Перспективи інтродукції видів роду Hypericum L.

Comparative introductive research of 73 Hypericum L. species from all 30 sections of the genus, not growing in wild conditions in Ukraine, has been carried out in M.M. Grishko National Botanical Gardens (Kyiv, Ukraine). It is revealed that 18 species from 10 sections are perspective for industrial culture in Ukraine (Ascyreia Choisy, Androsaemum (Duhamel) Godron, Inodora Stef., Roscyna (Spach) R. Keller, Hypericum sectio typicum generis, Olympia (Spach) Nyman, Drosocarpium Spach, Oligostema (Boiss.) Stef., Crossophyllum Spach. and Adenosepalim Spach).Проведено порівняльне інтродукційне вивчення в умовах Національного ботанічного саду ім. М.М. Гришка HAH України 73 не представлених у флорі України видів роду Hypericum L., що належать до всіх 30 секцій роду. Виявлено, що перспективними для промислового вирощування в Україні за вмістом біологічно активних речовин є 18 видів із 10 секцій (Ascyreia Choisy, Androsaemum (Duhamel) Godron, Inodora Stef., Roscyna (Spach) R. Keller, Hypericum sectio typicum generis, Olympia (Spach) Nyman, Drosocarpium Spach, Oligostema (Boiss.) Stef., Crossophyllum Spach. та Adenosepalum Spach)

Fusões e aquisições no sector da logística e transportes: um estudo de caso ibérico

The intensification of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) within the European and Iberian space has been a reality which is in need of further attention within academia. Through a case study we intend to build a pedagogic tool focusing on the Iberian merger involving STEF Portugal in 2015. The case develops starting by analysing the sector with STEF operates, the market of logistics and transportation of low temperature food products, intending to understand the market, the competitors, and clients within an increasingly competitive macroeconomic context. Afterwards we explore M&A topic by focusing on reasons behind its popularity in management today, which leverages operate for its success or failure, what is the role of leadership in change management and which corrective actions can be deployed to implement an M&A. In STEF company the case is relevant to identify what changed with the fusion, and hoe the integration process was understood by employees, highlighting cultural issues, namely communication, expectative management, amongst others. The present case study is set to enact answers to the following questions: "Which are the best practices that lead to a successful integration of these two Iberian branches? And "what success fusion factors as well as improvements should be developed by STEF management?".A intensificação das fusões e aquisições (F&A) no espaço europeu e ibérico tem sido uma realidade cuja compreensão carece de maior atenção na literatura académica. Mediante um estudo de caso, pretende-se proporcionar uma ferramenta pedagógica usando para o efeito a fusão ibérica que envolveu a STEF Portugal em 2015. O caso desenvolve-se mediante uma análise ao setor onde a STEF se insere, o mercado de logística e transportes sob temperatura controlada dedicado ao setor agroalimentar, tentando perceber a dinâmica do mercado, da concorrência e dos clientes num contexto macroeconómico cada vez mais exigente e difícil. De seguida aborda-se a temática das F&A, explorando as razões que levam a que ainda hoje as F&A sejam tão populares entre a Gestão, quais as alavancas de sucesso ou fracasso em F&A, qual o papel do Líder na gestão da mudança e quais as ações corretivas a implementar em F&A. Na organização STEF o caso é pertinente para identificar o que mudou com a fusão e como o processo de integração foi percebido pelos colaboradores, focando aqui os aspetos culturais de gestão - comunicação, gestão de expetativas, entre outros. Assim, o presente estudo de caso pedagógico pretende capacitar as respostas às seguintes questões: "Quais as boas práticas que conduzem ao sucesso na integração de duas filiais ibéricas?" e, "quais os fatores de sucesso da fusão, bem como as melhorias a serem desenvolvidas pela Gestão STEF?

The Grey Zone

The ‘grey zone’ is a term coined by the Italian Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in his essay collection The Drowned and the Saved (1989; originally published in Italian in 1986), the last book he completed before his death. In ‘The Grey Zone’, the second chapter and the longest essay in the book, Levi acknowledges the human need to divide the social field into ‘us’ and ‘them’, two clearly distinct and identifiable groups, but points out that such binary thinking is inadequate in the face of the..

Preservice Literacy Teachers in Transition: Identity as Subjectivity

This research addresses the complexities of identity development of elementary and middle school preservice literacy teachers during their teacher education program using a poststructural feminist theoretical lens. This research investigated two questions: 1) How do preservice teachers develop their identity as teachers of literacy in the midst of authoritative discourses? 2) What kinds of strategies and discourses do preservice literacy teachers use to negotiate the competing discourses of literacy during student teaching? The results indicated that the identities of the preservice literacy teachers were in transition during their teacher education program and authoritative discourses were at work constituting their subjectivities throughout this process. These discourses were heard as the preservice literacy teachers used deconstructive and reconstructive literacy discourses and strategies from their personal literacy biographies, literacy coursework, and student teaching practices. Their agency as literacy teachers was demonstrated through the strategies they used to negotiate and perform their identities during student teaching—working within and outside of the literacy structures of their cooperating teachers’ classrooms. The research also indicated the power of time and space in relation with others, as a means for continued identity transformation

A Deep Spatio-Temporal Fuzzy Neural Network for Passenger Demand Prediction

In spite of its importance, passenger demand prediction is a highly challenging problem, because the demand is simultaneously influenced by the complex interactions among many spatial and temporal factors and other external factors such as weather. To address this problem, we propose a Spatio-TEmporal Fuzzy neural Network (STEF-Net) to accurately predict passenger demands incorporating the complex interactions of all known important factors. We design an end-to-end learning framework with different neural networks modeling different factors. Specifically, we propose to capture spatio-temporal feature interactions via a convolutional long short-term memory network and model external factors via a fuzzy neural network that handles data uncertainty significantly better than deterministic methods. To keep the temporal relations when fusing two networks and emphasize discriminative spatio-temporal feature interactions, we employ a novel feature fusion method with a convolution operation and an attention layer. As far as we know, our work is the first to fuse a deep recurrent neural network and a fuzzy neural network to model complex spatial-temporal feature interactions with additional uncertain input features for predictive learning. Experiments on a large-scale real-world dataset show that our model achieves more than 10% improvement over the state-of-the-art approaches.Comment: https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/1.9781611975673.1

Qualitative in-depth interviews: Studying religious meaning-making in MMOs

In this chapter, Stef Aupers, Julian Schaap, and Lars de Wildt argue that a “game-centered” orient

A q-VARIANT OF STEFFENSEN'S METHOD OF FOURTH-ORDER CONVERGENCE

Starting from q-Taylor formula, we suggest a new q-variant of Stef-fensen's method of fourth-order convergence for solving non-linear equations

McSweeney's and the challenges of the marketplace for independent publishing

In their article "McSweeney's and the Challenges of the Marketplace for Independent Publishing" Katrien Bollen, Stef Craps, and Pieter Vermeulen argue that the artistic projects of the US-American author, activist, and editor Dave Eggers are marked by a tension between the desire for independence and the demands of brand-building. The article offers a close analysis of the materiality and paratexts of one particular issue of McSweeney's, the literary magazine of which Eggers is the founding editor. Both the content and the apologetically aggressive tone of Eggers's editorial statements betray a deep unease with the inability to inhabit a cultural and economic position that is untainted by the compromises that publishing requires. Still, this disavowed complicity with the market in fact sustains Eggers's editorial practice in McSweeney's, which, in marked contrast to his explicit statements, thrives on a dynamic of commodification

The African Union, constitutionalism and power-sharing

Over the past decade, the African Union (AU) had put in place an important normative framework to promote constitutional rule and, in particular, orderly constitutional transfers of power in its member states. Through its Peace and Security Council (PSC), the AU has actively opposed, including through the use of sanctions, unconstitutional changes of government. As a key element of its policy, the PSC systematically advocates a return to constitutional order as a remedy for unconstitutional changes of government. Free and fair elections are an important element in the PSC policy of legitimating a new constitutional and political order. However, while opposing unconstitutional means of obtaining or transferring power, the AU has been generally supportive of the use of power-sharing agreements as an instrument of negotiated conflict settlement. Most power-sharing agreements are not in accordance with the prevailing constitutional order and, as part of a larger peace agreement, often contain new constitutional blueprints. This dual policy of, on the one hand, opposing certain types of unconstitutional changes of government, in particular military coups, and, on the other, advocating power-sharing agreements in the absence of a regulatory framework or normative guidance on such agreements poses an obvious challenge for the consistency of AU policy. Insofar as the AU wishes to nurture a culture of constitutionalism in its member states, it might benefit from developing policy guidelines about how to enhance the legitimacy of a new constitutional order - and of the political regime exercising political authority – be it in the aftermath of a coup or as a result of power-sharing.