Search results for "House"
showing 10 items of 1116 documents
Conclusion: Transfer of the Rhetoric of Procedure to British Debating Societies
2016
In the concluding chapter, Haapala demonstrates why nineteenth-century British rhetoric should be appreciated more than previous studies suggest. While highlighting the political relevance of the British debating societies, the chapter illuminates the crucial role of the transfer of the rhetoric of procedure from the House of Commons to the Union Societies. Instead of focusing on the role of speech-making in British political culture, it puts forward an interpretation of the Unions as forerunners in the adoption of parliamentary procedure.
Introduction: The Rhetoric of Parliamentary Debate
2016
Haapala introduces a rhetorical approach to studying parliamentary debate. Focusing on the debating practices of the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, the chapter suggests that an extraordinary relationship was formed between debate and parliamentary procedure in the Unions and the mid nineteenth-century House of Commons. As well as drawing attention to the relevance of procedure and rules of debate in the history of the British Parliament, Haapala discusses approaches previously used to make sense of parliamentary discourse and debate. The chapter also illustrates the adoption of parliamentary procedure in the Unions and highlights them as an important historical source for understanding politi…
Political Theorizing as a Dimension of Political Life
2005
Quentin Skinner’s thesis ‘that political life itself sets the main problems for the political theorist’ marks a turning point in the study of the history of political thought. The Protestant princes who revised Luther’s doctrine of disobedience in order to save Lutheranism as a political force are the best example of this ‘Skinnerian revolution’ in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought. This is in accordance with his claim that principles play a legitimating and innovating role in politics. A tacit implication of the thesis is that we should not only read theorists as politicians but also read politicians as theorists. The politician possesses a special competence in discerning betwe…
Monopolization, classification and symbolic violence: Pierre Bourdieu’s contribution to the analysis of State Nationalism
2021
The study of nationalism is usually split into its macro-sociological dimension and the political and coercive aspects on the one hand, and into micro-sociological, psychological and symbolic aspec...
Eco-efficiency assessment of wastewater treatment plants using a weighted Russell directional distance model
2016
Abstract Improving the performance of wastewater treatment plants is essential to ensuring their long-term sustainability. Most of the previous studies on this topic have assessed the techno-economic efficiency of wastewater treatment plants and ignored the emission of greenhouse gases. For the first time, the weighted Russell directional distance model was applied to estimate the eco-efficiency of a sample of real wastewater treatment plants. Moreover, this approach allowed an inefficiency score to be obtained for each variable (cost factors, pollutant removal and greenhouse gases) involved in the model. Subsequently, a second stage of analysis was applied to identify factors influencing t…
Assessing changes in eco-productivity of wastewater treatment plants: The role of costs, pollutant removal efficiency, and greenhouse gas emissions
2018
Abstract Improving eco-efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has been identified as being essential for achieving urban sustainability. Several previous papers have evaluated the eco-efficiency of WWTPs using data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. However, those models provided only a static assessment in that they ignored possible fluctuations over time within each plant. To overcome this temporal limitation, this paper evaluates dynamic eco-efficiency (changes in eco-productivity over time) of WWTPs using the dynamic weighted Russell directional distance model (WRDDM). This approach allows one to obtain an eco-productivity change index for each major component of the WRDDM mo…
Greenhouse gases from membrane bioreactors: New perspectives on monitoring and mathematical modeling
2020
Abstract The awareness that the wastewater sector represents a significant source of greenhouse gas emission has increased, and is the awareness is evident based on the numerous research papers published in technical literature in the last 10 years. This chapter is aimed at providing a timely overview on greenhouse gas production and emission from membrane bioreactors. Specifically, this chapter dedicates particular attention to nitrous oxide (N2O), considering both experimental and mathematical modeling approaches. Referring to the experimental data, the observed results highlighted the significant contribution of the aerated compartments toward nitrous oxide emission as well as the import…
Evaluation of energy performance of drinking water treatment plants: Use of energy intensity and energy efficiency metrics
2018
Abstract One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to provide access to safe and clean drinking water. However, treating raw water in facilities currently involves using a non-negligible amount of energy, and the fossil fuels used are both expensive and emit greenhouse gases when combusted. Previous studies have evaluated the energy performance of drinking water treatment plants by estimating the amount of energy consumed per volume of water. However, such studies have not accounted for differences between treatment technologies and have assumed a common standard water treatment technology. To overcome these limitations, this study employed metafrontier data envelopment ana…
An aggregate AQI: comparing different standardizations and introducing a variability index
2012
Many studies demonstrate a strong relationship between air pollution and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. For this reason, assessing air pollution, and conveying information about its possible adverse health effects, may encourage population and policy makers to reduce those activities increasing pollution levels. In this paper a relative index of variability, to be associated with the aggregate Air Quality Index (AQI) among pollutants proposed by Ruggieri and Plaia (2011), is developed in order to better investigate air pollution conditions for the whole area of a city/region. The most widely-used and up to date pollution indices, based mainly on AQI computed by the US Environmenta…
The impact of landfills on the air quality of towns: A simple heuristic model for the city of Palermo
2009
In this study, the landfill of Palermo, is investigated as a potential source of the unusual methane concentrations found in the urban context. The source for these pollution episodes is identified by means of a simple heuristic method. A cross-correlation analysis between wind data and methane concentration levels is also used to confirm the hypotheses formulated. Doppler Sound Detection And Ranging (SODAR) measurements are used to investigate the air masses dynamics at the landfill, in order to better support the adopted assumptions. This interpretative method can be adopted in the first assessment stages of the environmental site performance in order to single out the candidate pollution…