Hasil untuk "Europe (General)"

J. Medlock, K. Hansford, A. Bormane et al.

Many factors are involved in determining the latitudinal and altitudinal spread of the important tick vector Ixodes ricinus (Acari: Ixodidae) in Europe, as well as in changes in the distribution within its prior endemic zones. This paper builds on published literature and unpublished expert opinion from the VBORNET network with the aim of reviewing the evidence for these changes in Europe and discusses the many climatic, ecological, landscape and anthropogenic drivers. These can be divided into those directly related to climatic change, contributing to an expansion in the tick’s geographic range at extremes of altitude in central Europe, and at extremes of latitude in Scandinavia; those related to changes in the distribution of tick hosts, particularly roe deer and other cervids; other ecological changes such as habitat connectivity and changes in land management; and finally, anthropogenically induced changes. These factors are strongly interlinked and often not well quantified. Although a change in climate plays an important role in certain geographic regions, for much of Europe it is non-climatic factors that are becoming increasingly important. How we manage habitats on a landscape scale, and the changes in the distribution and abundance of tick hosts are important considerations during our assessment and management of the public health risks associated with ticks and tick-borne disease issues in 21st century Europe. Better understanding and mapping of the spread of I. ricinus (and changes in its abundance) is, however, essential to assess the risk of the spread of infections transmitted by this vector species. Enhanced tick surveillance with harmonized approaches for comparison of data enabling the follow-up of trends at EU level will improve the messages on risk related to tick-borne diseases to policy makers, other stake holders and to the general public.

M. Rudwaleit, D. Heijde, R. Landewé et al.

C. Agyemang, J. Addo, Raj S. Bhopal et al.

BackgroundMost European countries are ethnically and culturally diverse. Globally, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death. The major risk factors for CVD have been well established. This picture holds true for all regions of the world and in different ethnic groups. However, the prevalence of CVD and related risk factors vary among ethnic groups.MethodsThis article provides a review of current understanding of the epidemiology of vascular disease, principally coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke and related risk factors among populations of Sub-Sahara African descent (henceforth, African descent) in comparison with the European populations in Europe.ResultsCompared with European populations, populations of African descent have an increased risk of stroke, whereas CHD is less common. They also have higher rates of hypertension and diabetes than European populations. Obesity is highly prevalent, but smoking rate is lower among African descent women. Older people of African descent have more favourable lipid profile and dietary habits than their European counterparts. Alcohol consumption is less common among populations of African descent. The rate of physical activity differs between European countries. Dutch African-Suriname men and women are less physically active than the White-Dutch whereas British African women are more physically active than women in the general population. Literature on psychosocial stress shows inconsistent results.ConclusionHypertension and diabetes are highly prevalent among African populations, which may explain their high rate of stroke in Europe. The relatively low rate of CHD may be explained by the low rates of other risk factors including a more favourable lipid profile and the low prevalence of smoking. The risk factors are changing, and on the whole, getting worse especially among African women. Cohort studies and clinical trials are therefore needed among these groups to determine the relative contribution of vascular risk factors, and to help guide the prevention efforts. There is a clear need for intervention studies among these populations in Europe.

David Pisinger, S. Røpke

We present a unified heuristic which is able to solve five different variants of the vehicle routing problem: the vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW), the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP), the multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP), the site-dependent vehicle routing problem (SDVRP) and the open vehicle routing problem (OVRP). All problem variants are transformed into a rich pickup and delivery model and solved using the adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) framework presented in Ropke and Pisinger [An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the pickup and delivery problem with time windows. Transportation Science, to appear]. The ALNS framework is an extension of the large neighborhood search framework by Shaw [Using constraint programming and local search methods to solve vehicle routing problems. In: CP-98, Fourth international conference on principles and practice of constraint programming, Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 1520, 1998. p. 417-31] with an adaptive layer. This layer adaptively chooses among a number of insertion and removal heuristics to intensify and diversify the search. The presented approach has a number of advantages: it provides solutions of very high quality, the algorithm is robust, and to some extent self-calibrating. Moreover, the unified model allows the dispatcher to mix various variants of VRP problems for individual customers or vehicles. As we believe that the ALNS framework can be applied to a large number of tightly constrained optimization problems, a general description of the framework is given, and it is discussed how the various components can be designed in a particular setting. The paper is concluded with a computational study, in which the five different variants of the vehicle routing problem are considered on standard benchmark tests from the literature. The outcome of the tests is promising as the algorithm is able to improve 183 best known solutions out of 486 benchmark tests. The heuristic has also shown promising results for a large class of vehicle routing problems with backhauls as demonstrated in Ropke and Pisinger [A unified heuristic for a large class of vehicle routing problems with backhauls. European Journal of Operational Research, 2004, to appear].

Martin R Miller, R. Crapo, J. Hankinson et al.

M. Antrop

G. Andersson, P. Donalek, R. Farmer et al.

On August 14, 2003, a cascading outage of transmission and generation facilities in the North American Eastern Interconnection resulted in a blackout of most of New York state as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. On September 23, 2003, nearly four million customers lost power in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden following a cascading outage that struck Scandinavia. Days later, a cascading outage between Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst power system failures in the last few decades. The Power System Stability and Power System Stability Controls Subcommittees of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee sponsored an all day panel session with experts from around the world. The experts described their recent work on the investigation of grid blackouts. The session offered a unique forum for discussion of possible root causes and necessary steps to reduce the risk of blackouts. This white paper presents the major conclusions drawn from the presentations and ensuing discussions during the all day session, focusing on the root causes of grid blackouts. This paper presents general conclusions drawn by this Committee together with recommendations based on lessons learned.

I. Burfield, F. V. Bommel

K. McCormick, Niina Kautto

A bioeconomy can be defined as an economy where the basic building blocks for materials, chemicals and energy are derived from renewable biological resources. This paper provides an overview of the bioeconomy in Europe, examining it from a policy framework and concept perspective. The role of bioenergy in the bioeconomy is discussed particularly through biofuels for transport and biorefineries. The study finds that the definitions of the bioeconomy are evolving and vary depending on the actor, but display similarities such as the emphasis on economic output and a broad, cross-sectoral focus. While there is great optimism about the benefits and opportunities associated with developing an advanced bioeconomy in Europe, significant risks and trade-offs are also expressed. Furthermore, the bioeconomy concept has been criticised for presenting a technical fix and pre-empting alternative visions. To advance a competitive and sustainable bioeconomy, this paper calls for attention on two important themes: participatory governance that engages the general public and key stakeholders in an open and informed dialogue as well as a commitment by government and industry to innovation that drives concerted efforts on sustainable development of the bioeconomy.

Michihiko Goto, M. Al-Hasan, M. Al-Hasan

Basarudin, Suparman Jayadi

Just like in Java there is Kiai, in Sunda there is ajengan, in Sumatra there is buya, in Aceh there is teungku, in Madura there is bindara, and in the Nusa Tenggara region there is Tuan Guru Besar, abbreviated as TGB. He has contributions and thoughts in the educational aspect to guide the elderly and children. This article aims to find out the contributions and thoughts of TGH Muhammad Najmuddin Makmun. This research uses historical research methods which have four stages, namely, heuristics, criticism, interpretation and historiography. In this research, the results can be obtained that, TGH Muhammad Najmuddin Makmun was a scholar who was born in 1920 M and had studied in Mecca for several years with teachers there. In terms of his leadership, he is wise, charismatic, simple and does not differentiate between the social strata of society and the students he teaches, prioritizing equality. TGH Muhammad Najmuddin Makmun educational thought is to improve and increase the existence of Islamic teachings, by referring to the teachings of monotheism education so that it can be used as a process of formation or guidance based on the Islamic religion, so that students are able to carry out their humanitarian duties as well as possible and adhere firmly to strong faith and intentions. In his contribution, he put it into educating the community, both children and the elderly. Through thoriqot establishments to educate the elderly, as well as Islamic boarding schools to educate children.

Maximiliano Camarda

La provincia de Entre Ríos se encuentra en un espacio con características insulares dentro del territorio argentino, y en su interior contiene cientos de arroyos y bosque nativo. El transporte vial en ese contexto estuvo marcado por la necesidad de la construcción de puentes y caminos. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las políticas públicas provinciales en infraestructura vial en Entre Ríos durante el periodo radical, de 1914 a 1943. Con ese fin se trabajó con los Mensajes de los Gobernadores, los cuales consistían en informes que describían las obras del año anterior y proyectaban lo planificado para el año entrante. También se analizaron las Memorias de Gobierno y Obra pública. Finalmente, se complejizó la mirada con los Diarios de Sesiones de la Honorable Cámara de Diputados de la Provincia de Entre Ríos.

Floriana-Bogdana CIOBANU, Marius VLADU

The LEADER programme provides new opportunities for rural development, identifies the local gaps/needs and implements the new solutions using a bottom-up approach. The publication follows the evolution of the programme both at European and national level, namely in Romania. The information was generated by the Ministry of Agriculture website and Rural Development and by the European Commission. They were processed by the Court of Accounts. In the European Union it was first introduced 32 years ago while in Romania only 16 years ago. The central mechanism and at the same time the beneficiary of this programme is the LAG (Local Action Group), meant to facilitate implementing the LEADER principles. The programme became compulsory to every member state between 2014–2020 and each state had to provide 5% of the rural development fund for the LEADER policy, excepting Croatia since it had just adhered to the EU, in 2013.In Romania, between 2011–2012, 163 LAGs were established while currently the number goes up to 259. However, parts of the Romanian territory are still not covered by any LAG, although they are eligible for the LEADER implementation. On the other hand, between 2014–2020 some LAGs’ functioning authorizations were canceled. In Europe, a number of 143,487 LEADER projects were registered. Although the EU planned to provide funding of up to Euro 9.2 billion, the real amount was of 7 billion.

T. Steiner, L. Stovner, Z. Katsarava et al.

BackgroundEuropean data, at least from Western Europe, are relatively good on migraine prevalence but less sound for tension-type headache (TTH) and medication-overuse headache (MOH). Evidence on impact of headache disorders is very limited. Eurolight was a data-gathering exercise primarily to inform health policy in the European Union (EU). This manuscript reports personal impact.MethodsThe study was cross-sectional with modified cluster sampling. Surveys were conducted by structured questionnaire, including diagnostic questions based on ICHD-II and various measures of impact, and are reported from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom. Different methods of sampling were used in each. The full methodology is described elsewhere.ResultsQuestionnaires were analysed from 8,271 participants (58% female, mean age 43.4 y). Participation-rates, where calculable, varied from 10.6% to 58.8%. Moderate interest-bias was detected. Unadjusted lifetime prevalence of any headache was 91.3%. Gender-adjusted 1-year prevalences were: any headache 78.6%; migraine 35.3%; TTH 38.2%, headache on ≥15 d/mo 7.2%; probable MOH 3.1%. Personal impact was high, and included ictal symptom burden, interictal burden, cumulative burden and impact on others (partners and children). There was a general gradient of probable MOH > migraine > TTH, and most measures indicated higher impact among females. Lost useful time was substantial: 17.7% of males and 28.0% of females with migraine lost >10% of days; 44.7% of males and 53.7% of females with probable MOH lost >20%.ConclusionsThe common headache disorders have very high personal impact in the EU, with important implications for health policy.

A. Rodríguez‐Pose, V. Berlepsch

Christopher Storrs

Chingis Ts. Tsyrenov

Introduction. The southern Chinese empire of Eastern Jin, which lost its northern lands in 316, did not lose hope of reclaiming its territories. The East Jin commander Huan Wen undertook three military expeditions to Northern China: the first campaign of 354 (against the northwestern “barbarian” kingdom of the Di clan — Former Qin), the second campaign of 356 (against the rebellious Northern Chinese barbarian general Yao Xiang), and the third campaign of 368 (against the Xianbei kingdom of Former Yan). The purpose of the article was to give a general overview and a brief analysis of the events associated with the three campaigns, as well as to identify the causes and consequences of the victories and defeats of the Chinese side. Materials and methods. The main research methods were historical-genetic, historical-biographical, and historical-geographical analysis of relevant events and personalities. The major source of information about the events associated with Huan Wen’s three campaigns to the North is the official dynastic history “History of the Jin [Dynasty]” (“Jin Shu”), namely the Zaiji section and the Liezhuan biographical section. Results. The unsuccessful outcome of the initially successful campaigns of Huan Wen may be explained by the factional struggle between the capital (Yangzhou) and regional (Jingzhou) groupings of the ruling elite of the Eastern Jin state, as well as the general degradation of the central government apparatus. The crushing defeat of the third northern campaign led to the loss of the territories in Central China previously conquered by the Jin army and the decline of the court career of Huan Wen himself. But his clan remained an influential power in the Jingzhou region.

Ioan Carol Opris

Our paper aims at bringing more facts to light over one of the Lower Danube forts – i.e. <em>Cius</em> (Gârliciu), by using all available data, including cartographic information, archive mentions by Pamfil Polonic, other epigraphic and numismatic elements, or aero-photogrammetric high-resolution imagery. In early 3^rd century AD it was mentioned in <em>Itinerarium Antonini Augusti</em> 224.5, at a distance of 10000 steps from <em>Carsium </em>(Hârșova)<em> </em>and another 14000 steps from <em>Beroe</em> (Piatra Frecăței). Both forts identified at <em>Cius</em> are situated on Hissarlık Hill, at the end of a 1.5 km long narrow peninsula mentioned by Themistius in the 4^th century AD, almost surrounded by water and wetland. In ancient times, it must have had direct contact to the river and very likely had its own port. Nobody knows anything on the earlier 2^nd-3^rd century <em>castellum</em> and if it stood on the same plateau or if it exploited some other vantage point in the area. On the contrary, Late Roman <em>Cius</em> (120 : 120 m) was built, as most of the fortifications along the Lower Danube frontier, in the last decades of the 3^rd – early decades of the 4^th century. Equipped with U-shaped towers and possibly with a splayed fan-shaped or rectangular (?) corner-tower projecting outward, the larger fortification presents typical Tetrarchic/ Constantinian characteristics, revealed by interpreting recent aerial photos. A second, smaller fort (85 : 60 m) has been identified at the end of the peninsula towards the Hasarlâc Lake. With its <em>Bauinschrift </em>dated 369 AD found somewhere in the middle of its northern side, the latter must be the one explicitly mentioned by Themistius in his <em>On the Peace</em> – 10^th Oration, as being built on a personal initiative of Emperor Valens, during its Gothic war against Athanaric.

K. Van Aerden, Vanessa Puig-Barrachina, K. Bosmans et al.

Simon Schwerin

The present work deals with the inter relationships of blockchain technology and the new European General Data Protection Regulation, that will be intact after May 28th, 2018. The regulation harmonises personal data protection across the European Union and aims to return the ownership of personal data to the individual. This thesis, therefore, addresses the question how this new technology that is characterised by decentralisation, immutability and truly digitised values will be affected by the strict privacy regulation and vice versa. The aim of this work is to clarify whether blockchains can comply with the new regulation on the one hand and to identify how blockchain could support its compliance, on the other hand. The questions are validated through an extensive literature review and are further investigated by using a Delphi study that asks a panel of 25 renowned experts to find opportunities, limitations and general suggestions about both topics. In addition, a framework is proposed to support the assessment of privacy and related risks of blockchains. As a result, it becomes apparent that blockchains can become more privacy friendly and comply with the regulation if an active dialogue between blockchain developers and regulatory authorities helps to strengthen their mutual understanding and work. With the support of this work and the blockchain Privacy Impact Assessment canvas a foundation for the necessary next steps is laid to overcome the challenges of defining a data controller or deleting personal data within a blockchain.