Social roots: How Romania’s Social Democrats won the 2016 election

Romania’s Social Democrats (PSD) emerged as the largest party from the country’s parliamentary elections on 11 December. Clara Volintiru and George Stefan assess the roots of their success, writing that the party managed to mobilise supporters in areas where it has a strong local presence, but that there is now a growing generational divide which could shape Romanian politics in the years to come

Epimorphism testing with virtually Abelian targets

We show that the epimorphism problem is solvable for targets that are virtually cyclic or a product of an Abelian group and a finite group.Comment: 18 pages. V3: final versio

Mindsets in Intra-familial Farm Transfer: Successful Successor and Predecessor Prototypes

This paper investigates mindsets in the context of family farm succession. Using a grounded theory approach, interviews and group discussions were analyzed. Results based on both data sets present prototypical mindsets of successful predecessors and successors. The mindset construct, which has been developed for this study, was expanded with stakeholders, information flows, and time, according to the results of this study. The findings provide insights into information processing in intra-familial farm succession and the mindsets of successful predecessors and successors. The mindset approach offers a supplementary and valuable perspective on the succession process. It can contribute to early action taking of farming families or consultants

Recent Advances of Transition Metal Complexes for Photopolymerization and 3D Printing under Visible Light

The possibility of exploiting visible light to induce polymerizations is extremely appealing from a technological point of view as it improves the sustainability of the overall process. To achieve this objective, it is necessary to employ single- or multicomponent systems containing a photoinitiator, and in some cases, a photosensitizer in combination. Due to their long-lived excited states and reversible redox properties, transition metal complexes are a valid choice to be applied in photoinitiating systems, often exhibiting enhanced conversions compared to purely organic compounds. This review presents an overview of the transition metal complexes exploited in photopolymerization reactions. Particular attention will be devoted to recent applications in 3D printing, highlighting the possible challenges that need to be faced to achieve highly efficient and more sustainable processes

Understandability Issues of Approaches Supporting Business Process Variability

The increasing adoption of Process-Aware Information Systems, together with the reuse of process knowledge, has led to the emergence of process model repositories with large process families, i.e., collections of related process model variants. For managing such related model collections two types of approaches exist. While behavioral approaches take supersets of variants and derive a process variant by hiding and blocking process elements, structural approaches take a base process model as input and derive a process variant by applying a set of change operations to it. However, at the current stage no framework for assessing these approaches exists and it is not yet clear which approach should be better used and under which circumstances. Therefore, to give first insights about this issue, this work compares both approaches in terms of understandability of the produced process model artifacts, which is fundamental for the management of process families and the reuse of their contained process fragments. In addition, the comparison can serve as theoretical basis for conducting experiments as well as for fostering the development of tools managing business process variability

A modal-based approach to the nonlinear vibration of strings against a unilateral obstacle:Simulations and experiments in the pointwise case

International audienceThis article is concerned with the vibration of a stiff linear string in the presence of a rigid obstacle. A numerical method for unilateral and arbitrary-shaped obstacles is developed, based on a modal approach in order to take into account the frequency dependence of losses in strings. The contact force of the barrier interaction is treated using a penalty approach, while a conservative scheme is derived for time integration, in order to ensure long-term numerical stability. In this way, the linear behaviour of the string when not in contact with the barrier can be controlled via a mode by mode fitting, so that the model is particularly well suited for comparisons with experiments. An experimental configuration is used with a point obstacle either centered or near an extremity of the string. In this latter case, such a pointwise obstruction approximates the end condition found in the tanpura, an Indian stringed instrument. The second polarisation of the string is also analysed and included in the model. Numerical results are compared against experiments, showing good accuracy over a long time scale

The dignity of the human corpse in forensic medicine

Working with the dead is a very specific kind of work. Although a dignified handling of the corpses is demanded by the legislator and by the general public, neither the legal status of the corpse is undisputed nor is it obvious what a dignified handling of the deceased should consist of. In our hypothesis generating pilot study, we asked which concrete considerations are involved in daily practice of forensic specialists. We used an online questionnaire (invitations via e-mail) consisting of questions with single choice, multiple choice, and free text entries. The answers to single or multiple choice questions were displayed in pivot tables. The data was thus summarized, viewed, descriptively analyzed, and displayed together with the free text answers. 84.54% of the physicians and 100% of the autopsy assistants stated that considerations concerning the dignity of the deceased should play a role in daily autopsy practice. 45.87% stated that the conditions surrounding the autopsy need improvement to be ethically suitable. The analysis of the survey’s results was based on Robert Audi’s ethics, according to which three aspects need to be lightened in order to evaluate the conduct of a person morally: the actions, the motivation, and the way in which the actions are carried out. This systematization helps to identify the need for improvement and to make the vague demands for a dignified handling of corpses more concrete. © 2021, The Author(s)

Sexual Dimorphism in the Prenatal Digit Ratio (2D:4D)

The second to fourth digit ratio (2D:4D) is smaller in human males than in females and hence this trait is sexually dimorphic. The digit ratio is thought to be established during early prenatal development under the influence of prenatal sex hormones. However, the general assumption of early establishment has hardly been studied. In our study, we analyzed the 2D:4D ratio in 327 deceased human fetuses. We measured digit lengths in 169 male and 158 female fetuses ranging from 14 to 42 weeks old. Our results showed a slight, but significant, sexual dimorphism in the expected direction, i.e., females had, on average, a ratio of 0.924 and males a ratio of 0.916. There was no significant relationship with the presence or absence of minor and major or single and multiple congenital abnormalities. There was a minimal, but significant difference between digit ratios based on digit lengths including and excluding the non-bony fingertip with the values being strongly correlated (r = .98). The prenatal 2D:4D ratio was lower than has thus far been reported for children and adults both for males and females. The extent of the sexual dimorphism in fetuses was similar to that found for children, but lower than for adults. The 2D:4D ratio, thus, seems to increase after birth in both men and women, with the second digit growing faster than the fourth digit (positive allometric growth of digit two) and perhaps more so in women than in men. Therefore, the sexual dimorphism is probably determined by prenatal as well as by postnatal developmental processes