The green-leaved variant of Eucalyptus largiflorens: a story involving hybridization and observant local people

Eucalyptus largiflorens (Black Box) is the most common tree in the Chowilla anabranch system on the Murray River floodplain. It typically has dull, glaucous, grey-green leaves. Occasional trees with smaller, glossy green leaves (Green Box) occur scattered amongst the Black Box. In areas with increasing salinity, they usually appear much healthier than adjacent, normal Black Box trees. Green Box plants are intermediate between normal Eucalyptus largiflorens plants and Eucalyptus gracilis plants in many morphological and allozyme characters, strongly suggesting that they are hybrids between those species. Green Box plants tolerate salinity better and use water more conservatively than normal Black Box plants, traits that they have probably inherited from Eucalyptus gracilis. In 1994, the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide used tissue culture and micropropagation to produce nearly 9,000 cloned Green Box plants which were planted out on Riverland floodplains. Since the 1990s, the high cost of producing clonal plants has meant that no further such plantings have occurred. Because Green Box plants can be a considerable distance from the nearest plants of one putative parent (Eucalyptus gracilis), more detailed studies could contribute to the existing work on such phantom hybrids

EU Sanctions Policy towards Russia: The Sanctioner-Sanctionee’s Game of Thrones. CEPS Working Document No. 402/January 2015

Since Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the start of the conflict in the Donbass region, the EU has introduced three waves of restrictive measures against Russia, which are regularly updated. Having thus expanded from measures targeting individuals to entire sectors, the current EU sanctions policy impacts Russia’s financial markets, energy sector and defence industry. On top of this, new bans affect EU investments, services and trade in Crimea and Sevastopol. While they hurt the Russian economy, the EU sanctions also have a boomerang effect, especially in conjunction with the countersanctions imposed by the Kremlin on EU food imports. In this lose-lose situation, the usefulness of the EU sanctions has been called into doubt, in particular in those EU member states that are the most economically intertwined with Russia. How successful has the EU been so far in pushing its case with the Kremlin and what moves are left for the two main actors in the sanctioner-sanctionee ‘Game of Thrones’? This Working Document offers a SWOT analysis of the EU sanctions policy towards Russia and identifies the Strengths for the EU to cultivate, Weaknesses to minimise, Opportunities to seize and Threats to counteract

Prospects for the Latest Rapprochement Attempt between Turkey and Armenia

Turkey and Armenia have had no diplomatic or commercial ties with each other since the 1990s. The key reasons for this have been disagreements over historic issues, particularly Turkey's refusal to recognise the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as a genocide, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, during which Turkey has traditionally been the closest ally of Baku. By the end of 2020, certain signals were sent from Ankara and Yerevan, hinting that the sides were ready to consider the normalisation of relations. Taking into consideration that this is not the first attempt to normalise the relationship and that certain steps in this direction have been taken earlier, although they led to no tangible results, this article explores whether the factors previously blocking the process are still present and the general prospects for this latest attempt at a rapprochement

The Impact of Russia's War against Ukraine on Georgia

Introduction by the Special Edito

The Rationale for Reintroducing the Foreign Agent Bill in Georgia before the 2024 Parliamentary Elections

The reintroduction of the foreign agents bill, particularly targeting nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and independent media outlets, which occurred only months before the 2024 parliamentary election in Georgia, engendered inquiries into the underlying motivations of the governing party. Although it encountered significant resistance in March 2023, the government exhibited a readiness to risk civil discord by revisiting this contentious legislative agenda. This discourse suggests that the governing party perceives NGOs and independent media as formidable purveyors of social capital capable of mobilizing dissent against its authority. Consequently, the proposed constriction of NGO and media activities is ostensibly aimed at mitigating electoral turnover and fortifying the governing party's hegemony in the imminent parliamentary election

Improving public service delivery of transportation in Tbilisi through fiscal decentralisation: lessons from the Dutch case

During the last couple of decades, after establishing a sovereign state, Georgia has been experiencing challenges with the performance of its public service delivery systems. Recently the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure of Georgia has proposed an innovative decentralisation strategy, which provides a perfect opportunity for exploring the policy options that could be used to improve the overall performance of the public service provision in Georgia. One of the challenges mentioned above is the public transportation system of the capital. Tbilisi strives to have a well-functioning public transportation system; however, current policies cannot keep up with the rapid development and the growth of the city. The Dutch case of decentralisation of the transportation policy is explored in this thesis to seek opportunities for lesson-drawing that could assist Tbilisi in tackling its public transportation problems, and in re-designing its public transportation system. More particularly, the goal of the thesis is to examine how Tbilisi can improve its public service delivery of transportation through fiscal decentralisation while applying Dutch experience in this particular field. This thesis outlines three policy issues in Tbilisi, which includes a lack of performance of the public transportation companies, missing public transport planning and operating systems, and a modest share of the public transport usage, and proposes solutions to these issues by analysing the Dutch case of fiscal decentralisation. The results of this thesis demonstrate that there are multiple lesson-drawing/policy transfer opportunities that could be helpful in addressing the policy challenges in Tbilisi including fiscal decentralisation in terms of expenditure assignment and intergovernmental transfers, as well as, privatisation with the means of competitive tendering. Nevertheless, the research also acknowledges the limitations of policy transfer and the potential constraints of lesson-drawing in policy design.https://www.ester.ee/record=b5239707*es

PENGARUH PEMAHAMAN PAJAK, PENDAPATAN WAJIB PAJAK DAN TINGKAT PENDIDIKAN TERHADAP KEPATUHAN WAJIB PAJAK BUMI DAN BANGUNAN DENGAN SANKSI PERPAJAKAN SEBAGAI VARIABEL MODERATING DI KECAMATAN PERCUT SEI TUAN

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji dan menganalisis pengaruh pemahaman pajak, pendapatan wajib pajak, dan tingkat pendidikan dengan sanksi perpajakan sebagai variabel moderating terhadap kepatuhan wajib pajak bumi dan bangunan di Kecamatan Percut Sei Tuan. Penelitian ini menggunakan data primer dimana data dikumpulkan langsung dari hasil penyebaran kuesioner. Penelitian ini dilakukan terhadap wajib pajak bumi dan bangunan di Kecamatan Percut Sei Tuan yang dimulai pada bulan april dengan populasi sebanyak 68.850 wajib pajak pada tahun 2023 dengan sampel sebanyak 100 responden. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa pemahaman pajak dan tingkat pendidikan secara parsial berpengaruh terhadap kepatuhan wajib pajak. Sedangkan pendapatan wajib pajak secara parsial tidak berpengaruh terhadap kepatuhan wajib pajak. Hasil analisis membuktikan bahwa sanksi perpajakan mampu memoderasi (memperkuat) pengaruh pemahaman pajak, pendapatan wajib pajak terhadap kepatuhan wajib pajak. Namun, sanksi perpajakan tidak mampu memoderasi (memperlemah) pengaruh tingkat pendidikan terhadap kepatuhan wajib pajak. Kata Kunci : Kepatuhan Wajib Pajak, Pemahaman Pajak, Pendapatan Wajib Pajak, Tingkat Pendidikan dan Sanksi  Perpajakan

The Vocabulary of Prometheus Bound in the Context of Aeschylean Poetics

Resembling a detective-style investigation by philologists, one can assume that this level of philological 'peril' or suffering as that found in Prometheus Bound by scholars seeking to identify the text’s authorship, has rarely received approval in the history of world literature. While many researchers have attempted to find a resolution to this conundrum, none of them appears to have the Olympic strength that is necessary to arrive at the finish line of reconciliation. In actuality, Prometheus’s authorship enigma is "one of the most intriguing problems in the history of literature" and still remains unresolved. Despite the fact that the paper underlines several times the authorship puzzle of Prometheus Bound, it does not seek to imply that its goal is to approve or disprove the Aeschylean authorship of the text. The modest goal of this paper is to demonstrate methodological possibilities of the Digital Humanities when tasked with the analysis of an author’s use of vocabulary. The paper demonstrates the above goal with an example that aims to compare the frequency of vocabulary analysis in relation to the text of Prometheus Bound with extracted Aeschylean, Sophoclean and Euripidean Corpora data and to closely situate Prometheus Bound to one of three tragedians’ corpus. The comparative frequency analysis of most used words in four corpora, comparison of average rates between Aeschylean, Sophoclean, Euripidean and Prometheus Bound’s Corpora and the semantic maps designed by top five words of each corpus showed that the Prometheus Bound is comparable to Aeschylean Corpus, it is dissimilar from the Sophoclean Corpus and does not coincide semantically with the Euripidean Corpus – the fact that could be aiding forth in creating an argumentum for supporting the Aeschylean authorship of the play