Academic literature on the topic 'Marfin Popular Bank'

<p>Murabaha financing is the most dominant in Indonesia Islamic banking compared to other financial products, it also dominates the Islamic banks in other countries. This method is becoming very popular because it is the nature of murabaha financing has required rate of profit that is definitely in accordance with the terms agreed upon. This study aims to determine the variables that influence the murabaha financing at Bank Syariah Mandiri, which consists of Third Party Funds (TPF), Profit Margin, Non-Performing Financing (NPF), Financing to Deposit Ratio (FDR). The data used in this study is a secondary data with monthly period 2008:012011:12. The analysis technique used is the Multiple Linear Regression by OLS (Ordinary Least Square). Based on the research results that the Third Party Funds (TPF) has positive and significant, Margin keutungan negative and insignificant, NPF has positive and significant effect, FDR has negative and insignificant.<br />Keywords :Murabaha Financing, Third Party Funds (TPF), Profit Margin, NonPerforming Financing (NPF), Financing to Deposit Ratio (FDR)</p>

E-banking has become one of the most popular methods of banking that has experienced a considerable expansion during the last few years. However, there is relative dearth of empirical studies examining the impact of e-banking on performance of banks. Though e-banking is gaining acceptance in Bangladesh, impact of e-banking on bank’s performance is yet to be established. This paper fills this gap. Using panel data of 13 banks over the period of 2003–2013, this study empirically investigated the impact of e-banking on the performance of Bangladeshi banks measured in terms of Return on Equity, Return on Assets and Net Interest Margin. Results from pooled ordinary least square analysis show that e-banking begins to contribute positively to banks’ Return on Equity with a time lag of two years while a negative impact was found in first year of adoption. Empirical findings of this study is of greater significance for the developing countries like Bangladesh because it will invoke the attention of the bank management and policy makers to pursue such policies to expand e-banking. This study also contributes to empirical literatures by reconfirming (or otherwise) findings of previous studies.

LABURPENA: Banco Popular Español, S.A. izan da Ebazpenerako Mekanismo Bakar berriaren eraginez ebazpena jaso behar izan duen lehenengo banku-erakundea. Hala, Banka Batasun sortuberriaren sare sarria eta errealitatea kontrastatzeko balio izan duen aurrekari juridiko argia izan da, eta alde onak ez ezik txarrak ere agerian utzi ditu. Ikuskapenerako eta Ebazpenerako Mekanismo Bakarrei ematen zaizkien jarduera eta eskumen marjina zabalagatik eta banku-erakundeak bideragarri ez diren kasuetarako ezartzen den paradigma aldaketa dela-eta (Banco Popular Español, S.A. erakundearen ebazpenean aplikatu dira), ikusten dugu mekanismo horiek zuzeneko ondorioak eragiten dituztela ez soilik erakunde juridikoan bertan baizik baita milaka partikularren eskubide eta interesetan ere, eta, horregatik, nagusiki teknikoa den sistema batean zenbait modulazioa ere sartu behar izan dituzte, eskubideak ziurtatuko bazaizkie. RESUMEN: El Banco Popular Español, S.A. ha sido la primera entidad bancaria sometida a una decisión de resolución emitida en el marco del reciente Mecanismo Único de Resolución. Se convierte, por tanto, en un claro precedente jurídico que ha permitido contrastar el complejo entramado de la reciente Unión Bancaria con la realidad, mostrando sus virtudes pero también sus deficiencias. El amplio margen de actuación y competencias que se otorga a los Mecanismos Únicos de Supervisión y Resolución, acompañado de un cambio de paradigma ante situaciones de inviabilidad de entidades bancaria, que han sido desplegadas en el caso de resolución de Banco Popular Español, S.A. muestra que éstos despliegan efectos directos no sólo en propia entidad jurídica, sino en los derechos e intereses de miles de particulares obligando a introducir en un sistema eminentemente técnico ciertas modulaciones en aras de garantizar sus derechos. ABSTRACT: The Spanish Banco Popular S.A. has been the first banking institution subjected to a decision of resolution delivered within the framework of the recent Single Resolution Mechanism. It therefore becomes a clear legal precedent which has allowed to contrast the complex web of the recent Banking Union with the reality showing its strengths but also shortcomings. The broad margin of action and competences that are granted to the Single Supervision and Resolution Mechanisms, together with a change of paradigm before situations of non viability of banking institutions, as it was the Spanish Banco Popular S.A. case, shows that these deploy direct effects not only upon the own legal institution but also upon the rights and interests of thousands of particulars ordering to introducewithin an eminently technical system some adjustments so as to guarantee rights.

This article examines the determinants of banks’ interest margins. The results suggest that short-term government bonds (floating debt) and the large share of interest-insensitive deposits held by banks are the key determinants of the interest margin. This is in contrast to the popular perception that the market power of the oligopolistic industry contributes to banks’ high interest margins. While a behavioral change—a greater inclination to save and an increase in output—might reduce the share of interest-insensitive deposits, the reduction in government debt depends on the state of certain macro-variables and macroeconomic management. Given these determinants and the possible ways of containing margins, the containment process is a tall order. The study also implicitly confirms that government borrowing is crowding out private investment.

The paper seeks to explore recent shifts within the popular culture with regard to oppression involving gender, class, race, and ethnicity that can be traced back to the #MeToo movement which was revived as a social media hashtag in October 2017 and has since spread all over the world. The paper starts with a brief overview of Western popular culture that “has recently been seen as a champion for feminism . . . with many high-profile female musicians and actresses visibly promoting the movement in their work” (Woodacre 2018, 21). Next, the paper discusses the origins of the Me Too Movement and the way it approaches the meaning of gendered oppressions as well as individualized and collective experiences of survivors of sexual abuse. This is later explored in the examination of the impact of the hashtag-led movement on three works of popular culture: Amazon’s TV series Lorena (2019), Nancy Schwartzman’s documentary Roll Red Roll (2019), and We Believe: the Best Men Can Be (2019) advertisement by Gillette. The entire case study is informed primarily by feminist theory understood as inseparable from feminist activism, following bell hooks’ Feminist theory from margin to center (1984).

Scene recognition is an essential part in the vision-based robot navigation domain. The successful application of deep learning technology has triggered more extensive preliminary studies on scene recognition, which all use extracted features from networks that are trained for recognition tasks. In the paper, we interpret scene recognition as a region-based image retrieval problem and present a novel approach for scene recognition with an end-to-end trainable Multi-column convolutional neural network (MCNN) architecture. The proposed MCNN utilizes filters with receptive fields of different sizes to have Multi-level and Multi-layer image perception, and consists of three components: front-end, middle-end and back-end. The first seven layers VGG16 are taken as front-end for two-dimensional feature extraction, Inception-A is taken as the middle-end for deeper learning feature representation, and Large-Margin Softmax Loss (L-Softmax) is taken as the back-end for enhancing intra-class compactness and inter-class-separability. Extensive experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance according to compare our proposed network to existing state-of-the-art methods. Experimental results on three popular datasets demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of our approach. To the best of our knowledge, the presented approach has not been applied for the scene recognition in literature.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the significance of financial risk factors in predicting default companies. Traditionally, credit decision process is built on accounting ratios derived from financial statements of the borrower. Combining various ratios through application of multivariate statistical techniques and testing their predictive power has been popular in credit risk quantification. Altman's Z-score model is the most acceptable model in this category. In this paper, three forms of Z-score models are applied: The first equation is developed by surveying the internal credit rating models of the Indian banks and the ratios selected are: current ratio, debt-equity ratio, and operating margin. The second equation is similar to that of Altman's (1968) original equation with a slight modification: instead of debt-to-market value of equity, debt-to-book value of equity is considered. The other three ratios of the second equation are working capital to total assets, retained earnings to total assets, and earnings before interest and taxes to total assets. The third equation is called as Altman, Hartzell and Peck's ‘Emerging Market Score Model.’ Except the asset turnover ratio, all the ratios of the second equation are considered. In all the three equations, the coefficients are estimated by using the development sample of 112 companies. The dominant variables discriminating the default companies from non-default ones are: current ratio, debt-equity ratio, operating margin, working capital to total assets, earnings before interest and tax to total assets, net worth to debt, and asset-turnover ratio. The classification accuracy of the second and the third equations is 82 per cent while that of the first equation is only 57 per cent. It implies that the most widely used two ratios — current ratio and debt-equity ratio — are relatively poor in predicting the default companies. Similarly, the ROC accuracy ratio is the highest for Altman's equation whereas the variables considered in internal credit rating models of banks is having a relatively low accuracy ratio. To test the ability of the model in identifying the defaulting companies correctly, an unbiased diagnostic test of the model is conducted on two separate sets of defaulted firms. The results reveal the following : The Altman's model is capable of predicting default in most of the sample companies. The hold-out sample accuracy results show that the selected variables are capable of predicting default. The analysis shows that the financial risk factors being considered by banks in their internal rating models are not very effective in comparison to other two models in discriminating the firms into default and non-default categories. Banks can map the internal ratings with the Z-scores and scale this up to assign various credit ratings. By arriving at the coefficients on the basis of their own database, banks can develop Z-score calculators for various segments of borrowers.

SUMMARYYam minisett technique (YMT) has been promoted throughout West Africa since the 1980s as a sustainable means of producing clean yam planting material, but adoption of the technique is often reported as being patchy at best. While there has been much research on the factors that influence adoption of the technique, there have been no attempts to assess its economic viability under ‘farmer-managed’ as distinct from ‘on station’ conditions. The present paper describes the results of farmer-managed trials employing the YMT (white yam: Dioscorea rotundata) at two villages in Igalaland, Kogi State, Nigeria. One of the villages (Edeke) is on the banks of the River Niger and represents a specialist yam environment, whereas the other village (Ekwuloko) is inland, where farmers employ a more general cropping system. Four farmers were selected in each of the two villages and asked to plant a trial comprising two varieties of yam, their popular local variety as well as another variety grown in other parts of Igalaland, and to treat yam setts (80–100 g) with either woodash or insecticide/nematicide+fungicide mix (chemical treatment). Results suggest that while chemical sett treatment increased yield and hence gross margin compared with woodash, if household labour is costed then YMT is not economically viable. However, the specialist yam growers of Edeke were far more positive about the use of YMT as they tended to keep the yam seed tubers for planting rather than sell them. Thus, great care needs to be taken with planning adoption surveys on the assumption that all farmers should adopt a technology.

The claim that “thinking positive” betters one's life has become pervasive in our contemporary culture. Proponents of this style of reasoning, including the head of the positive psychology movement, Martin Seligman, claim their goal is to create a field focused on human well-being and the conditions, strengths and virtues that allow people to thrive, and back their standpoint with a great number of studies.However, critics of the movement have, first of all, pointed out flaws in some of the concepts and studies backing them, and second, performed experiments of their own which show not only that forced positive thinking doesn’t help, but can sometimes be harmful.More worrisome than disputes in the therapeutic community is the tendency of mass media and our commodified society to abuse these approaches, the end result being a whole scope of popular psychology books which promise wealth, happiness and ideal partners to those prepared to “believe”, and the presence of a horde of self-appointed gurus promising easy answers and quick solutions. This is only a symptom of our contemporary postmodern condition, one well phrased by the Slovenian philosopher Žižek - “the commandment of the ruling ideology is ‘enjoy!”’.From philosophers of negativity (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer) to psychotherapists dealing with automatic negative thoughts, we come to our proposed field of research in the “neuroscience of negativity”, a search for the biological underpinnings of positivity/negativity, focusing primarily on their relation to Cloningers’ dimensions of personality and mood disorders.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

WITH WALTER CRANE, marginality is a question of medium. For his contemporaries, Crane's artistic practice embodied the ethos of Arts and Crafts eclecticism, apparent in this view of his studio from 1885 (Figure 15): watercolor, oil painting, tempera, sculpture, design, and illustration vie for our attention. As the painter Sir William Rothenstein recalled, “Crane could do anything he wanted, or anyone else wanted” (292). As an artist, designer, and – crucially – a socialist, Crane disregarded the traditional distinctions between high art and popular culture. With a history of art constructed along the fault lines of media, school, and style, Crane's diverse artistic practice and radical politics defy easy categorization. And this is precisely the point: his work requires the viewer to think across media, to move from the margins of wallpaper and illustration to the center of painting and back again. Or perhaps it is more fruitful to think of this process as one of inversion, placing wallpaper at the center and painting at its margins. According to Homi Bhabha, it is this “disjunctive temporality” (151) of the margins that allows cultural identity and political solidarities to emerge. The forging of political solidarities through art was the crux of Crane's project, and the disruption of established cultural hierarchies signaled the central role of art in political agitation. Visible on the right margin of photograph of Crane's studio (see Figure 15), the watercolor Pandora from 1885 (Figure 16) provides an ideal starting point for an exploration of the ways in which socialist politics move from the decorative margins to the very heart of Crane's art, a process enabled by the artist's politicized reinterpretation of classical mythology.

In 1926 Eleanor and Marion purchased a private school for upper-class New York girls. Marion was principal and Eleanor became one of the most popular teachers, taking her students on field trips to visit court rooms and tenement districts to broaden their educations. Eleanor commuted back and forth to Albany, where she presided as First Lady during FDR's two two terms as NY Governer, assisted by his close friend and secretary, "Missy" LeHand.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

The chapter demonstrates that spirituality and popular religiosity are built into the Marian apparitions, thus turning them into a contemporary ‘modern’ phenomenon. The study refers to a series of apparitions which happened during 1999 in Marpingen, a German village close to the Western border with France. This village was the setting for a series of Marian apparitions back in the 19th century. These earlier apparitions have recently been subjected to a very thorough study by British historian David Blackbourn (1993). Whereas Blackbourn based his analysis on written documents mostly stored in archives, the authors had not only access to written documents, newspapers and books, but also the exceptional chance to collect video-tape records from the event, and they could also rely on audio-taped statements by the seers. These data, supported by ethnographic field data, are subject to a fine-grained video-analysis provided in the chapter. In Marpingen, it was Marion who began to have visions on May 17 and 20 near the chapel (built by the above-mentioned association) where the earlier apparitions had happened. Thereafter, the three women together had various apparitions near the chapel, mostly in the company of an increasing number of pilgrims. The sixth apparitions on June 13, 1999, was already witnessed by about 4,000 visitors, and on the ninth day of the apparitions, on July 18, 12,000 visitors turned up. The final apparitions were said to be at- tended by 30,000. As a hundred years before, the incident not only attracted masses, there was also some turmoil accompanying the apparitions: television stations turned up and reported critical- ly on the event, the Church prohibited any proclamation by the seers, the seers were threatened and, finally, the village administration and the chapel association got into a conflict. The authors pointed out that when talking about the apparition, we must be aware of the fact that this notion refers not only to a subjective experience by the seers. In order to become an apparition, it needs to be communicated. The communication of the apparition does not only draw on the verbalisation by which the apparition is being reported, i.e. reconstructed. In addition, the apparition is also being performed by the body of the seers who form part of the setting which includes the visitors in relation to the seers and the spatial constellations of other objects. Thus, the authors interpret apparition as a communicative performance of religious action. However, the verbalisation of the cited vision is not, as in other cases, reconstructed after the vision. On the contrary, the seer (Marion) talks into a dictograph which is held by another visionary – Judith – while having the vision. In this way, the apparition is turned into a live report. It may be no accident that this kind of live report is not directly addressed to the live audience. Rather, it is recorded so to be accessible to a larger media audience via audio tapes, transcripts of the visions and a number of books based on these reports. According to Auslander (1999: 39ff.), it is the ‘techno- logical and aesthetic contamination of live performance’. The authors noted that the media are not only added to the event but are imparted in the event to such a degree that they transform it into something different. Thus, the use of the dictograph results in a format of the ‘live report’ on the inner visions. The microphone allows coordinating the actions of the seers with those of the crowd – a phenomenon that was virtually impossible at earlier apparitions. According to the authors, the Marian movement is not only a static remnant of earlier periods but also a form of modern expression against rationality and secularism. The Marian apparition in question, according to the authors, is an example for the modernity of this form of religion by exhibiting the essential features of popular religion. It is not that religion has changed its contents: it is still the realm of the transcendent as the subject matter of religion. However, this subject matter is not an element of cognitive or moral belief; it is something to be experienced subjectively, the reasserting subject being the major instance and locus of religiosity. This way, the analysis of Marian apparitions is a case for the thesis of the modernity of religion and a case that demonstrates what is modern about religion.

The rise of modern jazz—or “bebop” as it was called—dramatically changed the landscape of the music in the 1940s, transforming the genre into a truly progressive and experimental idiom. But this came at a cost, marking a shift from jazz’s predominance as a popular music, and turning it into an art music addressing a much smaller audience. This chapter looks at the innovations of the leading bebop musicians, especially Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. Other artists addressed include Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, Sarah Vaughan, and Dave Brubeck. The chapter concludes with an assessment of big band jazz during the post–World War II era, including the work of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.

This chapter highlights plebeianism as a political philosophy in the works of Martin Breaugh and Jeffrey Green and provides an in-depth analysis of recent attempts at retrieving the mixed constitution and proposing institutional innovations by John McCormick and Lawrence Hamilton. It looks at McCormick's proposals to revive the office of the Tribunate of the Plebs and bring back plebeian power to exert extraordinary punishment against agents of corruption. It also argues that McCormick's radical republican interpretation of Niccolò Machiavelli places class struggle, the threat of plutocracy, and the need for popular institutions to control the rich at the center of material constitutionalism. The chapter explores the illiberal nature of McCormick's proposals and the legitimacy problems arising from lottery as mode of selection. It explores Hamilton's proposal to combine consulting participatory institutions with an updated tribune of the plebs and a plebeian electoral procedure.

The unwillingness of contemporary Islamic banks to undertake real business risks has left many to ponder on whether the objectives laid down by the industry's founders have been realized. The need for real risk taking by Islamic banks is critical to justify the profits they earn in the forms of margins, rents, or service charges. This chapter analyzes issues relating to ownership risk (ḍamān al-milkiyyah) in Islamic banking by examining three of its popular products, namely Murabahah (mark-up sale), Ijarah (leasing), and Musharakah Mutanaqisah (diminishing partnership). Following close scrutiny, the chapter concludes that principles of ownership risk as laid down in Fiqh Muamalat (law of transactions) are violated in each of the studied products. Unfortunately, the problem extends beyond these products to include a number of other Islamic financial products. The author calls for closer attention to this important Shari'ah concept of ownership risk in designing Islamic finance products and offers some policy recommendations to improve the current situation.

Spring 2005, whilst sitting at my desk in the physics department at Leeds University, marking yet more exam papers, I was interrupted by a phone call. Interruptions were not such a surprise at the time, a few weeks previously I had published an article on quantum theory in the popular science magazine, New Scientist, and had since been inundated with all sorts of calls from the public. Most callers were very enthusiastic, clearly demonstrating a healthy appetite for more information on this fascinating topic, albeit occasionally one or two either hadn’t read the article, or perhaps had read into it a little too much. Comments ranging from ‘Can quantum mechanics help prevent my hair loss?’ to someone telling me that they had met their twin brother in a parallel Universe, were par for the course, and I was getting a couple of such questions each day. At Oxford we used to have a board for the most creative questions, especially the ones that clearly demonstrated the person had grasped some of the principles very well, but had then taken them to an extreme, and often, unbeknown to them, had violated several other physical laws on the way. Such questions served to remind us of the responsibility we had in communicating science – to make it clear and approachable but yet to be pragmatic. As a colleague of mine often said – sometimes working with a little physics can be more dangerous than working with none at all. ‘Hello Professor Vedral, my name is Jon Spooner, I’m a theatre director and I am putting together a play on quantum theory’, said the voice as I picked up the phone. ‘I am weaving elements of quantum theory into the play and we want you as a consultant to verify whether we are interpreting it accurately’. Totally stunned for at least a good couple of seconds, I asked myself, ‘This guy is doing what?’ Had I misheard? A play on quantum theory? Anyway it occurred to me that there might be an appetite for something like this, given how successful the production of Copenhagen, a play by Michael Freyn, had been a few years back.

Growing world trade, stiffening emissions requirements, and rising fuel prices are driving the marine industry to improve fuel utilization in large vessels. Exhaust steam boilers are a popular means of capturing energy from ship engine exhaust. The steam is used in various systems around the ship from laundry services to the fresh water generator. However, in most cases the supply outstrips the demand, and energy from un-used steam is dumped into the ocean. Calnetix Technologies is developing a marine based Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) designed to produce 350 kW gross power from un-used ship steam. The ORC will operate with sat urated steam at 8 Bar G and 175 °C and cooling sea water at 25 °C. The additional power will be used to offset the fuel demand from onboard diesel generators. This results in a significant fuel savings as well as lowered emissions. The ORC is comprised of a closed loop system with R245fa refrigerant as the working fluid. A pump is used to move the working fluid around the loop and increase its pressure into the evaporator. The high pressure refrigerant is vaporized using heat from the ship’s steam. The refrigerant then passes through a radial turbine where work is extracted and converted into electricity. Low pressure refrigerant is cooled and condensed by sea water, and then pumped back around the loop. This paper will focus on the design of the ORC’s integrated power module which is comprised of a high speed radial turbine, variable speed motor/generator, active magnetic bearings, and backup bearings. A high frequency, bidirectional inverter is used to operate the radial turbine at high speed (25,000 RPM.) This allows the turbine to reach an isentropic efficiency of 0.88. The PM bias active magnetic bearing system allows the turbine/rotor combination to operate without the need for lubricating oil and with minimal friction. This reduces the required maintenance and drastically improves the life span of the unit compared to using conventional bearings. An over-hung turbine design was chosen due to the high operating temperatures of the cycle. Cooling of the stator will be accomplished using a cooling water jacket. Cooling of the rotor will be accomplished by a cooled gas stream generated from a throttling process of the IPM inlet fluid and heat rejection via a heat exchanger. Various analyses will be presented including calculation of the turbine isentropic efficiency, rotor/stator thermal analysis, component stress analysis, and linear system dynamics for the rotor and magnetic bearing system.