Open Access Books

In the undulating plains of north-eastern Syria is the site of Tell Barri, identified with the city of Kahat. The archaeological sequence which has been brought to light stretches without interruption from the start of the third millennium up to the fourteenth century AD. This report illustrates the results of the twentieth excavation campaign, carried out by the group from the University of Florence and from the "Federico II" University of Naples. In Area G the levels of the first half of the III millennium BC and a sequence of strata of the Mitanni epoch were investigated, while on the western border of the site another section of the palace of Adad-nirari I was brought to light. In Area J the operations exposed the eastward extension of the palace structure resulting from transformations in the Neo-Babylonian period; in the northern section another courtyard of the palace of Tukulti Ninurta II was brought to light. The text, prepared for printing in July 2005, was published following the tragic death of Paolo Emilio Pecorella, which took place on 29 August in Tell Barri in the course of the excavation campaign.

Despite the national attention police violence gained and the calls for police reform following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, police officers are killing more people each year. Black and Hispanic people are killed by police officers at higher rates than white people. Of all the police killings documented between 2013 and 2019, one data source found that only 1 percent of cases led to a conviction of a police officer. This book discusses four obstacles that stand in the way of getting accountability for police officers involved in cases of excessive police violence: Qualified immunity, the reasonable officer standard, police union contracts, and Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights.

Composé d’une autobiographie intellectuelle rédigée en 1993 comme mémoire d’habilitation et d’un choix d’articles sur les rapports entre littérature et politique, cet ouvrage témoigne du parcours singulier d’un intellectuel entre la France et l’Italie. Il permet également de retracer les itinéraires contrastés d’une génération qui, au cours des années 1960, à un moment où les barrières traditionnelles entre les disciplines étaient en train de céder, avait dû construire ses propres parcours en dehors des écoles, à l’aide, ou à côté, de nouveaux maîtres. Alessandro Fontana bouscule ainsi les interprétations par catégories et repère ce qui fait échapper les auteurs à l’histoire de la littérature ou de la philosophie, pour mieux envisager ce qu’ils ont de présent, ou d’inaccompli, voire d’énigmatique. Au cœur de son questionnement figure une réflexion sur le statut du sujet à l’âge moderne et sur le passage de l’époque du « salut de l’âme » à celle du « salut de l’État ».

This volume contains the proceedings of the study convention held in Milan on 11 and 12 April 2003. The objective of these study days was to address the question of the powers of lordship which were exercised in the countryside of central-northern Italy between the mid fourteenth century and the end of the fifteenth century. The discussions focused on what instruments and what foundations of legitimacy these same powers had and what was their relationship with the authority of the prince and with the ordinary citizen, on the one hand, and with the community and the homines on the other. These and various other issues thrown up by the study of feudal power are the topics which emerge in the various contributions gathered in this volume, devoted principally to the Lombardy of the Visconti and the Sforza, but also to other areas of Italy.

The Los Angeles area has the most severe traffic congestion in the United States. Trends in many of the underlying causal factors suggest that congestion will continue to worsen in the coming years, absent significant policy intervention. Excessive traffic congestion detracts from quality of life, is economically wasteful and environmentally damaging, and exacerbates social-justice concerns. Finding efficient and equitable strategies for mitigating congestion will therefore serve many social goals. The authors recommend strategies for reducing congestion in Los Angeles County that could be implemented and produce significant improvements within about five years. To manage peak-hour auto travel, raise transportation revenue, improve alternative transportation options, and use existing capacity more efficiently, they recommend 10 primary strategies: improve signal control and timing; restrict curb parking on busy thoroughfares; implement paired one-way streets; promote ride-sharing, telecommuting, and flexible work schedules; develop a high-occupancy toll-lane network; vary curb-parking rates with demand, enforce the current parking cash-out law; promote deep-discount transit passes; expand bus rapid transit and bus-only lanes; and implement a regionally connected bicycle network. In addition, three recommendations may help, depending on the outcome of current events: evaluate arterial incident management, consider cordon congestion tolls, and levy local fuel taxes to raise transit revenue. Given that some of the recommendations may prove controversial, the authors also outline complementary strategies for building political consensus.

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A New Approach to Research Ethics is a clear, practical and useful guide to the ethical issues faced by researchers today. Examining the theories of ethical decision-making and applying these theories to a range of situations within a research career and process, this text offers a broader perspective on how ethics can be a positive force in strengthening the research community. Drawing upon a strong selection of challenging case studies, this text offers a new approach to engage with ethical issues and provides the reader with: a broader view on research ethics in practice, capturing both different stages of research careers and multiple tasks within that career, including supervision and research assessments thoughts on questions such as increasing globalisation, open science and intensified competition an increased understanding of undertaking research in a world of new technologies an extension of research ethics to a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach an introduction to a ‘guided dialogue’ method, which helps to identify and engage with ethical issues individually and as a research community. A New Approach to Research Ethics allows for self-reflection and provides guidance for professional development in an increasingly competitive area. Full of valuable guidance for the researcher and ethical decision-maker, this is an essential text for postgraduate students, senior academics and developers of training courses on ethics for researchers.

An examination of the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, with afocus on joint military operations.The 1999 military operation against the Yugoslav Army in Kosovosuggests several areas in which Joint military operations weredeficient. This study examined all aspects of the Kosovo conflict,including its political and historical underpinnings, in an attempt tounderstand these deficiencies and to recommend improvements. Thisdocument--provided in both a classified and unclassified version--isbased on extensive original source documents and interviews with mostof the principal participants, and serves as the definitive Armyrecord on Kosovo. While the primary focus of the research was on U.S.Army involvement, it covered many other aspects of Operation AlliedForce. Topics included NATO objectives in Operation Allied Force, airand ground planning, evolution of the air operation and its effects onfielded Yugoslav forces, Task Force Hawk, and peace operations. The 1999 military operation in Kosovo suggests severalareas in which Joint military operations were deficient. This studyexamines all aspects of the Kosovo conflict, with a focus on U.S. Armyinvolvement, including its political and historical underpinnings, inan attempt to understand these deficiencies and to recommendimprovements.

Unveiling the physical properties of the Earth's ionosphere is crucial for the comprehension of the dynamic processes occurring within it across various spatial and temporal scales. This is essential for comprehending numerous phenomena associated with Space Weather. The ionosphere, composed of ions and electrons, responds to the initiation, intensification and evolution of magnetic and electric fields, potentially altering its physical properties and energy balance. These changes can significantly affect the propagation properties of electromagnetic signals passing through the ionosphere. In this context, the Special Issue "Ionosphere Monitoring with Remote Sensing Vol. II" seeks to advance our understanding of the ionosphere by utilising data from various facilities and established ionospheric models.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Borderlands maps the relationship between gender and borderlands at a global scale and sets the agenda for developing a global composite field of gender and borderlands studies. This interdisciplinary collection seeks to understand the complex nexus at which gender and the borderlands intersect, modelling radical relationality at epistemological, ontological, and activist levels. Going beyond border studies’ frequent site at the U.S.–Mexico Border, this book examines the power relations of borderlands as they play out in, influence, and reflect gender dynamics. Contributors draw on case studies from around the world, and their chapters span diverse fields from anthropology, literature, and history, to political science, religious studies, sociology, and the arts. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Borderlands is an indispensable resource for scholars and students engaged in border studies, gender studies, and the wide range of interlocking disciplines that inform and enrich these fields.

Cette région du Sud a une personnalité à part en Thaïlande faite de nombreuses contradictions. Toute en longueur, il est clair qu’il y a peu de points en commun entre les provinces de Chumphon et de Yala, séparées par plus de 900 kilomètres. C’est une région parmi les plus dotées en richesses naturelles du pays (car on dit plus bas que c’est la région la plus pauvre) avec ses mines d’étain, ses plantations d’hévéa, sa pêche et sa crevetticulture, mais elle compte également des provinces parmi les plus pauvres. Elle est devenue la plus touristique de Thaïlande (avec le Sud-Est de Bangkok de Chonburi à Trat, mais ce n’est officiellement qu’une partie de la région Centre) mais elle est aujourd’hui la plus dangereuse avec la véritable guerre civile qui touche quatre provinces de l’extrême sud. Elle est depuis longtemps considérée comme une longue séquence de lieux paradisiaques, mais c’est la région la plus arrosée du pays et la plus menacée par les tempêtes, les inondations voire les Tsunami. Elle a, en politique notamment, une image de pureté et de sérieux que l’on oppose volontiers aux provinces du Centre et du Nord-Est, mais c’est une région de tous les trafics et de toutes les violences. Enfin, ses femmes sont tenues pour les plus réservées et les plus sages de Thaïlande, pourtant c’est la région du pays qui compte le plus grand nombre de prostituées, il est vrai importées des autres régions et même de l’étranger. Dans cette étude j’essaie de mettre le phénomène de la prostitution en perspective, de le contextualiser, d’adopter une approche globalisante. Ayant une connaissance directe d’à peine la moitié des quatorze provinces de la région, j’ai essayé de retrouver des recherches - publiées en langue thaï principalement - peu connues et peu utilisées par les chercheurs. Inutile d’insister sur le fait qu’une petite partie de ces études a été ici mise à profit. Un ouvrage de plusieurs centaines de pages serait nécessaire pour révéler davantage la complexité de cette région et de ses prostitutions.

One might say that ordinary differential equations (notably, in Isaac Newton’s analysis of the motion of celestial bodies) had a central role in the development of modern applied mathematics. This book is devoted to research articles which build upon this spirit: combining analysis with the applications of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). ODEs arise across a spectrum of applications in physics, engineering, geophysics, biology, chemistry, economics, etc., because the rules governing the time-variation of relevant fields is often naturally expressed in terms of relationships between rates of change. ODEs also emerge in stochastic models—for example, when considering the evolution of a probability density function—and in large networks of interconnected agents. The increasing ease of numerically simulating large systems of ODEs has resulted in a plethora of publications in this area; nevertheless, the difficulty of parametrizing models means that the computational results by themselves are sometimes questionable. Therefore, analysis cannot be ignored. This book comprises articles that possess both interesting applications and the mathematical analysis driven by such applications.

WINNER of the BISA IPEG Book Prize 2015 http://www.bisa-ipeg.org/ipeg-book-prize-2015-winner-announced/ Under the rubric of ‘financial inclusion’, lending to the poor –in both the global North and global South –has become a highly lucrative and rapidly expanding industry since the 1990s. A key inquiry of this book is what is ‘the financial’ in which the poor are asked to join. Instead of embracing the mainstream position that financial inclusion is a natural, inevitable and mutually beneficial arrangement, Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry suggests that the structural violence inherent to neoliberalism and credit-led accumulation have created and normalized a reality in which the working poor can no longer afford to live without expensive credit. The book further transcends economic treatments of credit and debt by revealing how the poverty industry is extricably linked to the social power of money, the paradoxes in credit-led accumulation, and ‘debtfarism’. The latter refers to rhetorical and regulatory forms of governance that mediate and facilitate the expansion of the poverty industry and the reliance of the poor on credit to augment/replace their wages. Through a historically grounded analysis, the author examines various dimensions of the poverty industry ranging from the credit card, payday loan, and student loan industries in the United States to micro-lending and low-income housing finance industries in Mexico. Providing a much-needed theorization of the politics of debt, Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry has wider implications of the increasing dependence of the poor on consumer credit across the globe, this book will be of very strong interest to students and scholars of Global Political Economy, Finance, Development Studies, Geography, Law, History, and Sociology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lU6PHjyOzU

In recent years, wireless communications have significantly evolved due to the advanced technology of smartphones;, portable devices; and the rapid growth of Internet of Things, e-Health, and intelligent transportation systems . Moreover, there is anare increasing need fors of emerging intelligent services like positioning and sensing in athe future intelligence society. Recent years have witnessed the growing research interests and activities in the communication and intelligencet services in the optical wireless spectrum, as a complementary technology to more

Explains what happened to music—for both artists and fans—when music went online. Playing to the Crowd explores and explains how the rise of digital communication platforms has transformed artist-fan relationships into something closer to friendship or family. Through in-depth interviews with musicians such as Billy Bragg and Richie Hawtin, as well as members of the Cure, UB40, and Throwing Muses, Baym reveals how new media has facilitated these connections through the active, and often required, participation of the artists and their devoted, digital fan base. Before the rise of social sharing and user-generated content, fans were mostly seen as an undifferentiated and unidentifiable mass, often mediated through record labels and the press. However, in today’s networked era, musicians and fans have built more active relationships through social media, fan sites, and artist sites, giving fans a new sense of intimacy and offering artists unparalleled information about their audiences. However, this comes at a price. For audiences, meeting their heroes can kill the mystique. And for artists, maintaining active relationships with so many people can be both personally and financially draining, as well as extremely labor intensive. Drawing on her own rich history as an active and deeply connected music fan, Baym offers an entirely new approach to media culture, arguing that the work musicians put in to create and maintain these intimate relationships reflect the demands of the gig economy, one which requires resources and strategies that we must all come to recognize and appreciate.