Humanities & Social Sciences

The text is devoted to researching the processes of formation of common Austro-Hungarian armed forces during the last third of 19th and first decades of 20th centuries up to the beginning of World War I. One of the most important aspects of this research is the study of modernization of army manning systems and the influence of this process on Austro-Hungarian society. The primary methodology of this research involves a comparative analysis of military modernization at the imperial level, and on the example of the peripheral province of the empire, Austrian Galicia.

Mimesis or imitation comes in many forms, from animal and plant mimicry to artistic copies ‘from life’. This book offers eighteen essays addressing mimesis from diverse perspectives. From the recreation of galaxies to Iron Age torcs, from counterfeit dragons to modern waxworks, each chapter explores facets of material mimesis from prehistory to the present day. The Matter of Mimesis invites readers to compare practices of imitating, faking, and synthesising materials and objects in nature, art and science, raising questions about skills, techniques and politics of making that transcend historical and disciplinary boundaries and inform both our past and future worlds.

This book takes the reader on a 800 year long journey through the chant and liturgy of the Order of the Birgittines investigating liturgical books from the Birgittine abbeys in Vadstena, Mariënwater/Maria Refugie (the Netherlands), Mariëntroon (Belgium), and Altomünster (Germany). Karin Lagergren explores how the liturgy maintained the Birgittine identity through all these centuries and how it negotiated the Birgittine liturgical heritage in order to adapt to a changing world. The Birgittine Order is a monastic order with the charismatic figure of St Birgitta as its very special hallmark, providing spiritual unity and a firm foundation for the Birgittine identity. How could such a figure remain constantly present and relevant to the Order’s existence and members? This is one of the questions the book attempts to answer. Furthermore, it seeks to address how the Birgittines used, expanded, altered, and lived with the Birgittine liturgy, through examining their liturgical books. More generally, interest lies in exploring how groups use chant and liturgy and adapt them to their particular needs; the Order of the Birgittines provides a specific case. Another issue concerns the intriguing question of the transmission of the Birgittine liturgy. In summary, the overall and guiding idea behind this book is to describe how liturgy expresses fundamental ideas about how a community chooses to define itself, in this case the Birgittines. A theoretical basis for this understanding has been adopted from Max Weber’s concept of charisma. Understanding arises through examination of the musical content of the liturgical books as well as the structure, layout and decoration of the books and how these can be linked to historical circumstances. The Birgittine liturgical chant repertoire in this study is regarded as a ‘chantscape’, a term covering the entire Birgittine liturgy as experienced by the sisters and brothers of the Order. This term, used here for the first time, is based on the more familiar concept of ‘soundscape’ and will be the guide for analysis of musical examples and then related to questions of Birgittine spirituality and Birgitta’s charismatic authority. This book is the first to address the Birgittine chant and liturgy after the Middle Ages and considers many sources that until now have been unexplored.

Despite considerable efforts to improve scientific understanding and risk management, governments and businesses remain insufficiently prepared to confront large oil spills considered to be the so called ‘high-impact low-probability’ disasters. To alleviate this problem, we focus on the historical HAVEN oil spill (off the Port of Genoa, 1991) recognized not only as the largest shipwreck in the European waters, but also as one of the worst oil pollution cases in the Med. We reconstruct this spill with the Lagrangian oil spill model MEDSLIK-II forced by the to-date high resolution meteo-oceanographic datasets. Moreover, we run the HAVEN oil spill scenario stochastically sampling virtual spills randomly in space and time. The results are presented as the pollution hazard indices in probabilistic terms, which is supposed to be a representative indicator of future accidents. The highest indices are found in the Alboran Sea, Algerian and Liguro-Provençal subbasins, and in the center of the Ionian Sea. Conversely, the southern part of the Ionian, the areas east of Sardinia and west of Corsica, the Gulf of Lion, the northern Adriatic, and north-eastern Aegean Sea do not reveal high hazards.

The volume, dedicated to the 44th International Conference of the Italian Union for Drawing, investigates the theme of ‘Transitions’, which particularly effectively represents our time and the current condition of the discipline of Drawing. The term, beyond its generic meaning of an intermediate stage in a process in which a condition changes from one state to another, has always been used in various fields, from music to geophysics. In fact, the disciplines of drawing have always been confronted with themes and issues relating to transitions from one condition to another. The history of representation tells us of transformations, even epochal ones, relating to ‘drawing’, with all that such transitions entail: suffice it to think of the evolution of forms of representation, of instrumental apparatuses, of the mutability of supports, of the analogical-digital transition underway, of the new modes of communication on platforms, of the hypertrophic offer of images also on the net that confirms Guy Debord’s intuitions relating to the new spectacularisation of society. Similarly, representation triggers transitions in the prefiguration and communication of design, the anticipation and foreshadowing of future events.The challenges posed by the digital pose open questions whose scope can only be glimpsed, such as the relationship between drawing and the act of modelling, and the construction of new paradigms of visual language and communication. ‘Transitions’, almost implicitly, points to possible futures, the evolution of technique and the search for new modes of expression; at the same time, however, it can suggest silences and reflections in a process of connection between history, theory, criticism and construction.

Livio Odescalchi (1652–1713), nephew of Innocent XI, paid the price in his youth for the pope’s anti-nepotism policy, who chose to deny him any official position. During the same period, Livio had to submit to the oppressive control of his uncle, his testamentary guardian – an unhappy situation that, at the time, caused him to be considered a symbol of misfortune. In spite of this, the young man was able to lay the foundations for a strategy of economic and social ascent that would later bear fruit. After the death of Innocent XI, a period of compensation began, built on the accumulation of honours and possessions, financial investments, commissions and art trades, patronage, social celebrations, and international networks. This book, based on Roberto Fiorentini’s doctoral thesis (Aprilia 1987 – Washington 2019), examines both phases of Livio Odescalchi’s life, analysing them in the light of a considerable quantity of archival documents, some of which are completely unpublished.

This open access book aims to present the experiences and visions of several world university leaders, providing strategies and methods used to find various income sources for their institutions. The expansion of a university system requires a corresponding increase in funding. Consequently, university administrators all over the world are in a constant search for additional funds. If higher-level institutions are expected to deliver high-quality education and research, their sustainable funding is crucial to the development of the countries they serve. While governmental sources are a major part of the funding of most universities, economic downturns as in the case of the COVID-19 crisis may reduce governmental contributions in this and cause administrators to look for various alternative sources to help them compete in a global setting. This book offers valuable information and guidance to university leaders and administrators worldwide especially at a time when university budgets are under stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic with its dire financial and economic consequences.

Genetic Diversity in Microorganisms presents chapters revealing the magnitude of genetic diversity of microorganisms living in different environmental conditions. The complexity and diversity of microbial populations is by far the highest among all living organisms. The diversity of microbial communities and their ecologic roles are being explored in soil, water, on plants and in animals, and in extreme environments such as the arctic deep-sea vents or high saline lakes. The increasing availability of PCR-based molecular markers allows the detailed analyses and evaluation of genetic diversity in microorganisms. The purpose of the book is to provide a glimpse into the dynamic process of genetic diversity of microorganisms by presenting the thoughts of scientists who are engaged in the generation of new ideas and techniques employed for the assessment of genetic diversity, often from very different perspectives. The book should prove useful to students, researchers, and experts in the area of microbial phylogeny, genetic diversity, and molecular biology.

While the divide between capitalism and communism, embodied in the image of the Iron Curtain, seemed to be as wide and definitive as any cultural rift, Giles Scott-Smith, Joes Segal, and Peter Romijn have compiled a selection of essays on how culture contributed to the blurring of ideological boundaries between the East and the West. This important and diverse volume presents fascinating insights into the tensions, rivalries, and occasional cooperation between the two blocs, with essays that represent the cutting edge of Cold War Studies and analyze aesthetic preferences and cultural phenomena as various as interior design in East and West Germany; the Soviet stance on genetics; US cultural diplomacy during and after the Cold War; and the role of popular music as the universal cultural ambassador. An illuminating and wide-ranging survey of interrelated collective dreams from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Divided Dreamworlds? has a place on the bookshelf of any modern historian.

When seeking the origins of World War I, the chain of events in the late nineteenth century that led to the breakdown of relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and facilitated the rise of an aggressive Serbian nationalism needs to be understood. This book focuses on the hitherto unexplored Hungarian influence on the Habsburg Monarchy's policy toward Serbia after the 1867 Ausgleich, and it argues that this early period was critical in shaping policy after 1871, down to the imposition on Serbia in 1881 of a system of economic and political control.The Ausgleich, the Austro-Hungarian compromise that reconstituted the Empire as a dual monarchy, gave Hungary a limited voice in foreign affairs; and it was at the request of the Hungarian premier, Count Gyula Andrássy, that the young politician Benjámin Kállay was appointed representative at Belgrade in 1868. Both men were obsessed with the threat posed by Russia and particularly concerned that Serbia might be used as a stalking horse for Russian influence among the Monarchy's South Slavs. They pursued a shadow policy designed to draw Serbia firmly into the Monarchy's sphere of influence, which contradicted that of the foreign minister, Count Beust, and resulted in a serious deterioration in relations with Serbia by 1871. After 1871 Andrássy, as foreign minister, laid the foundations for a more explicit control of Serbia; Kállay, as a senior diplomat, negotiated the treaties that, by 1881, locked Serbia into satellite status for a generation. Through detailed archival research in multiple languages and a painstaking reconstruction of diplomatic events, Armour illuminates a crucial period in Central European history, showing how the origins of a war that claimed millions of lives can be traced to political maneuverings almost fifty years before.

Mit der dekonstruktiven Analyse des Diskurses zur Lernberatung in der Weiterbildung wird ein innovativer methodologischer Zugang zu einer zentralen pädagogischen Diskussion vorgelegt. Die Aporien des Weiterbildungsdiskurses über das Prinzip der Selbststeuerung, die Beratungskommunikation und den Status des Subjekts werden in den Blick gebracht. Der Text bietet theoretisch interessierten Lernberaterinnen und -beratern eine bemerkenswerte Grundlagenarbeit und Studierenden oder Lehrenden ein gelungenes Beispiel des Einsatzes poststrukturalistischer Figuren in den erziehungswissenschaftlich-erwachsenenpädagogischen Diskurs.

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a statistical tool for digging out hidden factors which give rise to the diversity of manifest objectives in psychology, medicine and other sciences. EFA had its heyday as psychologist Leon Thurstone (1935 and 1948) based EFA on what he called the “principle of simple structure” (SS). This principle, however, was erroneous from the beginning what remained unrecognized despite subsequent inventions of more sophisticated statistical tools such as confirmatory analysis and structural equation modeling. These methods are highly recommended today as tolerable routes to model complexities of observation. But they did not remove the harmful errors that SS had left behind. Five chapters in this book demonstrate and explain the trouble. In chapter 2 the ailment of SS is healed by introducing an unconventional factor rotation, called Varimin. Varimin gives variables of an analysis an optimal opportunity to manifest functional interrelations underlying correlational observations. Ten applications of Varimin (in chapter 2) show that its results are superior to results obtained by the conventional Varimax procedure. Further applications are presented for sports achievements (chapter 3), intelligence (chapter 4), and personality (chapter 5). If Varimin keeps on standing the tests new theoretical building blocks will arise together with conceptual networks promoting a better understanding of the domains under study. Readers may check this prognosis by themselves using the statistical tool (Varimin) which is provided by open access in the internet.

This open access book examines the supervision of undergraduate degree projects, with a particular focus on how supervision may contribute to developing student independence and academic literacies. Based on an extensive research project, it uses examples from focus group interviews as well as actual supervision situations, taken from different higher education programmes at several universities in Sweden and Russia. The authors discuss issues such as supervisors’ perceptions and understandings of student independence, the relationship between supervisor and student, the significance of emotions in the supervision process, different supervision tools to foster independence, and the supervisor’s role not only as a guide and helper but also as an assessor of the students’ work. The book will appeal to scholars within the field of teaching and learning in higher education, as well as those from other disciplines who are interested in developing their own supervision practice.

Houshold objects (instrumenta domestica) from the Insula del Menandro are used to examine decorative principles, their correlation and interaction. Ancient object design is not only an expression of a visual culture, but rather an active part of it, as the objects are associated with activities, visual perception and semantic interpretation. These objects of Roman everyday life reflect cultural knowledge, social norms, values and lifestyles.

International Economics; Germany; Economy; Public Administration