Open Access Books

Building feminist alliances has always been an important feature of supranational European Union (EU) gender equality policy and politics. Historically, a so-called ‘velvet triangle’ consisting of feminist actors inside and outside of EU institutions committed to promoting gender equality has been the most tangible and best-researched network. Overall, feminist and women’s movements have played a major role in shaping the relationships between EU institutions and civil society and equally the content of EU gender equality politics and policies. The chapter provides an overview of: first, the history and formal rules of EU-civil society relationships; second, crucial changes to supranational alliances in gender equality; and third, current challenges to gender equality alliances in EU governance.

History videos on YouTube have obtained an enormous reach and relevance in the transmission of historical and political content. This edited volume examines media stagings, specific features in the historical portrayals of certain epochs, and processes of negotiating historical culture on YouTube. It makes a contribution to defining the relationship between history and popular media, and the challenges that this entails.

In Peki, an Ewe town in the Ghanaian Volta Region, death is a matter of public concern. By means of funeral banners printed with synthetic ink on PVC, public lyings in state, cemented graves and wreaths made from plastic, death occupies a prominent place in the world of the living. Rest in Plastic gives an insight into local entanglements of death, synthetic materials and power in Ewe community. It shows how different materials and things that come to shape power relations, exist in a delicate balance between state and local governance, kin and outsiders, death and life, the invisible and the visible, movement and containment.

Players and Arenas brings together a diverse group of experts to examine the interactions between political protestors and the many strategic players they encounter, such as cultural institutions, religious organizations, and the mass mediaas well as potential allies, competitors, recruits, and funders. Discussing protestors and players as they interact within the arenas of specific social contexts, the essays show that the main constraints on what protestors can accomplish come not from social and political structures, but from other players with different goals and interests. Through a careful treatment of these situations, this volume offers a new way to approach the role of social protest in national and international politics.

Islam et intégration sont fréquemment considérés en France, voire en Europe, comme antinomiques. Aux États- Unis, les musulmans du sous-continent indien (Inde, Pakistan, Bangladesh) offrent pourtant l'exemple d'une population qui semble avoir bien réussi son intégration structurelle. Celle-ci a été assurée grâce à des niveaux élevés d'instruction et de réussite économique qui font de cette population l'une des minorités les plus prospères en Amérique. Phénomène migratoire encore peu étudié, l...

À une époque où les problèmes socio-culturels et politico-économiques prennent une acuité croissante, l’influence continue de la science et de la technologie revêt une importance extrême. L’auteur s’attache à définir un nouveau domaine de l’économie : le « secteur quaternaire ». En redéfinissant les secteurs économiques, il montre une relation spécifique, jusqu’à présent oubliée, entre la science et la technologie, qui détermine un nouveau secteur économique : « le quaternaire », secteur caractérisé par l’action de concevoir, de créer, d’interpréter, d’organiser, de contrôler et de transmettre avec l’aide de la science et de la technique, donnant à ces actes une valeur économique. Le classement traditionnel en trois secteurs : primaire, secondaire, tertiaire, éclate en fonction de ce nouveau critère de la fonction scientifique. Le secteur quaternaire sera le secteur-clef du xxie siècle. Afin de pouvoir identifier le quaternaire comme une ère totalement a-spatiale, l’auteur commence par déterminer le quaternaire dans le temps et dans l’espace. Ensuite, avec l’examen de la division internationale du travail, du comportement et des stades de développement des pays, le quaternaire apparaît comme un instrument susceptible d’arracher les pays pauvres au sous-développement. Enfin, l’auteur décrit une nouvelle phase de l’humanité, usant de la science et de la technologie avec intensité, pouvant engager les pays dans la prospérité. Auparavant les connaissances scientifiques et techniques étaient un privilège réservé à une minorité alors que, dans un avenir proche, elles devraient être étendues à toute l’humanité, grâce à l’accumulation de connaissances et à la capacité de la société de l’information à les mettre à la portée de tous. Cette nouvelle société commandée par le quaternaire, également appelée « société de connaissance », trouvera un nouvel ordre mondial plus juste et équitable.

This paper explores the intellectual and culture context in which the Van Horne – Saeghemolen alba were commissioned and used. It is argued that these have to be understood in the broader Dutch context of the overlapping fields of art and science in general, and in the comntext of Leiden university in particular. Established in 1575, the university took great care to innovate both education and research. Eye for detail – both philological and anatomical – was considered of great importance, also with regard to religious notions of the ‘Book of Nature’, God’s second revelation. After discussing the these backgrounds, some attention is paid to two of Van Horne’s students, Nicolaus Steno and Johannes Swammerdam.

This book analyses the key issues of the offshore wind farm's energy transmission and grid integration infrastructure. But, for this purpose, there are not evaluated all the electric configurations. In the present book is deeply evaluated a representative case. This representative case is built starting from three generic characteristics of an offshore wind farm: the rated power, the distance to shore and the average wind speed of the location. Thus, after a brief description of concepts related to wind power and several subsea cable modeling options, an offshore wind farm is modeled and its parameters defined to use as a base case. Upon this base case, several analyses of the key aspects of the connection infrastructure are performed. The first aspect to analyze is the management of the reactive power flowing through the submarine cable. Then, the undesired harmonic amplifications in the offshore wind farms due to the resonances and after this, transient over-voltage problems in the electric infrastructure are characterized. Finally, an offshore wind farm connection infrastructure is proposed in order to achieve the grid code requirements for a specific system operator, but not as a close solution, as a result of a methodology based on analyses and simulations to define the most suitable layout depending on the size and location of each offshore wind farm.

The Legitimacy of European Constitutional Orders is a systematic and comparative study of European constitutional orders, which takes into consideration the national constitutional trajectories of European countries, as well as the defining power of EU law. Drawing on a wealth of case studies, this book explores the conceptual tools needed to undertake comparative reconstruction and assessment of national and supranational constitutional developments in the European context.

The commentary as transmitted in the Cologne manuscript consists of four principal sections: an initial section on the characteristics of the four Gospels (praef., lines 1– 133 of the edition);20 an extensive exposition of Matthew 1:1–2:18, apparently in three chapters (M. long. I–III, lines 134–574); a numbered list of the titles for each of the 160 sections of the full commentary (cap. M. I–CXXVIIII / cap. L. I–XIII / cap. J. I–XVIII, lines 575–755); the commentary itself, treating almost all of the Gospel according to Matthew in 129 chapters (M. I–CXXVIIII) followed by a portion of Luke in 13 chapters (L. I–XIII) and the opening of John in 18 chapters (J. I–XVIII) (lines 756–3306). There is no initial dedicatory letter or statement of authorial intent. The indication of the end of a given section, explicit, is found at the end of the first two parts and also at the end of the whole commentary in the Cologne manuscript (lines 133, 574 and 3306). Nevertheless, the unity of the work is demonstrated by internal connections. In particular, the first seven chapters of the full commentary refer back to the earlier, more detailed treatment of the beginning of Matthew, which itself contains an indication of the commentary to follow and a reference to the preceding introduction.21 The critical edition by Dorfbauer includes, as an Appendix, two passages from the “Pseudo-Theophilus” commentary which may represent borrowings from Fortunatianus in sections missing from all extant witnesses to the commentary (“Excerpta dubia”).

The purpose of the Special Issue was to collect the results of research and experience on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for the energy sector and the energy market, broadly understood, that were visible after a year. In particular, the impact of COVID-19 on the energy sector in the EU, including Poland, and the US was examined. The topics concerned various issues, e.g., the situation of energy companies, including those listed on the stock exchange, mining companies, and those dealing with renewable energy. The topics related to the development of electromobility, managerial competences, energy expenditure of local government units, sustainable development of energy, and energy poverty during a pandemic were also discussed.

The greatest trick the videogame industry ever pulled was convincing the world that videogames were games rather than a medium for making metagames. Elegantly defined as "games about games," metagames implicate a diverse range of practices that stray outside the boundaries and bend the rules: from technical glitches and forbidden strategies to Renaissance painting, algorithmic trading, professional sports, and the War on Terror. In Metagaming, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux demonstrate how games always extend beyond the screen, and how modders, mappers, streamers, spectators, analysts, and artists are changing the way we play. Metagaming uncovers these alternative histories of play by exploring the strange experiences and unexpected effects that emerge in, on, around, and through videogames. Players puzzle through the problems of perspectival rendering in Portal, perform clandestine acts of electronic espionage in EVE Online, compete and commentate in Korean StarCraft, and speedrun The Legend of Zelda in record times (with or without the use of vision). Companies like Valve attempt to capture the metagame through international e-sports and online marketplaces while the corporate history of Super Mario Bros. is undermined by the endless levels of Infinite Mario, the frustrating pranks of Asshole Mario, and even Super Mario Clouds, a ROM hack exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. One of the only books to include original software alongside each chapter, Metagaming transforms videogames from packaged products into instruments, equipment, tools, and toys for intervening in the sensory and political economies of everyday life. And although videogames conflate the creativity, criticality, and craft of play with the act of consumption, we don't simply play videogames-we make metagames.

L’ouvrage propose une étude grammaticale et stylistique de sept textes littéraires de langue française représentatifs de la littérature française du XVIe au XXe siècle. La démarche suivie est celle qui est demandée pour le traitement de la question de grammaire et de stylistique des sujets proposés à l’épreuve de français moderne, dite aussi grammaire et stylistique, du CAPES et de l’agrégation de lettres modernes. L’approche grammaticale est diversifiée et envisage différents champs : orthographe, lexicologie, morphologie, syntaxe, histoire de la langue, de même que l’étude stylistique, qui aborde les dimensions rhétoriques, sémiotiques, poétiques, dramaturgiques et narratologiques des œuvres. L’étude des textes vise aussi à valoriser les questions d’intertextualité, d’histoire culturelle ou d’interdisciplinarité. Les questions posées sont l’occasion d’approfondissements théoriques de certaines notions ou de rappels défi nitionnels, proposés dans des encadrés distincts de l’étude des textes. De ce fait, l’ouvrage intéressera un lectorat large, allant des étudiants de classes préparatoires littéraires et de licence de Lettres ou de master MEEF (métiers de l’enseignement, de l’éducation et de la formation) visant la préparation des concours, aux étudiants de master recherche souhaitant parfaire leurs connaissances.

Sample preparation is and will always be the most important step in chemical analysis. Numerous techniques, methods, methodologies, and approaches are published in the literature offering a wide range of analytical tools to the lab practitioner. Analytical scientists all over the world are trying to develop protocols for a plethora of analytes in various sample matrices. In the last decade, sample pre-treatment advances have followed green chemistry and green analytical chemistry demands, focusing on miniaturization and automation, using the least possible amount of organic solvents. The question is how far we have been till now, and what the future perspectives are. To answer this question, analytical chemists were invited to share their experience in the field and report on the recent advances in sample-preparation approaches. The outcome of our invitation was eleven excellent manuscripts, including four review articles and seven original research articles in the first edition of the Special Issue “Sample Preparation-Quo Vadis: Current Status of Sample Preparation Approaches”.The second edition is a collection of ten significant contributions to the field of sample preparation. It includes two highly interesting and comprehensive review articles and eight innovative research articles.

The soil is a dynamic living organism where plant roots interact deeply with its different horizons, extracting essential minerals for growth and releasing substances that promote microbial activity around the roots. Soil fertility analysis is crucial to ensure good harvests. In Venezuela, soil, water, and fertilizer laboratories have been established in recent years. However, these laboratories are often located far from agricultural production units, and there is a notable lack of awareness about the service offerings among producers. As a result, soil management is often done empirically. It is essential for producers to have a good understanding of their farm’s soil, as investing in the land is crucial for field production. Currently, some field methodologies are gaining popularity to evaluate the soil. For example, estimating soil texture through particle sedimentation in a transparent container. The pit method in the field is also used to calculate apparent density and estimate other properties that indicate water movement and root penetration. Describing the soil profile in its different horizons provides valuable information about its quality, revealing key physical, chemical, and biological characteristics. Additionally, field equipment such as the potentiometer for measuring pH is useful for predicting the dynamics of nutrients that can be utilized by plants. Considering the importance of soil fertility studies in laboratory settings, it is crucial to combine them with these field methodologies to obtain reliable and accurate recommendations on fertility.