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What are the implications of climate change for twenty-first-century conflict and security? Rising temperatures, it is often said, will bring increased drought, more famine, heightened social vulnerability, and large-scale political and violent conflict; indeed, many claim that this future is already with us. Divided Environments, however, shows that this is mistaken. Focusing especially on the links between climate change, water and security, and drawing on detailed evidence from Israel-Palestine, Syria, Sudan and elsewhere, it shows both that mainstream environmental security narratives are misleading, and that the actual security implications of climate change are very different from how they are often imagined. Addressing themes as wide-ranging as the politics of droughts, the contradictions of capitalist development and the role of racism in environmental change, while simultaneously articulating an original 'international political ecology' approach to the study of socio-environmental conflicts, Divided Environments offers a new and important interpretation of our planetary future.

The drylands of the Middle East have been long seen not only as unfavourable to life, but also and relatedly, socio-politically fragile. Fraught with myths of eternal ‘ethnic’, ‘sectarian’, or ‘res...

The paper guides three scenarios of power planning for Vietnam for the 2018–2030 period under CO2 emission targets. The analysis employs a model of energy expansion in the form of an optimization problem with the objective of the discounted entire system cost minimization. With each CO2 emission allowance, a scenario of the newly installed capacity structure will be carried out. The results indicate that instead of 42.6% coal-fired installed capacity as indicated in the National Power Development Master Plan for the 2011–2020 period with the Vision to 2030 (known as PDP VII), by 2030 the share of this power source will be around 29% (8% CO2 reduction scenario) and 19% (25% CO2 reduction scenario). Also, the lower emission sources such as hydro, wind, and solar power will be a priority for investment in the next decade. There is an existence of coal-fired power plants replacement by natural gas stations. Keywords: Power planning, Optimization problem, CO2 reduction target

When the Greek prime minister admired Delacroix’ famous painting ‘The Battle of Chios’ in the Louvre Museum during a state visit to France in 2021, this was meaningful in more than one way. Not only did he and French president Macron celebrate the second centenary of the 1821 “Greek Revolution.” They also reaffirmed their 200-year-old geopolitical alliance in the Eastern Mediterranean. An alliance between two countries that see themselves as the birthplace of European civilisation. Then, as now, celebrating their Europeanness went beyond artistic depictions and symbolisms. The creation of a White European space by virtue of a concrete struggle against an Oriental other, thus, delimited not only the Greco-Ottoman, but also Europe’s South-eastern borders. What IR has come to understand as the ‘spatial turn’, a return to emphasising the (un)making of borders and space, took, and takes, place in the Aegean. Looking back at the significance of the Greek War of Independence, this article reveals that, much like the violence in Delacroix’ painting, this formation of inter-national modernity, far from merely being a civilisational achievement, was bloody and genocidal. The painting’s conventional Orientalist understanding sees a white European people massacred by an Oriental occupying force. A careful re-historicisation of the Greek independence struggle reveals, however, that it had highly specific social and geopolitical origins that cannot be reduced to a spreading European Enlightenment. An alliance between local social forces gave rise to a struggle that was consolidated by mass violence. The international invention on behalf of Greece didn’t represent a shift towards a liberal international order giving rise to a reborn Athenian Republic. It represented a compromise between otherwise divided conservative dynasties imposing their designs on the young state. Finally, the article will argue that this historical episode embodies a continuing social process of European border making.

Software zur Simulation von Laborumgebungen bietet einen neuen Zugang zum Experimentieren in den Naturwissenschaften ohne entsprechende Ausstattung. Das digitale Format ermöglicht zusätzlich eine leichtere Anpassung der Experimenterfahrung an die unterschiedlichen Bedürfnisse der Schüler*innen. Dies liegt an der Barrierefreiheit, die durch die Unabhängigkeit von physischen Laboren entsteht, und an der Möglichkeit, dass Schüler*innen dadurch schnell und unmittelbar auf zusätzliche Informationen, Hilfe und Feedback zugreifen können. Aufgrund der Potentiale, die der Einsatz simulierter Labore birgt, ist es wichtig (angehende) Lehrpersonen in der Verwendung solcher Simulationen zu schulen und darüber hinaus zu ergründen, wie die Software zur Differenzierung naturwissenschaftlicher Lehr-Lern-Inhalte in der Praxis genutzt werden kann. Diese Problemstellung bildet den Ausgangspunkt für ein Pilotprogramm, in dessen Rahmen eine Lehrveranstaltung entwickelt wird, in der Biologielehramtsstudierende mit der Simulations-Software vertraut gemacht und im Zuge eines Abschlussprojekts dazu aufgefordert werden, Ideen zum Einsatz der Software im Sinne eines gerechten und inklusiven Naturwissenschaftsunterrichts zu entwickeln.

Few observers will have noticed that Turkey is second only to the USA in having large parts of its army stationed abroad. This contribution will focus on these interventions – which are diverse in ...

A point visibility graph is a graph induced by a set of points in the plane where the vertices of the graph represent the points in the point set and two vertices are adjacent if and only if no other point from the point set lies on the line segment between the two corresponding points. The set of all point visibility graphs form a graph class which is examined from a computational complexity perspective in this paper. We show NP-hardness for several classic graph problems on point visibility graphs such as Feedback Vertex Set , Longest Induced Path , Bisection and F - Free Vertex Deletion (for certain sets F ). Furthermore, we consider the complexity of the Dominating Set problem on point visibility graphs of points on a grid.

Car service technicians are challenged by the increasing variety and complexity of repair and maintenance tasks. Recent studies have shown benefits by using augmented reality (AR) for different industrial tasks. Most studies compared a very established support technology with the new AR support in just one initial exposure. The lack of routine in dealing with AR often creates a respective disadvantage. This paper looks into the question to which extent can AR head-mounted display (AR HMD) guidance provide benefits for an unknown car repair task. To investigate further than an initial exposure, the service technicians repeated the specific task every two weeks in total four times. The experiment under field conditions compares the efficiency, the repair quality, and the mental effort under AR HMD support to the traditional repair guideline. Results indicated that AR HMD support impacts positive the repair quality immediately and long term. Furthermore, the AR HMD support created a decent learning environment, that the high quality also remained without AR guidance. This shows opportunities to use AR HMDs for training and guidance of industrial tasks in practice.

The use of augmented reality (AR) guidance is seen as an opportunity to address the growing complexity of industrial tasks. Previous research showed benefits of AR for different industrial tasks especially for novice users, while other research suggests that AR was not superior to other means for novices. However, there is not much work that looks at the relation between initial exposure of users to AR (that is, if users have never used AR before) and different types of tasks. In this industry paper, addressing the field of car maintenance and repair, we look into the question of how AR support impacts the performance in familiar and unfamiliar task if the AR user has never used AR before. By running an experiment under field conditions, we investigate whether the familiarity of a specific repair task has an impact on the performance under AR head-mounted display (AR HMD) guidance compared to a traditional repair guideline. Our experiment reveals interesting insights. First, we show that familiarity and routine have an important impact on adherence to (all) repair guidelines, which should be regarded in future studies. Second, despite its novelty and the corresponding added time to deal with an AR HMD, we found that guidance via an AR HMD worked better for unfamiliar tasks. This shows the potential of AR HMDs for guidance of industrial tasks in practice, and it brings up design suggestions for the implementation of this guidance in practice.

A 2008 water crisis triggered collective fears of droughts and long-term scarcities both north and south of the buffer zone dividing the Mediterranean island of Cyprus since 1974. Tectonic shifts in the island’s water management were the result. Central to export oriented agricultural production since British colonial days, water has always been a policy priority throughout independence, conflict and division for all administrations on the island. With discourses of scarcity and impending doom on the rise, policy makers north and south of the buffer zone started investing heavily in non-conventional high capacity water resources. Since October 2015 an underwater pipeline from the Turkish mainland supplies the north of the island with freshwater while the Republic of Cyprus has commissioned desalination plants through public private partnerships. This article argues that both the construction of the motherland’s “umbilical water cord” in the north as well as the “desalination rush” in the south are not just reactions to issues of environmental scarcity. It shows that Malthusian narratives of water scarcity leading to conflict are just as mistaken as liberal notions of scarcity leading to cooperation. Instead, relationships of power, rooted in post-colonial state formation, development, conflict and division have motivated financially costly but politically expedient investments in excess capacities, rather than improvement of water management. Both the northern and southern water infrastructure boom is understood within its geopolitical context of creating water as political capital in the peace process. This geo-politically conditioned over-engineering of water resources, finally, provides ample grounds for rethinking the relations between water, conflict and division more generally.

The centrality of a vertex v in a network intuitively captures how important v is for communication in the network. The task of improving the centrality of a vertex has many applications, as a higher centrality often implies a larger impact on the network or less transportation or administration cost. In this work we study the parameterized complexity of the NP-complete problems Closeness Improvement and Betweenness Improvement in which we ask to improve a given vertex’ closeness or betweenness centrality by a given amount through adding a given number of edges to the network. Herein, the closeness of a vertex v sums the multiplicative inverses of distances of other vertices to v and the betweenness sums for each pair of vertices the fraction of shortest paths going through v. Unfortunately, for the natural parameter “number of edges to add” we obtain hardness results, even in rather restricted cases. On the positive side, we also give an island of tractability for the parameter measuring the vertex deletion distance to cluster graphs.

Cataloged from PDF version of article. This article develops a new framework for understanding environment-conflict relations, on both theoretical grounds and through a qualitative historical analysis of the links between water and conflict in the states of Sudan and South Sudan. Theoretically, the article critiques the dominant emphases on ‘scarcity’, ‘state failure’ and ‘under-development’ within discussions of environmental security, and proposes an alternative model of environment-conflict relations centring on resource abundance and globally-embedded processes of state-building and development. Empirically, it examines three claimed (or possible) linkages between water and conflict in the Sudans: over trans-boundary waters of the Nile; over the links between internal resource scarcities and civil conflict; and over the internal conflict impacts of water abundance and development.We find thatthere exists only limited evidence in support ofthefirst two of these linkages, but plentiful evidence that water abundance, and state-directed processes of economic development and internal colonisation relating to water, have had violent consequences. We conclude that analysts and policymakers should pay more attention to the impacts of resource abundance, militarised state power and global political economic forces in their assessments of the potential conflict impacts of environmental and especially climate change. 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This is a reply to:Gol, Ayla. 2015. “Imagining the Middle East: The state, nationalism and regional international society.” Global Discourse 5 (3): 379–394. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/23269995.2015.1053191.

The introduction of automated oscillometric blood pressure monitors was the basis for today’s widespread use of blood pressure self-measurement. However, in atrial fibrillation, there is a controversial debate on the use of oscillometry because there is a high variability of heart rate and stroke volume. To date, the accuracy of oscillometric blood pressure monitoring in atrial fibrillation has only been investigated using auscultatory sphygmomanometry as reference method, which may be biased by arrhythmia as well. We performed a cross-sectional study in 102 patients (52 sinus rhythm, 50 atrial fibrillation) assessing the accuracy of an automated and validated oscillometric upper arm (M5 Professional, Omron) and wrist device (R5 Professional, Omron) to invasively assessed arterial pressure. Blood pressure values were calculated as the mean of 3 consecutive measurements. Systolic and diastolic blood pressure did not significantly differ in patients with sinus rhythm and atrial fibrillation, independent of the method of measurement ( P >0.05 each). The within-subject variability of the oscillometric measurements was higher in patients with atrial fibrillation compared with sinus rhythm ( P P >0.05 each). In conclusion, atrial fibrillation did not significantly affect the accuracy of oscillometric measurements, if 3 repeated measurements were performed.

Intermittent renewable power production from wind and sun requires significant backup generation to cover the power demand at all times. This holds even if wind and sun produce on average 100% of the required energy. Backup generation can be reduced through storage – averaging in time – and/or grid extensions – averaging in space. This report examines the interplay of these technologies with respect to the reduction of required backup energy. We systematically explore a wide parameter space of combinations of both technologies. Our simple, yet informative approach quantifies the backup energy demand for each scenario. We also estimate the resulting total system costs which allow us to discuss cost-optimal system designs.

As the civil war in Syria continues, in the territory of Rojava – in Kurdish, ‘the West’ – the northern Syrian Kurdish political movement is attempting to implement ‘libertarian municipalism’, based on the thoughts of United States (US) anarchist Murray Bookchin. Since the withdrawal of Syrian regime forces in 2012, the movement has consolidated significant territorial gains as a US ally in the anti-Islamic State (IS) struggle, while simultaneously securing Russian support. Viewed with suspicion by Turkey, Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, the geopolitical conditions of Rojava’s emergence are its greatest impediment. This article analyses Rojava’s model of rule and socioeconomic development, and its theory and practice in the context of the civil war, and regional Middle Eastern and wider global geopolitics. It reflects on Rojava’s place and meaning for contemporary geopolitics in the Middle East, and considers the territory’s prospects, discussing its transformative potential for an otherwise troubled region.

Turkey’s foreign policy activism has received mixed reviews. Some feel threatened by the alleged increasing Islamization of the country’s foreign policy, sometimes called ‘neo-Ottomanism’, which is seen as a significant revision of Turkey’s traditional transatlanticism. Others see Turkey as a stable democratic role model in a troubled region. This debate on Turkish foreign policy (TFP) remains dominated by a sense of confusion about what appear to be stark contradictions that are difficult to make sense of. Intervening in this debate, this article will develop an alternative perspective to existing accounts of Turkey’s new foreign policy. Offering a historical sociological approach to foreign policy analysis, it locates recent transformations in Turkey’s broader strategies of social reproduction. It subsequently argues that, contrary to claims about Turkey’s ‘axis shift‘, its changing foreign policies have in fact never been pro-Western or pro-American. All foreign policy ‘shifts’ and ‘inconsistencies’, we argue, are explicable in terms of historically changing strategies of social reproduction of the Ottoman and Turkish states responding to changing domestic and international conditions.

Im Kopernikus-Projekt ENavi werden die Rollen von Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) im Energiesystem und die Chancen der Digitalisierung für die Bereiche Strom, Wärme und Mobilität untersucht.

Cataloged from PDF version of article. This special issue of Geopolitics presents a series of critical interventions on the links between global anthropogenic climate change, conflict and security. In this introduction, we situate the special issue by providing an assessment of the state of debate on climate security, and then by summarising the eight articles that follow. We observe, to start with, that contemporary climate security discourse is dominated by a problematic ensemble of policy-led framings and assumptions. And we submit that the contributions to this issue help rethink this dominant discourse in two distinct ways, offering both a series of powerful critiques, plus new interpretations of climate-conflict linkages which extend beyond Malthusian orthodoxy. ©, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

How should we characterise the relations between environmental scarcity, conflict, and migration? Most academic and policy analyses conclude that scarcities of environmental resources can have significant impacts upon conflict and migration, and claim or imply that within the context of accelerating global environmental changes these impacts are likely to become more significant still. Many analyses admittedly recognise that these impacts are often indirect rather than direct and that there exist multiple ‘drivers’ of conflict and migration, of which environmental stresses are but one. We argue that even these qualifications do not go far enough, however: they still overstate the current and likely future significance of environmental changes and stresses in contributing to conflict and migration and underemphasise a far more important causal pathway—from conflict and migration to environmental vulnerabilities. These arguments are advanced via a comparative analysis of water–migration–conflict linkages in Cyprus and Israel and the West Bank and Gaza. Keywords: water, conflict, migration, scarcity, Cyprus, Israel–Palestine

Der Vortrag gibt einen Überblick über aktuell verfügbare und eingesetzte Speichertechnologien. Exemplarisch werden aktuelle Entwicklungstrends und Forschungsarbeiten zu stationären Batterietechnologien vorgestellt. Ausgewählte Anwendungsbeispiele von stationären Energiespeichern unterschiedlicher Technologien und Größen auf unterschiedlichen Netzebenen werden im Detail diskutiert. Der Vortrag schließt mit systemtechnischen Entwicklungen und Perspektiven für stationäre Stromspeicher.

The renewable power generation aggregated across Europe exhibits strong seasonal behaviors. Wind power generation is much stronger in winter than in summer. The opposite is true for solar power generation. In a future Europe with a very high share of renewable power generation those two opposite behaviors are able to counterbalance each other to a certain extent to follow the seasonal load curve. The best point of counterbalancing represents the seasonal optimal mix between wind and solar power generation. It leads to a pronounced minimum in required stored energy. For a 100% renewable Europe the seasonal optimal mix becomes 55% wind and 45% solar power generation. For less than 100% renewable scenarios the fraction of wind power generation increases and that of solar power generation decreases.

Background Kidney allograft function crucially depends on the quality of organ perfusion. Duplex sonography, however, frequently reveals hypoperfused segments that remained undetectable to visual inspection intraoperatively. To date, no imaging system supplementing the surgeon's experience has achieved clinical acceptance. The present work examines whether laser-assisted indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence-videography can be used as a safe and sensitive technique for the intraoperative assessment of renal allograft perfusion. Methods Intraoperative assessment of organ perfusion by laser-assisted ICG fluorescence videography (IC-VIEW) was performed in 10 consecutive de novo renal transplantations. The IC-VIEW system allows the visualization of graft perfusion by the fluorescein dye ICG that emits infrared light after exposure to laser light. Results Perfusion measurements were successful in all 10 transplant recipients. Fluorescence videography produced brilliant, sharply contrasted images of the organs, allowing the detection of even small perfusion deficits. Remarkably, this technique detected 1 large perfusion defect that had remained imperceptible to visual inspection. Repositioning of the graft led to a homogeneous overall perfusion. There were no complications with the ICG injection or the imaging device. Conclusion Laser-assisted ICG fluorescence videography is a feasible and safe technique for the intraoperative assessment of renal allograft perfusion.

The increasing share of decentralized small and medium power plants opens up interesting options for a paradigmatic change of network operation strategies. On the one hand fluctuating generation principally endanger robust network operation. On the other hand there is an economic and ecological pressure to maximize the infeed of renewable energy sources. There is therefore a need for a cheap and scalable solution to meet these challenges. The solution we propose requires more decision intelligence and communication between the players in the electrical network. Scalability is achieved if the central control task is distributed among the intelligent players. Optimization of the control problem then means to devise a set of roles for the players and rules among them. We present such a basic set of roles and rules. We discuss the self-organization that occurs on the basis of these rules, the system performance as well as the consequences for the evolution of present-day strategies of network operation.

The term `Balkanization' has found entry in the social sciences vocabulary as a metaphor for diversity at best, social and political instability for the most part, and genocidal war at worst. And yet it is precisely the emergence of a variety of national states and the Ottoman Empire's disintegration that are frequently portrayed as processes of `modernizing' as well as `naturalizing' the international system of the Balkans and the Middle East. By offering a historical sociological re-construction of early modern Ottoman history up to the Greek Revolt in 1821, I argue in this article that the national secessions were not synonymous with the creation of a `modern' international system in southeastern Europe. National independence cannot therefore be understood as a functional derivate of an expanding European Modernity mediated through global capitalism or geopolitical competition. Rather, the various secessions were the result of a series of conservative reactions to the modernization efforts of the Ottoman central administration. National state formation and Ottoman disintegration, on the one hand, and capitalist development and modern sovereignty on the other, have thus to be seen rather as having historically and socially distinct origins than as representing two sides of the same coin of a totalizing form of European international modernity.