Open Access Books

Aquatic environments, including freshwater and marine ecosystems, raw and treated sewage, sludge, and sediments, are home to a huge variety of microorganisms that mediate the recycling of dissolved organic carbon and recalcitrant substrata into food webs and the atmosphere. Archaea, bacteria, filamentous fungi, and yeasts play a key role in degradation processes, and many of them are used or have the potential to be harnessed in bioremediation. The importance of aquatic microorganisms is in their physiology and behavior: they can sink or float, some are motile, others adhere to a range of biotic and abiotic substrates (e.g. algae, invertebrates, sediments, driftwood), and they can form biofilms on surfaces, remain planktonic, or produce a broad diversity of bioactive compounds. By gathering a collection of papers focused on microorganisms in the over-cited environments, this Special Issue will improve the current knowledge of aquatic microbial biodiversity.

This reprint focuses on recent developments in laser measurement technologies and innovative applications. Laser-based measurement and sensing technologies have attracted growing attention due to their advantages of high sensitivity and fast responses. Their applications include industrial production, substance analysis, environmental monitoring, and more. In recent years, with the development of laser source and measurement approaches, many new technologies or applications of laser measurement and sensing have appeared. The topics of this reprint include laser measurement and sensing, micro- and nano-photoelectric measurement, the simultaneous measurement of multiple parameters, structured light measurement, and so on.

This work reports on an ongoing Italian-English translation project that began in 2018. This project aims at compiling a learner corpus and involves a Government Department as client and a selected group of MA students as translators. Texts to be translated focus on cultural heritage and are targeted to the international tourism market. This chapter centers on a sub-corpus that focuses on churches and palaces of the House of the Estense. This chapter draws attention to the target texts of our corpus. Starting from the extraction of specific terms in the source texts, target texts are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively in order to identify translation strategies and frequent mistakes with the aim of contributing to the translation of art and architecture for heritage tourism.

This Element provides a strong focus on enactive theory and the prospects for integrating enactive approaches with other embodied and extended theories, mediated through recent developments in predictive processing and the free energy principle. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A new framework for studying markets as the product of organizational planning and understanding the practical limits of market design. The Western energy crisis was one of the great financial disasters of the past century. The crisis began in April 2000, when price spikes started to rattle California’s electricity markets. Decades later, some blame economic fundamentals and ignorant politicians, while others accuse the energy sellers who raided the markets. In Failure by Design, sociologist Georg Rilinger offers a different explanation, one that focuses on the practical challenges of market design. The unique physical attributes of electricity made it exceedingly difficult to introduce markets into the coordination of the electricity system, so market designers were brought in to construct the infrastructures that coordinate how market participants interact. An exercise in social engineering, these infrastructures were intended to guide market actors toward behavior that would produce optimal market results and facilitate grid management. Yet, though these experts spent their days worrying about incentive misalignment and market manipulation, they unintentionally created a system riddled with opportunities for destructive behavior. Rilinger’s analysis not only illuminates the California energy crisis but also develops a broader theoretical framework for thinking about markets as the products of organizational planning and the limits of social engineering, contributing broadly to sociological and economic thinking about the nature of markets.

République naturaliste examine la rencontre entre un petit objet d’histoire de la culture et des sciences, les collections d’histoire naturelle, et un événement colossal, la Révolution. Les années 1789-1804 sont en effet un moment exceptionnel dans la constitution des collections naturalistes françaises. Récoltés, échangés, achetés ou confisqués dans les cabinets aristocratiques et ecclésiastiques, une multitude de spécimens convergent vers le Muséum d’histoire naturelle, tandis qu’une partie des doubles de ces collections nationales est envoyée en province dans les cabinets des Écoles centrales. Le Muséum apparaît alors comme le centre autour duquel s’organisent le rassemblement, puis la dispersion des spécimens et Paris prétend, pour un temps, incarner la capitale universelle de l’histoire naturelle. En suivant le parcours de ces objets, le livre analyse aussi ce qui se joue au moment où, dans la capitale comme en province, l’histoire naturelle s’institutionnalise, se professionnalise et se spécialise autour de collections refondées ou entièrement nouvelles. Au sein de ces collections, les relations entre objets scientifiques, artistiques et ethnographiques ne sont jamais exactement les mêmes tout comme les pratiques savantes qui fixent la valeur et l’usage des spécimens. C’est ainsi que dans les relations complexes, et parfois tendues, qui se tissent alors entre le Paris naturaliste, l’Europe savante et la province des professeurs, une hiérarchie des positions intellectuelles et des institutions scientifiques s’élabore progressivement.

Change and persistence of gender relations in the workplace, family, and politics create specific opportunities and challenges for men and masculinity(ies). What is currently changing at all is up for debate. What developments are identified? What potentials, contradictions, and tensions – for men and for society – open up or emerge as a result? How have masculinities evolved and been shaped historically in Switzerland? The book brings together research papers on masculinity(ies) in Switzerland that contribute to a critical contemporary analysis. Perspectives from different disciplines are included: gender studies, sociology, social work, history, literary studies, psychology, and migration studies.

Materials and equipment in food processing industries are colonized by surface-associated microbial communities called biofilms. In these biostructures microorganisms are embedded in a complex organic matrix composed essentially of polysaccharides, nucleic acids and proteins. This organic shield contributes to the mechanical biofilm cohesion and triggers tolerance to environmental stresses such as dehydratation or nutrient deprivation. Notably, cells within a biofilm are more tolerant to sanitation processes and the action of antimicrobial agents than their free living (or planktonic) counterparts. Such properties make conventional cleaning and disinfection protocols normally not effective in eradicating these biocontaminants. Biofilms are thus a continuous source of persistent microorganisms, including spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms, leading to repeated contamination of processed food with important economic and safety impact. Alternatively, in some particular settings, biofilm formation by resident or technological microorganisms can be desirable, due to possible enhancement of food fermentations or as a means of bioprotection against the settlement of pathogenic microorganisms. In the last decades substantial research efforts have been devoted to unravelling mechanisms of biofilm formation, deciphering biofilm architecture and understanding microbial interactions within those ecosystems. However, biofilms present a high level of complexity and many aspects remain yet to be fully understood. A lot of attention has been also paid to the development of novel strategies for preventing or controlling biofilm formation in industrial settings. Further research needs to be focused on the identification of new biocides effective against biofilm-associated microorganisms, the development of control strategies based on the inhibition of cell-to-cell communication, and the potential use of bacteriocins, bacteriocin-producing bacteria, phage, and natural antimicrobials as anti-biofilm agents, among others. This Research Topic aims to provide an avenue for dissemination of recent advances within the “biofilms” field, from novel knowledge on mechanisms of biofilm formation and biofilm architecture to novel strategies for biofilm control in food industrial settings.

Sommes-nous encore maîtres de nos machines d’écriture ? Que se joue-t-il derrière la distinction entre le hardware et le software ? Dans les deux conférences Le logiciel n’existe pas (1991) et Mode protégé (1993), publiées ici pour la première fois en français, un des pères fondateurs de la théorie des médias allemande Friedrich Kittler (1943-2011), interroge la mainmise de l’industrie du logiciel sur nos usages des ordinateurs et nous invite à une stimulante relecture du matérialisme.

La constitution d'une économie mondiale bouleverse fortement les modes de formation des élites françaises. Depuis la fin des années quatre-vingt, le modèle des écoles de commerce et d'ingénieurs tente de concurrencer le modèle pédagogique national qui serait trop emprunt d'un esprit d'État, trop fermé sur l'hexagone, ou trop éloigné des besoins des entreprises. Le modèle des business school nord-américaines est-il vraiment adaptable à notre pays ?

La famille de Darius, tableau peint en 1660-1661, marque le début de la carrière de Charles Le Brun comme peintre du roi, elle marque également le début du gouvernement personnel de Louis XIV. Cette œuvre ouvre une nouvelle époque de la peinture en France, elle montre l'importance du dialogue avec la théorie de l'art moderne d’origine italienne, et incarne également une politique royale qui poursuit l’idée d’intégrer l’art moderne à ses stratégies. Pour mieux en saisir la signification complexe, cette étude analyse l’œuvre sous divers angles, elle s’attache au point de vue de la théorie politique, comme à celui de l’historiographie ou encore à l’histoire de la psychologie.

Cryopreservation has many biotechnological applications in different fields. This has led to an increase in importance of cryobiology as a science that examines the effect of ultra-low temperatures on cells, tissues, organs and organisms and also the freezability of these structures, while maintaining their viability. Nowadays it is well known that this form of biotechnology can be used to solve a lot of problems such as human infertility, life threatening diseases, preservation of gametes and DNA and also biodiversity conservation. Cryopreservation Biotechnology in Biomedical and Biological Sciences describes principles and application of cryopreservation biotechnology in different research areas and includes seven chapters that have been written by experts in their research fields. The chapters included in this book are thought to improve the current understanding of the different areas of using cryopreservation biotechnology.

This book brings suitable data concerning theory and experiments of neutron interactions with different materials. Since the neutron discovery by Chadwick in 1932, researchers of the entire world begin to make studies about it. It is well known that neutron have no charge, and their electric dipole moment is either zero or too small to measure, but theories and experiments show that neutron has spin (presence of magnetic moment), and polarization neutron scattering is plausible. The reader can obtain remarks about inelastic scattering cross sections for neutron; polarized neutron reflectivity; scattering methods; neutron reflectometry tool to probe the chemical structures; neutron scattering for amino acid crystals; and small-angle neutron scattering nanoemulsion heat transfer fluids in this book.

In this first comprehensive English-language portrait of the Brothers Grimm as political thinkers and actors, Jakob Norberg shows how history's two most famous folklorists aspired to define national identity, delineate national borders, and even counsel regimes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In this chapter, we aim to compare the Nordic societies in a broad fashion in the last 200 years in their process of “sailing” (with the implication of rough waters along the way) from social fragmentation to more inclusive welfare societies. Our main goal is to examine the co-evolution of economic, political, and fiscal factors among the Nordic societies in the long-run by making use of recent longitudinal datasets. In this way we can map out some key patterns that characterized the shift toward more peaceful and well-functioning societies. First, we focus on the process towards economic and political convergence that took place, with some exceptions, in the latter part of the 20th century. Second, we also examine how these processes of convergence translated into the realm of fiscal and social policies, and to what extent they were related to decreasing levels of social fragmentation. The chapter shows that the paths towards welfare states were not uniform among the Nordic countries, and that some of the pivotal forces and periods were connected to various types of crises, namely that these were not processes that were smooth or inevitable. We conclude our paper with some general findings and discussion of current day problems among the Nordic societies from a comparative historical perspective.