Open Access Books

With the invention of the laser it was possible to think about a fast and efficient way to make the information transmission, thus originating the first ideas of transmission through wave guides. This led to the invention of the optical fibers, for which scientific-technological research has been constantly developed in order to improve the efficiency of information transmission for different applications. Then, various techniques and materials used for the manufacture of optical fibers have been developed, which have been improved over the years, obtaining high efficiency in the transmission of information, as well as different types of optical fiber applications. This book intends to provide the reader a review of some different fiber optic applications as well as some ideas about the future of growing in this important technological area.

The absence of vibrant bondmarkets in East Asia was a significant contributor to the 1997–98 financial crisis. Ever since, the development of local bondmarkets has been a major objective of financial reforms in many East Asian economies. This effort has been frustrated by the inability to reach a consensus on whether Asian bondmarkets are truly needed in East Asia, whether they can be made viable in the competitive environment of the global economy, how they should be created and what role intergovernmental cooperation should play in their definition and creation. Developing Asian Bondmarkets helps build this consensus, proposing how to develop robust and efficient bondmarkets in East Asia. This book, the first of its kind, comes from the Finance Forum of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council.

The theatrical production of the playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela (1901-1952) offered Spanish audiences of the time a theatre that posed a challenge of innovation based on a new conception of humour. The numerous mechanisms of the verbal humour that sustain the script constitute a real challenge in translating the keys of this comedy due to the constant alteration of the code in the different levels of the language. After outlining some essential lines concerning the author’s dramaturgy, this volume will focus on one of Jardiel’s most successful comedies, Los ladrones somos gente honrada (1941), providing the first full Italian translation of the play. The aim is to stimulate reflection on the play’s translation rendering in Italian (also from a didactic perspective) based on the wide range of comic solutions adopted for the playful use of language.

In this work based on her doctoral thesis, Carole Fritz presents the remarkable contribution that observation with a scanning electron microscope brings to the study of engraving in Magdalenian portable art. This original and rigorous scientific approach opens up particularly promising paths of research. A corpus of sixty objects made of bone and antler, found at eight middle and upper Magdalenian sites m the area bounded by the Pyrénées, the Gironde estuary and the Dordogne river, is methodically analysed.On the basis of this analysis, backed by a previously unpublished and quite exceptional iconography, the author proposes fresh thinking on the artistic gestures of the Magdalenian period, on the operational processes corresponding to mental patterns and collective practices, on the modalities of acquisition and transmission of know-how and skills, and ultimately, on the existence of a thought-out artistic phenomenon in the societies of this epoch.

Visual working memory allows us to temporarily maintain and manipulate visual information in order to solve a task. The study of the brain mechanisms underlying this function began more than half a century ago, with Scoville and Milner’s (1957) seminal discoveries with amnesic patients. This timely collection of papers brings together diverse perspectives on the cognitive neuroscience of visual working memory from multiple fields that have traditionally been fairly disjointed: human neuroimaging, electrophysiological, behavioural and animal lesion studies, investigating both the developing and the adult brain.

The Sri Ksetra Museum Inventory is the most comprehensive single source of Myanmar's Pyu material culture. With artifacts dating from the early centuries of the first millennium, the inventory includes material retrieved from site excavations at Sri Ksetra and surrounding region from the early 1900s to recent years. With many objects documented for the first time, this publication makes the collection accessible to an international audience.

Drug metabolism/pharmacokinetics and drug interaction studies have been extensively carried out in order to secure the druggability and safety of new chemical entities throughout the development of new drugs. Recently, drug metabolism and transport by phase II drug metabolizing enzymes and drug transporters, respectively, as well as phase I drug metabolizing enzymes, have been studied. A combination of biochemical advances in the function and regulation of drug metabolizing enzymes and automated analytical technologies are revolutionizing drug metabolism research. There are also potential drug–drug interactions with co-administered drugs due to inhibition and/or induction of drug metabolic enzymes and drug transporters. In addition, drug interaction studies have been actively performed to develop substrate cocktails that do not interfere with each other and a simultaneous analytical method of substrate drugs and their metabolites using a tandem mass spectrometer. This Special Issue has the aim of highlighting current progress in drug metabolism/pharmacokinetics, drug interactions, and bioanalysis.

Winner, Premio Flora Tristán Al Mejor Libro, Peru Section, Latin American Studies Association, 2019 After the Spanish victories over the Inca claimed Tawantinsuyu for Charles V in the 1530s, native Andeans undertook a series of perilous trips from Peru to the royal court in Spain. Ranging from an indigenous commoner entrusted with delivering birds of prey for courtly entertainment to an Inca prince who spent his days amid titles, pensions, and other royal favors, these sojourners were both exceptional and paradigmatic. Together, they shared a conviction that the sovereign’s absolute authority would guarantee that justice would be done and service would receive its due reward. As they negotiated their claims with imperial officials, Amerindian peoples helped forge the connections that sustained the expanding Habsburg realm’s imaginary and gave the modern global age its defining character. Andean Cosmopolitans recovers these travelers’ dramatic experiences, while simultaneously highlighting their profound influences on the making and remaking of the colonial world. While Spain’s American possessions became Spanish in many ways, the Andean travelers (in their cosmopolitan lives and journeys) also helped to shape Spain in the image and likeness of Peru. De la Puente brings remarkable insights to a narrative showing how previously unknown peoples and ideas created new power structures and institutions, as well as novel ways of being urban, Indian, elite, and subject. As indigenous people articulated and defended their own views regarding the legal and political character of the “Republic of the Indians,” they became state-builders of a special kind, cocreating the colonial order.

We present three main research fields in which multimedia cartography and the study of the effectiveness of multimedia maps are currently taking place. In each of these fields, we describe how published research is embedded in the broader context of map design and user studies. The research refers to contemporary technological trends such as web HTML5 standards, virtual reality, eye tracking, or 3D printing. Efficiency, performance, and usability studies of multimedia maps were also included. The research published in this issue is interdisciplinary. They combine traditional mapping methods with new technologies. They are searching for new places for cartography in, e.g., the environment of computer games. They combine the design of the map with its perception by users.

White Etching Cracks (WECs) sind Schälungen oder Risse im Bereich der Laufbahnen von Wälzlagern, die in Verbindung mit irreversiblen Gefügeveränderungen auftreten. Die für das Schadensbild namensgebenden mikrostrukturellen Veränderungen treten im lichtmikroskopischen Schliff als weiß anätzende Phasen hervor. Da bis heute weder Auslöser noch Ursachen des Phänomens eindeutig identifiziert werden konnten, ist eine anhaltende wissenschaftliche Debatte um die Entstehungsmechanismen von WECs entbrannt. Vor diesem Hintergrund besteht die vorrangige Zielsetzung dieser Arbeit in einer schmierstoffseitigen Betrachtung der Wirkmechanismen und Zusammenhänge in einem ölgeschmierten Wälzkontakt unter Betriebsbedingungen, die zum Ausfall durch WEC-Schäden führen können. Um dieses anspruchsvolle Vorhaben in der Praxis umzusetzen, wurde ein neues Prüfsystem konzipiert, das es unter Einsatz einer kontrollierten elektrischen Zusatzbelastung ermöglicht, WEC-Schäden ohne chemische Vorbehandlung der Wälzlager zu erzeugen. Gleichzeitig wurde erstmalig der Versuch unternommen, mittels in situ FTIR-Spektroskopie anhand geringfügiger Änderungen der Schmierstoff-chemie Rückschlüsse auf tribochemische Reaktionen im Wälzkontakt zu ziehen. Darüber hinaus wurde der Aufbau isolierend wirkender Grenzschichten anhand des resultierenden Spannungsverhaltens der Prüflager verfolgt, um durch die Kombination beider Techniken eine fundierte Beurteilung der tribochemischen Schichtauf-, -ab- und -umbauprozesse zu ermöglichen.

Critique et constructif à la fois, l'ouvrage critique le traitement classique des classifications dualistes (droite/gauche, masculin/féminin, noir/blanc, pur/impur...) et présente une perspective nouvelle à partir d'un exemple ethnographique africain très développé emprunté aux Nyamwezi et d'une reconsidération de cas classiques (africains, chinois, nord-américains). Dans l'essai de Robert Hertz au début de ce siècle, et de façon plus rigide encore de nos jours chez Rodney Needham et ses associés, le système classificatoire d'une société, si éloignée soit-elle du type moderne, est vu dans des catégories logiques qui relèvent de la pensée classique et moderne : non-contradiction, égalité des termes, rationalité du discours linéaire. On n'aboutit ainsi à des listes dichotomiques qu'arbitrairement et moyennant de nombreuses contradictions. A cette logique atomique Serge Tcherkézoff oppose une logique du tout, une logique hiérarchique qui, d'une part, privilégie le système idéologique et rituel global, de l'autre, se caractérise par la distinction de niveaux de représentation et d'expérience dont la gradation tolère et même prescrit la contrariété. A une plate dichotomie est ainsi substituée une figure multidimensionnelle, épaisse, vivante, dont l'unité est en même temps vigoureusement affirmée.

This open access book aims to review the history, achievements, and challenges of trilateral cooperation among China, Japan, and South Korea in a systematic way. It offers numerous perspectives to explain the emergence of trilateral institution-building processes and the fluctuations of trilateral cooperation, and underscores three countries’ respective policy stances towards the building of the triangle. The evolvement of political and economic ties among China, Japan, and South Korea has vital importance to the peace and prosperity of East Asia. Recent years have witnessed the ups and downs of the trilateral cooperation among the three countries. The development of trilateral institution building emerged as a joint gesture in response to the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s. The three countries jointly established multilayered cooperative mechanisms in a wide range of fields. Nonetheless, trilateral cooperation among the three major powers has been proceeding in hardship in the shadow of longstanding geopolitical complexity and the deepening Sino-US confrontations. This book argues that, despite growing economic and social linkages, political animosities have constantly impeded the trilateral cooperation. Relevant to scholars and advanced students in international relations and political economy, this is a vital read in East Asian studies.

This reprint is comprised of eleven articles that are screened by our hard-working peer reviewers. It mainly focuses on the recent advances in electric motors and drives, to adapt to the ongoing trends of electrification in both transportation and industry. New structural motors, such as the axial flux machine and the multi-phase machine, are introduced because of their enhanced reliability for use in next-generation electrified transportation. Special attention is also given to the micro PM motor, which has a broad use in many areas. In addition, advanced control techniques, such as position sensorless control and fault-tolerant control, are also incorporated to fulfill the demand for safe crucial applications, and the modeling of the bearing voltage and a line-start permanent magnet motor can be of particular interest to the industrial sectors. Through this reprint, we hope to provide a new perspective for the readers to manage their encountered problems, as well as stimulate innovative ideas for the electrified transportation of the next generation.

The ability to create intelligent machines has intrigued humans since ancient times, and today with the advent of the computer and 50 years of research into AI programming techniques, the dream of smart machines is becoming a reality. The concept of human-computer interfaces has been undergoing changes over the years. In carrying out the most important tasks is the lack of formalized application methods, mathematical models and advanced computer support. The evolution of biological systems to adapt to their environment has fascinated and challenged scientists to increase their level of understanding of the functional characteristics of such systems. This book has 19 chapters and explain that the expert systems are products of the artificial intelligence, branch of computer science that seeks to develop intelligent programs for human, materials and automation.

This Special Issue compiles a distinguished collection of peer-reviewed contributions advancing the field of prosthodontics, with a particular focus on translational innovations in oral and maxillofacial rehabilitation. Encompassing original research, clinical protocols, and comprehensive reviews, the articles investigate the mechanical, biological, and digital dimensions of modern prosthetic dentistry. Topics include finite element analyses, novel biomaterials such as polyetheretherketone (PEEK) and titanium frameworks, AI applications, as well as digital workflows in implant and removable prosthodontics. The assembled works offer a rigorous examination of both in vitro performance and clinical implementation, providing a forward-looking perspective on minimally invasive, functional, and esthetic rehabilitation. This reprint serves as a reference point for clinicians, researchers, and policymakers dedicated to elevating the standards of prosthetic care through scientific excellence and interdisciplinary collaboration.