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This work was supported by the Latvian Council of Science , project NN-CARMA, project No. lzp-2018/1-0194. ; Background: This work studied how the exposure to an unusual substrate forced a change in microbial populations during anaerobic fermentation of crude glycerol, a by-product of biodiesel production, with freshwater sediment used as an inoculum. Results: The microbial associations almost completely (99.9%) utilized the glycerol contained in crude glycerol 6 g L−1 within four days, releasing gases, organic acids (acetic, butyric) and alcohols (ethanol, n-butanol) under anaerobic conditions. In comparison with control medium without glycerol, adding crude glycerol to the medium increased the amount of ethanol and n-butanol production and it was not significantly affected by incubation temperature (28 °C or 37 °C), nor incubation time (4 or 8 d), but it resulted in reduced amount of butyric acid. Higher volume of gas was produced at 37 °C despite the fact that the overall bacterial count was smaller than the one measured at 20 °C. Main microbial phyla of the inoculum were Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. During fermentation, significant changes were observed and Firmicutes, especially Clostridium spp., began to dominate, and the number of Actinobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria decreased accordingly. Concentration of Archaea decreased, especially in medium with crude glycerol. These changes were confirmed both by culturing and culture-independent (concentration of 16S rDNA) methods. Conclusions: Crude glycerol led to the adaptation of freshwater sediment microbial populations to this substrate. Changes of microbial community were a result of a community adaptation to a new source of carbon. How to cite: Paiders M, Nikolajeva V, Makarenkova G, et al. Changes in freshwater sediment microbial populations during fermentation of crude glycerol. ; Latvian Council of Science lzp-2018/1-0194; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART²

10 pages, 4 figures, 6 tables, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2021.107699 ; Sardine and anchovy have shown important changes in landings, biomass, abundance and body condition with time in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain these changes, including the negative interaction with jellyfish blooms. Increases in jellyfish blooms may be one of the reasons for a decline in these fish stocks because several jellyfish species have been shown to feed on fish larvae and juveniles. The main aim of the present study was to test the plausible relationship between jellyfish blooms and stock dynamics (abundance, biomass, and fitness) of anchovy and sardine, and its fisheries within an ecological context of the western Mediterranean Sea. Our main hypothesis was that jellyfish blooms, in combination with other environmental drivers, could have negative effects due to their predation on early stages of small pelagic fish (direct mortality) or due to predation on zooplankton, which is also prey of the small pelagic fish at different ontogenetic stages (direct competition). To test our hypothesis, we developed Bayesian Generalized Linear Mixed Models to compare landings, biomass, abundance, and Kn condition factor of both species with several climatic indices, oceanographic variables, and the occurrences of jellyfish blooms. Our results revealed that the jellyfish bloom occurrence had a high probability of negatively and broadly affecting both species in addition to changes in environmental conditions. This suggests that jellyfish blooms should be added to the likely causes of change when analyzing small pelagic fish change ; This study was carried out within the Spanish Research project PELWEB (CTM2017-88939-R) funded by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and the Catalonian Government PELCAT projects (CAT 152CAT00013, TAIS ARP059/19/00005). [.] MC acknowledges the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S) to the Institute of Marine Science (ICM-CSIC). ; Peer reviewed

How do changes in climatic conditions and disaster patterns affect the persistence of civil unrest across countries over time? Existing studies postulate that changing climate conditions will exacerbate various social conflicts through their impacts on degraded environmental and economic conditions, which is further conditional on political institutions. Nevertheless, there are two major pitfalls in the existing studies. First, vulnerability as a major underlying mechanism has been used as an umbrella term or been presumed. Using vulnerability as an umbrella term has a detrimental effect on climate-conflict theory-building because it prevents scholars from deriving testable empirical implications for relevant concepts. Second, previous research has pinpointed the importance of political institutions in moderating impacts of climate on conflict, but the literature says little about what aspects of political institutions might aggravate or alleviate vulnerability to climate in ways that are simmering or amplifying civil strife. Using the structural causal approach and machine learning methods, this dissertation improves the identification of the mediation effect of vulnerability and the moderation effect of political institutions on the climate-conflict relationship. The important mechanisms and implications revealed by this study are twofold. First, this dissertation finds that the impacts of extreme climatic events are more important in shaping local vulnerability than that of annual weather variations, and that adaptive capacity is more important than economic sensitivity in mitigating local vulnerability. Annual weather variations (i.e., the slow-moving mechanics) have a significant impact on cumulative conflict hazards, whereas extreme climatic events (i.e., the fast-moving drivers) fuel onset of a new conflict. In the presence of socio-psychological vulnerabilities, an increase in annual weather variations can boil new conflicts. Second, the state capacity is more important than democracy in exacerbating a country's vulnerability to climate, and the degree of executive bribery especially plays a crucial role in moderating the impacts of vulnerability to climate on civil conflict. However, of different aspects of democracy, freedom of academic and cultural expression has the most important moderating effect on conflict. What is striking is the role of socio-psychological vulnerability in transmitting the impacts of extreme climate and weather variations on civil conflict. Mainstream conflict theory has shown that institutional and economic conditions are the most important factors determining conflicts even though socio-psychological factors are meaningful contexts. However, this present study shows that socio-psychological vulnerability is more important than institutional and economic conditions in shaping civil conflict.

APPROVED ; Interpretations of the period following the disintegration of the Carolingian empire in Western Europe at the end of the ninth century have long divided historians, between those who believe a violent rupture in political and social structures took place around the year 1000 and those who argue for an essential continuity. This thesis aims to transcend these debates, by approaching medieval society through a case-study in the Loire valley region relying on two fresh methodological insights. Firstly, it will investigate changes in the economic structures which provided society's material base; secondly, it will analyse how those ?lites claimed, performed and maintained their status. Based on these two approaches, the thesis explores changing patterns of ?lite behaviour in order to better understand the social and economic changes which took place from the late ninth century onwards. The thesis examines the effects of shifting landholding patterns, the emergence of seigneurial customs, changing attitudes to church patronage and lay violence, and the methods by which ?lites were identified in documents, to establish their implications for the ways by which ?lites could claim and maintain their status. It concludes that there was a significant and fundamental transformation of social and economic structures, beginning in the middle of the tenth century, in the middle Loire valley, although the pace of change is slower than would be appropriate for a 'Feudal Revolution'. Nevertheless, the breakdown of the Carolingian political order unleashed a wave of competition amongst local and regional ?lites, which saw them innovate and adapt the heritage of Carolingian culture to create a new, 'feudal' social order. This was fuelled by the changes in economic structures which provided ?lites with more wealth to promote their own status; the competition for status in turn fuelled ?lites' need for more wealth and their incentive for economic expansion.

Satire in verse on the King's attempt to regulate the dress and clothing styles of the French. "Hé quoy? faut-il que vos Edicts Nous fassent changer nos Habits?" ; Electronic reproduction ; [6], [2] pages; 16 cm

Early legislation relating to the art of the goldsmith and silversmith: methods of work, jewelers' marks, importation of gold and silver, role of the money-changer and lender, etc. ; Electronic reproduction; [32] p. ; 17 cm. (8vo)

Inclui correções e alterações sugeridas pelo Júri. ; The COVID-19 pandemic is the disaster of the 21st century, the disease that shook the world and change life of entire populations. Its tremendous negative impact on economy caused permanent changes in organizational functioning, triggering companies to create crisis management strategies and adopt new innovative practices. The agro-sector was not an exemption. Considering that this sector manifests constant growth related to not only the increase of human population, but also to continuous life-style changes, it is crucial to develop recovery strategies on organizational and governmental levels. Therefore this study provides the general overview of crisis management concept with its main characteristics and frameworks; analyses the importance of innovation in agro-sector; offers agro-sector overview; examines the pandemic's impact on this particular sector and some of the recovery strategies; and explores the attitudes of agro-sector professionals towards COVID-19 crisis in two countries – Portugal and Russia. This research intends to discover differences and similarities in crisis management solutions between agro business professionals in both countries, as well as possible approaches to crisis outcome minimization. ; A pandemia COVID-19 é a tragédia do século XXI, a doença que abalou o mundo e mudou a vida de populações inteiras. O seu forte impacto negativo na economia provocou mudanças permanentes no funcionamento organizacional, levando as empresas a criar estratégias de gestão de crise e a adotar as novas práticas inovadoras. O setor agrícola não foi a exceção. Visto que este sector demonstra um crescimento constante relacionado não apenas com o aumento da população a nível mundial, mas também com as mudanças contínuas no seu estilo de vida, um desenvolvimento de estratégias de recuperação a nível organizacional e governamental torna-se imperativo. Deste modo, este estudo oferece um panorama geral do conceito de gestão de crise com as suas principais características e estruturas; analisa a importância da inovação no setor agrícola; oferece uma visão geral do setor; apresenta o impacto da pandemia neste sector e algumas das estratégias de recuperação; por fim, explora as atitudes dos profissionais do setor agrícola em relação à crise da COVID-19 em dois países – em Portugal e na Rússia. Esta investigação pretende descobrir as diferenças e semelhanças nas soluções de gestão de crise entre os profissionais de agro-negócios de ambos os países, bem como os possíveis abordagens relativamente à minimização dos impactos da crise.

Discrimination against minority groups still occurs in Indonesia, both in the form of verbal and non-verbal violence. The last discrimination that occurred was the closure of the Ahmadiyah Mosque in Garut, West Java in 2021. According to Foucault, discrimination occurs due to the existence of a power system to regulate knowledge and hegemony in society through the normalization of knowledge which is a tool of power so that discrimination and even intolerance can be justified in society. The Wawuh boardgame is a medium for spreading tolerance and peace through 9 basic human rights, namely; the right to life, the right to receive, the right to work, the right to health, the right to education, the right to facilities, the right to protection, the right to voice, and the right to administration. This study aims to determine the extent of changes in perspective and behavior of tolerance after playing the Wawuh Boardgame. This game is played to members of the Scouts of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung Batch 39 who have not been exposed to the issue of peace and violence based on minority group discrimination. This research method uses a combined qualitative and quantitative approach because the data collection uses a questionnaire whose results will be described in written form and the researcher can describe with a clear purpose. The results and discussion of this study prove that there is an attitude of tolerance and a change in perspective by 86% as well as increasing information about minority groups against members of the Scouts of UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung Batch 39. The conclusion of this study is that the Wawuh Boardgame is effective in campaigning for peace and can introduce minority groups as well as being able to prevent discrimination at all levels.

Insufficiency of water resources in the Middle East Region represents vital factors that influence the stability of the region and its progress. Expectations indicate that the condition will be dimmer and more complicated, especially in Iraqi territory. Iraq, which is situated in the Middle East, it covers an area of 433,970 square kilometers and populated by about 32 million inhabitants. Iraq greatly relies in its water resources on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as a surface water resources, and several productive groundwater aquifers in which from the hydrogeological point of view divided into several major aquifer units including Foothill, Al-Jazira, Aquifer System, Mandali-Badra-Teeb, Mesopotamian and Desert Aquifer system. Recently, Iraq is suffering from water shortage problems. This is due to external and internal factors affecting the water quality of water resources; they are controlled and uncontrolled factors. The uncontrolled factors are climate change and its consequences, such as reduction of precipitation and temperature increasing. The controlled factors have a significantly negative influence on water resources, but their effects involve more specific regions. The controlled factors are mainly represented by building dams and irrigation projects within the upper parts of the Tigris and Euphrates catchments, Al-Tharthar Scheme, waste water, solid wastes and wastes from wars, which has a significant effect on surface water in Iraq because about 80% of the water supply to Euphrates and Tigris Rivers come from Turkey. In addition, the pressures resulting from the high demand for water resources, and the continued decline in their quantity rates have led to major changes in the hydrological condition in Iraq during the past 30 years. The decrease in surface water levels and precipitation during these three decades reflects the drop in the levels of water reservoirs, lakes, and rivers to the unexpected levels. The level of main country's water source, Tigris, and Euphrates Rivers has fallen to less than a third of its natural levels. As storage capacity depreciates, the government estimates that its water reserves have been reduced precariously. According to the survey from the Ministry of Water Resources, millions of Iraqi people have faced a severe shortage of drinking water. Since of the importance of water for human life and the need to monitor temporal and spatial changes in quality and quantity, there is a need to develop a general Iraqi Water Quality Index (Iraq WQI) to monitor surface water and groundwater and classify it into five categories, very good, good, acceptable, bad and very bad, in terms of suitability for domestics, irrigation and agriculture depending on the Iraqi and WHO standards for drinking water. In addition, strict establishment for the regular quantitative monitoring surface water and groundwater setting and processes. Prospects are more negative for all riparian countries. This implies that solving these problems requires actual and serious international, regional, and national cooperation to set a prudent plan for water resources management of the two basins. Iraq being the most affected country should seriously set a prudent, scientific, and strategic plan for the management and conservation of its water resources. ; Validerad;2020;Nivå 1;2020-11-18 (johcin)

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Yan'an is China's "revolutionary holy land," the heart of Mao Zedong's Communist movement from 1937 to 1947. Based on thirty years of archival and documentary research and numerous field trips to the region, Joseph W. Esherick's book examines the origins of the Communist revolution in Northwest China, from the political, social, and demographic changes of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), to the intellectual ferment of the early Republic, the guerrilla movement of the 1930s, and the replacement of the local revolutionary leadership after Mao and the Center arrived in 1935. In Accidental Holy Land, Esherick compels us to consider the Chinese Revolution not as some inevitable peasant response to poverty and oppression, but as the contingent product of local, national, and international events in a constantly changing milieu.

The work needed to mechanically drive molten metal into a porous solid preform when producing a composite material by infiltration can significantly exceed the energy change required for thermodynamically reversible infiltration. We measure, by quantitative metallographic analysis of partially infiltrated, particle- or fiber-based non-metallic preforms, the evolution with saturation of the three interfaces present during the process. Results show that irreversible energy losses in the infiltration of alumina preforms by molten copper, aluminium or aluminium-tin alloy cannot be ascribed to the creation of liquid meniscus surface area at intermediate metal saturation. This result agrees with similar observations in soil science and gives experimental confirmation of predictions from a recent simulation of capillarity-dominated metal infiltration [Acta Mater., vol. 210, 2021, 116831]. ; This work was chiefly sponsored by the Swiss National Science Foundation (FNS), Project No. 200021 149899. J.M. Molina-Jordá acknowledges funding from the Spanish "Agencia Estatal de Investigación" (AEI) and the European Union (FEDER funds) through grant MAT2016-77742-C2-2-P.

A policy change in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) provides us with a unique opportunity to measure the impact of carbon pricing on aviation, the most climate-intensive mode of transport. We implement a difference-in-differences strategy on a sample based on all flights within Europe from 2010 to 2016 to examine the causal impact of the EU ETS on emissions and supply. We find that the EU ETS reduced emissions by 4.7% in the regulated routes relative to the counterfactual. When we restrict the sample to short-haul flights, routes on which competition from other means of transport may exist (less than 1,000 km), the reduction in emissions is 10.7%. Finally, the reduction in emissions is also high for low-cost airlines (−11%) but it is not statistically significant for network airlines. In sum, the EU ETS has helped to mitigate emission growth by 3 Mt CO2 per year during the period analyzed, but not to reduce absolute emissions in the sector, as needed.

The purpose of this work is to establish of the bound oxygen effect on the phase composition of the Semi-Insulating Polycrystalline Oxygen-doped Silicon (SIPOS) films by means of three independent methods: X-ray diffraction (XRD), Ultrasoft X-ray Emission Spectroscopy (USXES) and Raman spectroscopy, also on their electrophysical properties, depending on the relative oxygen content in the gas mixture flow (γ=N2O/SiH4) of the plasma reactor during the chemical vapor deposition of submicron SIPOS layers on monocrystalline silicon wafers. The increase in the oxygen content in SIPOS layers from γ=0 to maximum at γ=0.15 leads to the reduction of Si nanocrystals size from ~75 nm to 2–5 nm, submerged in amorphous matrix. Oxygen is contained in the bound form of silicon-oxygen clusters SiOSi3 type in the amorphous silicon matrix without SiO2 formation. These nonlinear qualitative and quantitative changes in the atomic structure of the SIPOS layers under the influence of bound oxygen increase not only the resistivity of the films by two orders of magnitude but also the activation energy of conductivity in comparison with silicon at the temperatures above room temperature. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd ; Russian Foundation for Basic Research, RFBR: 19-42-363013 ; MD-42.2019.2 ; Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation ; The reported study was funded by RFBR and Government of Voronezh region according to the research project № 19-42-363013. ; The part of work was carried out with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia Federation under the grand No. FZGU-2020-0036 .In part of diagnostics of the structures the work of P.V. Seredin was supported by the RF President's Grants Council (Grant MD-42.2019.2).

Social media provides ethno-racial immigrant groups—especially those who cannot vote due to factors such as lack of citizenship and limited English proficiency—the ability to mobilize and connect around collective issues. Online spaces and discussion forums have encouraged many Asian Americans to participate in public policy debates and take action on social justice issues. This form of digital group activism serves as an adaptive political empowerment strategy for the fastest-growing and largest foreign-born population in America. Asian American Connective Action in the Age of Social Media illuminates how associating online can facilitate and amplify traditional forms of political action. James Lai provides diverse case studies on contentious topics ranging from affirmative action debates to textbook controversies to emphasize the complexities, limitations, and challenges of connective action that is relevant to all racial groups. Using a detailed multi-methods approach that includes national survey data and Twitter hashtag analysis, he shows how traditional immigrants, older participants, and younger generations create online consensus and mobilize offline to foment political change. In doing so, Lai provides a nuanced glimpse into the multiple ways connective action takes shape within the Asian American community. ; https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1523/thumbnail.jpg

Securitization theory (ST) makes an insightful and significant contribution to security studies. Through the use of discursive speech act, ST provides an innovative strategy for understanding the application of security's distinctive character and dynamics to any issue in order to make it a security issue. Valuable as the theory is to security studies, the subaltern appear missing in existing securitization analyses. Even when the subaltern are examined, for instance in critiques of classical ST, they are conceived and presented as passive, lacking agency, voice, and power, and suffering from security silence problem. ST's reliance on discursive speech act and focus on state political elite prevent it from capturing the subaltern and subaltern securitization process. Furthermore, while existing ST and critiques of securitization studies offer some direction regarding how the subaltern actors may securitize threats to their security, these perspectives are incidental and grossly underdeveloped. In order to resolve this problem, the current study takes a novel approach to securitization studies by investigating how subaltern actors engage in securitizing discourses and practices. By combining the Fanonian decolonial theory of emancipatory violence, where the nature of the (post)colonial context becomes visible with the theoretical insights of ST, the study shows that the subaltern are able to securitize using protest and violence. The subaltern use protest and violence to show their perception and identification of security threats, mobilize the subaltern audience, and challenge and confront the threatening subject – often times, the subaltern's significant audience – to ensure that action is taken on issues concerning subaltern security. In addition to discourse, therefore, protest and violence serve as the subaltern's instruments of political communication used by the subaltern to move issues beyond normal to the point of extraordinary politics. Consequently, protest and violence can force audiences – including the common people and the political elite – to imagine threats to subaltern security, typically perceived but sometimes real, and accept subaltern securitization moves, and where possible take actions that may amount to an alteration or a change in the order of things. Such change may either be in favour of subaltern's perception of security or not. To uncover the essential dynamics of subaltern securitization, this study synthesizes a version of decolonial theory with elements of existing ST and focuses on the subaltern actors from below the state in Nigeria, a non-Western, postcolonial context. The results reveal that subaltern securitization is possible when members of the subaltern successfully mobilize themselves to collectively identify (real or perceived) threat to their security and in so doing challenging and confronting the threat. This makes their security concerns an issue of priority. The study concludes that desirable as subaltern securitization may be, especially to the subaltern, there is a tendency for subaltern securitization to obfuscate the danger that may lurk around subaltern's attempts to securitize certain issues.