Humanities & Social Sciences

Arriving in Rome from the Netherlands in 1895, the Catholic priest and Redemptorist Willem van Rossum (1854–1932) rose quickly through the ranks of the curia. In many ways an outsider, he made a resounding success of his career. His zeal in the fight against the ‘virus of modernism’ earned him a cardinal’s hat in 1911, and he was appointed prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in 1918. As ‘red pope’ or head of the Vatican’s mission department, Van Rossum led a hard-fought and ultimately successful campaign to separate missionary policy, fundraising and staffing from Western nationalism, and concentrate control over the worldwide missionary project at supranational level in Rome. He was the driving force behind two programmatic documents on the missions by Popes Benedict XV and Pius XI, which promoted the building up of indigenous churches and the educating of native clergy, thus helping to create a favourable position for the Catholic church during the subsequent wave of decolonisation. In the meantime, Van Rossum continued to decry Italian dominance in the church as well as the curia’s inefficiencies, for instance in a vituperative pamphlet that he wrote shortly before his death. This scholarly biography of Willem van Rossum rescues this great strategist behind the ‘popes of the missions’ from oblivion, and throws fascinating light on the history of the Catholic church and the Roman curia from the late nineteenth century until far into the twentieth.

This book, New Insights in Brain-Computer Interface Systems explores the world of BCIs, where cutting-edge technology meets the intricacies of the human brain. From pioneering advancements in neuroprosthetics to innovative applications in cognitive enhancement and rehabilitation, this book offers insight into the latest research and breakthroughs in the field. Written by leading experts, each chapter explores the science behind BCIs, their practical implementations, and the ethical considerations that accompany this rapidly evolving technology. This book is an exploration that spans multiple domains, including healthcare, robotics, virtual reality, biomaterials, education, humanoids, neuro rights, and neurostimulation. Discover how BCIs are transforming patient care and rehabilitation in offering new hope for individuals with neurological conditions. Learn about the groundbreaking use of neural networks in controlling lower limb exoskeletons, enhancing mobility for those with physical limitations. Uncover the applications of BCIs in action observation and motor imagery, reshaping the landscape of rehabilitation and training. Explore sustainable solutions with biodegradable and biohybrid materials crucial for advancing BCI technology. Gain insights into Mindwave applications and their potential to revolutionize learning methodologies. Delve into trust dynamics in human–humanoid interactions and their implications for future collaboration. Engage with the ethical considerations surrounding BCIs and the imperative for safeguarding individual rights. Investigate how frontal lobe stimulation enhances connectivity in Alzheimer’s disease networks, offering new avenues for therapeutic intervention. Whether you are a researcher, practitioner, student, or simply curious about the future of human-computer interaction, this book provides invaluable insights. Are you ready to explore the next frontier of neuroscience and technology?

Badekultur und Muße stehen seit jeher in einem spannungsvollen Zusammenhang, weil sowohl die Praktiken des Badens als auch die gesellschaftliche Bewertung von Muße erheblichen Schwankungen unterworfen waren. Die Vorstellungen darüber, ob, wann, wie, in welcher Art und mit welchem Nutzen zu baden sei, wandelten sich ständig und fanden Niederschlag in mannigfaltigen kulturellen Zeugnissen, welche in den hier versammelten Beiträgen aus Kunstgeschichte, Archäologie, Mediävistik, Musikwissenschaft und Literaturwissenschaft untersucht werden. Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes geben einen Überblick über Badekultur, Badeanlagen und Badepraktiken von der Antike bis zur Moderne und wollen darüber hinaus zur weitergehenden Erforschung dieses bislang eher stiefmütterlich behandelten Themenkomplexes anregen. Behandelt werden mit den Badeanlagen im antiken Baiae oder mit Zumthors Therme in Vals der räumlich-architektonische Rahmen des Badens. Die Auswertung literarischer und medizinischer Schriften rückt moralische und gesundheitliche Fragen in den Blick. Außerdem werden größere badekulturelle Zusammenhänge in der Antike, in der höfischen Kultur des Hoch- und Spätmittelalters sowie in den Kurorten des 19. Jahrhunderts verdeutlicht.

Alternative & renewable energy sources & technology

This open access book explores the role of textiles in death to investigate questions into how the body was prepared before the funeral, how the body was seen and perceived by its relatives and community, and the role of textiles in its metamorphosis into a deceased. The volume’s geographic coverage is broad, encompassing areas where textile and skeletal conservation is optimal (the ancient Nile Valley) and areas where only minute fragments could be preserved adhering to metal objects. The case-studies cover Egypt, Sudan, Greece, the Iberian Peninsula, Scandinavia, and Central Europe, ranging from the 12th century BCE to the end of the 19th century CE. Going beyond this geohistorical frameworks, the book presents new methods for the study, retrieval and conservation of funerary textiles in situ during excavations. It offers useful tools for future research in both textile archaeology and bioarcheology and promote interdisciplinary collaborations between the two fields for a better understanding of burial practices. Contributors to this volume include experts from the fields of bioanthropology, archaeology, textile research and conservation.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Jeffrey C. Alexander examines what was new about Egypt's Spring revolution. Why was it so compelling to watch, and what made it so effective and does it have implications for democratic movements internationally. Using international news reports and translations of the social media pages that brought Egyptians flocking onto Tahrir Square, Alexander uncovers the narrative of a revolution that was scripted by its organizers, as both a moral statement and a media and digital statement. He sees it as a theatrical performance, designed to reveal to the key protagonists what a civil, egalitarian society might look like, by showing it in microcosm on the Square. Ultimately, he argues, it was the sight of the protestor's behaviour that swayed the army, and brought about regime change. From the author of the widely acclaimed 2010 book: The Performance of Politics: Obama's Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power, this powerful intervention into the debate on the Arab Spring is a must-read for those curious about how social media are fundamentally changing global politics.

By portraying the circumstances of people living with chronic conditions in radically different contexts, from Alzheimer’s patients in the UK to homeless people with psychiatric disorders in India, Managing Chronicity in Unequal States offers glimpses of what dealing with medically complex conditions in stratified societies means. While in some places the state regulates and intrudes on the most intimate aspects of chronic living, in others it is utterly and criminally absent. Either way, it is a present/absent actor that deeply conditions people’s opportunities and strategies of care. This book explores how individuals, groups and communities navigate uncertain and unequal healthcare systems, in which inherent moral judgements on human worth have long-lasting effects on people’s wellbeing. This is key reading for anyone wishing to deconstruct the issues at stake when analysing how care and chronicity are entangled with multiple institutional, economic, and other circumstantial factors. How people access the available informal and formal resources as well as how they react to official diagnoses and decisions are important facets of the management of chronicity. In the arena of care, people with chronic conditions find themselves negotiating restrictions and handling issues of power and (inter)dependency in relationships of inequality and proximity. This is particularly relevant in current times, when care has given in to the lure of the market, and the possibility of living a long and fulfilling life has been drastically reduced, transformed into a ‘reward’ for the few who have been deemed worthy of it.

This research aims to contribute to the study of the current of non-violence in Islam. A phenomenon often considered extraneous to the heritage of this religion, it nevertheless has several examples of commitment, among whom the Syrian preacher and theologian Ǧawdat Saʿīd (1931-2022) deserves particular attention. Central to our work is a reconstruction of his biographical profile as well as an analysis of the development of his theoretical framework over time. Initially a follower of the salafiyyah and then close to the Islamist movement, Saʿīd played a pioneering role in promoting non-violence as the sole modus operandi of an Islamic activism oriented towards the establishment of global peace and justice. Drawing on a social and anthropocentric reading of the Quran, Saʿīd aims to demonstrate that this is the true meaning of revelation and the purpose of the divine eschatological project.

This is an open access book. It offers comprehensive, self-contained knowledge on Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), which is a very promising technology for achieving intelligence in the next-generation wireless communications and computing networks. The book starts with the basic concepts, key techniques and network architectures of MEC. Then, we present the wide applications of MEC, including edge caching, 6G networks, Internet of Vehicles, and UAVs. In the last part, we present new opportunities when MEC meets blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and distributed machine learning (e.g., federated learning). We also identify the emerging applications of MEC in pandemic, industrial Internet of Things and disaster management. The book allows an easy cross-reference owing to the broad coverage on both the principle and applications of MEC. The book is written for people interested in communications and computer networks at all levels. The primary audience includes senior undergraduates, postgraduates, educators, scientists, researchers, developers, engineers, innovators and research strategists.

This book puts forward a mechanistic account of subjective experience based on a review of the current cognitive neuroscience literature on conscious perception, attention, and metacognition. It is argued that current empirical studies are often misinterpreted. An undue focus has been placed on perceptual capacity rather than subjective experience per se. Null findings are often overemphasized despite the limited sensitivity of the methods used. A synthesis is proposed to combine the advantages and intuitions of both global and local theories of consciousness. This will be discussed in the context of our understanding of the sense of agency, emotion, rationality, culture, philosophical theories, and clinical applications. Taking insights from both physiology and current research in artificial intelligence, the resulting view directly addresses the qualitative nature of subjective experience.

Synesius' essay De insomniis ('On Dreams') inquires into the meaning and importance of dreams for human beings and treats themes - most of all the relationship of humans to higher spheres -, which for religiously- and philosophically-minded people are still important today.

"Part art history essay, part experimental fiction, part theoretical manifesto on the politics of equivalence, Helicography examines questions of scale in relation to Robert Smithson’s iconic 1970 artwork Spiral Jetty. In an essay and film made to accompany the earthwork, Smithson invites us to imagine the stone helix of his structure at various orders of magnitude, from microscopic molecules to entire galaxies. Taking up this invitation with an unrelenting and literal enthusiasm, Helicography pursues the implications of such transformations all the way to the limits of logic. If other spirals, from the natural to the man-made, were expanded or condensed to the size of Spiral Jetty, what are the consequences of their physical metamorphoses? What other equivalences follow in turn, and where do their surprising historical, cultural, and mechanical connections lead? This book considers a number of forms in order to find out: the fluid vortices of whirlpools, hurricanes, and galaxies; the delicate shells of snails and the threatening pose of rattlesnakes; prehistoric ferns and the turns of the inner ear; the monstrous jaws of ancient sharks; a baroque finial scroll on a bass viol; a 19th-century watch spring; phonograph discs and spooled film; the largest open-pit mine on the planet. The result is a narrative laboratory for the “science of imaginary solutions” proposed by Alfred Jarry (whose King Ubu also plays a central role in the story told here), a work of fictocriticism blurring form and content, and the story of a single instant in time lost in the deserts of the intermountain west."

Crossing disciplinary and regional boundaries, this book takes a comparative perspective on standardisation tendencies in Arabic-based writing systems across three continents. 12 distinct manuscript traditions are presented in situations where different cultures, languages and scripts interact, yielding a wide range of case studies. A wealth of new data gives insight into the factors underlying uniformity and variation in manuscript cultures.

This book draws on extensive research into Baroque ceiling painting in Bohemia and Moravia. Three case studies of residential decoration present different representational strategies used by 17th century noblemen. Emphasis is placed on the way that social changes brought about by the Thirty Year’s War and the Battle of White Mountain altered the historical circumstances of artistic patronage in Central Europe. The formal models inspiring 17th century artistic production are explored in detail – the influence and appropriation of sources from Italy, France, the Low Countries and Central Europe – and it is shown that appropriation was never mere imitation, but was mediated by the representational strategies of the nobility in specific historical circumstances.

Erotic, Sexualities, BDSM,Middle Ages, Beowulf, Chaucer,Santiago García