Urban Brownfield Regeneration Projects: Complexities and Issues

Because of urban brownfields’ inherent complexity related to their very nature, as well as their intermediate scale—the neighbourhood—regeneration projects are not a spontaneous process. Indeed, an urban brownfield regeneration project may encounter several issues, which can be obstacles, barriers, or resistance, that we classify in four types: sociocultural barriers, governance involved by the multiplication of actors, legal and regulatory constraints, and deterrent costs. While these issues contribute in turn to complexify brownfield regeneration projects, they are not insurmountable. Finally, to overcome urban brownfield regeneration projects’ complexities and issues, we argue that there is a need to implement real project dynamics. To this end, we provide four potential approaches to foster the creative development of tailored solutions.

Investigation of Seeds and Peels of Citrullus colocynthis as Efficient Natural Adsorbent for Methylene Blue Dye

Natural adsorbents as low-cost materials have been proved efficient for water remediation and have significant capacity for the removal of certain chemicals from wastewater. The present investigation aimed to use Citrullus colocynthis seeds (CCSs) and peels (CCPs) as an efficient natural adsorbent for methylene blue (MB) dye in an aqueous solution. The examined biosorbents were characterized using surface area analyzer (BET), scanning electron microscope (SEM), thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) and Fourier transform infra-red (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Batch adsorption experiments were conducted to optimize the main factors influencing the biosorption process. The equilibrium data for the adsorption of MB by CCSs were best described by the Langmuir isotherm followed by the Freundlich adsorption isotherms, while the equilibrium data for MB adsorption by CCPs were well fitted by the Langmuir isotherm followed by the Temkin isotherm. Under optimum conditions, the maximum biosorption capacity and removal efficiency were 18.832 mg g−1 and 98.00% for MB-CCSs and 4.480 mg g−1 and 91.43% for MB-CCPs. Kinetic studies revealed that MB adsorption onto CCSs obeys pseudo-first order kinetic model (K1 = 0.0274 min−1), while MB adsorption onto CCPs follows the pseudo-second order kinetic model (K2 = 0.0177 g mg−1 min−1). Thermodynamic studies revealed that the MB biosorption by CCSs was endothermic and a spontaneous process in nature associated with a rise in randomness, but the MB adsorption by CCPs was exothermic and a spontaneous process only at room temperature with a decline in disorder. Based on the obtained results, CCSs and CCPSs can be utilized as efficient, natural biosorbents, and CCSs is promising since it showed the highest removal percentage and adsorption capacity of MB dye.

The Correlation Between Ontology and Ethics in V. Bibikhin's Philosophy: Automatic Morality

The article is devoted to clarifying the relationship between ethics and ontology in the philosophy of V. Bibikhin and based on a report made at the conference “Second Bibikhin Readings” in Bezhetsk in 2020. The very approach to the texts and ideas of V. Bibikhin can be called hermeneutic: the main thing is the effort to understand the author's thought, following it, but noting at the same time the difficulties it encounters. Based on the texts of V. Bibikhin, an attempt is made to interpret the meaning of ethical problems in his essentially ontologically oriented thought. The terms ethics and ontology are used in the meaning of specific areas of existence (ethical and ontological), revealed by philosophical thought. It was shown that the fundamental philosophical mood, thought and deed have an ontological status for V. Bibikhin, and the idea of an automaton is the basis of all the three phenomena. An automaton is understood as a self-propelled, spontaneous process of life (living matter) development, which always goes through a crisis of amechania, which fundamentally distinguishes it from artificially created automata. Automatic morality, being a manifestation of a living automaton, consists in the spontaneity of an act that does not choose that cannot be chosen and which is launched from the present, that is, an automatic thought that has an ontological, not an epistemological character. But not only a moral deed (ethics) depends on ontology (the automaton of thought, the world), but the world automaton itself requires a certain ethos from a person, the openness of its explicitness. Thus, ontology and ethics in V. Bibikhin's thought mutually condition each other.

Preserving spontaneous order: A normative reflection of community building in post-reform China

How and to what extent can community be imaged as a spontaneous order? Is the spontaneous social order dichotomous or oppositional to state power? Despite vigorous scholarship and policy debate, the theorization of the community has not attended adequately to the ways in which interactional order emerges in various sociopolitical contexts. Reflecting the experience of community building in post-reform urban China, I present an organic statist vision of community, in which community is found to be the concomitant outgrowth of both state intervention and the spontaneous process of place-based identity mobilization. An expanded conception of community as embedded spontaneous order as well as its implication is also discussed.

Rules and information: An integral criticism of legislation

The goal of this paper is to produce a fundamental criticism of the legislation. However, to do so, we first need to understand the nature of custom-ary rules. For this task, we find it relevant to develop a rule theory founded on praxeology. This work studies how man produces claims over certain economic goods, how those claims can lead to conflict and the complex interactions that take place as a consequence of this. We will conclude that the rules produced in a free society as a result of said interactions condense relevant information that aids human coordination, propitiating a better resolution of future conflicts as well as their avoidance. Rules tell man what expectations he can rely on. Parting from this theory, we will explain how intervention on this spontaneous process by way of legislation produces critical consequences which we can only understand after acknowledging the process of rule formation. Keywords: praxeology, law, customary law, rules, expectations, spontaneous order, entrepreneurship, legislation. JEL codes: K0. Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es producir una crítica fundamental de la legislación. Sin embargo, para hacerlo, primero tenemos que comprender la naturaleza de las normas consuetudinarias. Para esta tarea, consideramos que es relevante el desarrollo de una teoría de reglas basada en la praxeología. Este trabajo estudia cómo el hombre genera reclamaciones sobre ciertos bie-nes económicos, cómo ellas pueden conducir a un conflicto y las complejas interacciones que se producen como consecuencia de ello. Llegaremos a la conclusión de que las reglas que se producen en una sociedad libre y como resultado de dichas interacciones, condensan información relevante que ayu-da a la coordinación humana, propiciando una mejor resolución y evitación de conflictos futuros. Las reglas indican al hombre en qué expectativas puede confiar. A partir de esta teoría, vamos a explicar cómo la intervención en este proceso espontáneo a través de la legislación produce consecuencias críticas que sólo podemos entender después de reconocer el proceso de formación de reglas. Palabras clave: praxeología, derecho, ley consuetudinaria, reglas, expectati-vas, orden espontáneo, función empresarial, legislación. Clasificación JEL: K0.

Univerbation

Univerbation is the syntagmatic condensation of a sequence of words recurrent in discourse into one word, as when the Spanish combination a tras (to back) becomes atrás ‘behind’. It affects both lexemes and grammatical formatives. Unlike processes of word formation, including conversion of a syntactic construction into a word, as in forget-me-not, and compounding, as in Spanish lavaplatos ‘dishwasher’, univerbation is a spontaneous process. There are two main types of univerbation: phrasal univerbation downgrades a phrase to a word, as when Latin terrae motus ‘earth’s movement’ becomes Spanish terremoto ‘earthquake’. Transgressive univerbation coalesces a string of words which do not form a syntagma into a word, as when French par ce que becomes parce que. A set of univerbations may share structural features and may therefore evolve into a pattern of compounding. Thus, blackbird originated by univerbation, but may now provide a pattern of compounding. As a consequence, univerbation and compounding are not always easily distinguishable. The discussion uses empirical evidence adduced in earlier work, mostly from Romance and Germanic languages. Its aim is not to present novel phenomena but to provide a theoretical background for the phenomenology and improve on available analyses.

Effects of stigma and stress on mental health and quality of life

Sociological interest in stigma gained attention following the publication of the article Stigma: Notes on Managing Spoiled Identity (Goffman, 1963). Social stigmatization is, to a large extent, a spontaneous process, but its development is carried out within the framework of certain well-established laws of a sociocultural nature. Knowledge of these laws makes it possible to predict possible consequences of this phenomenon, to prevent their onset, and to neutralize the negative effect of the phenomenon on social actors. However, experimental data are insufficient to support explanations for this social phenomenon and the effect of stigma on the quality of life.

Two Eighteenth-Century Views

This chapter discusses two viewpoints on rhythm and meter from the eighteenth century. In Der vollkommene Capellmeister (1739), Johann Mattheson systematically develops the concept of die Rhythmik as a means of uniting meter as the division or measuring of time and rhythm as the particular course this measuring takes in melody. To understand this concept, it will be necessary to explore Mattheson’s subtle and, from a twentieth-century perspective, quite unfamiliar terminological distinctions. In his attempt to reconcile what one might think of as rhythm and meter, Mattheson is not concerned with the distinction between measure and “rhythmic pattern,” but rather with the distinction between mensuration and movement and their mysterious union in Rhythmik. The chapter then considers the modern pulse theory that emerged midcentury and was most systematically formulated by Heinrich Christoph Koch in 1787. Koch does not explicitly oppose meter and rhythm, in part because he conceives of metrical grouping as a creative and spontaneous process of one's imaginative faculties. Nevertheless, what one would call “meter” and “rhythm” are opposed implicitly in Koch's theory as an opposition of unity and multiplicity or as the givenness and fixity of pulse against the creative activity of grouping.

Archimedes’ Principle and Gravitation as a Spontaneous Process

A different physical interpretation of floating of bodies - the so-called “Archimedes’ Principle” - relates the gravitational process to its essential characteristic: its spontaneity. Gravity is a spontaneous physical process - similar, for example, to the process we interpret as ‘heat transfer’ between bodies at different temperature; similar to the process which occurs when masses of gas in contact with each other are at different pressures; similar to the process we call ‘friction’. Gravitation has all the characteristics shown by other spontaneous processes, and, like them, its cause is disequilibrium, between matter in contact, in a ‘quality’ of that matter. In the case of gravitation, the quality of matter is related to its intensive property we call ‘density’. Just as the process we call ‘heat transfer’ is the spontaneous process by means of which the Universe reduces and eliminates disequilibria that exist between its parts, due to differences in ‘temperature’, what we call ‘gravitation’ is the spontaneous process by means of which the Universe reduces and eliminates disequilibria between its parts, due to differences in ‘density’. This is achieved by moving bodies. Ceteris paribus, the process moves a body in the direction in which the difference in density between the matter of the body and the matter of the fluid surrounding the body is reduced.

From the “Influx of the Yellow Race” to “Migrant Workers”: Dynamics of the Languages for Describing Cross-Border Migrations in Russia

The phenomenon of mass cross-border labour migrations to Russia of the late imperial and post-Soviet periods was in an urgent need of comprehension in order to build relationships (for the population) and to “manage the process” (for the authorities). The novelty of the phenomenon required the formation of a corpus of migration terminology, both ordinary and official, public one. The importance of studying the issue lies in the fact that both the understanding of the phenomenon and the relation to it are implied in the terms, and a discourse is formed with their help. In the late imperial era, the familiar terminology of citizenship and social class was used, and ethnic categories started being applied. However, the key metaphor was the term “the influx of the yellow race”. It implied the idea of migration as a natural spontaneous process and of migrants as a part of racially alien persons. The Soviet era preserved the dominance of primordialist ethnic discourse, which prevailed at the first stage of the post-Soviet era migration process. However, it was soon supplemented and then replaced by social and, particularly, migration terminology. A “Chinese” becomes a “Chinese migrant”, and then simply a “migrant”, followed by a “migrant worker”. These dynamics did not mean a complete replacement of one system of representations and the description language with another; the hierarchy of discourses changed. However, it clearly demonstrates a change in the attitude of the host Russian society towards migrants and the migration situation in general