Open Access Books

The Volume II is entitled “Neurostimulation and pharmacological approaches”. This volume describes augmentation approaches, where improvements in brain functions are achieved by modulation of brain circuits with electrical or optical stimulation, or pharmacological agents. Activation of brain circuits with electrical currents is a conventional approach that includes such methods as (i) intracortical microstimulation (ICMS), (ii) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and (iii) transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). tDCS and TMS are often regarded as noninvasive methods. Yet, they may induce long-lasting plastic changes in the brain. This is why some authors consider the term “noninvasive” misleading when used to describe these and other techniques, such as stimulation with transcranial lasers. The volume further discusses the potential of neurostimulation as a research tool in the studies of perception, cognition and behavior. Additionally, a notion is expressed that brain augmentation with stimulation cannot be described as a net zero sum proposition, where brain resources are reallocated in such a way that gains in one function are balanced by costs elsewhere. In recent years, optogenetic methods have received an increased attention, and several articles in Volume II cover different aspects of this technique. While new optogenetic methods are being developed, the classical electrical stimulation has already been utilized in many clinically relevant applications, like the vestibular implant and tactile neuroprosthesis that utilizes ICMS. As a peculiar usage of neurostimulation and pharmacological methods, Volume II includes several articles on augmented memory. Memory prostheses are a popular recent development in the stimulation-based BMIs. For example, in a hippocampal memory prosthesis, memory content is extracted from hippocampal activity using a multiple-input, multiple-output non-linear dynamical model. As to the pharmacological approaches to augmenting memory and cognition, the pros and cons of using nootropic drugs are discussed.

This study suggests a new definition of the highly disputed class of noun-verb combinations. The new approach offered here does not begin, as before, with the verb, but rather, examines the semantic and pragmatic properties of the noun-verb construction as a whole. Another important aim is to explain the status of noun-verb combinations in the transitional realm between lexicon and grammar, and between regularity and irregularity.

Die Aufgabe der Theologie sollte es sein, die Rede von Sinn des Lebens nicht nur auf die eschatologische Dimension zu beziehen, sondern auch auf den Sinn und die Erfahrung unseres Lebens im Diesseits, d.h. auf "unser Dasein heute an diesem Ort". Daher kann die Frage nach dem Glück in der Theologie eine Frage nach dem Gesamtsinn des Lebens sein, sowohl in der Welt als auch in der zukünftigen Wirklichkeit. In der Beatitudolehre, die in der Summa Theologiae dargestellt ist, hat Thomas solch eine Aufgabe der Theologie treffend behandelt. "Glück" ist für Thomas von Aquin ein theologischer Begriff, in dem sowohl das eschatologische Glück als auch das diesseitige Glück zu erkennen sind. Thomas hat in seiner Beatitudolehre aber auch nicht nur die eschatologische Vollkommenheit und das Heil des Menschen zur Sprach gebracht, sondern ein Verständnis der menschlichen Natur und des menschlichen Daseins entwickelt, bei dem nicht nur vom jenseitigen Glück, sondern auch vom diesseitigen Glück in einem positiven Sinn die Rede sein kann. Der Autor ist davon überzeugt, dass sich in der Beatitudolehre des Thomas gut zeigt, wie das Glück in eben diesem Spielfeld des menschlichen Daseins theologisch verstanden werden kann. Bei Thomas stehen das endliche und das unendliche Glück in enger Beziehung zueinander, zugleich werden das Dasein des Menschen und die Gnade Gottes zu ihm gerechnet.

This book gives insights into inclusive education practices within different levels of education. It underlines the importance of studies on intellectual and learning disabilities. Inclusivity and accessibility are key factors in shedding light on sustainable education. Equal access to educational services and providing opportunities for learners with intellectual disabilities are important. Quality across all levels of education encompasses inclusive strategies in educational practice.

The question 'what is a human being?' remains one of the most vexing intellectual tasks. Debating Humanity reconstructs how contemporary sociologists and philosophers – among others, Arendt, Taylor, Archer and Boltanski – understand the key anthropological skills that define our shared membership to the human species.

Concerns about access to behavioral health care for military service members and their dependents living in geographically remote locations prompted research into how many in this population are remote and the effects of this distance on their use of behavioral health care. The authors conducted geospatial and longitudinal analyses to answer these questions and reviewed current policies and programs to determine barriers and possible solutions.

Recently, the trends of a circular economy and sustainability have driven nanotechnology towards the development of novel and innovative applications in the food packaging sector, which is rather recent compared with their use in biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. Bioactive films and coatings based on natural biopolymers such as chitosan, sodium alginate and gelatin and containing antioxidant and antimicrobial agents such as micro- and nanoemulsions of phytochemicals and nanostructured materials such as quantum dots, ZnO nanoparticles, nanoclays, silicas, zeolites and activated carbons, are finding application in various sectors of the food industry, especially in the development of novel edible, active packaging films and coatings. These bioactive films and coating materials enhance solubility, improve bioavailability, facilitate controlled release, and protect bioactive components during manufacture and storage. This Issue intends to provide an overview of bioactive gel films and coatings applied in active food packaging.

As one of the most fundamental natural resources for life, water is arguably indispensable to human beings, and the problem of water environmental pollution is receiving more attention. Currently, there are still a large number of people worldwide suffering from water shortages. Wastewater treatment techniques play a critical role in the purification of polluted effluent and achieving sustainable water use in order to solve the problem of water shortage worldwide. In this Special Issue, we anticipate seeing the state-of-the-art development of materials and processes for wastewater treatment techniques. The topics include, but are not limited to, physical and chemical methods in wastewater purification, mechanism studies at the interface of these processes, preparation and fit-for-purpose applications of novel functional materials, strengthening of the current wastewater treatment technologies, and other approaches relating to wastewater treatment techniques.

Several promising techniques have been developed to overcome the poor solubility and/or membrane permeability properties of new drug candidates, including different fiber formation methods. Electrospinning is one of the most commonly used spinning techniques for fiber formation, induced by the high voltage applied to the drug-loaded solution. With modifying the characteristics of the solution and the spinning parameters, the functionality-related properties of the formulated fibers can be finely tuned. The fiber properties (i.e., high specific surface area, porosity, and the possibility of controlling the crystalline–amorphous phase transitions of the loaded drugs) enable the improved rate and extent of solubility, causing a rapid onset of absorption. However, the enhanced molecular mobility of the amorphous drugs embedded into the fibers is also responsible for their physical–chemical instability. This Special Issue will address new developments in the area of electrospun nanofibers for drug delivery and wound healing applications, covering recent advantages and future directions in electrospun fiber formulations and scalability. Moreover, it serves to highlight and capture the contemporary progress in electrospinning techniques, with particular attention to the industrial feasibility of developing pharmaceutical dosage forms. All aspects of small molecule or biologics-loaded fibrous dosage forms, focusing on the processability, structures and functions, and stability issues, are included.

The community of biologists has been eager to realize the promise of DNA barcodes since the concept was first proposed in 2003. As we approach twenty years of DNA barcoding, their application continues to increase, and methods continue to be developed that utilize this ever-expanding resource for multiple fields of biology. The nearly ten million DNA barcodes available today provide a database that is especially useful for ecology and evolutionary biology. Thanks to these large and well-curated DNA barcode resources, fundamental biological questions can be more rigorously addressed regarding community evolution, assembly, herbivory, pollination, and species interactions across and among diverse habitats and organisms, including plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms. This reprint illustrates the wide variety of applications of DNA barcodes, especially in plants, to tackle research topics in ecology, evolutionary biology, plant–animal interactions, taxonomy, conservation, and ethnobotany.

DO KSIĄŻKI DOSTĘPNA JEST DRUGA PUBLIKACJA ZAWIERAJĄCA KLUCZ DO ĆWICZEŃ Questa pubblicazione costituisce un’introduzione ai quesiti fondamentali della fonetica e fonologia italiana e include un uso pratico dell’Alfabeto fonetico internazionale. Nella trattazione si dedica particolare attenzione alla lingua italiana standard. Il materiale comprende informazioni di ordine generale sulla produzione dei suoni linguistici in quanto fenomeni acustici, la presentazione di un sistema di trascrizione dei foni linguistici, un quadro dei fenomeni fonetico-fonologici che si verificano nella lingua parlata e una descrizione dei tratti prosodici come l’accento, la quantità, l’intonazione, il ritmo e altri. Il libro è stato pensato per venire incontro alle esigenze degli studenti di italianistica e altri lettori che necessitano di un primo strumento introduttivo alla fonetica. Le nozioni fonetiche e fonologiche costituiscono la base e un primo passo allo studio della grammatica della lingua italiana. Autori

The article proposes an analysis of media experiments with the word and language in Wojciech Bruszewski’s artistic theory-practice. The artist presumed that the language and the culture of the word were factors which determined traditional way of using technical media and reduced the image they created to a schematic, culturally conditioned artifact, capable of providing only partial access to the world. In order to unlock the media from conceptual conventions and structures of experience shaped by the culture of the word, and thereby to produce a different, extended image of the world, it is necessary to remediate the word as such. Bruszewski took the word at the level of its infrastructure and treated it as an anagrammatic audio-visual aggregate. He kept on constructing more and more complex machines which generated new combinations of letters and words as well as created new rules for translating the visual and the audial, and finally, he wrote ‘documental fictions’ which recombined fragments of individual biography and world history. In this way, he evoked generative chaos as reality which exceeds conceptual schemes of the humanistic culture of the word.

The study of basic tissues constitutes the foundation of veterinary histology, providing the morphological and functional bases necessary to understand the structure of organs and their relationship with animal physiology and pathology. In the veterinary field, they study four basic tissues that, through their association and specialization, form all the organs and systems of domestic species, each with specific characteristics and functions that determine their importance in the organism. The epithelial tissue is characterized by closely united cells and a sparse extracellular matrix, and fulfills the essential functions of coating, protection and secretion. This tissue is subclassified into lining epithelia, which can be simple or stratified, and into glandular epithelia, which are divided into exocrine and endocrine. Its relevance in veterinary medicine is paramount, since it constitutes the skin, the mucous membranes and the glands, acting as the first barrier of defense against external agents and actively participating in absorption and secretion processes. The connective tissue is distinguished by having an abundant extracellular matrix with dispersed cells, which fulfill vital functions of support, union and defense. This tissue includes various variants such as connective tissue (loose and dense), adipose, cartilaginous, bone and blood tissue. In veterinary practice, its study is crucial to understanding the structural support of the organism, energy storage and immune response mechanisms that guarantee animal health. The muscle tissue is formed by cells specialized in contraction, responsible for movement and contractility. It is classified into three main types: skeletal striated muscle, of voluntary character; músculo striado cardiac, de naturale involuntaria; and smooth muscle, also involuntary. The veterinary relevance of this tissue ranges from locomotion and posture to cardiac function and visceral movements and is essential for the integral functioning of the organism. The nervous tissue is composed of neurons and glial cells specialized in the transmission of electrical impulses, performing communication and coordination functions. It is divided into the central nervous system, which includes the brain and the spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, formed by nerves and ganglia. His study in veterinary medicine is fundamental to understanding the integration of bodily functions and the adaptive response to the environment, key aspects of animal behavior and well-being. The importance of the study of these tissues lies in the fact that it allows to interpret the relationship between structure and function, both in normal and pathological conditions. For example, understanding the organization of the respiratory epithelium facilitates the diagnosis of bronchitis, while knowledge of cardiac muscle tissue is essential to identify myopathies. This introduction lays the foundations for exploring how the interaction between these four tissues gives rise to the anatomical and functional complexity that characterizes domestic animals, always integrating the clinical perspective with the fundamental histological principles.

Since 2015, computer science teaching has been provided for in primary and junior high schools. This chapter aims to describe the curricula, textbooks and institutional discourses that provide for this teaching. Using the categories of analysis proposed by Reuter, it analyzes the way computer science teaching is presented in these texts. It shows the difficulties raised by the unspecific use of the terms “computing” and “digital”, which designate ill-defined entities that sometimes overlap considerably. It then analyzes the variety of computer science content, organized around three main attractors: algorithms, hardware and networks, and human activities; as well as the diversity of ways in which content is referred to computer science and the aims assigned to this teaching.