Abstract The question of how to deal with a pregnancy, whether desired or unwanted, is a complex biological, ethical, social, and medical issue going back for millennia. Every form of regulatory approach to this issue is culturally and temporally specific and is therefore subject to continuous change. Our look at its history and the medical, legal, and religious background begins in ancient times, progresses through history, and ends with a focus on the second half of the nineteenth century and especially the twentieth century in Germany. These ethical, moral, and medical questions are likely to have been discussed in a similar way in other parts of the Western world.
Ramon Canal, Stefano Di Carlo, Dimitris Gizopoulos
et al.
Among the key contributions of Vitamin-V (2023-2025 Horizon Europe project), we develop a complete RISC-V open-source software stack for cloud services with comparable performance to the cloud-dominant x86 counterpart. In this paper, we detail the software suites and applications ported plus the three cloud setups under evaluation.
To move towards a low-carbon society by 2050, understanding the intricate dynamics of energy systems is critical. Our study examines these interactions through the lens of hydrogen storage, dividing it into 'direct' and 'indirect' hydrogen storage. Direct hydrogen storage involves electrolysis-produced hydrogen being stored before use, while indirect storage first transforms hydrogen into gas via the Sabatier process for later energy distribution. Firstly, we utilize the PyPSA-Eur-Sec-30-path model to capture the interactions within the energy system. The model is an hour-level, one node per country system that encompasses a range of energy transformation technologies, outlining a pathway for Europe to reduce carbon emissions by 95 percent by 2050 compared to 1990, with updates every 5 years. Subsequently, we employ both quantitative and qualitative approaches to thoroughly analyze these complex relationships. Our research indicates that during the European green transition, cross-country flow of electricity will play an important role in Europe's rapid decarbonization stage before the large-scale introduction of energy storage. Under the paper cost assumptions, fuel cells are not considered a viable option. This research further identifies the significant impact of natural resource variability on the local energy mix, highlighting indirect hydrogen storage as a common solution due to the better economic performance and actively fluctuation pattern. Specifically, indirect hydrogen storage will contribute at least 60 percent of hydrogen storage benefits, reaching 100 percent in Italy. Moreover, its fluctuation pattern will change with the local energy structure, which is a distinct difference with the unchanged pattern of direct hydrogen storage and battery storage.
Hagit Attiya, Michael A. Bender, Martin Farach-Colton
et al.
A data structure is called history independent if its internal memory representation does not reveal the history of operations applied to it, only its current state. In this paper we study history independence for concurrent data structures, and establish foundational possibility and impossibility results. We show that a large class of concurrent objects cannot be implemented from smaller base objects in a manner that is both wait-free and history independent; but if we settle for either lock-freedom instead of wait-freedom or for a weak notion of history independence, then at least one object in the class, multi-valued single-reader single-writer registers, can be implemented from smaller base objects, binary registers. On the other hand, using large base objects, we give a strong possibility result in the form of a universal construction: an object with $s$ possible states can be implemented in a wait-free, history-independent manner from compare-and-swap base objects that each have $O(s + 2^n)$ possible memory states, where $n$ is the number of processes in the system.
Outdoor air pollution is estimated to cause a huge number of premature deaths worldwide, it catalyses many diseases on a variety of time scales, and it has a detrimental effect on the environment. In light of these impacts it is necessary to obtain a better understanding of the dynamics and statistics of measured air pollution concentrations, including temporal fluctuations of observed concentrations and spatial heterogeneities. Here we present an extensive analysis for measured data from Europe. The observed probability density functions (PDFs) of air pollution concentrations depend very much on the spatial location and on the pollutant substance. We analyse a large number of time series data from 3544 different European monitoring sites and show that the PDFs of nitric oxide ($NO$), nitrogen dioxide ($NO_{2}$) and particulate matter ($PM_{10}$ and $PM_{2.5}$) concentrations generically exhibit heavy tails. These are asymptotically well approximated by $q$-exponential distributions with a given entropic index $q$ and width parameter $λ$. We observe that the power-law parameter $q$ and the width parameter $λ$ vary widely for the different spatial locations. We present the results of our data analysis in the form of a map that shows which parameters $q$ and $λ$ are most relevant in a given region. A variety of interesting spatial patterns is observed that correlate to properties of the geographical region. We also present results on typical time scales associated with the dynamical behaviour.
A társadalmi fenntarthatóság kulcsfontosságú fogalom, amely hangsúlyos tényezőként azonosítható az emberiség jelen szükségleteinek kielégítését, a környezet és természeti erőforrások jövő generációja számára történő megőrzését támogató folyamatokban. A társadalmi innovációs kezdeményezések a fenntartható jövőt támogató olyan megoldások, amelyek alkalmasak lehetnek a regionális szintű különbségek mérséklésére, a területi versenyképesség növelésére, valamint a felzárkóztatás segítésére. Az oktatási egyenlőtlenségek csökkentése, megszüntetése olyan hosszútávú megoldásokat kíván, amely szükségessé teszi a társadalom szereplői közötti újszerű együttműködéseket. A tanulmány keretei között a társadalmi innovációs törekvések oktatásban megjelenő példáit és ezen gyakorlatok hatásait vizsgáljuk, amely során kiemelt figyelmet fordítunk a társadalmi fenntarthatóság kérdéseire. Célunk olyan társadalmi innovációs programok, jó gyakorlatok bemutatása, amelyek oktatás kiegyenlítő megoldásokként azonosíthatók, és a helyi szükségletek és igények, valamint az adott közösség sajátosságainak figyelembevétele mellett adaptálhatók és fenntarthatók a jóllét növelése érdekében. A tanulmány keretei között a vizsgált jó gyakorlatokat strukturált formában jelenítjük meg, hangsúlyozva a társadalmi fenntarthatóságot biztosító kulcselemeket.
History of Central Europe, Social sciences (General)
Francesca Larosa, Jaroslav Mysiak, Marco Molinari
et al.
Innovation is a key component to equip our society with tools to adapt to new climatic conditions. The development of research-action interfaces shifts useful ideas into operationalized knowledge allowing innovation to flourish. In this paper we quantify the existing gap between climate research and innovation action in Europe using a novel framework that combines artificial intelligence (AI) methods and network science. We compute the distance between key topics of research interest from peer review publications and core issues tackled by innovation projects funded by the most recent European framework programmes. Our findings reveal significant differences exist between and within the two layers. Economic incentives, agricultural and industrial processes are differently connected to adaptation and mitigation priorities. We also find a loose research-action connection in bioproducts, biotechnologies and risk assessment practices, where applications are still too few compared to the research insights. Our analysis supports policy-makers to measure and track how research funding result in innovation action, and to adjust decisions if stated priorities are not achieved.
The European energy system will undergo major transformations in the coming decades to implement mitigation measures and comply with the Paris Agreement. In particular, the share of weather-dependent wind generation will increase significantly in the European energy mix. The most extreme fluctuations of the production at all time scales need to be taken into account in the design of the power system. In particular, extreme long-lasting low wind energy production events constitute a specific challenge, as most flexibility solutions do not apply at time scales beyond a few days. However, the probability and amplitude of such events has to a large extent eluded quantitative study so far due to lack of sufficiently long data. In this letter, using a 1000-year climate simulation, we study rare events of wind energy production that last from a few weeks to a few months over the January-February period, at the scale of a continent (Europe) and a country (France). The results show that the fluctuations of the capacity factor over Europe exhibit nearly Gaussian statistics at all time scales. A similar result holds over France for events longer than about two weeks and return times up to a few decades. In that case, the return time curves follow a universal curve. Furthermore, a simple Gaussian process with the same covariance structure as the data gives good estimates of the amplitude of the most extreme events. This method allows to estimate return times for rare events from shorter but more accurate data sources. We demonstrate this possibility with reanalysis data.
This interdisciplinary paper discusses the situation in the Czech lands in the early modern period with regard to Catholic theology, liturgics and the development of these disciplines. Given the large number of religious texts that emerged in this period, it focuses on the beginnings of Czech liturgical education and formation aimed at the laity within the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th century, i.e. liturgical manuals written in Czech.
AbstractAfter the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the sanctioning of new national borders in 1920, the successor states faced the controversial task of reconceptualizing the idea of national territory. Images of historically significant landscapes played a crucial role in this process. Employing the concept of mental maps, this article explores how such images shaped the connections between place, memory, and landscape in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Hungarian revisionist publications demonstrate how Hungarian nationalists visualized the organic integrity of “Greater Hungary,” while also implicitly adapting historical memory to the new geopolitical situation. As a counterpoint, images of the Váh region produced in interwar Czechoslovakia reveal how an opposing political agenda gave rise to a different imagery, while drawing on shared cultural traditions from the imperial past. Finally, the case study of Dévény/Devín/Theben shows how the idea of being positioned “between East and West” lived on in overlapping but politically opposed mental maps in the interwar period. By examining the cracks and continuities in the picturesque landscape tradition after 1918, the article offers new insight into the similarities and differences of nation-building processes from the perspective of visual culture.
This article covers the transformation of the ideal of a bishop and the bishop’s role during the Migration Period using the example of Gaul. Following a short description of the methodology, the ideal of the bishop in the period before the migration is discussed. The main aspects of the transformation of this ideal and the role of the bishop are then analysed, followed by any introduc-tory analysis of the source materials where the developments in Gaul are compared with other re-gions, primarily North Africa. The specific development of the gallic episcopate and gallic society is finally evaluated using the German Bischofsherrschaft medieval studies concept.
Lukas Brasiskis and Masha Shpolberg interview three emerging filmmakers/video artists about the climate crisis, the power of the moving image, and the rich but still unmined environmental history of East-Central Europe.
Santanu Saha, Simone Di Cataldo, Maximilian Amsler
et al.
In this work we probe the possibility of high-temperature conventional superconductivity in the boron-carbon system, using ab-initio screening. A database of 320 metastable structures with fixed composition (50$\%$/50$\%$) is generated with the Minima-Hopping method, and characterized with electronic and vibrational descriptors. Full electron-phonon calculations on sixteen representative structures allow to identify general trends in $T_{\textrm{c}}$ across and within the four families in the energy landscape, and to construct an approximate $T_{\textrm{c}}$ predictor, based on transparently interpretable and easily computable electronic and vibrational descriptors. Based on these, we estimate that around 10$\%$ of all metallic structures should exhibit $T_{\textrm{c}}$'s above 30 $K$. This work is a first step towards ab-initio design of new high-$T_{\textrm{c}}$ superconductors.
Giacomo Cacciapaglia, Corentin Cot, Francesco Sannino
A second wave pandemic constitutes an imminent threat to society, with a potentially immense toll in terms of human lives and a devastating economic impact. We employ the epidemic renormalisation group approach to pandemics, together with the first wave data for COVID-19, to efficiently simulate the dynamics of disease transmission and spreading across different European countries. The framework allows us to model, not only inter and extra European border control effects, but also the impact of social distancing for each country. We perform statistical analyses averaging on different level of human interaction across Europe and with the rest of the world. Our results are neatly summarised as an animation reporting the time evolution of the first and second waves of the European COVID-19 pandemic. Our temporal playbook of the second wave pandemic can be used by governments, financial markets, the industries and individual citizens, to efficiently time, prepare and implement local and global measures.
Parasites exhibiting a high degree of host specificity are expected to be intimately associated with their hosts. Therefore, the evolution of host-specific parasites is at least partially shaped by the evolutionary history and distribution of such hosts. Gill ectoparasites of Dactylogyrus (Monogenea) are specific to cyprinid fish. In the present study, we investigated the evolutionary history of 47 Dactylogyrus species from the Balkan Peninsula, the Mediteranean region exhibiting the highest cyprinid diversity in Europe, and from central European cyprinids. Phylogenetic analyses revealed four well-supported clades of endemic and non-endemic Dactylogyrus spp. with four basal taxa. Endemic cyprinids with a limited distribution range were parasitized by endemic Dactylogyrus species, but some of them shared several Dactylogyrus species with central European cyprinids. Species delimitation analyses based on molecular data suggest that Dactylogyrus diversity is higher than that defined from morphology. Some endemic cyprinid species harboured Dactylogyrus species of different origins, this probably resulting from multiple host switching. Our results support the view that the evolution of Dactylogyrus in the Balkans has been influenced not only by the historical dispersion and distribution of their cyprinid hosts, but also by recent contacts of non-native cyprinid species with endemic cyprinid fauna in this region.