Open Access Books

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Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) are a heterogeneous group of complex diseases characterized by neuronal loss and progressive degeneration of different areas of the nervous system. NDs represent a significant health problem worldwide, with an increasing incidence rate. Although the exact pathogenesis of NDs remains unclear, a complex interaction among genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors has been proposed. To date, no effective therapeutics have been developed to slow, halt, or prevent any NDs. Thus, information on the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of NDs is strongly sought after. This Special Issue collected papers discussing advances in the field of NDs.

The theory of evolution has clearly altered our views of the biological world, but in the study of human beings, evolutionary and preevolutionary views continue to coexist in a state of perpetual tension. The Taming of Evolution addresses the questions of how and why this is so. Davydd Greenwood offers a sustained critique of the nature/nurture debate, revealing the complexity of the relationship between science and ideology. He maintains that popular contemporary theories, most notably E. O. Wilson’s human sociobiology and Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism, represent pre-Darwinian notions overlaid by elaborate evolutionary terminology. Greenwood first details the humoral-environmental and Great Chain of Being theories that dominated Western thinking before Darwin. He systematically compares these ideas with those later influenced by Darwin’s theories, illuminating the surprising continuities between them. Greenwood suggests that it would be neither difficult nor socially dangerous to develop a genuinely evolutionary understanding of human beings, so long as we realized that we could not derive political and moral standards from the study of biological processes.

Over the past quarter century, the people of the Arabian Peninsula have witnessed a revolutionary transformation in higher education. In 1990, there were fewer than ten public universities that offered their Arabic-language curricula in sex-segregated settings to national citizens only. In 2015, there are more than one hundred public, semi-public, and private colleges and universities. Most of these institutions are open to expatriates and national citizens; a few offer gender integrated instruction; and the language of instruction is much more likely to be in English than Arabic. Higher Education Revolutions in the Gulf explores the reasons behind this dramatic growth. It examines the causes of the sharp shift in educational practices and analyses how these new systems of higher education are regulated, evaluating the extent to which the new universities and colleges are improving quality. Questioning whether these educational changes can be sustained, the book explores how the new curricula and language policies are aligned with official visions of the future. Written by leading scholars in the field, it draws upon their considerable experiences of teaching and doing research in the Arabian Gulf, as well as their different disciplinary backgrounds (linguistics and economics), to provide a holistic and historically informed account of the emergence and viability of the Arabian Peninsula’s higher education revolutions. Offering a comprehensive, critical assessment of education in the Gulf Arab states, this book represents a significant contribution to the field and will be of interest to students and scholars of Middle East and Gulf Studies, and essential for those focused on higher education.

La vicenda di Gaio Cornelio Gallo matura sullo sfondo della profonda trasformazione che caratterizzò il I secolo a.C. Intellettuale di primo piano, espressione delle élite occidentali di recente integrate, politico e militare di successo, per primo posto a capo dell’Egitto come prefetto e infine oggetto di un pubblico perseguimento che gli costò la vita, Gallo rappresenta un’efficace chiave di lettura di questo passaggio storico, indagato, attraverso un approccio interdisciplinare, nella duplice prospettiva della res publica diventata principato e dell’Egitto divenuto territorio romano.

La Bretagne catholique a longtemps été une évidence, et voilà qu’elle ne l’est plus. On se souvient de sa puissance d’hier, on s’étonne de son effacement d’aujourd’hui. Pour souligner cette différence des temps, ce livre, qui fait varier les focales, associant explorations singulières et considérations générales, examine deux temporalités. D’abord, « le moment 1905 », c’est-à-dire la période qui va des années 1880 à la Première Guerre mondiale et pendant laquelle, face à la politique anticléricale de la Troisième République, l’emprise du catholicisme en Bretagne n’a sans doute jamais été aussi forte. Ensuite, « cent ans après », la marginalisation de ce même catholicisme, au terme d’un processus de déconnexion de la religion et de la culture moderne dont les signes avant-coureurs n’avaient pas manqué depuis 1950. Sans préjuger de l’avenir de nouveaux styles d’existence chrétienne, modestes, diversifiés et circonscrits, dans une société sécularisée, on voudrait mettre en évidence, par ce puissant contraste de deux époques, la disparition du catholicisme breton traditionnel, si prégnant encore au début des années 1960 et désormais quasiment réduit à sa dimension mémorielle et patrimoniale.

Im Hinblick auf die globale Krise der Mental-Health ist es unerlässlich, Burnout-Prävention als ein Regierungsproblem und Teil eines Präventionsdispositivs ins Auge zu fassen. Ausgehend von der Gouvernementalitätsperspektive zeigt Jozef Zelinka, wie die Prävention psychischer Störungen zur Sicherung der neoliberalen Leistungsgesellschaft eingesetzt wird: Subjekte werden durch kontinuierlichen Gefährdungsdruck und Risikokalkulation zur Selbstführung gedrängt. Die kritische Dispositivanalyse macht diese diskursiven, alltagspraktischen und vor allem materiellen Manifestationen der Prävention sichtbar.

This open access book provides multidisciplinary perspectives on the changing dynamics of new working spaces, with insights from various European countries and observing critical theoretical approaches. Divided into two main parts, the first part focuses on the different typologies of new working spaces, identifying the changing nature of these spaces and associated concepts, taxonomies, and specific approaches to this phenomenon. The second part analyzes the location of new working spaces, examining its recent evolution and identifying new factors and geographies, offering an additional empirical analysis of different European realities. The research included in this book contributes to the current discussion of new forms and geographies of work and their impact on the territories and related policies.

The dispersion of nanomaterials in liquid crystals, both of the thermotropic and the lyotropic kind, has attracted much interest over recent years. This is in part related to the success of liquid crystals in several applications, in particular flat screen displays, besides others. The dispersion of nanoparticles allows the fine-tuning of liquid crystalline properties and the addition of functionalities associated with the properties of the nanoparticles. These include the addition of ferroelectricity, magnetic properties, optic and plasmonic properties, for example through quantum dots and gold nanoparticles, but also directed conductivity, by exploiting the respective conductivity anisotropy of nanotubes. In addition, such behaviors can be achieved through transfer and templating of the self-organization of the liquid crystalline order onto dispersed anisotropic nanoparticles, allowing the formation of ordered nanostructures. Furthermore, the formation of partially ordered fluids can be induced by dispersing shape anisotropic nanoparticles in an isotropic solvent. Such lyotropic systems have recently experienced a revived interest. This genuinely multidisciplinary field of research has led to a wealth of novel systems in soft condensed matter and promises new applications in the areas of displays, optical elements, meta-materials, sensors, drug delivery, and many more. Various examples are presented in this publication.

Menschliches Leben ist grundlegend dadurch charakterisiert, dass dem Menschen bewusst ist, dass er sich in unterschiedlicher Gestalt verwirklicht. Dieses Bewusstsein ist tief im Bewusstsein seiner selbst, in seinem Selbstbewusstsein also, verankert. In diesem Buch wird gezeigt, dass ein Subjekt nur dadurch ein adäquates Bewusstsein seiner selbst haben kann, dass es sich in Differenz zu anderen gleichermaßen selbstbewussten Subjekten begreift. Mir als einzelnem Menschen, als Individuum, ist bewusst, dass ich so bin, mein Mitmensch hingegen anders und wir beide trotzdem gleich – nämlich Mensch. Das Bewusstsein, das ein einzelner Mensch von sich selbst als partikularem Individuum hat, enthält also notwendig das Verhältnis zu anderen Menschen, die auf eine andere Art und Weise leben als er selbst. In diesem Bewusstsein verwirklicht sich der Anspruch des selbstbewussten Subjekts, letzte Quelle dessen zu sein, was es tut. Es weiß, dass es selbst bestimmen kann, was zu tun und wie zu leben für es allgemein richtig ist. Es weiß, dass es frei ist. Um dies zu verstehen, muss das selbstbewusste Subjekt, das als solches die Idee der Freiheit verwirklicht, jedoch als Widerspruch begriffen werden. Es verkörpert die Identität von Identität und Nicht-Identität.

This book analyzes the origins and rationale of family planning programs and how they have evolved based on experience in different country settings.

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences.

People interpret their biographies in order to give them a subjective meaning. In institutionalized biographies, biographies also become normatively charged patterns of progress. They reflect the tension between life courses and culturally and socially shaped generalized patterns of life-style. The volume collects selected peer-reviewed contributions on this topic.

This book discusses contemporary ideas on different molecular and immunological aspects of diseases. Different signaling mediators drive the production of messenger molecules that mediate their action, leading to the elicitation/suppression of immune responses. It provides a balanced approach to the study of different molecular phenomena that eventually drive infection outcomes and that can be manipulated for therapeutic benefits.

This open access book seeks effective strategy to realize a rice Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa based on more than ten years of research team’s inquiries into determinants and consequences of new technology adoption in rice farming in seven countries in this region. Rigorous statistical analyses are carried out by using valuable household data of rice farmers. The book is actually sequel to the two earlier books on the same subject published by Springer and edited by K. Otsuka and D.F. Larson, An African Green Revolution published in 2013 and In Pursuit of an African Green Revolution in 2016. The main message of the first book was that rice is the most promising cereal crop in SSA because of the high transferability of Asian rice technology, whereas that of the second book was that rice cultivation training programs are effective in significantly increasing rice yield in SSA. This third book has wider coverage in terms of topics, study periods, and study sites. It continues to show the significant impacts of rice cultivation training on productivity and newly demonstrates the high sustainability of the productivity impact of the training and the existence of spillover effects from trainees to other farmers by using panel data. We newly assess the important role of mechanization in intensification of rice farming, high returns to large-scale irrigation schemes, and the critical role of rice millers in improving the quality of milled rice. Based on these studies, this book provides clear pathways toward full-fledged Green Revolution in rice farming in sub-Saharan Africa.