Open Access Books

This book explains the basic principles of terrain modeling, such as contour lines, landforms, and earth mass determination, and introduces the topics of slope stabilization, rainwater management, and terrain modeling for streets and parking spaces. The second edition also includes digital technologies such as landscapingSMART, DGM, and 3D machine control. The theory is rounded out with practical examples and a problem section.

This book discusses contemporary challenges within the law of the sea, a domain of international law extensively codified in United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Given the considerable time elapsed since the convention’s adoption and nearly three decades of its implementation, the book analyses the interplay and influence of its provisions on international customary law, as well as to identify issues arising from its application. The book explores and discusses crucial aspects of the law of the sea, addressing challenges and future perspectives related to UNCLOS provisions, such as the delimitation of maritime areas, maritime security, safety, environmental protection, and the implications of advancing technologies, particularly in the realm of unmanned vessels. Additionally, the book delves into recent maritime legal challenges arising from the conflict in Ukraine and the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in the field of the law of the sea, international relations and international law.

This paper explores Ibn Rushd’s (Averroes, d. 595/1198) distinctive stance on miracles as they pertain to Islamic prophetic theory, situating his arguments within the broader intellectual and theological climate of his era. Beginning with Hugo Grotius’s early modern critique contrasting Christian and Islamic miracles, the study shows how Ibn Rushd’s own views challenge the dominant Sunni Ashʿarite position, which considered miracles unequivocal proof of prophecy. After surveying the Ashʿarite theologians – most notably Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, al-Juwaynī, and al-Ghazālī – who vigorously defended miracles as the decisive validation of a prophet’s claim, the paper turns to Ibn Rushd’s critique. While he does not deny that miracles happen, Ibn Rushd questions their logical power to establish prophecy, underscoring the absence of a rational, necessary link between the supernatural event and a prophet’s truthfulness. Instead, he privileges the Qur’an as Islam’s singular miracle capable of providing lasting, rational credibility. The paper also highlights how Ibn Rushd draws on, yet critically reinterprets, segments of al-Ghazālī’s later works – particularly al-Qisṭās al-mustaqīm and al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl – to shore up his argument. Though al-Ghazālī remained committed to a broader Ashʿarite framework, both he and Ibn Rushd share the view that extraordinary feats do not, by themselves, confer certain knowledge of prophecy. Ultimately, the article argues that by relegating miracles to a chiefly rhetorical function and centering ‘corresponding’ proofs such as lawgiving and unique moral insight, Ibn Rushd separates prophecy from extravagant supernatural claims. His approach thus preserves both causality and the rational integrity of religious belief, while still acknowledging the formative role that miracles, especially the Qur’an, play in the faith of ordinary believers.

Mike Mosher’s “Some Aspects of Californian Cyberpunk” vividly reminds us of the influence of West Coast counterculture on cyberpunks, with special emphasis on 1960s theoretical gurus such as Timothy Leary and Marshall McLuhan, who explored the frontiers of inner space as well as the global village. Frenchy Lunning’s “Cyberpunk Redux: Dérives in the Rich Sight of Post-Anthropocentric Visuality” examines how the heritage of Ridley Scott’s techno-noir film

The present book contains five papers accepted and published in the Special Issue, “Fuzzy Natural Logic in IFSA-EUSFLAT 2021”, of the journal Mathematics (MDPI). These papers are extended versions of the contributions presented in the conference “The 19th World Congress of the International Fuzzy Systems Association and the 12th Conference of the European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology jointly with the AGOP, IJCRS, and FQAS conferences”, which took place in Bratislava (Slovakia) from September 19 to September 24, 2021. Fuzzy Natural Logic (FNL) is a system of mathematical fuzzy logic theories that enables us to model natural language terms and rules while accounting for their inherent vagueness and allows us to reason and argue using the tools developed in them. FNL includes, among others, the theory of evaluative linguistic expressions (e.g., small, very large, etc.), the theory of fuzzy and intermediate quantifiers (e.g., most, few, many, etc.), and the theory of fuzzy/linguistic IF–THEN rules and logical inference. The papers in this Special Issue use the various aspects and concepts of FNL mentioned above and apply them to a wide range of problems both theoretically and practically oriented. This book will be of interest for researchers working in the areas of fuzzy logic, applied linguistics, generalized quantifiers, and their applications.

This Book includes selected papers that has been published in the Water journal Special Issue (SI) on Water Supply and Water Scarcity. Moreover, an overview of the SI is included. The papers selected for publication in the SI include review and research papers on water history, on water management issues under water scarcity regimes, on rainwater harvesting, on water quality and degradation, and on climatic variability impacts on water resources. Overall, the issue identify and highlight the main challenges in water sector, and particularly in management and protection of water resources and in use of alternative (non-conventional) water resources, especially in areas with demographic change and climate vulnerability in order to achieve sustainable and secure water supply. Furthermore, general guidelines and possible solutions for an improved and sophisticated water management system are proposed and discussed, such as the adoption of advanced technological solutions and practices that improve water-use efficiency and the use of alternative water resources, to address the growing environmental and health issues and to reduce the emerging conflicts among water users.

Records of Disasters: Media Infrastructures and Climate Change explores how environmental disasters manifest and inscribe themselves in infrastructures. By turning to infrastructures, their logic and functioning, collapse and malfunction, the volume reveals their potential as fragile material witnesses to and of disasters. As climate change is unequally distributed across continuous dynamics and events, time scales and spatial registers, infrastructures can be understood as proxies or seismographs mediating different spatio-temporal layers that make these dynamics tangible. Disaster is made operational by negotiating what is defined as such, and under which geopolitical conditions. What connects melting glaciers and the knowledge from ice cores to the mapping of the ocean floor and the extraction of resources in the deep-sea? How can infrastructures be thought in time and “critical proximity”, and how do they bear witness to colonial pasts and presents? The volume proposes an analytical perspective on infrastructures as multi-layered witnesses to climate change, bringing together scientific and artistic approaches, students and scholars from different disciplines.

While widely considered a core pillar of the peace and security architecture, Security Sector Reform (SSR) is coming under fire. SSR theory and practice are criticized for being overly focused on traditional conflict and post-conflict settings and for being unable to adjust to unconventional settings marked by chronic crime and terrorism. SSR tends to be disproportionately focused on national institutions and less amenable to engaging at the subnational scale. Drawing on the experiences of so-called ‘citizen security’ measures in cities across Latin America and the Caribbean, this paper offers some opportunities for renewing and revitalizing SSR. The emphasis of citizen security interventions on multiple forms of insecurity, data-driven and evidence-informed prevention, the promotion of social cohesion and efficacy and designing crime prevention into the social and built environment are all insights that can positively reinforce comprehensive SSR measures in the 21st century.

This document presents a temporal analysis of the scientific production originating at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto (P.PORTO), its Organic Units, and research centers linked to P.PORTO, with the aim of offering reference frameworks for the past and present. This analysis focused on documents authored by P.PORTO faculty (including invited researchers), researchers (including grant holders), non-faculty staff, and students indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection and published between 2007 and 2021. Using these documents, a set of objective metrics was developed that allow characterizing the volume, thematic spectrum, collaborative activities, and the impact of P.PORTO's scientific production. Thus, this document aims to clarify the research developed at this institution for the P.PORTO community, and others who may be interested. This information can also be used in internal debate and in the definition of strategies that seek to improve and expand P.PORTO's research activities.

This book discusses the latest advances in cotton genetics and the biochemistry, physiology, bioinformatics, and genomics of the cotton plant. Chapters cover genomics and transcriptomics approaches to characterization and tagging of essential genes, novel transgenic tools to accelerate breeding against climate issues, abiotic and biotic stress pressures, biological control and machinery tools for cotton plant protection, cotton seed meal production, and sustainable and effective farming in the era of climate change and technological advance.

This reprint gathers works on various coating materials and technologies aimed at the improvement of materials’ properties, such as corrosion resistance or biocompatibility. Systematic studies demonstrate how the structure and morphology of coatings can change the mechanical, chemical and various functional properties of materials. The reprint contributes to the better understanding of various phenomena induced by metal, ceramic or composite coatings in core materials and, thus, it can help in the more rational design of the selected material’s properties in future studies by the application of coatings.

Au XVIe siècle, les conquistadors de la frontière asiatique de l’Empire espagnol furent attirés sur ces lointains rivages par l’aimant des épices. Trois siècles plus tard, les fonctionnaires métropolitains viennent chercher aux Philippines des épices d’une tout autre nature : pots-de-vin, détournements de fonds publics, extorsions et prélèvements indus. L’objet de cet ouvrage est de décrire et, surtout, de comprendre la déviance publique généralisée qui affecte cette colonie espagnole. L’aute...

2014 and 2016, marked by the 450th anniversary of his birthday and the 400th anniversary of his demise respectively, have both been dedicated to the remembrance of William Shakespeare and the celebration of his work through readings, theater productions, movies, exhibitions, and many academic events. He is fondly called the “Bard” by many and has long been England's export hit. Shakespeare gained lasting fame and fortune during his lifetime not only by successfully moving his audience, but also because from the beginning his work inspired critical and artistic dialogue. The ingenuity and uniqueness of his work did not fail to inspire the creative imagination of successive generations of authors, artists, and musicians over the past four and a half centuries. In fact, each generation has reimagined and recreated Shakespeare in its own different way, bringing its own interpretation, themes, fashion, taste, and customs to the rereading, visualization, and intonation of his work. The brand “Shakespeare” is still as popular and productive as ever. A fact that is apparent not only in the huge numbers of visitors yearly to Stratford upon Avon and Verona, the city of Shakespeare's tragic-romance Romeo and Juliet, but also in the long line of movies produced based on his plays each year. One might even go as far as to assert that it is the generations of productive readers and their own unique creative interpretations that have kept the Bard alive over the past 450 years. This collection of essays celebrates Shakespeare’s two big anniversaries and takes the opportunity to look at him from a different perspective, as a source of inspiration and, for a change, to explore the eclectic results of centuries of productive reception of his work from the Elizabethan era up to the 21rst century.

L’image de Japonais imitateurs possède une longue histoire : en Europe, elle émerge au xviiie et a connu jusqu’à récemment différentes phases caractéristiques. Bien que liée à la modernisation, cette histoire n’éclaire pas uniquement la rencontre du Japon avec la culture européenne, elle est aussi le miroir des conceptions de l’art en Occident où des contremodèles étaient nécessaires afin de soutenir l’idée que la création est la valeur suprême. La première partie de ce livre a pour objectif ...

In the wake of Glasgow’s transformation in the nineteenth-century into an industrial powerhouse, the "Second City of the Empire,” a substantial part of the old town of Adam Smith degenerated into an overcrowded and disease-ridden slum. The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow, Thomas Annan’s photographic record of this central section of the city prior to its demolition in accordance with the City of Glasgow Improvements Act of 1866, is widely recognized as a classic of nineteenth-century documentary photography. Annan’s achievement as a photographer of paintings and a portrait and landscape photographer is less widely known. Thomas Annan: Photographer of Victorian Scotland offers a handy, comprehensive and copiously illustrated overview of the full range of the photographer’s work. The book opens with a brief account of the immediate context of Annan’s career as a photographer: the astonishing florescence of photography in Victorian Scotland. Successive chapters deal with each of the main fields of his activity, touching along the way on issues such as the nineteenth-century debate over the status of photography — a mechanical practice or an artistic one? — and the still ongoing controversies surrounding the documentary photograph in particular. While the text itself is intended for the general reader, extensive endnotes amplify particular themes and offer guidance to readers interested in pursuing these themes further.