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Building on qualitative interviews, this article brings into view how New Delhi university students organized improvised forms of Covid relief during the Delta coronavirus wave in the spring of 2021. Responding to a lack of care due to state negligence and a breakdown of public and private healthcare infrastructure, students coordinated access to crucial resources such as masks, other personal protective equipment and even oxygen through the use of social media, existing social networks, and practices developed in earlier moments of organizing. Using the lenses of improvisation, rehearsal and repair, this article documents how students improvised informal Covid relief. Conceptually, the article offers the framework of transposition to look at how improvisational capacity in a social network was shifted from one crisis to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All around the world, new cities are popping up. Magically, they all closely resemble each other. They claim a cosmopolitan vibe that one typically associates with the big metropoles such as New York City, Buenos Aires, or Paris. These cities have become prototypical for 21st-century urbanism. They claim to be smarter and ecologically superior, seemingly providing a city-level answer to urging global problems like climate change. This account draws on critical urbanism to critically investigate the promises of model cities. I point out how these high-tech utopias are engineered in ways that render them logically feasible, drawing on the lively example of New Songdo City, South Korea. The powerful, formulaic logic of logistics does not only shape Songdo's physical transportation and communication networks but also its political structures and economic unfoldings. Infrastructure becomes a medium of what Easterling (2014) calls "extrastatecraft"; spatial infrastructure dictates and polices behaviors, thus becomes a medium of polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the data-centric digital circuits of global finance have been driving financial markets toward algorithmic management. The penetration of algorithms into finance dates back to the 1980s, well before becoming a significant trend in Internet and social media companies. AI is now considered the new frontier of this process. This paper examines Brazil, the most important financial center in Latin America, as a case study to explore Machine Learning applications in capital markets, providing new evidence on the penetration of automated trading systems in the region. Grounded in a historical overview of the digitalization of capital markets in Brazil, the paper draws on the STS definition of infrastructures and the political economy of digitalized finance to analyze AI as an emerging financial infrastructure. Beyond its physical and material aspects, this approach also addresses how digitalization and AI relate to financialization and the emergence of new financial risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a deeper understanding of the forms of streaming platform infrastructures as imagined and experienced by audiences. The empirical research is based on a qualitative audience study in Southeast Asia. Through the use of drawings of streaming platform maps, combining visual and interview methods, the article analyses visual forms depicting the infrastructures for global streaming platforms, e.g. Netflix, alongside transnational platforms and national cable channels, e.g. Astro. Out of this original research, a core finding is that audiences from the global south have multi-layered experiences of streaming platform infrastructures, technologies and lifestyles. A new concept of streaming platform imaginaries is developed in relation to the layering of platform infrastructures, thus contributing to a nuanced understanding of both real and imagined forms of streaming platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the rapidly evolving realm of financial technology, blockchain integration has catalyzed transformative changes. This study delves into the intricate relationship between traditional banks and the blockchain technology. Drawing from the perspectives of International Political Economy (IPE) and Science and Technology Studies (STS), this study understands the blockchain technology through the lens of infrastructure, where power dynamics are constantly shaped by the entity wielding the strongest agency. This analysis delves into how traditional banks strategically leverage blockchain not only for technological integration but to exert control. Grounded in the concept of "power of social interaction," this study reveals how and why banks secure a central position within this evolving infrastructure, dynamically influencing the interplay between technology and financial institutions. A focal point of this exploration is the tokenization process, which illustrates how banks actively engage with blockchain, seamlessly integrating it into their structures to shape the infrastructure narratives. By contributing insights into the implications of blockchain adoption by traditional banks, this study enhances understanding of power dynamics within financial infrastructures and their transformative potential, underscoring the process of infrastructuring governing the endeavor to attain a central position within an infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that medieval urban authorities developed nodal spatial strategies to mitigate various risks—from accidents, floods, and military vulnerability to sickness and scarcity. Using digital methods (Geographic Information System [GIS]) to map public works during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in one large city (Ghent), it offers a fuller understanding of urban governance in dialogue with a city's topography and environmental and sociopolitical challenges. Ghent's authorities invested in gates, bridges, markets, thoroughfares, key buildings, and waterworks. Tracing their interventions reveals the city as an interconnected, moving system, an economy of movement. Attention concentrated on these points because several types of interests related to communal well-being converged there. The city was thus capable of absorbing shocks (war, floods) through regular maintenance and monitoring. Tracing public works that promoted mobility can therefore tell us much about power dynamics and how communities functioned in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a manifesto for an infrastructural turn in psychoanalysis, proposing to look at institutions 'slantwise'. It theorises psychoanalytic infrastructural thinking, pondering on its qualities as a particular kind of orientation to action, and showing its capacity to consider multiple transferences and ambivalence, as well as new fantasies on gain, accumulation and redistribution. It articulates the relationship between infrastructural thinking and a postural theory of the subject, centred on considering inclinations, orientations, and disorientations in relation to objects. Drawing on ethnographic and archival material, it constructs a 'scene' for observing infrastructural thinking at work, in psychoanalytic free clinics in Brazil, in the 1970s, and up to our times. It looks at the infrastructural creativities of the free clinics, which promise to renew the relationship of psychoanalysis with itself and with its others. Exploring the intersection of psychoanalysis and phenomenology, it traces the work of infrastructural thinking in postural moments, glitches, disorientations, or slips of the tongue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although soil stabilization with cement and lime is widely used to overcome the low shear strength of soft clay, which can cause severe damage to the infrastructures founded on such soils, such binders have severe impacts on the environment in terms of increasing emissions of carbon dioxide and the consumption of energy. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate soil improvement using sustainable materials such as byproducts or natural resources as alternatives to conventional binders—cement and lime. In this study, the combination of cement kiln dust as a byproduct and zeolite was used to produce an alkali-activated matrix. The results showed that the strength increased from 124 kPa for the untreated clay to 572 kPa for clay treated with 30% activated stabilizer agent (activated cement kiln dust). Moreover, incorporating zeolite as a partial replacement of the activated cement kiln dust increased the strength drastically to 960 and 2530 kPa for zeolite ratios of 0.1 and 0.6, respectively, which then decreased sharply to 1167 and 800 kPa with further increasing zeolite/pr to 0.8 and 1.0, respectively. The soil that was improved with the activated stabilizer agents was tested under footings subjected to eccentric loading. The results of large-scale loading tests showed clear improvements in terms of increasing the bearing capacity and decreasing the tilt of the footings. Also, a reduction occurred due to the eccentricity decreasing as a result of increasing the thickness of the treated soil layer beneath the footing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrant mobilities and infrastructures are often studied in either urban or rural socio-spatial contexts, whereas labour migration is often studied in either labour or non-labour realms. However, a too rigid division between these contexts might obscure a crucial part of migrant workers' everyday experiences, struggles and aspirations. To overcome these dichotomies, this paper looks at labour migration from the middle and uses migrant commuting as an entry point to grasp the variegated infrastructures, their connections, and migrants' infrastructuring practices and experiences. It deploys the notion of viapolitics to understand commuting infrastructures not as neutral elements but as relations of materiality, sociality and power. The analysis draws on ethnographic fieldwork in two agricultural regions in the Netherlands and Belgium. Following three commutes across long and short distances, with different vehicles, and along variegated routes, the analysis disentangles how these material, spatial and social ingredients produce different articulations of viapolitics as part of the broader infrastructure of agricultural labour migration. The article argues that the different ways migrant workers commute not only reveal a wide array of formal and informal, material and social infrastructures, but also gives insights into different dimensions of migrant workers' navigations of labour and migration regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Iraq's construction industry is struggling with innovation and productivity, which has a negative impact on the return on investment for foundation projects. The choices made during the design and construction phases significantly impact the rest of the interaction since bridges are reliable for a long time. Despite being a crucial requirement from contractors, designing for simplicity of building is still challenging for designers. Methods: The first stages of project planning and design present the most visible chance to influence construction and its future characteristics. Information sharing between construction and design engineers is uneven and unstructured, which makes collaboration difficult. The effectiveness of a few tactics for increasing productivity in the construction industry is examined in this review. Results: The findings highlight life-cycle issues, the value of organized group participation, and the discovery of crucial design variables while showcasing characteristics common to all techniques. Successful teamwork and communication skills are essential for the advancement of construction projects. Conclusion: A structure is suggested to address these problems and identify areas where Swedish bridge design groups could improve. The construction industry is researched to grasp contemporary collaboration and communication practices and gain insight into areas that require special attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical transportation infrastructures (HTIs) like railways and bridges are essential to our cultural heritage. However, the preservation and enhancement of these structures pose significant challenges due to their complex nature and the need for modern upgrades. Historic building information modeling (HBIM) has emerged as a solution, facilitating the documentation, restoration, and maintenance of historic transportation assets. The purpose of the proposed work is to provide a systematic review of research findings on the application of HBIM in historic transportation infrastructure, highlighting its role in capturing intricate architectural details and supporting decision making for preservation efforts. A series of case studies in which HBIM has been instrumental in preserving historic transportation infrastructure are investigated and analyzed using a comprehensive literature review method. Furthermore, future directions in HBIM research are proposed, identifying potential applications and recommending areas for further investigation. Additionally, this paper suggests HBIM's potential to balance modernization demands with the conservation needs of historic transportation infrastructure, providing policymakers and stakeholders with insightful strategies for sustainable heritage management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model and lessons learned for creating a cross-domain national ontology and Linked (Open) Data (LOD) infrastructure. The idea is to extend the global, domain agnostic "layer cake model" underlying the Semantic Web with domain specific and local features needed in applications. To test and demonstrate the infrastructure, a series of LOD services and portals in use have been created in 2002–2023 that cover a wide range of application domains. They have attracted millions of users in total suggesting feasibility of the proposed model. This line of research and development is unique due to its systematic national level nature and long time span of over twenty years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the landscape of the Old City of Mostar eighteen years after the reconstruction of its famous Old Bridge. The reconstruction project took place within broader international peace-building efforts, foregrounding the bridge as a symbol of multicultural reconciliation and initiating the development of tourism. We explore a landscape perspective to reflect on the aftermath of this neoliberal peacebuilding project which created a commodified landscape image, endangering the site as a public space. By disallowing the local community to engage with the reconstruction process, the project limited participatory ways of dealing with the past, but also public arenas for negotiating a shared future. To unpack this, we look at the heritage-landscape as a process and focus on its infrastructural aspects. We aim to outline an infrastructural perspective which helps understand how the future of public space and participation were conditioned by the process of neoliberal peacebuilding through heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data practices in biomedical research often rely on standards that build on normative assumptions regarding privacy and involve 'ethics work.' In an increasingly datafied research environment, identifiability gains a new temporal and spatial dimension, especially in regard to genomic data. In this paper, we analyze how genomic identifiability is considered as a specific data issue in a recent controversial case: publication of the genome sequence of the HeLa cell line. Considering developments in the sociotechnological and data environment, such as big data, biomedical, recreational, and research uses of genomics, our analysis highlights what it means to be (re-)identifiable in the postgenomic era. By showing how the risk of genomic identifiability is not a specificity of the HeLa controversy, but rather a systematic data issue, we argue that a new conceptualization is needed. With the notion of post-identifiability as a sociotechnological situation, we show how past assumptions and ideas about future possibilities come together in the case of genomic identifiability. We conclude by discussing how kinship, temporality, and openness are subject to renewed negotiations along with the changing understandings and expectations of identifiability and status of genomic data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces (dis)continuities in colonial logics across disjunctures of decolonisation and democratisation through a large infrastructure project in contemporary Lahore, Pakistan. Analysing Lahore's Orange Line Metro Train, a project constructed under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the article shows how colonial extractive and racial logics can limit the redistributive potential of typically inclusive infrastructures like mass transit by continuing to shape the conditions of their development and (re)producing precarious configurations of citizenship in the postcolony. It finds that Pakistan's colonial-era land acquisition law erased a range of land relations and rights from recognition and thus compensation by the state. In an instance of informal policy making, the state eventually created an ad hoc 'grant-in-aid' scheme to compensate landowners in informal settlements. However, the scheme continued the property centric politics of recognition embedded in the expropriation law by only compensating people with long-term land claims. The public script of the scheme invoked welfare obligations of the state but structured these through moral-legal norms of property. The postcolonial state thus bypassed the transition from colonial subjects to citizens and instead repositioned people as humanitarian subjects. The article thus highlights the contradictions of developing subsidized public infrastructure in postcolonial cities, where construction becomes another conduit of imposing land commodification and disciplining pro-poor self-built neighbourhoods that have escaped the rigidity of private property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Purpose: According the significance of developing desert sports in the areas prone to such sports, the aim of the current study was to identify the requirements for the development of desert sports in Kerman. Method: This research was a qualitative exploratory study that has been done using a thematic analysis method. The participants in the study included experts in the field of sports management with the experience in desert sports. According to the nature of the research, 12 experts were interviewed as the participants through purposive sampling until reaching the theoretical saturation. The tool used in the research was a semi-structured interview. The intra-subject agreement method was used to ensure the reliability of findings, and the validity was confirmed by criteria including credibility, dependability, transferability and confirmability. Results: The thematic analysis of the data by Braun and Clarke's (2006) method led to the extraction of 144 codes, 18 sub-themes and five main themes. The findings showed that "Creating infrastructure", "Holding events", "Encouragement and support", "Promotion and advertising", as well as "Training and preparation" were the explored requirements for the development of desert sports in Kerman. Conclusion: According to the importance and potentials of desert sports in Kerman, the findings of this study can be considered as a basis for developing the desert sports and provide an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to explore the diversity of natural landscapes, faunae, florae, and touristic infrastructures in Taza province and their attractiveness to visitors. Equally, visitors and local populations were interviewed on the socioeconomic activities in the study area. Field visits were realized to delimit the ecosystems, road network, and infrastructures in Taza province. Transects were used to collect faunae and florae data, while a questionnaire was used to collect demographic features and socioeconomic activities in Tazekka National Park. The obtained results showed a high diversity of ecosystems, including forests, steppes, farmlands, and aquatic systems. The documented faunae and florae were diverse with 86 avian species and 16 mammalian species. Two birds Carduelis carduelis and Streptopelia turtur arenicola were classified as vulnerable, while Neophron percnopterus was classified as an endangered species. Two mammals Macaca sylvanus and Cervus elaphus barbarus were endangered. The road network was advanced with four types of roads (highway, national, regional, and provincial) and hotel infrastructures (hotels, restaurants, diesel stations) were diverse and well distributed in each corner of the area. The availability of natural resources and well-developed infrastructures are suggested to support sustainable activities, such as ecotourism, which are expected to add income to local populations. In fact, field interviews showed that the area, principally Tazekka National Park was visited by national and international tourists, which creates jobs for local residents. Equally, many other activities such as agriculture, pastoralism, transportation, and commerce were recorded among the inhabitants. Therefore, more advanced research is needed to characterize new ecosystems that deserve tourist visits as well as how to balance between human activities and the sustainability of natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the political economy of groundwater-led agrarian transformation in dryland India through the expansion of groundwater irrigation and rice production since the 1990s. Within this process, I speak to aspirations by subsistence farmers and imaginaries by state governments for agricultural commercialisation via expanding and investing in irrigation infrastructures. In India, this has largely been driven by private and decentralised investments by smallholder farmers. Theoretically adding to the literature on water infrastructures, development aspirations and groundwater governance, I find how farmer aspirations of rice cultivation and associations of the crop with food security and status drove the debt-laden and capital-intensive rapid adoption of groundwater irrigation in dryland Telangana, aided by specific discourses and electricity subsidies policies post the formation of the newest state in India in 2014. I find that political discourses of historical inequalities over water in the struggle for state formation of Telangana in 2014 mobilised electricity subsidies as a key lever to re-imagine the state as a rice bowl of India through groundwater expansion, producing uneven political economy and ecological repercussions for farmers. This article finds that while rice production increased in a short period in Telangana, it came at the expense of widespread well failures and indebtedness at the farmer and village level colliding with the fragile semi-arid climate and hard rock aquifer setting in the state, deepening distress and decay from depleted water infrastructures and failed aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of infrastructures on export diversification (ED) in Africa, over the period 2000–2014. We make use of the Panel Correlated Standard Error (PCSE) and the two steps system Generalized Method of Moments (s-GMM) to investigate these effects. Globally, infrastructures significantly contribute to overall ED along the intensive margin but do not contribute to ED along the extensive margin. Infrastructures should be provided close to the export maximizing level. The spatial distribution of infrastructures should obey much of their capacity to contribute to diversified production and hence exports. In this line, the maintenance of infrastructures is necessary because power shortages and potholes slow down the move to a more diversified production and export structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay I describe an experimental wifi network sideBand which provided access to a simple message-board during the Content/Form workshop, held at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in January 2024, as part of transmediale. This is considered in relation to the collaborative infrastructure ServPub that was carefully assembled and maintained for the workshop. The production of the hardware and software required for the sideBand network is described with specific consideration of the types of memory and data storage systems that are utilised. The programming that provided message-board (and wider) functionality is also described. The conditions of this production along with the specific ways in which use of the network unfolds are considered in relation to Dunbar-Hester’s propagation and a Luddite framing, that includes sabotage and refusal. This is argued as producing other ways of understanding infrastructure and place, related to the feminist methodologies of ServPub.

The article explores the integration of the Digital Twin concept with Federated Learning techniques for monitoring critical infrastructure. This approach allows for local data processing and knowledge transfer between different infrastructures, minimizing the amount of data sent to the cloud. Benefits include enhanced data security, operational efficiency, and more proactive maintenance. Through practical examples, it demonstrates how these technologies can revolutionize the management of critical infrastructure.

This article provides the reader with a theoretical framework and a method of representing cities called cartographies of infrastructural imaginations. The study employs mapping methods from the fields of architecture, urban geography and visual cultures. The research inquires about the role of cartography in the analysis of discourses that define policies of water supply, food distribution and land-use regulation, which are three environmental challenges in cities. How can we identify and situate the urban actors that attend to such challenges in cities from the Global South? The research is empirically grounded in Mexico City, Shanghai and Bangalore, urban settlements with a history of colonial occupation in previous centuries. Their foreign interventions still shape urban imaginaries of these cities. The method of blending photographic analysis with maps aims to offer objective precision of geographical data and subjective street-level views of local stories. The intention is to understand where the infrastructural ideas come from, and how imaginaries flow to communicate visions about the development of the city. A central task here is to frame how power structures interact and represent their interests via utopian and dystopian narratives.

The focus of the research carried out by Zones Portuaires and Corpi Idirici for the digital map of Genoa is water. The map is broken down into the theme of the "immersed" with a dual meaning of "invisible underground or underwater'' due to it being submerged or forced, and of "invisible - unknown or hidden" as a result of it being abandoned or unused. The map tells the stories of a select number of noteworthy places along fresh and saltwater routes, land and maritime passages, stories made invisible by anthropogenic hyper-infrastructures and immersed in physical conditions that lack knowledge and accessibility. The phenomenon has been studied from a point of view that moves from the sea to the hinterland and vice versa using a transdisciplinary approach method of investigation and restitution that makes use of the hybridization between artistic practice and scientific research.

A new community of research infrastructures has joined forces to provide scientists with seamless access to the plethora of data, services and tools in biodiversity research. New levels of technological innovation and interoperability between infrastructures foster unprecedented access to biodiversity data across all data domains and the entire research lifecycle, thus advancing open science practices and strengthening Europe's position in the global biodiversity research landscape. This policy brief highlights the potential benefits derived from enhanced connectivity and interoperability among various types of biodiversity data, fostering innovation and advancements in biodiversity science, monitoring, conservation, and policy development.

In what ways might the digital renminbi (RMB), also known as e-CNY, bolster China’s efforts to internationalize its currency? Utilizing Susan Strange’s concept of currency negotiation and borrowing the concept of infrastructures from science, technology, and society studies, this article argues that RMB internationalization is a gradual process that relies heavily on negotiation involving both state and non-state actors (i.e., private financial authorities). It further argues that while e-CNY may create new opportunities for RMB internationalization, it also raises new challenges. First, the e-CNY’s lack of coordination with other central banks represents a challenge for future evolution and standardization with other digital currency platforms, thus rendering first-mover status a potential disadvantage. Second, as a result of China’s divergent data governance direction from both the US and the EU, the e-CNY is disadvantaged when it comes to interoperability, trust of users, and diversity of data. The purpose of this study is not to predict the future of RMB internationalization once the e-CNY rolls out but rather to highlight various ways in which the latter may influence the former in order to widen analyses of the topic.

In view of the end of the golden years of the Norwegian oil economy, ocean genetic resources are being advertised in policy environments as holding great potential for the future of the country. Microbes have increased in popularity as promising agents of the Norwegian new bioeconomy, as advances in gene sequencing technologies and genomics have made them more accessible. This paper examines the turn toward digital sequence data in bioprospecting to inquire about its political implications. It draws on a combination of empirical materials to describe the infrastructural work that goes into extracting microbes from their in situ locations in arctic and subarctic waters to in silico collections and databases. I argue that in that infrastructural work, microbes may become both more promising and more elusive public and political matters. As biodiversity is turned into data, bioprospecting appears as less dependent on material samples, which may ultimately render policy frameworks for biodiversity governance obsolete. The shift toward big sequence data in bioprospecting entails shifts in how promise is attributed to biodiversity, which life forms appear to be more promising, and how such life forms come to appear as public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the urban fabric of Lagos is being transformed by neo‐Pentecostal forms of Christian religiosity—a transformation not only of inner, 'private' lives but also of urban infrastructures and their provision. Neo‐Pentecostal churches in Lagos now provide a range of infrastructures such as roads, bridges, electricity, water, healthcare, plus banking and educational facilities as well as a range of residential options. Church emblems are common features of the Lagos streetscape and can be found on buildings, vehicles and advertisement hoardings. In addition to their symbolic, moral and aesthetic register, Pentecostal urban infrastructures can be understood as a response to the crisis of social reproduction in Lagos, within the context of a postcolonial state that has adopted a position of entrenched neoliberalism. Critical questions remain, however, regarding whose interests are served by this arrangement. The article aims to understand (1) the ontological status of neo‐Pentecostal infrastructures, taking seriously the production and delivery of material infrastructures that are understood by some users to also be spiritual; and (2) the novel relations between church, state, market and citizen articulated by these infrastructures. Our arguments are based on qualitative data collected in Lagos between 2018 and 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new community of research infrastructures has joined forces to provide scientists with seamless access to the plethora of data, services and tools in biodiversity research. New levels of technological innovation and interoperability between infrastructures foster unprecedented access to biodiversity data across all data domains and the entire research lifecycle, thus advancing open science practices and strengthening Europe's position in the global biodiversity research landscape. This policy brief highlights the potential benefits derived from enhanced connectivity and interoperability among various types of biodiversity data, fostering innovation and advancements in biodiversity science, monitoring, conservation, and policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interest in portfolio management has grown in time, especially due to the economical restrictions of the recent years. Selecting the best portfolio of projects and manage it to reach the strategic goals is therefore crucial, but the criteria to consider in the evaluation are getting more complex. The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) is one of the actors that operate in complex environment, dealing with different portfolios and different types of projects. In the management of these portfolios, the new strategic initiative is to bring sustainability among the set of criteria to be evaluated. This is creating a challenge where the importance in selecting the projects to form the portfolio and manage the existing portfolios actively has grown with the difficulty of handling inhomogeneous criteria, also difficult to measure. The structure of NPRA's portfolios has been investigated, conducting semi-structured interviews and analyzing strategic and organizational NPRA's documents and tools used for portfolio management. The paper describes the different portfolios for the NPRA and focuses on the actual system for the selection and management of the portfolio of projects, for chosen specific portfolios. For each of them, the strengths and weaknesses for the project portfolio selection and management in NPRA are discussed, with the focus on sustainability as evaluation criteria. Literature and portfolio practice is used to evaluate criticalities for the public agency and to suggest further work to develop a coherent and effective portfolio management focused on sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on teachers' experience of working during the Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis is based on a thematic analysis of group interviews with 76 teachers working throughout the Swedish school system, i.e., preschools, primary, secondary school, and municipal adult education. The interviews were conducted during autumn 2021. Conceptualizing teaching and working during the pandemic as a breakdown of infrastructures, the article focuses on how teachers talk about changes in institutional, social, technological, and pedagogical aspects of teaching and learning. The results show that changes in institutional aspects mainly concern teachers' communication with colleagues, custodians, and school leadership. Social and pedagogical aspects are emphasized, while technological aspects are not as prominent in the teachers' accounts. Commonly taken-for-granted aspects are brought to the fore, and their importance for teaching and learning has implications for the new normal and for what is of importance when creating future infrastructures for teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines local and global logistics involved in the transfer of animals to and from zoos in the twentieth century. The key contexts discussed here are, on the one hand, the relationship between the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (Museum of Natural History) and Berlin Zoo, and on the other hand, trade in and the market of exotic animals, a market that both exceeds and constitutes the institutions of the museum and the zoo. Taking the accidental death of a giant tortoise in the zoo in 1969 as its starting point, the paper studies the movement of animals, dead and alive. It traces the acquisition history of two new Galápagos giant tortoises by following the animals' trajectory from Ecuador to West Berlin during the Cold War. At the same time, it reconstructs the itineraries of the dead animals' remains through different natural history institutions, leading into the shared history of trade and traffic between zoos and natural history museums and into the political geographies of the Cold War. To put these episodes into a broader historical context, the article looks back on the expansion of global networks in animal trade through the lens of transport infrastructures, trading networks, and the accompanying red tape, tracing this back to the period around 1900 in order to reveal genealogies, thereby historicizing current logistical practices, policies, and problems. Taking logistics as a critical analytical category for natural history and thus examining natural history as logistics allows us to gain new insights into how logistics not only enabled but also shaped and reshaped natural history's material, economic, and epistemic frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic entomology as the study and ordering of insect biodiversity is a material-based practice that relies on insect bodies as a resource. Especially large amounts of insect specimens were collected and traded globally in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century, often relying on colonial infrastructures. Taking colonial-era Taiwan as a case study, this paper asks under which circumstances specific places became collecting sites. It takes a series of articles on the insect fauna of the island as a point of departure, titled H. Sauter's Formosa-Ausbeute after the German naturalist who sent the specimens around the world in the early twentieth century. It explores how collecting specimens was entangled with colonial infrastructure projects, insect policies, and forest-based industries. After Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, newly constructed railways, including push car lines and logging trains, gave naturalists access to inner frontiers. Conversely, insects moved into the spotlight by disrupting these same infrastructures. A rush into the mountains was brought on by the island's abundance in old growth forests, as evergreen trees such as camphor laurels became valuable export resources. The location of insect collecting sites was determined not just by ecological factors but by forest-based industries and colonial policies as well. As ancient trees were felled and aboriginal peoples violently displaced, insect collectors followed colonial infrastructures into the mountains, resulting in what a German entomologist called the "mass fabrication" of articles about Taiwan's insect fauna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy communities seem to hold great promise for addressing the challenges of a just energy transition. They are expected to shift energy production to local territories, bring new actors into energy governance and intervene to reshape existing power dynamics. However, these expectations often lead to placing the responsibility for change on communities, as if they were designed to mechanically transform energy systems. This ignores the fact that energy communities navigate through domains of uncertainty where techno-managerial approaches impede the possibilities for radical change. The article suggests that adopting an infrastructural perspective can enhance and innovate the discourse on energy communities in the social sciences. Arguing that both energy infrastructures and energy communities exist in a field of tension in which three crucial infrastructural dimensions -- power, territory, and knowledge -- create different relational geometries, this paper proposes a new categorisation for understanding energy communities through an infrastructural lens. The aim is to identify which specific geometries of power, territory and knowledge are best positioned to build energy communities capable of challenging the current energy infrastructure. The article states that energy communities are neither conservative nor inherently revolutionary, suggesting that the transformative capacity of energy communities depends on specific infrastructural assemblages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what ways might the digital renminbi (RMB), also known as e-CNY, bolster China's efforts to internationalize its currency? Utilizing Susan Strange's concept of currency negotiation and borrowing the concept of infrastructures from science, technology, and society studies, this article argues that RMB internationalization is a gradual process that relies heavily on negotiation involving both state and non-state actors (i.e. private financial authorities). It further argues that while e-CNY may create new opportunities for RMB internationalization, it also raises new challenges. First, the e-CNY's lack of coordination with other central banks represents a challenge for future evolution and standardization with other digital currency platforms, thus rendering first-mover status a potential disadvantage. Second, as a result of China's divergent data governance direction from both the US and the EU, the e-CNY is disadvantaged when it comes to interoperability, trust of users, and diversity of data. The purpose of this study is not to predict the future of RMB internationalization once the e-CNY rolls out but rather to highlight various ways in which the latter may influence the former in order to widen analyses of the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for gender inclusion was highlighted as the fifth sustainable development goal (SDG) (i.e. SDG5) and policies have been gearing towards attaining this objective and its subsequent effect on macroeconomic outcomes. Equally, the demonstrated trend of infrastructures in Africa in terms of stocks and future need is unique compared to the rest of the world. The objective of this study is therefore to empirically examine the effect of women's political inclusion on infrastructural development in Africa. The results through the system GMM and Quantile Regression techniques show that women's political inclusion enhances infrastructural development in Africa. The result is robust across different measures of infrastructures and political inclusion. Besides, the positive relationship is maintained across income groups, levels of political stability and export structure. However, the effect is not significant in countries with infrastructural scores around the extreme quantiles. The results of the study recommend African policy makers to prioritise the inclusion of women in the political agenda as one of the strategies towards the development of infrastructures. This could come through the putting in place of laws that favour women's participation in politics. Moreover, the countries should ratify international conventions that favour gender inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments engage in infrastructural developments across the globe, and the level of success often colligates with institutional quality levels. However, despite the presence of governance, the lack of well‐developed infrastructure has bedevilled sub‐Saharan African (SSA) countries for decades. Therefore, this study investigates the governance‐led infrastructural development hypothesis for the SSA region from an institutional quality perspective towards addressing the infrastructural deficit challenges of the region. A combination of advanced panel econometric techniques was applied to data collected from the African Development Bank, World Bank World Development Indicator, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to investigate the governance‐led infrastructural development hypothesis in SSA while controlling for financial development, economic growth, and industrialization in the region. The findings show that the interaction of institutional quality measures and governance indicators significantly and positively induces infrastructure in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). Additionally, while economic growth and financial development yield no expected significant influence on infrastructural developments, industrialization plays a crucial role, as its spillover effects are not confined to boosting economic growth alone but also to infrastructural transformations. Thus, the provision of policy frameworks by authorities to strengthen institutions and promote good governance is vital for articulating and facilitating infrastructural development plans for SSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In dental practice, CAD-CAM digital technologies are used for zirconium dioxide processing. Thus, in recent years, zirconium oxide has determined an extraordinary development of digital CAD-CAM technologies, a fact that determined the presentation in this material of several extremely interesting aspects, regarding the technological process of designing and manufacturing structures made of this material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying qualitative methods, this paper examines the burgeoning of quality assurance databases, processes and networks of actors in the field of higher education in Europe. Our main argument is that there has been a move from the Bologna Process being the near singular focus for European-level coordination and harmonisation of higher education, towards the making of a much more diverse and complex quality assurance and evaluation infrastructure. This infrastructure involves a range of distinct but interdependent actors and processes and contains explicit and implicit interlinkages with the production of wider policy agendas, such as the rise of the European Education Area. The aim of this paper is to analyse the growth and complexity of Quality Assurance (QA) in higher education (HE) in Europe, as a way of understanding the multifaceted and continuously developing process of Europeanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the first results of the application of an innovative methodology for the development of a walkability overall index for urban street infrastructure, aimed at the application of urban design techniques to improve the urban form and its use by pedestrians. The general objective of the research is to identify the performance of the current city walkable network, to structure public policies and strategies consistent with it aimed at rebalancing settlements and infrastructure, and above all at the development of active mobility. The methodology defined integrates three approaches on walkability analysis: geometric–morphological, proximity, and sociality. In this paper, the analysis process related to the geometric–morphological component and partly to that of proximity will be described. It will be applied to the case study of the city of L'Aquila (Italy), a city undergoing reconstruction after the 2009 earthquake. From the first results of the application of the methodology to the case study, it emerges that the urban area analyzed is not capable of hosting walkable infrastructures unless urban design interventions are aimed at structuring an efficient network of pedestrian paths. In the future development of the study, it is expected to conclude the analysis of the proximity and social components, the other two groups of analysis considerations for walkability, which will complete the experimentation of the general methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]