Open Access Books

Beginning with an overview of distributed generation technologies, as well as of the state of the art of District Heating (DH) networks, this book provides an insight on methods and strategies for the optimal design and management of the smart energy networks. First of all, an in-depth analysis on the thermal distribution networks is discussed, presenting a tool for the design and analysis of traditional DH and introducing the new concept of smart DH, with an in-depth analysis of the thermal prosumer role. In detail, the integration of distributed heat generators (e.g., solar thermal panels and cogenerators) into existing DH networks and the resulting thermodynamic effects are discussed. In addition, different possibilities for the design ex novo of such smart DH prosumers are presented. In addition, a focus on the optimization of the energy systems scheduling within complex (smart) energy networks is investigated, presenting a new software based on genetic algorithms and providing two case studies.

The use of radical prostatectomy in patients with high risk of recurrence has significantly increased during the past 10 years. Thus, adjuvant radiation as a part of multimodality treatment or salvage radiation at the evidence of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) progression represents mainstay curative-intent options for a great number of prostate cancer patients. Although, few randomized trials and many retrospective studies have been published, many uncertainties still mold the discussions on the best treatment management for men after prostatectomy. This research topic successfully intended to foster discussions on current controversies in the use of postoperative radiotherapy and to present novel perspectives for treatment optimization.

Carboxylic acids are truly central compounds in cellular metabolism. Carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere through formation of carboxylic groups and is also released, in part, by decarboxylation reactions. The reactivity of the carboxylic group with amino- or hydroxyl-groups enables the formation of peptide and ester bonds. The functionality of the carboxylic group is also of huge importance in our industrial world for a wide range of applications. The loosely bound hydrogen provides weak acid functionality, much desired for food industry applications in preservatives and flavour compounds. Citric acid is one of our oldest industrial fermentation products. The presence of two carboxylic groups, or a combination of one carboxylic group and another functional group, make the compounds interesting building blocks for polymer production. A number of carboxylic acids, including, e.g., lactic, succinic, 3-hydroxypropionic and itaconic acids, have been identified and recognized as suitable platform chemicals for a foreseen growing carbohydrate based economy. Economic margins are, however, tight when competing with petroleum based production, and production strains, fermentation technology and—not least—downstream processing, all need to be improved to enable viable commercial production. This Special issue will cover current developments within this exciting field. Topics will include: Fermentation physiology of natural carboxylic acid producers; screening and isolation of novel producers; metabolic engineering for improving intrinsic carboxylic acid production; metabolic engineering for expanding product range to non-endogenous carboxylic acids; production from lignocellulosic derived sugars or by-product streams; downstream processing for recovery of carboxylic acids; bioprocess design—including continuous processes and integration. All production organisms—fungi, yeasts, bacteria—are welcome.

The oomycete genus Phytophthora represents one of the most notorious groups of tree pathogens in natural and semi-natural forest ecosystems. Since the discovery in the 1960s of the invasive P. cinnamomi, threatening some of the world’s richest plant communities in Australia, numerous Phytophthora diseases have been reported on forest trees worldwide, which were previously unknown to science. The most notable examples include the oak and beech declines triggered by different Phytophthora spp. in Europe and North America, the findings of sudden oak death and sudden larch death caused by P. ramorum in the Western USA and the U.K., respectively, and the association of P. austrocedri with mal del ciprés in Argentina and juniper decline in the U.K. All these epidemic events are driven by exotic invasive Phytophthora species, introduced through infested nursery plants from their native overseas environments. In recent years, many independent surveys have studied the diversity of Phytophthora species and the diseases they are causing across a diverse range of forests and other natural ecosystems. This Special Issue presents papers on Phytophthora surveys performed in different biogeographic regions and addresses the pathways, and ecological and economic impacts of these invasive forest pathogens.

“Every written work,” Giorgio Agamben opens the preface to Infancy and History, “can be regarded as the prologue (or rather, the broken cast) of a work never penned, and destined to remain so.” Although that observation applies to any work of writing, the exemplary case is that of a work of philosophy. While every written work is put to work in its nonexistent successor, a work of philosophy is bereft of even that recourse: philosophy is written in the breakdown of destiny, so that every work of philosophy must first and foremost confront the absolute abandonment of its writing. At work in each and every work of philosophy is the question, “What is a work of philosophy?” More concretely, although well-formed and rigorously structured, What is Philosophy? abstains from work. On even a quick reading that fact must be palpable. A seminar paper? An article, or book chapter? Not in the least. Nor, essentially, may the individual pieces that compose it be so developed. Fragments unrecognizable as at one time a cast, inconceivable at a future time as anything else, the position of each piece with respect to the others thwarts development in order to preserve, in its place, the tension of its absence. As such, the articulations internal to each of the three divisions, and between them, are essential. The first division — What is Philosophy? — takes seriously Deleuze and Guattari’s contention in their book of the same title that “The nonphilosophical is perhaps closer to the heart of philosophy than philosophy itself, and this means that philosophy cannot be content to be understood only philosophically or conceptually, but is essentially addressed to nonphilosophers as well” — including the nonphilosopher in every philosopher. The second division — On Argument — interrogates the status and value of evidence, and self-evidence. The third division — On Not Knowing — generalizes a parenthetical observation of Agamben’s on Heidegger, “If we may attempt to identify something like the characteristic Stimmung of every thinker, perhaps it is precisely this being delivered over to something that refuses itself that defines the specific emotional tonality of Heidegger’s thought”: Might not philosophy be defined, the phil of sophia, precisely, as what it is to be delivered over to something that refuses itself?

This book studies the evolution of the University of Barcelona from 1595 to 1714. Given the absence of internal documentation from the University, various sources of municipal documentation are used to write a factitious Chronicle, which details the name of many professors, as well as it regulates many educational, economic and cultural aspects. The preliminary study contextualizes the Chronicle and presents the prosopography of the main professors.

The call to decolonise has become one of the dominant forces in contemporary art – yet its most radical possibilities are routinely absorbed and neutralised by the institutions of the Global North. Unmaking to Make intervenes in this impasse by turning to Latin America, centring Afro-diasporic and Indigenous perspectives from a region where artistic practice operates at the intersection of aesthetics, politics and social life, and whose thinkers and practitioners have long theorised decolonisation from within. Drawing on essays, curatorial reflections and conversations with contributors from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, Martinique, Mexico and Peru, the volume moves across four thematic terrains – counter-genealogies, museums and cultural institutions, the decolonisation of language, and plural temporalities – to show how art unsettles colonial narratives, reshapes knowledge and generates new vocabularies of power. At its core, the volume makes a bold claim: that Latin American artistic practice is not just transforming the canon but articulating a form of thought – one that theorises, enacts and insists upon other worlds. Essential reading for scholars, curators, artists and students of contemporary art, decolonial thought and Latin American cultural politics.

War captivity is a prolific field of research for studies on strong asymmetrical dependency. The contributions in the present volume examine how POWs and civilian internees in different military conflicts, including the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the two world wars, and the war in Bosnia, have been represented in visual sources. The images of war captivity addressed in the contributions are as heterogeneous as the contexts in which they were produced; they include allegorical representations and official press photographs, amateurish snapshots and propagandistic film recordings, self-drawn camp albums and comics commemorating war. What they have in common, however, is that they not only offer information about POWs and civilian internees but also interpret and emotionalise their experience. Visual sources may, for instance, document how POWs were treated in a particular camp, but they may also stress a certain amount of agency of the POWs; in addition, they may come to play a vital role in how the detaining power is remembered. Images provide evidence of atrocities and comparatively humane treatment alike – and thus may be relevant to the question whether reconciliation might seem possible in the long run.

A multidisciplinary book that takes internet governance research as a research subject in its own right, discussing methods and conceptual approaches. The design and governance of the internet has become one of the most pressing geopolitical issues of our era. The stability of the economy, democracy, and the public sphere depend on the stability and security of the internet. Revelations about election hacking, facial recognition technology, and government surveillance have gotten the public's attention and made clear the need for scholarly research that examines internet governance both empirically and conceptually. In this volume, scholars from a range of disciplines consider research methods, theories, and conceptual approaches in the study of internet governance. The contributors show that internet governance is not only about governments; it is enacted through technical design, resource coordination, and conflicts at various invisible control points. They discuss such topics as the emergence of “internet governance” as an area of academic study and a real-world policy arena; the scholarly perspectives of STS, the law, computer science, and political science; the use of big data and text mining in internet governance studies; and cybersecurity. Contributors Farzaneh Badiei, Davide Beraldo, Sandra Braman, Ronald J. Deibert, Dame Wendy Hall, Jeanette Hofmann, Eric Jardine, Rikke Frank Jørgensen, Aastha Madaan, Stefania Milan, Milton Mueller, Kieron O'Hara, Niels ten Oever, Rolf H. Weber

Krisenzeiten sind schwierig, bergen aber auch Herausforderungen für Individuen und Gesellschaft, die nicht nur negative Konsequenzen haben müssen. Krisen können ein positives Potenzial entwickeln und als Wendepunkt, als Anlass zur Neu- und Umorientierung fungieren. Damit dies gelingt, ist in besonderem Maße Solidarität erforderlich: Gemeinsame Probleme müssen kollektiv bearbeitet, individuelle Interessen zum Schutz anderer zurückgestellt werden. Von diesem Verständnis ausgehend blickt der Sammelband aus sozialpädagogischer Perspektive auf die Coronakrise und darüber hinaus: Was macht die Krise mit uns als Gesellschaft? In welcher Weise sind spezifische Gruppen betroffen und wie gehen sie damit um? Welche Auswirkungen hat die Krise auf individueller Ebene? Die Beiträge beleuchten Herausforderungen und Probleme, aber auch Lösungsansätze.; Times of crisis are difficult times. They hold challenges for individuals and society, but they do not have to have exclusively negative consequences. Crises can develop a positive potential and act as a turning point, an occasion for reorientation and change. For this to succeed, solidarity is particularly necessary: crises can rarely be overcome alone, common problems must be dealt with collectively, individual interests must be put aside to protect others. Starting from this understanding, the volume looks at the Corona crisis: What is the crisis doing to us as a society? In what ways are specific groups affected and how do they deal with it? What are the effects of the crisis at the individual level? The contributions shed light on challenges and problems, but also on approaches to solutions.

In the view of the increasingly strong and far-reaching international interdependence of the national legal system, the question as to where the German Basic Law relates concerning the increasing international complexity is becoming ever more important. In response to this, the German Basic Law is said to be a constitution open to international law, which is extracted from the basic principle of ‘Völkerrechtsfreundlichkeit’ (friendliness toward international law). However, it remains vague in which relation such a principle would stand to the rule of law, the principle of democracy or the system of basic rights, if it is inserted into their limitations or constitutes a supreme premise. The focus of this study lays upon the attempt to make the principle of Völkerrechtsfreundlichkeit tangible and to explore its legal content of.

A representation of the experiences and yields of the interdisciplinary work of a humanities and social science research training group with disciplinary breadth as well as historical depth. The disciplines range among others from ancient history through music didactics to sociology, and theology. Pairs of experienced and young scholars jointly reflect on their individual and collective experiences with joint interdisciplinary research.

Sustainability is an approach increasingly being used by more and more organizations in the pursuit of a circular economy. Sustainability cannot be achieved without risk management. As such, this book discusses the risk management process, which is integral to meeting organizational objectives. Chapters address such topics as risk analysis, risk management models, communication and leadership, managing risk in different countries and industries, and much more. The book examines innovative approaches that meet the needs of risk management, sustainability, and leadership.

The aim of the following reprint is to immerse the reader in the latest approach of Chemical Sensors for Volatile Organic Compound Detection. As VOCs are ubiquitous in multiple specific settings, such as confined spaces and chemical production processes, it is essential to achieve superior detection of VOCs, particularly in terms of lower detection limits of sub-ppm and shorter response time. The detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is in high demand in various fields, such as environmental pollution monitoring, early disease screening, and food freshness assessment. A variety of methods, including spectroscopic analysis, mass spectrometry, chromatographic analysis, electrochemical gas sensors, infrared gas sensors, and semiconductor gas sensors, have been extensively used for VOC detection. In particular, semiconductor sensors have been extensively investigated to detect VOCs due to their high sensitivity, fast response time, and cost-effectiveness. Under the unremitting efforts of researchers, research on semiconductor gas sensors has made a major breakthrough. Articles included in this reprint focus on gas sensors with selective enhancement, lower power consumption, and fast response. The characterization and evaluation of sensing performance, and the completion of gas-sensitive mechanistic discussions of experimental phenomena are also included. This reprint serves as a detailed entry point for readers interested in exploring VOC detection.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the most informative and widely used imaging technologies for the clinical examination of soft tissues. It has been used to evaluate the structural integrity of nearly all tissues and is unparalleled in analyses of the nervous and cardiovascular systems. Since its inception, MRI applications have undergone a broad evolution that has led to such well-established procedures as parallel imaging and functional MRI. Recent years have seen a new generation of applications, which has benefitted from a synergy of these established methods and a parallel evolution occurring in computational analyses. These recent MRI trends tend toward a growing emphasis on functional performance, greater reliance on extended computational analysis, and an expansion in the range of multimodal structural assessments. This book showcases these trends through in-depth analyses of select applications from this new generation of MRI methods. New Advances in Magnetic Resonance Imaging provides an insightful and detailed view into these upcoming developments that will be of interest to MRI professionals and scientists alike.