Urban heritage fragility and antifragility:Matera and the 2019 European Capital of Culture

The city of Matera is known internationally for its prehistoric built heritage and for being the oldest continuously inhabited city in Europe. Until the Covid-19 pandemic, the heritage area of the “Sassi” used to attract significant numbers of tourists and day-trippers. This exerted significant pressure on this fragile part of the city. The plans for the Matera-Basilicata 2019 European Capital of Culture (ECoC) included measures that focused on the Sassi and others that intended to expand the set of heritage and cultural attractions in other parts of the city, as well as to strengthen the social and economic system of Matera as an innovation hub for the region. While the mega-event planning and delivery improved accessibility, public spaces and the local cultural economy, the ECoC did not significantly and directly reduce the fragility of the city’s heritage. This contribution discusses the relationship between urban heritage and mega-event policies and discusses it in the light of a fragility/antifragility theoretical framework

Abortion law in Europe:The promise and pitfalls of human rights and transnational trade law in the face of criminalization with exceptions

The fairly general consensus position on abortion law across Europe is that of partial decriminalization or, more accurately, criminalization with exceptions. Women in most European countries are able to access abortion, but currently there is no broad individual right to abortion on request. By contrast, abortion is generally a criminal offence. However, the law in each country offers various exceptions to that rule. The specific conditions of decriminalization and consequent access to lawful abortion vary substantially among European countries. These usually establish exceptions (rape, fetal abnormalities, risk to life or health of the woman, emergency/necessity) and other alternative requirements, such as a gestational term, mandatory counselling and waiting periods, parental and/or judicial consent in the case of minors, and limitations related to the type and number of healthcare professionals who need to be involved in the procedure. We show that this position is vulnerable to worrying indications that the direction of travel in Europe is away from liberalization, autonomy or human rights protection, and towards greater restrictions on women’s access to abortion. We consider possible legal and other strategies for women’s empowerment, including cross-border provision of abortion services in Europe

The European Council, Council and Member States: jostling for influence

The European Council and the Council each constitute at once supranational EU institutions in which Member States collectively take decisions in the interest of the EU and intergovernmental bargaining arenas for Member States which try to defend their national interests. While the Environment Council has dealt with climate issues since the 1980s, the European Council has focused more regularly on climate policy issues only after they had become politically salient ‘high politics’ issues. Since about 2007, the European Council has become more active in EU and international climate policy, with notable peaks of activity in 2007-2009 and 2014-2015, associated with the 2009 Copenhagen UN climate conference (COP15) and the 2015 Paris UN climate conference respectively as well as in the run up to the 2021 Glasgow UN climate conference. Although the European Council is meant to define only the general political directions and priorities for the EU, in recent years it has issued sometimes fairly detailed instructions to the Council (and the Commission) to act on a particular climate policy issue. The Environment Council focuses on EU climate dossiers while renewable energy and energy efficiency are usually dealt with by the Transport, Telecommunications and Energy Council. Council meetings constitute only the tip of the iceberg of the Council machinery. They are prepared by Coreper and Council Working Groups which try to achieve as much consensus as possible on dossiers before they are placed on the agenda of Council meetings. The Council’s Working Party on International Environment Issues has been of central importance for the preparation of international climate conferences where the EU is formally represented by the rotating Presidency. Since 2004, a semi-permanent structure with issue leaders and lead negotiators has been in place and has led to an informal division of labour between the Presidency, Commission and Member States. The Council’s internal structures and administrative capacities to deal with EU and international climate issues have changed considerably over the years. This seems to confirm Helen Wallace’s (2003) assessment that the Council is an ‘institutional chameleon’. Over time there have also been significant changes in the relationships between Member States on EU climate issues, with different alliances emerging inside and outside the European Council and Council. Member States have frequently disagreed about the level of ambition for EU climate policies. The widely accepted informal convention that permanent or quasi permanent alliances between groups of Member States should not be formed within the European Council and/or the Council was repeatedly challenged by the Visegrad countries during the 2010s. This challenge, in conjunction with the decline of the relevance of the green trio/sextet, triggered the setting up of the Green Growth Group, both of which have however purposefully remained ad hoc alliances

Care and the analysis of welfare states

In this chapter we cut through the voluminous scholarship on care to focus on the role of the state. With this lens, the overall aim of the chapter is to outline the main trajectory of the concept and its potential as an analytic framework for future research. While care is now a widely-used term and concept, it is important to clarify its meaning and core references. For the purposes of this chapter, care refers to the labour, resources and relations involved in meeting the needs of those requiring assistance and help because of age illness or frailty of some kind. This understanding encompasses care for both children and adults, and it covers both the persons receiving care and those providing it. Care has arguably been one of the most original concepts in gender, welfare state and social policy studies, especially in the sense of a concept emerging from practices and relations in real life. The associated scholarship is vibrant and diverse as well as being solidly comparative and increasingly global

Research-based innovation for sustainable development: the case of aquaculture

Cutting emissions and preserving biodiversity requires innovations and investments at a scale and speed with no historical peacetime precedent. The challenges are complex, with a need for new knowledge and innovation which can address environmental challenges while also accounting for economic and social sustainability. New combinations of knowledge through cross-disciplinary collaboration as well as an unprecedented level of collaboration between academia and society are required. This presents a direct challenge to business schools’ research and innovation strategies, which must shift significantly if they are to make a meaningful contribution. Here, we examine empirical evidence from the sustainability challenges of the aquaculture sector, focusing on interactions between the University of Stavanger Business School and stakeholders in Norwegian aquaculture. We offer examples of how business schools can contribute to the green economic transition through broad stakeholder engagement, responsible innovation activities, and the leveraging of tools and techniques for sustainable business model innovation.publishedVersio

Limit order market analysis and modelling: on an universal cause for over-diffusive prices

We briefly review data analysis of the Island order book, part of NASDAQ, which suggests a framework to which all limit order markets should comply. Using a simple exclusion particle model, we argue that short-time price over-diffusion in limit order markets is due to the non-equilibrium of order placement, cancellation and execution rates, which is an inherent feature of real limit order markets.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of Econophysics Bali Conference 200

Capacity development and knowledge transfer on the climate, land, water and energy nexus

Applying the concept of the nexus of climate, land, energy and water systems (CLEWs) to sustainable development requires the integration of knowledge from different disciplines to solve complicated multi-systems challenges. Such knowledge and expertise are not solely situated in scientific research’s theoretical realm (i.e. branch of knowledge). For the approach to be successful, integration is also required in a variety of decision spaces. The development of nexus knowledge, which we define as information related to systems’ physical, natural and socioeconomic interactions, broadly emerged from project-oriented research and case study applications, extending the system’s coverage to several resource systems, climate and governance

Synthesis of four arms star polymer for hydrogel formulation

Star-shaped polymer can be described as macromolecules with multi-armed polymeric material with a huge potential in biomedical applications. This study investigated the effect of molecular architecture of amphiphilic star polymers in drug formulation for wound healing application. Four arms star-shaped block copolymers constructed of polyethylene glycol (PEG) as hydrophilic block and polycaprolactone (PCL) as hydrophobic block were synthesized via combination of Steglich Reaction and ring opening polymerization (ROP). 1H NMR and FTIR analysis shows that the four star-shaped polymers is successfully synthesized. XRD analysis of the polymers shows that PEG decrease the crystallinity of the polymers. Thermal analysis (XRD and DSC) shows the thermal stability difference between homopolymer star and block copolymer star in which modification of end-group affect their thermal stability. The polydispersity index (PDI) indices from GPC were narrow suggesting controlled polymerization reaction. Preparation of hydrogel formulation shows the presence of PEG in the polymers increase the hydrophilicity and solubility in water. Drug loading of the formulation with Ciprofloxacin as drug cargo indicating high entrapment efficiency of the drug towards star-shaped polymer formulation