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In this presentation, I will address the possibility of an imminent mass extinction of all living beings from planet Earth, and the implications of such a catastrophic event for games studies. The Anthropocene, a term popularized by the end of the 20th century to refer to the geological impact of human beings on planet Earth, assumes a temporal development, a 'before' and 'after' the appearance of humankind. The 'after' period, known as the Post-Anthropocene, is repeatedly claimed by scientists to be approaching within the next few decades, as over-consumption is destroying vital resources of the planet. Allegedly, the sixth mass extinction in the history of our planet is already unfolding, and might determine the disappearance of life from Earth and, as far as we know, from the Universe and beyond (Zylinska 2014; Wark 2015; Haraway 2016; Thacker 2010). Video games have been responding to the arrival of the Post-Anthropocene. In recent years, an increasing number of games appear to capture the fascination and creepiness of a world with no humans. This impending future is not just imagined in fictional settings (e.g. The Legenda of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Nintendo, 2000; Horizon: Zero Dawn, Guerrilla Games, 2017), but within game design. In the last decade an increasing number of video games requiring limited human intervention has been released. Idle games such as Cookie Clicker (Julien Thiennot, 2013) and AdVenture Capitalist (Hyper Hippo Productions, 2014) require an initial input from the player to start, and then keep playing themselves in the background operations of a laptop or smartphone. Virtual environments can be entirely designed by algorithms, as experimented by Hello Games for No Man's Sky (2016). Artificial Intelligence is also used to play games. Screeps, a massive-multiplayer online game, requires players to program an AI that will play the game in their place, and which will 'live within the game even while you are offline' (Screeps Team, 2014). Ghost cars in racing games replace the human actor with a representation of their performance. The same concept is further explored by the Drivatar of the Forza Motorsport series (Microsoft Studios, 2005-2017), which simulates the driving style of the player and competes online against other AI-controlled cars (Bittanti 2015). These are only some of the example that suggest that human beings are becoming peripheral in the act of playing games. The video installation Emissaries, at MoMA PS1, by Ian Cheng (2017), and Twitch streaming of computer-controlled avatars in Grand Theft Auto by Ben Watanabe (San Andreas Deer Cam, 2016; San Andreas Community Cam, 2017) are further investigations in how games could play themselves even after the disappearance of human beings. Drawing on Sonia Fizek's analysis of the concept of interpassivity in digital games (via the work of Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Zizek), and on studies on gamification and self-tracking, I argue that Non-Human Gaming is not necessarily an exception to oppose to 'standard' video games, or a (con)temporary trend (Fizek 2018; Ruffino 2016). The non-human has always been haunting the medium, and studies on interactivity, agency, and player's skills and competences have been providing, so far, a comforting perspective that places the human at the center, or at an equal hierarchical importance than the machine (Giddings 2005; Björk and Juul 2012). Alexander Galloway imagined how machines could take the lead in the process of enacting a video game, creating 'ambience acts' where the game plays itself with no need for the human being to be present (Galloway 2006). Galloway was concerned with the allegories that computer games provide, and the ways in which games mimic the social reality in which we live in. Since 2006, fears of economic, political, social, and geological crises at global level have been prominent. Non-Human gaming can be interpreted as a response to those fears, and put in relation to the rise of self-driving cars, algorithmic trade exchange, and remote warfare, which similarly operate by replacing human beings. In fact, Non-Human Gaming is an adequate response to the disappearance of life from Earth – as it has been imagined, feared, and prophesized by scientists in recent years, and even more insistently since the time of Galloway's contribution. In this talk I will attempt to map the broad category of Non-Human gaming. Roger Caillois, in his early work on mimicry and mythology, was already describing how living beings develop forms of dispersal and waste of energy that cannot be explained through a rationalistic view on evolution and preservation, and which bring the organism closer to its own disappearance and assimilation in the surrounding environment, but are nonetheless defining characteristics of life (Caillois 1934; 1935). My concern is to highlight the weirdness and creepiness, the irony and spoofs, the paradoxes and contradictions of video games made by no one and/or for no one. As Haraway's vision of the cyborg did with cybernetics, Non-Human gaming confuses and complicates the ontologies of digital texts, and could be used to shed light on the situatedness, temporality, and partiality of our knowledge, of both humans and games (Haraway 1991; Kember 2018). Life might be disappearing from Earth at some point, but we are not there yet. We are in-between birth and death, the beginning and the end, and we have always been. Non-Human gaming helps us articulating this space and time in-between, and has the potential to re-route gaming (and game studies) from false myths of agency, interactivity, and instrumentalism (the 'games for' health, education, self-improvement, and so on). Non-human games are companions for earthly survival. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bittanti, M. (2015) Orizzonti di Forza: Fenomenologia della Guida Videoludica, Edizioni Unicopli Björk, S. and Juul, J. (2012) 'Zero-Player Games, or: What We Talk About When We Talk About Players', presented at the Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Madrid 2012 Caillois, R. (1934) [2014] 'The Praying Mantis: from Biology to Psychoanalysis', in The Edge of Surrealism: A Roger Caillois Reader, Durkham: Duke University Press Caillois, R. (1935) [1984] 'Mimicry and Legendary Psychastenia', in October (31), Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press Fizek, S. (2018) 'Interpassivity and the Joy of Delegated Play'. ToDiGRA Journal (to be published). Galloway, A. (2006) Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. Giddings, S. (2005) Playing with non-humans: digital games as technocultural form. In: Proceedings of DiGRA 2005 Conference: Changing Views - Worlds in Play, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 16-20 June 2005. Haraway, D. J. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women. The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books. Haraway, D. J. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press Kember, S. (2017) 'After the Anthropocene: the photographic for earthly survival?' in Digital Creativity, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 348-353 Ruffino, P. (2016) 'Games to Live With: Speculations Regarding NikeFuel' in Digital Culture and Society, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 153-`159 Thacker, E. (2010) After Life, London and Chicago: Chicago University Press Wark, M. (2015) Molecular Red. Theory for the Anthropocence. London: Verso. Zylinska, J. (2014) Minimal Ethics for the Anthropocene. Michigan (MA): Open Humanities Press

As being state who gained the most attention from all over the world, North Korea has been one of the unique countries which international system has ever seen. With her sole and unparalleled Juche regime which emphasizes on government's self-reliance policy and unpredictable leaders, North Korea has not ceased her dedication to develop nuclear weapons. Since her establishment in 1950 with Korea War and also with 38th Parallel, Democratic People's Republic of Korea have been trying to enhance her military, economy, industry and also mass weapons of destruction programme. With Union of Soviet Socialist Republics assistance, North Korea was able to start her Nuclear Weapon programme by saying that it was for peaceful uses in 1980. However, her abrupt development and receiving aid from the Soviet Union disturbed USA and European countries. Therefore, North Korea signed Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1993 but she said that she withdrew from the agreement which led first North Korea Nuclear crisis to break out. Although USSR(Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was collapsed in 1991, North Korea has not left her devotion to nuclear weapons. With her new leader, Kim Jong Un who took power from his father's abrupt death in 2011, have been aggressive for developing and testing mass weapons of destruction. Since 2009, North Korea made her first missile test in 2012 which was done successfully. Thus, North Korea has become a serious threat which could cause a major effect with her missiles in the international area. North Korea's possession of nuclear weapons gives concern to her neighbours and also USA who she designated as her archenemy. With President Donald Trump's inauguration and his words of " bring Fire and Fury" to Northern part of Korean peninsula, made two state's relationship to be conflicted. However, relations of USA and North Korea have been strained ever since. DPRK(Democratic People's Republic of Korea) knows that USSR possessed mass weapons of destruction and used them as deterrent strategy. And she challenged the USA with those weapons. Thus, North Korea, with her nuclear power, she is able to maintain her unique Juche regime as well as her politics both inside and outside without any state especially USA to interfere. Therefore, by using nuclear weapons programme as a deterrence strategy, North Korea have been advancing in her programme and continuing to challenge USA and other states with her mass weapons of destruction. Under the question of why North Korea is willing to develop and possess nuclear weapons and in order to answer and defend thesis question, case study approach is used which approaches a problem with different angles. As the thesis qualitative one, two results were reached. The first result for North Korea's and the second result for other state's. For the first result, it is indicated that North Korea is aware of her unique and unparalleled regime and therefore, in order to avoid USA and also other states to interfere her politics and destroy her regime, she uses nuclear weapons a deterrence tool. Accordingly, North Korea needs mass weapons of destruction in order to support her regime, economy and future of her country. For the second result, all of the states have their reasons for North Korea in terms of mass weapons of destruction. However, they all compromise on one thing: They do not want North Korea to be threat to whole world. In addition, they are against proliferation of nuclear weapons. Because in the past, Second World War set an example of a nuclear war which could only bring chaos, millions of casualties. Therefore, states are against North Korea's ambition to develop mass weapons of destruction. Although they are trying to stop her with sanctions by the United Nations, North Korea does not seem to give up her nuclear weapons yet. Dünyanın en fazla ilgi gören devletlerin biri olan Kuzey Kore, uluslararası sistemin tanık olduğu eşsiz ülkelerden biri olmuştur. Benzersiz Juche rejimi ve eşsiz liderleri ile, Kuzey Kore nükleer silah geliştirme konusundaki kararlılığını hala devam ettirmektedir. 1950'de Kore Savaşı ve 38. Paralel ile kuruluşundan bu yana, Kuzey Kore askeri alandaki kitle imha silahlarını geliştirmeye çalışmaktadır. SSCB'nin yardımı ile Kuzey Kore, Nükleer silah programını 1980'de barışçıl kullanımlar için olduğunu söyleyerek başlatabilmiş ancak, almış olduğu söz konusu yardım ABD ve Avrupa ülkelerini rahatsız etmiştir. Bu nedenle Kuzey Kore 1993 yılında Nükleer Silahların Yayılmasını Önleme Antlaşması'nı imzalamaya zorlanmış, daha sonra anlaşmadan çekildiğini söylemiştir. Her ne kadar 1991'de SSCB çökmüş olsa da, Kuzey Kore nükleer silahlara olan bağlılığını bırakmamıştır. 2011'de babasının ani ölümü yüzünden liderliği devralan yeni lider, Kim Jong Un, kitle imha silahlarını geliştirmek ve test etmek konusunda babasından ve büyükbabasından daha saldırgan bir politika takip etmiştir. Kuzey Kore, 2009 füze testlerinden bu yana, 2012'de füze denemesini başarıyla tamamlamıştır. Böylece, Kuzey Kore , uluslararası sistemin önünde, nükleer füzeleri ile devletler için büyük tehdit haline gelmiştir. Kuzey Kore'nin baş düşmanlarından biri olarak saydığı ABD de, Kuzey Kore'nin nükleer güce sahip olmamasını isteyen ülkelerdendir. Donald Trump'ın ABD başkan olmasıyla ve Kore yarımadasının Kuzey kısmına "ateş ve öfke sözleriyle, iki devletin ilişkileri daha da kötüleşmiştir. Ancak, her iki ülkenin ilişkileri gerginleşse de , Kuzey Kore, kitlesel imha silahlarını ABD ve müttefiklerine caydırıcı bir etken olarak kullanmaya devam etmektedir. Kuzey Kore, zamanında SSCB'nin nükleer silahlara sahip olduğunu ve bu füzelerle ABD'ye meydan okuduğunu ve hatta bunları bir caydırıcı etki olarak kullandığını bilmektedir. Nükleer silah programını caydırıcı bir strateji olarak kullanan Kuzey Kore, kitlesel imha silahlarını geliştirmeye ve ABD ve diğer devletlere de kafa tutmaya devam etmektedir. Kuzey Kore, nükleer füzelerinin verdiği caydırıcılık avantajı ile diğer ülkeleri özellikle ABD'yi kendi iç ve dış politikasından uzak tutabilmeyi başarmıştır. Kuzey Kore neden Nükleer silahlanmayı geliştirmek ve sahip olmak istiyor soru altında, Vaka çalışması yaklaşımını kullanarak sorumu cevaplamaya çalıştım. Vaka çalışması yaklaşımı, bir problemi farklı açılardan inceler ve bu tez de nitel bir tez olduğu için bu tekniğin uygun olduğu düşünülmüştür. Tezde iki sonuca ulaşılmıştır: İlk sonuç Kuzey Kore için, ikinci sonuç ise diğer devletler içindir. İlk sonuçta, Kuzey Kore'nin, eşsiz ve rakipsiz rejimin farkında olduğu ve herhangi bir müdahaleyi, özellikle ABD ve diğer devleti engelleyebilmek için nükleer silahlarını caydırıcılık aracı olarak kullandığı noktasına ulaşılmıştır. Bu yüzden de Kuzey Kore'nin, rejimi, ekonomisi ve geleceği için nükleer güce ihtiyacı vardır. İkinci sonuç için ise, bütün devletlerin nükleer silahlanma hakkında Kuzey Kore karşı nedenleri olduğu belirtilebilir. Lakin, bütün devletlerin ortak bir görüşü var: Kuzey Kore dünyaya bir tehdit olmamalı ve nükleer gücü yayılmamalı. Çünkü İkinci Dünya Savaşı, nükleer savaşın sadece kaos, milyonlarca ölüm getirmesine örnek teşkil etmiştir. Bu yüzden, devletler Kuzey Kore'nin kitlesel imha silahlarını geliştirme ve sahip olma hırsına karşı çıkmaktadırlar. Birleşmiş Milletler tarafından uygulanan yaptırımlarla Kuzey Kore durdurulmaya çalışılmaktadır, ama Kuzey Kore, nükleer silahlanmayı bırakacak gibi de gözükmemektedir.

¿Se pueden crear el emprendedores a través de la educación? Los programas de educación para el emprendimiento comenzaron a crecer y a recibir atención de países de todo el mundo desde que se impartió por primera vez en Harvard en 1947. La razón se debió a la interconexión entre emprendimiento y desarrollo económico. La promoción del espíritu emprendedor se vuelve importante debido a la demanda del gobierno, estudiantes, PYMES y grandes empresas (Fayolle, 2007). La mejor herramienta encontrada hasta ahora para predecir el comportamiento es a través de la medición de la intención (Ajzen, 1991). En la literatura emprendedora, muchos estudios se han centrado en la Teoría del Comportamiento Planeado (TCP), que se relaciona con las intenciones empresariales. Varios autores, como Fayolle et al. (2006), han hecho llamamientos para usar esta teoría como un marco común para evaluar la educación emprendedora (EE). Sin embargo, sólo unos pocos estudios han examinado los componentes dentro de la EE que pueden responder a la pregunta "quién enseña (formador), qué (contenido del curso) y cómo (método de enseñanza)" como las variables moderadoras sobre la relación entre la EE y la intención empresarial. Por lo tanto, este estudio pretende llenar el vacío evaluando el efecto moderador de la educación emprendedora, a través de estas variables, hacia la intención y las habilidades de los estudiantes universitarios de pregrado en el contexto de Malasia. Esta investigación utilizará el marco de TCP para entender la conexión entre estos componentes de los programas de educación emprendedora y el impacto en la intención empresarial de los estudiantes. El estudio se realiza en UKM, Malasia. La población de investigación consiste en estudiantes de primer año en todas las disciplinas. Se trata de un curso obligatorio y es la primera vez que se introduce en Malasia. Este estudio utiliza un método cuantitativo longitudinal. Se llevó a cabo la recolección de datos en dos etapas, incluidas las recopilaciones de datos antes y después del curso. Se utilizó una encuesta en línea. El número de encuestados fue de 493 para el pre-curso y 149 para el post-curso. El resultado del estudio mostró que tanto el formador como la participación de un orador invitado moderan la relación entre actitud e intención. El efecto es de intensidad moderada, pero muestra el importante papel que pueden desempeñar estos dos elementos para influir en la intención empresarial entre los estudiantes. Para la comparación entre géneros, los resultados mostraron que los varones exhiben un mayor interés empresarial en el emprendimiento, en comparación con las alumnas. Sin embargo, en cuanto al número de estudiantes en las universidades públicas de Malasia, las alumnas son la mayoría. Los resultados también muestran que el grupo étnico que más se beneficia de la EE es el malayo. Tienen un mayor interés por el espíritu empresarial, a pesar de que este campo ha sido tradicionalmente dominado por los chinos desde el período colonial. Finalmente, como en muchos estudios previos, los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes de la Facultad de Economía y Administración se benefician más en términos de interés hacia el curso. Algunas recomendaciones para el futuro pueden derivarse de esta tesis doctoral. El gobierno debe comenzar a centrarse en las alumnas, ya que su participación en el mercado de trabajo (tasa de actividad) es baja en comparación con el número de mujeres en la población con las estudiantes que acceden a la universidad. Por lo tanto, esta tasa de actividad se espera que aumente en el futuro. Además, los profesores de estos cursos deben recibir una formación especial sobre cómo atraer el interés de los estudiantes, como señalan Soutaris et al. (2007). En cuanto a la estructura del curso, se debe alentar una combinación entre el formador y los empresarios invitados de éxito, para que la parte de inspiración pueda ser transmitida a los estudiantes. ; Can entrepreneurs be created through education? Entrepreneurship education programs started to growth and receive attention from countries all over the world since it was first taught in Harvard in 1947. The reason was due to the interconnection between entrepreneurship and economic development. Promotion of entrepreneurship becomes important due to demand by government, students, SMEs and large companies (Fayolle, 2007). The best tool found so far to predict behavior is through the measurement of intention (Ajzen, 1991). In the entrepreneurship literature, many studies have been focused on the Theory of Planned Behavior, which related to entrepreneurial intentions. Several authors, such as Fayolle et al. (2006), have made calls to use this theory as a common framework to evaluate entrepreneurship education (EE). However, only few studies have looked at the components inside the EE that may answer the question "who teaches (trainer), what (course content) and how (teaching method)" as the moderating variables on the relationship from EE to entrepreneurial intention. Therefore, this study aims to fill in the gap by evaluating the moderated effect of entrepreneurship education, through these variables, toward the intention and skills among the undergraduate university students in the context of Malaysia. This research will use TPB framework to understand the connection between these components of entrepreneurship education programs and the impact on the students' entrepreneurial intention. The study is conducted in UKM, Malaysia. The research population consists of first year students across all disciplines. The status of the course is compulsory and is the first time it is introduced in Malaysia. This study use a longitudinal quantitative method. Twostage data collection was carried-out, including pre- and post-course data collections. An online survey was used. The number of respondents was 493 for the pre-course and 149 for the post-course. The outcome of the study showed that both the trainer and the participation of an invited speaker moderate the relationship between attitude and intention. The effect is moderate in strength, but it showed the important role that can be played by these two elements to influence the entrepreneurial intention among student. For the comparison between genders, the results showed that males exhibit a higher entrepreneurial interest in entrepreneurship, when compared to the female students. However, regarding the number of students in public universities in Malaysia, females students are the majority. The results also show that the ethnic group benefitting the most from EE is the Malay. They have higher interest toward entrepreneurship, even though this field has traditionally been dominated by the Chinese since the colonial period. Finally, as in many previous studies, the results showed that students in the Faculty of Economic and Management benefit the most in term of interest toward the course. Some recommendations for the future may be derived from this dissertation. The government should start focusing on female students, since their participation in the labour market (activity rate) is low when compared to their number of females in the population and the students entering university. Thus, this activity rate is expected to rise in the future. Additionally, the lecturers of this course should be given special training on how to attract students' interest, as pointed out by Soutaris et al. (2007). Regarding the structure of the course, a combination including the lecturer and successful invited entrepreneurs should be encouraged, so the inspiration part can be conveyed to the students.

Next to preferences over outcomes, people's subjective beliefs about unobserved states of the world are the central building block of economic models of decision-making. This thesis submits that a more nuanced account of the nature of subjective beliefs can improve the explanatory power of models of economic behavior. It revolves around the following questions. How do people incorporate new information into their beliefs? What are the cognitive mechanisms underlying different updating rules? To what extent is observed heterogeneity in beliefs and behavior predictable? Are beliefs shaped by people's individual experience? How do beliefs translate into economic behavior? The unifying approach of this work is cross-disciplinary, leveraging ideas from other fields such as cognitive science and psychology. The empirical motivation for Chapter 2: "Inattentive Inference" is the pervasive evidence for miscalibration to news in practice. In many situations, beliefs overreact, as if base rates are neglected or new information overweighted, and they often underreact, leading to information rigidities or conservatism in updating. Whether and how these conflicting updating patterns can be reconciled remains an open question. Chapter 2 builds on the observation that most information structures pose a signal extraction problem for belief updating: an agent wants to learn an unobserved state of the world X, but information about X is "compound" in that it also depends on other states Y. Inattention to other causes Y in the signal structure could create misattribution to X. A series of laboratory and online experiments show that most people do not take into account other causes (labelled feature neglect), leading to excessively sensitive and overprecise beliefs. There is pronounced heterogeneity, with up to 90% of beliefs corresponding to three updating rules: feature neglect, Bayesian updating and non-updates. Exploring the underlying mechanism, I find that unawareness about the necessity to factor in alternative causes drives feature neglect, whereas non-updating follows cost-benefit considerations. I propose a conceptual framework that accounts for the combined evidence. Moreover, learning is found to be limited by unawareness, but cues and hints debias by changing people's mental models directly. Chapter 3: "Heterogeneity of Loss Aversion and Expectations-Based Reference Points" examines how people's forward-looking beliefs, i.e., expectations, affect their decisions. A seminal insight from psychology is that we tend to evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point. In theories of reference-dependent decision-making, people code outcomes as gains or losses relative to some reference point. Yet, the location of this reference point is a critical degree of freedom. A recent theoretical advance characterizes the reference point based on people's expectations about their own future outcomes. In the past decade, empirical tests of this model yielded mixed results and there remains a lack of consensus on the location – and thus the empirical relevance – of reference points. Chapter 3 attempts to reconcile different approaches and findings. In this study that is joint work with Lorenz Goette, Charles Sprenger and Alexandre Kellogg, we developed a tightly controlled exchange experiment with two main innovations: First, the design recognizes that testing the role of expectations-based reference points requires experimental control of other plausible avenues of reference dependence, such as the status quo or personal experience. Second, it accommodates a critical confound related to the key behavioral parameter, loss aversion. Loss aversion captures that people dislike losses more than equal-sized gains. A growing body of evidence documents substantial heterogeneity in measured levels of loss aversion, with a substantial fraction of people being loss-neutral or even loss-loving. Different levels of loss aversion, however, lead to different signs of comparative statics. In our results, recognizing heterogeneity in loss aversion allowed us to reliably recover the central prediction of expectations-based reference points. Chapter 4: "Breaking Trust: On the Persistent Effect of Economic Crisis Experience" shifts the focus to a particularly important belief for economic transactions. Trust is the degree of belief in the benevolent intentions of another person. In the realm of economic behavior, trust plays a central role as a prerequisite for all forms of economic exchange: without a minimal amount of trust in the counterpart, no person would be willing to sign a contract. In fact, trust has been shown to affect economic outcomes at the individual, group and societal levels. However, much less is known about the origins of trust. Recent evidence documents that levels of trust vary substantially across locations and over time, but the determinants of this geographical and temporal variation are not well understood. In Chapter 4, which is joint work with Tom Zimmermann, we analyzed the economic implications of a breach of trust argument, positing that trust is not easily restored once it has been abused. Building on a nascent literature on the economic implications of people's lifetime experience, we hypothesized that trust is partially determined by the experience of catastrophic macroeconomic events. Using a variety of identification strategies in a large cross-country sample, we estimated a persistent and robust negative long-term effect of economic crisis experience on trust in other people. In line with the breach of trust hypothesis, the effect was specific to living through crises in trust- intensive domains, most of all banking crises. The effect was not driven by distrust in financial institutions but was accommodated by a lack of confidence in the political class, and operated via beliefs rather than changes in preferences. Chapter 5: "Negative Long-run Effects of Prosocial Behavior on Happiness" studies happiness. In recent times, measures of subjective well-being are increasingly viewed as relevant indicators of a society's welfare, and a rising number of countries have incorporated national happiness levels as a policy objective. This development concurs with a renewed scientific interest in the causes of happiness. Most prominently, recent studies contribute to a debate spanning more than two millennia on the hypothesis that prosocial behavior is a key to happiness. The existing causal evidence indeed confirms a positive influence of prosocial behavior on happiness, but is limited to the short-term effects of an enforced prosocial or selfish act. In Chapter 5, which is joint work with Armin Falk, we reconsider this hypothesis in a behavioral experiment that extends the scope of previous studies in various dimensions. In our Saving a Life paradigm, every participant either saved one human life in expectation or received one hundred euros, respectively. Using a choice between two binary lotteries with different chances of saving a life, we observed subjects' intentions at the same time as creating random variation in prosocial outcomes. We repeatedly measured happiness at different time horizons after the experiment. We confirmed the previous consensus finding of a positive short-term effect, but this effect quickly faded. As time passed, the sign of the effect even reversed, and we recorded significantly greater happiness associated with the selfish outcome than with the prosocial outcome one month later. Our findings hint at distinct sources of happiness as time passes. Chapter 5 provides a first piece of evidence that a comprehensive understanding of the effects of prosocial behavior on happiness requires a more nuanced view that accounts for delayed effects.

The Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB) has been organising its Erasmus Week since 2004. It is held yearly in May, normally during the second week of May. The Erasmus week's main purposes are three-fold. First, the IPB aims at enforcing closer, more dynamic and more efficient institutional relations amongst the European Higher Education Institutions. Lectures are then organised and introduced in both undergraduate and master classes in accordance with the area of interest. Meetings with directors of the 5 IPB schools and Erasmus coordinators are also scheduled. The second and third goals, which naturally derive from the first, are to facilitate familiarity with the IPB campus, its schools and with the cities of Bragança and Mirandela, where the IPB schools are settled, and with the surrounding area, namely the Montesinho Natural Park and the Alto Douro Wine Region (UNESCO World Heritage). This information can be found on the IPB International Relations Office website. Overall, all these three goals lie behind what is considered an umbrella goal which is to promote the IPB in its numerous valences and strengthen the mobility ties with the different European Higher Institutions which have established cooperation agreements with the IPB. This has revealed fruitful and far-reaching as more than 20 partner countries visit us every year. If one takes into account the two last editions' numbers, Poland is the country with a higher percentage of participants (37.1% and 29%), followed by Spain (11.4% and 15.9%), France, Romania and Czech Republic1. Regarding the lectures delivered during this week, teachers show a high level of satisfaction and find it rather rewarding according to the evaluation results obtained every year. One of the most visible results of these lectures is the publication of Teaching Crossroads. It started being published aiming ultimately at the dissemination of the research work that was presented at the IPB. We then extended it to all activities related to Teachers Erasmus+ mobility and international projects. The idea was not only to disseminate studies from other European researchers but also to give to the IPB teaching staff the opportunity to publish their research work and what they presented during their mobility. So far, the adhesion to this project has been rather steady and compliant with the publication's main goal. In hindsight, this project, which started in 2011, continues to persevere in its academic path, making thus available to students and teachers the most valuable research studies and relevant data in regard to a myriad of study areas which underlie the spirit of Higher Education, multifaceted, multilayered and plural. In Higher Education we hope never to be at a crossroads, but we dare to constantly thrive when faced with obstacles and embrace the challenges of knowledge. All areas of study are important and meaningful and must be continually promoted. This has been the leading motto of Teaching Crossroads since its very beginning. This would have never been possible without the valuable help of regular contributors to whom we are very grateful, from the authors, the reviewers, the designer to the IPB Image Services. A thanking note must also go to the IPB which has embraced this project by agreeing to publish it. As a result of the close cooperation work with the researchers who submitted their proposals to blind review, we selected five texts from diverse areas but nonetheless complementary. As such, this year, areas of study vary from comparative literature, education, social education and sociology, finance to business and entrepreneurship. A brief summary of each is presented next. María Antonia Mezquita Fernández, whose research has been focusing on the modern subject of ecocriticism bearing in mind the new approach to the close relationship between environmental issues and literature, a concern that always permeated literature, discusses the ecocritical identity in the light of literary figures and their poetical messages regarding nature. By highlighting and comparing two British poets, William Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas, and a Spanish poet, Claudio Rodríguez, the author introduces an ecocritical stance to the analysis of the poems under discussion. Sharing the common ground of nature, the poems are worth reading due to the powerful messages they convey, not only bearing in mind the period when they were written but because the topics explored resonate with the environmental defenders' main principles. What the author brings to the fore of discussion is a thought-provocative, challenging and relevant essay which found in literature its main driving force to call the attention to the importance of the defence of nature in a time where environmental issues, such as global warming and the melting of glaciers, are at the centre of the world's political agenda, despite the constant scepticism that still persists to endure. Beata Sufa & Anna Szkolak-Stępień delve into the idea of creativity fostered within the teaching context, by both teachers and students. In their article entitled "Creative Teacher-Creative Pupil – a Study Report", the authors argue that, having in mind all the technological advances and (advanced) use of learning technology, the new conditions of school and learning context require new challenges to the way the teaching-learning process is dealt with. The teacher's creative attitude will thus become paramount for children's development of creativity which will help them to improve communication skills. Kazimiera Król studies the phenomenon of begging in Poland, analyzing the spatial and social framework of such reality which results from many factors and underlies consequences to the places chosen for begging and to the beggars themselves. The author puts forth an empirical study bearing in mind the age, gender, civil status and nationality of mendicants, presenting thus in-depth data which allow her to reach interesting and relevant conclusions regarding the whole phenomenon of begging in nowadays Poland. Eliza Komierzyńska-Orlińska sheds some light on a common unknown part of the financial system to the majority of people, which is the security of the banking system. When one deposits or withdraws money one is never aware of (or simply does not care about) how our money is held safe or how the banks protect their assets. The article "Security of the Banking System in Poland. Fundamental Assumptions" deals precisely with security issues within the Polish banking system highlighting the crucial role of the central bank in the whole process of surveillance and regulation. Legal issues are therefore discussed. By using simple and straightforward language, the author is able to reach a non-specialist audience who will become more informed about this issue in a rather clear way. Erik Kubička focuses on organizational culture explaining how well-succeeded, renowned, top companies in the technology sector foster effectiveness in the work environment. In this regard, the author describes several technological companies, such as Google, Apple and IBM, just to name a few. Innovation, informal leadership, less red tape and closer contact with the workers are features that are common to all these companies which represent the key to their success. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Nowadays, transmitarray antennas are of great interest for many civil and military applications in frequency bands between 10 and 110 GHz (5G mobile networks, point-to-point communication systems, radars, etc.).This thesis aims to make major innovations in modeling and design of transmitarray antennas for Ka-band applications (28-40 GHz). It focuses on the development of numerical tools, and the design and demonstration of several prototypes with advanced functionalities, such as passive (broadband or multibeam) and active (at electronic reconfiguration) transmitarrays.The first part of the work consists of a theoretical analysis of the transmitarray antenna. In a first step, the impact of the phase compensation method on the performance of the transmitarray is studied. The phase compensation law of the quasi-spherical wave incident on the array aperture is calculated using two methods called constant phase compensation and true-time delay (TTD) compensation. The numerical results show that TTD compensation allows an increase of the transmitarrays bandwidth and a reduction of the beam squint as compared to constant phase-shift compensation. In a second step, the operating principle of facetted transmitarrays is described in detail. The numerical simulation of a 3-facet transmitarray is validated through 3-D electromagnetic simulations. For a certain facet angle, the bandwidth and the beam scanning capability of the TA are improved at the expense of the gain.The next step of the work concerns the design and prototyping of two passive transmitarray antennas, one with a collimated and a large bandwidth, and the other with four fixed beams. The two transmitarrays are based on a 3-bit unit-cell providing two functions, namely the phase compensation and the polarization conversion from linear to circular. The passive beam-collimated transmitarray exhibits a measured gain of 33.8 dBi (corresponding to an aperture efficiency of 51.2%) and a 3-dB gain-bandwidth larger than 15.9%. The quad-beam transmitarray phase distribution has been optimized by a genetic algorithm code coupled with an analytical tool. The array is designed to radiate four beams at ±25° in the horizontal and vertical planes at the optimization frequency.The last part of the work aims to the design of a 27-31 GHz reconfigurable transmitarray antenna. Initially, an active unit-cell with four phase states (2 bits) in linear polarization was designed and validated experimentally. It consists of six metal layers printed on three substrates. The radiating elements are rectangular patch antennas, each of them including two PIN diodes to control the transmission phase. The operating principle of the unit-cell has been experimentally validated with a minimum insertion loss of 1.6-2.1 dB and a 3-dB transmission bandwidth of 10-12.1% for the four phase states. 0°, 90°, 180° and 270°.Then, this unit-cell was used for the design of a reconfigurable transmitarray antenna comprising 14 × 14 unit cells and 784 PIN diodes. A prototype was realized and characterized, it presents a measured maximum gain of 19.8 dBi, corresponding to an aperture efficiency of 23.5%, and a 3-dB bandwidth of 4.7 GHz (26.2% at 30.9 GHz). Despite some faulty elements, this prototype validates the operating principle and the feasibility of Ka-band transmitarray antennas with a 2-bit phase quantization. It is one of the first demonstration of such an antenna in the current state of the art. ; De nos jours, les antennes à réseaux transmetteurs attirent un grand intérêt pour de nombreuses applications civiles et militaires aux bandes de fréquence comprises entre 10 et 110 GHz (réseaux de communication 5G, liens point à point, radars, etc.).Le travail de thèse vise à faire des innovations dans la modélisation et la conception d'antennes à réseaux transmetteurs pour des applications en bande Ka (28-40 GHz). Il porte plus précisément sur le développement d'outils numériques pour l'analyse théorique des réseaux transmetteurs, la conception et la démonstration de plusieurs prototypes avec des fonctionnalités avancées, telles que des réseaux transmetteurs passifs (larges bandes ou à multifaisceaux) et actifs (à reconfiguration électronique).La première partie des travaux consiste en une analyse théorique des réseaux transmetteurs. Dans un premier temps, l'impact de la méthode de compensation de phase sur les performances des réseaux transmetteurs est étudié. La loi de compensation de phase de l'onde quasi-sphérique incidente sur l'ouverture du réseau transmetteur est calculée en utilisant deux méthodes nommées compensation à phase constante et compensation par ligne à retard, et nous montrons que cette dernière permet d'augmenter la bande passante du réseau transmetteur et de corriger les erreurs de dépointage du faisceau. Dans un second temps, le principe de fonctionnement des réseaux transmetteurs facettés est décrit en détail. La simulation numérique du réseau transmetteur à trois facettes est validée au travers de simulations électromagnétiques 3-D. Pour un certain angle d'inclinaison, nous montrons que la bande passante et la capacité de dépointage du réseau transmetteur sont améliorées au détriment du gain.La suite des travaux porte sur la conception et le prototypage de deux réseaux transmetteurs passifs, dont l'un à faisceau collimaté et très large bande et l'autre à quatre faisceaux fixes. Les deux réseaux transmetteurs sont basés sur une cellule élémentaire à 3bits qui assure une double fonction à savoir la compensation de phase et la conversion de la polarisation linéaire en circulaire. Le réseau passif à faisceau collimaté présente un gain mesuré de 33,8 dBi (correspondant à une efficacité d'ouverture de 51,2%) et une bande passante à -3 dB supérieure à 15,9%. La distribution de phase du réseau transmetteur à quatre faisceaux a été optimisée par un algorithme génétique afin d'avoir des faisceaux dépointés à ± 25° dans le plan horizontal et le plan vertical à la fréquence d'optimisation.La dernière partie des travaux vise la conception d'un réseau transmetteur reconfigurable à 27-31 GHz. Dans un premier temps, une cellule élémentaire active à quatre états de phase (2 bits) en polarisation linéaire a été conçue et validée expérimentalement. Elle est composée de six couches métalliques imprimées sur trois substrats. Les éléments rayonnants sont des antennes patch rectangulaires comprenant chacun deux diodes PIN pour contrôler la phase de transmission. Le principe de fonctionnement de la cellule élémentaire a été validé expérimentalement avec des pertes d'insertion minimales de 1.6-2,1 dB et une bande passante en transmission (à 3 dB) de 10-12,1% pour les quatre états de phase 0 °, 90°, 180° et 270°. Cette cellule a ensuite été utilisée pour la conception d'un réseau transmetteur reconfigurable comprenant 14 × 14 cellules unitaires et 784 diodes PIN. Un prototype a été réalisé et caractérisé, il présente un gain maximum mesuré de 19,8 dBi, correspondant à une efficacité d'ouverture de 23,5%, et une bande passante à 3 dB de 4,7 GHz (26,2-30,9 GHz). Malgré quelques éléments défaillants, ce prototype valide le principe de fonctionnement et la faisabilité de réseaux transmetteurs en bande Ka avec une quantification de phase de 2 bits et constitue une des premières réalisations de ce type dans l'état de l'art actuel.

In this era of startling developments in the medical field there remains a serious worry about the hazardous potential of various by products which if not properly addressed can lead to consequences of immense public concern. Hospitals and other health care facilities generate waste products which are evidently hazardous to all those exposed to its potentially harmful effects. Need for effective legislation ensuring its safe disposal is supposed to be an integral part of any country's health related policy. This issue is of special importance in developing countries like Pakistan which in spite of framing various regulations for safeguarding public health, seem to overlook its actual implementation. The result unfortunately is the price wehave to pay not only in terms of rampant spread of crippling infections but a significant spending of health budget on combating epidemics which could easily have been avoided through effective waste disposal measures in the first place. Waste classified under the heading 'bio-hazardous' includes any infectious or potentially infectious material which can be injurious or harmful to humans and other living organisms. Amongst the many potential sources are the hospitals or other health delivery centres which are ironically supposed to be the centres of infection control and treatment. Whilst working in these setups, health care workers such as doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and sanitation workers are actually the ones most exposed and vulnerable to these challenges. Biomedical waste may broadly be classified into Infectious and toxic waste. Infectious waste includes sharps, blood, body fluids and tissues etcwhile substances such as radioactive material and by-products of certain drugs qualify as toxic waste. Furthermore health institutions also have to cater for general municipal waste such as carton boxes, paper and plastics. The World Health Organisation has its own general classification of hospital waste divided into almost eight categories of which almost 15% (10% infectious and 5% toxic) is estimated to be of a hazardous nature while the remaining 85% is general non hazardous content.1A recent study from Faisalabad, Pakistan has estimated hospital waste generation around 1 to 1.5 kg / bed /day for public sector hospitals in the region,2while figures quoted from neighbouring India are approximately 0.5 to 2 KG / hospital bed /day.3 Elsewhere in the world variable daily hospital waste production has been observed ranging from as low as 0.14 to 0.49 kg /day in Korea4 and 0.26 to 0.89 kg/day in Greece5to as high as 2.1 to 3.83 kg/day in Turkey6 and 0.84 to 5.8 kg/day in Tanzania.7Ill effects of improper management of hospital waste can manifest as nosocomial infections or occupational hazards such as needle stick injuries. Pathogens or spores can be borne either through the oro-faecal or respiratory routes in addition to direct inoculation through contact with infected needles or sharps. Environmental pollution can result from improper burning of toxic material leading to emission of dioxins, particulate matter or furans into the air. The habitat can also be affected by illegal dumping and landfills or washing up of medical waste released into the sea or river. Potential organisms implicated in diseases secondary to mismanagement of hospital waste disposal include salmonella, cholera, shigella, helminths, strep pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis, herpesvirus, anthrax, meningitis, HIV, hepatitis and candida etc. These infections can cause a considerable strain on the overall health and finances of the community or individuals affected. The basic principal of Public health management i.e 'prevention is better than cure' cannot be more stressed in this scenario as compared to any other health challenge. Health facilities must have a clear policy on hazardous waste management. To ensure a safe environment hospitals need to adopt and implement international and local systems of waste disposal. Hospital waste management plan entails policy and procedures addressing waste generation, accumulation, handling, transportation, storage, treatment and disposal. Waste needs to be collected in marked containers usually colour coded and leak proof. Segregation at source is of vital importance. The standard practice in many countries is the Basic Three Bin System ie to segregate the waste into RED bags/ boxes for sharps, YELLOW bags for biological waste and BLUE or BLACK ones for general/ municipal waste. All hospital staff needs to be trained in the concept of putting the right waste in relevant containers/ bags. They need to know that more than anything else this practice is vital for their own safety. The message can be reinforced through appropriate labelling on the bins and having posters with simple delineations to avoid mixing of different waste types. Sharps essentially should be kept in rigid, leak and puncture-resistant containers which are tightly lidded and labelled. Regular training sessions for nurses and cleaning staff can be organised as they are the personnel who are more likely to deal with waste disposition at the level of their respective departments. Next of course is transportation of waste products to the storage or disposal. Sanitary staff and janitors must be aware of the basic concepts of waste handling and should wear protective clothing, masks and gloves etc, besides ensuring regular practice of disinfection and sterilization techniques.8Special trolleys or vehicles exclusively designed and reserved for biomedical waste and operated by trained individuals should be used for transportation to the dumping or treatment site. Biomedical waste treatment whether on site or off site is a specialised entity involving use of chemicals and equipment intended for curtailing the hazardous potential of the material at hand. Thermal treatment via incinerators, not only results in combustion of organic substances but the final product in the form of non-toxicash is only 10 to 15% of the original solid mass of waste material fed to the machine. Dedicated autoclaves and microwaves can also be used for the purpose of disinfection. Chemicals such as bleach, sodium hydroxides, chlorine dioxide and sodiumhypochlorite are also effective disinfectants having specialised indications. Countries around the world have their own regulations for waste management. United Kingdom practices strict observance of Environmental protection act 1990, Waste managementlicensing regulations 1994 and Hazardous waste regulations 2005 making it one of thesafest countries in terms of hazardous waste disposal. Similar regulations specific for each state have been adopted in United States following passage of the Medical Waste tracking act 1988. In Pakistan, every hospital must comply with the Waste Management Rules 2005 (Environment Protection Act 1997), though actual compliance is far from satisfactory. It is high time that the government and responsible community organisations shape up to seriously tackle the issue of bio hazardous waste management through enforcement of effective policies and standard operating procedures for safeguarding the health and lives of the public in general and health workers in particular.

This thesis consists of five self-contained empirical essays centering on total factor productivity (TFP), efficiency, and impacts of policy. Essay I: "TFP Change and Its Components for Swedish Manufacturing Firms During the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis" (co-authored with Jonas Månsson and William H. Greene). A driving force of economic development is growth in total factor productivity (TFP). Manufactured goods are, to a large extent, exports, and represent an important part of the economy for many developed countries. Additionally, a slowdown in labour productivity has been observed in many OECD countries after the financial crisis 2008-2009. This study investigates TFP change and its components for the Swedish manufacturing industry, compared with the private service sector, during the years 1997-2013, centering on the financial crisis. Stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) is used to disentangle persistent and transient efficiency from firm heterogeneity and random noise, respectively. In addition, technical change (TC), returns to scale (RTS) and a scale change (SC) component are also identified. Along with the empirical analysis, an elaborative discussion regarding TC in SFA is provided. The persistent part for manufacturing (service) is 0.796 (0.754) and the transient part is 0.787 (0.762), indicating improvement potentials. Furthermore, TFP change is substantially lower between the years 2007-2013, compared to 1997-2007, driven by lower technological progress. Policy should, therefore, target interventions that enhance technology. However, care needs to be taken so that policies do not sustain low-productive firms that otherwise would exit the market. Essay II: "A bootstrapped Malmquist index applied to Swedish district courts" (co-authored with Jonas Månsson, Christian Andersson and Fredrik Bonander). This study measures the total factor productivity (TFP) of the Swedish district courts by applying data envelopment analysis (DEA) to calculate the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) of 48 Swedish district courts from 2012 to 2015. In contrast to the limited international literature on court productivity, this study uses a fully decomposed MPI. A bootstrapping approach is further applied to compute confidence intervals for each decomposed factor of TFP. The findings show a 1.7% average decline of TFP, annually. However, a substantial variation between years can be observed in the number of statistically significant courts below and above unity. The averages of the components show that the negative impact is mainly driven by negative technical change (TC). Large variations are also observed over time where the small courts have the largest volatility. Two recommendations are: (1) that district courts with negative TFP growth could learn from those with positive TFP growth; and (2) that the back-up labour force could be developed to enhance flexibility. Essay III: "Potential efficiency effects of merging the Swedish district courts" (co-authored with Claes Tidanå). The Swedish district courts have undergone a substantial restructuring process in which the main reform has been to merge. As a result, the number of district courts has declined from 95 in 2000 to only 48 in 2009. All main arguments that support merging concern enhancements of efficiency. However, it has not yet been explicitly examined whether the mergers have the potential to increase efficiency ex ante. Thus, the expectation concerning higher efficiency was built on a subjective view. This paper investigates whether the mergers can be rationalized from a production economic point of view. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to compute a production frontier where the conducted mergers are incorporated to identify the potential ex ante gains. Furthermore, the overall potential is decomposed into learning, scale, and harmony to investigate the source of the potential gain, e.g., an effect of adjusting to best practice or a pure merging effect such as scale. The results show diverse potentials, i.e., a number of mergers did not have the potential to gain in efficiency while others could gain substantially. A conclusion based on the analysis is that the potential production economic effects should be investigated before merger decisions are made in the future. This is also likely to be true beyond the Swedish district courts. Essay IV: "Impacts on efficiency of merging the Swedish district courts" (co-authored with Per J. Agrell and Jonas Månsson). Judicial courts form a stringent example of public services using partially sticky inputs and outputs with heterogeneous quality. Notwithstanding, governments internationally are striving to improve the efficiency of and diminish the budget spent on court systems. Frontier methods such as data envelopment analysis (DEA) are sometimes used in investigations of structural changes in the form of mergers. We review the methods used to evaluate the ex post efficiency of horizontal mergers. Identification of impacts is difficult. Therefore, we apply three analytical frameworks: 1) a technical efficiency comparison over time, 2) a metafrontier approach among mergers and non-mergers and 3) a conditional difference-in-differences (cDiD) approach where non-merged twins of the actual mergers are identified by matching. In addition, both time heterogeneity and sources of efficiency change are examined ex post. We apply our method to evaluate the impact on efficiency of merging the Swedish district courts from 95 to 48 between 2000 and 2009. Whereas the stated ambition for the mergers was to improve efficiency, no structured ex post analysis has been done. Swedish courts are shown to improve efficiency from merging. In addition to the particular application, our work may inform a more general discussion on public service efficiency measurement under structural changes, and their limits and potential. Essay V: "The impact of labour subsidies on total factor productivity and profits per employee." Subsidizing targeted labour groups is a common intervention to prevent long-term unemployment. Lower expected productivity is the motivation for subsidizing labour, but all research, with one exception, focuses on other effects while some investigates the TFP effects of capital subsidies. This study combines methods that, to the best of my knowledge, have not previously been used together to determine the impacts of labour subsidies on total factor productivity (TFP). Further, the profit per employee is included as a second outcome. Coarsened exact matching (CEM) is performed on the key variables; difference-in-differences (DiD) is then applied to the matched data. It is found that firms employing workers with wage subsidies experience negative and significant effects on both TFP and profit per employee. Heterogeneity is, however, observed; the only sector to show a deficit in both TFP and profit per employee is wholesale. During the second year with a subsidy, a negative impact can be observed on the profit per employee but not on TFP. The policy conclusion from the analysis is that subsidizing individuals from particular groups is necessary to induce firms to hire workers from these groups. However, the time period for which a single firm is subsidized should be considered.

Blockchain technology has been one of the most promising technologies of the past decade, with Ethereum and Bitcoin being the two most popular Blockchains today. Both do not provide data protection and privacy by default. The former allows for Decentralized Applications (DApps) to be built, with zero chance of downtime or censorship and is the main focus of this dissertation. The European Union approved a law in 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with severe penalties being enforced since May 25th, 2018. It is considered a massive step toward protecting user data. Not only does it affect companies with offices in the EU, but also organizations throughout the world that have users from EU territories. Further, it stipulates key obligations for organizations handling user data, in addition to introducing new rights to individuals, such as the right to erasure. This represents a major challenge towards achieving GDPR compliance in DApps, as Blockchains such as Ethereum, are immutable by design. This dissertation's work attempts to comply with the GDPR and its conflicting right to erasure, by developing an Ethereum proof-of-concept DApp: DFiles, which also aims to provide some form of data privacy and protection. It also allows its users to upload encrypted files in addition to their download and decryption. It was developed using an Agile methodology in an iterative approach with mainly decentralized technologies, such as the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) and Ethereum smart contracts, with a centralized component for user authentication, while adhering to Blockchain Software Engineering. Due to the GDPR's complexity, some parts were selected, namely the rights to erasure, data portability, access and rectification. DFiles GDPR compliance was then evaluated with a statistical analysis on user encrypted and unencrypted uploaded files in the DApp, with its elapsed upload times and Ethereum transaction costs measured for files separated into four categories: small (1KB-1MB), medium (1MB-20MB), large (20MB-200MB) and extra-large (200MB-2GB). However, due to hardware limitations, this statistical analysis could only be performed for files up to 14.2MB. It concluded that transaction costs for unencrypted files are slightly higher, although this increase is not significant. As for elapsed upload times, it found that the elapsed upload time in encrypted files was overall significantly higher. Data from files larger than 14.2MB was still recorded which determined that the last two elapsed upload times for unencrypted files up to 800MB, are less than the last two upload elapsed times for encrypted ones up to 14.2MB. In conclusion, encrypting files to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation's right to erasure is a valuable option only for small to medium files up to 14.2MB. From there, without considering hardware encryption limitations, upload times tend to grow exponentially. Ethereum and the IPFS must advance to allow better privacy techniques. Recently, there have been major new improvements to Ethereum and its smart contracts; the world of DApp development is always changing at a fast rate. In the future, Ethereum might evolve to a newer version which may bring new and enhanced privacy controls which may allow its complete GDPR compliance. ; A tecnologia de Blockchain tem sido uma das mais promisoras da última década, com Ethereum e Bitcoin como as duas Blockchains mais conhecidas atualmente, em que ambas têm o problema de não fornecer, por defeito, a proteção de dados e a sua consequente privacidade. O Ethereum, o principal foco desta dissertação, permite desenvolver Aplicações Descentralizadas (DApps) com a impossibilidade de estarem offline ou serem alvos de censura. A União Europeia (EU) aprovou o Regulamento Geral sobre a Proteção de Dados (RGPD) em 2016, com penalizações apenas a serem aplicadas no dia 25 de Maio de 2018. Este regulamento é considerado um passo gigante para proteger a informação e os dados dos utilizadores, visto que este não afeta apenas organizações com escritórios na EU, mas também empresas no mundo todo que tenham clientes em territórios da União Europeia. Além disto, o regulamento estipula novas obrigações para organizações que manuseiam dados dos seus utilizadores, além de introduzir novos direitos para os mesmos, como o direito de apagamento dos dados. Este direito representa um desafio enorme para conseguir cumprir estritamente com o RGPD nas DApps, visto que as Blockchains como o Ethereum são, no seu design, imutáveis. O trabalho desenvolvido nesta dissertação tenta cumprir com o RGPD e o seu direito problemático ao apagamento dos, ao desenvolver uma prova de conceito, uma DApp em Ethereum: DFiles, em que esta visa fornecer alguma maneira de proteger os dados dos seus utilizadores e também a sua privacidade. Além disto, também permite que os seus utilizadores submetam ficheiros encriptados além de os conseguirem desencriptar quando o seu download é efetuado. Foi também desenvolvida com uma metodologia Agile, com uma abordagem por iterações usando na maioria tecnologias descentralizadas, como por exemplo o Interplanetary File System (IPFS) e os contratos inteligentes do Ethereum, contando também com uma componente centralizada para efeitos de autenticação de utilizadores, ao mesmo tempo que adere à Engenharia de Desenvolvimento de Software para Blockchain (BOSE). Devido à complexidade do RGPD, apenas alguns dos seus aspetos foram selecionados para a sua implementação no DFiles como os direitos de apagamento dos dados, portabilidade, acesso e retificação. O cumprimento do RGPD na DFiles DApp foi avaliado com recurso a uma análise estatística nos ficheiros encriptados e não encriptados submetidos pelos seus utilizadores, em que foram medidos o tempo gasto no seu upload e o custo total de transação em Ethereum, em ficheiros de quatro categorias diferentes: pequenos (1KB-1MB), médios (1MB-20MB), grandes (20MB-200MB) e muito grandes (200MB-2GB). No entanto, por limitações de hardware, esta análise estatística apenas foi feita para ficheiros até 14.2MB de tamanho. Pode ser concluído que os custos de transação para ficheiros não encriptados são ligeiramente superiores, apesar deste aumento não ser significativo. Além disto, esta análise também concluiu que o tempo gasto nos ficheiros encriptados é substancialmente maior. Os dados dos ficheiros com tamanho superior a 14.2MB foram também registados. Ao compararmos os últimos dois registos dos ficheiros desencriptados, até 800MB de tamanho, concluímos que o seu tempo gasto é inferior aos útlimos dois registos para ficheiros encriptados até 14.2MB de tamanho. Finalmente, pode-se concluir que encriptar ficheiros para cumprir com o direito ao apagamento de dados do RGPD é uma possível abordagem apenas para ficheiros pequenos e médios até 14.2MB de tamanho. A partir desta fase, e sem considerar limitações de hardware, os tempos gastos para upload de ficheiros encriptados tendem a aumentar exponencialmente. Assim sendo, o Ethereum e o IPFS têm obrigatoriamente que melhorar a sua tecnologia num futuro próximo para permitir novas e melhores técnicas de privacidade dos dados. Recentemente, têm existido melhoramentos significativos no Ethereum e os seus contratos inteligentes que fazem com que o mundo do desenvolvimento de DApps se faça a um ritmo muito elevado. No futuro, o Ethereum poderá evoluir numa nova versão que poderá também trazer novos melhoramentos e controlos de privacidade que poderão permitir o cumprimento na totalidade do RGPD.

Les feux sont un phénomène naturel dans la forêt boréale du Canada. Ils sont étroitement liés à la croissance et au développement de cet écosystème. Cependant, l'augmentation des activités anthropiques associées au changement climatique graduel peuvent provoquer un accroissement des épisodes de feux. Un tel accroissement pourrait avoir des effets indési-rables sur l'industrie forestière en raison d'une rupture de l'approvisionnement en bois sur une période de planification à long terme. Cette thèse explore une approche alternative pour concevoir des stratégies qui réduiront l'impact potentiel des feux de forêt sur les revenus à long terme générés par la vente de produits forestiers ciblés, et ce, au moyen d'une politique d'aménagement forestier spécifique. L'étude est basée sur les données de trois unités d'aménagement forestier localisées dans la région boréale de la province de Québec au Ca-nada. Les modèles de politique de planification de la récolte forestière ont été résolus en utilisant la programmation linéaire intégrée avec un taux de brûlage constant. Les options de récolte prescrites par les modèles de planification ont été évaluées à l'aide d'un modèle de simulation de paysage intégré avec un taux de brûlage stochastique. Parmi les quatre modèles pris en compte, le modèle verticalement intégré (modèle 4) a géné-ré les revenus les plus élevés tout en ayant les variations les moins importantes de revenu au sein et entre les périodes pour l'horizon de planification. Ce modèle a permis de maximiser la valeur actuelle nette des recettes provenant de la vente de produits de première transfor-mation pour les deux premières périodes soumis à une récolte forestière constante et à des volumes de bois récupérés durant une période de planification complète. Les revenus plus élevés et les variations plus faibles suggèrent que le modèle peut réduire le risque des im-pacts des feux de forêt sur les revenus comparativement aux trois autres modèles, y compris le modèle de rendement soutenu qui maximise le volume de la récolte soumis à des flux constants du volume de récolte durant une période de planification (modèle 1). L'analyse des dépenses de gestion des incendies a démontré que l'augmentation de telles dépenses peut réduire le coût de lutte contre les feux et augmenter les revenus de la récolte tout en diminuant la variabilité. Cependant, il y a un niveau optimal de dépense qui dépend de la structure forestière et des régimes de feux. Par conséquent, une répartition optimale des dépenses de prévention peut réduire le risque d'impact du feu sur l'économie forestière à long terme. La pérennité des écosystèmes est importante en gestion forestière. Par conséquent, l'intégri-té écologique est de plus en plus préoccupante en ce qui concerne les forêts publiques cana-diennes qui sont aménagées à des fins commerciales. La mise en œuvre d'une politique de récolte exigeant la conservation des vieilles forêts tout en tenant compte de l'impact poten-tiel du feu peut avoir des effets négatifs sur les revenus. Les impacts peuvent être réduits en choisissant une politique de gestion forestière alternative. La réduction des revenus à court terme peut être compensée par des retours à long terme générés par la valeur ajoutée asso-ciée à l'âge du bois en utilisant des politiques alternatives. Finalement, les résultats démontrent que le modèle de planification de la récolte intégrée verticalement et l'optimisation des efforts de gestion du feu peuvent accroître les revenus à moyen et à long terme de l'industrie forestière. Le modèle réduit le risque de perte de reve-nus lié à la rupture de l'approvisionnement lorsque l'impact du feu est inclus dans le proces-sus de planification. De plus, les solutions prescrites dans ce modèle aident à réduire le taux de récolte et à augmenter le volume des stocks qui peut être un coussin en prévision des feux qui surviennent de façon très variable au cours des périodes de l'horizon de planification. ; Forest fire is a natural process in the boreal forest region of Canada and it is strongly con-nected to forest growth and development. Yet, increasing anthropogenic activities coupled with gradual climate change can increase fire occurrence and area burned. Such an increase may cause adverse impacts on the forest-based economy by the potential disruption of tim-ber supply over a long-term planning horizon. This thesis explores an alternative approach to designing strategies to reduce the potential impact of fire on long-term revenues generated by the sale of prescribed harvest products using a specified forest management policy. The study is based on data from three commercially-managed forests located in the boreal forest region of the province of Quebec, Canada. The harvest planning policy models were solved using a constant average annual burn rate-embedded in a linear programming model. The harvest solutions prescribed by the planning model were evaluated by implementing them in a stochastic landscape simulation model. Among the four policy models examined, vertically integrated model (model 4) generated the highest revenue with the least within- and among-period variation in revenue over the planning horizon. This model maximized the net present value from the sale of primary-processed wood products for the first two periods subjecting to the constant flows of har-vest timber and recovered lumber volumes for an entire planning horizon. The higher reve-nue and lower variation suggest that the model can have lower risk of fire impacts on reve-nue compared with the other three models including the status quo sustained-yield policy model (model 1) that maximizes harvest timber volume subject to constant flows of the harvest volume over the planning horizon. Analysis of fire management expenditures demonstrated that increased presuppression ex-penditure can reduce suppression costs and increase the revenue from the harvest while lowering the variability. However, there is an optimal level of expenditure, which depends on the structure of the forest and fire regimes. Hence, an optimal allocation of presuppres-sion expenditure can reduce the risk of the fire on the long-term economics of the forest. Ecosystem sustainability is important for forest management. Therefore, ecological integrity is of increasing concern with respect to commercially-managed public forests in Canada. Implementation of a harvest policy with strict requirement of old-growth forest area con-straint while accounting for the possible impact of fire can have adverse impacts on reve-nue. The impacts can be reduced by selecting alternative forest management policies. The short-term reduction in revenue from harvests can be compensated for by long-term eco-nomic returns provided by age-related value accumulation of the harvest timber using alter-native policies. Finally, based on the results, the vertically integrated harvest planning model coupled with optimal fire management efforts can increase long-term average revenue to wood industry. The model lowers the risk of loss of revenue due to supply disruptions when the impact of fire is accounted for in the planning process. In addition, the solutions prescribed by this model help reduce the harvest rate and increase stock volume which can act as a buffer for the highly variable potential fires in the successive periods over a planning horizon.

Brazil-China agricultural trade mushroomed since 2000 to become one of the world's largest flows of agroindustrial commodities and capital, reigniting and transforming agrarian questions in a new, multipolar world order. After the conjunction of food price and financial crises in 2007-2009, this burgeoning trade gave rise to a very palpable boom of Chinese investments in Brazilian agribusiness. My dissertation is the most in-depth and extensive study to date about this phenomenon, and its background in historical relations between Brazil and China. As this growth of Chinese investments abroad took place, a broader rush of investments in farmland and agroindustrial production, processing, trade, and infrastructure unfolded worldwide (often called the global land grab) – and China was identified as a major new investor, while Brazil was recognized as one of the foremost targets for transnational agroindustrial investments. State and corporate actors across both China and Brazil promoted this leveraging of investments as a new form of South-South cooperation, claiming it strengthens domestic agribusinesses and governments in these countries in relation to the hegemonic agribusiness and state interests from the Global North. On the other hand, some critics feared this new wave of investments establishes a neocolonial relation that deindustrializes Brazil, dragging it back to an extractivist and export-oriented agriculture that curtails employment and the standard of living of Brazilians, and locks the country economically into dependent international relations. In this dissertation, I set out to investigate where and how Chinese investments are taking place in Brazilian agribusiness (both direct and indirect, targeting everything from seeds, agrochemicals, and other inputs, farmland and agricultural production, agroindustrial processing, and the related logistics infrastructure such as warehouses and ports). My findings indicate that Chinese investments in Brazilian agribusiness did expand rapidly in recent years, but they are still far dwarfed by capital from the Global North – particularly in farmland and agricultural production. The prominent discourse that "China is a (or the) major land grabber" is debunked, and I argue it has actually been constructed through a complex conjuncture of social interests that range across rural social movements, commercial farmers, landed elites, and industrialists in Brazil, alongside agribusinesses and financiers from the Global North. This indicates also a form of sinophobia, which I argue must be understood in its 200-year history of shifting and sedimented Orientalist discourses about the Chinese in Brazilian (and other "Western") imaginaries. Tracing a genealogy of this sinophobia, I also reconstruct the emergence of a transnational class of boosters, brokers, bureaucrats, and (agri)businessmen (mostly men), who I call collectively "agribusiness professionals." I argue these agribusiness professionals have not only been at the forefront of constructing Brazil-China relations for over 200 years, but also it is examining their work of assembling Chinese capital with Brazilian land, labor, and expertise that we can comprehend the nature and denouement of Brazil-China agroindustrial partnerships. Thus, I combine political economic and historical methods with a critical global ethnography of the transnational agribusiness professionals assembling Chinese capital with Brazilian agribusiness – rooted in in-depth interviews, life histories, and some participant observation undertaken from the fall of 2010 through the spring of 2017. This period included fieldwork in China during the summers of 2011 and 2013, and the spring of 2015. In Brazil, fieldwork was undertaken during the summer of 2012, and between January 2014 and August 2015. In total, I spent over 20 non-consecutive months undertaking fieldwork in Brazil and 7 non-consecutive months in China, working in about 14 Brazilian states and 8 Chinese provinces (and provincial-level cities). This research reveals that Chinese agroindustrial capital is not homogeneous, centralized, or directed "from Beijing", and rather than treating it as a "global force" that has "local impacts" in Brazil, I reveal how Chinese and Brazilian agribusiness professionals co-produce the emerging Brazil-China agroindustrial assemblage in the pursuit of their own affluence and influence. On one end of the spectrum, there are companies and projects that I term "Paper Tigers." These are companies that invested (or attempted to invest) primarily in farmland and agricultural production, and so were feared to be menacing land grabbers, but nevertheless turned out to be quite ineffective. Through a combination of insufficient financial and political resources, inadequate operational capacity among agribusiness professionals, and social resistance across various scales, these Paper Tigers either failed to operate profitably or even establish themselves in the first place. On the other end of the spectrum are companies I call (adapting a term from the Chinese government's recent policies) "Dragon Heads." These are companies that play leading roles in their sectors domestically, and launched foreign investments primarily through global-level mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of existing transnational or local (i.e. Brazilian) companies, focusing primarily on agroindustrial trade. While these indirect investments through M&As actually amount to the largest influx of Chinese agroindustrial capital into Brazil, and show clear signs and potential for converging with the agribusiness corporations from the Global North that had hegemony over much of Brazilian and transnational agroindustrial assemblages, this is still an underexplored phenomenon. A central contribution of my dissertation is discerning Chinese agribusiness investments in Brazil as Dragon Heads or Paper Tigers, showing this to be a much more useful lens for analysis than simple categorization across ownership structure as private companies or state-owned enterprises. My main argument is that, whether Brazil-China agroindustrial partnerships collapse as Paper Tigers or advance as Dragon Heads, these projects ultimately benefit the transnational agribusiness professionals who assemble them above all others. While transnational agribusiness professionals cultivate their own wealth and power through these projects, they also aggravate the exploitation of natural resources and workers, and the marginalization of peasants and agroecological alternatives. Therefore, what I call the "South-South question" – how Brazil-China agroindustrial partnerships constitute new linkages of agroindustrial capitalism within and between these previously-peripheral spaces that emerge now as new hubs of capital, and with what implications for the society and environment, particularly struggles for democracy and social justice – brings into the spotlight this group of agribusiness professionals as the key intellectuals (in the sense that Gramsci used in his examination of the "southern question") who construct capitalist hegemony through transnational agribusiness development. In turn, the struggle for democracy, land redistribution, agroecology, agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and social justice must contest this intellectual and political terrain of transnational agribusiness professionals. Agroecological alternatives for Brazil-China agroindustrial partnerships exist, and are illustrated in the conclusion of this dissertation, but their pursuit is fundamentally a project of internationalist class struggle – uniting peasants, workers, and their allies in both China and Brazil against an increasingly transnational capitalist class.

The object of this research is the Zaberezinskis family among the political elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: the association of the family's history (its genealogy, economic, political, foundational activity) with the rest of the environment of the GDL rulers of the Jagiellonian Dynasty. The general backdrop of the political life of the GDL makes it possible to see and evaluate the weight of the Zaberezininkis family among the country's ruling elite. From the late 15th to the middle of the 16th century, the aristocratic authority with its ages-old roots acquired institutional form. Foreseeing the possibility of rulers residing outside the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (as during Kazimierz Jagiellonian's rule), Alexander Jagiellonian's privilege of 6 August 1492 authorized broader prerogatives for the Council of Lords. At the same time, on the eve of the proclamation of the Grand Duke, the summoned parliament initiated the tradition of representation of the nobility. Institutional changes were accompanied by the reception of humanistic ideas, legal culture and political theory, linked to the custom, increasing at the time, of nobility sending their offspring to universities to pursue higher education. The story of the Zaberezinskis family, descendants of Rimvydas, is presented In the context of the formation of the GDL Republic (Respublica Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae), a political nation of descendants of the Romans (as the Lithuanian nobility portrayed themselves). The earliest data on the kin are associated with the times of Sigismund Kęstutaitis, and the latest with those of Sigismund Augustus. Members of the family played a particularly significant role in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the times of Kazimierz Jagiellonian and his two sons Alexander and Sigismund the Old, from the 1480s until 1544. Responding to the postulates of the modern science of genealogy, the story of the family is presented according to its different branches. Against the background of key events in Lithuanian history, beginning from Jurgis Rimvydaitis and Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis, the careers of the latter's children and their descendants, their interrelationships, and factors influencing their careers are analysed. Due to the different status of different members of the family and the different amounts of data available in the sources, the questionnaire applied to different members of the family differs. Jonas Jurgaitis and his son Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis, who reached the highest posts, are the most significant, and the most extensive treatment is given to their biographies. The composition of the landholding and the development of the network of towns are discussed in a separate part of the study. The available data (including property holdings) do not directly confirm a family relationship between the Zaberezinskis and the Manvydas families. No sources have been found in which the Zaberezinskis in any way mention Manvydas or his brother, or a family relationship with them. In the view of the author of this work, the success of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinsky's career can be attributed to his holding the strategic post of Vicar of Polotsk at a key moment, the favour of Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander and strong personal abilities. In consequence, Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinsky proved one of the most prominent personalities on the Council of Lords, achieving the particularly high offices of Voivode of Trakai and Grand Marshall, and personally taking part in the most important events in the interstate relations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. For a variety of reasons (often due to early death), the only descendent of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis who achieved a significant political career was his son Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis (~1473-1538), who ultimately, like his father, assumed the posts of Voivode of Trakai and Grand Marshall of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His relations with the other most influential high-ranking noblemen of the period are considered, especially the meaning of marriages contracted by him and arranged by him for his descendants and relatives. The gathered data regarding the formation and distribution of the family's latifundium show that the most important stage in the formation of the estate was the time of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis, although later the family also acquired significant properties through marriage and purchases. A major step in this process was the marriage of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis to the daughter, Ona, of Jonas Nasuta, who held large properties in Palenkė (Podlasie). Other ways land was acquired were purchases and gifts of the rulers (Casimir and Alexander). One such event that stands out is Alexander's gift in 1506 of the regions of Alytus and Simnas. Many of the surviving papers written by Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis in the final period of his life, when he resided in Alytus as Keeper of the City and the Region, testify to intense internal colonization of the area of Alytus and Simnas by the Nemunas River. Alytus and Simnas also include the most noteworthy church foundations made by Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis and his family, a clear witness to the founders' piety. As he gave the decisive impulse for Alytus and Simnas to become city-like settlements, he can properly be considered the founder of those cities. The political self-awareness of the Lithuanian aristocracy is best captured by the term from that period "the Republic of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania" (Respublica Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae), as D. Kuolis has accurately observed. The theory of the Roman origins of the Lithuanian nobility, with all its consequences (such as e.g. the rule of law), can be considered the highest peak of the political culture of the ruling elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1525 (well before the Union of Lublin, which is often associated with Lithuanian republican traditions) Albertas Goštautas's memorial to the Grand Duchess Bona associated the notion of nobility with loyalty to the ruler and responsibility for the commonwealth (the republic). Although it can be said that certain Republican ideals drawn from antiquity thrived among the Lithuanian aristocracy, their dominant trait was conservatism (unwillingness to admit lesser nobility to the structures of power). The high-rank nobility clearly recognized the ruler as the head of the political body of the Grand Duchy, and sought for him a crown. The programme for a Kingdom of Lithuania should be linked to the need, fostered by aristocracy, for the GDL to have its own distinct identity, though having a separate ruler was important also for practical reasons: the unquestioned centralized government accelerated the defence mechanisms of the state. A contemporary observer testifies that, when the ruler was absent, the Lithuanian lords "did not know what to do, remained undecided and did nothing." The ruling elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, both in their actions and in what they wrote (in the Lithuanian chronicles and elsewhere), unequivocally showed that no agreements with the Polish Crown bound them. The role of the aristocracy in the political emancipation of the lesser nobility and the importance of the latter for the maturing of the Lithuanian-Polish Union are issues that still require further research. Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis gave some of his nobles personal freedom and economic autonomy, which can be regarded as a precondition for political emancipation.

Includes bibliography (p. 439-461). ; Number of sources in the bibliography: 304 ; Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Cyprus, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture, 2016. ; The University of Cyprus Library holds the printed form of the thesis. ; Η έννοια της συλλογικής νοημοσύνης χαράσσει νέες κατευθύνσεις ως προς τον τρόπο προσέγγισης πολλών σύγχρονων θεμάτων πολιτικής, οικονομικής, κοινωνικής και ηθικής φύσης, αποδίδοντας μεγάλη έμφαση στις δυναμικές σχέσεις που αναπτύσσονται μεταξύ των συμβαλλόμενων μερών. Κατ' επέκταση, ο συλλογικός χώρος που προκύπτει ως αποτέλεσμα αυτής της 'ανοικτής' διαδικασίας, μπορεί να αποτελέσει το πεδίο όπου διάφορες αβεβαιότητες αποκαλύπτονται, αλλά και να λειτουργήσει ως το πεδίο όπου οι αντιθέσεις, συγκρούσεις και αντιπαραθέσεις συνιστούν τα κύρια στοιχεία που ορίζουν την αρχιτεκτονική δημιουργία. Εξετάζοντας οποιαδήποτε χωρική προβληματική, καλούμαστε να ανταπεξέλθουμε σε έναν τεράστιο αριθμό παραμέτρων που αναδεικνύουν την ανεπάρκεια των διαθέσιμων μεθόδων σχεδιασμού για την αντιμετώπιση πολύπλοκων αστικών προβλημάτων. Σε άλλους επιστημονικούς κλάδους, όπως αυτόν της πληροφορικής, η διαχείριση της πολυπλοκότητας φαίνεται να επιτυγχάνεται από τους ίδιους τους χρήστες, με την υιοθέτηση διαφόρων μοντέλων συλλογικών διαδικασιών, όπως είναι ο ανοικτός κώδικας (open source), η ομότιμη δυναμική (p2p), ο πληθοπορισμός (crowdsourcing), κ.λπ. Εν αντιθέσει, στον κλάδο του αστικού σχεδιασμού οι εκφάνσεις συλλογικών πρακτικών σχετίζονται με την έννοια του συμμετοχικού σχεδιασμού, ο οποίος συχνά περιορίζεται στην εμπλοκή διαφόρων ενδιαφερομένων στη διαδικασία σχεδιασμού και στην απόδοση ευθυνών σχεδιασμού προς αυτούς, για την παραγωγή χώρων που θα αφορούν τις ανάγκες των πραγματικών χρηστών. Παρότι ο σχεδιασμός συνήθως επικεντρώνεται στο τελικό προϊόν σχεδιασμού, στην πραγματικότητα τα στάδια της διαδικασίας σχεδιασμού, τα οποία ξεκινούν με τον προσδιορισμό ενός αστικού προβλήματος και με στόχο την ανάπτυξη ενός τελικού προϊόντος, συνήθως παραμένουν στην αφάνεια, παρόλο που αποτελούν ουσιώδες μέρος της αρχιτεκτονικής πρακτικής. Για τους λόγους αυτούς, η παρούσα μελέτη αποσκοπεί στη διερεύνηση της έννοιας της συλλογικής νοημοσύνης, εστιάζοντας στο σχεδιασμό ως μια διαδικασία η οποία εκτείνεται πέρα από τα όρια κάθε έργου και η οποία δύναται να συμβάλλει στη διάδοση της γνώσης. Το τελευταίο κατέστη δυνατό μέσα από την επιλογή της πλατφόρμας αρχιτεκτονικών διαγωνισμών Europan, ως περιπτωσιολογικής μελέτης. Για το σκοπό αυτό χρησιμοποιήθηκαν αναλυτικές μέθοδοι προσέγγισης συγκεκριμένων έργων από το αρχείο του Europan, σε συνδυασμό με ένα αριθμό συνεντεύξεων των εμπλεκόμενων μερών για τα επιλεγμένα έργα, καθώς επίσης πραγματοποιήθηκε διεξοδική μελέτη του 28-χρόνου αρχείου του Europan. Η διατριβή κατέδειξε ότι οι συλλογικές πρακτικές που διενεργούνται μεταξύ των παραγόντων ενός έργου (πόλεις, αρχιτέκτονες, εμπειρογνώμονες, φορείς ανάπτυξης) και οι οποίες διαμορφώνουν σταδιακά το σχεδιασμό ενός έργου, επωφελούνται και ενισχύονται από τις πλατφόρμες επικοινωνίας που προσφέρονται από το θεσμό του Europan (χώροι δημόσιας συζήτησης (forum, debates), εργαστήρια, εκθέσεις, κλπ.). Ως εκ τούτου, διαπιστώθηκε ότι ένα έργο αστικού σχεδιασμού μπορεί να αποκτήσει υβριδικά χαρακτηριστικά, επηρεαζόμενο τόσο από την ιδιαιτερότητα του χωρικού πλαισίου αναφοράς όσο και από τη δυναμική των δικτύων των παραγόντων τα οποία εκτείνονται σε όλες τις ευρωπαϊκές πόλεις που εμπλέκονται στο θεσμό. Κατά συνέπεια, διαπιστώθηκε ότι η πλατφόρμα του θεσμού Europan αποτελεί όντως ένα πρακτικό πολυεπίπεδο μέσο, μια κοινή πλατφόρμα επικοινωνίας των διαφόρων παραγόντων, ένα μέσο για την παραγωγή και διάδοση της γνώσης, ένα εν εξελίξει ερευνητικό πεδίο καθώς και ένα ενεργό μέσο στη διαμόρφωση πολιτικής. Η καινοτομία της εργασίας έγκειται στο γεγονός ότι ο συγγραφέας πρότεινε την ανάπτυξη μιας προσαρμοστικής μεθοδολογίας για τη χαρτογράφηση της πορείας εξέλιξης μιας αστικής κατάστασης, από το στάδιο προσδιορισμού της προβληματικής μέχρι και την υλοποίηση ενός έργου και η οποία αξιοποιεί πλήρως τη συσσωρευμένη γνώση που διαθέτει σήμερα ο θεσμός του Europan. Η επιστημονική αξία της εργασίας έγκειται στο ότι η γενίκευση της μεθοδολογίας αυτής θα μπορούσε να οδηγήσει στην εφαρμογή της πέρα από τα καθορισμένα όρια του θεσμού του Europan και να συμβάλει στην εμφάνιση ή την περαιτέρω ενίσχυση της συλλογικής νοημοσύνης. ; The concept of collective intelligence opens up new avenues in the potential approaches to many contemporary issues of a political, economic, social and moral nature, by laying great emphasis on the dynamic relations which are developed among the contributing parties. In turn, the collective space that emerges as the outcome of this 'open' process can function as the field where uncertainties are revealed as well as where the confrontation with differences, contrasts, conflicts and controversies that define architecture on the making, takes place. Coming across any problematic urban situation, we are faced with a vast number of parameters that highlight the inadequacy of our planning methods to respond to complex urban problems. In other disciplines, such as in Information Technology, the management of complexity appears likely to be resolved by the users themselves, by embracing several models of collective processes, such as open source, p2p, crowdsourcing, etc. That said, in urban design such manifestations of collective practices are usually related to the 'traditional' form of participatory design, that is often limited to engaging stakeholders in the design process and to attributing design responsibilities to them in order to produce environments for the actual users. Despite the perseverance of a design process being mainly focused on the end-product of the design, the process that starts from identifying the urban problem towards an end-product usually remains invisible but at the same time is a very challenging part of the architectural practice. On these grounds, this study explores the concept of collective intelligence by focusing on design as a process that stretches beyond the specific project and contributes to the spread of knowledge. The latter was made possible with the employment of Europan architectural competitions' platform as a case study. Analytical approach methods of selective Europan projects including interviews of key actors for the selected projects and the study of Europan's 28 year course archive were employed. The dissertation demonstrated that the collective practices between project actors (cities, architects, experts, developers) formulate gradually the design project, profiting from the platforms offered by the Europan institution (forums, workshops, debates). Therefore, it was found that the making of an urban design project can obtain hybrid characteristics, depending both on the specificity of the actual context and the dynamics of networks of actors that span all European cities involved. Consequently, it was found that the Europan platform is indeed a practical multi-level medium, a shared platform for the communication of diverse actors, a means of production and spread of knowledge, a domain of research in progress and an active argument in the formation of politics. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the author suggested the development of an adaptive methodology for mapping an urban situation's course of evolution into an implemented project that fully exploits Europan's accumulated knowledge. The significance attached to the latter is that the methodology's generalization could lead to its use over and above the Europan's context and contribute to the emergence or the enhancement of collective intelligence.

The object of this research is the Zaberezinskis family among the political elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: the association of the family's history (its genealogy, economic, political, foundational activity) with the rest of the environment of the GDL rulers of the Jagiellonian Dynasty. The general backdrop of the political life of the GDL makes it possible to see and evaluate the weight of the Zaberezininkis family among the country's ruling elite. From the late 15th to the middle of the 16th century, the aristocratic authority with its ages-old roots acquired institutional form. Foreseeing the possibility of rulers residing outside the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (as during Kazimierz Jagiellonian's rule), Alexander Jagiellonian's privilege of 6 August 1492 authorized broader prerogatives for the Council of Lords. At the same time, on the eve of the proclamation of the Grand Duke, the summoned parliament initiated the tradition of representation of the nobility. Institutional changes were accompanied by the reception of humanistic ideas, legal culture and political theory, linked to the custom, increasing at the time, of nobility sending their offspring to universities to pursue higher education. The story of the Zaberezinskis family, descendants of Rimvydas, is presented In the context of the formation of the GDL Republic (Respublica Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae), a political nation of descendants of the Romans (as the Lithuanian nobility portrayed themselves). The earliest data on the kin are associated with the times of Sigismund Kęstutaitis, and the latest with those of Sigismund Augustus. Members of the family played a particularly significant role in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the times of Kazimierz Jagiellonian and his two sons Alexander and Sigismund the Old, from the 1480s until 1544. Responding to the postulates of the modern science of genealogy, the story of the family is presented according to its different branches. Against the background of key events in Lithuanian history, beginning from Jurgis Rimvydaitis and Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis, the careers of the latter's children and their descendants, their interrelationships, and factors influencing their careers are analysed. Due to the different status of different members of the family and the different amounts of data available in the sources, the questionnaire applied to different members of the family differs. Jonas Jurgaitis and his son Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis, who reached the highest posts, are the most significant, and the most extensive treatment is given to their biographies. The composition of the landholding and the development of the network of towns are discussed in a separate part of the study. The available data (including property holdings) do not directly confirm a family relationship between the Zaberezinskis and the Manvydas families. No sources have been found in which the Zaberezinskis in any way mention Manvydas or his brother, or a family relationship with them. In the view of the author of this work, the success of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinsky's career can be attributed to his holding the strategic post of Vicar of Polotsk at a key moment, the favour of Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander and strong personal abilities. In consequence, Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinsky proved one of the most prominent personalities on the Council of Lords, achieving the particularly high offices of Voivode of Trakai and Grand Marshall, and personally taking part in the most important events in the interstate relations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. For a variety of reasons (often due to early death), the only descendent of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis who achieved a significant political career was his son Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis (~1473-1538), who ultimately, like his father, assumed the posts of Voivode of Trakai and Grand Marshall of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. His relations with the other most influential high-ranking noblemen of the period are considered, especially the meaning of marriages contracted by him and arranged by him for his descendants and relatives. The gathered data regarding the formation and distribution of the family's latifundium show that the most important stage in the formation of the estate was the time of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis, although later the family also acquired significant properties through marriage and purchases. A major step in this process was the marriage of Jonas Jurgaitis Zaberezinskis to the daughter, Ona, of Jonas Nasuta, who held large properties in Palenkė (Podlasie). Other ways land was acquired were purchases and gifts of the rulers (Casimir and Alexander). One such event that stands out is Alexander's gift in 1506 of the regions of Alytus and Simnas. Many of the surviving papers written by Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis in the final period of his life, when he resided in Alytus as Keeper of the City and the Region, testify to intense internal colonization of the area of Alytus and Simnas by the Nemunas River. Alytus and Simnas also include the most noteworthy church foundations made by Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis and his family, a clear witness to the founders' piety. As he gave the decisive impulse for Alytus and Simnas to become city-like settlements, he can properly be considered the founder of those cities. The political self-awareness of the Lithuanian aristocracy is best captured by the term from that period "the Republic of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania" (Respublica Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae), as D. Kuolis has accurately observed. The theory of the Roman origins of the Lithuanian nobility, with all its consequences (such as e.g. the rule of law), can be considered the highest peak of the political culture of the ruling elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1525 (well before the Union of Lublin, which is often associated with Lithuanian republican traditions) Albertas Goštautas's memorial to the Grand Duchess Bona associated the notion of nobility with loyalty to the ruler and responsibility for the commonwealth (the republic). Although it can be said that certain Republican ideals drawn from antiquity thrived among the Lithuanian aristocracy, their dominant trait was conservatism (unwillingness to admit lesser nobility to the structures of power). The high-rank nobility clearly recognized the ruler as the head of the political body of the Grand Duchy, and sought for him a crown. The programme for a Kingdom of Lithuania should be linked to the need, fostered by aristocracy, for the GDL to have its own distinct identity, though having a separate ruler was important also for practical reasons: the unquestioned centralized government accelerated the defence mechanisms of the state. A contemporary observer testifies that, when the ruler was absent, the Lithuanian lords "did not know what to do, remained undecided and did nothing." The ruling elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, both in their actions and in what they wrote (in the Lithuanian chronicles and elsewhere), unequivocally showed that no agreements with the Polish Crown bound them. The role of the aristocracy in the political emancipation of the lesser nobility and the importance of the latter for the maturing of the Lithuanian-Polish Union are issues that still require further research. Jonas Jonaitis Zaberezinskis gave some of his nobles personal freedom and economic autonomy, which can be regarded as a precondition for political emancipation.

Orchestration: piccolo, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, English horn, 3 clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 6 horns in F, 5 trumpets (1-2 in D, 3-5 in C), 2 tenor trombones, 2 bass trombones, 2 tubas, timpani, percussion (xylophone, snare drum, bass drum, 2 taiko drums, tam-tam, large temple gong, medium temple gong, 3 Rin Gongs (24", 20" and 16"), hyoshigi), koto, piano, soprano solo, and stringsThe genesis of the symphony dates back to the fall of 2015, at the conclusion of a vacation in Japan. Having toured the ancient Imperial capital of Kyoto, the bustling metropolis of Tokyo, and the serene beauty of Hakone, I felt the desire to compose a work set in Japan, with music that accurately depicts the history and picturesque landscapes. However, it was not until a year later that I began work on the initial material. Before I knew the music would become a symphony, the idea was to compose a dramatic opera in 5 acts, titled Masayo To Masashi. The work follows the stories of two characters, a husband and a wife, who are separated when the former is drafted into military service. Masashi, the husband, is sent to fight on Iwo Jima, where he is instructed to fight until death. Meanwhile, Masayo endures numerous tragedies, including the bombing of Tokyo. Both, however, survive their various conflicts and are given false news of each other's demise. After the war, a heartbroken Masashi returns to Japan, only to discover Masayo is indeed alive. The opera concludes brightly, with both characters looking to the future with optimism and hope. Despite the creation of a promising plot to an Opera, I decided to set the music to a symphony first, focusing specifically on Masayo's perspective. The result are five highly-connected movements that are a narrative of their own though familiar and reoccurring themes, motifs, and instrumental solos. Several instruments — such as the piano, solo flute, taiko drums, and koto — assume the role of various characters in the Opera, while a soprano solo assumes the role of Masayo. I think of this symphony as an operetta without words, that is, until the fifth and final movement when the soprano joins the orchestra. The first movement imitates an overture of an opera, designed to thrust the audience back to Japan in the year 1945. At roughly three minutes in length, it is the shortest movement of the symphony. Even eighth-note patterns in asymmetrical intervals clash against heavy dotted-eight-note patterns, paying homage to ancient court music of Kyoto. Tension is built harmonically as each eighth-note pattern passes, ultimately landing on a soft violin harmonic. The mood changes significantly, with the music growing more haunting and sparse. The movement ends leading in to its successor, with a final statement of the eighth-note pattern melting away as lower strings grow in volume, imitating an air-raid siren and the ominous sound of B-29 squadrons. Beginning where the first movement left off, the second, titled 3-9-45, sets to music the infamous firebombing of Tokyo. All of the orchestral forces engage together in violent passages and flurries of notes over the course of several minutes, until the orchestra is interrupted by the trumpets, imitating the air-raid siren. This "eye of the storm" moment does not last long, with the orchestra stirring itself up again to conclude the movement in the manner in which it began.The third movement is a flashback in time, returning to the years before the war began. Titled Kaisō, or Reminiscence, the overall mood is serene and calm. The koto and piano make their first appearance in this movement, while the solo flute and strings accompany both. The "sakura" theme (a prominent and reoccurring melody throughout the symphony representing harmony and peace) reveals itself several times throughout the movement. However, the promise of peace is hindered by harmonies that contain subtle tension, a reminder the plot is looking to the past and is not of the present. Overall, the third movement is a "flower between two chasms", serving as a buffer between the turbulent second movement, and the horrors that lie ahead in the fourth. Similar in nature to the second movement, the mood of the fourth is consumed with agony and despair. Although not as frantic as the second, the fourth makes up with dense orchestration and unpredictable tempo changes. Titled Nenshō, or Burning, the music reflects the hellish conditions that resulted from the bombing campaign. The movement continues from the third without pause, as the dreamlike state of the third melts away slowly, ushering in darker and more menacing sounds. Finally, with a sudden, sharp chord consisting of brass and woodwinds, the turbulence resumes. The horrors unleashed in this movement are not constant, however, with a sudden interruption of material related to the third appearing without warning. Like the transition of the third movement to the fourth, this interruption melts away like fire to wax, picking up speed at a rapid pace, finishing the movement with tremendous volume and intensity.Similar to the final movement of Shostakovich's controversial Symphony no. 4, the fifth movement is by far the longest and weightiest. A threnody, the beginning nature of the music is dark and heavy. Japanese tradition is demonstrated from the start, with the sound of a traditional Shinto Rin Gong, struck 3 times: a symbolic call to the spirits. After approximately 28 minutes of music from the beginning of the symphony, the soprano finally joins the orchestra, assuming the role of Masayo from my opera-in-development, Masayo To Masashi. She sings to her dead loved ones and ancestors, with her vocal lines noticeably static and bleak. Having survived the bombing of Tokyo, she is war-torn and shellshocked. Some of the saddest moments of the entire symphony occur in this movement, for example, when a lonely piano passage accompanied by a single note held by the 1st violins appears out of nowhere, representing the spirit of Masayo's dead child calling out to his mother. Despite many melancholy moments, the movement progressively becomes more optimistic and positive. By the end of the threnody, Masayo sings of hope and a future, while nevertheless still aware of her dark past. With the ominous and reoccurring "E" pitch — representing pain and suffering — long gone, the mood and style of the third movement returns, insuring the audience that the darkness and turmoil of the previous music is forever gone, and only replaced by peace and tranquility.