The Iberian Peninsula in the Imperial and Post-Imperial Context

This paper investigates the way in which technical and normative knowledge relating to infrastructures, mobility and water management, which the Romans began developing in the republican period, was functionalized for the purpose of expanding the empire in the Iberian Peninsula, starting with the establishment of Roman provincial rule and continuing into the Islamic epoch. It also examines how that knowledge was entrenched in the individual Iberian provinces, and adapted to reflect specific local features. In addition to shedding light on how imperial concepts manifested themselves in the appropriation of space in specific contexts, the example of the Iberian Peninsula elucidates both how the knowledge in question was adapted to meet ‘regional-political’ objectives once the imperial frame of reference fell away and how it was ultimately restructured, modified and legitimized to reflect overriding religious considerations. The paper also provides examples indicating the degree to which antique concepts lent themselves to transformation while simultaneously representing both a potential and a challenge for any subsequent rulers

OER Certification of Individuals and Organisations in Higher Education: Implementations Worldwide

The initiative “Open Education Austria Advanced” develops infrastructures for open educational resources (OER) in higher education. One part is the development of certification procedures to point out OER competencies of teachers in higher education and OER activities at Austrian universities. We present the results of our research on existing OER certification procedures from the German and English-speaking world. We started by searching in the OER World Map and there listed OER policies of universities worldwide and then tried to find examples for existing OER certification for people and organisations. There are several examples for certifications of persons such as in MOOCs on OER, university training on OER or the Creative Commons certification itself. We found only a few references of (partly) OER certificates for organisations. The publication then describes ambitions towards openness of the OER movement regarding possible certification procedures, namely open development, open content, open assessment and open certificates

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

IPCC, 2023: Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, Summary for Policymakers. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, H. Lee and J. Romero (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland.

This Synthesis Report (SYR) of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) summarises the state of knowledge of climate change, its widespread impacts and risks, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. It integrates the main findings of the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) based on contributions from the three Working Groups1 , and the three Special Reports. The summary for Policymakers (SPM) is structured in three parts: SPM.A Current Status and Trends, SPM.B Future Climate Change, Risks, and Long-Term Responses, and SPM.C Responses in the Near Term.This report recognizes the interdependence of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societies; the value of diverse forms of knowledge; and the close linkages between climate change adaptation, mitigation, ecosystem health, human well-being and sustainable development, and reflects the increasing diversity of actors involved in climate action. Based on scientific understanding, key findings can be formulated as statements of fact or associated with an assessed level of confidence using the IPCC calibrated language