New Proposals on Portuguese Vegetation (II)

As a consequence of the geobotanical studies that have been developed in west and southern areas of the Iberian Peninsula, four new phytosociological associations are proposed, integrated in the perennial mesophytic grasslands of Stipo giganteae-Agrostietea castellanae (Serratulo flavescentis-Celticetum giganteae, Armerio macrophyllae-Celticetum giganteae, Centaureo rothmaleranae-Celticetum giganteae, and Centaureo coutinhoi-Dactyletum lusitanici). For each proposed unit, besides its syntaxonomical fitting, we present its ecological diagnosis and the serial and catenal context, as well as its patrimonial value

Activist Globalization: How Markets, Societies and States Empower Cause-Oriented Action in Transnational Relations

This study examines how transnational conditions of markets, societies and states empower civic groups, social movements, advocacy networks or resisters to participate in cause-oriented action that connects two or more polities. Preliminary theses infatuated with the latest and thickest wave of globalization have blown back into a solidified antithesis. Under this influential antithesis, international interactions between states create more opportunities for transnational activism than do global flows between societies or markets. The evidence analyzed here suggests a refutation of that prevalent antithesis. Instead, it supports the synthesizing hypothesis of this study: The more markets and societies globalize and the more states interact, the more transnational activism occurs. The research conducted here develops on a promising explanatory typology that is the best attempt to answer the main question about activism in international relations (IR) studies at present. This dissertation builds on such theory, moderating short-range and statist imbalances in conventional IR and cross-national (comparative) research on the consequences of interstate regimes and political opportunity structures, respectively. The study goes on to make this prior scholarship more accurate, comprehensive and reflective. First, tests of the prime theory over a longer history, which predates 1945, here elevate globalism toward a favorable condition that is as consequential as internationalism for activism across borders. Second, this study conceptualizes four explanatory processes--or chains of causal mechanisms--that link activism mainly to encouragement from globalization. These original models expose a grand, causal theory to have outpaced its necessary processual, mechanismic bases. Finally, the study addresses the spatial transnationality and transnationalization of activism. It extends the typology of explanatory processes to distinguish the primary scale of activist actions from the locus of activist causes, along a domestic-foreign frontier. The extension renders as unexamined a conventional assumption that activism transnationalizes through a one-dimensional globalization from local toward global proportions. The dissertation uses qualitative, case-study and process-tracing, methods to compare and generalize beyond two transnational activist campaigns. These campaigns are situated temporally from the 1860s to the 1950s, geographically through inclusion of actors based in Brazil, and thematically via incorporation of biodiversity in activist deed or discourse

Políticas da desilusão: Violência e idealismo em “Civil War” de Liam O’Flaherty e “Guests of the Nation” de Frank O’Connor

Vivendo os seus anos de formação no período imediatamente anterior à revolução irlandesa, Liam O’Flaherty e Frank O’Connor foram profundamente influenciados pela propaganda nacionalista. Inspirados por ideais republicanos, ambos os escritores assumiram um papel ativo, apesar de modesto, tanto na Guerra da Independência quanto na subsequente Guerra Civil. A literatura que produziram quando os conflitos cessaram, no entanto, apresenta uma perspectiva crítica e contrastante com os ideais que os tinham levado a apoiar a revolução. Analisando os contos “Civil War” (1924), de Liam O’Flaherty, e “Guests of the Nation” (1932), de Frank O’Connor, este artigo explora porquê e como ambos os autores recorreram a abordagens brutais e niilistas para retratar o período revolucionário irlandês em vez de aderirem a perspectivas mais românticas e idealistas.Having their formative years in the period right before the Irish revolution, Liam O’Flaherty and Frank O’Connor were deeply influenced by nationalistic propaganda. Inspired by Republican ideals, both writers-to-be took an active, though modest, role in the War of Independence and in the ensuing Civil War. The literature they produced when the conflicts had ceased, however, displays a very critical and contrasting perspective to the one that had driven them to support the revolution. Analysing the short stories “Civil War” (1924), by Liam O’Flaherty, and “Guests of the Nation” (1932), by Frank O’Connor, this essay explores why and how both authors resorted to stark, gruesome, and nihilistic approaches to the Irish revolutionary period instead of adhering to more romantic and idealistic perspectives

Towards gauge theories in four dimensions

The abundance of infrared singularities in gauge theories due to unresolved emission of massless particles (soft and collinear) represents the main difficulty in perturbative calculations. They are typically regularized in dimensional regularization, and their subtraction is usually achieved independently for virtual and real corrections. In this paper, we introduce a new method based on the loop-tree duality (LTD) theorem to accomplish the summation over degenerate infrared states directly at the integrand level such that the cancellation of the infrared divergences is achieved simultaneously, and apply it to reference examples as a proof of concept. Ultraviolet divergences, which are the consequence of the point-like nature of the theory, are also reinterpreted physically in this framework. The proposed method opens the intriguing possibility of carrying out purely four-dimensional implementations of higher-order perturbative calculations at next-to-leading order (NLO) and beyond free of soft and final-state collinear subtractions.Comment: Final version to appear in JHE

The role of lease financing

Leasing has become, throughout recent years, an increasingly important financing source for companies’ operational activities and has deserved some attention in the corporate finance literature. Understanding the leasing decision, through a comparison with other external financing options and an evaluation of its overall fit with firms’ specific characteristics has been the focus of existing investigations and it is the goal of this study. Our analysis is focused on the relationship between lease and debt financing and on an examination of firms’ leasing propensity, taking into account their particular features. With the adoption of three different, but complementary methodologies, we find that leasing propensity is greater for smaller firms, with more investment opportunities, in a worst financial condition, with relatively fewer specific assets and with lower availability of collateral. In addition, results suggest that lease and debt financing are seen as substitutes, as higher relative amounts of debt are associated with lower leasing intensity