Reassessing the Greek National Schism of World War I: The Ideological Parameters

The National Schism that erupted in Greece during World War I has already been thoroughly analysed in the bibliography as a crisis of national unification, defined by geographical, political and socio economic criteria. The aim of this article is to move a step forward, to support that the National Schism might also be considered as an act in the broader and much older Greek ideological drama, that of the tantalising and incomplete “return” to the East via the European West. It is argued that the Schism, far from being a bipolar confrontation between supporters and opponents of Europe, did select from the East–West debate whatever arguments were necessary to invest military and political choices with a “deeper” meaning. Our approach focuses mostly on the rhetoric produced by the two opposing camps, the Venizelists and the anti-Venizelist block, from 1914 to 1922. It is, however, complemented by a retrospective presentation of the nineteenth-century debateover the Enlightenment and liberalism, on the one hand, and German idealism, on the other

Reassessing the Greek National Schism of World War I: The Ideological Parameters

The National Schism that erupted in Greece during World War I has already been thoroughly analysed in the bibliography as a crisis of national unification, defined by geographical, political and socio economic criteria. The aim of this article is to move a step forward, to support that the National Schism might also be considered as an act in the broader and much older Greek ideological drama, that of the tantalising and incomplete “return” to the East via the European West. It is argued that the Schism, far from being a bipolar confrontation between supporters and opponents of Europe, did select from the East–West debate whatever arguments were necessary to invest military and political choices with a “deeper” meaning. Our approach focuses mostly on the rhetoric produced by the two opposing camps, the Venizelists and the anti-Venizelist block, from 1914 to 1922. It is, however, complemented by a retrospective presentation of the nineteenth-century debateover the Enlightenment and liberalism, on the one hand, and German idealism, on the other

Collaborative governance networks: A case study of argentina’s forest law

Deforestation causes biodiversity loss and the eviction of small-scale ranchers and indigenous people. Accordingly, it is a global issue in environmental politics. This article analyzes a participatory governance system associated with the implementation of Argentina’s forest law in a hotspot of deforestation: the province of Salta in the Gran Chaco ecoregion. Specifically, this article investigates policy actors’ core beliefs, how they match with policy network clusters, and how this affects the implementation of the forest law. The study is based on a unique data set derived from extensive fieldwork and a network survey among all actors who participate in the policy forums. After defining three main core beliefs that describe policy actors’ motivations, we systematically analyze all key actors’ beliefs as well as their interactions in the various policy networks. This analysis shows that it is necessary to empirically identify coalitions based on both behavior and core beliefs to understand the limited implementation of the law. Our methodological approach holds promise for the analysis of other governance systems where multiple stakeholders engage in consensus-oriented decision-making

Codifying and commodifying nature: Narratives on forest property rights and the implementation of tenure regularization policies in Northwestern Argentina

Environmental resource management requires negotiation among state and non-state actors with conflicting goals and different levels of influence. In northwestern Argentina, forest policy implementation is described as weak, due to governance structure and ambiguities in the law. We studied how policy actors’ attitudes and their positions in the forest governance network relate to the implementation of land tenure regularization in a context where land tenure regularization is at the core of struggles over environmental policies. We focused on the Chaco Salteño part of the Gran Chaco ecosystem, one of the world’s major deforestation frontiers. We argue that the presence of weak advocacy coalitions requires an analysis of agency to understand this policy process. Our policy network analysis revealed a lack of clear contrasting factions, due to a core–periphery structure. The core of the network brings together all core beliefs but not all of the most influential actors. Assessing network centrality and reputational influence enabled us to identify actors with exceptional agency. We contribute to the debates on advocacy coalitions and on land tenure by distinguishing between attitudes toward tenure regularization policies and their actual implementation in a context where actors have diverging interests and objectives

A bio-inspired image coder with temporal scalability

We present a novel bio-inspired and dynamic coding scheme for static images. Our coder aims at reproducing the main steps of the visual stimulus processing in the mammalian retina taking into account its time behavior. The main novelty of this work is to show how to exploit the time behavior of the retina cells to ensure, in a simple way, scalability and bit allocation. To do so, our main source of inspiration will be the biologically plausible retina model called Virtual Retina. Following a similar structure, our model has two stages. The first stage is an image transform which is performed by the outer layers in the retina. Here it is modelled by filtering the image with a bank of difference of Gaussians with time-delays. The second stage is a time-dependent analog-to-digital conversion which is performed by the inner layers in the retina. Thanks to its conception, our coder enables scalability and bit allocation across time. Also, our decoded images do not show annoying artefacts such as ringing and block effects. As a whole, this article shows how to capture the main properties of a biological system, here the retina, in order to design a new efficient coder.Comment: 12 pages; Advanced Concepts for Intelligent Vision Systems (ACIVS 2011

Thermodynamic calculations of oxygen self-diffusion in mixed-oxide nuclear fuels

Molecular dynamics calculations are used to provide a self-consistent prediction of the elastic, thermal expansion and oxygen self-diffusion properties of mixed oxide nuclear fuels at arbitrary compositions.</p

Strategies and challenges to facilitate situated learning in virtual worlds post-Second Life

Virtual worlds can establish a stimulating environment to support a situated learning approach in which students simulate a task within a safe environment. While in previous years Second Life played a major role in providing such a virtual environment, there are now more and more alternative—often OpenSim-based—solutions deployed within the educational community. By drawing parallels to social networks, we discuss two aspects: how to link individually hosted virtual worlds together in order to implement context for immersion and how to identify and avoid “fake” avatars so people behind these avatars can be held accountable for their actions

Governance capacity and regionalist dynamics

The debate on the effects of regionalism and European integration on European nation states has been prominent for more than a decade. Regionalization of EU states has not brought with it genuine regional autonomy and regionalism has not emerged as a bottom-up public demand in European regions. It is contended here that to determine the future of regional devolution, whether as a result of bottom-up or top-down processes, the factors at play must be contextualized. This paper examines some determinants of regional political capacity, as identified in the policy literature, in tandem with a number of determinants of economic prospects and the existence of an economic milieu. This is done in a comparative context across 12 regions of the EU. It is suggested that the potential for regionalist pressures to emerge is dependent on regional governance capacity and the relative economic weight of a region. © Taylor & Francis

Bitopic binding mode of an M1 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor agonist associated with adverse clinical trial outcomes

The realisation of the therapeutic potential of targeting the M1 muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (M1 mAChR) for the treatment of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease has prompted the discovery of M1 mAChR ligands showing efficacy in alleviating cognitive dysfunction in both rodents and humans. Among these is GSK1034702, described previously as a potent M1 receptor allosteric agonist, which showed pro-cognitive effects in rodents and improved immediate memory in a clinical nicotine withdrawal test but induced significant side-effects. Here we provide evidence using ligand binding, chemical biology and functional assays to establish that rather than the allosteric mechanism claimed, GSK1034702 interacts in a bitopic manner at the M1 mAChR such that it can concomitantly span both the orthosteric and an allosteric binding site. The bitopic nature of GSK1034702 together with the intrinsic agonist activity and a lack of muscarinic receptor subtype selectivity reported here, all likely contribute to the adverse effects of this molecule in clinical trials. We conclude that these properties, whilst imparting beneficial effects on learning and memory, are undesirable in a clinical candidate due to the likelihood of adverse side effects. Rather, our data supports the notion that "pure" positive allosteric modulators showing selectivity for the M1 mAChR with low levels of intrinsic activity would be preferable to provide clinical efficacy with low adverse responses