently ravaging Ukraine is about the defense of this country's European future is no exaggeration. Ukraine's struggle for Europe started ten years ago, on November 21, 2013, when Ukrainian youth gathered on the Maidan, Kyiv's central square, to protest the refusal of then-president Viktor Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, scheduled to take place on November 29 that year in Vilnius, Lithuania. Yanukovych did so under the pressure of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also sought to bribe the Ukrainian leadership with a $17 billion loan and cheaper gas prices. As it turned out, not only the Ukrainian students, but most of the Ukrainian population would not accept the Yanukovych-Putin plan. Two weeks into the EuroMaidan protests, the Yanukovych regime decided to break up protests, unleashing riot police and their batons on the students. This was the first time the state used violence against unarmed, peaceful protesters since Ukraine became an independent state in 1991. The massive surge of popular indignation that followed was in itself a testament to the kind of state Ukrainians wanted to live in and the kind of governance they deemed unacceptable. For the millions of Ukrainians who in the winter of 2014 came out in protest across the nation, for the thousands who build and defended a make-shift encampment on the Maidan, and for the hundred, the Heavenly Hundred, who would lay their lives in what became the Revolution of Dignity, "Europe" was not an ephemeral notion, not even a reference to a shared cultural past, but a very tangible, conscious choice about the future. Ukrainians gathered on the Independence Square in Kyiv to protest in support of integrating Ukraine into the EU, November 24, 2013.Image CreditEurope meant the freedom to assembly, speech, and expression. Europe meant the freedom from arbitrary state violence. Europe meant that the nation's political and economic elites are accountable and prevented from growing shamelessly fat on state graft. Europe meant the rule of law and a recourse to justice. Europe meant responsible husbanding of the nation's resources, clean water and air, and sustainable energy. Europe meant agency and options in shaping one's future. Europe meant synergy and cooperation, not a zero-sum game. Europe meant living in prosperity, yes, but most importantly, living in dignity. It means all this still and so much more, now that the price Ukrainians paid and continue to pay for their European choice proved so dear. In February 2014, the stand-off between protesters and the Yanukovych regime on the Maidan culminated in Russian-backed sniper shootings of the protesters, a blood-red line that even Yanukovych's domestic allies thought he ought not to have crossed, eventually causing the president to abdicate by fleeing to Russia. On March 21, 2014, Ukraine's new government signed the Association Agreement with the EU; the Agreement would go into full effect on November 1, 2017.Meanwhile, Russia took advantage of Ukraine's internal upheaval and political transition to stealthily occupy and illegally annex Ukraine's peninsular of Crimea in March 2014. It proceeded to not-so-stealthily ignite a war in the Donbas in Ukraine's east. The first undeclared interstate war between Ukraine and Russia – complete with artillery battles, encirclements, and sieges, and resulting in thousands of military and civilian casualties, millions of internally displaces people – was now afoot. Most observers in Ukraine and beyond interpreted Russia's behavior as an opportunistic land-grab and a ploy to destabilize Ukraine that is bound to stay limited and confined to Ukraine's east. That proved wrong: Putin's Russia was not after another bit of territory to add to its giant landmass. Ukraine's Crimea and Donbas in 2014, like Georgia before them in 2008, were first, explicit shots in Russia's multi-year multi-domain war against Europe and everything it stands for. Russia's is the project of domination that seeks to subvert, subjugate, and ultimately supplant Europe's project of cooperation and integration. The final confirmation of this came in the small hours on February 24, 2022, with the roar of Russian tanks and missiles across the Ukrainian boarders and airspace. Four days later, in a bold and highly symbolic move, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, signed Ukraine's application for membership in the European Union.Since then, Ukraine not only managed to survive as an independent state in the face of a militarily and economically superior enemy, but also to push the Russian invaders from large swaths of its territory and hold firm against unending Russian offensives and missile barrages. On top of all that, Ukraine – its leaders and its civil society – has been hard at work to put its own house in much-needed good order: continue to eradicate graft, adopt reform legislation, and persevere economically. War never stops at the border, especially on a continent like Europe. The European Union absorbed millions of Ukrainian war refugees and poured billions of euros into Ukraine's defenses and economic survival. The war permanently reshaped Europe: its demographics, political economy, and energy architecture are shifting in ways that will have irreversible long-term consequences. All of this is because in a very real sense Ukraine already is inextricably woven into the fabric of Europe: Ukraine's pain is Europe's pain and Ukraine's gain will inevitably be Europe's gain, too.But Europe also is not confined to specific borders. More than a geographic area, Europe is an idea and an ideal that represents a way of life, based not only, not even primarily, on a common cultural past, but rather on shared values and mutual commitments toward the future, a future based on dignity and respect among nations and people and the environment they inhabit. Ukrainians have fought many demons, domestic and foreign, to align their country and their way of life with these ideals. The fight is far from over and the hardest battles are likely still ahead. But the European Council's December 14 decision to begin membership negotiations with Ukraine is both an acknowledgement of the country's efforts and sacrifices for the sake of its European aspirations and an opening of a new chapter not only for Ukraine but for a new and transformed Europe.

On December 14, 2023, the European Council adopted an historic decision to open membership negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, and to grant candidate status to Georgia. All three nations were once part of the Soviet empire, all three share the ill-fortune to live next to Russia, a belligerent nuclear-armed state that sees them as instrumental in reconstructing its imperial past. All three have followed a long and arduous path toward European integration. Of the three, however, Ukraine is paying the most exorbitant price, in blood and treasure, for its European choice. That the war currently ravaging Ukraine is about the defense of this country's European future is no exaggeration. Ukraine's struggle for Europe started ten years ago, on November 21, 2013, when Ukrainian youth gathered on the Maidan, Kyiv's central square, to protest the refusal of then-president Viktor Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, scheduled to take place on November 29 that year in Vilnius, Lithuania. Yanukovych did so under the pressure of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also sought to bribe the Ukrainian leadership with a $17 billion loan and cheaper gas prices. As it turned out, not only the Ukrainian students, but most of the Ukrainian population would not accept the Yanukovych-Putin plan. Two weeks into the EuroMaidan protests, the Yanukovych regime decided to break up protests, unleashing riot police and their batons on the students. This was the first time the state used violence against unarmed, peaceful protesters since Ukraine became an independent state in 1991. The massive surge of popular indignation that followed was in itself a testament to the kind of state Ukrainians wanted to live in and the kind of governance they deemed unacceptable. For the millions of Ukrainians who in the winter of 2014 came out in protest across the nation, for the thousands who build and defended a make-shift encampment on the Maidan, and for the hundred, the Heavenly Hundred, who would lay their lives in what became the Revolution of Dignity, "Europe" was not an ephemeral notion, not even a reference to a shared cultural past, but a very tangible, conscious choice about the future. Ukrainians gathered on the Independence Square in Kyiv to protest in support of integrating Ukraine into the EU, November 24, 2013.Image CreditEurope meant the freedom to assembly, speech, and expression. Europe meant the freedom from arbitrary state violence. Europe meant that the nation's political and economic elites are accountable and prevented from growing shamelessly fat on state graft. Europe meant the rule of law and a recourse to justice. Europe meant responsible husbanding of the nation's resources, clean water and air, and sustainable energy. Europe meant agency and options in shaping one's future. Europe meant synergy and cooperation, not a zero-sum game. Europe meant living in prosperity, yes, but most importantly, living in dignity. It means all this still and so much more, now that the price Ukrainians paid and continue to pay for their European choice proved so dear. In February 2014, the stand-off between protesters and the Yanukovych regime on the Maidan culminated in Russian-backed sniper shootings of the protesters, a blood-red line that even Yanukovych's domestic allies thought he ought not to have crossed, eventually causing the president to abdicate by fleeing to Russia. On March 21, 2014, Ukraine's new government signed the Association Agreement with the EU; the Agreement would go into full effect on November 1, 2017.Meanwhile, Russia took advantage of Ukraine's internal upheaval and political transition to stealthily occupy and illegally annex Ukraine's peninsular of Crimea in March 2014. It proceeded to not-so-stealthily ignite a war in the Donbas in Ukraine's east. The first undeclared interstate war between Ukraine and Russia – complete with artillery battles, encirclements, and sieges, and resulting in thousands of military and civilian casualties, millions of internally displaces people – was now afoot. Most observers in Ukraine and beyond interpreted Russia's behavior as an opportunistic land-grab and a ploy to destabilize Ukraine that is bound to stay limited and confined to Ukraine's east. That proved wrong: Putin's Russia was not after another bit of territory to add to its giant landmass. Ukraine's Crimea and Donbas in 2014, like Georgia before them in 2008, were first, explicit shots in Russia's multi-year multi-domain war against Europe and everything it stands for. Russia's is the project of domination that seeks to subvert, subjugate, and ultimately supplant Europe's project of cooperation and integration. The final confirmation of this came in the small hours on February 24, 2022, with the roar of Russian tanks and missiles across the Ukrainian boarders and airspace. Four days later, in a bold and highly symbolic move, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, signed Ukraine's application for membership in the European Union.Since then, Ukraine not only managed to survive as an independent state in the face of a militarily and economically superior enemy, but also to push the Russian invaders from large swaths of its territory and hold firm against unending Russian offensives and missile barrages. On top of all that, Ukraine – its leaders and its civil society – has been hard at work to put its own house in much-needed good order: continue to eradicate graft, adopt reform legislation, and persevere economically. War never stops at the border, especially on a continent like Europe. The European Union absorbed millions of Ukrainian war refugees and poured billions of euros into Ukraine's defenses and economic survival. The war permanently reshaped Europe: its demographics, political economy, and energy architecture are shifting in ways that will have irreversible long-term consequences. All of this is because in a very real sense Ukraine already is inextricably woven into the fabric of Europe: Ukraine's pain is Europe's pain and Ukraine's gain will inevitably be Europe's gain, too.But Europe also is not confined to specific borders. More than a geographic area, Europe is an idea and an ideal that represents a way of life, based not only, not even primarily, on a common cultural past, but rather on shared values and mutual commitments toward the future, a future based on dignity and respect among nations and people and the environment they inhabit. Ukrainians have fought many demons, domestic and foreign, to align their country and their way of life with these ideals. The fight is far from over and the hardest battles are likely still ahead. But the European Council's December 14 decision to begin membership negotiations with Ukraine is both an acknowledgement of the country's efforts and sacrifices for the sake of its European aspirations and an opening of a new chapter not only for Ukraine but for a new and transformed Europe.

This thesis, which seeks to formalize a psycho-social geographical situation, reviews the role of the psyche and of space in individuation and the relationship with the other by studying everyday life in Cadaqués, a semi-rural tourist village on Spain's Costa Brava, situated in the heart of the Catalan region of Empordà on the South-Mediterranean coast. This village has a diverse local population, given the presence of European and non-European immigrants who are often reduced to the status of foreign seasonal and temporary workers, often long-term. In this shared community, with a wide variety of rich and complex lives, co-habitation with outsiders leads to the emergence of several subgroups based on hierarchical social position and promotion of a so-called native authenticity. A transcalar interpretation of spatial changes and a biographical approach on human experience permits an assessment of contemporary transformations in this village as part of the global world and of different forms of co-habitation that emanate from this situation. It describes a space constituted by a secular interaction of a wide range of material and idealistic changes, while at the same time, exposing the variations negotiated between individuals along community lines and influenced by various interests, despite their shared existential misfortunes and aspirations. This analysis, which is based on a qualitative survey of an ethnographic terrain, interviews with different categories of residents, statistical data, press articles, and mapping, reveals daily life functioning within a plurality of universes. Geohistorical catalysts of notoriety and adherence to globalization processes of the village of Cadaqués, as well as issues arising from a co-habitation between native population and visitors, are both highlighted by inter/national migrations. This extended case study takes a distanced, situated and ordinarized approach to questioning the participation of migrants in their village, a participation that is more often analysed in an urban environment from the perspective of methodological ethnicism and inclusiveness. With the rise in racism, political short-term vision and disputes over conformity to democratic principles, specifically the right to live and move around Europe and the West, this thesis demonstrates the importance of initiating a renewed prospective and utopic approach to a respectful sociality that is capable of promoting otherness and a citizenship that permits both rooting and mobility. ; Esta tesis pretende formalizar una geografía psicosocial y trata del papel de la psique y del espacio en la individuación y la relación con el otro, mediante el estudio del habitar en Cadaqués. Éste es un municipio turístico y semi-rural de la Costa Brava española, localizado en el seno de la región catalana del Empordà y en la costa mediterránea sur-europea. Participando de la diversidad de la inmigración en dicha localidad, los no-nacionales extra/europeos, a menudo reducidos al estatuto de trabajadores extranjeros de temporada y precarios, moran también en el pueblo, algunos de ellos desde bastante tiempo. En este espacio compartido, atravesado y rico en vidas complejas, la convivencia con el otro tiene lugar bajo varias compartimentaciones, vinculadas a posiciones sociales diferenciadas y al marketing de una pretendida autenticidad autóctona. Una lectura trans-escalar de las evoluciones espaciales y un enfoque biográfico sobre las experiencias humanas posibilitan una apreciación de las transformaciones contemporáneas del pueblo de Cadaqués, en el marco de la mundialización, y de las formas de co-habitar que resultan de ellas. Todo ello nos muestra un lugar constituido por el entramado secular de múltiples movimientos materiales e ideales. Además, Cadaqués también está constituido por las brechas que son negociadas entre los habitantes según lógicas comunitarias animadas por intereses variables, a pesar de desdichas y de aspiraciones existenciales comunes. El análisis de datos de esta tesis se fundamenta sobre una investigación cualitativa realizada en el contexto de un trabajo de campo etnográfico que ha incluido entrevistas a una amplia variedad de residentes, así como la recopilación de datos estadísticos, documentales (incluyendo prensa local) y cartográficos. Todo ello muestra un día a día animado por una pluralidad de universos. Los catalizadores geo-históricos de la notoriedad y la adhesión a procesos de globalización del pueblo de Cadaqués, así como los retos actuales de la copresencia heredada, se ven destacados por las migraciones ínter/nacionales. Este estudio de caso extendido interroga por consiguiente de forma distanciada, situada y ordinarizada, una participación de los inmigrantes en la localidad, a menudo considerada desde el medio urbano bajo los ángulos del etnicismo y del integracionismo metodológicos. Frente al aumento del racismo, el corto-plazo político y una democracidad cuestionable en cuanto a los derechos de vivir y de desplazarse en Europa y en Occidente, esta tesis sugiere la necesidad de un pensamiento prospectivo y utópico renovado, basado en una sociabilidad respetuosa y promotora de la alteridad y en una ciudadanía que permita tanto el anclaje como la movilidad. ; Cette thèse, qui vise la formalisation d'une géographie psycho-sociale, aborde le rôle de la psyché et de l'espace dans l'individuation et le rapport à l'autre, à travers l'habiter à Cadaqués, commune semi-rurale touristique de la Costa Brava espagnole, située au sein de la région catalane de l'Empordà, sur la côte méditerranéenne sud-européenne. Participant de la diversité immigrée locale, des non-nationaux extra/européens, souvent réduits au statut de travailleurs étrangers saisonniers et précaires, habitent aussi ce village, pour certains depuis longtemps. Dans cet espace partagé, traversé et riche de lignes de vies complexes, le vivre-ensemble avec autrui connaît pour autant divers compartimentages, liés à des positions sociales différenciées, et au marketing d'une prétendue authenticité autochtone. Une lecture trans-scalaire des évolutions spatiales et une approche biographique des expériences humaines permettent alors d'apprécier les transformations contemporaines du village dans la mondialisation, et les formes du co-habiter qui en résultent. Elles donnent à voir un lieu constitué de l'enchevêtrement séculaire de multiples mouvements matériels et idéels. Mais aussi des écarts, qui sont négociés entre les hommes selon des logiques communautaires mues par des intérêts variés, malgré des infortunes et des aspirations existentielles communes. L'analyse, qui s'appuie sur une enquête qualitative mobilisant un terrain ethnographique avec différents résidents interviewés, des données statistiques, de la presse locale, et l'outil cartographique, montre ainsi un quotidien animé par une pluralité d'univers. Les ferments géo-historiques d'une notoriété et d'une globalité villageoises et les enjeux actuels d'une coprésence héritée, sont mis en exergue par les migrations inter/nationales. Cette étude de cas étendue interroge donc de manière distanciée, située et ordinarisée, une participation des migrants à la localité plus souvent saisie en milieu urbain sous les angles de l'ethnicisme et de l'intégrationnisme méthodologiques. Face à une augmentation du racisme, un court-termisme politique, et une démocraticité discutable des droits à habiter et à se mouvoir en Europe et en Occident, cette thèse suggère la nécessité d'une pensée prospective et utopique renouvelée, sur une socialité respectueuse et promotrice d'altérité, et sur une citoyenneté associant ancrage et mobilité.

Introduction Beyond the intrinsic, aesthetic and spiritual values one may assign to nature, the reasons to manage it are multiple due to its central role in a wide panel of ecological functions crucial to human wellbeing and development. For instance, biological structures and ecological processes provide us food, raw materials, water and energy, protect us against erosion or floods, control water quality, pest impact, pollination, give us large enjoyable spaces for recreation, sport and leisure activities, etc. Despite contributing considerably to economic development, social welfare and health, natural resources have often been considered as inexhaustible and unlimited which has caused dramatic damages in economic, social and environmental issues. This is mainly explained by the fact that many ecosystem services (ES) are 'public goods' or 'common goods': they are often open access in character and non-rival in their consumption. Market and policy decisions often fail to capture most ES values with the exception of a few marketed provisioning ecosystem services 'ES' (e.g. food, timber). This systematic under-valuation of ecosystem services and failure to capture the values is one of the main causes underlying today's biodiversity crisis1. ES valuations can serve as methodological baseline for decision support tools aiming at more sustainability thus guiding and accelerating transition. To sustainably manage the supply and the demand of ES, the policy level needs to gain knowledge on where and which services are provided2–4and who are the stakeholders involved. ES maps provide an explicit link between the biophysical data of the ecosystem and expectations of main concerned stakeholders2. There are an essential tool to help for more holistic and transparent decision processes .Additionally, ES valuations allow highlighting ES hotspots, bundles and trade-offs and priority areas for action5. At last, ES valuations can serve as policy efficiency barometer by measuring ES before and after a specific measure. The importance of the ES in policy is reflected at several levels. At the European level, the Strategy 2020 for biodiversity (resulting from the United Nation convention on biological diversity) presents the objective to 'preserve and enhance ecosystems and their services'. Under this objective, one of the actions requested to member states is to 'map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services in their national territory by 2014'6. Recently, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was launched to guide the flow of scientific information related to biodiversity and ES to governments and practitioners7. In this context, the Walloon government decided to work on the 'development of the implementation of the ES concept into practice within the Public Service of Wallonia (SPW)' (Walloon governmental decision 24/04/2014).To put the ES concept into practice, a common platform, entitled 'WalES', is currently being designed. Objectives The objectives of the WalES platform are multifold: • Developing a common interface between administrations and scientists and multiple actors to share up-to-date information, methods, tools, means, experiences, multiple data flows at multiple levels, etc. in order to organize a common information system on ecosystem services and develop a common methodological platform. • Providing a planification tool through the assessment and mapping of ES to highlight ES hotspots, priority areas for action and discrepancies between ES demand and supply, all providing valuable information to optimize planification. • Providing an impact assessment tool assessing ES before and after a project (e.g. infrastructure building) or a political measure (e.g. agri-environmental measures) in order to test their efficiencies and their impacts on sustainability. • Communicating to the public the importance of ES and the dependency of humans, society and economy upon them, hence demonstrating the emergency to take actions. Procedure and outcomes of the WalES project Since the platform aims at serving policy making, its development consults actors in an iterative way and by different means. Through an accompanying committee, different actors from distinct background follow and guide the project from its premises to its finalization. Among them, policy makers, Directorate Generals from the Walloon Region, university scientists and Governmental research agencies are involved. Additionally, consultations with the civil society are planned. Such participatory approaches are known, especially in ES valuation science, to improve the procedural quality of the assessment and provide assessments better answering the needs and questions of the different parties. As first step, all Directorates General of SPW have been consulted in order to identify fields within the distinct missions of SPW for which the development of ES-based tools would be feasible and desirable. From there, the project structure, method and objectives have been established. In a second and on-going step, all structures, research projects and actors involved are being inventoried in order to get insight into what is being done, what is already accomplished and what remains to be done. Simultaneously, a common and shared information system detailing all data and data flows which could serve as indicator or proxy or models for ES measurements, collecting all experiences and methods on ES valuation available at the Walloon and more detailed scales and proposing standardized or recommended ES evaluation method are developed. This common and shared database will be made available on the net for dissemination of ES holistic approaches and should be updated on a participative way. Subsequently, ES assessments and maps of the Walloon regions is developed in order to fulfill the requirements of the Biodiversity Strategy 2020. A conceptual and methodological framework is designed and will be submitted to stakeholders. A Walloon ES classification with corresponding indicators is setup and a methodology for mapping and assessing ES at various scales is developed. However, the framework and information system are not only defined as a simple recurring reporting tool. The holistic approach should be put in practices on a large spectrum of activities on the fields of agriculture, forestry, water management, nature conservation, rural development plan, urban development, tourism activities, etc. and all field experiences should be shared to demonstrate how it works and what are the limits. The ability of ES approach as decision support tool by different stakeholders will be assessed. Concurrently, a website is established in order to accomplish the communication objectives of the project. Besides communicating the importance of ES assessments and conservation for sustainability, the website serves as interactive platform where the methodological framework, the Walloon ES classification and the database of all indicators and proxy available is made available to all stakeholders or researchers needing some baseline. It thus also serves as a facilitating tool for future research on ES providing theoretical and practical information to ensure their sound scientific background and their practical policy implementation. Conclusions: implications of the project in terms of sustainable development The link between ES and sustainable development has now been the center of political and scientific attention for a while1,8–10. Much research is being carried out developing frameworks, tools and models to assess and map ES11–13. More recently, the importance of the ES concept as decision support tool for policy makers has been put forward. It is stated that ES assessments could guide policy decisions towards more sustainability by adding social and environmental criteria to the economic ones usually relied on14. In that sense, ES assessments could accelerate the transition by providing sound information upon which sustainable policy decisions could be made. However, to date, despite being a hot topic, ES assessments serving policy decisions are sparse15 and the challenge for real integration remains16. The WalES project is thus a real opportunity for the Walloon government and science to bind together to contribute to filling in this gap while simultaneously comply with European baseline by providing the requested national ES assessments and mapping. References 1. TEEB. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Mainstreaming the economics of nature, a synthesis of the approach, conclusions and recommendations of TEEB. (Progress Press, 2010). 2. Burkhard, B., Crossman, N., Nedkov, S., Petz, K. & Alkemade, R. Mapping and modelling ecosystem services for science, policy and practice. Ecosystem Services 4, 1–3 (2013). 3. Kandziora, M., Burkhard, B. & Müller, F. Mapping provisioning ecosystem services at the local scale using data of varying spatial and temporal resolution. Ecosystem Services 4, 47–59 (2013). 4. García-Nieto, A. P., García-Llorente, M., Iniesta-Arandia, I. & Martín-López, B. Mapping forest ecosystem services: From providing units to beneficiaries. Ecosystem Services 4, 126–138 (2013). 5. Palomo, I., Martín-López, B., Potschin, M., Haines-Young, R. & Montes, C. National Parks, buffer zones and surrounding lands: Mapping ecosystem service flows. Ecosystem Services 4, 104–116 (2013). 6. UE. EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. (2011). at 7. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). at 8. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being. (Island Press, 2005). at 9. Abson, D. J. et al. Ecosystem services as a boundary object for sustainability. Ecological Economics 103, 29–37 (2014). 10. Costanza, R. & Folke, C. in Nature's Services societal dependence on natural ecosystems 49–68 (Gretchen C. Daily, 1997). at 11. Nelson, E. et al. Modeling multiple ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, commodity production, and tradeoffs at landscape scales. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 7, 4–11 (2009). 12. Antle, J. M. & Valdivia, R. O. Modelling the supply of ecosystem services from agriculture: a minimum-data approach*. Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 50, 1–15 (2006). 13. Barrios, E. Soil biota, ecosystem services and land productivity. Ecological Economics 64, 269–285 (2007). 14. Bagstad, K. J., Semmens, D. J., Waage, S. & Winthrop, R. A comparative assessment of decision-support tools for ecosystem services quantification and valuation. Ecosystem Services 5, 27–39 (2013). 15. Laurans, Y. & Mermet, L. Ecosystem services economic valuation, decision-support system or advocacy? Ecosystem Services 7, 98–105 (2014). 16. Daily, G. C. & Matson, P. A. Ecosystem services: From theory to implementation. PNAS 105, 9455–9456 (2008).

Efforts related to the safety and performance of oil sands tailings storage and transportation facilities have traditionally focused on preventing catastrophic failures and are well defined by government legislation and industrial best practices. However, a recent death related to ground hazards near oil sands tailings facilities, dykes, and transport systems signals the need for improved worker safety during daily operations near these facilities. Ground hazards are known and understood by geotechnical experts, but a breakdown in communication occurs with respect to informing frontline workers. This final report serves to provide a thorough review of the research completed as part of the creative sentencing project resulting from that fatality. It represents an unprecedented collaboration and initiative between the oil sands industry, regional contractors, the Province of Alberta, and the University of Alberta. The outcomes of this research project are increasing the discussion of worker safety in tailings by the: (1) creation of seven tailings specific, so called, Bow Tie Diagrams that graphically provide a means to showcase hazards, threats, consequences and controls, (2) interviews with 158 frontline workers, leaders and regional contractors to determine the viewpoint of internal stakeholders, (3) development of a generalized framework for ground hazards in the oil sands tailings operations, (4) creation of ground hazard photo databases for summer, winter and spring that include descriptions of the ground hazards, potential consequences, precursory conditions and temporal factors, (5) inaugural Tailings Safety Symposium to promote collaboration between oil sands owner companies and regional contractors, and (6) presentation of this research to 12 diverse interdisciplinary audiences across Canada. A holistic approach to operations and worker safety that includes managing the dynamic tailings work environment, job tasks, human factor considerations, and the potential for unknown hazards so that workers are better able to control all hazards in their work environments. Of particular concern are ground hazards in oil sands tailings operations as they not always apparent and pose a threat to workers with no training relevant to ground hazards when working near tailings facilities, dykes, and transport systems. Over the two-year research project, data were collected from four sources: the Energy Safety Canada tailings hazard inventory; incident databases related to the oil sands tailings operations; interviews with tailings workers, regional contractors, and leadership; and a ground hazard assessment conducted by the University of Alberta. These four datasets were compared to determine similarities and differences and then provide recommendations for enhancement of the current hazard identification tools and controls for ground hazards. Process safety management tools such as the Bow Tie Risk Assessment Method were used to cluster the tailings hazard inventory and identify areas for enhanced controls. Energy Safety Canada subject matter experts reviewed the bow tie diagrams to ensure applicability to tailings operations. The final bow tie diagrams showed a heavy reliance on administrative controls (56% of the controls mentioned were administrative) such as training, permits, and hazard assessment to protect worker safety. This value was confirmed by engineers who indicated that engineering controls and elimination and substitution methods are implemented in the design phase, but administrative controls are the primary method to mitigate hazards in the field during daily operations. Tailings incident databases from multiple companies were analyzed to determine what incidents are actually happening in the tailings operations and what is being reported. The data were categorized by hazard type, with a focus on incidents caused by or that could cause ground hazards. Incidents in the ground hazard category include slips, trips, and falls; stuck or sunk equipment; pipeline leaks; and reported ground hazards (i.e., berm breaches, washouts, and over-poured cells). It was determined that almost a quarter (23%) of the reported incidents related to ground hazards. Interviews were also completed with 158 frontline tailings workers, safety personnel, engineers, supervisors, leadership, and regional contractors. Interviewees were asked about the hazards they see in the tailings operations, what solutions or changes they would like to see implemented, and what "words of wisdom" they would pass down to new workers. Workers are aware of the unique, dynamic environment in which they work; however, incidents still occur. One of the reasons incidents are occurring is a lack of information or training regarding tailings specific hazards. Given the lack of training on tailings specific hazards, a framework was developed to discuss ground hazards in the oil sands tailings operations. This framework includes definitions of the four main ground hazards identified by the University of Alberta during their site visits: soft ground, surface erosion, subsurface erosion, and slope instability. To accompany this framework, three ground hazard photo databases have also been created. The photos were taken in three seasons (summer, winter, and spring) of representative tailings facilities, dykes, and transport systems. The hazards in tailings operations are seasonal, indicating the importance for multiple site visits and differentiation between times of the year. How these ground hazards manifest, potential consequences, precursory conditions, and temporal factors are discussed in the figures. Another deliverable of this project was the dissemination of information. The results of this research were presented numerous times to the Energy Safety Canada Tailings Safety Task Force at their office in Fort McMurray. This task force has representation from all of the major oil sands operators and regional contractors. Participation from members was invaluable in terms of providing expert information for the project. Information provided at these meetings was shared with the respective organizations represented by these participants. This type of collaboration regarding tailings related safety in the oil sands is unprecedented, and is set up to continue after the conclusion of this project. On November 29, 2018, the results of this research were also presented to the most important stakeholders—the tailings workers, contractors, and leadership—at an inaugural Tailings Safety Symposium. The 105 people in attendance represented 15 organizations. The findings from the project were presented to the group and feedback on next steps was solicited through group brainstorming methods. In addition to the local oil sands community, this research has also been presented 12 times to diverse audiences at academic and industrial conferences and workshops, including the Canadian Institute of Mining Convention 2018, Petroleum Safety Conference 2018, Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference 2017 and 2018, GeoEdmonton 2018, and 2018 Geohazards 7. The attendees at these presentations provided valuable feedback on the project at every stage of the research process. The full list of academic presentations can be found in Appendix G along with the accepted abstracts. This research will continue to be disseminated after submission of this report as the work has been accepted for presentation at two conferences in 2019: the Society for Risk Analysis and the Center for Risk, Integrity and Safety Engineering Symposium. Based on the analysis of the collected data and discussions with subject matter experts at Energy Safety Canada eight recommendations were developed. The recommendations are: (1) increased communication within industry, (2) increased communication within companies, (3) enhancements to hazard identification tools, (4) critically evaluate current operations, like the operation of spill boxes, (5) increase resources, (6) tailings-specific training, (7) regional standardization, and (8) enhancements to incident databases. Energy Safety Canada has already begun the process of implementing these recommendations with the oil sands tailings industry by taking the following actions: setting up continued meetings of the tailings safety task force, creating smaller working groups to address regional training, alignment of standards on all sites, pipeline leak best practices, spill box operation best practices, working on water and ice best practices, and engaging with emergency response teams to ensure competency for successful emergency response plans. They have also proposed a monthly call for companies (owners and contractors) to discuss lessons learned and share incidents. This type of collaboration regarding safety is unprecedented in industry, and the continued partnership will significantly improve personal safety in the tailings. Hopefully, other industries will see this project as a case study to begin their own collaborations.

The struggle to belong Dealing with diversity in 21st century urban settings. Amsterdam, 7-9 July 2011 Eye contact, clientele alignment & laissez-faire: the production of public space and neighbourhood in Phnom Penh, Cambodia Thomas Kolnberger(*) Paper presented at the International RC21 conference 2011 Session: Nr. 12 – Belonging, exclusion, public and quasi-public space (*) Université du Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Research Unit IPSE (Identité, Politiques, Sociètes, Espace) Universität Passau, BR Deutschland Southeast Asian Studies thomas.kolnberger@uni.lu Overview Private, public or quasi-public spaces are terms that seem particularly difficult to apply to non-Western societies: as in the 'West', their boundaries are fluid and routinely transgressed, but in ways that are distinctive to the local situation and history. This paper is arguing that these concepts retain practical descriptive power, particularly for the city of Phnom Penh, a case study of demographic extremes, as nearly all her inhabitants could be classified as immigrants. In deed, the Khmer Rouge had forcefully evicted the ca. two million people-strong population of the capital in 1975, virtually erasing all 'bourgeois urbanity' during Pol Pot's Cambodian 'auto-genocide'. After the fall of the regime, the new socialist government slowly repopulated the deserted metropolis with new urban dwellers. Their social and spatial belonging needed to be set up from scratch. "Who belongs to whom" (in terms of political clientelism and patronage), "who is doing what" (regarding face-to-face control and eye contact investigation), and "who owns what" (concerning redistribution and also new original accumulation of capital) were the essential questions in this 'struggle to belong'. In this urban setting, people have been employing a mixed set of strategies for implementing 'belonging' ever since. Based on empirical surveys (mapping & interviews) and research in Cambodian and French colonial archives, this paper presents the constant negotiations of private and public space in a changing economic environment from three angles: - streets, squares, and parks as spaces of interaction: the spatial inheritance of the French colonialism in a new context - the emergence of different types of gated communities since 1975: at first by spatial inclusion strategies generating patronage networks, then by urban planning separating rich from poor - the economy of espionage and imitation of Phnom Penh's retail trade: the neighbours' curious gaze Methodology - The city of Phnom Penh in Cambodia is a case study for a `rush economic evolution´ - This paper aims in one part to highlight the role and influence of place and space for a specific process: the spatial location of business sites in a unique window of opportunity as a self-organizing process `from below´. By applying spatial analysis (GPS mapping), a specific pattern of retail agglomeration and dispersion of this `atomistic´ metropolis could be identified. The analysis is based on fieldwork investigating the use of the city's space for economic ends. 1,000 kilometres of built frontage (`streetscapes´) with 14,647 cases of land use features (e.g. shops, `pavement economy´ etc.) have been surveyed and mapped. Subsequent to this quantitative part, 100 semi-structured interviews and numerous ad hoc conversations were conducted including a dozen of expert interviews (city administration, NGO, city planners). Results and Thesis - The city of Phnom Penh in Cambodia is a case study for a `subsistence urbanization´ - Much economic geography research has focused on the importance of the social context for various transactions. 'Face-to-face contact remains central to coordination of the economy, despite the remarkable reductions in transport costs and the astonishing rise in the complexity and variety of information – verbal, visual and symbolic – which can be communicated near instantly' (Storper and Venables, 2003, p. 43 ). Visual proximity and eye-contact are particularly important in environments of imperfect information, like in Cambodia after Pol Pot. Information was scarce at this time and communication hardware rare. Thus, in Phnom Penh's initial retail business formation, an 'economy of espionage and imitation' provided the necessary information for deal-making, decisions concerning the assortments of goods, prize, and trends. The first merchants and producers were heavily dependent on visual contact 'around the corner' and close contact also proved to be beneficial to customers. This specific knowledge and information externality (an externality or transaction spillover is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices) could only be reaped by spatial agglomerations. While screening and socialization of network members and potential partners were essential for the build-up of Cambodia's original clientele-system during the gradual resettlement, visual contact became the decisive steering mechanism for the original distribution of business agglomeration or its dispersion. For a `subsistence urbanization´, the public and quasi-public space are the most important `common-pool resource´. The influx of the population into the city produced a `non-rivalrous´ and `non-excludable´ economic good by the neighbours' curious gaze. - The city of Phnom Penh in Cambodia is a case study for a `spatial club´ - From a New Institutionalism's point of view 'City's neighbourhoods – residential, industrial and commercial clusters – are like firms, nexuses of agreements and understandings about entitlements to share and pooled resources. They differ from firms in that they are spatial clusterings and in that they cluster around resources that remain to varying extents in the public domain. They are like spatial clubs. Members co-operate by various forms of informal and formal rules and agreements in order to ensure the continued supply and enhancement of shared public domain goods. Municipal government is itself a type of club, delivering collectively consumed infrastructure and regulations from a tax on its citizens, firms and visitors. Communities, in the social sense, are also clubs – delivering collectively consumed benefits such as a sense of belonging, security and culture' (Webster and Lai 2003, p. 58). This spontaneous `neighbouring´ as 'rational herding' (Banerjee 1992; Hung and Plott 2001) helped to reduce transaction costs during the initial resettlement process (and beyond). It can be described as a continuous act of self agglomeration of business, creating bazaar-type streets over the whole of the city, which specialise in specific goods and services forming thus, from a bird's view perspective, a `mental retail map´ for the inhabitants. This is one side of building neighbourhoods in Phnom Penh. The base for this laissez-faire et laissez passer behaviorism of the government in (micro)economy was the redistribution of Phnom Penh's real estate amongst trustworthy followers. A `New property Deal´ of first in, first served allocated the built environment piecemeal. In this political economy, two steps are discernable. First, a community-building process regarding the public administration. Each ministry was assigned to a certain area of the city and in a top-down process, starting from the top echelons to the simple civil servants and officials, distributed land and housing. Initially, each responsible could pick `his´ followers and could reward him/her with the allocation of living space, a social structure, which represents a spatially bond replica of the traditional clientelism and patronage-network in Cambodia. These 'strings' (ksae) formed the first neighbourhoods as a kind of `original´ gated community because each administrative unit was planned to be self-sufficient. Each 'cité' (Carrier 2007) was thus clearly demarcated. Its decisions were autonomous, too. In certain areas of Phnom Penh, remnants of this socio-politically gathered community can be found. In a second step, and with increasing immigration, secondary ksae (the mother's cousin, the friend of a friend) proliferated and the city was being `filled up´. Today, the pattern of co-residence in technically secluded areas of Phnom Penh resembles the typical economical founded example of gated communities as neighbourhoods around the world: the rich and the better off separate from the rest. The once moral economy of the civil war and initial post-conflict years is dissolving. Regulation, commodification and the government's efforts to demarcate public and private space is replacing/reducing the common good 'public space'.

The book shows a very original organization addressing in a non traditional way, but with a systematic approach, to who has an interest in using mathematics in the social sciences. The book is divided in four parts: (a) a historical part, written by Vittorio Capecchi which helps us understand the changes in the relationship between mathematics and sociology by analyzing the mathematical models of Paul F. Lazarsfeld, the model of simulation and artificial societies, models of artificial neural network and considering all the changes in scientific paradigms considered, (b) a part coordinated by Pier Luigi Contucci on mathematical models that consider the relationship between the mathematical models that come from physics and linguistics to arrive at the study of society and those which are born within sociology and economics, (c) a part coordinated by Massimo Buscema analyzing models of artificial neural networks, (d) a part coordinated by Bruno D`Amore which considers the relationship between mathematics and art. The title of the book "Mathematics and Society" was chosen because the mathematical applications exposed in the book allow you to address two major issues: (a) the general theme of technological innovation and quality of life (among the essays are on display mathematical applications to the problems of combating pollution and crime, applications to mathematical problems of immigration, mathematical applications to the problems of medical diagnosis, etc.) (b) the general theme of technical innovation and creativity, for example the art and mathematics section which connects to the theme of creative cities. The book is very original because it is not addressed only to those who are passionate about mathematical applications in social science but also to those who, in different societies, are: (a) involved in technological innovation to improve the quality of life, (b) involved in the wider distribution of technological innovation in different areas of creativity (as in the project "Creative Cities Network" of UNESCO). TOC: Mathematics and Society Preface Vittorio Capecchi, Massimo Buscema, Pierluigi Contucci, Bruno D`Amore 1- Vittorio Capecchi: Historical Introduction Section I (mathematics and models) 2- Pierluigi Contucci, Ignacio Gallo, Stefano Ghirlanda: "Equilibria of culture contact derived from ingroup and outgroup attitudes" 3- Oscar Bolina: "Society from the Statistical Mechanics Perspective" 4- Anna M. Borghi, Daniele Caligiore, Claudia Scorolli: "Objects, words, and actions. Some reasons why embodied models are badly needed in cognitive psychology." 5- Luca Desanctis, Stefano Ghirlanda: "Shared culture needs large social networks" 6- C. Gallo: "Mathematical models of financial markets" 7- F. Gallo, Pierluigi Contucci, A. Coutts, Ignacio Gallo: "Tackling climate change through energy efficiency: mathematical models to offer evidence-based recommendations for public policy" 8- Simone Sarti, Marco Terraneo: "An application of the multilevel regression technique to validate a social stratification scale" 9- Robert B. Smith: "The Academic Mind Revisited: Contextual Analysis via Multilevel Modeling" Section III (mathematics and neural networks) 10 - Massimo Buscema: "The General Philosophy of the Artificial Adaptive Systems" 11 - Massimo Buscema, Pier Luigi Sacco: "Auto-Contractive Maps, the H Function and the Maximally Regular Graph (MRG): a new methodology for data mining" 12- Massimo Buscema, Pier Luigi Sacco: "An Artificial Intelligent Systems Approach to - Unscrambling Power Networks in Italy`s Business Environment" 13- Giulia Massini: "Multi - Meta SOM" 14- Massimo Buscema: "How to make data mining: The Persons Arrested Dataset" 15- Enzo Grossi: "Medicine and Mathematics of Complex Systems" 16- Massimo Buscema, Enzo Grossi: "J-Net System: a new paradigm for Artificial Neural Networks applied to diagnostic imaging" 17 - S. Tangaro, R. Bellotti, F. De Carlo, G. Gargano: "Digital Image Processing in Medical Applications" Section III (mathematics and art) 18 - Giorgio T. Bagni: "Mathematics, Art, and Interpretation: an Hermeneutic Perspective" 19- Giorgio Bolondi: "Point, line and surface, following Hilbert and Kandinsky" 20- Bruno D`Amore: Figurative arts and mathematics: pipes, horses, triangles and meanings A contribution to a problematic theory of conceptual meaning, from Frege and Magritte up to the present time" 21- Michele Emmer: The idea of space in art, technology and mathematics" 22- Raffaele Mascella, Franco Eugeni,e Ezio Sciarpa: "Mathematical structures and sense of beauty" 23- Monica Idà: "Visual impact and mathematical learning" 24- Marco Pierini: "Art by Numbers.Mel Bochner, Roman Opalka and other Philarhythmics" 25-Aldo Spizzichino: "My way of playing with the computer. Suggestions for a personal experience in vector graphics" 26- Gian Marco Todesco: "Four dimensional ideas" 27- Igino Aschieri, Paola Vighi: "From Art to Mathematics in the paintings of Theo van Doesburg" Editors`s biographies