Open Access Books

This paper investigates the impact of intermediated funding provided by the EIB on the performance of SMEs in the EU between 2008 and 2014. Using statistical analysis of firm-level data, it finds that EIB lending had a positive effect on employment, firm size, investment and innovation capacity, and also increased firms' leverage. The impact of EIB funding was higher in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and also in Southern Europe, while somewhat smaller, yet still significant, in West and North Europe.

This open access book contains 13 contributions on global animal law, preceded by an introduction which explains key concepts and methods. Global Animal Law refers to the sum of legal rules and principles (both state-made and non-state-made) governing the interaction between humans and other animals, on a domestic, local, regional, and international level. Global animal law is the response to the mismatch between almost exclusively national animal-related legislation on the one hand, and the global dimension of the animal issue on the other hand. The chapters lay some historical foundations in the ius naturae et gentium, examine various aspects of how national and international law traditionally deals with animals as commodity; and finally suggest new legal concepts and protective strategies. The book shows numerous entry points for animal issues in international law and at the same time shifts the focus and scope of inquiry.

Global is everywhere - recent years have seen a significant proliferation of the adjective "global" across discourses. But what do social actors actually do when using this term? Written from within the political studies and International Relations disciplines, and with a particular interest in the US, this book demonstrates that the widespread use of "global" is more than a linguistic curiosity. It constitutes a distinct political phenomenon of major importance: the negotiation and reproduction of the "new world". As such, the analysis of the use of "global" provides fascinating insights into an influential and politically loaded aspect of contemporary imaginations of the world.

Growing up in English inner cities today is a distinctive experience: deprivation and poverty are intense, while social and cultural diversity enriches everyday life. Urban Childhoods puts children’s and families’ voices centre stage while investigating ways of bringing children’s wellbeing to the fore in planning for urban life today and tomorrow. Children’s wellbeing starts from what children themselves find important: reliable relationships, plenty to do, especially outdoors, and having a say in their lives. Organised around three main themes of place, provisioning and infrastructure, the book brings together key concepts from critical childhood studies, urban studies and public health to argue that, used together, these approaches offer a dynamic framework for considering urban childhood. Chapters are linked to a major prevention programme that ran between 2019 and 2025 in the northern city of Bradford and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. They investigate spaces to play outdoors, reclaiming school streets, child poverty, economic support for child wellbeing via families, and provision for under threes. A number of strategies also feature, including support for mothers’ mental health, resolving overcrowding, involving children in making better school food, and increasing community participation in co-creating health and wellbeing. Each chapter has sections on inequality of experience, voices of children, families and professionals who work with them, and hopeful courses of action, including potential policy actions. The whole builds into a blueprint for an urgently needed thriving urban childhood.

The Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem 587 BCE is a central theme in biblical literature. Applying a perspective of cultural trauma, this book will argue that the deportation of the people and the devastation of the temple of Jerusalem, which are often regarded as major traumatizing events in the history of ancient Judah, became remembered as such only as the result of a longer process. Die Eroberung Jerusalems durch die Babylonier 587 v.u.Z. und ihre Folgen – insbesondere das babylonische Exil – gelten allgemein als Zäsur in der Geschichte Israels. Zahlreiche biblische Texte beziehen sich auf dieses Ereignis. Das vorliegende Buch zeigt, dass sich die Erzählung der babylonischen Eroberung Jerusalems und ihrer Folgen erst im Laufe der Zeit als Leidensnarrativ in der überlieferten Form herausgebildet hat. Dieser Prozess, in dem ein gefestigtes Bild dieser Ereignisse und ihrer Bedeutung entsteht, lässt sich als Etablierung eines kulturellen Traumas beschreiben. Die letztlich dominante Trauma-Erzählung bewahrt nicht die Erinnerung der unmittelbaren (emotionalen) Auswirkung der Ereignisse. Vielmehr lässt sich zeigen, dass wesentliche Elemente der Trauma-Erzählung wie die Deportation der Bevölkerung und die Zerstörung des Tempels erst in jüngeren biblischen Texten zentral werden.

The first book to explore the deaths of explorer Jules Crevaux and his crew from an Indigenous perspective.In 1882, the celebrated French explorer Jules Crevaux and his crew were killed by Indigenous people in the Bolivian Chaco, a fiercely contested region on the border between Bolivia, Argentina, and Paraguay. The event sparked an international uproar. The scene of the crime was embroiled in clashes among various Indigenous peoples, rubber tappers, and missionaries. Official investigators sent from France and competing newspapers ended up mired in a morass of equivocal, ambiguous, false, and contradictory information.To make sense of this event, Isabelle Combès is the first researcher to consult the local archives and to include the perspective of Indigenous peoples. In search of who killed Crevaux and why, Combès unearths the power struggles and social imaginaries behind the incident and its aftermath. Readers will find not only an engrossing story in these pages but also an exemplar of historical inquiry that questions the very nature of truth-telling.

Soft and Stiffness-controllable Robotics Solutions for Minimally Invasive Surgery presents the results of a research project, funded by European Commission, STIFF-FLOP: STIFFness controllable Flexible and Learn-able manipulator for surgical Operations. In Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), tools go through narrow openings and manipulate soft organs that can move, deform, or change stiffness. There are limitations on modern laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgical systems due to restricted access through Trocar ports, lack of haptic feedback, and difficulties with rigid robot tools operating inside a confined space filled with organs. Also, many control algorithms suffer from stability problems in the presence of unexpected conditions. Yet biological "manipulators", like the octopus arm can manipulate objects while controlling the stiffness of selected body parts and being inherently compliant when interacting with objects. STIFF-FLOP robot is an innovative soft robotic arm that can squeeze through a standard MIS, reconfigure itself and stiffen by hydrostatic actuation to perform compliant force control tasks while facing unexpected situations. Technical topics discussed in the book include:Soft actuatorsContinuum soft manipulatorsControl, kinematics and navigation of continuum manipulatorsOptical sensors for force, torque, and curvatureHaptic feedback and human interface for surgical systemsValidation of soft stiffness controllable robots

Apocalyptic narratives construct histories of the future which pertain either to this-worldly political events or otherworldly post-mortem conditions. While visions of the afterlife generally describe a world in atemporal stagnation, political prophecies anticipate prospective events that are structured by chronological progression, temporal anomalies, and typological design. Despite the wide range of prospective outlooks, Byzantine apocalypses convey a coherent vision of temporal processes and qualities in anticipation of the Last Judgment. This book examines the notion of eschatological time as portrayed in Medieval Greek apocalyptic texts from the Byzantine millennium (c. 500 to 1500 CE). It is divided into three parts and explores the interrelated aspects of eschatological chronology, velocity, and typology. Methodologically, Byzantine apocalypses are read not merely as historical sources but as literary artefacts that employ specific compositional techniques (narratological, phenomenological, typological) in order to construct a variegated yet coherent meta-history of the end times.

This volume is a collection of eight articles by different scholars from Japan, China, and Italy. Although the topics covered belong to different fields, such as literature, history, linguistics and sociology, all of the included works are geographically focused on cultural aspects of East Asia. The interdisciplinary character of the collection is meant to provide a broader perspective on the cultures and societies of the Far East, nonetheless the individual articles are each based on specific and focused research. The authors featured in the volume are Eduardo Barberis, Edoardo Gerlini, Tiziana Lioi, Massimiliano Tomasi, Pierantonio Zanotti, Tanina Zappone and Zhou Yuhui. The volume is also proud to include a short piece by professor Takei Kyōzō on Omowaku utaawase.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. From New Orleans to New York, from London to Paris to Venice, many of the world’s great cities were built on wetlands and swamps. Cities and Wetlands is the first book to explore the literary and cultural histories of these cities and their relationships to their environments and buried histories. Developing a ground-breaking new mode of psychoanalytic ecology and surveying a wide range of major cities in North America and Europe, ecocritic and activist Rod Giblett shows how the wetland origins of these cities haunt their later literature and culture and might prompt us to reconsider the relationship between human culture and the environment. Cities covered include: Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Hamburg, London, New Orleans, New York, Paris, St. Petersburg, Toronto, Venice and Washington.

The article examines Luigi Meneghello’s use of dialect and its significance in his works. Meneghello navigates between standard Italian and the Venetian dialect to express memory and to preserve rural culture. Key works like Libera nos a malo highlight the dialect’s role in bridging past and present. The analysis underscores how Meneghello saw dialect as more concrete than Italian, reflecting tensions between official and spoken language. Ultimately, use of dialect becomes a form of cultural resistance and a means to preserve personal and collective identity.

SCARS is an updated and comprehensive overview focused on the pathological scarring process. The chapters are written by international authors, researchers, and clinical practitioners with an interest in scars and united in a valuable study. The book aims at providing a guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of scars, as well as opening research paths for future developments.

“This volume emerges from a ground-breaking conference held in the Republic of Palau on cultural heritage in the Pacific. It includes bold investigations of the role of cultural heritage in identity-making, and the ways in which community engagement informs heritage management practices. This is the first broad and detailed investigation of the unique and irreplaceable cultural heritage of the Pacific from a heritage management perspective. It identifies new trends in research and assesses relationships between archaeologists, heritage managers and local communities. The methods which emerge from these relationships will be critical to the effective management of heritage sites in the 21st century. A wonderful book which emerges from an extraordinary conference. Essential reading for cultural heritage managers, archaeologists and others with an interest in caring for the unique cultural heritage of the Pacific Islands”.

Published

modalities; modalities of communication; multilingual communication; historical communication; multimodal resources; multimodality; semiotic resources