Open Access Books

Horticulture

This edited volume, Social Work – Perspectives on Leadership and Organisation, presents a variety of perspectives and reflections from social work theories and practice on how to manage, lead and organize social work in different parts of the world. The authors share their experiences and knowledge from a variety of perspectives, focusing on education, practice, user participation, leading social work with responsibility for handling different ethical dilemmas, and organizing a sustainable and healthy work-life for both staff members and their clients. Global collaboration enables reflection on social work leadership and organization from different professional perspectives and organizational levels. The book addresses students, politicians, lecturers and researchers, practitioners, users, relatives and others who are interested in social work and want to improve their understanding of social work leadership and organization from an international perspective.

This report examines what binds and divides the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—and presents the outlook for the GCC’s evolution over the next ten years. The study aims to help policymakers better understand intra-GCC dynamics and prepare for future trends in a region with high stakes for U.S. strategic interests.

Cultural heritage plays a key role in understanding the history of humankind; therefore, the adoption of appropriate strategies for its conservation is essential. Microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi and microalgae, which are usually organized on the surface in microbial communities as “biofilms”, can cause serious problems in the conservation of cultural heritage, making the adoption of prevention and conservation strategies a critical issue. This editorial focuses on studies published within the present Special Issue that present advances in the field of the biodeterioration of cultural heritage caused by microbial communities, with a particular focus on new methods for their elimination and control.

Published

Das Jahrbuch für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik gibt einen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand der einschlägigen Forschung. Mit diesem Zuschnitt wird dem breiten thematischen und methodologischen Spektrum der Forschung und Theoriebildung in der Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik Rechnung getragen.; The Jahrbuch für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik provides an overview of the current state of relevant research. This volume takes into account the broad thematic and methodological spectrum of research and theory formation in vocational and business education.; What are the goals and conditions for the success of computer education in elementary and primary education? With a view to the pedagogical and content-related target dimensions of informatics education, experts in the field make recommendations for the development of the content offerings of the "House of Little Researchers" Foundation in the field of informatics. In addition, the implementation of these recommendations is illustrated in the Foundation's offerings.

For the past 40 years, metal-based drugs have been widely used for the treatment of cancer. Cisplatin and follow-up drugs carboplatin (ParaplatinTM) and oxaliplatin (EloxatinTM) have been the gold standard for metallodrugs in clinical settings as antineoplastic agents. While effective, these drugs (either alone or in combination therapy) have faced a number of clinical challenges resulting from their limited spectrum of activity, high toxicity leading to significant side effects, resistance, poor water solubility, low bioavailability and short circulating time. In the past 10 years, various unconventional non-platinum metal-based agents have emerged as a potential alternative for cancer treatment. These compounds are highly effective and selective in cancers resistant to cisplatin and other chemotherapeutic agents. Research in this area has recently exploded with a relevant number of patents and clinical trials, in addition to reports in scientific journals. Furthermore, in parallel to the synthesis of coordination and organometallic compounds comprising many different metals and unconventional platinum-based derivatives, researchers are focused on optimizing mechanistic and pharmacological features of promising drug candidates. This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest advances in anticancer metallodrugs with a focus on unconventional anticancer agents, as well as novel activation, targeting and delivery strategies aimed at improving their pharmacological profile.

This book is aimed at neurosurgeons with an interest in updating their knowledge on the latest state of meningiomas surgery and management. The book is focused at performing a portrait of that what is state of the art in management of meningiomas. All the chapters have been developed with high quality and including the most modern approaches for the different aspects they deal with. The book concentrates on those problems that, although perhaps less common in the day to day routine of the average neurosurgeon, when present pose a special challenge. This is neither a "how to" book nor a book about meningioma biology. It presents some of the most relevant aspects in the latest developments for meningioma surgery and management in a clear and professional manner.

This book, Sustainable Forest Management - Surpassing Climate Change and Land Degradation, is devoted to important issues forest managers face. Besides managing forest resources, the issues addressed include aspects of climate change, biodiversity conservation, and agroforestry. The book contains four sections, each devoted to this set of topics. Forest management is very important in the context of sustainable use of resources. To achieve this, forest management should aim at improving economic profitability for the investors, preserve the ecosystem structure to serve society, and maintain all (physical, economic, social, and other) ecosystem functions. All these aspects of forest management have been addressed in various chapters of this book. The editor sincerely hopes this will be a welcome addition to the field of forest management.

This volume offers insights into the role of private supplementary tutoring in the Middle East, and its far-reaching implications for social structures and mainstream education. Around the world, increasing numbers of children receive private tutoring to supplement their schooling. In much of the academic literature this is called shadow education because the content of tutoring commonly mimics that of schooling: as the curriculum changes in the schools, so it changes in the shadow. While much research and policy attention has focused on private tutoring in East Asia and some other world regions, less attention has been given to the topic in the Middle East. Drawing on both Arabic-language and English-language literature, this study commences with the global picture before comparing patterns within and among 12 Arabic-speaking countries of the Middle East. It presents the educational and cultural commonalities amongst these countries, examines the drivers of demand and supply of shadow education, and considers the dynamics of tutoring and how it impacts on education in schools. In addition to its pertinence within the Middle East itself, the book will be of considerable interest to academics and education policy makers broadly concerned with changing roles of the state and private sectors in education. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This open access book explores how expertise about bipolar disorder is performed on American and French digital platforms by combining insights from STS, medical sociology and media studies. It addresses topical questions, including: How do different stakeholders engage with online technologies to perform expertise about bipolar disorder? How does the use of the internet for processes of knowledge evaluation and production allow for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder to reposition themselves in relation to medical professionals? How do cultural markers shape the online performance of expertise about bipolar disorder? And what individualizing or collectivity-generating effects does the internet have in relation to the performance of expertise? The book constitutes a critical and nuanced intervention into dominant discourses which approach the internet either as a quick technological fix or as a postmodern version of Pandora’s box, sowing distrust among people and threatening unified conceptualizations and organized forms of knowledge.

This book examines the role of the military in Georgia during the crucial period from 1754 to 1776, with particular attention devoted to the militia. Through in-depth research and analysis, the author finds that, despite the occasional presence of small bodies of both regulars and provincial rangers, the militia of Georgia served as the final defensive bulwark during the colonial era. After 1767, the militia companies were the only viable military units in the colony.

D’abord roman avec le gothique qui se développe au cours du xixe siècle et trouve son apogée au xxe, le « noir », récit de mort, de violence et de terreur, mais aussi de résolution de cette tension mortifère, ne tarde pas à se décliner en films, faisant de la figure du détective un arcane majeur du cinéma à partir des années 1940. Romans et films mettent en évidence les noirceurs des crimes et des environnements sociaux qui les génèrent ou les capacités déductives d’enquêteurs de papier devenus icônes de l’écran : Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot. Le genre et son immense succès populaire se propagent dans d’autres médias (BD, séries).Les articles réunis ici tentent de faire la lumière sur cette extension du Noir, travaillant les codes pour les adapter comme Tardi, transposant les romans de J.-P. Manchette ou Black Sad, dont les auteurs reprennent les images du film noir dans le roman graphique. Le Noir se fait le porte-parole de réalités criminelles à l’œuvre dans nombre de sociétés, et utilise sa « fiction » pour les dénoncer, et ceci aussi bien dans les romans (D. Meyer, H. Mankell, A. Indridason) que dans les films (J. Gray, M. Scorsese, A. Egoyan) ou les séries (The Wire).Né dans l’Angleterre du xviiie siècle, le Noir, ses stratégies, ses codes et son pouvoir se sont infiltrés puis développés comme moyen privilégié d’exprimer l’angoisse et la fascination de la violence et de la mort, sur tous les continents, de l’Europe aux États-Unis, du Mexique à l’Afrique du Sud.

During the famine that befell China following the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, hunger was a major affliction for the individuals undergoing reform in the labor camps. Food – in terms of procurement, consumption, or just discursive recollection – was a central issue in the prisoners’ lives and, as a consequence, descriptions of meals and eating practices are a recurring presence in modern Chinese literary texts that revolve around carceral experiences. This contribution investigates three literary works that reconstruct personal experiences of imprisonment by way of eating: Wang Ruowang’s Hunger Trilogy (1980), Zhang Xianliang’s Mimosa (1984), and Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou (2003). In these texts, food becomes a privileged perspective through which look at how personal and collective memories are re-appropriated and re-elaborated, as well as to analyze how narratives of the past are consumed and produced.

The idea of origin in terms of space and culture as a special indicator of quality is one of the most influential strands in contemporary food. It impacts on politics, economics and everyday life – and it connects these fields with complex relations of power and culture. With geographical indications, the EU offers an instrument which allows for the declaration of specialties, qualified by their tradition, as typical for a defined area. The declaration serves to protect these products as intellectual and collective property and presents them as culinary heritage, thereby enabling sale at an added value. Accordingly, the EU instrument of geographical indications evokes the interests of a variety of disciplines, such as (agricultural) economics, (social) geography, sociology, anthropology and law. Nonetheless, dialogue and cooperation among the disciplines are quite rare. “Taste | Power | Tradition” gives an insight into this multidisciplinary debate and brings together empirical data and theoretical reflections from different perspectives.