bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The political stakes of regions
Authors: Blank Yishai , Rosen-Zvi Issi 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
Regionalism is experiencing a global resurgence as countries grapple with issues such as coordination problems, economic inequality, racial tensions, and environmental degradation. Nations are exploring various regional entities as potential solutions to these challenges. However, despite the growing prominence of regions, they remain undertheorized. While extensive research has been conducted on national and local governments, regions have often been treated as either state-like or locality-like, or as ad-hoc remedies for the limitations of both. This article seeks to complicate this perspective and present the initial stages of a theory of regions. By examining the case study of the Cities’ Union in Israel and tracing its historical origins and legal evolution into multipurpose regional clusters, the article uncovers valuable theoretical insights about regions. First, it argues that just as “the local” and “the national” mutually shape one another, “the local” and “the regional” too are interdependent concepts, each definition relying on the other. The existence of a third concept—the regional—is crucial, making this a conceptual triad rather than a dyad. Second, the article highlights that legal institutions such as interlocal cooperations and special-purpose governments (SPGs) are not inherently local or regional but can be perceived as either depending on historical and political contingencies. The conceptualization and concrete manifestations of local and regional forms are subject to political concerns and ideological commitments, extending beyond mere technical or functional considerations. Lastly, the article reflects on the unique characteristics of regional forms that make them legally, socially, geographically, and economically nimbler and more adaptable than their national and local counterparts.
Cities in a world of regions – Remarks from an international law perspective
Authors: Philipp Aust Helmut 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
The role of subnational regions is ill-conceived in international law scholarship, which has come to slowly accept the important role that cities can play as international actors. Opening up the academic debate for a perspective on regions promises to develop new insights on the divide of governance functions between international organizations and states, regions and cities. At the same time, the regional focus helps to unearth some of the shortcomings of overly enthusiastic approaches to what cities can do as global actors. International law scholarship has found it difficult, however, to engage with the concept of the region. This is owed, as this Article demonstrates, to difficult definitional issues as well as the informalizing bend of a focus on regional governance, which is hard to square with traditions of formalist thinking in international law. Ultimately, the Article argues that regions can function as a useful prism through which to analyze current governance challenges.
Megalopolis bound?
Authors: Davidson Nestor M. 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
Since ancient Greece’s “megalopolis,” the concept of vast cities has loomed in the urban discourse. A century ago, English planner Patrick Geddes warned about a growing imbalance between traditional society and ever-larger conurbations, an anxiety that Lewis Mumford later invoked to predict that urban hubris would inevitably collapse of its own weight. In 1961, by contrast, the geographer Jean Gottman surveyed the interconnected agglomeration stretching from Washington, D.C. up the east coast of the United States to the cities of southern New England, and more optimistically highlighted this new urban form’s governance potential.
Today, the question is not whether urbanism will arrive at the scale that so concerned Geddes and Mumford yet engaged Gottman—it already has. Commentators and scholars increasingly recognize that vast polycentric urban regions are displacing cities and metropolitan areas as the locus of modern growth and development. Eleven distinct urban-centered megaregions, for example, concentrate the bulk of the population and economic activity in the United States, and similar clusters are coalescing globally, from Greater Tokyo, Beijing, and the Pearl River Delta, to the arc from São Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, to the European urban spine running from London to Milan.
Grappling with the phenomenon’s legal-institutional dimensions—whether and how to formalize governance to match this scale—requires more than transposing the descriptive and normative discourse on metropolitanism. Crosscurrents around fragmentation, efficiency, inequality, and democratic legitimacy refract, but there are distinct arguments for fostering governance—and equally particular concerns to anticipate—with the rise of the megalopolis.
Can micropolitan areas bridge the urban-rural divide?
Authors: Foster Sheila R. , Gillette Clayton P. 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
In this Article, we explore a subset of the urban-rural divide and propose a mechanism for reducing its economic and political effects within that limited realm. Specifically, we focus on the subset of rural areas that lie within what the Office of Management and Budget defines as micropolitan areas. Micropolitan areas are characterized by an urban area with a population between 10,000 and 50,000, and adjacent rural counties. Data suggest that rural areas within micropolitan regions do better economically than rural areas unconnected to urban areas, though not as well as the principal city within the micropolitan area. If the objective is to reduce the economic, and perhaps also the political, divide between urban and rural areas, then micropolitan areas may represent low-hanging fruit for redress. This Article argues that micropolitan areas are an important window into understanding the relationship between urban and rural economies, explores the characteristics of those areas that are likely to generate economic success, and recommends policies that would capture those benefits. Additionally, we speculate that increased opportunities for economic interaction between the urban and rural parts of micropolitan areas could also address the political aspects of the urban-rural divide. Recognizing the complexity of the relationship between urban and rural economies, we identify various obstacles to realizing the kinds of interlocal cooperation that we believe are necessary to reduce the economic and political divide within micropolitan areas. We conclude with suggestions for a research agenda to remedy the underdeveloped study of micropolitan areas.
The science of urban regions: Public-science-community partnerships as a new mode of regional governance?
Authors: De Nictolis Elena , Iaione Christian 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
This article offers a discussion on the opportunity of collaborative, multi-actor (public, private, science, social, and civic actors) partnerships as experimental policymaking and governance solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation plans geographically localized at the urban, metropolitan, and regional level. It sets out considerations as regards the need to design newly conceived permanent or temporary institutional geographies by building on the analysis of examples of policies implementing this kind of partnerships in Italy (e.g., river contracts; river foundations; neighborhood agreements; pacts of collaboration; city science offices; urban sustainable development and innovation partnerships, etc.). Finally, the article draws attention to the challenges entailed by these partnerships including ethics, accountability, and climate justice concerns.
Communities of competitors: Toward leveraging the region’s contradictions
Authors: Smith Fred O. 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
Fragmented regions face a range of collective action problems on issues ranging from transportation to affordable housing. Specifically, within regions, free-rider and race-to-the-bottom problems both abound. This Article offers theoretical lenses to clarify the sources of, and barriers to solving, these problems. First, it introduces the concept of concentricity to better understand the region. The municipality and the region represent coexisting, concentric communities and nodes of competition. The geographically based identity that one espouses may toggle between the local and the regional across different contexts. Second, this Article describes a community-competitor feedback loop. Drawing on social science literature, the Article shows how encouraging deep identification with a community can inspire competition with other communities. And encouraging competition between communities can deepen community identity. The Article then applies these theories to practical considerations. Given the persistent nature of hyperlocal identity, intraregional competition, and the resultant feedback loop, mandatory regional solutions may often be politically unattainable, even when they are the optimal solution. Accordingly, this Article presents two voluntary, cooperative regionalist solutions that embrace and potentially exploit regions’ concentric identities, instead of doing the more costly work of dislodging local identity.
Regionalism as a mode of inclusive citizenship in divided societies
Authors: Totry-Jubran Manal 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
This Article presents a new mode of governance called “inclusive regionalism,” which aims at curing the fragmented citizenship of marginalized groups within multicultural-divided societies. It seeks to expand the theoretical work on the appropriate mode of local governance in multicultural-divided societies from a narrow resident-based to a broad citizen-based point of view. I argue that regionalism can play a dual role in curing social ills through the establishment of regional facilities that engage in civic activities and promote solidarity between citizens. As opposed to localism, a regionalist mode of governance that coordinate the facilities and practices of several localities within a region is more capable of confronting issues of discrimination, segregation, and inequality within and between localities. Moreover, such a mode of governance can connect the residents of separate localities within the region by providing regional facilities and institutions that serve as bridges between communities. Accordingly, applying a regional mode of governance might result in a much less fragmented society, which benefits from greater opportunities for cooperation between residents of the region in various fields. Promoting such a mode of governance requires a shift in the perception of regionalism as a means of control toward a mode of “community building” that advances social and environmental justice and inclusive citizenship.
National priority regions (1971–2022): Redistribution, development and settlement
Authors: Bloch Ofra 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
National Priority Regions (NPRs) are one of Israel’s most robust tools for redistribution: a resource allocation governmental plan that favors some regions over others, mostly according to their socioeconomic status and peripherality. Drawing on archival research, this article is the first to focus on this topic and provide a detailed description and analysis of this measure. It provides historical and theoretical accounts of NPRs, tracing their history, starting in the 1970s, over three periods and showing how they have been used and abused. This allows for some important observations about the stakes of using a "color-blind" place-based distributive mechanism, and about the complex relationship between redistribution, development, and settlement. At the national level, this article shows how NPRs changed over the years from a discriminatory tool that excluded almost all Palestinian-Arab localities into a more inclusionary mechanism, but one that also works to support and incentivize Jewish settlement in the Occupied West Bank. At the theoretical level, this article lends itself to and supports a ‘region-skeptic’ approach that sees the regional scale, much like other seemingly “race-neutral” criteria, mostly as an elusive exercise of power that often deepens inequality. However, drawing on Israel’s experience with NPRs, this article provides some more specific cautionary tales that can, I suggest, work to improve the regional scale rather than eliminate it altogether.
The challenge of regionalist institutions without regionalist politics
Authors: Hills Roderick M. 
Published: October 2023

Abstract
Scholarship on regionalist institutions lacks a theory of regionalist politics because we lack regional political parties, without which regional politics is difficult. Particularly in the United States, regional governments are the product of either intergovernmental agreements between governments controlled by ostensibly national parties or state statutes and federal grants administered by ostensibly nonpartisan bureaucrats.
The absence of truly regionalist politics and parties creates problems for governmental problem-solving at both the national and regional levels. First, politics abhors a vacuum: In the absence of truly regionalist parties, politics generates semi-regionalized parties that risk hindering national policymaking with the parochial outlook of the semi-regionalized politicians. Second, regional politics are important tools for organizing both legislators and voters to pursue regionally controversial ends requiring political compromise. National parties organized around national issues cannot perform this function at the regional level. Without regional parties organized around issues like overcoming NIMBY (“not-in-my-backyard”) resistance to housing, for instance, it is difficult to rally politicians to take politically costly positions on those issues. This Article aims to solve the problem of missing regionalist parties and politics in two steps—first, with a taxonomy of regional governments and regionalist and semi-regionalist parties along with their respective benefits and burdens, and second, with very modest suggestions for promoting regionalist and discouraging semi-regionalist, parties. None of these solutions is perfect. Genuinely regionalist democracy presents an unsolvable problem, resulting from the inevitable cognitive limits of voters and the organizational incentives of politicians at every level of government.
The Impact of Construction Activities Near the Gulf: The Likelihood of Construction Materials Effect, ERA and Sustainable Development
Authors: Motaleb Omayma , Hijah Esraa 
Published: October 2023

The environmental risks associated with construction activities are being monitored, especially given the global construction boom, in which the United Arab Emirates is a major participant. Construction activities near Gulf water cause variations in the ecosystem, yet whilst the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given much attention to environmental risks resulting from construction material during construction activities to streams and rivers, there has been limited exploration of those risks in the Gulf. This research paper aims to identify the best practices in Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) in order to contribute towards the achievement of sustainable development. Specifically, the objective is to determine the relationship between the parameters of water quality (turbidity and pH) that affect the ecosystem during construction activities in the hot summer and to frame effective ERA, to pursue this aim, 32 water samples were collected from the Gulf water in two locations; the first adjacent by 12 m to the Gulf and at a 500 m distance from the second, inactive location in Abu Dhabi city, UAE. All these water samples were taken during the peak time of construction activities, and after six hours of no activities, taking into consideration the weather conditions. Samples were tested in the environmental laboratory within 24 hours. The temperature is particularly considered to predict future levels of variation and consider risks that will affect such areas and seasons. The results indicate that a maximum turbidity level of 25.2 NTU (Nephelometric Turbidity Units) was noticed when the temperature was 43°C and pH 5.9 at the active construction. Hence a strong relationship between turbidity, pH, and temperature and their impacts on the water quality of the Gulf during construction activities is revealed. Outcomes are promising in effective risk management for sustainable development of the Gulf ecosystem during construction activities. The study demonstrates the need for a successful risk management framework to focus on the construction material management treatment that can decrease turbidity and adjust pH in the Gulf water near active construction. In addition, managing statistics of the communities residing near the Gulf and re-evaluating environmental risks are crucial.
Numerical Approach for Evaluation of Surface Integrals in Polygonal Domain by Gauss Legendre Quadrature and Generalized Gaussian Quadrature Method
Authors: Yogitha A.M. , Shivaram K.T. , Kiran S. 
Published: October 2023

We present a new approach for the numerical integration of arbitrary functions over polygonal region, by applying two kinds of quadrature method Gauss Legendre quadrature and Generalized Gaussian quadrature method, the polygonal region is divided into arbitrary triangles, the sides of each triangle is noted as equation of straight line by joining two end vertices, this approach is used to further reduces the integral equations, numerical integration of rational and irrational functions are approximated computationally, we illustrate several numerical examples to shows the accuracy of the present method
A Cross Sectional Study on the 24 – Hour Variation of Fungal Pollution in the Atmosphere of Erbil City, Iraq
Authors: M Al-Bader S , Aljoborey Abdulmunem Dherar Abdullah , Ahmed Alwan Qader , Ayied Asaad Yahia 
Published: October 2023

Airborne fungi are an important part of aerobiological particles; this group includes several etiologic fungi for humans, animals, and plants. Meteorological parameters as well as plantations are actively influencing the density of outdoor airborne fungi. The current study followed the plate exposure method to collect bihourly air samples for 3 days between April 22 and July 7, 2023. The site of sample collection is 15 meters high in the centre of Erbil city. Sabouraud’s dextrose agar was used. Plates were exposed for 15 minutes from 7 a.m. to 5 a.m. the following day. Plates were kept at lab temperature for 3 weeks and examined daily for visible fungal growth. Fungi were morphologically identified at the genus level. A total of 322 colonies belonging to 10 identified genera, as well as sterile mycelia SM, sclerotia bodies, chlamydospore colonies, and creamy yeast colonies, were Hyphomycetes, which represented 6 genera, Ascomycetes 2, Zygomycetes, and Basidiomycetes, one for each.SM group showed the highest frequency (F% =48.2%) and occurrence (O% =100%). Aspergillus spp. has the second incidence level (F=12.7% and O%=91.6%) followed by Alternaria sp. (F=9.3% and O= 25%).
Exploring Factors Affecting Intention to Consume Fish in Jordan
Authors: Afaishat Tayseer Mohammad Al , Alnaser Ahmad Salih , Albloush Ahmad , Shaer Basel Yuosef AL 
Published: October 2023

Purpose: This study aims to exploring factors affecting intention to consume fish in Jordan. Theoretical framework: Fish consumption is one of important topics in the national economy, so the current study examine how price, product, promotion, place, and health concern effect on intention to consume fish. Design/ Methodology / Approach: A descriptive approach and regression analysis was utilize to test the study’s hypotheses, and 208 questionnaires were analyzed. Findings: Results revealed a significant effect of product promotion, place and health concern on fish consumption intention in Jordan. While price have no impact on intention to consume fish. Research, Practical & Social implications: the study recommended more studies covers different region in Jordan, taking into consideration other variables that could concern the Jordanian customers. Originality / value: This study one of paucity studies in Jordan environment focus on the factors that affect fish consumption, also set of suggestions for the subsequent research works also was listed at the end of this study.
Some parameters of connective tissue metabolism in genital prolapse
Authors: kizi Urinova Ruzagul Shakhobiddin , Djavdatovna Saidjalilova Dilnoza 
Published: October 2023

Genital prolapse (GP) is one of the most common gynecological problems, with an incidence of 28-39%. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that about 1/3 of all these patients are women of reproductive age. And with age, GP becomes progressive. We examined 63 women with the GP of reproductive age who applied to the 8th maternity complex in Tashkent. We found that in women, genital prolapse in 57.1% of cases is due to uCTD. It was found that the severity of GP development depended on the severity of uCTD. In women with GP and uCTD, the magnesium level was significantly lower by 1.8-2 times than in the group without pathology. In more than half (69.4%) of women with GP and uCTD, the excretion of OP was significant and exceeded the due value by more than 2 times. In almost a third (30.6%) of patients, the increase in this indicator was moderate and averaged 76.1±1.9 mg/day.
DETERMINING OIL AND FATTY ACID PROFILES OF SELECTED SOYBEAN (Glycine max L.) CULTIVARS UNDER SECOND CROP CONDITION IN EAST MEDITERRANEAN AGROECOLOGY
Authors: CUBUKCU Pınar 
Published: October 2023

The objective of this study was to analyse the oil contents and composition of fatty acids (linolenic, stearic, oleic,
palmitic and linoleic acids) of 20 distinct soybean (Glycine max L. Merrill) cultivars cultivated as the second crop
in Cukurova Delta in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. Soybean cultivars Ilksoy, Traksoy maturity group
II (MG: II), Atakisi, Arisoy, Cinsoy, Atem-7, Sa 88, Altinay, Asya, Bravo, Gapsoy, Kocaturk, Mitchell, Samsoy,
Kristal, Umut-2002 (MG: III), Adasoy, ANP 2018, Nazlican, Lider (MG:3.8) were used. Field tests of this study
were carried out in a randomized complete block design with three replications at the Eastern Mediterranean
Agricultural Research Institute's Dogankent-Adana location in 2020-2021. Years, genotypes, and year x
genotype interactions were all determined as significant in the variance analysis of the experiment's data. The
fatty acid content of soybean cultivars varied between 10.00 and 12.64% for palmitic acid, 4.15 and 5.17% for
stearic acid, 25.75 and 33.90% for oleic acid, 43.22 and 51.59% for linoleic acid, and 4.85 and 5.98% for linolenic
acid, according to a 2-years average. Soybean cultivars' oil content ranged from 23.12 to 24.78 percent.
Epiretinal Membrane Surgery on Youtube
Authors: Murat Serkan Songur  , Mehmet Çıtırık  
Published: October 2023

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the usefulness of YouTube videos on epiretinal membrane surgery in the retina. Methods: When ‘epiretinal membrane surgery’ was searched on the YouTube search engine, the first 100 videos on this topic were evaluated. These videos were then analyzed and scored using DISCERN, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and Global Quality (GQ) scoring systems. Results: The evaluated videos had a DISCERN score of 30.0 ± 7.8, a JAMA score of 1.5 ± 0.6, and a GQ score of 1.8 ± 0.6. When the results of epiretinal membrane surgery were evaluated according to the quality scoring of these three scoring systems, the DISCERN score was evaluated as poor, the JAMA score as low quality, and the GQ scored as poor quality. Conclusion: Although there are many videos about epiretinal membrane surgery on Youtube, the usefulness of these videos as a resource is low and the quality is poor.