Early 2020s Research Articles

Back to the future? An analysis of party influence on electricity grid remunicipalisation in Germany

ABSTRACT The literature on privatisation and nationalisation has presented conflicting results on partisan theory, echoed in studies on local public service ownership. Moreover, there is a notable quantitative research gap on Germany’s energy market, the sector most strongly affected by remunicipalisation. This study addresses this gap by investigating whether party strength impacts the remunicipalisation of local electricity grids in Germany. Using logistic regression on a novel dataset covering approximately 1,800 municipalities in the 2010s, the findings reveal that stronger left-wing or green party representation do not increase remunicipalisation likelihood. Instead, factors such as population size, the local political systems, and municipal finances play substantial roles. In doing so, it adds valuable insights on a hitherto understudied case and examines the role of partisan theory, whose application has yielded conflicting results. Electricity grids are critical infrastructure for the energy transition, with many contracts in Germany up for renewal in the early 2030s.

Sustainable management of end of life crystalline silicon solar panels in Australia: Advancing circular economy practices

The worldwide adaptation of Photovoltaic (PV) technology as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, has experienced exponential growth in recent years. However, the lack of effective waste management policies has hindered efficient PV panel disposal and recycling practices. In the absence of effective policies, the worldwide End-of-Life (EoL) PV module accumulation is predicted to reach a critical stage in the early 2030s. This study examines the environmental impacts of different EoL management practices using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), based on a comprehensive database generated from both literature and industrial data. Five different EoL scenarios were considered for 1000 kg of Crystalline Silicon (c-Si) PV modules with a focus on Australia as a case study, while considering the energy recovery options and emphasizing the economic benefits. From a comprehensive LCA study, it is found that upcycling options reduce the environmental impacts significantly compared to downcycling, while chemical treatment emerges as a preferred option, demonstrating a reduced environmental burden. Nevertheless, the utilization of toxic chemicals during chemical treatment-based PV recycling needs to be reconsidered. Additionally, the usage of chemicals during the metal recovery process of PV module recycling caused the highest environmental burden, necessitating the importance of moving to greener treatment practices. This research study will enable the identification of optimum EoL c-Si module recycling options, contributing to sustainable waste management.

Identifying and filling critical knowledge gaps can optimize financial viability of blue carbon projects in tidal wetlands

One of the world’s largest “blue carbon” ecosystems, Louisiana’s tidal wetlands on the US Gulf of Mexico coast, is rapidly being lost. Louisiana’s strong legal, regulatory, and monitoring framework, developed for one of the world’s largest tidal wetland systems, provides an opportunity for a programmatic approach to blue carbon accreditation to support restoration of these ecologically and economically important tidal wetlands. Louisiana’s coastal wetlands span ∼1.4 million ha and accumulate 5.5–7.3 Tg yr−1 of blue carbon (organic carbon), ∼6%–8% of tidal marsh blue carbon accumulation globally. Louisiana has a favorable governance framework to advance blue carbon accreditation, due to centralized restoration planning, long term coastal monitoring, and strong legal and regulatory frameworks around carbon. Additional restoration efforts, planned through Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan, over 50 years are projected to create, or avoid loss of, up to 81,000 ha of wetland. Current restoration funding, primarily from Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlements, will be fully committed by the early 2030s and additional funding sources are required. Existing accreditation methodologies have not been successfully applied to coastal Louisiana’s ecosystem restoration approaches or herbaceous tidal wetland types. Achieving financial viability for accreditation of these restoration and wetland types will require expanded application of existing blue carbon crediting methodologies. It will also require expanded approaches for predicting the future landscape without restoration, such as numerical modeling, to be validated. Additional methodologies (and/or standards) would have many common elements with those currently available but may be beneficial, depending on the goals and needs of both the state of Louisiana and potential purchasers of Louisiana tidal wetland carbon credits. This study identified twenty targeted needs that will address data and knowledge gaps to maximize financial viability of blue carbon accreditation for Louisiana’s tidal wetlands. Knowledge needs were identified in five categories: legislative and policy, accreditation methodologies and standards, soil carbon flux, methane flux, and lateral carbon flux. Due to the large spatial scale and diversity of tidal wetlands, it is expected that progress in coastal Louisiana has high potential to be generalized to similar wetland ecosystems across the northern Gulf of Mexico and globally.

Germany’s approach to the functioning of NATO standing force groups in the mid-2010s and early 2020s

Western democracies have endowed NATO with the functions of “containment” of Russia and influential non-Western powers in general. This process is accompanied by a spasmodic growth of the Alliance’s military capabilities and changes in its internal structure. The principal responsibility for the implementation of the aforementioned measures falls upon the European member states, particularly those which have been members of the Alliance for a considerable length of time. Of these, Germany has demonstrated the most considerable commitment. Although some studies have examined the evolution of the Alliance’s military structures, there is a dearth of literature on Germany’s role in the Alliance within the field of Russian historiography. Nevertheless, an analysis of this topic is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of Berlin’s strategic intentions. The objective of this article is to examine the role of the FRG in relation to the functioning of permanent NATO troops. In order to achieve this, the author employs two distinct theoretical frameworks, namely those of alliance theory and military capability building, in combination with a comparative analysis approach. The author illustrates the distinctive features of the evolution of permanent NATO force groups and elucidates the challenges, including a shortage of military personnel, and opportunities, including limited activity by other NATO member states, that have influenced the utilisation of the Bundeswehr in the functioning of the groups. In light of the aforementioned conceptual and operational documents, which serve as the foundation for Germany’s foreign policy, the article posits that the Federal Republic of Germany is prepared to assume a leading role within the European NATO member state contingent with regard to the operationalisation of multilateral troop groupings.

Value, knowledge and reputation: zoological exchange by Australian museums, 1870-1900.

The burgeoning nineteenth-century public-museum sector built a significant part of its natural-history specimen collections through extensive international trading. The early 2020s has seen an upsurge of scholarly interest in this largely overlooked trade. Exchange was a distinctive aspect of the natural-history trade that reveals much about the diverse practices and motives of the institutional collectors. Economic-geographic benefits included conserving the limited financial resources of museums and exploiting complementarities in the geographic distribution of specimens. Collection management, institutional reputation, social connection and international diplomacy were also part of a complex mix of value making that shaped this important international trade. We analyse the exchange practices of the three largest museums in the Australian colonies in the final three decades of the nineteenth century who exchanged Australia's 'rare and curious' fauna with collectors across the globe. By deploying and analysing extensive, comparative data on a particular form of natural history, zoology, and a particular kind of trade, exchange trading, among three Australian museums, this paper extends and enriches recent scholarship on the mobility of natural-history specimens and how they were traded.

Wellbeing and sustainability in Europe in the 2010s–An empirical analysis

The decade of the 2010s was characterized by relative economic stability in Europe. Most of the countries had recovered from the financial crisis of the previous decade while the new socio-economic crises, brought by the early 2020s, were not yet on the horizon. The economic stability of this period does not mean the absence of systemic issues at all. Environmental degradation, aging societies, refugee crisis, or offshore scandals are but just to mention a few. However, due to the period of relative stability, the direct impact of these issues in different countries can be better illustrated and compared over the 2010s than during the crisis periods. In order to prove empirically this presumption, I apply longitudinal statistical data analyses, as well as cross-sectional regressions, among 39 European countries. The examined outcome variables are the Happy Planet Index (HPI), as an informal indicator of progress, and its sub-components, as proxy indicators for (subjective) wellbeing and (objective) sustainability. The results confirm the diverse trends in terms of wellbeing and sustainability in spite of the roughly even formal economic growth over the period. This highlights the necessity for a multifaceted approach to assess progress.

Beyond “Pressure”: Peer Influences on e-Cigarette Use in Young Australian Narratives of Vaping

Background In the early 2020s, Australian media and public health organizations described the rapid rise in youth e-cigarette uptake, portraying this as a “peer pressure” problem wherein vulnerable young people were being led or bullied into vaping by the “cool” kids. Yet, the peer pressure framing of vaping fails to account for young people's rituals of nicotine consumption and ways social drug economies are organized. Methods In 2023, we conducted qualitative interviews and ethnographic research with 24 young people ages 17 to 25, both vapers and nonvapers, in New South Wales, Australia. We investigated their embodied experiences of vaping, observations of peers’ vaping practices, and beliefs about vaping policy. We analyzed their accounts for themes and here report our findings, illustrated with participants’ quotes and an ethnographic portrait of a Sydney high school vape seller. Results The notion that young people are “pressured” into vaping lacked emic meaning for our participants. Their accounts reveal three ways that vaping is social beyond “pressure.” First, social vape market offers entrepreneurial teens money-earning opportunities, mediated by social networks and markers of peer esteem, prestige, and trust. Second, vapes are exchanged as both gifts and commodities in sharing economies, offering social opportunities and scripts for recreational interactions. Third, e-cigarettes as material objects provide esthetic and gustatory pleasures that are both individually enjoyed and socially performed in rituals of taste and display. Discussion These three perspectives on the sociality of vaping help nuance our understanding of how and why young people vape, and also suggest why public health outreach efforts may not be effective when they reduce youth vaping uptake to peer pressure. As youth vape use is on the rise in Australia, these perspectives matter for understanding this important social phenomenon and may help policy development move beyond simplifications of youth cultural motivations.

Employment, labor and social protection in a hybrid enforcement regime

The features of the hybrid law enforcement regime in the field of employment, labor and social protection are considered. Russia and the whole world have entered an era of turbulence, when customary and even emergency legal regimes that have been developed over decades do not allow us to respond effectively to challenges, regulate public relations and protect the rights and freedoms of legal entities in response to changes in the current situation. The traditional systematic approach to legal regulation using blocks of legislation formed in advance as a reaction to the situation changing in one direction or another often does not justify itself and each time requires a creative and individual, rather than template, approach from the law enforcement officer to the selection of used tools and norms of different legal regimes , which requires active rule-making to fill emerging gaps. Avoiding complex legal regulation adds originality to rulemaking and law enforcement in the early 2020s, the general direction of which is to accelerate the creation of rules of conduct in the field of labor, employment and social protection by increasing the role of the Government, speeding up the lawmaking process, expanding regional rulemaking, and giving greater legitimacy to the instructions of officials in comparison with documented acts. The legislator has consistently optimized the legal technique of preparing and adopting laws that meet the needs of operational support of a special military operation with labor legal means. The growth of regional rule-making in the field of social protection requires the elimination of shortcomings and unification at the federal level. A noticeable phenomenon was in a number of cases the replacement of written administrative acts with instructions from a senior official. The legal regimes formed in this way - aimed at countering the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19, accompanying the conduct of a special military operation, etc., can be called hybrid or constructed – assembled from various legal elements and do not form systems sufficient to achieve an integration-entropy balance. Moreover, for this design, elements of normatively established special legal regimes are used, which, however, have undergone significant transformation - a self-isolation regime instead of mandatory quarantine measures, special measures in the economic sphere instead of special economic measures established by presidential decree; mobilization – but partial. All this points to the 2020s as a period of hybrid law enforcement, when elements of other emergency regimes are used to construct the current law enforcement regime, but not in combination, while avoiding measures that entail a radical and total violation of civil rights and freedoms. At the same time, accelerated law-making clearly indicates that the array of norms that have been created over decades is insufficient to regulate the current agenda.

(De)politicization of the environmental agenda in Russian media

In the early 2020s, climate change and environmental challenges became increasingly important issues in the Russian political discourse. This was followed by growing media interest in environmental and climate reporting. This article explores how environmental journalists in Russian media outlets make sense of and discursively frame the environmental agenda. Based on in-depth interviews with environmental journalists working in the Russian media inside the country and in exile, we explore the role of the environmental agenda in a authoritarian regime such as Russia’s. The research reveals the forces shaping the environmental agenda and journalists’ perceptions of it. Drawing on theoretical perspectives on the politicization and depoliticization of the environmental debate, we explain how the prevailing forces shaping the environmental agenda lead to the depoliticization of environmental beats. As a result, some topics are treated as purely scientific problems that do not affect society or the state at large. On the other hand, regional environmental issues that do not affect state security issues allow for freer and more investigative reporting.

Urban Agriculture and Food Security in Development Planning

With the world population anticipated to reach over nine billion in 2050, and the majority of whom will live in cities, feeding a predominantly urban population will pose additional challenges to a predominantly rural-based agrifood system. Further, with the focus of economic activity being centered in cities, a development question is whether agriculture in cities should be an integral part of national planning. This is particularly when food insecurity is expected to challenge the poor in cities much more than in the countryside. Urban and peri-urban agriculture has been practiced in many parts of the world through activities ranging from community gardens to commercial farms of varying sizes. A major change, accelerated by supply chain disruptions and the COVID-19 pandemic in the early 2020s, has been the rapid development of technologies (digital, physical, biotechnological) that increases food production capabilities in urban areas and provide economic opportunity for entrepreneurship. Additionally, sizable investments from private equity have seen sophisticated food production facilities, such as indoor vertical vegetable and fish farms and precision fermentation factories, produce novel food such as alternative proteins in city spaces. Apart from the economic and food security benefits arising from urban agriculture, environmental and social benefits have also been demonstrated in cities that have adopted a clear mandate to become “green” and reduce their carbon footprints. This paper provides a background on urban farming, its justification as a worthwhile activity, and the rationale for explicitly including urban agriculture in national planning.

The Faxinal System in the State of Paraná: a Review

The Faxinal System is a traditional silvopastoral system located in fragments of Araucaria Forest in the state of Paraná (PR). In these areas, there is extensive animal husbandry between properties associated with the selective exploitation of forest resources. The Faxinal has been the subject of study by various branches of science, so new gaps and methods have emerged as research has progressed on the subject. To verify the evolution and new challenges of research on faxinals, a bibliometric review was carried out based on 125 articles collected by the Publish or Perish 8 program. The articles were organized according to the decade of publication (1980s; 1990s; 2000s; 2010s and early 2020s), the topic researched (economy, territory, cultural and environmental)and the geographical location of the faxinals. The number of articles on the Faxinal System has increased in recent decades, with a tendency for an even greater increase by 2029. Research has shown that, due to capitalist expansion,the strengthening of agribusiness and environmental problems, the Faxinal is failing to sustain itself in the traditional way and its long-term continuity is under threat. Considering this, we see the need for an integrated approach that promotes cooperation between the community, the private sector and government entities. In addition, initiatives aimed at research, education, training, technical support, and monitoring are fundamental to maintaining the Faxinal System, taking advantage of its sustainable potential.

A Research-Practice Partnership to Develop the R-CITY Multi-Component, Equity-Focused Social–Emotional Learning Intervention

There is growing interest in the integration of social–emotional learning (SEL) and equity approaches in schools, yet systematic research on how to blend these two frameworks is limited. In this article, we describe the process by which a research-practice partnership (RPP) collaborated to iteratively co-create a multi-component equity-focused SEL preventive intervention in the context of a politically charged landscape related to the ‘dual pandemics’ of racial injustice and COVID-19 in the early 2020s. We conducted a document review of informal data sources (e.g., meeting minutes, correspondence) and analyses of formal data sources (i.e., teacher interviews, student focus groups) to describe how we overcame challenges to form an RPP, to demonstrate our collaborative intervention development efforts, and to assess feedback on the contextual appropriateness of the intervention. We discuss lessons learned from our partnership efforts and reflect on future directions for RPP-driven work to advance equity-focused SEL in K-12 public schools.

Research on K-12 maker education in the early 2020s – a systematic literature review

AbstractThis systematic literature review focuses on the research published on K-12 maker education in the early 2020s, providing a current picture of the field. Maker education is a hands-on approach to learning that encourages students to engage in collaborative and innovative activities, using a combination of traditional design and fabrication tools and digital technologies to explore real-life phenomena and create tangible artifacts. The review examines the included studies from three perspectives: characteristics, research interests and findings, previous research gaps filled, and further research gaps identified. The review concludes by discussing the overall picture of the research on maker education in the early 2020s and suggesting directions for further studies. Overall, this review provides a valuable resource for researchers, educators, and policymakers to understand the current state of K-12 maker education research.

Gigahertz and terahertz transistors for 5G, 6G, and beyond mobile communication systems

Mankind is currently living in the era of mobile communication. Mobile communication encompasses almost all areas of our daily life and is heavily used in most sectors of economy, including agriculture, healthcare, education, and so on. With mobile devices such as smart phones, people can connect to any other people somewhere on the earth, can access huge databases via the internet, stream videos and movies, to name just a few of the many mobile services that are routinely used in the early 2020s. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other emerging new applications will further boost the importance of mobile communication. It is a general trend that with progressing evolution of mobile communication, the amount of data to be transmitted wirelessly increases rapidly and continuously. To enable this, a suitable well-performing hardware infrastructure is needed. The hardware used so far in the successively introduced generations of systems for mobile communication is essentially based on fast transistors. We designate these transistors as gigahertz (GHz)–terahertz (THz) transistors, as the high data rates to be transferred require an electronic hardware operating properly at frequencies in the GHz–THz range. The present paper provides a comprehensive in-depth discussion of these transistors. After a short survey of the evolution of mobile communication systems, the different categories and classes of GHz–THz transistors are introduced, relevant transistor performance measures called figures of merit are defined, issues of transistor design are dealt with, and general design rules for GHz–THz transistors are established. This is followed by a tour through the evolution of these transistors, starting in the 1950s, when the first transistors with GHz capabilities were demonstrated, up to the latest developments since the turn of the millennium and to the state-of-the-art in mid-2024. The discussion includes evolutionary advances as well as true breakthroughs, both contributing to the significant performance improvements achieved over the years. Furthermore, some research activities on GHz–THz transistors, which, unfortunately, led to a dead end as well as ongoing efforts with still unclear outcome are presented and the approaching limits of transistor performance are critically examined. Finally, we take a short view on alternative hardware options for mobile communication systems beyond the limits of transistors.

The declining affordability of dental care in New Zealand from 1978 to 2023.

In the early 2020s, nearly half of New Zealand adults reported that cost of treatment had prevented them from accessing dental care, with higher rates among Māori, Pasifika and individuals living in the most deprived areas. Unaffordable dental care may be explained by a rise in dental service fees over time relative to personal income, as documented in New Zealand between 1978 and 1993. However, there have been no contemporary estimates in New Zealand of how the affordability of dental care has changed. The aims of this study were to analyse the change in dental treatment fees and the personal income of New Zealanders from 1978 to 2023 and to explore differences in affordability of dental care by ethnicity. Average fees for dental treatments were sourced from surveys completed by practising New Zealand dentists. Earnings (from 1978) and personal income data (full population from 2000 and by ethnicity from 2008) were sourced from Statistics NZ and NZ Official Yearbooks. Inflation-adjusted changes in average fees, weekly personal earnings and income were calculated as a percentage change from 1978 levels for fees and earnings and from 2000 for personal income. For the five dental treatments with data available from 1978 to 2023, fees increased in the range of 75%-236%, while earnings increased by 46% over the same period. Fees for other treatments (with data available from 1981 to 2009) similarly increased and mostly surpassed changes in earnings. From 2008 to 2023 the overall increase in personal income (about 21% across all ethnic groups) kept pace with the rising cost of most treatments. However, due to persistent income inequalities, in 2023, Māori and Pasifika would need to spend a higher proportion of their weekly income (approximately 16% and 23% respectively) to receive the same dental treatments as NZ Europeans. Fees for dental treatments have risen markedly in recent decades, more sharply than the price of other goods and services.

Standard siren cosmology in the era of the 2.5-generation ground-based gravitational wave detectors: bright and dark sirens of LIGO Voyager and NEMO

The 2.5-generation (2.5G) ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors LIGO Voyager and NEMO are expected to be operational in the late 2020s and early 2030s. In this work, we explore the potential of GW standard sirens observed by the 2.5G GW detectors in measuring cosmological parameters, especially for the Hubble constant. Using GWs to measure cosmological parameters is inherently challenging, especially for 2.5G detectors, given their limited capability, which results in weaker constraints on cosmological parameters from the detected standard sirens. However, the measurement of the Hubble constant using standard siren observations from Voyager and NEMO is still promising. For example, using bright sirens from Voyager and NEMO can measure the Hubble constant with a precision of about 2% and 6% respectively, and using the Voyager-NEMO network can improve the precision to about 1.6%. Moreover, bright sirens can be used to break the degeneracy of cosmological parameters generated by CMB data, and to a certain extent, 2.5G detectors can also play a role in this aspect. Observations of dark sirens by 2.5G detectors can achieve relatively good results in measuring the Hubble constant, with a precision of within 2%, and if combining observations of bright and dark sirens, the precision of the Hubble constant measurement can reach about 1.4%. Finally, we also discussed the impact of the uncertainty in the binary neutron star merger rate on the estimation of cosmological parameters. We conclude that the magnificent prospect for solving the Hubble tension is worth expecting in the era of the 2.5G ground-based GW detectors.

LAB-to-FAB Transition of 2D FETs: Available Strategies and Future Trends.

The last decade has seen dramatic progress in research on FETs with 2D channels. Starting from the single devices fabricated using exfoliated flakes in the early 2010s, by the early 2020s, 2D FETs being trialed for mass production and vertical stacking of 2D channels made by leading semiconductor companies. However, the industry is focused solely on transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) channels coupled with conventional 3D oxide insulators such as Al2O3 and HfO2. This has resulted in numerous challenges, such as poor-quality interfaces and reliability limitations due to oxide traps. At the same time, the alternative routes for 2D FETs offered by laboratory (LAB) research have not been appreciated until now, even though the use of the native oxides of 2D channels has recently resulted in the first 2D FinFETs. Considering the research progress achieved in the last decade, from this perspective, we will discuss the main challenges for industry integration of 2D FETs and also suggest possible future steps which could propel these emerging technologies towards market applications.

Invisible chain: breaking the taboo of abortion in Jeanne Caruchet’s L’Ensemencée (1904), Annie Ernaux’s L’événement (2000) and Audrey Diwan’s L’événement (2021)

ABSTRACT In L’Événement (2000), the author’s retelling of her experience of an illicit abortion in 1964, Annie Ernaux writes of a ‘chaîne invisible où se côtoient des artistes, des écrivaines, des héroïnes de roman’, stating that ‘[s]on histoire est en elles’. There is a timelessness to Ernaux’s abortion narrative, jumping between two temporal spaces: the contemporary narrator’s experience of writing the novel at the turn of the millennium, and that of the young Annie in the 1960s. Twenty-one years after the novel’s publication, Audrey Diwan’s film adaptation of the same name became another link on this chain, further highlighting the relevance of the story of a young woman’s illicit abortion almost 50 years after the decriminalisation of abortion in France. This article extends Ernaux’s ‘chaîne’ further back in time, by adding another female-authored novel: L’Ensemencée (1904), by Jeanne Caruchet. The author explores how these women’s experiences of abortion are presented across these three works, examining the change in attitudes towards abortion, with particular focus on the evolution of female communities, from the Belle Époque, through the turn of the millennium and into the early 2020s.

To be continued? Book review of ‘Nuclear arms control in Russian-American strategic relations (2010 — early 2020s)’ by O.M. Aleksandriya and A.G. Savel’ev

To be continued? Book review of ‘Nuclear arms control in Russian-American strategic relations (2010 — early 2020s)’ by O.M. Aleksandriya and A.G. Savel’ev

Securitization of China in the NATO discourse in the late 2010s— early 2020s: Towards a global collective identity

Securitization of China in the NATO discourse in the late 2010s— early 2020s: Towards a global collective identity