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Abstract. The present contribution constitutes the first comprehensive attempt to (a) record the spatial characteristics of the beaches of the Aegean archipelago (Greece), a critical resource for both the local and national economy, and (b) provide a rapid assessment of the impacts of the long-term and episodic sea level rise (SLR) under different scenarios. Spatial information and other attributes (e.g., presence of coastal protection works and backshore development) of the beaches of the 58 largest islands of the archipelago were obtained on the basis of remote-sensed images available on the web. Ranges of SLR-induced beach retreats under different morphological, sedimentological and hydrodynamic forcing, and SLR scenarios were estimated using suitable ensembles of cross-shore (1-D) morphodynamic models. These ranges, combined with empirically derived estimations of wave run-up induced flooding, were then compared with the recorded maximum beach widths to provide ranges of retreat/erosion and flooding at the archipelago scale. The spatial information shows that the Aegean pocket beaches may be particularly vulnerable to mean sea level rise (MSLR) and episodic SLRs due to (i) their narrow widths (about 59 % of the beaches have maximum widths < 20 m), (ii) their limited terrestrial sediment supply, (iii) the substantial coastal development and (iv) the limited existing coastal protection. Modeling results indeed project severe impacts under mean and episodic SLRs, which by 2100 could be devastating. For example, under MSLR of 0.5 m – representative concentration pathway (RCP) 4.5 of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) – a storm-induced sea level rise of 0.6 m is projected to result in a complete erosion of between 31 and 88 % of all beaches (29–87 % of beaches are currently fronting coastal infrastructure and assets), at least temporarily. Our results suggest a very considerable risk which will require significant effort, financial resources and policies/regulation in order to protect/maintain the critical economic resource of the Aegean archipelago.

Radical ideologies may manifest differently at first, but they do follow a similar logic: truth claims, promises of salvation and a unifying common enemy. In Yemen's transition process today, the secessionist movement Al-Hirak has summoned the spirit of South Yemen, the only Marxist state in Arabia. This book meticulously describes how East Germany supported the implantation of this alien ideology in Yemen through its policy of »Socialist state- and nation-building«. In the same breath, the analysis captures the GDR's activities in the Middle East and their vital role in Moscow's Cold War strategy. Last but least, the study provides one of the few compact overviews of East German foreign policy in the English language of today.

Dottorato di ricerca in Diritto dei mercati europei e globali, crisi, diritti, regolazione ; La tesi ha ad oggetto l'evoluzione della regolazione nel settore ferroviario con riferimento agli effetti determinati dalla istituzione dell'ART, e, dunque, dal passaggio da una regolazione di tipo ministeriale ad una di tipo tecnico.Analizzato il contesto di partenza, ci si è posti una serie di domande che costituiscono l'obiettivo dell'indagine: a)se l'attività svolta sia riuscita a fornire un quadro regolatorio certo e stabile; b)se l'ART sia stata in grado di supportare il decisore politico; c)se sia riuscita a garantire la coerenza della regolazione economica e il suo tempestivo enforcement; d)se sia riuscita a realizzare una effettiva regolazione pro concorrenziale su aspetti chiave, quali il calcolo del pedaggioe delle modalità di accesso dei nuovi operatori.Al fine di fornire risposte a tali domande, è stato effettuato uno scrutinio analitico delle delibere adottate nel settore. Lo studio, svolto attraverso i filtri della capacità innovativa e della portata pro-concorrenziale, dimostra come molti provvedimentisiano rivoluzionari per il settore e di importanza cruciale per la promozione della concorrenza. Tuttavia, emerge un ulteriore interrogativo: visto che le ricavate risposte sono confortanti, ci si domanda come mai la concorrenza stenti ad affermarsi. Due questioni su tutte: la governance della infrastruttura el'assenza di un quadro regolatorio vincolante in tema di gare. In un siffatto contesto, l'attività di enforcement svolta dall'ART rischia di diventare meno efficace. ; The subject of the presentthesisis the evolution of regulation in the railway sector with reference to the effectsdetermined by the institution of ART, and, therefore, by the passage from a ministerialtyperegulation to a technical one. After analyzing the startingcontext, weaskedourselves a series of questionsthatconstitute the objective of the investigation: a) if the activity carried out hassucceeded in providing a certain and stableregulatory framework; b) whether the cfART wasable to support the politicaldecision maker; c) whetherithassucceeded in guaranteeing the coherence of economicregulation and itstimely enforcement; d) whetherithassucceeded in realizingeffective pro-competitive regulation on key aspects, suchas the calculationof the toll and the methods of access for new operators. In order to provideanswers to thesequestions, an analyticalscrutiny of the resolutionsadopted in the sectorwascarried out. The study, carried out through the filters of innovative capacity and pro-competitive scope, shows howmanymeasures are revolutionary for the sector and of crucialimportance for the promotion of competition. However, a furtherquestionemerges: since the answers are reassuring, one wonderswhy the competitionisstruggling to assertitself. Two questions on all: the governance of the infrastructure and the absence of a bindingregulatory framework in terms of tenders. In such a context, the enforcement activity carried out by the ART risks becominglesseffective.

AbstractThis article argues that employing migrant domestic workers has become a new form of social distinction in urban Yemen. The rapid social, economic and political changes of the past forty years have altered Yemen's system of social stratification. Formerly, one's racial descent and economic background determined the work they performed. Manual and service professions had a very low status and were only performed by the lowest social status groups. Nowadays other forms of social distinction have emerged. Although the economic situation in Yemen has deteriorated since the 1990s, the demand for paid domestic labour has increased. Yemeni women are reluctant to take up paid work as domestics, and middle and upper middle class families in urban areas employ migrant and refugee women, in particular from the Horn of Africa.

This paper focuses on the time perspective dynamics of the Ukrainian 17–24-year-olds which reside in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, such as Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk and Odessa regions, during the period 2012–2015. The study included areas bordering the zone of military conflict, or those that are an area of great national importance and therefore are a strategic area in military operations, which can begin there. All subjects filled out a personal data questionnaire (age, gender, place of residence) and the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) in the Ukrainian-language adaptation by A. Senik or the Russian-language adaptation by A. Syrtsova. Thus, the research has covered three periods which differ in social, political and economical stability: before Maidan, during Maidan and the one started with onset of armed conflict in the Eastern regions of the country. The temporal perspective of young people, measured during these periods, may also differ because of changes in the social and material parameters of life. The results have shown that during the aforementioned period future time orientation decreases, whilst the numbers of present fatalistic and past negative time orientations as well as a negative interpretation of past events increase with onset of armed conflict in the Eastern regions of the country. The significance of time orientations does not differ in the period before the Maidan and in the Maidan period, and grow only in the period from the outbreak of the military conflict – simultaneously with significant changes in the social and material parameters of the population life living near the military conflict zone. The results obtained – a decrease in the setting of long-term goals, an increase in fatalism (helplessness) and a negative assessment of the past – may be the result of the young people traumatic experience, through the prism of which past, present and future events of one's own life are evaluated.

Iran is More than Persia: Ethnic Politics in Iran analyses Iranian politics from a unique perspective, one that focuses on the relations between the Persian-dominated Iranian state and the country's ethnic minorities. The book explores the stability of the ruling regime in light of the challenges that multiethnicity brings. Persians comprise less than half of the population of Iran and more than 40 percent of Iranians lack fluency in the Persian language. An overwhelming majority of non-Persian groups inhabit most of Iran's border regions; as such the book explores Iran's foreign policy toward neighboring states that share co-ethnic populations. Iran's ethnic minorities inhabit the state's poorest provinces and the country's growing environmental and water supply challenges hit the ethnic minority provinces harder than the Persian center, adding an ominous ethnic character to what are often presented as purely environmental or economic challenges. The book further examines the potential impact of ethnic based unrest in Khuzestan on Iran's oil production, Iran's main oil producing region. Drawing on a rich assortment of primary data and interviews, this book offers unparalled insights into ethnic politics in Iran. It will be of interest to upper-level undergraduates and postgraduates, researchers and professionals interested in the Middle East, international relations, and ethnic studies.

"Relations between Israel and the Gulf states are not anything new. In the immediate aftermath of the 1993 Oslo Accords, both Qatar and Oman established low-level yet open diplomatic ties with Israel. In 2010, Ha'aretz reported that the former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, was on friendly terms with Shaykh Abdullah Ibn Zayed, her counterpart from the UAE, despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties between the two states. The shared suspicion towards the regional designs of Iran that undoubtedly underpinned these ties even extended, it was alleged, to a secret dialogue between Israel and Saudi Arabia, led by the late Meir Dagan, the former head of Mossad. Cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia in thwarting Iran's regional ambitions also casts light on Washington's lack of strategic leadership, which had previously been the totem around which Israel and the Gulf states had based regional security strategies. Jones and Guzansky contend that, at the very least, ties between Israel and many of its Gulf counterparts are now more vibrant than hitherto realized. They constitute a tacit security regime which, while based on hard power interests, does not preclude competition in other areas. Ultimately, these relations are helping shape a new regional order in the Middle East." --Publisher's description

This revelatory study investigates how changing modes of representing the black female figure were foundational to the development of modern art. Posing Modernity examines the legacy of Edouard Manet's Olympia (1863), arguing that this radical painting marked a fitfully evolving shift toward modernist portrayals of the black figure as an active participant in everyday life rather than as an exotic "other." Denise Murrell explores the little-known interfaces between the avant-gardists of nineteenth-century Paris and the post-abolition community of free black Parisians. She traces the impact of Manet's reconsideration of the black model into the twentieth century and across the Atlantic, where Henri Matisse visited Harlem jazz clubs and later produced transformative portraits of black dancers as icons of modern beauty. These and other works by the artist are set in dialogue with the urbane "New Negro" portraiture style with which Harlem Renaissance artists including Charles Alston and Laura Wheeler Waring defied racial stereotypes. The book concludes with a look at how Manet's and Matisse's depictions influenced Romare Bearden and continue to reverberate in the work of such global contemporary artists as Faith Ringgold, Aimé Mpane, Maud Sulter, and Mickalene Thomas, who draw on art history to explore its multiple voices

Dating from the Reagan presidency's 'crusade for freedom', democracy promotion has been a central pillar of US foreign policy. Whether claims by George H.W. Bush that 'beyond containment lies democracy', or by George W. Bush that intervention into the Middle East promoted a 'march to freedom in the Muslim world', the importance of democracy to US foreign policy should not be underestimated. Far from promoting democracy, however, critics suggest that it is merely rhetorical cover for intervention and control, thus serving US rather than local interests. While not discarding these insights, this paper suggests that while democracy promotion may support US self-interests, so too does it uphold a US self-image by acting as an ideal around which Washington constructs its identity and worldview. Explored in relation to Latin America, it is argued that US democracy promotion - enabled by authoritarian representations of Venezuela - is central to both a US-authored Latin American identity and, in contrast, integral to challenging it. While Venezuela acts as the reverse image of freedom-loving United States and a democratically abiding Latin America, Caracas also challenges US democratic pre-eminence by extending the very notion of democracy and thereby demonstrates how both democracy and US influence more broadly are increasingly sites of contestation.

تتناول هذه الدراسة تحليلاً استراتيجيات الموازنة للدول المتوسطة (الثانوية والصغرى) في العلاقات الدولية، وتناقش مُفصلاً موازنتي التهديد والتحوّط في السياسات الخارجية، وتحلل دوافع الموازنة وعناصرها الخارجية، وتستعرض تحليلياً أنواع الموازنة، ثم تناقش الدراسة الموازنة كسياسةٍ خارجيةٍ للقوى المتوسطة والصغيرة في النظام الدوليّ، ثم تستعرض الدّراسة أبرز الاستراتيجيات البديلة عن الموازنة وهيّ المناورة والترابط والتشبيك والارتباط الملزم ثم الحصار، وذلك من خلال اختبار ثلاث فرضياتٍ بحثية، أولها أنّ الموازنة سياسةٌ خارجيةٌ للدولة تهدف لمعادلة (القوة أو التهديد) تجاه الدول الأكثر قوةً، وبالتالي تصبح تلك الدولة أقلّ احتماليةً للهيمنة، هذا الافتراض يستكمله افتراضان آخران، أن نظرية الموازنة هي جزءٌ من نظرية توازن القوى إلاّ أنّ مجموعةً من الفروق النظرية، والتطبيقية تجعلهما متمايزتان، والفرضية الجزئية الثانية أنّ الموازنة الإيجابية تهدف إلى تعزيز قدرات الدولة وترسيخ مكانتها في المجتمع الدولي، بينما تسعى استراتيجية الموازنة السلبية إلى تقويض نفوذ الخصم وتقليص قدراته. وتوصلت الدّراسة إلى نتائج بحثيةٍ أهمها أن الموازنة هيّ سياسةٌ أو سلوك يهدف إلى محاولة مطابقة، أو تجاوز، أو منع قوة دولةٍ أقوى من الهيمنة على الدولة الموازنة من خلال: تحالفٍ لمواجهة دولة الهيمنة على أن تكون الموازنة هنا استباقيةٌ، فهيّ لا تشمل المواقف التي "تُفرض فيها الحرب على الموازن المحتمل من خلال هجومٍ عسكريٍّ مباشرٍ من قبل المعتدي، كما يمكن أن تكون الموازنة داخليًة أيضًا، حيث تبني الدولة قدراتها الخاصة، سواء العسكرية أو القاعدة الاجتماعية الاقتصادية التي تعتمد عليها، لذا فإنّ التوازن الداخلي يكون أكثر وضوحًا عندما يتجاوز معدل النمو معدل نمو الدول الأخرى، خاصةً في القوة العسكرية، ثم تقوم الدولة بموازنة جميع القوى الأقوى من خلال اللحاق بهم.