Juglans regia in Europe: distribution, habitat, usage and threats

Juglans regia L., commonly known as common, English or Persian walnut, is an economically very important tree species, prized both for its nuts and for its attractive high-quality timber. It is the most widespread nut tree worldwide.

The Secular State Under Siege: Religion and Politics in Europe and America

Throughout human history, religion and politics have entertained the most intimate of connections as systems of authority regulating individuals and society. While the two have come apart through the process of secularization, secularism is challenged today by the return of public religion. This cogent analysis unravels the nature of the connection, disconnection, and attempted reconnection between religion and politics in the West. In a comparison of Western Europe and North America, Christianity and Islam, Joppke advances far-reaching theoretical, historical, and comparative-political arguments. With respect to theory, it is argued that only a “substantive” concept of religion, as pertaining to the existence of supra-human powers, opens up the possibility of a historical-comparative perspective on religion. At the level of history, secularization is shown to be the distinct outcome of Latin Christianity itself. And at the level of comparative politics, the Christian Right in America which has attacked the “wall of separation” between religion and state and Islam in Europe with the controversial insistence on sharia law and other “illiberal” claims from some quarters are taken to be counterpart incarnations of public religion and challenges to the secular state. This clearly argued, sweeping book will provide an invaluable framework for approaching an array of critical issues at the intersection of religion, law and politics for advanced students and researchers across the social sciences and legal studies, as well as for the interested public.

Did Impending War in Europe Help Destroy the Gold Bloc in 1936? An Internal Inconsistency Hypothesis

This paper investigates the gold bloc operated between France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium, especially over the period after the USA left the gold standard in March 1933 to its end in September 1936. It enquires into the effect of military-political developments in Germany and Italy on the sustainability of the gold bloc between its members. Juxtaposed is the view of leading political scientists, such as Henry Kissinger, who see impending war in Europe as deeply and adversely affecting psychology in Europe, and what may be called the standard "economists' view" that sees the demise of the gold bloc as being caused almost exclusively by economic factors. Developing concepts of external and internal inconsistency of the gold bloc, this investigation concludes that both economic and military-political developments played important roles in destroying the last vestiges of the gold standard.

Line Integrals and Work in Thermodynamics

This paper considers line integration in the context of elementary thermodynamics, ending with irreversible to reversible work integrations (employing, in part, L'Hopital's rule).

Israel in Europe [Rezension]

B. B.

1900 - Sousa and his band in Europe

Signatur des Originals: S 36/F09938

Work in progress - Exploiting videoconferencing possibilities to promote the European convergence process

This paper introduces the experience of using videoconferencing and recording as a mechanism to support courses which need to be promoted or discontinued within the framework of the European convergence process. Our objective is to make these courses accessible as live streaming during the lessons as well as recorded lectures and associated documents available to the students as soon as the lesson has finished. The technology used has been developed in our university and it is all open source. Although this is a technical project the key is the human factor involved. The people managing the virtual sessions are students of the courses being recorded. However, they lack technical knowledge, so we had to train them in audiovisuals and enhance the usability of the videoconferencing tool and platform. The validation process is being carried out in five real scenarios at our university. During the whole period we are evaluating technical and pedagogical issues of this experience for both students and teachers to guide the future development of the service. Depending on the final results, the service of lectures recording will be available as educational resource for all of the teaching staff of our university.

Impacts and adaptive capacity as drivers for prioritizing agricultural adaptation to climate change in Europe

In the face of likely climate change impacts policy makers at different spatial scales need access to assessment tools that enable informed policy instruments to be designed. Recent scientific advances have facilitated the development of improved climate projections, but it remains to be seen whether these are translated into effective adaptation strategies. This paper uses existing databases on climate impacts on European agriculture and combines them with an assessment of adaptive capacity to develop an interdisciplinary approach for prioritising policies. It proposes a method for identifying relevant policies for different EU countries that are representative of various agroclimatic zones. Our analysis presents a framework for integrating current knowledge of future climate impacts with an understanding of the underlying socio-economic, agricultural and environmental traits that determine a region’s capacity for adapting to climate change.

Mapping urban shrinkage in Europe. Training School Final Report. EU-COST Action TU0803

In the context of the European COST Action ‘Cities Regrowing Smaller’ (CIRES) a training was held in Dortmund, Germany from November 14th to 18th in 2011. The training school ‘Mapping Urban Shrinkage’ aimed to get young researchers and scholars from different European countries together to deal with questions of how to measure and illustrate shrinkage

Rhizoctonia solani as causative agent of damping off of Swiss chard in Europe

During September 2011, post-emergence damping off of Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla L.) was observed in a greenhouse in Villa del Prado (Spain). About 20% of the seedlings showed damping off symptoms. Lesions were initially water soaked, dark brown necrosis of crown tissue, irregular in shape and sunken in appearance on large plants, causing the infected seedlings to collapse and eventually die. Rhizoctonia solani was isolated consistently from symptomatic plants. After morphological and molecular identification of the isolates, pathogenicity was tested by placing agar plugs of four isolates adjacent to the stem at the three or four true leaf stage. In inoculated plants, brown crown and stem necrosis occurred while control plants did not show disease symptoms. Pathogenicity using non-germinated seeds was also tested. All four isolates produced extensive damping off when inoculated on non-germinated seeds. To our knowledge, this is the first report of damping off of Swiss chard caused by R. solani in Europe.

The framework for post-accident preparedness in Europe. The IRPA guiding principles for stakeholder engagement

To provide public and private actors at local, regional, national and European levels with methodologies to: – Create the conditions for them to gradually appropriate the problematic of long term rehabilitation following a situation of long‐lasting radioactive contamination; – Develop in their context appropriate means and tools for rehabilitation strategies; – Foster innovation and experimentation at territorial and national levels.

Implications of biofuel support policies in Europe - a quantitative analysis in an open economy

EU biofuels support Biofuels modelling with CAPRI Scenario setting Main results Concluding remarks Biofuels production and use will remain mainly driven by public support Strong links of biofuels to agricultural markets Development of second generation technologies would ease food-fuel links