Humanities & Social Sciences

The study of early modern cancer is significant for our understanding of the period’s medical theory and practice. In many respects, cancer exemplifies the flexibility of early modern medical thought, which managed to accommodate, seemingly without friction, the notion that cancer was a disease with humoral origins alongside the conviction that the malady was in some sense ontologically independent. Discussions of why cancer spread rapidly through the body, and was difficult, if not impossible, to cure, prompted various medical explanations at the same time that physicians and surgeons joined with non-medical authors in describing the disease as acting in a way that was ‘malignant’ in the fullest sense, purposely ‘fierce’, ‘rebellious’ and intractable.3 Theories seeking to explain why cancer appeared most often in the female breast similarly joined culturally mediated anatomical and humoral theory with recognition of the peculiarities of women’s social, domestic and emotional life-cycles. Moreover, as a morbid disease, cancer generated eclectic and sometimes extreme medical responses, the mixed results of which would prompt many questions over the proper extent of pharmaceutical or surgical intervention.

Herodotus is the epochal authority who inaugurated the European and Western consciousness of collective identity, whether in an awareness of other societies and of the nature of cultural variation itself or in the fashioning of Greek self-awareness – and necessarily that of later civilizations influenced by the ancient Greeks – which was perpetually in dialogue and tension with other ways of living in groups.In this book, 14 contributors explore ethnicity – the very self-understanding of belonging to a separate body of human beings – and how it evolves and consolidates (or ethnogenesis). This inquiry is focussed through the lens of Herodotus as our earliest master of ethnography, in this instance not only as the stylized portrayal of other societies, but also as an exegesis on how ethnocultural differentiation may affect the lives, and even the very existence, of one’s own people. Ethnicity and Identity in Herodotus is one facet of a project that intends to bring Portuguese and English-speaking scholars of antiquity into closer cooperation. It has united a cross-section of North American classicists with a distinguished cohort of Portuguese and Brazilian experts on Greek literature and history writing in English.

There is no real difference between the records of the biggest rural Lords and those of the Principalities in late medieval Italy. Both ones had a more or less organised chancery and produced documents in chancery form. Their archival history too is similar. The paper proposes and discusses the documentary typology of the documents made by and for the Lords. The Empire, the Holy See, the Kingdoms may have influenced the form of seigneurial litterae patentes and clausae, although there were individual nuances. The other documents, as registers and other chancery books were influenced by different regional traditions.

Dass Künstler*innen forschen, ist nichts Neues. Was sich aber sukzessive wandelt, ist der künstlerische Zugang: Die Kunst ist nicht länger (nur) Gegenstand, sondern vor allem auch Mittel zur Erkenntnisgewinnung. Dieser Entwicklung folgend hat die Universität Bern gemeinsam mit der Hochschule der Künste Bern das erste Schweizerische Doktoratsprogramm für Künstler*innen und Gestalter*innen gegründet: Studies in the Arts (SINTA). Die an diesem Projekt beteiligten Beiträger*innen des Bandes liefern hierzu grundsätzliche Erwägungen und Fallbeispiele sowie praktische Anwendungen in Interpretation, Musikrezeption und Design.

Perhaps unexpectedly, English travel writing during the long eighteenth century reveals a discourse of global civility. By bringing together representations of the then already familiar Ottoman Empire and the largely unknown South Pacific, Sascha Klement adopts a uniquely global perspective and demonstrates how cross-cultural encounters were framed by Enlightenment philosophy, global interconnections, and even-handed exchanges across cultural divides. In so doing, this book shows that both travel and travel-writing from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries were much more complex and multi-layered than reductive Eurocentric histories often suggest.

This book reviews successes and (remaining) challenges in vaccine development for the selected Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) of Leprosy, Leishmaniasis, Meliodoisis and Tuberculosis, which are a continuous burden for millions of people in affected areas worldwide. Written by frontline researchers, the volume deep-dives into different vaccine strategies, provides biotechnological background information and also tackles animal models in NTD therapeutics research. By bringing together state-of-the-art expert knowledge, the book contributes to the aim of ultimately ending the epidemics of neglected tropical diseases, complying with UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, Health and Well-Being. The volume highlights the activities of the research network VALIDATE (VAccine deveLopment for complex Intracellular neglecteD pAThogEns), funded by the Medical Research Council in the UK. The four NTDs discussed in the book were selected as these are in the focus of VALIDATE’s research. The book targets scientists and clinicians working on NTDs, as well as all readers with a background in biomedicine and interest in vaccine development. This is an open access book.

Ultrasound techniques offer many advantages, in terms of ease of realization and patients’ safety. The availability of suitable hardware and software tools is condicio sine qua non for new methods testing. This PhD project addresses medical ultrasound signal processing and seeks to achieve two scientific goals: the first is to contribute to the development of an ultrasound research platform, while the second is introducing and validating, through this platform, non-standard methods. During the thesis, the capabilities of the system were improved by creating advanced software tools, such as acoustic field simulators, and by developing echo-signals elaboration programs. In particular, a novel technique for quasi-static elastography was developed, in-vitro tested and implemented in real-time.

Materials of industrial interest often show a complex microstructure which directly influences their macroscopic material behavior. For simulations on the component scale, multi-scale methods may exploit this microstructural information. This work is devoted to a multi-scale approach for brittle materials. Based on a homogenization result for free discontinuity problems, we present FFT-based methods to compute the effective crack energy of heterogeneous materials with complex microstructures.

What was the impact of the armies of the King of Spain on one of the territories of its composite monarchy during the centuries of the early modern age? What changes took place in the relations of power between the local institutions and the Madrid headquarters, between the Lombard corps and the city of Milan, between the representatives of the territorial corps and the power élites, as a consequence of the grievous burden represented by the military costs necessary for running the war? These are some of the questions that the author attempts to answer through study of the phenomenon of the military garrisons, an exceptional vantage point for observing the fine line that, in the ancient regime, divided the "military" and "civilian" worlds, which were not yet separated by the high walls and barbed wire of modern barracks.

Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues covers the century when infectious plagues—anthrax, tuberculosis, tetanus, plague, smallpox, and polio—were conquered, and details the important role that veterinary scientists played. The narrative is driven by astonishing events that centered on animal disease: the influenza pandemic of 1872, discovery of the causes of anthrax and tuberculosis in the 1880s, conquest of Texas cattle fever and then yellow fever, German anthrax attacks on the United States during World War I, the tuberculin war of 1931, Japanese biological warfare in the 1940s, and today’s bioterror dangers. Veterinary science in the rural Midwest arose from agriculture, but in urban Philadelphia it came from medicine; similar differences occurred in Canada between Toronto and Montreal. As land-grant colleges were established after the American Civil War, individual states followed divergent pathways in supporting veterinary science. Some employed a trade school curriculum that taught agriculturalists to empirically treat animal diseases and others emphasized a curriculum tied to science. This pattern continued for a century, but today some institutions have moved back to the trade school philosophy. Avoiding lessons of the 1910 Flexner Report on medical education reform, university-associated veterinary schools are being approved that do not have control of their own veterinary hospitals, diagnostic laboratories, and research institutes—components that are critical for training students in science. Underlying this change were twin idiosyncrasies of culture—disbelief in science and distrust of government—that spawned scientology, creationism, anti-vaccination movements, and other anti-science scams. As new infectious plagues continue to arise, Pioneer Science and the Great Plagues details the strategies we learned defeating plagues from 1860 to 1960—and the essential role veterinary science played. To defeat the plagues of today it is essential we avoid the digital cocoon of disbelief in science and cultural stasis now threatening progress.

This anthology addresses the current understanding of democracy from a feminist, intersectional and transnational perspective with a particular focus on the relevance of women’s suffrage in Switzerland since 1971, and analyses challenges for women’s political participation worldwide. It points to the significance of memory politics, political struggles and discourses on citizenship and human rights that shape democracies today. Furthermore, it examines how digitalization affects women's democratic participation, exploring both the opportunities it opens up and the barriers it may create, while also expanding the concept of democracy beyond traditional state institutions

The novelties brought in by the legislature on the Italian vote abroad marked a turning point both for Italian politics, with the introduction of foreign representation, and for the communities of Italians abroad. But what opinion do our expatriate co-nationals have of the Italian vote? And has voting from abroad brought our global co-nationals closer (or not) to Italian politics, Italy and/or their Italian heritage? And then, who are the Italians in the world? How many are there and where are they concentrated? This book offers an up-to-date reading of the experiences of the Italian vote in the world from 2003 to date, analysis of the results of a survey into the participation of Italians abroad in the 2006 political elections, as well as cues, reflections and considerations on the topic of Italian emigration and the Italian vote abroad.

The book 'Quantum dots: A variety of a new applications” provides some collections of practical applications of quantum dots. This book is divided into four sections. In section 1 a review of the thermo-optical characterization of CdSe/ZnS core-shell nanocrystal solutions was performed. The Thermal Lens (TL) technique was used, and the thermal self-phase Modulation (TSPM) technique was adopted as the simplest alternative method. Section 2 includes five chapters where novel optical and lasing application are discussed. In section 3 four examples of quantum dot system for different applications in electronics are given. Section 4 provides three examples of using quantum dot system for biological applications. This is a collaborative book sharing and providing fundamental research such as the one conducted in Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Material Science, Medicine with a base text that could serve as a reference in research by presenting up-to-date research work on the field of quantum dot systems.

A XIX és XX. század orvosbölcseleti témakörei között megkerülhetetlen a medikalizáció meglehetősen szerteágazó jelensége, melynek számos filozófiai és bioetikai vonatkozása is van. A gyógyító munka alapvető sajátossága, hogy normatív folyamat: a betegségek, zavarok és szindrómák osztályozásától a páciensek ellátásáig erkölcsi értékek, etikai normák szövik át az orvos-beteg találkozásokat. A medikalizáció, azaz egy életjelenség orvosi hatókörbe vonása, orvosbiológiai nyelvezettel történő leírása és orvosi eszközökkel történő kezelése önmagában értéksemleges, ám az elmúlt két évszázad bővelkedik a határátlépő, az arányosság követelményeit próbára tevő gyakorlatokban. Jelen kötet a férfi és női testek működéséhez, kiváltképp a szexualitáshoz és a reprodukcióhoz fűződő jelenségek kritikai olvasatával kíván rámutatni az orvoslás társadalmi, kulturális beágyazottságára, különös tekintettel a diagnózisalkotás azon eseteire, amikor a medicina illetékessége, vagy eszközválasztása megkérdőjelezhető. Az olvasó a szexuális funkciók élethosszig tartó megőrzésének imperatívusza mellett a homoszexualitás, a hisztéria, vagy a várandósság és szülés témaköreinek filozófiai és etikai reflexióin keresztül megismerheti a medikalizáció negatív hatásait, végső soron betekintést nyerhet az egészség-betegség fogalompár filozófiai-etikai beágyazottságába.