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Biomedicine general; Public Health; Quality of Life Research; Population Health; EQ-5D; Quality-of-Life; Utilities

Social media has the potential to provide rapid insights into unfolding public health emergencies such as infectious disease outbreaks. They can also be drawn upon for rapid, survey-based insights into various health topics. Social media has also been utilised by medical professionals for the purposes of sharing scholarly works, international collaboration, and engaging in policy debates. One benefit of using social media platforms to gain insight into health is that they have the ability to capture unfiltered public opinion in large volumes, avoiding the potential biases introduced by surveys or interviews. Social media platforms can also be utilised to pilot surveys, for instance, though the use of Twitter polls. Social media data have also been drawn upon in medical emergencies and crisis situations as a public health surveillance tool. A number of software and online tools also exist, developed specifically to aide public health research utilising social media data. In recent years, ethical issues regarding the retrieval and analysis of data have also arisen.

Die hier versammelten Aufsätze verfolgen nicht nur das Neben- und Miteinander von Verbrechen mit Todesfolge und deren Detektion in der deutschen Literatur des langen 19. Jahrhunderts. Vielmehr steht die Frage im Fokus, ob es einen inneren Anschluss der Ermittlungspraktiken an die jeweiligen Tötungsarten gibt und welche Rolle dabei der konkreten Eigenlogik spezifischer Tötungsarten zukommt. Es wird in diesem Band gefahndet nach der verborgenen strukturellen Identität zwischen dem Mord, dem fundamentalen Bruch des Strafgesetzes, und den strafprozessrechtlichen Möglichkeiten, diesen aufzuklären – einer Identität, die im Medium der Literatur nicht nur dargestellt, sondern auch reflektiert wird.

Soil, a key component linking the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere, plays a vital role in sustaining human life and terrestrial systems globally. However, soil contamination by toxic trace metals is worsening worldwide due to urbanisation and industrialisation, posing serious risks to ecosystems and human health. Elevated trace metal levels harm the soil’s biological properties, disrupt food chains, damage plants, and pollute groundwater. Assessments typically focus on total and geochemical baseline concentrations, which help distinguish natural from anthropogenic levels and calculate human contributions. When heavy metal levels exceed permissible limits, soil fertility declines, enzymatic activity is inhibited, and acidity changes. Long-term mining and extraction cause severe environmental pollution and ecological damage, but remain essential for supplying critical raw materials to modern technologies. Growing demand for resources drives innovation, including advanced waste recycling technologies. Mining and metallurgical waste, such as flotation tailings, red mud, and slag landfills accumulate and create significant environmental challenges. Various processing methods are applied to treat these wastes, but they remain a persistent problem. Advances in landfill processing are critical, motivating ongoing research worldwide. This Reprint will particularly address acid mine drainage treatment and acidic water neutralisation, involving hydrometallurgists and hydrogeologists.

For 50 years, educator and sociologist Geoff Whitty resolutely pursued social justice through education, first as a classroom teacher and ultimately as the Director of the Institute of Education in London. The essays in this volume - written by some of the most influential authors in the sociology of education and critical policy studies - take Whitty’s work as the starting point from which to examine key contemporary issues in education and the challenges to social justice that they present. Set within three themes of knowledge, policy and practice in education, the chapters tackle the issues of defining and accessing ‘legitimate’ knowledge, the changing nature of education policy under neoliberalism and globalization, and the reshaping of teacher workplaces and professionalism – as well as attempts to realize more emancipatory practice. Whitty’s scholarship on what constitutes quality and impact in educational research is also explored. Together, the essays open a window on a life in the sociology of education, the scholarly community of which it was part, and the facets of education policy, practice and research that they continue to reveal and challenge in pursuit of social justice. They celebrate Whitty as one of the foremost sociologists of education of his generation, but also as a friend and colleague. And they highlight the continued relevance of his contribution to those seeking to promote fairer and more inclusive education systems.

The monograph illustrates different aspects of profound shifts in the economic, societal, political, and cultural landscapes of Asia. In three thematic blocks, it analyzes the US and the EU’s changing position in East Asia, China’s growing political and economic influence in the world, as well as the evolution of the Japanese democracy. By examining various dimensions of the politics, foreign policies, societies, and economics of selected Asian countries, it contributes to better understanding of a complex mosaic of intertwining interests of global and local powers in the region. A range of studies by Asia scholars stress the sudden rise of the People’s Republic of China, accompanied by a waning position of Western powers in the Asia-Pacific, as well as economic and political stagnation of Japan. While indicating different methods for containing China’s rise instituted by competing powers, as well as the social, humanitarian, political, and economic obstacles against the spread of the Chinese sphere of influence, the authors describe the dynamic changes that occurred on the Asian continent in the last decades.

This edited volume seeks to contribute to the broader project of decolonisation by bringing together diverse perspectives for a critical examination of the Palestine Question. It aims to challenge dominant narratives, highlight the resilience and agency of Palestinians, and explore new pathways toward justice and liberation amid ongoing occupation and colonialism. The volume is structured into five sections, each providing a distinct lens on the question of Palestine. Topics covered include the question of refugees, the diaspora, the predicament of the Palestinian Authority, hydropolitics, and the settler colonial modes of Israeli control. Additionally, the book delves into Palestinian cultural resistance and the evolution of international coalitions, highlighting a shift in solidarity - from performative to transformative - towards decolonisation and liberation and the associated challenges.

Positive Peer Culture ist ein stärkenorientierter Ansatz, um Jugendliche und Erwachsene zu befähigen, sich gegenseitig bei wichtigen Themen und Problemen zu unterstützen. Über Gruppengespräche wird eine positive, kompetenzfördernde Gruppenkultur geschaffen. Das Buch gibt konkrete Anleitungen für den Einsatz in Schule, Ausbildung, Studium und Teamsupervision. Positive Peer Culture ist ein stärkenorientierter Ansatz, der Jugendliche und Erwachsene befähigt, sich gegenseitig bei wichtigen erausforderungen zu unterstützen. In moderierten Gruppengesprächen entsteht eine positive, kompetenz- und resilienzfördernde Gruppenkultur. Der Ansatz ist vielseitig einsetzbar, etwa in der Jugendarbeit, der Jugendhilfe, im Unterricht, in der Organisationsentwicklung oder begleitend zur Psychotherapie. Die zweite, aktualisierte und ergänzte Auflage erweitert den Ansatz gezielt um den Einsatz in der Berufswahlorientierung von Jugendlichen. Das Buch erläutert Grundlagen, Moderationsaufgaben und bietet praxisnahe Anleitungen für Schule, Ausbildung, Studium und Teamsupervision. Ergänzend zum Buch finden Sie auf der Website des Verlags einen Leitfaden für die Praxis: Er unterstützt Sie dabei, Peer-Gruppentreffen in den Klassen 7 bis 9 in den Schulalltag zu integrieren.

The paper discusses the current studies on the influence of individuals on the Polish language and proposes directions for further research on this issue, resulting mainly from methodological (change of linguistic paradigms: a new concept of language, the need to take into account the internal differentiation of the idiolect), historical (multiple types of influencing a language) and cultural (new language models of Poles) premises. The following postulates have been formulated: to study the influence of various variants of idiolects, not only its artistic variation; to compare them with the appropriate variant of the Polish language; to consider the relationship of an idiolect/idiostyle and a language of the community in a strictly synchronous perspective; to consider all possible types of influence on a language of the community; to take into account different levels of language and linguistic phenomena, and well as attitudes towards language.

There is a complicated history of racism and psychiatric healthcare in the Deep South states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. The asylums of the Jim Crow era employed African American men and women; served as places of treatment and care for African Americans with psychiatric illnesses; and, inevitably, were places of social control. Black people who lived and worked in these facilities needed to negotiate complex relationships of racism with their own notions of community, mental health, and healing. Kylie M. Smith mixes exhaustive archival research, interviews, and policy analysis to offer a comprehensive look at how racism affected Black Southerners with mental illness during the Jim Crow era. Complicated legal, political, and medical changes in the late twentieth century turned mental health services into a battlefield between political ideology and psychiatric treatment approaches, with the fallout having long-term consequences for patient outcomes. Smith argues that patterns of racially motivated abuse and neglect of mentally ill African Americans took shape during this era and continue to the present day. As the mentally ill become increasingly incarcerated,Jim Crow in the Asylum reminds readers that, for many Black Southerners, having a mental illness was and still tantamount to committing a crime.

Rising pollution, climate change and the depletion of fossil fuels are leading many countries to focus on renewable-based energy conversion systems. In particular, recently introduced energy policies are giving high priority to increasing the use of renewable energy sources, the improvement of energy systems’ security, the minimization of greenhouse gas effect, and social and economic cohesion. Renewable energies’ availability varies during the day and the seasons and so their use must be accurately predicted in conjunction with the management strategies based on load shifting and energy storage. Thus, in order to reduce the criticalities of this uncertainty, the exploitation of more flexible and stable renewable energies, such as the geothermal one, is necessary. Geothermal energy is an abundant renewable source with significant potential in direct use applications, such as in district heating systems, in indirect use ones to produce electricity, and in cogeneration and polygeneration systems for the combined production of power, heating, and cooling energy. This Special Issue includes geothermal energy utilization and the technologies used for its exploitation considering both the direct and indirect use applications.

Pharmaceuticals represent an especially worrying class of micropollutants because they are biologically active. Thus, their occurrence in aquatic environments may cause undesirable effects in living organisms and, if present in water sources for human consumption, may constitute a public health issue. However, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), which have not been designed for the removal of pharmaceuticals and cannot guarantee their full elimination, are considered hotspots for their dissemination in natural waters. In this context, the Special Issue (SI) entitled “Removal of Pharmaceuticals from Water: Conventional and Alternative Treatments” was launched to contribute to the assessment of the contemporary challenges and advances in the removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater. Papers published in the SI, which have been compiled in this book, approached the topic with either of the following different perspectives: (i) the fate and removal of pharmaceuticals by conventional treatments applied in existing WWTPs; or (ii) advanced and alternative green approaches to remove pharmaceuticals from water. Apart from the Editorial, papers published within this SI include two literature reviews and six experimental studies, all of them presenting unconventional approaches, original views, innovative research and/or novel methodologies. This compilation will definitely spark the attention of readers intrigued in the topic, and is useful for researchers in the field.

Since the 2011 revolution in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has emerged as a key political player. Although individuals under the age of 35 make up a large share of the membership, the group’s strict hierarchy has led to disaffection among its youth. These members merit attention not only as a challenge to the Brotherhood’s organizational cohesion, but as a potential conduit for expanding U.S. engagement with the group.