The influence of over-stoichiometry in La2Ni0.9V0.1O4.15+δ on selective oxidative dehydrogenation of propane

In this study, the non-stoichiometric redox compound La2Ni0.9V0.1O4.15+δ has been tested as an oxidant in selective oxidation of propane. The extent of over-stoichiometry (δ) was varied via both removing oxygen with propane in pulse experiments, as well as partial re-oxidation with oxygen. The optimal degree of over-stoichiometry (δ) has been quantified; olefins are formed whereas formation of CO2 is prevented provided that δ is below 0.03. Additionally, the structural stability of the material was tested with in situ X-ray diffraction in H2 (H2-XRD), temperature programmed reduction (TPR), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), propane-pulse-experiments and re-oxidation cycles. La2Ni0.9V0.1O4.15+δ has demonstrated structure stability at 550 °C and reversibility during oxidation–reduction cycles at 800 °C. Therefore, La2Ni0.9V0.1O4.15+δ is considered suitable for selective oxidative dehydrogenation of propane, provided that the degree of over-stoichiometry is limited to 0.03

conformism or inadequacy of roma inclusion policies missed opportunities at the european and local levels

Roma populations have been part of European societies for centuries, yet they started to be perceived as a European "issue" in occasion of the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargement. In Eastern Europe several Roma, already struggling to cope with critical living conditions, fell into an ever-more negative spiral of deprivation as a result of the transition to an open market economy. The accession to the European Union eased internal migration of Roma from Central and Eastern Europe and triggered the emergence of problems associated with service provision of shelter, education and health. Meanwhile, those who found themselves in severe marginalized situations and could not afford to migrate began to be regarded as a "problem" for local authorities. The European Union has taken several soft policy actions to establish a framework for Roma integration, and has conditioned the use of structural funds to said strategies. The difficulty of implementing the National Roma Integration Strategy and of investing integration funds at the local level is however heavily affected by the lack of administrative capacity, political will, and practical obstacles. This chapter describes the EU efforts made in this field, focusing on the need to involve the local level through the concrete case of the ROMACT programme

Photography, care and the visual economy of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations

This article examines transnational kinship relations between Gambian parents in the United Kingdom and their children and carers in The Gambia, with a focus on the production, exchange and reception of photographs. Many Gambian migrant parents in the U.K. take their children to The Gambia to be cared for by extended family members. Mirroring the mobility of Gambian migrants and their children, as they travel between the U.K. and The Gambia, photographs document changing family structures and relations. It is argued that domestic photography provides insight into the representational politics, values and aesthetics of Gambian transatlantic kinship relations. Further, the concept of the moral economy supports a hermeneutics of Gambian family photographic practice and develops our understanding of the visual economy of transnational kinship relations in a number of ways: it draws attention to the way in which the value attributed to a photograph is rooted in shared moral and cultural codes of care within transnational relations of inequality and power; it helps us to interpret Gambian’s responses to and treatment of family photographs; and it highlights the importance attributed to portrait photography and the staging, setting and aesthetics of photographic content within a Gambian imaginary

Uncanny Objects and the Fear of the Familiar:Hiding from Akan Witches in New York City

This article examines the cosmology and secret practices of West African traditional priests in New York City in preventing the spread of witchcraft, an evil invisible spirit transmitted between female members of the Akan matrilineage. Explored is an uncanny dynamic as everyday habitus becomes increasingly strange in the world of a young Ghanaian woman in the Bronx, who has become petrified of insinuations of witchcraft from close family members. In trying to hide the young woman from infection by her fellow witches, Akan priests attempt to ‘capture’ her habits and everyday routines, calling upon the iconic magic of New York City in order to ‘misplace’ familiarity within the anonymity of Manhattan. In this process, the transmission of the witch’s spirit to the intended victim is disturbed as the victim’s life and things are moved. Nowhere to be found, the witch shifts her attention to other victims

Healing Multiculturalism: Middle-Ground Liberal Forgiveness in a Diverse Public Realm

This article examines debates about political forgiveness in liberal, pluralist societies. Although the concept of forgiveness is not usually taken up by liberals, I outline a plausible conception by exploring two recent approaches. The first, ‘unattached articulation’, concept requires no real emotional change on the forgiver’s part, but rather a form of civic restraint. In contrast, the second version highlights a strong form of empathy for perpetrators. In spite of their advantages, each concept proves too extreme. The problems are revealed by focusing on the case of the Harkis, who fought for the French during the Algerian war. Often still marginalised in French society, their case helps to highlight the conceivability of a ‘middle-ground’ or moderate concept of political forgiveness. Its core rests on the forgiver’s care for the social world. While this concept brings considerable challenges also, and is not inevitable in any particular case, it entails a more plausible combination of emotional and rational shifts in the forgiver’s world-view. Although the article does not recommend forgiveness by any person or group, it observes, recalling Arendt’s idea of amor mundi or ‘love of the world’, that political forgiveness may sustain a viable connection between diverse citizens’ public and non-public lives

roma westward migration in europe rethinking political social and methodological challenges

The idea for this book stemmed from two symposia that brought together scholars from a range of different countries and disciplines to reflect upon the political and legal context of the mobility of Romani citizens in Europe. Our interest in this topic started with the adoption of a EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies in 2011, when Member States were requested to develop integration strategies that were explicitly yet not exclusively targeted at their Roma populations (European Commission 2011). Even though this policy scheme represented an effort to overcome the inadequacies of the anti-discrimination directives to address the social and institutional discrimination suffered by Roma people in Europe, tangible results of such measures have so far been lacking. The symposia, titled "Roma Westward Migration in Europe: Rethinking Political, Social, and Methodological Challenges", addressed the emergence of Roma-specific policies alongside an increasing concern about migration and diversity management. The drive to bring together different disciplinary and methodological approaches to "Roma migration" in Europe, and to explore how such phenomenon has been narrated, policed, politicized or ignored was – and is – rooted in four main considerations. Firstly, we are convinced that putting the focus squarely on the so-called "Roma westward migration" and problematizing the assumptions that underpin such a label contributes to uncover the structural inconsistencies of the European "Roma integration" framework and to question its overall political approach. Secondly, the intersections and overlaps between the categories of "Roma" and of "migrants" show how the classifications of deservingness and of access to welfare resources have shifted in recent years, making explicit the under-studied link between inclusive and securitarian policies. Thirdly, we believe that "Roma migration" provides a unique testing ground to understand how those portrayed as "the others" in contemporary Europe cope and develop counter-strategies in a system in which their options are limited. Fourthly and finally, we strongly support ethnographic accounts as a useful means to evaluate public policies at the local level, as they offer rich data that cannot be captured by national statistics or by surveys alone

More things in Heaven and Earth: spirit possession, mental disorder, and intentionality

Spirit possession is a common phenomenon around the world in which a non-corporeal agent is involved with a human host. This manifests in a range of maladies or in displacement of the host's agency and identity. Prompted by engagement with the phenomenon in North Africa, this paper draws connections between spirit possession, and the concepts of personhood and intentionality. It employs these concepts to articulate spirit possession, while also developing the intentional stance as formulated by Daniel Dennett. It argues for an understanding of spirit possession as the spirit stance: an intentional strategy that aims at predicting and explaining behaviour by ascribing to an agent (the spirit) beliefs and desires, but is only deployed once the mental states and activity of the subject (the person) fail specific normative distinctions. Applied to behaviours which are generally taken to signal mental disorder, the spirit stance preserves a peculiar form of intentionality where behaviour would otherwise be explained as a consequence of a malfunctioning physical mechanism. Centuries before the modern disciplines of psychoanalysis and phenomenological-psychopathology endeavoured to restore meaning to 'madness', the social institution of spirit possession had been preserving the intentionality of socially deviant behaviour

Testing the inverse-Compton catastrophe scenario in the intra-day variable blazar S5 0716+71. I. Simultaneous broadband observations during November 2003

Some intra-day variable, compact extra-galactic radio sources show brightness temperatures severely exceeding 10^{12} K, the limit set by catastrophic inverse-Compton (IC) cooling in sources of incoherent synchrotron radiation. The violation of the IC limit, possible under non-stationary conditions, would lead to IC avalanches in the soft-gamma-ray energy band during transient periods. For the first time, broadband signatures of possible IC catastrophes were searched for in S5 0716+71. A multifrequency observing campaign targetting S5 0716+71 was carried out in November 2003 under the framework of the European Network for the Investigation of Galactic nuclei through Multifrequency Analysis (ENIGMA) together with a campaign by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT), involving a pointing by the soft-gamma-ray satellite INTEGRAL, optical, near-infrared, sub-millimeter, millimeter, radio, and Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) monitoring. S5 0716+71 was very bright at radio frequencies and in a rather faint optical state during the INTEGRAL pointing; significant inter-day and low intra-day variability was recorded in the radio regime, while typical fast variability features were observed in the optical band. No correlation was found between the radio and optical emission. The source was not detected by INTEGRAL, neither by the X-ray monitor JEM-X nor by the gamma-ray imager ISGRI, but upper limits to the source emission in the 3-200 keV energy band were estimated. A brightness temperature Tb>2.1x10^{14} K was inferred from the radio variability, but no corresponding signatures of IC avalanches were recorded at higher energies. The absence of IC-catastrophe signatures provides either a lower limit delta>8 to the Doppler factor affecting the radio emission or strong constraints for modelling of the Compton catastrophes in S5 0716+71.Comment: 15 pages, 3 EPS figures, 3 tables, to appear in A&

Clinical features and comorbidity pattern of HCV infected migrants compared to native patients in care in Italy: A real-life evaluation of the PITER cohort

Background: Direct-acting antivirals are highly effective for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, regardless race/ethnicity. We aimed to evaluate demographic, virological and clinical data of HCV-infected migrants vs. natives consecutively enrolled in the PITER cohort. Methods: Migrants were defined by country of birth and nationality that was different from Italy. Mann-Whitney U test, Chi-squared test and multiple logistic regression were used. Results: Of 10,669 enrolled patients, 301 (2.8%) were migrants: median age 47 vs. 62 years, (p < 0.001), females 56.5% vs. 45.3%, (p < 0.001), HBsAg positivity 3.8% vs. 1.4%, (p < 0.05). Genotype 1b was prevalent in both groups, whereas genotype 4 was more prevalent in migrants (p < 0.05). Liver disease severity and sustained virologic response (SVR) were similar. A higher prevalence of comorbidities was reported for natives compared to migrants (p < 0.05). Liver disease progression cofactors (HBsAg, HIV coinfection, alcohol abuse, potential metabolic syndrome) were present in 39.1% and 47.1% (p > 0.05) of migrants and natives who eradicated HCV, respectively. Conclusion: Compared to natives, HCV-infected migrants in care have different demographics, HCV genotypes, viral coinfections and comorbidities and similar disease severity, SVR and cofactors for disease progression after HCV eradication. A periodic clinical assessment after HCV eradication in Italians and migrants with cofactors for disease progression is warranted