Open Access Books

Yawning is a stereotyped phylogenetically ancient phenomenon that occurs in almost all vertebrates. As an emotional behavior and an expressive movement, yawning has many consequences; nevertheless, it has so far been poorly addressed in medical research and practice. Bringing together the latest research from many fields, this volume integrates current insights within embryology, ethology, neurophysiology, psychology, fMRI and pathology. The phylogenetic and ontogenetic aspects of yawning offer an interesting perspective on human development, and its occurrence in neurological diseases - an area explored by only a few investigators - may provide useful clinical information. This book will make valuable and fascinating reading to neurologists, sleep specialists, psychologists, ethologists and pharmacologists, as well as to anybody interested in uncovering the mystery of yawning.

This open access book focuses on the importance that EU politicization has gained in European democracies and the consequences for voting behaviour in six countries of the EU: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Most of the studies which research the way the EU is being legitimised focus on the European Parliament elections. In this book we argue that to understand how EU accountability works, it is necessary to focus instead on national elections and the national political environment. Through a detailed, multimethod analysis this book establishes rigorously the paths of European accountability at the national level, its propitious contexts in the media and parliamentary debates, and whether the paths are similar from Greece to Germany. The findings have implications for both national and European Union democracy, underlining the importance that national institutions have in enabling citizens to hold the EU accountable.

This volume explores the use of demonstratives in the structuring and management of discourse, and their role as engagement expressions, from a crosslinguistic perspective. It seeks to establish which types of discourse-related functions are commonly encoded by demonstratives, beyond the well-established reference-tracking and deictic uses, and also investigates which members of demonstrative paradigms typically take on certain functions. Moreover, it looks at the roles of non-deictic demonstratives, that is, members of the paradigm which are dedicated e.g. to contrastive, recognitional, or anaphoric functions and do not express deictic distinctions. Several of the studies also focus on manner demonstratives, which have been little studied from a crosslinguistic perspective. The volume thus broadens the scope of investigation of demonstratives to look at how their core functions interact with a wider range of discourse functions in a number of different languages. The volume covers languages from a range of geographical locations and language families, including Cushitic and Mande languages in Africa, Oceanic and Papuan languages in the Pacific region, Algonquian and Guaykuruan in the Americas, and Germanic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages in the Eurasian region. It also includes two papers taking a broader typological approach to specific discourse functions of demonstratives.

The volume includes the proceedings of the 2nd Roma Sinica conference held in 2019 and aims to compare some features of the ancient political thought in the Western classical tradition and in the Eastern ancient thought. The contributors propose new patterns of interpretation of the mutual interactions and proximities between these two cultural worlds and offer also a perspective of continuity between contemporary and ancient political thought.

Inclusion and digitization are about to decisively change society in several dimensions. This also includes (school) education. However, inclusive and digital education as central tasks of the education system have so far been discussed too rarely in combination. However, digital education is fundamental for enabling social participation and must therefore be a significant component of educational processes. The content of the anthology is based on selected contributions to the online conference ""Inklusion digital! - Opportunities and Challenges of Inclusive Education in the Context of Digitization"". The articles reflect the current discussions in teacher training and continuing education with regard to inclusion and digitization from the perspectives of subject didactics, subject sciences, educational science, and special education.

Die Beschleunigung gesellschaftlicher Transformationsprozesse lässt soziale Ängste entstehen, die zunehmend im imaginären Raum der Nostalgie kompensiert werden. Die aktuelle Forschungstendenz, den Blick auf dieses Phänomen aus der Kulturkritik zu entbinden, scheint mit der zunehmenden Politisierung und reflexiven Ästhetisierung des Nostalgischen fragwürdig. Zugleich wirkt es aber so, als ob die Begriffe der traditionellen Kritik nicht mehr greifen. Die Beiträger*innen diskutieren den aus diesen Befunden resultierenden Theoriebedarf, indem sie ein breites empirisches Spektrum abschreiten sowie Sichtweisen unterschiedlicher Disziplinen integrieren und zusammenführen.

This volume provides the very first transcription of correspondence between Richard Dedekind and Heinrich Weber, one of the most important instances of written dialog between mathematicians in the 19th century. Nearly every subarea of mathematics is addressed in the letters, which intensively discuss nascent developments in the field. A register of persons and index of works ease access to the topics discussed in the letters.

Multiple dysfunctions take place in the B cell compartment during HIV-1 infection, comprising depletion of resting memory B cells carrying serological memory to vaccines and previously met pathogens. In addition, population of B cells characterized by the expression of exhaustion markers are enlarged during HIV-1 infection. Antibodies with the capacity to neutralize a broad range of HIV-1 isolates can be detected only in a minority of infected patients, after a year or more from acute infection. An open question is whether the inability of producing neutralizing HIV-1 antibodies is somehow linked to the B cell immunopathology observed in patients. In this research topic we invited scientists to summarize the current state of knowledge on regulation and development of B cells and antibody responses during HIV-1 infection; fifteen contributions were received comprising both reviews and original articles. The articles are related to B cell dysfunctions identified in HIV-1 infected individuals, production of different types of antibodies (neutralizing versus non neutralizing, and of different isotypes) in vivo during HIV-1 infection and the biological factors which may impact on this process, clinical potential and applications of anti-HIV antibodies and how to achieve neutralizing antibody responses to HIV-1 epitopes upon vaccination. The topic has gathered articles on front-line research undertaken in the field of B cells and antibodies in HIV-1 infection. It is our hope that the collection of articles presented in this book may be useful for new and experienced scholars in the field and add a piece to the complex puzzle of knowledge needed for the development of an HIV-1 vaccine.

Published

Mario Blaser proposes a new lens for combatting the momentous challenges the world currently faces, arguing that solutions to major crises should be based in the specificities of the places they emerge from rather than a single approach that only exacerbates the problem.

Partial differential equations are indispensable for modeling various phenomena and processes, such as those in physics, biology, finance, and engineering. Finding solutions to partial differential equations using qualitative theories or quantitative methods, as well as the application of such investigations to real-world problems, has drawn a large amount of interest from researchers. This reprint encompasses all the articles that were accepted and published in this Special Issue titled "Applications of Partial Differential Equations ". We hope that these accepted and published papers will be impactful and motivate future research on partial differential equations for solving complex problems in various fields, disciplines, and applications.

Automi, realtà virtuale e formiche (“Automata, virtual reality and ants”) proposes an analysis of the complexity of the war phenomenon through three different approaches: in the microphysics of the individual action, in simulated reality and in a metaphor with the biological environment. The investigation into the nature of the interactions between man and machine presents the attempt to dominate the Clausewitzian uncertainty of the battle through an automated, post-human system. This seems to be resolved in the Omega Point, which the theologian de Chardin had identified as a point of escape from entropy and from the disorder of reality. There is neither a scientific solution, nor a theological fate. Intelligence is shared through the semantics of the satellite, of the drone and through the information passing from machine to machine. While the warriors will act as a swarm, by sharing a huge amount of data, each one of them on the exocrine glands of the machine, St. Basil was right when he warned that whoever claims to speak on the nature of things (and therefore on war) should first of be able to speak of the nature of the ant.

Die Universitätsbibliothek Graz erhielt 1782 das Anrecht auf die Bibliotheksbestände der im Zuge der josephinischen Reformen aufgehobenen Klöster und Stifte im Herzogtum Steiermark. In den Folgejahren wurden tausende Druckwerke und Handschriften nach Graz überstellt, was einen fundamentalen Wandel im lokalen Wissensspeicher auslöste. Neben den bisher nur ansatzweise beantworteten Fragen aus welchen Ordensniederlassungen und in welchem Umfang Buchbestände übernommen wurden, untersucht die Studie die Bücherverkäufe und -entsorgungen. Darüber hinaus wird mit Methoden der historischen Leser:innenforschung der Frage nachgegangen, wer Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts Zugang zu den durch die Klosteraufhebungen massiv erweiterten Wissensbeständen der Grazer Studienbibliothek hatte.

This book focuses on the referendums against water privatisation in Italy and explores how activists took to social media, ultimately convincing twenty-seven million citizens to vote. Investigating the relationship between social movements and internet-related activism during complex campaigns, this book examines how a technological evolution-the increased relevance of social media platforms-affected in very different ways organisations with divergent characteristics, promoting at the same time decentralised communication practices, and new ways of coordinating dispersed communities of people.Matteo Cernison combines and adapts a wide set of methods, from social network analysis to digital ethnography, in order to explore in detail how digital activism and face-to-face initiatives interact and overlap. He argues that the geographical scale of actions, the role played by external media professionals, and the activists' perceptions of digital technologies are key elements that contribute in a significant way to shape the very different communication practices often described as online activism.

This report examines the prospects for stabilization in Mali following the political and military crisis that began in 2012. To this end, it examines Mali’s peace settlements since the early 1990s to identify flaws and successes. The report also explores whether Mali’s neighbor Niger owes its current stability to a more favorable context, shrewd policies, or sheer luck, and whether it might offer a model of resilience for Mali.