Beyond national narratives? : centenary histories, the First World War and the Armenian Genocide

In April 2015 the centenary of the Armenian Genocide was commemorated. Just like the First World War centenary, this anniversary has provoked a flurry of academic and public interest in what remains a highly contested history. This article assesses the state of the current historiography on the fate of the Ottoman Armenians. It focuses on the possibilities for moving beyond the national narratives which continue to dominate the field, in particular through connecting the case of the Armenian Genocide to what has been termed a ‘transnational turn’ in the writing of the history of the First World War

Factors affecting innovation and imitation of ICT in the agrifood sector

Diffusion of innovations has gained a lot of attention and concerns different scientific fields. Many studies, which examine the determining factors of technological innovations in the agricultural and agrifood sector, have been conducted using the widely used Technology Accepted Model, for a random sample of farmers or firms engaged in agricultural sector. In the present study, a holistic examination of the determining factors that affect the propensity of firms to innovate or imitate, is conducted. The diffusion of ICT tools of firms which are engaged in the NACE 02/03 as well as in the NACE 10/11 classifications for 49 heterogeneous national markets is examined, using the Bass model. The innovation parameter is positively associated with rural income, female employment, export activity and education of farmers, while the imitation parameter is increased in countries whose societies are characterized by uncertainty avoidance

A space–time Trefftz discontinuous Galerkin method for the acoustic wave equation in first-order formulation

We introduce a space–time Trefftz discontinuous Galerkin method for the first-order transient acoustic wave equations in arbitrary space dimensions, extending the one-dimensional scheme of Kretzschmar et al. (IMA J Numer Anal 36:1599–1635, 2016). Test and trial discrete functions are space–time piecewise polynomial solutions of the wave equations. We prove well-posedness and a priori error bounds in both skeleton-based and mesh-independent norms. The space–time formulation corresponds to an implicit time-stepping scheme, if posed on meshes partitioned in time slabs, or to an explicit scheme, if posed on “tent-pitched” meshes. We describe two Trefftz polynomial discrete spaces, introduce bases for them and prove optimal, high-order h-convergence bounds

The lion on the move towards the world frontier:Catching up or remaining stuck?

The striking reversal reported by the Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economy from the early 1990s through 2015 has been well documented by now. What is less known is whether this resurgence has translated into a gradual process of convergence to the U.S. level. With the benefit of major upgrades in the source data, we employ well-tested and familiar methods in the development literature to sort out the quantitative importance of the fundamentals behind the process of convergence. While the SSA growth revival has generated local pride, foreign envy and enthusiasm from international policy makers, our results suggest a more sober tone. In 2010, per capita income and labour productivity levels relative to the U.S. are well below those reported during the pre-1990 period. Regardless of the way in which human capital is measured, relative factor input endowments constitute the primary force that held back the SSA relative labour productivity-a major departure from conventional wisdom. While the story from the sectoral level remains broadly consistent with the one obtained from the aggregate level, additional insights emerge. These include disproportionately lower relative levels of sectoral labour productivity that led to a considerably slow and atypical process of structural transformation. Although relative intersectoral labour productivity gaps have been reduced, sources of allocative inefficiency remain large. We argue that all indications point to a combination of favourable shocks behind the SSA wakening pulse rather than a set of economic fundamentals that feature a genuine economic development. The burst of the commodity prices in the mid-2014 that coincided with a sharp weakening of the performance of this economy constitutes a compelling counterfactual

Building Spacetime Meshes over Arbitrary Spatial Domains

We present an algorithm to construct meshes suitable for spacetime discontinuous Galerkin finite-element methods. Our method generalizes and improves the `Tent Pitcher' algorithm of Üngör and Sheffer. Given an arbitrary simplicially meshed domain X of any dimension and a time interval [0, T], our algorithm builds a simplicial mesh of the spacetime domain X * [0, T],in constant time per element. Our algorithm avoids the limitations of previous methods by carefully adapting the durations of spacetime elements to the local quality and feature size ofthe underlying space mesh

Building Space-Time Meshes over Arbitrary Spatial Domains

We present an algorithm to construct meshes suitable for space-time discontinuous Galerkin finite-element methods. Our method generalizes and improves the 'Tent Pitcher' algorithm of /lngSr and Sheffer. Given an arbitrary simplicially meshed domain X of any dimension and a time interval [0, T], our algorithm builds a simplicial mesh of the space-time domain X x [0, T], in constant time per element. Our algorithm avoids the limitations of previous methods by carefully adapting the durations of space-time elements to the local quality and feature size of the underlying space mesh