Humanities & Social Sciences

This book develops a comprehensive theoretical and empirical framework explaining how entrepreneurial ecosystems (EEs) influence firms’ sustainable high growth (SHG). Its core objective is to conceptualize SHG as a key outcome of entrepreneurial ecosystems and to empirically verify whether, and through which mechanisms, ecosystems foster sustainable firm expansion. The theoretical part is based on a narrative literature review covering entrepreneurial ecosystems, firm growth, and growth determinants. It integrates ecosystem thinking with firm-level perspectives, including the resource-based view, and advances theory by defining the output of EEs as sustainable high-growth entrepreneurship—growth that combines size dynamics, profitability, and social benefits. Methodologically, this book makes a strong contribution by applying a quantitative, large-scale approach that remains rare in EE research. Using firm-level microdata for over 43,000 enterprises and regional data for Polish ecosystems from 2018–2022, it employs panel logistic regression, marginal effects analysis, Bayesian regression, and spectral clustering. Entrepreneurial ecosystems are operationalized through six dimensions and the study also captures firm heterogeneity, prior growth, and spatial interactions between neighboring ecosystems. Practically, the findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and regional development practitioners. By identifying ecosystem configurations most conducive to SHG, this book provides evidence-based guidance for designing targeted entrepreneurship and regional policies that promote productive, sustainable firm growth. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Herhaling speelt een centrale rol in menselijke cultuuruitingen. Slaap - liedjes en smeekbeden, protesten en strijdkreten: van de wieg tot het graf begeleidt de herhaling de essentiële gebeurtenissen in het leven. Maar in een wereld die zelf voortdurend in beweging is, kan van zuivere herhaling geen sprake zijn. Je kunt onmogelijk tweemaal in dezelfde rivier stappen. Dat geldt ook in literatuur en kunst, waar herhaling veelvuldig wordt ingezet als artistiek middel. Daarbij is juist het verschil van essentieel belang. Maar wat is precies de aard van dat verschil? Wat ‘doet’ herhaling als kunstgreep met het werk? En hoe kan herhaling worden ingezet om gevestigde belangen en opvattingen te consolideren of juist te onder mijnen? Déjà Vu behandelt deze vragen vanuit een interdisciplinair en mondiaal perspectief en laat daarbij zien hoe het middel van de herhaling door alle tijden en alle culturen wordt toegepast in beeldende kunst, muziek, literatuur en film.

Delta Futures explores the competing visions of the future that are crowding into the Bengal Delta’s imperiled present and vying for control of its ecologically vulnerable terrain. In Bangladesh’s southwest, development programs that imagine the delta as a security threat unfold on the same ground as initiatives that frame the delta as a conservation zone and as projects that see its rivers and ports as engines for industrial growth. Jason Cons explores how these competing futures are being brought to life: how they are experienced, understood, and contested by those who live and work in the delta, and the entanglements they engender—between dredgers and embankments, tigers and tiger prawns, fishermen and forest bandits. These future visions produce the delta as a “climate frontier,” a zone where opportunity, expropriation, and risk in the present are increasingly framed in relation to disparate visions of the delta’s climate-affected future. “Jason Cons’s ethnography is filled with insights into the multiple and often contradictory entanglements of global warming, crime, politics, development, and projected ‘climate solutions.’ This important work presents a ground-level portrait of the region’s ongoing transformation, examining the ways in which climate change, economic uncertainty, and historical legacies are shaping its future.” — AMITAV GHOSH, author of Smoke and Ashes “Delta Futures illustrates how the Bengal Delta and its inhabitants are being ‘captured’ by particular actors and imaginations, struggling to navigate the ‘siltscape’ with ever smaller margins between climate frontier futures. A very powerful book.” — FRANZ KRAUSE, author of Thinking Like a River “In this creative and original work, Cons makes us think more closely about how climate change is remaking a place that could be considered a ‘sentinel space’ for the planetary crisis, and how people are living through it.” — NAYANIKA MATHUR, author of Crooked Cats

This booklet takes the online platform didae.eu as a starting point to categorize the use of digital media in teaching, art, and creative practice thematically and discursively. In doing so, it describes action areas for teaching design with digital tools. DIDAE is an acronym for Digital Didactics in Art Education, based on the ERASMUS+ research project (2021-2023). It was led by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and, in collaboration with the Bern University of the Arts, the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest, the University of Cologne, and the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam, was dedicated to questions about current and future digital didactic practice after the caesura caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comment se fait-il que, malgré la meilleure réussite des filles à l’école, l’infériorisation des femmes dans l’emploi persiste ?

The philosophy of religion is a discipline that explores a wide range of issues related to religious beliefs and practices. However, the field has historically exhibited a narrow focus, predominantly centring on the Christian tradition and lacking substantial interaction between philosophers from distinct religious and cultural backgrounds. To address this limitation, Global Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion: From Religious Experience to the Afterlife presents a compilation of discussions in which eminent scholars address the world’s five major religious traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. These dialogues delve into the philosophical aspects of religion, covering significant topics, including revelation and religious experience, analysis of faith, science, and religion, the foundations of morality, and life and the afterlife. In each section of the book, one of these critical issues is examined by three distinguished philosophers, each specializing in a particular religious tradition. These authors not only present their own perspectives on the subject matter but also respond to the viewpoints of philosophers from other traditions. This dynamic exchange gives readers valuable insight into how philosophical inquiries can be approached from various religious standpoints. This unique collection of dialogues offers a rich tapestry of ideas and fosters a greater understanding of the philosophical dimensions of religion across diverse cultural and religious contexts.

This work analyses the emergent European border surveillance regime as part of the European border regime/migratory regime and the power structures this technologogical regime is embedded into, is reproducing and creating. The history, politics, policies and technological characteristics of the border surveillance regime of the EU are analysed through a theoretical framework based in political science, political sociology and surveillance studies.

"Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The turn towards a Social Investment approach to welfare implies deploying resources to enhance human capital and mobilise the productive potential of citizens, starting in early childhood. This edited collection brings regional and local realities to the forefront of social investment debates by showcasing successes, challenges and setbacks of Social Investment policies and services from ten European countries: Italy, UK, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Spain. It provides practical, accessible illustrations of good practice, routes to success, and lessons learned. The book is informed throughout by engagement with service users and local communities, and features many previously unheard voices including front-line workers, local decision makers, volunteers and beneficiaries."

environmental management; air quality control; air pollution; climate change; agriculture; atmospheric protection; soil science; conservation

The exhibition "Osmanen in Hamburg - a relationship history during the First World War" which was shown in the Hambrug State and University Library from November 6th, 2014 to January 4th, 2015, devoted itself to the 100th anniversary of the "Urkatastrophe" (the Great War) to he German-Ottoman relations from the perspective of Hamburg, and focused on the years between 1914 and 1918.The archival objects were presented for the first time and are documented in this publication. They illustrate not only economic, diplomatic and cultural contacts., but also give an impression of the presence and the life of the ethnically and religiously heterogeneous group of the Ottomans (e.g. Armenians, Greeks, Sephardic Jews, Muslim Turks) in Hamburg who can be traced back to the 19th century.This catalog, however, does not only want to document the exhibition which was divided into eight sections. With an additional eight contributions, it provides a deeper insight into the complex and ambivalent Ottoman-German and/ or Hamburg-Ottoman relations. In addition to transcultural encounters such as cultural differences between the time of 1850 and 1909 the colonial ambitions and oriental emblems of the German Reich, as well as the role of German women in the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1918, are illuminated in three chapters.

Optical studies of single emitters have become routine for a number of systems ranging from atoms and ions in the gas phase to molecules, color centers and quantum dots in the solid-state. A new direction in experimental quantum optics is to exploit this know-how to assemble well-defined arrangements of optically coupled emitters for investigating quantum many-body physics. However, common approaches via strong focusing or cavity quantum electrodynamics do not scale favorably. We developed a scalable light-matter interface by coupling organic dye molecules to subwavelength dielectric waveguides (nanoguides). Their small effective mode area gives rise to substantial single-emitter coupling efficiencies with expected values up to 35%. By combining high-resolution microscopy with fluorescence excitation and resonance fluorescence spectroscopy, we study the coupled nano-guide-emitter system. Our results demonstrate the versatility of the geometry for reaching high optical densities and yet maintaining the addressability of each single emitter. We show that we can couple several thousand molecules simultaneously and coherently to a single guided mode, while their nearly lifetime-limited resonances are inhomogeneously distributed. The optical response of the coupled nanoguide-emitter system can be controlled by modifying the molecular electronic states either via static electric or external optical fields. Here, a pump beam can switch and even coherently amplify a weak laser beam that probes the inherent nonlinearity of a single molecule. Moreover, we gain local control of the molecular resonance frequencies via the dc Stark effect by applying static electric fields on microelectrodes integrated along our chip-compatible nanoguides. Exploiting this tunability allows us to match the resonance frequencies of two molecules that are coherently coupled to the same waveguide mode. All these crucial ingredients, a scalable light-matter interface, high optical densities, external control over the molecular resonance frequencies and their nonlinear response, open up realistic prospects for investigating small, but well-defined networks of quantum emitters coherently coupled via a shared guided mode.

Why are human societies hierarchical? How did centralized political authority originate? Anthropologists tell us that foraging societies are egalitarian compared to their agrarian and industrial successors. So what prompted our foraging ancestors to submit to the authority of big men, chiefs, and kings? And how did the big man once installed in the center maintain his authority in the face of the resentment mobilized against him? Shakespeare’s Exiles addresses these fundamental ethical, political, and anthropological questions by looking at two of Shakespeare’s most eccentric big men. Why does Timon, the once-legendary host of Athens, refuse to return to his beloved city? And why does Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, promise to break his staff and throw his books into the deep blue sea? In this highly original and provocative book, Richard van Oort shows that Shakespeare is not just a dramatist but a philosopher, political scientist, and anthropologist too.

This open access book presents outstanding doctoral dissertations in Information Technology from the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Information Technology has always been highly interdisciplinary, as many aspects have to be considered in IT systems. The doctoral studies program in IT at Politecnico di Milano emphasizes this interdisciplinary nature, which is becoming more and more important in recent technological advances, in collaborative projects, and in the education of young researchers. Accordingly, the focus of advanced research is on pursuing a rigorous approach to specific research topics starting from a broad background in various areas of Information Technology, especially Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics, Systems and Control, and Telecommunications. Each year, more than 50 Ph.D.s. graduate from the program. This book gathers the outcomes of the best theses defended in 2022–23 and selected for the IT Ph.D. Award. Each of the authors provides a chapter summarizing his/her findings, including an introduction, description of methods, main achievements and future work on the topic. Hence, the book provides a cutting-edge overview of the latest research trends in Information Technology at Politecnico di Milano, presented in an easy-to-read format that will also appeal to non-specialists.

Captioning and Subtitling for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Audiences is a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of captioning and subtitling, a discipline that has evolved quickly in recent years. This guide is of a practical nature and contains examples and exercises at the end of each chapter. Some of the tasks stimulate reflection on the practice and reception, while others focus on particular captioning and SDH areas, such as paralinguistic features, music and sound effects.The requirements of d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences are analysed in detail and are accompanied by linguistic and technical considerations. These considerations, though shared with generic subtitling parameters, are discussed specifically with d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences in mind. The reader will become familiar with the characteristics and needs of d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences, and the diversity – including cultural and linguistic differences – within this group of people. Based on first-hand experience in the field, the book also provides a step-by-step guide to making live performances accessible to d/Deaf and hard of hearing audiences. As well as exploring all linguistic and technical matters related to the creation of captions, aspects related to the overall set up of the captioned performance are discussed. The guide will be valuable reading to students of audiovisual translation at undergraduate and postgraduate level, to professional subtitlers and captioners, and to any organisation or venue that engages with d/Deaf and hard of hearing people. ; Captioning and Subtitling for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Audiences is a comprehensive guide to the theory and practice of captioning and subtitling.

Hands-On Accelerator Physics Using MATLAB®, Second Edition, provides a broad introduction into the physics and the technology of particle accelerators from synchrotron light sources to high-energy colliders. It covers the design of beam optics, magnets, and radio-frequency systems, followed by a discussion of beam instrumentation and correction algorithms. Later chapters deal with the interaction of beams with targets, the emission of synchrotron radiation, and intensity limitations. Chapters discussing running and future accelerators round up the presentation. Theoretical concepts and the design of key components are explained with the help of MATLAB code. Practical topics, such as beam size measurements, magnet construction and measurements, and radio-frequency measurements are explored in student labs that do not require access to an accelerator. This unique approach provides a look at what goes on ""under the hood"" inside modern accelerators and presents readers with the tools to perform their independent investigations on the computer or in student labs. This book will be of interest to graduate students, post-graduate researchers studying accelerator physics, as well as engineers entering the field. The second edition features a new chapter on future accelerators and several new sections on polarization, neutrino beams, testing of superconducting cavities, and matching in longitudinal phase space, among others. The MATLAB code was updated to be consistent with the recent release of R2024a. All code is available from the book’s GitHub site at https://github.com/volkziem/HandsOnAccelerators2nd. Key features: Provides a broad introduction into physics of particle accelerators from synchrotron light sources to high-energy colliders. Discusses technical subsystems, including magnets, radio-frequency engineering, instrumentation and diagnostics, correction of imperfections, control, vacuum, and cryogenics. Illustrates key concepts with sample code in MATLAB.