Open Access Books

This open-access book combines traditional economic methods with newer machine learning techniques such as regression trees and random forests to analyse data and provide an in-depth analysis of inequality of opportunity and poverty in India. Using data from national surveys and unique sources like night-time satellite images and location data of points of interest, it explores different aspects of inequality and poverty. The book adopts a unique interdisciplinary approach, blending theories and methods from sociology, economics, geography, anthropology, and computer science to explore three key aspects of human well-being: income, health, and education, focusing on regional disparities. It aims to offer practical insights for policymakers and researchers who want to address social and economic inequalities in India.

Some 15 years ago, all teachers in Norway became writing teachers—at least according to the new curriculum—overnight. Following a “PISA-shock” in the early 2000s, Norwegian legislators decided to reform the national curriculum by introducing five cross-curricular “key competencies” to be taught by all teachers: writing, reading, mathematics, ICT and oracy. To accommodate teachers other than language arts teachers, the curriculum was amended to include subject-specific writing characteristics. This purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, an overview description of writing instruction in Norwegian schools using official documents as the main source is provided. Second, aided by a newly developed writing competency model, a fine-grained review of the language arts subject syllabi, the chapter presents an analysis of how writing and writing development is framed in the language arts subject syllabi.

This volume collects the outcomes of the conference Art – Law – Restoration, that was held at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice in July 2021. Through the studies outlined by several international scholars, crucial aspects of the history of heritage protection and restoration in sixteenth- to nineteenth-century Europe are reconsidered, combining different disciplines and geographical contexts into a comparative perspective. The systems elaborated in the early modern States to preserve artefacts, monuments, and antiquities are evaluated following multifarious approaches – including archaeology, art history, history of law, social history, and the history of museums. Particular consideration is given to the practices established in the Kingdom of Naples, Spain, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Greece, Prussia, the Papal States, Portugal, and the Scandinavian Countries to protect what they thought of as ‘heritage’ respectively. The project LawLove and the publication of this volume are supported by the European Commission (Marie Skłodowska-Curie project no. 837857).

For a long time, big banks had little interest in having workers or employees as their customers. Only in the aftermath of the German Economic Miracle did Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank, and Commerzbank begin wooing the common people and their savings with new financial products. But were the big banks the real driving forces behind this change or were the banks being impelled by the dawn of a new dynamic epoch?

Onomastics is an area of scholarly interest that has grown considerably in importance in recent years. Consequently, the 27th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, held in 2021 in Kraków, Poland, gathered scholars from all over the world, active in all subfields of onomastic enquiry, as well as those exploring the areas bordering on other disciplines of the humanities. It thus became a venue for presenting state-of-the-art research in the study of proper names, proposing novel approaches and opening new vistas for future research. The present work is the third of the three volumes of conference proceedings that are the fruit of the congress. Being the most diverse thematically, it contains contributions on the general and applied aspects of onomastics, onymy in literature and other cultural texts, and chrematonyms. It ends with two reports. The volume comprises 30 individual articles, contributed by 35 scholars. The first section, devoted to general and applied onomastics, features texts concerned with ever-interesting questions relevant to all practitioners of the discipline: the essence of properhood, the meaning of proper names, and onomastic terminology. Scholars whose papers focused on applied onomastics were interested in problems occasioned by the translation of onyms, by their pronunciation in cross-cultural contact, and by the use of exonyms, drawing for exemplification on the Hungarian, German and Czech language material respectively. Literary onomastics in its broad definition constitutes by far the largest part of the volume. Contributors to this section represent diverse literatures, including Scottish, Russian, Polish, Czech and Nigerian. The scope and internal subdivisions of literary onomastics are discussed and the activities of the Italian Society for Literary Onomastics are presented. The name Dracula is analysed in depth, and so is the Old Prussian onym Patollo. Some researchers take a step into the wider realm of culture. Their attention is attracted by the names of spirits in the beliefs adhered to in Southwest China, by the proper names in a medieval Scottish document, by the onyms that personify hunger in Italian wartime epistolography, and by toponyms in video games. The third section deals with chrematonyms as diverse as names of railway locomotives in Britain, logonyms in Slovakia and perfume names in a Slovak online shop. The naming patterns of Chinese restaurants in Czechia are studied too, as well as the names of travel agencies in Germany, Ukraine and Poland. Finally, the reader is presented with two reports. One outlines new tendencies in Nordic socio-onomastics, while the other presents the new paradigm in the publication of “Onoma”, the journal of the ICOS. The book is a must not only for onomasticians, but also for researchers in related disciplines, ranging from history, via human geography or philosophy of language, to social studies. However, professionals active in naming will find it useful as well, since it provides a much-needed supranational perspective and enables cross-cultural comparisons.

En marge de l‘Université, Julio Caro Baroja a construit une œuvre à l’intersection de l’histoire, des études littéraires et de l’anthropologie. À l’apogée du structuralisme, son ouvrage Le Mythe du caractère national (1970) affirmait la nécessité d’utiliser la démarche historique pour “déconstruire” les catégories utilisées en anthropologie. Il a pu ainsi mettre à mal les fondements des préjugés portés sur les peuples. Ces a priori collectifs et permanents qui traverseraient siècles et individus et qui guideraient parfois les comportements, voire les politiques. Les leçons de ce livre intéressent l’ensemble des sciences sociales mais aussi l’observateur des sociétés d’aujourd’hui.

This open access book offers a holistic and interdisciplinary analysis of the energy sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and its ongoing transformation. Taking into account global decarbonization policies, it offers a comprehensive overview of the transition’s effects in the region highlighting socioeconomic, geopolitical and cultural aspects. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which illustrates the historical, cultural and socioeconomic heterogeneity of the MENA region. The second part assesses the region's energy sector, with a special focus on the energy mix and consumption evolution at the national level. The third part addresses the geopolitics and geoeconomics of the energy sector in MENA countries, including foreign interference, conflicts, investments and partnerships both related to hydrocarbons and energy transition. Lastly, the fourth part provides overall conclusions and key takeaways on all major aspects addressed by the book, highlighting various paths and strategies for decarbonization in the region.

Within the idea and objective of bringing together original studies dealing with the continuum aspects of meat, i.e., from farm to fork, this book grouped papers on the study of the nutritional, sensory, and technological aspects of carcass, muscle, meat, and meat-product qualities. This nook highlights a great part of the research activities in the field of meat science. A total of 14 original studies and one comprehensive review were edited within five main topics: (i) production systems and rearing practices, (ii) prediction of meat quality, (iii) statistical approaches for meat quality prediction/management, (iv) muscle biochemistry and proteomics techniques, and (v) consumer acceptability, development, and characterization of meat products.

The Special Issue "Chemical conservation of paper-based cultural heritage" compiles the research achievements in the field of cultural heritage conservation, aiming to deepen the understanding of degradation mechanisms and preservation strategies for paper artifacts and offering practical insights into more efficient and sustainable conservation approaches. This publication serves as a valuable resource for cultural heritage conservation experts, chemists, materials scientists, and general readers with interest in this interdisciplinary domain.

This study examines how selected authors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries write about their creative processes in old age and thus purposefully produce a late style of their own. Late-life creativity has not always been viewed favourably. Prevalent „peak-and-decline“ models suggest that artists, as they grow old, cease to produce highquality work. Aiming to counter such ageist discourses, the present study proposes a new ethics of reading literary texts by elderly authors. For this purpose, it develops a methodology that consolidates textual analysis with cultural gerontology.

Patient consent to data processing is regarded as the »gold standard« for achieving a balanced reconciliation between researchers’ academic freedom and the data protection rights of individuals. However, it reveals shortcomings, particularly in the context of secondary use of data. This study therefore develops an approach to expand existing research clauses de lege ferenda and complement them with protective safeguards, with the aim of enabling the use of health data without requiring consent.

International policies have recently acknowledged the responsibilities of museums towards the landscape. We trace a critical summary of the debate developed in museology and geography about the relationships between museums and the territories and landscapes surrounding them. As stated by Massimo Quaini, the complex challenge posed by these relationships lies in the balancing between conservation of landscapes and local development: a challenge that in the Italian context could be successfully taken on by eco-museums.

Cette réflexion de Jacques Léonard doit être prise au sérieux. Cinquante ans après la parution de l’Histoire de la folie et alors que s’achève la publication des cours au Collège de France, le dialogue des historiens avec Michel Foucault se poursuit. Les textes réunis dans ce volume, abordant des périodes historiques différentes, mettent en avant des expériences individuelles au contact d’un Foucault désacralisé. Ils questionnent aussi bien des chantiers ouverts par Foucault (folie et déraison, enfermement psychiatrique et carcéral, pastorale, sexualité), des outils conceptuels (pratiques discursives, biopolitique, gouvernementalité, techniques de soi, régimes de vérité, objectivation du sujet), que des propositions historiographiques et épistémologiques (archéologie et généalogie, césure et continuité). Dans cette mise à l’épreuve, le passé devient un lieu de problématisation du présent, et l’histoire, une voie qui singularise l’actualité.

Energy efficiency and low-carbon technologies are key contributors to curtailing the emission of greenhouse gases that continue to cause global warming. The efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions also strongly affect electrical power systems. Renewable sources, storage systems, and flexible loads provide new system controls, but power system operators and utilities have to deal with their fluctuating nature, limited storage capabilities, and typically higher infrastructure complexity with a growing number of heterogeneous components. In addition to the technological change of new components, the liberalization of energy markets and new regulatory rules bring contextual change that necessitates the restructuring of the design and operation of future energy systems. Sophisticated component design methods, intelligent information and communication architectures, automation and control concepts, new and advanced markets, as well as proper standards are necessary in order to manage the higher complexity of such intelligent power systems that form smart grids. Due to the considerably higher complexity of such cyber-physical energy systems, constituting the power system, automation, protection, information and communication technology (ICT), and system services, it is expected that the design and validation of smart-grid configurations will play a major role in future technology and system developments. However, an integrated approach for the design and evaluation of smart-grid configurations incorporating these diverse constituent parts remains evasive. The currently available validation approaches focus mainly on component-oriented methods. In order to guarantee a sustainable, affordable, and secure supply of electricity through the transition to a future smart grid with considerably higher complexity and innovation, new design, validation, and testing methods appropriate for cyber-physical systems are required. Therefore, this book summarizes recent research results and developments related to the design and validation of smart grid systems.