Open Access Books

Photography is clearly not a mirror of daily life: that images are constructions is especially obvious in19th-century studio portrait photography. This book explores how indigenous Iranian photographers constructed their own realities in contrast to how foreign photographers constructed Iranians’ realities. Through an in-depth comparative visual analysis of 19th-century Iranian portrait photography and Persian painting, the author arrives at the insight that aesthetic preferences correlate with socio-cultural habits and practices in writing, reading and looking. Subsequently, she advocates for a place in a global history of photography for those unknown, local photo histories (such as the Iranian one) and for the indigenous photographers who produced them.

Climate change is one of the main threats to modern society. This phenomenon is associated with an increase in greenhouse gas (GHGs, mainly carbon dioxide—CO2) emissions due to anthropogenic activities. The main causes are the burning of fossil fuels and land use change (deforestation). Climate change impacts are associated with risks to basic needs (health, food security, and clean water), as well as risks to development (jobs, economic growth, and the cost of living). The processes involving CO2 capture and storage are gaining attention in the scientific community as an alternative for decreasing CO2 emissions, reducing its concentration in ambient air. The carbon capture and storage (CCS) methodologies comprise three steps: CO2 capture, CO2 transportation, and CO2 storage. Despite the high research activity within this topic, several technological, economic, and environmental issues as well as safety problems remain to be solved, such as the following needs: increase of CO2 capture efficiency, reduction of process costs, and verification of the environmental sustainability of CO2 storage.

L'ambition de ce livre est de proposer un regard nouveau sur le Guzmán de Alfarache et le Quichotte. Il adopte pour cela un angle d'attaque singulier qui consiste à étudier ces deux chefs-d'œuvre du Siècle d'or en regard de leurs Secondes parties apocryphes. Les Premières parties du Guzmán et du Quichotte ont en effet donné lieu à des continuations d'autres auteurs, parues respectivement à Valence, en 1602, et à Tarragone, en 1614, alors qu'Alemán et Cervantès préparaient eux-mêmes des suites...

This book is a collection of innovative up-to-date perspectives on key aspects of water resources planning, development, and management of importance to both professional practitioners and researchers. Authors with outstanding expertise address a broad range of topics that include planning strategies, water quality modeling and monitoring, erosion prediction, freshwater inflows to estuaries, coastal reservoirs, irrigation management, aquifer recharge, and water allocation.

This Special Issue addresses the environmental and health impacts of abandoned metal mining sites, which often pose significant risks due to the presence of potentially toxic elements (PTEs) such as arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), and lead (Pb). The collection brings together research focused on the characterization of PTEs in wastes, soils, sediments, and/or waters, their natural mobility, and the mechanisms of their dispersion. A key emphasis is placed on assessing contamination levels and understanding the origin and behavior of pollutants in affected environments. The studies also explore the toxicological implications of these contaminants and the strategies available for remediation. Overall, this Special Issue contributes valuable insights into environmental geochemistry, soil contamination, and risk assessment, offering a scientific basis for informed remediation planning and environmental protection in post-mining landscapes.

Cet ouvrage rassemble les actes du Colloque transfrontalier et international « Vierges médiévales de Catalogue : mises en perspective » qui s’est déroulé à l’Université de Perpignan, les 1er et 2 décembre 2011, en parallèle avec l’exposition des Vierges romanes et gothiques des Pyrénées-Orientales proposée par le Centre de conservation et de restauration du Patrimoine. L’inventaire de ces Vierges, dirigé par Jean-Bernard Mathon, est publié en deuxième partie. Comme l’indique son titre, ce colloque a eu comme objectif d’élargir les points de vue sur ces Vierges des Pyrénées-Orientales, en les croisant avec d’autres apports, à partir de comparaisons avec des œuvres conservées tant en Espagne, qu’en Italie, qu’en Languedoc voisin, ou en Île de France et plus largement encore en Europe. Ces actes constituent donc un apport important à la connaissance des œuvres catalanes, en permettant d’en souligner la spécificité au sein d’un vaste corpus de Vierges à l’Enfant sur lesquelles les publications d’ensemble en français sont rares ou déjà anciennes. La seconde partie de ce volume présente le répertoire exhaustif et abondamment illustré des 150 Vierges à l'Enfant médiévales des Pyrénées-Orientales, étudiées du point de vue historique, technique, matériel et dévotionnel. Ce corpus départemental est le premier réalisé en France ; il ouvre ainsi de nouveaux horizons à la recherche.

This book is devoted to new developments in measurement technologies for upstream and downstream bioprocessing. The recent advances in biotechnology and bioprocessing have generated a number of new biological products that require more qualified analytical technologies for diverse process analytical needs. These includes especially fast and sensitive measurement technology that, early in the process train, can inform on critical process parameters related to process economy and product quality and that can facilitate ambitions of designing efficient integrated end-to-end bioprocesses. This book covers these topics as well as analytical monitoring methods based either on real-time or in-line sensor technology, on simple and compact bioanalytical devices, or on the use of advanced data prediction methods.

Never before in history was the interaction between people and their natural environment as complex and problematic as it is today. A proliferation of scientific research has yielded valuable insights into various aspects of this interaction from the angle of many disciplines - the natural sciences, the social sciences, archaeology and history, ecological studies. The diversity of approaches has created a need for synthesis, for a study that transcends the boundaries of traditional fields of study. In this volume, authors from various academic backgrounds discuss the relations between human society and its physical environment in the course of history, highlighting a number of significant periods, throughout the world. The last chapter assesses our present situation and prospects for the future in the light of theoretical reflections based on the evidence from the past.

Approaches to world literature often think through binaries of local/global, major/minor, provincial/cosmopolitan, taking them as given positions on a single world map. To an extent, this is true of Amitav Ghosh’s prize-winning essay “The testimony of my grandfather’s bookcase” (1998), which reflects on his grandfather’s collection of world literature books to think about the relationship between his grandfather’s provincial location in Calcutta and the world. Yet in The Shadow Lines Ghosh takes a much more complex and interesting approach to space, the world, perception and narration. In the novel’s complex narration, space, time, and self always appeared mirrored through other people, times, and spaces. Places also acquire reality and meaning only after they are first narrated and imagined, often several times, and before they are experienced directly. This is a stance that has deep existential but also epistemological implications that go beyond “simply” critiquing colonial and national border-making. This essay explores how (and which) spaces become “significant” in the novel, and how the novel’s approach to space can be productive for thinking about world literature.

Rechtsanwälte haben rechtsordnungsübergreifend eine wichtige rechtsstaatliche Funktion. Doch anders als die richterliche Unabhängigkeit, die in den europäischen wie mitgliedstaatlichen Verfassungstexten ausdrücklich erwähnt wird, gilt dies für Rechtsanwälte und die Rechtsanwaltschaft als Institution zumeist nicht. Der berufsfreiheitliche und verfassungsgerichtliche Schutz anwaltlicher Berufsausübung in Deutschland kennt keine Entsprechung in Frankreich, wo dieser bislang der berufsständischen Selbstverwaltung überantwortet ist. Der Autor vermisst die anwaltliche Berufsfreiheit im deutschen Verfassungsrecht neu. Diese stellt sich als dienende Freiheitsgewährleistung dar. Zugleich werden erstmals grundrechtliche Maßstäbe für die Regulierung des Anwaltsberufs in Frankreich aufgezeigt. Der Grundrechtsvergleich lässt als gemeinsame Elemente die Fremdnützigkeit und Normgeprägtheit der anwaltlichen Grundrechte hervortreten. Die Arbeit ist 2023 mit dem Dissertationspreis "Prix des affaires" der Deutsch-Französischen Hochschule und dem Promotionspreis des Vereins der Freunde und Förderer der Rechtswissenschaften an der Universität Passau e.V. ausgezeichnet worden.

Ce livre, consacré à l’œuvre d’Ahmadou Kourouma, prend pour thème majeur la géopolitique, sorte de téléologie cristallisant la carrière de l’écrivain, dont l’« essentiel », pour lui, semble avoir été éludé au profit d’une approche longtemps fascinée par sa créativité formelle et linguistique. Derrière cet horizon d’attente, se forme un magma d’idées et de paradigmes éculés, comme le rapport du romancier ivoirien à la langue du colonisateur et son aversion pour les régimes dictatoriaux africains. Pareille lecture, au contraire de toutes les gloses élogieuses à l’égard d’Ahmadou Kourouma, fait courir le risque de la marginalisation dans l’histoire des idées à la critique consacrée à l’ensemble de ses romans. Questionner l’œuvre sous le prisme de la géopolitique et de la question postcoloniale permet de la saisir, tout comme son auteur, loin des fantasmes dominants d’une herméneutique qui s’est fossilisée, au fil du temps, dans des grilles de lecture qui ont parfois donné l’impression, même à Kourouma de son vivant, de se trouver devant une impasse.

The aim of this Special Issue is to specify relevant principles of mathematics and mechanics in order to explore and understand biological problems. We summarize the most important parameters that influence human performance and that are related to the health sciences for all age groups, throughout their lives. We present papers that aim to introduce the latest research in the fields of health, quality-of-life improvement, and sport rehabilitation and that summarize their recommendations for best practice. The aim for this Special Issue is, therefore, to effectively combine and coordinate research and results in order to understand and improve human movement in medicine, sports, and at work.

Over the past few decades, Daoism has become a recognizable part of Western “alternative” spiritual life. Now, that Westernized version of Daoism is going full circle, traveling back from America and Europe to influence Daoism in China. Dream Trippers draws on more than a decade of ethnographic work with Daoist monks and Western seekers to trace the spread of Westernized Daoism in contemporary China. David A. Palmer and Elijah Siegler take us into the daily life of the monastic community atop the mountain of Huashan and explore its relationship to the socialist state. They follow the international circuit of Daoist “energy tourism,” which connects a number of sites throughout China, and examine the controversies around Western scholars who become practitioners and promoters of Daoism. Throughout are lively portrayals of encounters among the book’s various characters—Chinese hermits and monks, Western seekers, and scholar-practitioners—as they interact with each other in obtuse, often humorous, and yet sometimes enlightening and transformative ways. Dream Trippers untangles the anxieties, confusions, and ambiguities that arise as Chinese and American practitioners balance cosmological attunement and radical spiritual individualism in their search for authenticity in a globalized world.

Dans l’usage commun, l’expérience – du latin experientia, « essai, épreuve, tentative » – est une notion renvoyant à la fois au savoir acquis ou vécu, élaboré empiriquement à partir du passé, et au savoir tiré de l’expérimentation envisagée comme savoir en devenir. Dépassant les clivages temporels (du Siècle d’Or espagnol à la période actuelle), géographiques (de la Norvège à la Russie) ou disciplinaires (la littérature, la didactique, la danse, la spiritualité, la philosophie ou la sociologie), les seize voix réunies dans ce recueil s’accordent pour témoigner que l’expérience – faite, vécue, restituée – entretient un lien étroit avec toutes les formes d’altérité : expérience de / à ( / sur ?) l’autre. Qu’on la prépare ou la pense, qu’on en soit le seul bénéficiaire ou que la démarche ait une portée universelle, l’expérience revient à une quête du mieux pour l’homme. Elle est, en somme, une rencontre avec le monde mais aussi, in fine, avec soi-même.