Abstract In this paper, we investigate how market concentration and efficiency impact banks’ performance and stability during the SAR-COV-2 pandemic. There is a research gap in the empirical literature in understanding the specific impact of market concentration and efficiency on the profitability and risk-taking behavior of banks, particularly in the developing context of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. To address this gap, we examine the relationship between market concentration, efficiency, and bank performance using a comprehensive dataset encompassing 575 banks across 20 MENA countries from 2006 to 2021. Specifically, we examine the market dynamics and performance of different banking systems co-existing in the MENA region. Our findings indicate that prior to the pandemic, both conventional and Islamic banks benefited from enhanced financial stability as a result of the increased market concentration and efficiency. However, during the pandemic, the positive effects of efficiency and concentration were primarily observed within the group of Islamic banks. Furthermore, we provide new evidence for the moderating effect of market concentration, with a significant negative impact suggesting that increased market competition reinforces the efficiency effect during the pandemic. Our findings are important for policymakers and regulatory authorities in the MENA region as they indicate the need for new policies that assign a more significant role to Islamic banking in the post-SAR-COV-2 recovery.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Social Sciences
María Virginia Palchetti, Fernando Zamudio, Sebastián Zeballos
et al.
Plants are essential for our lives because they provide food, medicine, fuel, shelter, and immaterial resources. Understanding patterns of plant uses through large-scale plant use analysis may contribute to the development of a biocultural conservation approach. We conducted a systematic review to assess current knowledge of the ethnoflora of Argentina, as well as to identify taxonomic and geographic patterns of ethnobotanical uses of native plants at the large scale. We analyzed 124 articles reporting the use of 1706 species. We found that the most widely studied region and use category were Chaco and medicine, respectively. The number of useful native species within a family was positively related to the total native species in each family at the country level. In general, species of greatest cultural importance at the country level had a wide distribution. Almost 70% of native plants used in one phytogeographic province were exclusive to it, and species with the highest importance were characteristic elements of its vegetation. We found that southern Argentina has an exclusive ethnoflora that differs from that in a large area of central and northern Argentina. Our review highlights that plants used by people are intimately associated with the local environment, and that species with great cultural importance across phytogeographic provinces are frequent in the landscape. We provide the first analysis of ethnobotanical studies and a database of useful native plants across Argentina. This information highlights strengths and gaps in knowledge of useful native species, which is crucial for conservation, sustainability and human well-being.
Ecology, General. Including nature conservation, geographical distribution
The summer hypoxia off the Changjiang Estuary is one of the largest coastal hypoxic systems in the world and has displayed spatial heterogeneity in recent years. Based on observation data in the summer of 2014, hypoxia was identified both in the bottom and mid-layers. Except for the typical bottom hypoxia in the submarine canyon, the subsurface oxygen minima (SOM) were captured in the mid-layer of 10~15 m, with lower dissolved oxygen in the mid-layer than at the bottom (30–50 m). This SOM phenomenon was located in the lower boundary of the pycnocline and above the Taiwan warm current (TWC) and Kuroshio subsurface water (KSSW). Due to the southern expansion of Changjiang diluted water (CDW), a high phytoplankton biomass (the maximum chlorophyll a of 25 μg L−1, pH of 8.6, and DO of 11 mg L−1) band occupied the surface area along 123°E. By analyzing the 24-h continuous observation and high-resolution profile data, we revealed that the subsurface oxygen minima were predominantly controlled by remineralization and bottom-flushing effects. Fast local consumption occurred near the pycnocline layer, while the lateral transport of oxygen-rich ambient water replenished the bottom oxygen deficit from south to north. We summarize and contextualize three hot spots of hypoxia into a conceptual diagram and emphasize the influences of advection, mixing, and respiration on their location and severity. Overall, compared with the discussion about the low DO background of TWC/KSSW, this research highlights the flushing effects of TWC/KSSW that will reshape the hypoxia structure and alleviate the hypoxia severity in the south hypoxia area off the Changjiang Estuary.
Science, General. Including nature conservation, geographical distribution
Циљ овог рада је изложити аргументацију Томе Аквинског у његовом покушају доказивања Бога, а поред тога и његово одређење душе. Најпре се осврћемо на средњи век и оно шта са њим долази, а и како је све то утицало на ауторе тог периода. Затим се конкретно фокусирамо на Бога, као Творца, а са тим и његов однос спрам човека. У трећем делу се у најосновнијим цртама бавимо поимањем душе и њеним својствима. У закључку је обухваћена суштина читавог рада, као и одраз и утицај који су остали аутори имали на Тому Аквинског.
Social Sciences, History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
According to Trianon Peace Treaty in 1920, the entire territory of historical Transylvania that belonged to Hungary became a part of Greater Romania. This area was inhabited by a big amount of Hungarian people, the Hungarian national minority in Romania numbered approximately 1,5 million people. The issue is aimed to present the process of isolation of Hungarians in state life and local governments in Transylvania within the framework of Romanian efforts for creating a homogenic state. The irst half of the 1930s was a period of economic crisis and the position of the Hungarians was shaken even more. From 1938 to 1940, in order to protect against revanchist aspirations, the implementation of which in the international arena became more and more real, discriminatory measures against Hungarians continued in the ield of labor law, the use of language and economy.
Law, History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
This essay investigates how modern day piracy off of the coast of Somalia has negatively impacted international trade. The paper breaks down possible causes of Somali piracy and offers possible solutions to the problem after it has been made known. Since the topic and research is so current and because the piracy problem still exists today, readers will be drawn to this essay. Final grade - 85.
Este texto foi proferido na Conferência de abertura do III Negras Antropologias,
realizado nos dias 26 e 27 de novembro de 2019, no Instituto de Ciências
Sociais da Universidade de Brasília. Primeiro apresento um breve histórico
sobre a formação do Coletivo Zora Hurston, composto por estudantes negras
e negros do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social da UnB, e
relembro as edições anteriores do evento. Em seguida, ancorada nos trabalhos
de Frantz Fanon, Abdias do Nascimento e Lélia Gonzalez, discuto os efeitos de
suas negras epistemologias na teoria antropológica.
A proposição básica deste artigo é apresentar um estudo exploratório acerca dos movimentos educativos populares da década de 1960, especialmente a Campanha de Educação Popular que se desenvolveu na Paraíba entre 1961 e 1964, e as Ligas Camponesas. Objetiva-se, assim, realizar um mapeamento da produção acadêmica dos últimos dez anos (2006-2016) a partir de dois lócus epistêmicos: as reuniões da Associação Nacional de Pesquisa em Educação (Anped) e o Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação da Universidade Federal da Paraíba-UFPB que possui desde a década de 1970 uma linha de Pesquisa sobre Educação Popular. A dimensão descritiva da produção acadêmica e científica sobre o tema nos possibilitou uma aproximação teórica e conceitual com o objeto de estudo, uma ordenação do conjunto de informações e resultados obtidos sobre a temática, evidenciando a necessidade de pesquisas que tratem sobre a relação entre estas duas práticas de Educação Popular desenvolvidas no Estado da Paraíba na década de 1960.
In a journal entry from 1957, H.D. writes that Adorno’s description of the aging of modernist music might easily apply to the fate of her own work in the post-war period: “Among other fascinating things, he [Adorno] says that Bartók ‘could not quite live up to his own avant-guardism’ [sic] […]. I felt the phrase applied, in a way, to myself and my Helen sequence” (H.D. 2015, p. 40). H.D.’s remark refers to her long poem, <i>Helen in Egypt</i> (1960), which, with its engagement with classical sources and epic themes, seemed to some to be a throwback to an earlier modernist period in which Pound, Joyce, Eliot and H.D. herself had looked to ancient models as a means of reinvigorating modern literature. What did it mean for H.D. to feel that her work had outlived its time, to be a first-generation modernist still writing in that mode after many of her peers and their achievements had passed into history? This article explores H.D.’s sense that her practice was at odds with contemporary demands for poetry to answer to immediate historical concerns. It also considers her case against the critics in letters, notes and in <i>Helen in Egypt</i> which contains its own defense of the relevance of classical modernism to the post-war present day.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
The representations of the city in the literature constitute the field in which these works are inscribed. The analysis focuses on two novels of science fiction: High-Rise by J. G. Ballard (1930-2009), english novelist, and The World Inside by R. Silverberg (1935-), american author of science fiction. In both cases, political anticipation dominates. The construction of the story rests on a narrative device involving a social and urban order of verticality, producing a world, a society, a city, a mode of dwelling, all dominated by vertical principles. In the 1970s, the history of the Western world experienced a moment of rupture. The modern relationship of society to this world has inflected. Change affects urbanism and architecture as much as, for example, science fiction, which now makes the reality of the moment its main source of inspiration. At the same time, the construction of towers is experiencing a new episode of its history which has started in the beginning of the 20th century. This paper aims at deciphering the mechanisms inherent to this vertical territorial organizations by promoting the idea of “ville-tour”. Hence, it is possible to glimpse in the imaginary world that these stories promote, the possibility of a prospective of the vertical city. Methodologically, the geocritical approach is mobilized. After examining the foundations of the “ville-tour” and the changes to which it leads, the paper invites us to situate the contribution of fiction to a prospective study mainly in the disturbances that these fictions reveal. Two issues emerge: one is linked to the very reality of public space while the other questions the conditions of conception of a vertical urbanity. The conclusion invites us to extend the research: what belongs to the hybrid buildings seems to hold at a distance the “ville-tour” project’s of the untenable figure from the social condenser finally promoted by these novels.
Este artículo pone de relieve los esfuerzos realizados en el área de la adquisición de segundas lenguas para describir los mecanismos psicolingüísticos que el aprendiz de lenguas pone en práctica en el momento del aprendizaje. Esos mecanismos, identificados inicialmente como estrategias, fueron objeto de estudio por varios investigadores debido a la importancia que la competencia estratégica representa en el desarrollo de la competencia comunicativa del aprendiz. En coherencia con lo anterior, desde una perspectiva diacrónica, se describe cómo se ha ido confor- mando la noción de estrategia, sus diferentes tipologías y su importancia en el marco de una pedagogía para la autonomía, en la que el desarrollo de la autorregu- lación resulta esencial en el proceso de aprendizaje de una segunda lengua.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Philology. Linguistics
En el gobierno virreinal que sirvió de tránsito entre los reinados de Felipe IV y Carlos II, el Perú reveló su cara más autónoma dentro de los márgenes permitidos por los mecanismos jurídi-cos coloniales. El conde de Santisteban apareció como un virrey de escaso carácter, y eso, unido al proceso de visi-ta que sufría la jurisdicción, desembocó en el auge de los propios inspectores, de los miembros de la Real Audiencia de Lima y del Tribunal del Comercio gra-cias al apoyo en estructuras de marcado cariz clientelar.
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span><p style="margin: 0cm 42.55pt 0pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 14pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-pagination: none;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">This article elaborates on the role of the periodical fund of the national library named after M. F. Akhundov in the development of the Azerbaijani culture and science through a short survey of the funding history. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The main goal of this article is to create a comprehensive historical scene of the periodical fund of this library which was established in the first half of the twentieth century and to determine its function vis-à-vis the scientific idea of </span></span><span style="font-family: "Cambria Math","serif"; font-size: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";"></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-bidi-theme-font: major-bidi; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> national librarianship.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"> </span>
Information resources (General), Transportation and communications