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Presenting an analysis of higher education in eight countries in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, Degrees of Dignity works to dismantle narratives of crisis and assert approaches to institutional reform. Drawing on policy documents, media narratives, interviews, and personal experiences, Elizabeth Buckner explores how apolitical external reform models become contested and modified by local actors in ways that are simultaneously complicated, surprising, and even inspiring. Degrees of Dignity documents how the global discourses of neoliberalism have legitimized specific policy models for higher education reform in the Arab world, including quality assurance, privatization, and internationalization. Through a multi-level and comparative analysis, this book examines how policy models are implemented, with often complex results, in countries throughout the region. Ultimately, Degrees of Dignity calls on the field of higher education development to rethink current approaches to higher education reform: rather than viewing the Arab world as a site for intervention, it argues that the Arab world can act as a source for insight on resilient higher education systems. ; This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Tertiary education attendance in Brazil varies remarkably among different population groups. In order to decrease inequalities and increase the proportion of minorities in public universities, many institutions of higher education in Brazil have implemented affirmative action policies since the 2000s. The main objective of this paper was to analyze different counterfactual affirmative action policies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) based on simulations, measuring the proportion of minorities and the level of academic performance at this institution under each scenario. The current quota policy of 50% for students from public secondary schools, divided between four main groups (non-poor/non-minority; poor/non-minority; non-poor/minority; poor/minority), was shown to be well-designed to promote higher proportions of minorities among the student body. However, if academic performance is also taken into account, the best options would be either a quota policy of 50% divided between poor and non-poor students or a bonus policy based on a linear function of course competitiveness with an average bonus of 6%.

Solar cells with the structure ZnO/CdS/Cu2ZnSnSe4/Mo/glass were studied by photoluminescence (PL) before and after irradiation with a dose of 1.8 × 1015 cm−2 and then 5.4 × 1015 cm−2 of 10 MeV electrons carried out at 77 K in liquid nitrogen bath. The low temperature PL spectra before irradiation revealed two bands, a broad and asymmetrical dominant band at 0.94 eV from the CZTSe layer and a lower intensity high energy band (HEB) at 1.3 eV, generated by defects in the CdS buffer layer. Analysis of the excitation intensity and temperature dependencies suggested that the dominant band is free-to-bound (FB): the recombination of free electrons with holes localised at acceptors whose energy levels are affected by potential fluctuations of the valence band due to high concentrations of randomly distributed charged defects. Irradiation did not induce any new band in the examined spectral range (from 0.5 μm to 1.65 μm) but reduced the intensity of both bands in the PL spectra measured at 77 K without warming the cells. The higher the dose the greater was the reduction. After this the cells were warmed to 300 K and moved to a variable temperature cryostat to measure temperature dependencies of the PL spectra. After irradiation the red shift rate of the FB band with temperature rise was found to increase. Electrons displace atoms in the lattice creating primary defects: interstitials and vacancies. These defects recombine during and shortly after irradiation forming secondary defect complexes which work as deep non-radiative traps of charge carriers reducing the PL intensity and increasing the rate of the temperature red shift. Irradiation did not affect the mean depth of the band tails estimated from the shape of the low energy side of the dominant PL band. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd ; European Commission, EC ; European Regional Development Fund, FEDER: TK141 ; Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation: АААА-А18-118020290104-2 ; The research was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (topic "Spin" № АААА-А18-118020290104-2 ) and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, Project TK141 .

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

Unlike almost most other studies of neoliberal universities and academic capitalism this book ethnographically explores and interprets those transformations and their contradictions empirically in the everyday practices of students, faculty members, and administrators at two public universities: NTNU in Norway and UCLA in California.Differently situated in global political economies, both are ambitious, prosperous campuses. The book refl exively examines their disturbing disputes about quality, competition, and innovation. It argues that some academic, bureaucratic, and corporate university governance practices are both unsustainable and undermining what some university students and faculty already do well: circulate interdisciplinary knowledge and its making globally across the diasporic domains of academia, society, industry, and government while addressing the world's immediate challenges: power, inequities, and sustainability.It shows the important, strategic work of domesticating, co- morphing, and meshworking at the faultlines of emerging knowledge. This book is for students, faculty, society members, and policy makers who want to engage more effectively with contemporary universities that increasingly serve as busy crossroads for sharing ideas and how to make them. It will be of interest to workers and scholars in the interdisciplinary fi elds of higher education studies, critical university studies, and critical public infrastructure studies, plus science, technology, and society studies.

10 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, supplementary data https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.118377 ; Concentrations of organophosphate esters (OPEs) plasticizers were analysed in the present study. Fifty-five fish samples belonging to three highly commercial species, European sardine (Sardina pilchardus), European anchovy (Engraulis encrasicolus), and European hake (Merluccius merluccius), were taken from the Western Mediterranean Sea. OPEs were detected in all individuals, except for two hake samples, with concentrations between 0.38 and 73.4 ng/g wet weight (ww). Sardines presented the highest mean value with 20.5 ± 20.1 ng/g ww, followed by anchovies with 14.1 ± 8.91 ng/g ww and hake with 2.48 ± 1.76 ng/g ww. The lowest OPE concentrations found in hake, which is a partial predator of anchovy and sardine, and the higher δ15N values (as a proxy of trophic position), may indicate the absence of OPEs biomagnification. Eleven out of thirteen tested OPEs compounds were detected, being diphenyl cresyl phosphate (DCP) one of the most frequently detected in all the species. The highest concentration values were obtained for tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDClPP), trihexyl phosphate (THP), and tris(2-butoxyethyl) phosphate (TBOEP), for sardines, anchovies, and hakes, respectively. The human health risk associated with the consumption of these fish species showing that their individual consumption would not pose a considerable threat to public health regarding OPE intake ; This study has been partially funded by PELCAT project (CAT 152CAT00013, TAIS ARP059/19/00005), PELWEB project (ES-PN-2017-CTM 2017-88939-R, Spanish Government), EXPOPLAS project (PID2019-110576RB-I00), Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (Consolidated Research Group Water and Soil Quality Unit 2017 SGR 1404). MEDITS data collection has been co-funded by the EU through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) within the National Program of collection, management and use of data in the fisheries sector and support for scientific advice regarding the Common Fisheries Policy. [.] This work acknowledges the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditations (Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation to IDAEA and ICM (Project CEX2018-000794-S and CEX2019-000928-S, respectively).EL-L was supported by a FPU grant (FPU1704395, Spanish Ministry of Education) ; Peer reviewed