Open Access Books

In der Arbeit wird die Frage analysiert, welche Konsequenzen sich aus der Osterweiterung für die zukünftige Ausgestaltung der EU-Politiken ergeben können. Die mit der Erweiterung einhergehende zunehmende Heterogenität der ökonomischen Strukturen innerhalb der Europäischen Union lässt auf eine gleichermaßen zunehmende Pluralität der politischen Interessen der Mitgliedstaaten schließen, so dass in der erweiterten Union unter Umständen andere Interessen dominieren und andere einflussreiche Ländergruppen existieren können als dies in der alten EU der Fall war. Für ausgewählte Politikbereiche zeigt die empirische Analyse, dass sich in der erweiterten Europäischen Union verschiedene Ländergruppen mit relativ heterogenen politischen Interessen gegenüberstehen, wodurch der politische Entscheidungsprozess auf europäischer Ebene durch die Erweiterung aller Voraussicht nach deutlich erschwert werden wird.

Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s, its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gained strength. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interview data, Palestinian Chicago charts the origins of these changes and the multiple effects they have had on identity across religious, political, class, gender, and generational lines. The perspectives that emerge through this rich ethnography challenge prevailing understandings of secularity and religion, offering critical insight into current debates about immigration and national belonging.

Felice D. Blake’s Black Love, Black Hate: Intimate Antagonisms in African American Literature highlights the pervasive representations of intraracial deceptions, cruelties, and contempt in Black literature. Literary criticism has tended to focus on Black solidarity and the ways that a racially linked fate has compelled Black people to counter notions of Black inferiority with unified notions of community driven by political commitments to creative rehumanization and collective affirmation. Blake shows how fictional depictions of intraracial conflict perform necessary work within the Black community, raising questions about why racial unity is so often established from the top down and how loyalty to Blackness can be manipulated to reinforce deleterious forms of subordination to oppressive gender, sexual, and class norms.

This book covers different aspects of food bioprocess engineering for value-added food production and waste management. The various topics presented include food biotechnology and bioprocess engineering, fermenter and bioreactor design, studies related to unit operations, and food safety and regulatory issues for safe and nutritious food product development using novel biotechnology and bioprocessing technologies. The book also addresses food industry waste utilization for first-, second-, and third-generation biofuel production, as well as biodegradable packaging materials. This book: Includes the basic principles of both biotechnology and bioprocess engineering related to food preservation and product development. Covers unit operations such as membrane filtration, chromatography, cocrystallization and nano-encapsulation, supercritical fluid extraction, DNA recombination, and PCR technology. Discusses pertinent regulatory constraints. Reviews recent developments, challenges, and opportunities in food biotechnology and bioprocess engineering, including fermenter and bioreactor design. Addresses food safety and regulatory issues for safe and nutritious food product development. Is aimed at graduate students and researchers in food and chemical engineering, bioprocessing, and food biotechnology. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

This open access book presents a novel approach to food security research (SDG-2 Zero Hunger) by integrating indigenous and scientific knowledge. Through extensive field-based research in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and South Africa, it explores the impact of merging traditional practices and local knowledge with scientific methods. Through field studies, the book shows the value of local knowledge and community-led innovations in combating hunger, achieving food security, and enhancing nutrition sustainably and food sovereignty. Drawing on decades of research in rural Africa, the authors introduce the "Plug-In Principle"—a theory for integrating indigenous and modern knowledge systems to foster sustainable agricultural practices and enriched food ecosystems in Africa. The Plug-In Principle advocates that advancements in science and technology should enhance rather than replace existing indigenous knowledge. This principle emerged from the failures of many development interventions where attempts at replacement often led to challenges and failures. In agriculture, for instance, interventions in mechanization, soil amendments, seed and breed improvements, and extension services have seldom succeeded due to a lack of integration with existing practices. The Plug-In Principle emphasizes that effective knowledge integration hinges on a deep understanding and appreciation of prevailing systems. By designing interventions that seamlessly "plug-in" to existing technologies, we can ensure the co-creation of effective solutions to the challenges we face. This book is a testament to the potential of collaborative innovation in fostering sustainable development. Development workers, policymakers, researchers, students, and donor agencies in agriculture and other development areas will find this volume invaluable. Additionally, scholars focused on decolonization and indigenous knowledge in the Global South will uncover insightful case studies and analyses.

Noncitizens have always been present in liberal political philosophy. Often hard to situate within traditional frameworks that prioritise citizenship, noncitizens can appear voiceless and rightsless, which has implications for efforts towards global justice and justice in migration. This book proposes an alternative. Noncitizenism identifies an analytical category of noncitizenship. While maintaining the importance of citizenship, noncitizenship is another form of special individual-State relationship. It operates far from a State, at its borders, and within its territory, providing a tool for examining the continuity between sites of engagement and the literatures, questions, and conclusions relating to them. The book argues that an accurate liberal theoretical framework, and one which can address contemporary challenges, must acknowledge the political relationship of noncitizenship between individuals and States. This book is for students and scholars of political philosophy and for those interested in noncitizenship and how it can inform the response of liberal theory, citizenship, global justice, migration studies, political theory and policy work.

This essay presents an updated edition of the Hittite document KBo 6.29+. This text is a royal edict issued by Ḫattušili III and establishes that the sanctuary of the Goddess Šaušga will be exempted from any levies. The regulations concerning this sanctuary are preceded by a long introduction where the king relates his conflict with Urḫi-Teššob. This presentation can be compared with the narrative on this event that is documented in the ‘Apology.’

Die Arbeit untersucht, unter welchen Umständen das von makroökonomischen Fundamentalvariablen losgelöste und damit scheinbar irrationale Imitationsverhalten von Devisenmarktteilnehmern zu Zahlungsbilanzkrisen führen kann. In einem eigens entworfenen stochastischen Modell des Beharrungs- und Imitationsverhaltens der Devisenmarktteilnehmer wird der letztgenannte Fall durch die je nach Parameterkonstellation unterschiedlichen komplexen Modelldynamiken begünstigt. So kann z.B. bei bimodalen stationären Lösungen des Interaktionsmodells ein hohes Imitationsverhalten marktstabilisierend wirken. Gerade das Imitationsverhalten wird aber in vielen theoretischen Modellen als Ausgangspunkt von Krisen herangezogen und gilt auch im empirischen Einzelfall als Auslöser (z.B. beim Herding von Fondsmanagern in der Asienkrise) oder als Transformator (z.B. in der Rußlandkrise) von Krisen.

Digitalisation is profoundly transforming adult and continuing education - in teaching, in institutions, in education policy, and not least in research. This book provides a comprehensive overview of current academic work on this transformation and shows how digital technologies open up new opportunities, but also what challenges and risks they bring. The first part is devoted to the teaching and learning level. Based on current research findings, it illustrates how Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality and digital educational offerings are changing adult/continuing education. The potential of digital learning formats is presented, but also the ethical, data protection and didactic questions that arise. The second part focuses on institutions, educational offerings and societal framework conditions. The contributions examine the use of digital platforms in the health sector, the influence of social media on political education, the design requirements for media-supported programmes, as well as questions of governance under the conditions of digitality. The third part illuminates theoretical and research-methodological questions on a meta-level. Topics discussed include competency requirements for dealing with generative AI, new questions in the context of digitalisation research, conditions for successful exchange between research and practice, as well as methodological approaches to analysing AI use in adult learning. With these contributions, this volume offers a multi-layered and current picture of how the digital transformation is shaping adult education in Germany and which perspectives and questions are significant in this context. It is aimed at academics who deal with the effects of digitalisation on adult education in an international context and who are interested in current research and theoretical developments.

This corpus-based vocabulary examines Ladin literature prior to 1879, including the variations in all valley idioms, etymology, first mention, definition of the different meanings as well as a rich exemplification through evidence from more than 200 text of the earliest Ladin literature.

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.

In this work, we investigate and optimize heterogeneous catalysis in porous metal foams. First, we consider the gas dynamics together with the reaction and diffusion processes in individual foam pores on the mesoscale. Second, we condense the detailed simulation results on the mesoscale to relations between few, dimensionless numbers. Based on these relations, we follow a multiscale approach to derive an efficient, one-dimensional, macroscale model for metal foam filled catalytic converters. Due to its industrial relevance, we focus on the mass transfer limited regime. Finally, we develop a simple recipe to determine optimum pore size configurations. For realistic heat release values, the heat transfer out of the catalytic converter is critical. We show hat, in order to keep temperature fluctuations small, the optimum configuration consists of several, stacked foam segments with decreasing pore size along the main flow direction. For typical parameters, we observe that, compared to foam with constant pore size, the trade-off between chemical conversion and flow resistance can be increased significantly, while the required reactive surface area, i.e., the needed amount of catalytic material, is reduced substantially.

Grounded in ethnography and teacher research, Moving across Differences examines how an LGBTQ+-themed literature course enabled high school students to negotiate their differences and engage in ethical encounters. Drawing on the work of queer theorists, Mollie V. Blackburn conceptualizes these encounters as forms of movement across differences of not only gender and sexuality but also identity and ideology more broadly. As we follow Blackburn's thoughtful rendering of students' sometimes fraught exchanges, we are encouraged to follow their lead and move when confronted with differences. We might move closer to those like us, so we can be in community to recover and heal. But we might also move closer to others, so we can discover and learn. The book argues, though, that we must move ethically and, moreover, that literature and the work of reading, writing, and talking can foster this movement. Modeling care in both teaching and research, Moving across Differences contributes to the study and practice of English Language Arts curriculum and pedagogy, qualitative methods, and queer theory.This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, available at:

"This book examines the key dimensions of 21st century war, and shows that orthodox thinking about war, particularly what it is and how it is fought, needs to be updated. Accelerating societal, economic, political and technological change affects how we prepare, equip and organise for war, as well as how we conduct war – both in its low-tech and high-tech forms, and whether it is with high intensity or low intensity. The volume examines changes in warfare by investigating the key features of the conduct of war during the first decades of the 21st century. Conceptually centred around the terms ‘kinetic’, ‘connected’ and ‘synthetic’, the analysis delves into a wide range of topics. The contributions discuss hybrid warfare, cyber and influence activities, machine learning and artificial intelligence, the use of armed drones and air power, the implications of the counterinsurgency experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, as well as the consequences for law(fare) and decision making. This work will be of much interest to students of military and strategic studies, security studies and International Relations."

In Labour Market, the issue of Sizing and Allocation is a discussed problem. In this study, this topic has been considered from a statistical point of view. Indeed, the choice to change the number of your team of employees in a business context needs a very accurate analysis. If for example a firm decides to launch a new product on the market, it could be necessary to recruit new resources. The proposed statistical approach aims to give some hints about the total number of employees analysing the features of the existing market and the territorial geography. From a statistical point of two techniques of multivariate analysis have been presented as exploratory tools. In the application, a Principal Component Analysis has been used to investigate the business environment after some qualitative interviews to the board of the company. In a second step, some different scenarios have been proposed to determine the exact number of new resources using a data hybridization technique including internal and external sources. Finally, the allocation of the new hired of the scenarios on the Italian territory has been achieved thanks to the construction of a territorial potential index.