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Nowadays, a high percentage (> 50%) of the paper produced in Europe uses recovered paper (secondary fibers) as raw material. In order to improve the mechanical properties of the paper produced, different kinds of additives are usually incorporated into the paper. Emerging renewable materials based on agricultural or forest residues, such as cellulose nanomaterials, have recently proved good capacities as reinforcing agents for different applications. In this work, pulp from wheat straw with a content of cellulose nanomaterial has been produced and tested as a mechanical reinforcing agent for paper production. A soda semi-chemical process was applied for the delignification of straw, to produce pulp with high cellulose content. Posteriorly, pulps with cellulose nanofibers were obtained in a high-pressure homogenizer, applying three different pretreatments to the cellulose pulp (acid hydrolysis, enzymatic hydrolysis and thermal treatment with glycerol) in order to facilitate the obtention of cellulose nanomaterial. Handsheets of paper were prepared from two sources of secondary fiber (fluting paper and old corrugated containers), adding different percentages of wheat straw derivatives (0, 3.5, 5 and 7%). The fibers' morphology and the papers' mechanical properties were investigated. Noticeable improvement rates (up to 25%) were observed for some mechanical properties of paper containing nanocellulose produced after the enzymatic and acid pretreatments. The quality of the secondary fibers source also affected the improvement rates achieved, with higher percentage changes for the lower-quality recycled paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the views of contemporary Muslim jurists about withdrawing treatment of the terminally ill. Its aim is threefold. Firstly, it analyses jurists' views concerning core themes within the process of withdrawing treatment. Secondly, it provides insight into fatwas about withdrawing treatment. Thirdly, it compares these views with current medical standards in Europe and the Atlantic world on withdrawing treatment. The data consisted of six papers by Muslim jurists presented at the conference of the Islamic Fiqh Council in 2015. We conducted a directed content analysis (DCA) through a predetermined framework and compiled an overview of all previous fatwas referred to in the papers, which are also analysed. The results show that the general consensus is that if health cannot be restored, treatment may be withdrawn at the request of the patient and/or his family or on the initiative of the doctor. The accompanying fatwa emphasizes the importance of life-prolonging treatment if this does not harm the patient. It becomes apparent in the fatwa that the doctor has the monopoly in decision-making, which is inconsistent with current medical standards in Europe. Managing disclosure in view of the importance of maintaining the hope of Muslim patients may challenge the doctor's obligation to share a diagnosis with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diagnosing immediate drug hypersensitivity reactions (IDHRs) can pose a significant challenge and there is an urgent need for safe and reliable tests. Evidence has emerged that the basophil activation test (BAT), an in vitro assay that mirrors the in vivo response, can be a complementary test for many drugs. In this position paper, members of Task Force (TF) "Basophil activation test in the evaluation of Drug Hypersensitivity Reactions" from the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) present the data from a survey about the use and utility of BAT in IDHRs in Europe. The survey results indicate that there is a great interest for using BAT especially for diagnosing IDHRs. However, there are still main needs, mainly in the standardization of the protocols. Subsequently consensus‐based recommendations were formulated for: (i) Technical aspects of BAT in IDHRs including type of sample, management of drugs, flow cytometry protocols, interpretation of the results; and (ii) Drug‐specific aspects that should be taken into account when performing BAT in relation to betalactams, neuromuscular blocking agents, fluoroquinolones, chlorhexidine, opioids, radio contrast media, chemotherapeutics, biological agents, nonsteroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs, COVID vaccine, and excipients. Moreover, aspects in the evaluation of pediatric population have also been considered. All this indicates that BAT offers the clinician and laboratory a complementary tool for a safe diagnostic for IDHRs, although its place in the diagnostic algorithm depends on the drug class and patient population (phenotype, geography, and age). The standardization of BAT is important for generalizing this method beyond the individual laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we are interested in modelling and solving a flow and resource planning problem related to the trade-in, treatment and resale of pre-owned consumer electronic products. This problem is motivated and inspired by the flows and the processes of the company Recommerce Group, which mainly handles traded-in used smartphones in Europe, but also used tablets, smartwatches, game consoles, laptops, etc. Collected products must be directed to refurbishment centres. After having been recorded, cleaned, tested and reset, they may be refurbished, or remanufactured by a subcontractor. They may also remain in their initial state. Finally, they are sold on diversified channels. This problem can be generalised to other refurbishment and remanufacturing activities of used consumer electronic products. We first formulate the problem as a mixed-integer linear program and show its NP-hardness. In order to solve large size real-life instances, mixed-integer programming based heuristic approaches are proposed. Extensive computational experiments on realistic instances are conducted to show the advantages and the limits of the proposed approaches. Several managerial insights are investigated and analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To ensure the precise dimensioning and effective testing of drivetrain components, it is crucial to have a thorough understanding of customer requirements, with a particular emphasis on customer stress on these components. An accurate interpretation of customer data is essential for determining representative customer requirements, such as load collectives. The automobile industry has faced challenges in analyzing large amounts of customer driving data to obtain representative load collectives as target values in durability design. However, due to technical limitations and cost constraints, collecting data from a large sample size is not feasible. The ongoing digitalization of the automotive industry, driven by an increasing number of connected vehicles, enhances data-based and customer-oriented development. This paper investigates representative customer load collectives using cloud data from over 40,000 customer vehicles to lay the groundwork for realizing robust requirement engineering. A systematic method for analyzing big data on the cloud was introduced. The derived component-specific damage distribution from these collectives adopts a unique approach, utilizing the 1% vehicle term instead of the common 1% customer term to represent typical customer stress. This study shows that the driven mileage and the number of vehicles are crucial factors in 1% vehicle analysis. An analysis of the characteristics of the 1% vehicle is conducted, followed by an exploration to determine the required vehicle quantity for obtaining stable results. The shape parameter of the damage distribution determines the necessary number of vehicles for a reliable conclusion. Additionally, a comparative analysis of market-specific customer requirements between the US and Europe is presented, and real usage differences in customer operations are explained using an operating point frequency heatmap. The information presented in this paper provides valuable input for optimizing durability design and conducting efficient, customer-oriented tests, resulting in significant reductions in development time and costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper centres the colonial pre-histories of 'the digital' to complicate posthumanist theorisations of subjectivity. Posthumanism helpfully undercuts human exceptionalism by presenting subjectivity as always-already co-constituted by technology. However, this paper argues that it insufficiently engages the human as the historico-political effect of negating the assumed non-technological colonial Other. Focusing on liberal humanism between the 16th and 19th centuries, the paper theorises the modern human as bound up in 'technological onticide'. The presumed absence of technology became a (theo-centric, ratio-centric, bio-centric) measure of the Other's sub-humanity, at the same time as this Other was expected to be humanised through its technologisation. An emphasis on technological onticide complicates universalist theories of subjectivity that take it as always a matter of human-technology co-constitution. The paper argues that, to confront the legacies of ontological murder, conceptual room needs to be made for in human, counter human or un human theories of subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth model (GM) programme in comparative and international political economy attempts to do three things. First, it encourages a dialogue between international and comparative political economy research through creating a shared theoretical framework that moves beyond the methodological and ontological nationalism of traditional comparative research. Second, it draws upon post-Keynesian macroeconomics to emphasise the importance of domestic demand, credit debt, and macro-financial regimes in shaping the politics of advanced capitalism. Third, it draws attention to the dynamics of political conflict, coalition building and social agency in shaping country-specific GMs. Each paper in this special issue either directly or indirectly touches on these different aspects of the nascent GM research programme. But they do so with a particular focus on the comparative political economy of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the distinct effects of linguistics distance and language literacy on the labor market integration of migrant men and women. Using data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2018 in 16 countries of destination mainly from Europe and more than 110 languages of origin, we assess migrant labor force participation, employment, working hours, and occupational prestige. The study finds that linguistics distance of the first language studied has a significant negative association with labor force participation, employment, and working hours of migrant women, even after controlling for their abilities in their destination language, education, and cultural distance between the country of origin and destination. In contrast, linguistics distance is only negatively associated with migrant men's working hours. This suggests that linguistic distance serves as a proxy for cultural aspects, which are not captured by cultural distance and hence shape the labor market integration of migrant women due to cultural factors rather than human capital. We suggest that the gender aspect of the effect of language proximity is essential in understanding the intersectional position of migrant women in the labor force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considered among the fastest-growing industries in the world, tourism brings immense benefits but also creates certain challenges. Conservation of natural resources is a stringent necessity, without which the extraordinary ecosystems' attributes that create the premises for nature-based tourism would reduce, alter, and subsequently disappear. The aim of the present review is twofold: gaining a general understanding of what nature-based tourism is and providing a systematic literature review of articles on nature-based tourism in European national and natural parks, with emphasis on their applicability. The articles included in the present review were selected based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. The review accounts for research conducted between 2000 and 2021 and is divided into two sections: articles aimed at understanding tourists' behaviour and articles that are focused on other stakeholders or have the local communities in the foreground. While many studies are aimed at understanding tourists' behaviour as a means of improving parks' management, participatory strategies including local communities are often indicated as beneficial. The results of this paper can facilitate future research in the field and provide valuable knowledge to policymakers and any interested parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban lab is an experimental governance approach for the co-creation of innovative solutions to urban challenges, such as climate change. However, urban lab scholarship has overlooked lab formation as a distinct process and is almost exclusively based on European cases. Therefore, little is known about the role of context conditions for lab formation in general and beyond Europe in particular. To address these gaps, this paper inductively analyses urban lab formation in five cities in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, develops a framework for the comparative analysis of lab formation challenges, and asks: What do the challenges encountered and the solutions developed during lab formation in these cities tell us about the context dependence of the urban lab approach and what are the implications for its potential beyond Europe? Comparing insights from Europe to the findings from Latin America, the paper answers these questions and identifies future research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]