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This volume collects the notes of the CIME course "Nonlinear PDE’s and applications" held in Cetraro (Italy) on June 23–28, 2008. It consists of four series of lectures, delivered by Stefano Bianchini (SISSA, Trieste), Eric A. Carlen (Rutgers University), Alexander Mielke (WIAS, Berlin), and Cédric Villani (Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon). They presented a broad overview of far-reaching findings and exciting new developments concerning, in particular, optimal transport theory, nonlinear evolution equations, functional inequalities, and differential geometry. A sampling of the main topics considered here includes optimal transport, Hamilton-Jacobi equations, Riemannian geometry, and their links with sharp geometric/functional inequalities, variational methods for studying nonlinear evolution equations and their scaling properties, and the metric/energetic theory of gradient flows and of rate-independent evolution problems. The book explores the fundamental connections between all of these topics and points to new research directions in contributions by leading experts in these fields.
This timely book offers an in-depth exploration of state partitions and the history of nationalism in Europe from the Enlightenment onwards. Stefano Bianchini compares traditional national democratic development to the growing transnational demands of representation with a focus on transnational mobility and empathy versus national localism against the EU project. In an era of multilevel identity, global economic and asylum seeker crises, nationalism is becoming more liquid which in turn strengthens the attractiveness of ‘ethnic purity’ and partitions, affects state stability, and the nature of national democracy in Europe. The result may be exposure to the risk of new wars, rather than enhanced guarantees of peace.
This book presents a concise and comprehensive overview of the mainstream flows of ideas, politics and itineraries towards modernity in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans over two centuries from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the Gorbachev administration. Unlike other books on the subject which view modernity based on the idea of Western European supremacy, this book outlines the various different pathways of development, and of growing industrialisation, urbanisation and secularisation which took place across the region. It provides rich insights on the complex networks whereby very varied ideas, aspirations and policies interacted to bring about a varied pattern of progress, and of integration and isolation, with different areas moving in different ways and at different paces. Overall the book presents something very different from the traditional picture of the" two Europes". Particular examples covered include agrarian reform movements, in various phases, different models of socialism, and different models of socialist reform.
Studies of partitions have usually focused on individual cases. These innovative volumes use comparative analysis to fill the gap in partition studies.
The papers included in this volume represent just such an effort to lay a firmer foundation for this continuing dialogue and to bring together different points of view. In October 1998, the Strategic Studies Institute, assisted by Pepperdine University, assembled a distinguished group of analysts from the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, in Florence, Italy. At a conference titled "Mediterranean Security into the Coming Millennium," the task of the participants was to address current regional security issues in the Balkans, Middle East, and the Aegean, as well as the perceptions of the individual states, the relevant security organizations, NATO and the European Union, and the players and major external actors like the United States and Russia. These papers cover the many areas discussed at the conference and should advance the debate on Mediterranean security both in the United States and abroad.
Contents: Southeastern Europe: the unlikely security community? Environmental security in Southeastern Europe: a basis for regional co-operation; Russian in the Transcaucasus and Kosovo: from insecurity to security provider?; Churches and (in) security providers in Southeastern Europe; Bulgaria and the disintegration of Yugoslavia: between ethnic affinity and international commitment; regional implications of a failed transition to democracy: the case of Serbia; The internationalisation of conflict in the Transcaucasus and the former Yugoslavia; The OSCE security model for the Balkans: a viable model for the 21st century?; Lessons from UN Peacekeeping in Cyprus; Srebenica: The failure and future of safe areas; Conflict management in Southeastern Europe: the use of force as a last resort; The Georgian-Abkhazian conflict: failed realpolitik with moralistic justifications?; Rethinking the concept of peace-building: Bosnia and the lessons for Kosovo; Kosovo and the international community; Index.
Among the main stumbling blocks of European Union-Western Balkan integration are the differences in perceptions on both sides. Today, the gap between what the Western Balkan politicians and citizens think about the European Union and what the politicians and citizens in the EU member states think about the Western Balkans is probably wider than ever. This volume offers fresh insights about these misperceptions and how to possibly bridge the gap. It examines perceptions about the region’s “European perspectives” both on the side of the six Western Balkan countries - Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – and the key European Union member states (Italy, Germany, Croatia), international donors, USA. An analysis of the diverse views regarding the prospects of EU – Western Balkan integration is today highly relevant, in view of the current uncertainties regarding European Union’s enlargement policy, particularly after the attack of Russia on Ukraine and candidate status granted to Ukraine and Moldova.
This book presents the fundamentals of the shock wave theory. The first part of the book, Chapters 1 through 5, covers the basic elements of the shock wave theory by analyzing the scalar conservation laws. The main focus of the analysis is on the explicit solution behavior. This first part of the book requires only a course in multi-variable calculus, and can be used as a text for an undergraduate topics course. In the second part of the book, Chapters 6 through 9, this general theory is used to study systems of hyperbolic conservation laws. This is a most significant well-posedness theory for weak solutions of quasilinear evolutionary partial differential equations. The final part of the book, Chapters 10 through 14, returns to the original subject of the shock wave theory by focusing on specific physical models. Potentially interesting questions and research directions are also raised in these chapters. The book can serve as an introductory text for advanced undergraduate students and for graduate students in mathematics, engineering, and physical sciences. Each chapter ends with suggestions for further reading and exercises for students.
During the most recent conference of the Renaissance Society of America, two sessions were devoted entirely to the Renaissance in Poland. In fifty-nine editions of what is considered the most prestigious international appointment for experts of Renaissance culture, this is the first time that characteristic features of sixteenth-century Poland were the subject of analysis and debate. The interest generated at the conference and the academic value of the contributions convinced the organisers of the panels to ask the speakers to develop and revise their contributions to conform with the conventions of the academic article. The result is a selection of essays that pursue specific pathways in exploring the cultural factors that affected the Renaissance in Poland: influences and originality in Polish literary and artistic production, orthodoxy and dissidence, the circulation of thought and reflection on the Res Publica in the spheres of both politics and philosophy. Adopting a distinctly interdisciplinary approach, the aim of this publication is to focus certain aspects of the Polish Renaissance and the cultural identity of sixteenth-century Poland in relation to the European context.