Old World megadroughts and pluvials during the Common Era

Climate model projections suggest widespread drying in the Mediterranean Basin and wetting in Fennoscandia in the coming decades largely as a consequence of greenhouse gas forcing of climate. To place these and other “Old World” climate projections into historical perspective based on more complete estimates of natural hydroclimatic variability, we have developed the “Old World Drought Atlas” (OWDA), a set of year-to-year maps of tree-ring reconstructed summer wetness and dryness over Europe and the Mediterranean Basin during the Common Era. The OWDA matches historical accounts of severe drought and wetness with a spatial completeness not previously available. In addition, megadroughts reconstructed over north-central Europe in the 11th and mid-15th centuries reinforce other evidence from North America and Asia that droughts were more severe, extensive, and prolonged over Northern Hemisphere land areas before the 20th century, with an inadequate understanding of their causes. The OWDA provides new data to determine the causes of Old World drought and wetness and attribute past climate variability to forced and/or internal variability

Economic effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on employment in Austria

The paper estimates the effects of public payments in agriculture on employment in two ways. A partial analysis of FADN-data concentrating on the agricultural sector shows a preservation of 45,000 to 57,000 jobs for the year 2004 in agriculture because of public payments but without taking into account effects of and interdependencies to other sectors. As a second step an input-output analysis estimates the employment effects of a hypothetical redistribution of agricultural subsidies to other sectors. The results show a decrease of 45,000 work places in the primary sector and an increase of 12,000 jobs in other sectors. But in all a decrease of 33,000 work places would be the result under the assumption of a constant volume of overall production. Due to the low income level in the primary sector public payments for agriculture seem to be a relatively cheep possibility to reach the highest possible level of employment with the side effects of keeping settlement in peripheral regions and maintaining the landscape

Alchi, Ladakh’s Hidden Buddhist Sanctuary

The monastic complex of Alchi is undoubtedly one of the most important and fascinating monuments preserved in the Himalayas. With its earliest monuments dating from the late twelfth to the mid-thirteenth centuries, it provides unique insight into the Buddhist culture flourishing at that time. Through a detailed analysis of the architecture, sculptures and murals in their context, their interrelationship to each other and to Tibetan textual sources likely known at the time the publication offers a deeper understanding of the monuments religious environment. A reassessment of some of the inscriptions preserved at the site provides new insights into the historical circumstances of the temple's construction. This publication builds on and includes an updated version of the Sumtsek book by Roger Goepper, covers all early remains of the Alchi Choskhor, and still relies on the quality of Jaroslav Poncar’s early documentation for all main monuments. Holger Neuwirth and Carmen Auer contributed on the architecture and all plans, and Rob Linrothe and Nils Martin contributed new studies on the lineage and foundation inscription of the Sumtsek respectively

Familien in Zahlen 2009. Statistische Informationen zu Familien in Österreich

Das jährlich erscheinende Nachschlagewerk Familien in Zahlen (FiZ) fasst die österreichweit wichtigsten familienstatistischen Tabellen übersichtlich zusammen. Die einzelnen Tabellen sind mit Lesebeispielen untermauert, um eine rasche Interpretation der Zahlen zu ermöglichen. Auch die wichtigsten Kennzahlen der EU sind vorhanden

Political Islam and Non-Muslim Religions - A Lesson from Lessing for the Arab Transition

Hardly any region has recently captured the global geopolitical imagination as much as the Arab world after the so-called Arab Spring and very likely no state more so than Egypt. Finally it seemed that democracy was coming to the region, that this would spell the end of radical Islam, and of any local aspirations of creating Islamic states, and mark the beginning of a rapprochement between East and West. This article analyses and links those dynamics, with particular reference to the transition process in the wake of the so-called Arab Revolution, and gauges what may be at stake for members of non-Muslim faiths. It particularly traces the rift between theoretical Muslim discourse about Islamic tolerance towards other faiths and its implementation or the absence thereof in practice. It concludes that so far no real progress has been made and that, for the relationship to evolve, Islam needs to proceed to a state in which it sees itself as no more than an equal to other religions. The recognition of its tradition-based nature and of the consequences that flow from such a realization for the treatment of its fundamental sources, the Qur'an and the Sunna, will be addressed. To evaluate the current situation and the outlook, we shall use the example of the famous eighteenth-century German play by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise, about the occupation of Jerusalem by Saladin