Lukas Franken, Elisabeth Zeyen, Orestis Angelidis
et al.
Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) can provide constant, reliable electricity and heat with minimal emissions, but high drilling costs and uncertain cost reductions leave their future unclear. We explore scenarios for the future adoption of EGS in a carbon-neutral, multi-sector European energy system. We find that in a net-zero system, heat (co-)generating EGS at current cost can support 20--30 GWth of capacity in Europe, primarily driven by district heating demands. When drilling costs decrease by approximately 60%, EGS becomes competitive in electricity markets, expanding its market opportunity by one order of magnitude. However, the spatially dispersed rollout of district heating contrasts with the confined overlap of high geological potential and low potential for other renewables, which conditions the competitiveness of electricity-generating EGS. This results in a challenge where the majority of EGS market potential depends on pan-European technology learning for cost reductions, emphasising coordination is crucial in stakeholders' efforts to reduce EGS cost.
Road transport is responsible for about a quarter of Europe's greenhouse gas emissions, making its transformation a crucial part of Europe's overall decarbonization goals. Current European policies promote decarbonizing the transport sector and passenger car sales show an increased adoption of electric vehicles. Full electrification of land transport will significantly increase the average electricity demand but the use of smart charging and vehicle-to-grid could provide additional flexibility to balance wind and solar generation. In this study, we find cost-optimal transition pathways of the European land transport sector embedded in the sector-coupled open energy model PyPSA-Eur. We consider fossil-fueled, hydrogen-fueled, and electric cars using a 3-hour time resolution for a full year and covering 33 interconnected European countries. We analyze a transition path from 2025 to 2050 under different carbon budgets corresponding to a 1.7°C and 2°C temperature increase. Our results show that rapid electrification of road transport reduces the total system cost, even in the absence of climate targets. We see a clear preference for rapidly decommissioning internal combustion engine vehicles and using electric vehicles in all countries and under all carbon budgets. Allowing smart charging of electric vehicles decreases the total system cost by 1.6% because it reduces the need to install stationary batteries by almost 40%.
Francesco Menegale, Mattia Manica, Martina Del Manso
et al.
Abstract To address the growing frequency, extension, and size of local arboviral outbreaks in Europe we retrospectively analyzed dengue and chikungunya transmission in Italy from 2006 to 2023. We applied generalized additive models to the records of travel-related cases to highlight the spatiotemporal patterns of disease importation, calculated reproduction numbers for six local outbreaks based on autochthonous case data and mapped current transmission risks by applying a computational model that integrates human density, entomological, and climate data. Outbreak locations appear driven by case importation, which is notably higher for dengue – especially from June to October - rather than local transmission risks. Although reporting delays and favorable temperatures allowed onward transmission for several generations from mid-August to mid-November, upon outbreak detection control of transmission was achieved within 15 days. In high-risk areas, significantly longer epidemic risks were found for chikungunya (over 4 months). However, considering observed importation trends, increasingly frequent local dengue outbreaks are expected. Case detection should be prioritized focusing on areas, and in times, where environmental and climate conditions are permissive, regardless of prior outbreaks.
The European Union (EU) aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. This requires capturing CO2, eventually transporting it to different regions, and either converting it into valuable products or sequestering it underground. Although the target is set for the entire EU, in practice, most of the governance and strategy to attain it remains in the individual member states. Previous literature modelling how Europe can achieve carbon neutrality has either considered only a global CO2 limit or used coarse spatial and temporal representation without proper network modelling. Here, we use a highly-resolved open model of the European sector-coupled energy system, PyPSA-Eur, to explore the impacts of imposing net-zero emissions globally for the entire EU versus imposing carbon neutrality for each country. Forcing net-zero emissions in every country increases system cost by 1.4%, demands varied CO2 prices, and triggers higher investment in direct air capture and renewable capacities. Furthermore, in both scenarios, a significant portion of the captured CO2 is transported across Europe, either directly via CO2 pipelines or indirectly via solid biomass or synthetic methane gas, methanol, and oil. Our research enables quantifying the impact of following a collaborative or self-sufficient carbon management strategy to attain carbon neutrality.
У статті піддаються розгляду процеси генези феномену колективного самоусвідомлення предків сучасних українців на етапі переходу від тотемного до антропоморфічного типів світогляду в текстах українського фольклору. При цьому основна увага переноситься на дослідження метафізичного виміру цього процесу. Підкреслено, що особливо рельєфно виділяються фази переходу від одного типу світогляду до іншого на прикладах порівняння текстів первісних міфів і народної казки. В українській народній казці, на відміну від первісного міфу, на просценіум виходять мотиви, моральна позиція персонажів. У казках людина перебуває в напружених рефлексіях про суперечності між загальноприйнятим і особистісним, а вже пізніші міфологічні тексти «заземлюють» просторові і часові горизонти діяльності героя, поміщуючи їх у контекст співвіднесення правового й морального, світського й релігійного. В горизонті генези форм колективної самосвідомості казка виявляє свою історично зумовлену амбівалентність: у ній фігурують герої давніх міфів, в сюжети казок вживлені лінії і структурна будова первісних міфів, окрушини тотемного світогляду. Однак приявність у казках моральних регулятивів, зародків свободи особистості виказує на прорив духовності людини за межі тотемізму й зоолатрії первісного міфу на простір антропоморфізму. На цьому новому етапі розвитку колективної свідомості істотною ознакою самосвідомості постає поєднання свободи і моральності, особливо рельєфно це проступає в сюжетах казок, у яких йдеться про стосунки між людиною і смертю.
Open access to scientific publications has progressively become a key issue for European policy makers, resulting in concrete measures by the different country members to promote its development. The aim of paper is, after providing a quick overview of OA policies in Europe, to carry out a comparative study of OA practices within European countries, using data from the Web of Science (WoS) database. This analysis is based on two indicators: the OA share that illustrates the evolution over time, and the normalized OA indicator (NOAI) that allows spatial comparisons, taking into account disciplinary structures of countries. Results show a general trend towards the development of OA over time as expected, but with large disparities between countries, depending on how early they begin taking measures in favor of OA. While it is possible to stress the importance of policy and its influence on open access at country level, this does not appear to be the case at the regional level. There is not much variability between regions, within the same country, in terms of open access indicators.
The topic of Central Europe is one of the key problems for contemporary Polish literature, as it defines the issues of social identity as well as both individual and collective self-identification. As a “middle country” chocked in between two major spheres of influence: Russia and Germany; the East and the West, Poland has been voided of its statehood ever since the second half of the 18th century and has been the place where these two spheres of influence kept clashing. The perception of Poland as the boundary between the influences, a historical bulwark of the West, the interwar bastion of western culture or a country from behind the Iron Curtain did not strengthen the bonds between its culture and Central Europe. The Iron Curtain bolstered the polarization of Central Europe after World War II and Polish literature observes this crack on two facets – chronological and spatial.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
Автор анализирует визуализацию героев немецкого героического эпоса «Песнь о нибелунгах». То, как иллюстраторы изображают тела персонажей, какие позы им придаются, на фоне какого ландшафта происходит действие, сколько действующих лиц на картине и что именно они делают – все это может стать активным семантическим фактором. Намеренное вторжение в сюжет некоторыми художниками не только создает новый контекст для восприятия, но и придает тексту иное или дополнительное значение. Иногда семантика иллюстраций находится в явном противоречии с событиями сюжета – автор показывает, как и почему это происходит, какие смыслы зашифрованы в иллюстрациях к поэме, как изображения влияют на восприятие текста реципиентами.
La notizia, supportata da una lunga tradizione erudita, per cui sotto il complesso di Santa Maria della Vita a Napoli si collochi una catacomba dedicata a san Vito, dove un tempo si ergeva una chiesa intitolata al medesimo santo, è stata sempre circondata da incertezza. Nonostante la catacomba sia tuttora irrintracciabile, lo studio, mosso dal fine di chiarire il complesso di fonti al riguardo, ha conseguito notevoli risultati, accertando l’esistenza storica e i caratteri della primitiva chiesa, individuando in loco numerose cavità ipogee non funerarie, nonché riportando all’attenzione degli studiosi un’immagine mariana dimenticata, proveniente dagli ambienti sotterranei preesistenti al convento.
Abstract Background The shortage of qualified nurses is a problem of growing concern in many countries. Recruitment of internationally trained nurses has been used to address this shortage, but successful integration in the workplace is complex and resource intensive. For effective recruitment and retention, it is important to identify why nurses migrate and if their expectations are met to ensure their successful integration and promote a satisfying work climate for the entire nursing team. The aim of this study was to examine the perceptions of safety culture, work-life-balance, burnout and job demand of internationally trained nurses and associated host nurses in German hospitals. Methods A multicentric, cross-sectional study was conducted with internationally trained nurses (n = 64) and host nurses (n = 103) employed at two university hospitals in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. An anonymous paper-based survey was conducted between August 2019 and April 2020. The questionnaire included sociodemographic questions, questions regarding factors related to migration, and the German version of the Assessment of your work setting Safety, Communication, Operational Reliability, and Engagement (SCORE) questionnaire. SCORE is divided into three sections: Safety Culture Domains (six subscales), Work-Life-Balance (one subscale), and Engagement Assessment Tool (four subscales). Results Nurses who migrated to Germany were primarily seeking better working conditions, a higher standard of living, and professional development opportunities. Internationally trained nurses reported lower work-related burnout climate (Mean 55.4 (SD 22.5)) than host nurses (Mean 66.4 (SD 23.5)) but still at a moderately high degree (Safety Culture Domains). Host nurses indicated a higher workload (Mean 4.06 (SD 0.65)) (Engagement Assessment Tool) and a lower Work-Life-Balance (Mean 2.31 (SD 0.66)) (Work-Life-Balance) compared to nurses who trained abroad (Mean 3.67 (SD 0.81) and Mean 2.02 (SD 0.86), respectively). No differences were detected for the other subscales. The Safety Culture Domains and Engagement Assessment Tool showed room for improvement in both groups. Conclusion The study suggest that the expectations migrant nurses had prior to migration may not be met and that in turn could have a negative impact on the integration process and their retention. With increasing recruitment of internationally trained nurses from within Europe but also overseas, it is crucial to identify factors that retain migrant nurses and assist integration. Trial registration The study has been prospectively registered (27 June 2019) at the German Clinical Trial Register ( DRKS00017465 ).
RESUMO Este artigo aborda a expedição realizada por Afonso Botelho de Sampaio e Souza, que adentrou territórios indígenas no século XVIII. A expedição de Botelho se deu no contexto das reformas pombalinas, momento em que a Coroa Portuguesa tentava implementar novas diretrizes para as políticas indigenistas, buscando angariar entre os nativos novos súditos nos sertões, a fim de garantir o domínio sobre os territórios coloniais em disputa. Nesse contexto, Botelho percorreu os territórios dos chamados Campos de Guarapuava, no terceiro planalto paranaense, entrando em contato com grupos nativos de origem Jê, denominados desde o século XIX de Kaingang. Por meio de três relatórios da expedição e uma parte da iconografia produzida, buscaram-se indícios referentes à territorialidade e à liderança indígena, captando elementos da cultura Kaingang presentes na organização dos espaços e que influíram no encontro com os exploradores estrangeiros.
Milena Lopreite, Pietro Panzarasa, Michelangelo Puliga
et al.
We analyze data from Twitter to uncover early-warning signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe in the winter season 2019-2020, before the first public announcements of local sources of infection were made. We show evidence that unexpected levels of concerns about cases of pneumonia were raised across a number of European countries. Whistleblowing came primarily from the geographical regions that eventually turned out to be the key breeding grounds for infections. These findings point to the urgency of setting up an integrated digital surveillance system in which social media can help geo-localize chains of contagion that would otherwise proliferate almost completely undetected.
Anna Sigridur Islind, María Óskarsdóttir, Harpa Steingrímsdóttir
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way we act, interact and move around in the world. The pandemic triggered a worldwide health crisis that has been tackled using a variety of strategies across Europe. Whereas some countries have taken strict measures, others have avoided lock-downs altogether. In this paper, we report on findings obtained by combining data from different publicly available sources in order to shed light on the changes in mobility patterns in Europe during the pandemic. Using that data, we show that mobility patterns have changed in different counties depending on the strategies they adopted during the pandemic. Our data shows that the majority of European citizens walked less during the lock-downs, and that, even though flights were less frequent, driving increased drastically. In this paper, we focus on data for a number of countries, for which we have also developed a dashboard that can be used by other researchers for further analyses. Our work shows the importance of granularity in open source data and how such data can be used to shed light on the effects of the pandemic.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Central and Eastern Europe were subject to strong polarisation processes. This article proposes examines two neglected aspects regarding the transition period: a comparative static assessment of foreign trade since 1967 until 2012 and a city-centred analysis of transnational companies in 2013. Results show a growing economic differentiation between the North-West and South-East as well as a division between large metropolises and other cities. These findings may complement the targeting of specific regional strategies such as those conceived within the Cohesion policy of the European Union.
The reception and appropriation of Roman history under the Valois through copies and translations of luxurious manuscripts owned by these kings, their relatives and great officers, connect the medieval imaginary of antiquity to this dynasty. French political iconography of the 14th and 15th centuries combines the governance of the City of Rome with the origins of the kingdom since the translation of Ab Urbe Condita of Tite-Live by Pierre Bersuire, the copies of Jean Mansel's Fleurs des histoires, the translations of De Civitate Dei by Raoul de Presles and the vernacular translation of the writings of Valère Maxime by Simon de Hesdin and Nicolas de Gonesse. By thousands, these miniatures on a universe of men and cities, order and disorder, peace and revenge, concord and discord, identify the public space, the speech, the just power, the contestation, the tyranny, the circulation pacificator of the law, but rarely give way to women, except to associate them with bloody scenes. The serial analysis of the narrow corpus of female representation shows that the appropriation of the image of Roman history gives a singular place to the genre in the representation of conflicts and their resolution in urban areas. The painted women who emerge from Roman stories of the late Middle Ages French escort a world of ancient men experiencing the soothing role of law. Can we conclude for these rare women who accompany scenes of conflict and peace that the painter gives them a historical role as mediators and reinterprets the actions of Roman women? Does he reconsider the construction of public order at the end of the French Middle Ages or is it first of all the historized formulation of a political theory of marriage?
History (General) and history of Europe, History of Spain
In 1945 Einstein concluded that [1]: "The present theory of relativity is based on a division of physical reality into a metric field (gravitation) on the one hand, and into an electromagnetic field and matter on the other hand. In reality space will probably be of a uniform character and the present theory be valid only as a limiting case. For large densities of field and of matter, the field equations and even the field variables which enter into them will have no real significance.". The dichotomy is resolved by introducing a complex Randers metric with a real valued scalar field and complex valued vector field, providing a unified mathematical framework for gravitation & electromagnetism for which the resulting theory's predictions agree with General Relativity; to leading order in the gravitational constant. Hence, the related experimental results validate both theories; and the former theory's metric solutions are free of spurious singularities, because its stress-energy tensor includes the energy & momentum for the gravitational field; like e.g. Maxwell's stress-energy tensor contains the electromagnetic field.
To obtain a generalized wave equation for a field in general covariant form, one must define covariant differentiation of a generalized wave function describing particles with arbitrary spin. Gel'fand and Iaglom, Dirac, and Fierz and Pauli have studied the generalized wave equation in the special theory of relativity. In this paper, the Gel'fand-Iaglom field equation was generalized to the curved space based on the veilbein framework. The general covariant field equations for arbitrary spin were obtained. More importantly, in this work, we introduced the gauge covariant derivative with the local Lorentz transformation, which is the foundation for a gauge theory of gravitation.