Open Access Books

Biomass can be used as feedstock for the production of biomaterials, chemicals, platform molecules and biofuels. It is the most reliable alternative to reduce fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Within the framework of the circular economy, resource recovery from organic waste, including sewage sludge, biowaste, manure and slaughterhouse waste, is particularly useful, as it helps saving resources while reducing environmental pollution. In contrast to energy crops, lignocellulosic biomass and algae do not compete for food production; therefore, they represent an important source of biomass for bioenergy and bioproducts. However, biomass may require a pretreatment step in order to enhance its conversion into valuable products in terms of process yield and/or productivity. Furthermore, a pretreatment step may be mandatory for waste management (i.e., animal by-products).Pretreatment technologies are applied upstream of various conversion processes of biomass into biofuels or biomaterials, including bioethanol, biohydrogen, biomethane, biomolecules or bioproducts. Pretreatments may include mechanical, thermal, chemical and biological techniques, which represent a crucial, cost-intensive step for the development of biorefineries. Thus, research is needed to help identify the most effective, economic, and environmentally friendly pretreatment options for each feedstock. This Special Issue aims to gather recent developments of biomass pretreatments for bioproduct and biofuel production.

Global wheat consumption in the 2016/2017 season is forecasted to reach a record high 736m tonnes, showing a growth of 25% in the last 15 years. This raises the question which outlets the wheat is going into, what the growth of these outlets is, which regions or countries have grown the most, and where do we see future potential. Strong competition of other feed grains like corn is expected to slow the growth of wheat used for feed in the next years, and in the future, companies involved in the grain supply chain and feeding industry will need to be flexible enough to continue to meet this fast-changing demand for feed grains. For feed producers, this means they need to be able to access supplies of different grains from different origins to allow for the cheapest composition of their feed, while grain suppliers need to be able to continuously best engage with global trading opportunities to originate grains in various regions and move them to demand regions as cost-effectively as possible.

Les théâtres communautaires réunissent les habitants d'un quartier ou d’un village. Ces troupes de voisins créent collectivement des pièces qui interrogent l’histoire et l’identité de leur territoire, de leur pays. Elles expérimentent de nouveaux rapports sociaux et modes d’organisation et encouragent la participation à l’échelle locale. S’appuyant sur une solide expérience de terrain, Lucie Elgoyhen retrace le développement et l’action des théâtres communautaires en Argentine depuis la naiss...

This book explores the notions of violence, care, and cure within the medical encounter and seeks to foreground the ways in which, whether individually or as a triad, they are prone to ambiguous interpretations. The chapters of this book attend to the complex interlacing of these three key terms and what to make of their entanglement by offering historical, practical, philosophical, personal, and aesthetic analyses of different medical scenes, objects, and concepts. Besides the three main concepts that give the collection its title, the volume deals with bodily experience, medical neglect or scepticism, pain and suffering, diagnosis and recovery, and epistemic injustice, through the lens of, among others, biopolitics, ethics, gender medicine, and critical medical humanities. Altogether, the chapters pay particular attention to the role of images and other narratives, including social media platforms. The case studies in this collection invite the reader to observe medical encounters that take place in and are shaped by a variety of both material and ‘immaterial’ spaces, from the consulting room to the antechamber of medical bureaucracy, and from artistic venues to biopolitical discourses. Taken together, this book argues that a hermeneutic of violence, care, and cure is inseparable from individual and collective perceptions of the medical encounter; that is, it is inextricable from an understanding of the tensions and consensus that surge among perceptions orchestrated by both internal (subjective) and external (social, cultural, political) ‘gazes’. Moreover, the volume aims to provide, both directly and indirectly, a meta‑eflection on the disciplines that fall under the umbrella of ‘medical and health humanities’, interrogating the field’s potential to unearth systemic bias, to open different possibilities of existence, and to make visible the complexity of its research objects, as well as to caution against their possible pitfalls. By bringing together different methodological approaches, this volume provides its readers with conceptual resources for thinking about the intersections of violence, care, and cure. By providing a space where the voices of both emerging and established scholars mingle and respond to one another, this book will be essential reading for anyone across the social sciences and humanities interested in the sociology of health and medicine, the medical humanities, and gender studies.

With the renaming of the Music hall (Musikhalle) Hamburg in "Laeiszhalle" in January 2005, a name in the Hanseatic city has been brought back to the forefront. The volume traces the fascinating life of Sophie and Carl Laeisz. Both have distinguished themselves as patrons not only at the foundation of this concert hall, but also as donors of the Hamburgische Wissenschaftliche Stiftung. Her life reflects the central tendencies of Hamburg's 19th century history: civic commitment and the Hanseatic city's place in the world economy.

Echoing the edgy, disjunctive, ever-emergent city of Nairobi that it explores, Nairobi Becoming: Security, Uncertainty, Contingency strives to be several things-in-the-making. It is a historically and anthropologically minded examination of a shifting cityscape, an experimental, collaborative exercise in curated juxtaposition and assemblage, and an interdisciplinary, subjunctive urban ethnography. It brings together curated interventions by twenty-seven artists, scholars, and writers to trace Nairobi’s becoming. Methodologically experimental and multimodal, it seeks to balance an appreciation of Nairobi’s fragmented character while also recognizing its contingent coherency. Nairobi Becoming curates an eclectic collection of different voices and interventions to evoke something of the city's manifold guises and historicities – an urban mosaic of partial experiences as well as dawning possibilities for future becomings. Assembling scholarship, literature, creative non-fiction, and visual art, the contributions are arranged around particular themes, while resisting the urge to develop a singular coherent voice. Security – in its various guises – is the linking thread, the point of articulation that connects apparently disparate elements of Nairobi life, from sex work to roadbuilding, goat markets to funerals. Security is here an analytical operator: a concept that refracts the seemingly diverse modalities of life in Nairobi, and, with the related domains of uncertainty and contingency, brings the city’s dynamics of fragmentation and coherence to the surface in surprising ways. If confronting Nairobi’s will to coherence amidst the strains of fragmentation is the empirical and analytical challenge of Nairobi Becoming, then it is through collaboration and juxtaposition, curation and contrast, and the messiness of assemblage, that this book chimes with the fraught multiplicities of a city-in-the-making. As such, this book is also an exploration of the inevitable tension that exists between curatorial intent and the possibility of allowing each contribution to stand for itself.

Self-cleaning surfaces can be achieved using a variety of strategies, materials and technologies, and their applications are as wide as their production methods. The interdisciplinary topic “advanced self-cleaning surfaces” has collected a variety of approaches for self-cleaning, including theoretical approaches, as well as small-scale laboratory experiments and material validation in relevant environments, demonstrating how tailoring the surface for the nano- and micro-meter scale surface phenomena can affect the larger-scale phenomena. This reprint contains all articles included in the topical collection published across different journals—Materials, Membranes, Nanomaterials and Coatings—and is intended to be of help to the scientific community involved in this field to improve collaboration among diverse disciplines and promote novel insights across interdisciplinary research fields.

Intractable epilepsy still remains the main issue despite new advances in medical and surgical treatment of epilepsy. Acute seizure management in a timely manner is crucial to prevent irreversible brain damage. Benzodiazepines still remain the first initial treatment to abort the seizure activity. The approval phenytoin, fosphenytoin, intravenous valproate, and rectal diazepam provided additional options. The approval of intravenous levetiracetam gave another option to physicians if and when the above treatment fails to control the seizure activity. In this Ebook, we have included chapters from renowned researchers in the field of neurology and epilepsy who have covered the various aspects of these agents in detail including the properties, mechanism of action, pharmacology, neurobehavioral effects, and the roles of these agents in special populations including traumatic brain injury and brain tumor related epilepsy. These data further show that intravenous levetiracetam can be used in acute seizure management and in special circumstances.

Today's society is often characterized as a knowledge society, in contrast to the earlier industrial society. Historians however know that all societies are and have been knowledge societies. Without the ability to create, transfer, and use knowledge, between individuals and groups, power areas would neither have been built nor maintained. This edited volume reflects how historical actors, both those in power as well as laymen and officials, have produced and utilised information and knowledge from the Middle Ages until today. It acommodates research into census, urbanisation, history of kings and queens, exercise of public authority, social and political movements, disciplining and formation of opinion. In Kunskapens tider. Historiska perspektiv på kunskapssamhället (”The knowledge society. A historical perspective”) nine researchers from the Department of History at Stockholm University contribute with examples of the need for and use of knowledge, in different historical situations and periods.

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Environments around the globe are undergoing human-induced change. Human population growth, rapid urbanization, expanding global economy, and the diffusion of western consumer lifestyles are placing increasing pressure on natural and social systems. Global institutions, nation-states, and local communities are seeking to identify and employ sustainable solutions to these environmental and socio-economic challenges. Sustainability has emerged as a policy discourse that seeks to balance the desire and need for economic growth with the protection of the environment, and the promotion of social and environmental justice. This book contributes to the study and search for sustainable responses to global environmental change. The authors of this volume explore environmental change in different places around the world and the diverse responses to such changes. The chapters demonstrate the need for place-specific sustainable development; the authors suggest the need to see sustainable responses to environmental change as a negotiated outcome between various social actors living and working in diverse spatial, environmental and socio-economic contexts. Environmental Change and Sustainability is a timely international examination of the relationship between environmental change and sustainability. As an InTech open source volume, current and cutting edge research methodologies and research results are quickly published for the academic policy-making communities. Dimensions of environmental change and sustainability explored in this volume include: Natural science approaches to study of environmental change Importance of perception in human understanding of environmental change Role of external events and institutions in shaping sustainable responses to environmental change Importance of bottom-up sustainable development as key to reducing environmental risk and community vulnerability The need for place-based sustainable development that combines local conditions with global processes Creation of a sustainable development model that synthesizes local, traditional knowledge of the environment and environmental management with the techniques and understandings generated by modern environmental science

This Open Access volume highlights how tree ring stable isotopes have been used to address a range of environmental issues from paleoclimatology to forest management, and anthropogenic impacts on forest growth. It will further evaluate weaknesses and strengths of isotope applications in tree rings. In contrast to older tree ring studies, which predominantly applied a pure statistical approach this book will focus on physiological mechanisms that influence isotopic signals and reflect environmental impacts. Focusing on connections between physiological responses and drivers of isotope variation will also clarify why environmental impacts are not linearly reflected in isotope ratios and tree ring widths. This volume will be of interest to any researcher and educator who uses tree rings (and other organic matter proxies) to reconstruct paleoclimate as well as to understand contemporary functional processes and anthropogenic influences on native ecosystems. The use of stable isotopes in biogeochemical studies has expanded greatly in recent years, making this volume a valuable resource to a growing and vibrant community of researchers.

Das Buch präsentiert eine disziplinäre Vielfalt an Perspektiven auf Unsicherheit in der Wissenschaft. Schwerpunkte sind Klimaforschung, Umweltwissenschaft und Technikfolgenabschätzung. Die Beiträge diskutieren Gründe und Folgen wissenschaftlicher Unsicherheit und einer entsprechenden Verantwortung der Wissenschaft. Vertreten sind Kommunikationswissenschaft, Linguistik, Philosophie, Politikwissenschaft, Soziologie und Volkswirtschaftslehre sowie Chemie und Klimawissenschaft. Der Band dokumentiert die ungewöhnliche Kooperation zweier Schwerpunktprogramme der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft – «Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit» und «Climate Engineering: Risks, Challenges, Opportunities?» –, die sich auf einer Tagung an der TU Darmstadt mit weiteren WissenschaftlerInnen zu Austausch und kritischer Reflexion getroffen haben.

Translation Classics in Context carefully considers the relationship between translation and the classics. It presents readers with revelatory and insightful case studies that investigate translations produced as part of nexuses of colonial resistance and liberation across Africa and in Ireland; translations of novels and folklore collections that influence not just other fictions, but stage productions and entire historical disciplines; struggles over Ukrainian and Russian literature and how it is shaped and transferred; and the role of the academy and the curriculum in creating notions of classic translations. Along the way it covers oral poetry, saints, scholars, Walter Scott and Jules Verne, not to mention Leo Tolstoy and the Corpse Bride making her way from folklore to Frankenstein and into the world of Disney animation. Contributors are all leading scholars, and the book is accessible and engaging, assuming no specialist knowledge. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

This open access book is the first account of the whole diversity of teacher education in the Nordic region: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the Åland Islands and Sápmi (where the Sámi people live). Today, large parts of the world are looking to the Nordic model of social organization, and interest in the Nordic comprehensive school system and teacher education arrangements is no exception. A good education is a key to prosperity and well-being. And the quality of students’ education is undoubtedly linked to the quality of their teachers’ education. While teacher education in the Nordic region is globally admired, it also faces new challenges. The leading scholars writing in this volume discuss the challenges and opportunities that professional environments are facing. By providing solid portraits of each area as well as analyses across the region, this book will be a great resource to students, academics in teacher education and schooling as well as social scientists and policy-makers inside and outside the Nordic region. This is an open access book.