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Covering a period from the Middle Ages through the 1990s, and addressing phenomena overlooked by Rokkan such as statebuilding and nationalism, this book demonstrates that Rokkan's models continue to be relevant to modern political science and sociology. Kommisrud's study is a valuable contribution to Rokkanian approaches and the understanding of Eastern European development within the historical and geographic context of Europe as a whole.

Taking a fresh approach to the works of Henry David Thoreau, this book applies his ideas to a contemporary business setting. Gathering Thoreau's key writings on leadership, wealth and well-being, the nature of business, and simplicity and self-reliance, this study places each into a modern-day context and business model to highlight what is relevant to scholars, leaders, and strategists in the field today

In this autoethnographic work, authors Deanna L. Fassett and John T. Warren illustrate a synthesis of critical pedagogy and instructional communication, as both a field of study and a teaching philosophy. Critical Communication Pedagogy is a poetic work that charts paradigmatic tensions in instructional communication research, articulates commitments underpinning critical communication pedagogy, and invites readers into self-reflection on their experiences as researchers, students, and teachers

Locating Africa on the global stage, this book examines and compares external involvement in the continent, exploring the foreign policies of major states and international organizations towards Africa. The contributors work within a political economy framework in order to study how these powers have attempted to stimulate democracy, peace and prosperity in the context of neo-liberal hegemony and ask whom these attempts have benefited and failed.

Locating Africa on the global stage, this book examines and compares external involvement in the continent, exploring the foreign policies of major states and international organizations towards Africa. The contributors work within a political economy framework in order to study how these powers have attempted to stimulate democracy, peace and prosperity in the context of neo-liberal hegemony and ask whom these attempts have benefited and failed.

Encounters with Alphonso Lingis is the first extensive study of this American philosopher who is gaining an international reputation to augment his national one. The distinguished contributors to this volume address most of the central themes found in Lingis's writings-including singularity and otherness, death and eroticism, emotions and rationality, embodiment and the face, excess and the sacred. The book closes with a new essay by Lingis himself

This is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical and political thought of Karl Popper, now available in English. It is divided into three parts, dealing with his biographical data, his works and recurrent themes, and finally his critics. It was approved of by Popper himself as a sympathetic and comprehensive study, and will be ideal to meet the increasing demand for a summary introduction to his work

Mikhail Gorbachev's rise to power in 1985 signalled the beginning of significant improvements in Soviet-Israeli relations--thoroughly examined in this carefully researched volume. Based on an analysis of Soviet behavior and interviews with Israeli and Soviet Foreign Ministry officials and PLO leaders, this study describes how eased tensions between the Soviet Union and Israel have been achieved and analyzes the Soviet Union's reasons for advancing diplomatic relations with Israel.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the configurations of short life cycle, low quality, design and price, influence customer purchase intention in fast fashion and high technology industries in China.


Design/methodology/approach
The traditional thinking is that products with high quality and low price will win more customers. However, the authors can notice that high quality products usually have high cost. Therefore, it is necessary to do more research on how customers can accept low quality products. The authors take fast fashion products and smart phones as empirical studies, collecting data from customer's online survey. Based on the methodology of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors analyse the relationship between the factors of short life cycle, low quality, design and price and influence customer purchase intention.


Findings
The authors find that price is the most important influencing factor. Low price is a strong competitive factor in the market. As to low quality products, low price can be achieved relatively more easily than with high quality products, resulting from relatively poorer raw material or configurations. Hence the connection between quality and price may give an idea to enterprises that customers will accept low quality products with low price. Moreover, according to the research, different generations are equally affected by the low price condition, regardless of customer gender and household income.


Research limitations/implications
Because the study only focuses on fast fashion and smart phones industries, future work needs to replicate this study with individual data for different industries and with alternative methods to reinforce the confidence in the research. Meanwhile , this research studied mainly the customer perspective, it would be desirable to extend the study to the enterprise perspective and find out the difficulties that limit them in using low quality products to meet market needs. This may revel some cultural differences in purchase behavior among different countries and the discussed industries can be expanded to a larger area.


Practical implications
The study offers a number of managerial implications. With the rapid changes in people's aesthetic sense and developing high-tech, it is more and more necessary for companies to think about how to win more customers and earn more profits. Low quality products have advantages as they will lower companies' costs in many dimensions, improving the speed of supply. It helps firms to take low quality products into consideration and think whether they will influence different aspects of the company assistance firms to get a deeper understanding of customer psychology and make better decisions on their products.


Originality/value
The paper fills the gap in the research field by exploring how consumer behavior is affected by different conditions.

AbstractDespite decades of research and debate, the narrative that low-quality patents stifle innovation remains fraught with controversy. It is called into question because the term "patent quality" seems to be a potential misnomer, and reforms to improve patent quality are ineffective. The purpose of this study is to offer a comparative critique of the debate regarding patent quality in the European Union and the United States. It investigates five factors relating to the history of this debate, contested definitions, measurements of quality, proposals that are not implemented, and reforms that are implemented. The main contribution of this paper is to review how the debate has been constructed, indicating that certain arguments seem to talk past each other and consensus is hard to reach, that measurements are flawed, and that proposals and reforms seeking improvement seem to be treating the symptoms but not the disease. The study argues that the debate encounters a conceptual predicament characterized by substantively different conceptions of patent quality, which are influenced by differing normative expectations and assessments of patent systems. It transforms a potentially useful analytical concept into a rabbit hole. Any attempts to break the current impasse must begin with an appreciation of the different senses in which patent quality is used and an assessment of the legitimacy of their underlying normative frameworks.

Bereavement services incorporating family-centered practices are emerging within hospital-based care but are often time-limited and lack personalization. This action research single case study explored one father's experience of music therapy using amplified cardiopulmonary recordings (ACPR) during bereavement following his son's death by suicide, to critique current norms and inspire transformative change in systems of care. As co-researchers, a bereaved father, his music therapist, and a music therapy researcher used iterative cycles to qualitatively analyze a series of dialogic reflections upon an 8-year experience of ACPR to construct two overarching themes: 1) continuity experienced as compassion, and 2) process of music therapy with ACPR as tool for resilience and positive growth. Aspects of continuity in the ACPR process, in relation with the music therapist, in journeying through grief, and in the heart and heartbeat were perceived as overwhelming compassion that fostered positive growth in the face of profound loss. We see our study as a first step in promoting culture change by exposing underlying practices, assumptions and policies within the context of hospital-based bereavement care and identifying an exceptional example of possibilities. Our findings add to the literature on action research for transformation by demonstrating that the process of relational knowledge co-creation can be perceived as part of the therapeutic journey.

AbstractBy establishing an infrastructure for monitoring and blocking networks in accordance with European Union (EU) law on preventive measures against the spread of information, EU member states have also made it easier to block websites and services and monitor information. While relevant studies have documented Internet censorship in non‐European countries, as well as the use of such infrastructures for political reasons, this study examines network interference practices such as website blocking against the backdrop of an almost complete lack of EU‐related research. Specifically, it performs and demonstrates an analysis for the total of 27 EU countries based on three different sources. They include first, tens of millions of historical network measurements collected in 2020 by Open Observatory of Network Interference volunteers from around the world; second, the publicly available blocking lists used by EU member states; and third, the reports issued by network regulators in each country from May 2020 to April 2021. Our results show that authorities issue multiple types of blocklists. Internet Service Providers limit access to different types and categories of websites and services. Such resources are sometimes blocked for unknown reasons and not included in any of the publicly available blocklists. The study concludes with the hurdles related to network measurements and the nontransparency from regulators regarding specifying website addresses in blocking activities.

Our study demonstrates that the pre-M&A phase provides breeding ground for irrational behavior in the form of cognitive biases. These biases not only arise within acquiring and acquired firms, but M&A advisors themselves are also prone to effort-saving techniques and subconscious biases, which may be reflected in the client's M&A decision-making process. Cognitive biases stem from the contractual client–advisor relationship that elicits time pressure, standardization, and emotionality—that is, circumstances that favor the employment of effort-saving techniques. These biases lead to complex decisions based on the selective collection, framing and evaluation of data, the overestimation of one's rationality, ability and deal likelihood, the illusion of control, and one-sided views. Such a biased evaluation of information is likely to induce the selection of a non-optimal target or acquirer or simply forcing a deal that should not be made in the first place. Hence, these cognitive biases can be seen as a source for consequent M&A failure. With the identification of cognitive biases and bias-fostering circumstances, our study allows for awareness and consequent mitigation of such blind spots, thereby improving decision-making processes in the pre-M&A phase via the introduction of "debiasing" strategies and the creation of favorable conditions for rational reasoning.

AbstractThe presented work deals with levels and distribution of bisphenol A (BPA) in the edible tissues of a large food-producing animal species. An experimental animal study included 14 young Istrian pramenka rams (Ovis aries), of which seven were exposed for 64 days to a low dietary dose of BPA at 25 µg/kg b.w./day, and seven served as a control group. Residue analysis of both aglycone and total BPA was performed in the muscle tissue, liver, kidney and fat tissue of the individual animals by means of enzymatic deconjugation (for total BPA), organic solvent extraction, molecularly imprinted polymer solid-phase extraction (MISPE) clean-up and high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLU). The analysis was optimized and validated for aglycone BPA in the fat tissue and for the total BPA in all tissues investigated. Edible tissues of the control group of rams generally remained BPA-free, while there were concentration differences between the control and treated groups for liver and kidney post last administration. The human health risk resulting from this study was assessed by the estimated dietary exposure in adults, which was < 0.1% related to the valid European Union Tolerable Daily Intake (TDI) value of 4 µg/kg b.w./day. However, it would be 58-fold higher than the newly proposed TDI value of 0.04 ng/kg b.w./day.

Gurdwara Shiri Guru Singh Sabha is the finest historical and religio-cultural legacy of Sikhs in Hazara Division. Due to the absence of Sikh population, it is not functional for religious activities and remained closed till 1976. Later the building became part of various departments and was eventually converted into a library in 2000 but its old look and architecture have been taken care of. This magnificent three story Gurdwara still amazes the visitors with its architectural beauty. This masterpiece of Sikh architecture still exists with its historical, religious and cultural values. The current study is an attempt to elaborate all those historical aspects associated with Gurdwara which are still hidden from the limelight. The study also seeks to highlight the religious significance of the Gurdwara for the Sikh community of Pakistan and abroad. The research has mainly been conducted through primary and secondary sources including historical evidences, interviews, journals and books etc with an aim to highlight the scope of religious tourism in the Hazara Region. The decision of the ETBP to resume Sikh rituals and worship here is really a matter of happiness for the Sikh community. This decision will further promote peace in the times to come. Gurdwara is a testament to the fact that the religious places of minorities in Pakistan are not only safe but as intact as possible.