Lapo Santarlasci, Armando Rungi, Loredana Fattorini
et al.
Artificial intelligence has become a key arena of global technological competition and a central concern for Europe's quest for technological sovereignty. This paper analyzes global AI patenting from 2010 to 2023 to assess Europe's position in an increasingly bipolar innovation landscape dominated by the United States and China. Using linked patent, firm, ownership, and citation data, we examine the geography, specialization, and international diffusion of AI innovation. We find a highly concentrated patent landscape: China leads in patent volumes, while the United States dominates in citation impact and technological influence. Europe accounts for a limited share of AI patents but exhibits signals of relatively high patent quality. Technological proximity reveals global convergence toward U.S. innovation trajectories, with Europe remaining fragmented rather than forming an autonomous pole. Gravity-model estimates show that cross-border AI knowledge flows are driven primarily by technological capability and specialization, while geographic and institutional factors play a secondary role. EU membership does not significantly enhance intra-European knowledge diffusion, suggesting that technological capacity, rather than political integration, underpins participation in global AI innovation networks.
The author was encouraged to write this review by numerous enquiries from researchers all over the world, who needed a ready-to-use algorithm for the inversion of confluent Vandermonde matrices which works in quadratic time for any values of the parameters allowed by the definition, including the case of large root multiplicities of the characteristic polynomial. Article gives the history of the title special matrix since 1891 and surveys algorithms for solving linear systems with the title class matrix and inverting it. In particular, it presents, also by example, a numerical algorithm which does not use symbolic computations and is ready to be implemented in a general-purpose programming language or in a specific mathematical package.
The paper deals with the chronology and cultural definition of two funerary objects found during the excavations of the “Russian Church” (Ryska kyrkan) in Visby (Gotland, Sweden). A comparative analysis of one of them, close to the Liljestenar tradition, shows that its own date lies within the 12th–14th centuries, and its artistic features are characteristic rather of Western Europe, primarily England, of the late Middle Ages. This is not a standard tombstone of this type, but a complex composition, including the image of large and succulent leaves, not similar to the schematic ornaments of Västergötland. The second object, a stone lining in the shape of a human body with a niche for the head, has so far been associated with the Russian (namely Novgorodian) tradition (O.M. Ionnisyan and others). But in this case it should be dated no earlier than the end of the 14th century, as only from that time anthropomorphic coffins came into use in Russia, and exclusively in the Moscow Principality. The lining from Visby obviously belongs to the western branch of the tradition of anthropomorphic stone receptacles for the human body: such cuttings are known in Europe from the 10th–11th centuries, they appear as a stone linings during the Crusades in the 12th century, and as whole sarcophagi – later, in the 13th century. They are well known in Scandinavia as well. As a result, the identification of the funerary object from Visby changes: this model is not brought here from Russia, there are simply no such products in Novgorod. As for the whole sarcophagi made of limestone, they will begin to appear in Russia not earlier than the end of the 14th century. Thus, during the excavations of Ryska kyrkan nothing of Russian origin was found. The new interpretation of the funeral complex in Visby also makes a change in the history of the burial structures of Russia. It allows to bring to the discussion of the problem of the appearance of white stone sarcophagi of Moscow a group of stone linings with a niche for the head, common in Northern Europe.
The forces that drive uplift of the continental lithosphere outside collision zones are a topic of considerable dispute. Here we review our studies of the post-Caledonian development of Greenland, Fennoscandia and adjacent regions based on apatite fission-track analysis (AFTA) and stratigraphic landscape analysis (SLA). AFTA defines episodes of cooling (exhumation) while SLA provides a relative denudation chronology. Integrating these results with the geological record can produce a coherent history of both positive and negative vertical crustal movements. Our studies reveal a history involving multiple regional episodes of burial and exhumation, leading to a) formation of peneplains graded to sea level, b) formation of distinct unconformities in sedimentary successions, and c) deposition of thick siliciclastic wedges in basins adjacent to the uplifting landmasses. Exhumation episodes which began in late Carboniferous, Middle Triassic and Middle Jurassic affected the entire study area (with some time variations). These episodes correlate with rifting episodes during the break-up of Pangea, attributed to accumulation of mantle heat beneath the supercontinent. Mid-Cretaceous exhumation affected wide parts of the study area and coincided with the inversion of the Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone in southern Scandinavia. This may be linked with changes in the relative motion between the European and African plates in the earliest Late Cretaceous. Maastrichtian exhumation affected wide areas around Greenland, probably reflecting doming above the rising Iceland Plume upon its arrival in the upper mantle, prior to the mid-Paleocene impact at the base of the lithosphere. The mid-Paleocene impact of the plume under Greenland contributed to the onset of sea-floor spreading west of Greenland. This represents the onset of the Eurekan Orogeny which affected wide areas around northern Greenland. End-Eocene exhumation interrupted the Eocene regime of subsidence following earliest Eocene break-up in the North-East Atlantic, coincided with a minimum rate of sea-floor spreading in the North-East Atlantic, possibly related to changes in the motion of Africa relative to Europe. Early Miocene exhumation affected only Fennoscandia and is attributed to intraplate stress transmitted across the Eurasian plate. Late Miocene uplift initiated the formation of Greenland ’ s coastal mountains but did not affect Fenno-scandia. This episode correlates with changes in the absolute motion of the North American Plate. Pliocene uplift – amplified by the isostatic response to erosion – raised all margins in the region with maximum elevations reached in coastal areas close to Iceland. This suggests support from the Iceland Plume due to outward-flowing asthenosphere extending beneath the conjugate margins of the North-East Atlantic. We use these observations to argue that these episodes reflect both lithospheric and sub-lithospheric forces, related either to changes in the motion of the plates caused by far-field stress induced by events outside the study area, or driven by movements within the mantle directly within the study area. Geodynamic modelling is required to obtain further insights into the properties of the Earth that allow recurrent episodes of uplift and subsidence of the continents.
Philipp C. Böttcher, Leonardo Rydin Gorjão, Christian Beck
et al.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24\textsuperscript{th} of February 2022, this led to many acts of solidarity with Ukraine, including support for its electricity system. Just 20 days after the invasion started, the Ukrainian and Moldovan power grids were synchronized to the Continental European power grid to provide stability to these grids. Here, we present an initial analysis of how this synchronization affected the statistics of the power grid frequency and cross-border flows of electric power within Continental Europe. We observe faster inter-area oscillations, an increase in fluctuations and changes in the cross-border flows in and out of Ukraine and surrounding countries as an effect of the synchronization with Continental Europe. Overall these changes are small such that the now connected system can be considered as stable as before the synchronization.
Alberto Martínez-Ortí, Sonia Adam, Giovanni Garippa
et al.
Urogenital schistosomiasis has been present naturally in the South of Europe since the beginning of the 20 th century and nowadays its presence is also known, at least imported by Sub-Saharan emigrants and tourists, in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. One of the intermediate hosts of this trematode present in Europe is the bulinid mollusc Bulinus truncatus, non-native species that can be reached to Europe by humans and birds. In order to know this mollusc better, we carried out a morpho-anatomical study, of the shell, the reproductive system, radula, the respiratory organs and pseudobranch of several populations from Italy, France and Spain. Spanish conchological material studied comes from different populations, from material deposited in the "Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales" of Madrid and the "Museu de Ci{è}ncies Naturals" of Barcelona, as well as from its own material deposited in the "Museu Valenci{à} d'Hist{ò}ria Natural" of Alginet (Valencia). The shell growth in captivity and the estimation of the population age of B. truncatus from El Ejido (Almer{í}a, Spain), has also been studied. Finally, the finding of aphallic and euphallic specimens in the different populations of southern Europe studied is presented and taxonomic and ecological data of the genus Bulinus are shown.
Flemming A. J. Nielsen And Thorkild Kjærgaard:The First Greenlandic Book Ever since the arrival of Norse peasants in south-west Greenland in the second halfof the tenth century there have been links between the immense island (2.2 millionkm2) in the north-eastern corner of the American hemisphere and the Scandinavianworld. At the end of the twelfth century, the ancestors of today’s Inuit, a whale- andseal-hunting people speaking a language of the Eskimo-Aleut group, migrated fromEllesmere Island across the narrow Smith Sound to northern Greenland. Within twoand a half centuries, the Norse peasants had, it seems, been exterminated by the Inuit,but Greenland was never forgotten in Scandinavia. In the European world it was generallyrecognised that Greenland was Norwegian territory. In 1380 Norway enteredinto a union with Denmark, and the dream of restoring connections with Greenlandtherefore became a shared Danish-Norwegian dream, although it seemed less and lesspracticable as time went by and the Davis Strait between Baffin Island and Greenlandbegan to teem with Dutch and British whalers and trading ships.However, in 1721 the course of history changed. A Norwegian priest, Hans Egede(1686‑1758), who had been offering his services for more than a decade, was appointed‘Royal Missionary in Greenland’ and was given the necessary support for an expeditionaiming to re-establish the old connection and to reintroduce Christianity into Greenland.Egede’s Greenlandic adventure succeeded, and over the course of the eighteenthcentury Greenland was reintegrated, bit by bit, into the multicultural, multinationalDanish-Norwegian state and society.In 1814 Norway was divided as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Mainland Norway(what we know as Norway today) was ceded to Sweden while the remote Norwegianislands in the North Atlantic (Greenland, the Faroe Islands and, until 1944, Iceland)were annexed to the kingdom of Denmark.Being a true officer of the Danish-Norwegian empire, where every child had tobe taught to read and appreciate Luther’s Small Catechism, Egede struggled fromthe outset with the exotic Greenlandic language, not just to learn to speak a vaguelyunderstandable ‘kitchen-Greenlandic’ but also to acquire the deeper understandingof phonetic and grammatical structures that was needed in order to develop a writtenversion of the language.During Egede’s fifteen years in Greenland (1721‑36), all the documents pertainingto the mission were handwritten. This was true also for the basic Christian texts inGreenlandic which Egede and his helpers began to produce and distribute among thegrowing number of converts from as early as 1723. Back in Copenhagen in 1736, Egede founded the so-called Seminarium Groenlandicum. The purpose of this institution wastwofold: to teach basic Greenlandic to new missionaries and catechists before they wentto Greenland, and to produce books printed in Greenlandic in order to have a moremajor and focused impact on Greenlandic society than the sporadic effects obtainablewith handwritten texts that were constantly being altered by being laboriously copiedout by hand again and again.The first book published in Greenlandic as part of this programme was a spellingbook containing reading exercises based on Luther’s Small Catechism in addition to acollection of prayers and eight hymns translated from the Danish, comprising a total offorty pages prepared by Egede and printed in Copenhagen in 1739 to be sent to Greenlandthe same year. As a bridge between written and printed culture in Greenland, thissmall book marked an important milestone in early modern Greenland. Until now it hasbeen known only from uncertain and elusive bibliographical sources – sceptical voiceshave even doubted whether it ever existed, but two copies of the book have recentlybeen located and identified in the holdings of the Royal Library. Our article providesa thorough study of the book: how it came to be forgotten, how it was rediscovered,the nature of its contents and details of its typographical layout.Less than a century after Hans Egede’s arrival in Greenland, almost everybody inwestern Greenland had learned to read and write, and the local vernacular had becomea literary language. Later, in 1861, Greenland’s first newspaper was established.It was written and edited from the outset by Greenlanders eagerly discussing their ownaffairs. As a result of the discussions, scattered groups of individuals throughout theenormous but thinly populated island coalesced into a nation, and, thanks to Egede’sendeavours and those of his many successors throughout the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies, Greenlandic is today the only native American language that is used for anyand every purpose by its speakers, whether it be literature, pop music, government,church services or legislation.
Monica M. Sheffer, Brian Schulze, Linda Zander
et al.
In response to climate change, a northward range expansion has been observed in many species. The wasp spider, Argiope bruennichi, has expanded from its historic range in the Mediterranean (“core”), now reaching as far as the Baltic States and Scandinavia (“edge”), even faster than the pace of climate change. We explored life history traits, adult phenotypes, offspring cold tolerance, and genomic patterns across the European range of A. bruennichi, and found origin-, environment- and life stage-specific responses to the cold northern climate. Wasp spiders have shifted their phenology at the edge, with females maturing earlier and at a smaller size, but maintaining similar pigmentation, clutch sizes, and hatching success compared to the core region. Using a reciprocal common garden experiment on overwintering offspring from the core and edge, we found evidence for genetic adaptation and considerable phenotypic plasticity. Overwintering survival was lower under the cold winter treatment for spiderlings from both origins. However, the edge-origin spiderlings that survived the winter had lower lethal temperatures and enhanced supercooling ability with reduced phenotypic plasticity in supercooling points compared to core spiderlings, while the chill coma recovery time was similar. Metabolomic analysis revealed accumulations of amino acids and myo-inositol in the cold winter treatment, particularly in spiderlings from the edge population, suggesting a role of these metabolites in improving cold tolerance. Genotype-environment tests showed strong genetic association across the genome to seasonality and minimum winter temperature. The population genomic analysis across the European range splits A. bruennichi into two distinct genetic clusters through the center of Germany, which roughly aligns with turnover from an oceanic to continental climate zone, complementing the genotype-environment test results. Overall, our study highlights the importance of integrating data on phenological shifts, changes in life-history, and life stage-specific phenotypic plasticity and genetic adaptation to understand the impacts of range expansions and shifts. The nuanced processes of acclimation and adaptation we uncovered advocate for holistic investigations of evolutionary fitness and fitness-related traits in the context of organismal responses to novel and changing environments.
“Asatru”, the modern worship of the Heathen deities of Scandinavia and Northern Europe, is a relatively young, internationally developing religious phenomenon. Since the 1990’s researchers have gradually built a body of academic literature seeking to chronicle and contextualize Asatru’s multifaceted histories, beliefs, practices and social developments within the larger arena of Western societies. This critical historiography provides an over-view of the most influential extant research of Asatru and frames the developing academic discourse. The article shows that Asatru is a dynamic, heterogenous web of intersected movements which are both rapidly developing, and prone to the influences of overarching societal discourses, and that this is especially true of popular and academic discourses aimed at Asatru itself. This historiography serves as a landmark demonstrating where we have come so far as researchers with our study of and relationship with Asatru, and what steps we might consider taking in the future.
Kimberley Miner, Laura Meyerson, . Climate Change Institute
et al.
Mediterranean ecosystems such as those found in California, Central Chile, Southern Europe, and Southwest Australia host numerous, diverse, fire-adapted micro-ecosystems. These micro-ecosystems are as diverse as mountainous conifer to desert-like chaparral communities. Over the last few centuries, human intervention, invasive species, and climate warming have drastically affected the composition and health of Mediterranean ecosystems on almost every continent. Increased fuel load from fire suppression policies and the continued range expansion of non-native insects and plants, some driven by long-term drought, produced the deadliest wildfire season on record in 2018. As a consequence of these fires, a large number of structures are destroyed, releasing household chemicals into the environment as uncontrolled toxins. The mobilization of these materials can lead to health risks and disruption in both human and natural systems. This article identifies drivers that led to a structural weakening of the mosaic of fire-adapted ecosystems in California, and subsequently increased the risk of destructive and explosive wildfires throughout the state. Under a new climate regime, managing the impacts on systems moving out-of-phase with natural processes may protect lives and ensure the stability of ecosystem services.
We continue our efforts to understand, within the framework of the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole, the quasiclassical realm of familiar experience as a feature emergent from the Hamiltonian of the elementary particles and the initial condition of the universe. Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to exhaustive sets of alternative decoherent histories of the universe. We introduce and define the notion of strong decoherence. We replace the notion of maximal sets of alternative decohering histories by defining the more useful concept of "full" sets of alternative strongly decohering histories. These full sets fall into equivalence classes each of which is characterized by a basis in Hilbert space. Finally we describe our continuing efforts to find measures of classicality --- measures that could be applied to such full sets of alternative strongly decohering so as to characterize a quasiclassical realm.
We outline the Minimalistic Measurement Scheme (MMS) compatible with regular unitary evolution of a closed quantum system. Within this approach, a part of the system becomes informationally isolated (restricted) which leads to a natural emergence of the classical domain. This measurement scenario is a simpler alternative to environment-induced decoherence. In its basic version, MMS involves two ancilla qubits, $A$ and $X$, entangled with each other and with the System $S$. Informational or thermodynamic cost of measurement is represented by $X$-qubit being isolated, i.e. becoming unavailable for future interactions with the rest of the system. Conditional upon this isolation, $A$-qubit, that plays the role of an Apparatus, becomes classical and records the outcome of the measurement. The procedure may be used to perform von Neumann-style projective measurements or generalized ones, that corresponds to Positive-Operator Value Measure (POVM). By repeating the same generalized measurement multiple times with different $A$- and $X$-qubits, one asymptotically approaches the wave function collapse in the basis determined by the premeasurement process. We present a simple result for the total information extracted after $N$ such weak measurements. Building upon MMS, we propose a construction that maps a history of a quantum system onto a set of $A$-qubits. It resembles the Consistent History (CH) formulation of Quantum Mechanics (QM), but is distinct from it, and is built entirely within the conventional QM. In particular, consistency postulate of CH formalism is not automatically satisfied, but rather is an emerging property. Namely, each measurement event corresponds to the branching of mutually exclusive classical realities whose probabilities are additive. In a general case, however, the superposition between different histories is determined by the history density matrix.
ABSTRACT: One of the most striking genre conventions to emerge in Danish cinema in
recent years is the gangster motif. Replete with gritty social realism, urban decay,
and tribal warfare between different ethnic groups, these films reflect a growing
discontent in the Danish welfare state, particularly regarding multiculturalism and
inclusion. This article follows these trends from the mid-1990s, focusing specifically
on the themes of ethnic division in four films: Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher (1996), Michael Noer’s Nordvest (2013) [Northwest], Omar Shargawi’s Gå med fred, Jamil (2008) [Go With Peace, Jamil], and Michael Noer and Tobias Lindholm’s R (2010) [R: Hit First, Hit Hardest]. The article explores racial division in these films by examining how they reflect
or subvert cultural and political approaches towards diversity in Denmark over the
last two decades.
History of Northern Europe. Scandinavia, Language and Literature