This chapter discusses the importance of decision-making and agency problems in bank governance with particular focus on the role of the board of directors in addressing sustainability risks that are increasingly affecting the banking business. It considers traditional agency theories that underpin corporate governance and suggests that they do not offer a full explanation of the ‘collective’ agency problems that exist in large complex organisations, such as banks and other financial institutions. Human agency theory offers an alternative theory that emphasises the importance of organisational culture in determining standards, norms and values that influence agent behaviour. As to bank boards, the chapter stresses that although their role is primary, regulatory intervention may be necessary to ensure that organisational practices are adequately managing agency problems regarding sustainability concerns. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for how bank governance and business practices could be improved to support society’s sustainability objectives.

A nuclear detonation’s energy release can be approximately broken up into blast (50%), thermal (35%), and radiation (15%). If a detonation occurs significantly above ground (airburst) and various factors are favorable, for example, few clouds and no snow on the ground, then thermal radiation can ignite surface fires. These fires will first commence within fine fuels, such as paper and leaves on vegetation, but given time, these small-scale fires can upscale to larger fires that burn entire houses, trees, and possibly a city. Depending on weather conditions, the fires may continue to spread within a city and impact first responders or civilians sheltering in place to avoid fallout. This chapter highlights the coarse-graining of turbulence, combustion, and cloud physics associated with ignition, spread, and possible interaction of fires with nuclear fallout plumes. In particular, examples are given to illustrate the complex relationship between fallout and fires, an idealized detonation over Dallas (Texas, USA) and Hiroshima (Japan). For both examples, even though the nuclear airburst was at a fallout-free height of burst, the complex and turbulent interaction of the fires with clouds induced significant fallout on the ground.

As part of a broader policy agenda promoting more sustainable financial markets, legislative and policy initiatives within the European Union in recent years have explored the activation of micro-prudential requirements for banks and other financial intermediaries with a view to incentivise regulated institutions to change business models and investment patterns and shift funding towards projects and beneficiaries identified as sustainable. This is compatible with traditional regulatory objectives (only) to the extent that regulatory measures try to enhance the sensitivity of existing arrangements vis-à-vis new types of sustainability-related risks, the most obvious example being climate-related risks to the viability and profitability of existing loan and investment portfolios. This chapter assesses the relevant policy initiatives in the light of recent promulgations by international standard-setters, and critically discusses the potential and the functional limits of micro-prudential regulation as a driver towards more sustainable lending – as well as potential repercussions on the existing prudential frameworks.

Observing that the history of the Roman Republic has been one of turbulence, conflict, and dynamic change throughout, Martin Jehne investigates the integrative and indeed moderating force of standardized forms of interaction between the upper and the lower classes. He sees the corresponding modes grounded in what Jehne labelled a Jovialitätsgebot, that is, a communicative and behavioural code of benevolence that structured and lent meaning to the mutual relations between unequals. Under this unspoken code, members of the governing classes were expected to encounter ordinary citizens deliberately and pointedly as if they were on terms of equality with one another, even though all parties understood that they were not. In its Roman context, Jovialität allowed both the nobility and the people to cultivate an institutionalized conversation that supplemented the realm of prevailing power structures and social asymmetries. To flesh out the argument, Jehne discusses a prominent incident from 414 BCE, the battle of words between M. Postumius Regillensis and M. Sextius.

At the court of the Phaeacians, Demodocus sings of the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles and delights his listeners, all except the still unrevealed Odysseus who covers his head and weeps. During the feast that follows, Odysseus, despite his grief, sends the singer a rich portion of meat and salutes him, praising how well he sang ’all that the Achaeans did and suffered and toiled, as if you were present yourself, or heard it from one who was’. In this simile, Odysseus anticipates the twin methods of validation for contemporary historians: eyewitness (autopsy) and inquiry of the participants in events. In ancient historiography, professions of autopsy and inquiry are found from Herodotus to Ammianus, and they serve as one of the most prominent means of claiming the authority to narrate contemporary and non-contemporary history. In this chapter, we shall survey some of the issues revolving around inquiry for ancient historians, treating the theoretical observations of the historians on the difficulties and problems raised by inquiry, as well as the explicit claims made by historians in the course of their narratives.

Tics are brief, sudden, non-rhythmic, repetitive movements. Tics can be motor or vocal. Further, both motor and vocal tics can be either simple or complex. Simple tics typically involve only one group of muscles and are brief and meaningless, whereas complex tics may last longer and appear more purposeful. Tic disorders usually begin in childhood and are classified according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) into four groups: (1) provisional tic disorder, (2) chronic motor or vocal tic disorder, (3) Tourette disorder (or Gilles de la Tourette syndrome), (4) tic disorder not otherwise specified. As tics can resemble almost any other movement disorder, phenotypic analysis alone is insufficient and patients must be questioned whether the execution is preceded by a premonitory sensation (urge to do, urge to move) and whether a temporary control of the movement can be achieved. Also, relief following execution of the tic is frequently reported. There are no biomarkers available for tics and diagnosis therefore remains strictly clinical.

The Roman Capitol was a place of memory. Several conceptual traits of a Roman lieu de mémoire are identified: an ever-present signposting to other stories, notions of humble origins, portents of a prosperous future, and great men who tie it all together. The concrete places related to these stories are not only visible but, in fact, vital to the story they tell; without them, the symbiotic interlinking between narrative and numinous place evaporates. Discussion of the Roman triumph demonstrates how space is created by ritual. From this emerged an implicit hierarchy of space that lent additional quality to place. The Republic’s greatest imperatores wished to see their fame immortalized on the Capitol. But the Capitol was also somewhat removed from everyday politics, for instance, in the Comitium or in the Forum. Here, aristocrats had to confront the people, directly and in person. In turn, the encounter was critical to the way in which the people awarded public offices in the voting assemblies on the Campus Martius. Between these various locations there developed a distinctive hierarchy of place that was defined by proximity to the present of politics, prestige, and war.

On the Singaporean resort island of Sentosa, two waxworks depict the British surrender to the Japanese in Singapore in 1942, and the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945. This essay focuses on the Japanese surrender waxworks, first displayed in 1974. Consideration of what the waxworks represent, how the display came about, and the experience the exhibit offers provides a perhaps unexpected opportunity to examine questions concerning the nature of diplomacy as refracted through post-war Japan-Singapore relations. In both representational and material terms, the waxworks mark a liminal condition. Representing a surrender grants them an ambivalent relation to post-war diplomacy, something crystallised by fraught public debate over their creation in the 1970s as independent Singapore struggled to reconcile its wartime past and commercial present. The chapter then goes on to consider the contemporary experience of the waxworks, which today represent historical curiosities in their own right and present the visitor with a strange and uncanny embodied experience of a moment frozen in time. In light of the events the waxworks depict, and the debates they triggered, the chapter seeks to answer the question of what embodied ‘work’ of history they continue to perform.