Michel Foucault's the Birth of Biopolitics and contemporary neo-liberalism debates

Neo-liberalism has become one of the boom concepts of our time. From its original reference point as a descriptor of the economics of the ‘Chicago School’ or authors such as Friedrich von Hayek, neo-liberalism has become an all-purpose concept, explanatory device and basis for social critique. This presentation evaluates Michel Foucault’s 1978–79 lectures, published as The Birth of Biopolitics, to consider how he used the term neo-liberalism, and how this equates with its current uses in critical social and cultural theory. It will be argued that Foucault did not understand neo-liberalism as a dominant ideology in these lectures, but rather as marking a point of inflection in the historical evolution of liberal political philosophies of government. It will also be argued that his interpretation of neo-liberalism was more nuanced and more comparative than more recent contributions. The article points towards an attempt to theorize comparative historical models of liberal capitalism

Biogeography of Wood-Boring Crustaceans (Isopoda: Limnoriidae) Established in European Coastal Waters

Marine wood-borers of the Limnoriidae cause great destruction to wooden structures exposed in the marine environment. In this study we collated occurrence data obtained from field surveys, spanning over a period of 10 years, and from an extensive literature review. We aimed to determine which wood-boring limnoriid species are established in European coastal waters; to map their past and recent distribution in Europe in order to infer species range extension or contraction; to determine species environmental requirements using climatic envelopes. Of the six species of wood-boring Limnoria previously reported occurring in Europe, only Limnoria lignorum, L. quadripunctata and L. tripunctata are established in European coastal waters. L. carinata and L. tuberculata have uncertain established status, whereas L. borealis is not established in European waters. The species with the widest distribution in Europe is Limnoria lignorum, which is also the most tolerant species to a range of salinities. L. quadripunctata and L. tripunctata appear to be stenohaline. However, the present study shows that both L. quadripunctata and L. tripunctata are more widespread in Europe than previous reports suggested. Both species have been found occurring in Europe since they were described, and their increased distribution is probably the results of a range expansion. On the other hand L. lignorum appears to be retreating poleward with ocean warming. In certain areas (e.g. southern England, and southern Portugal), limnoriids appear to be very abundant and their activity is rivalling that of teredinids. Therefore, it is important to monitor the distribution and destructive activity of these organisms in Europe

Chapter Bibliography

In this book, we discuss the changing medical and public profile of fungal infections in the period 1850–2000. We consider four sets of diseases: ringworm and athlete’s foot (dermatophytosis); thrush or candidiasis (infection with Candida albicans); endemic, geographically specific infections in North America (coccidioidomycosis, blastomycosis and histoplasmosis) and mycotoxins; and aspergillosis (infection with Aspergillus fumigatus). We discuss each disease in relation to developing medical knowledge and practices, and to social changes associated with ‘modernity’. Thus, mass schooling provided ideal conditions for the spread of ringworm of the scalp in children, and the rise of college sports and improvement of personal hygiene led to the spread of athlete’s foot. Antibiotics seemed to open the body to more serious Candida infections, as did new methods to treat cancers and the development of transplantation. Regional fungal infections in North America came to the fore due to the economic development of certain regions, where population movement brought in non-immune groups who were vulnerable to endemic mycoses. Fungal toxins or mycotoxins were discovered as by-products of modern food storage and distribution technologies. Lastly, the rapid development and deployment of new medical technologies, such as intensive care and immunosuppression in the last quarter of the twentieth century, increased the incidence of aspergillosis and other systemic mycoses

Hydrogeological challenges in a low carbon economy

Hydrogeology has traditionally been regarded as the province of the water industry, but it is increasingly finding novel applications in the energy sector. Hydrogeology has a longstanding role in geothermal energy exploration and management. Although aquifer management methods can be directly applied to most high-enthalpy geothermal reservoirs, hydrogeochemical inference techniques differ somewhat owing to peculiarities of high-temperature processes. Hydrogeological involvement in the development of ground-coupled heating and cooling systems using heat pumps has led to the emergence of the sub-discipline now known as thermogeology. The patterns of groundwater flow and heat transport are closely analogous and can thus be analysed using very similar techniques. Without resort to heat pumps, groundwater is increasingly being pumped to provide cooling for large buildings; the renewability of such systems relies on accurate prediction and management of thermal breakthrough from reinjection to production boreholes. Hydrogeological analysis can contribute to quantification of accidental carbon emissions arising from disturbance of groundwater-fed peatland ecosystems during wind farm construction. Beyond renewables, key applications of hydrogeology are to be found in the nuclear sector, and in the sunrise industries of unconventional gas and carbon capture and storage, with high temperatures attained during underground coal gasification requiring geothermal technology transfer

Biogeographical transect studies in the high elevation mountain areas of Myanmar

Summary This study has its focus on elevational biodiversity patterns of ferns and fern allies in three mountain areas of the southeastern periphery of the Himalayan arc in northern Myanmar where the two large floristic realms of Eurasia meet, the Holarctic realm in the north and the Palaeotropic realm in the south. Because complex geographical configuration of mountains leads to high biological and climatic diversity, thus the elevational gradient represents a model system to assess the underlying mechanism of larger scale species richness and diversity patterns. Moreover, diversity pattern represents the regional evolutionary process of species and their ecological sorting, the following hypotheses are underlined to meet the objectives of this study to link species diversity patterns on geographical space and evolutionary time connecting with environmental influences. (1) Species richness pattern in Myanmar differs from other gradient within Himalaya and climate variables are the influencing factors for elevational richness pattern. (2) The absence of phylogenetic diversity pattern is typical for ferns in accordance with lack of spatial barrier with respect to their long distance dispersal rate and reproductive behavior. (3) Complexity of hump shaped pattern gradually turning to linear pattern along latitudinal gradients and the parameters of the climate-richness relationship derived from a subset of those elevational gradients should be able to describe the climate-richness relationship at any point along the latitudinal gradient. Data collection was carried out during three expeditions of together 33 weeks in the field, with support of up to 45 local helpers and team members of the Myanmar partner institutions. For the first time ever worldwide, aiming at a complete inventory of all species of seed-plants, pteridophytes and bryophytes, samples were recorded plot-based in three transects of four plots of 400 m² at every 200 meters in elevation between the foot of the slopes and summit of mountain up to 4200 m. In total, 14,485 seed plant specimens, 3,978 pteridophyte specimens and 160 gross samples of bryophytes were collected; most of them in three sets. Additionally, two transects of nine automatically recording climate stations were established between 400 and 3200 m. This first plot based inventory of ferns of in total 132 vegetation plots revealed 299 species from 72 genera and 24 families from Hponyinrazi and Hponkanrazi and Natma Taung gradient. Out of 299 species, 125 are new to Myanmar, in other words the species were previously only known from neighboring countries. The taxonomic composition is strikingly similar to what is known from the very well-known Neotropical regions (Kluge et al 2006), which may be explained by the ability of long distance dispersal of fern spores and the relatively old age of major fern lineages (Smith 1972). One species is new to science, which was found only five times along the gradient in Northern Myanmar, Selliguea kachinensis Hovenkamp, S. Linds., Fraser-Jenk., sp. nov. Additionally a new combination Selliguea erythrocarpa (Mett. ex Kuhn) Hovenkamp was described, based on the specimens from ou collection. With respect to the new species it is important to mention that the generic placement of this species is rather unclear, because morphological characteristics are close to either Selliguea Bory or Arthromeris (T. Moore) J. Sm. However, an erection of a new genus was avoided due to the general taxonomic uncertainty of this group of polpodial ferns. These data contribute to the upcoming Flora of Myanmar, but also set the basis for further taxonomic research in one of the least known areas worldwide (Chapter --> 3, 4). Another groundbreaking contribution to the diversity knowledge of the mountain forests of northern Myanmar is the unexpected great richness of angiosperm species with maximum morphospecies counts of nearly 400 on plots of the submontane belt. It seems probable, but has to be tested based on determined species sets, that these forests are among the richest worldwide. Testing of above-mentioned main hypotheses was accomplished within three work packages (WP). (WP 1) The assessment of elevational richness showed that angiosperm patterns differ not only from other groups such as ferns and epiphytes but also from the interpolated result of other studies of the central Himalaya. In contrast to plant-list based distribution graphs, the real distribution of angiosperms do not show the widely known hump-shaped diversity, but have a more or less linear decline with increasing elevation. This pattern was mainly driven by trees, shrubs, and palms, whereas especially epiphytes clearly peaked around 1200 m a.s.l., and grasses peaked at the high elevations above treeline. Climatic variables and especially temperature and precipitation play a key role for explaining the species richness patterns of all considered life forms and underpin the climatic dependence of lifeforms. Also for traits there was a clear finding: tree leaf size reduces with elevation, and so did other leaf properties as well. All these patterns can be related to climatic adaptations, especially to frost and drought stress. Not surprisingly, elevational fern species richness showed along both study gradients a hump shaped richness pattern. This pattern was mainly driven by the epiphytic lifeform, their elevational richness trend was more pronounced than for terrestrial species. This is especially due to the higher sensitivity to the steep change of environmental conditions and their exposed position especially in the upper tree layer. Comparing both gradients, the elevational peak of richness was situated at the northern gradient at a considerably lower elevation, and moreover, the absolute species richness was higher at the northern gradient. This last finding is especially counterintuitive on the first glance, as species richness should increase when coming closer to the equator. However, both results can be explained by the climatic setting of the gradient: (1) Along the northern gradient, temperature levels are situated at lower elevations at the southern gradients, thus peak of richness is at about 16°C mean annual temperature at both gradients. (2) The higher temperature was assumed to lower the ambient humidity that the highest species occurred under the environmental condition with moderate temperature and high humidity. Additionally, due to the close vicinity of the southern gradient to the dry zones of Central Myanmar, species richness is generally lower here, showing the strong demand of humidity for maintenance and lifecycle of ferns. These first findings show the strong environmental relationships of species richness of ferns and confirm what is known from other tropical mountains in the Americas and Africa (Chapter --> 2, 3). (WP 2) Phylogenetic diversity pattern present a certain degree of variation in phylogenetic overdispersion and environmental clustering; however the overall pattern does not deviate from the random assemblage. Additional four gradients, i.e. Taiwan and Japan: Kyushu, Nishikoma and Hokkaido were added to the study to have a wide range of climate and geographic variations. Phylogenetic richness among the species presents similar pattern with species richness in general, however they are not identical, for instance the decreasing in phylogenetic richness in a species rich assemblage could be a consequence of the less phylogenetic distances between assigned species. In accordance with their reproductive behavior and long distance dispersal rate, the relationship between phylogenetic diversity and species richness might not be different from the randomness in contrast with the angiosperms. In contrast with angiosperms from the previous studies, the phylogenetic diversity of pteridophytes reflects more to stochastic events as the deterministic processes limit the regional species pool in general, however for ferns, the geographic barrier such as dispersal limitation and, seasonal and temporal barrier for fertilization disregards to a certain extent. Thus the equilibrium of competitive interaction and environmental filtering represent the species-neutral interactions and the pteridophytes dispersal might have been overriden the vicariance rate. However the trait patterns of some gradients such as Natma Taung and Hponyinrazi from Myanmar, and Nishikoma from Japan have uncoupled with the phylogenetic pattern, thus the environmental divergence of those gradients are strong to lead the trait having clustered assemblage. Therefore, adaptations in ferns occur convergently in diverse phylogenetic assemblage (Chapter--> 5). (WP 3) The best species richness model was developed with a set few climatic variables such as temperature and cloud cover. However the climate variables explain more than 60% of the local variation and combinations of small scale local factors could enhance the model prediction power. Putting the local results from Myanmar in a wider context, it is generally accepted that the total richness within each gradient should decline towards high latitudes as reported for most groups of organisms due to the general temperature driven nature of species richness. Second, for the same reason the frequently reported and for Myanmar confirmed hump shape pattern of species richness (mentioned above), the peak of richness should shift towards lower elevations for gradients at increasing latitude. Both trends combined should result in a pattern, where the symmetric hump in tropical regions gradually turned into a linear trend in temperate regions, which means the respective models were reduced in complexity. Relating species richness patterns to macroclimatic conditions along both gradients types, elevation and latitude, respectively, hypothesize main trends, which were tested on eight elevation gradients between 4°S and 43.3°N. The combination of eight full elevational gradients in East Asia from Indonesia at the equator via Taiwan and Myanmar to temperate Japan, all sampled with the same standardized sampling protocol, offer the unique possibility to test this hypothesized interlinked trend. Additionally, by applying general additive models, the best fitting climatic variables could be assessed together with their relative contribution. Moreover, since 'best fitting' does not necessarily mean 'good predicting', we applied the technique of leave-one-out-cross-validation (LOOCV) to find the best combination of climatic variables, which predicted the left out gradients. A reasonable result from these analyses can be extrapolated into the whole region covered by the analyzed gradients (East Asia). As a result we could confirm the simple model of a shift in species richness trends from unimodal to linear towards temperate regions and suggest that over this broad spatial scale temperature is the most decisive factor. Confirming this, the highest predictability following our macroclimatic models was indeed temperature in combination with cloud cover as humidity related variable, together predicting about 60% of species richness variation. It is interesting in this regard that explained variance is rather similar for the model based on generalized linear model result (GLM- model) and best model based on leave one out cross validation result (LOOCV-model) (also somewhat lower for the latter ones), but that absolute numbers of species were more realistically modelled by LOOCV, since GLM predicted up to 380 species per plot, which is by far nonsense. There are two interesting conclusions to be drawn: First, not precipitation as a humidity variable is included in the models, as most frequently used in species richness-climate models, but rather cloud cover. This indeed better reflects the physiological specifications of ferns, since not absolute water input, but balanced humidity is crucial. Second: In contrast to a large bulk of publications, which regularly report higher fits for richness–climate relationships, our best model is only able to predict a little bit more than half of the variation in local fern species richness in East and Southeast Asia. The remaining variation in local fern species richness is most likely due to small scale factors, which are hardly accounted for by macroclimatic factors (Chapter 6). The outcome of this study has contributed to comprehensive national conservation plans; (1) the preparation of the national biodiversity strategy and action plan, (2) the nomination dossier of UNESCO neutral heritage site in northern Myanmar

REPSOL SA: The Spanish national leader and a potential competitor in the refining sector

Treball Final de Grau en Finances i Comptabilitat. Codi: FC1049. Curs: 2016-2017The purpose of this paper is to analyze meticulously the annual accounts belonging to the company REPSOL, S.A. In particular, the transactions carried out during the last 5 years, between 2012 and 2016, with the main goal of explaining the positioning of this company in the national refining market, as well as its current situation at the global level. In order to develop this work, a specific methodology will be used. First of all, it will analyze both the horizontal and the vertical evolution of the company in question. Secondly, it will present a detailed study regarding its annual accounts which will be followed by a study of ratios. Furthermore, it will expound a data comparison about the economic-financial information of this company and the four main competitors in this field, at the national and international level. These competitors are CEPSA, CLH, TOTAL and BP. Finally, to sum up, it presents the conclusions reached in this economic-financial study about the company REPSOL, S.A

Making Executive Privilege Work: A Multi-Factor Test in an Age of Czars and Congressional Oversight

This Article begins in Part II by exploring a recent executive privilege case between the White House and Congress. Part III then explains the constitutional rationale for executive privilege by surveying the tension between Congress\u27s Article I powers and the President\u27s Article II powers. Part IV then explains modern executive privilege doctrine and the different forms of executive privilege, and also proposes a new multi-factor analysis to be incorporated into the current test. Part V moreover explains why the courts should reject both branches\u27 arguments on these issues in favor of a third approach. Part VI then ends with the long-term implications of executive privilege

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