Open Access Books

In dredging, trenching, (deep sea) mining, drilling, tunnel boring and many other applications, sand, clay or rock has to be excavated. This book gives an overview of cutting theories. It starts with a generic model, which is valid for all types of soil (sand, clay and rock) after which the specifics of dry sand, water saturated sand, clay, atmospheric rock and hyperbaric rock are covered. For each soil type small blade angles and large blade angles, resulting in a wedge in front of the blade, are discussed. For each case considered, the equations/model for the cutting forces, power and specific energy are given. The models are verified with laboratory research, mainly at the Delft University of Technology, but also with data from literature.

Notebooks for Operations Research is a practical guide that uses Python and Jupyter Notebooks to teach the principles and applications of operations research. Designed for both beginning students and professionals, the text connects theory and practice through interactive tutorials, solved exercises, and the use of Python libraries to solve problems with a hands-on approach. Chapters cover topics such as linear programming, combinatorial optimisation, non-linear programming, decision and game theory, simulation and Markov chains. Each section integrates mathematical concepts with real-world applications, demonstrating how to solve optimisation and decision-making problems in complex contexts, especially in supply chain management. In addition, the book highlights the relationship between operations research and artificial intelligence, focusing on mathematical reasoning and optimisation techniques, and provides an introduction to machine learning. It is an interactive book in the sense that all content is available in an interactive online environment that allows experimentation with the code. It provides fundamentals, tools and open source resources for those seeking to master operations research in a practical and modern approach.

Research Advances in Syngas sheds light on the potential of this versatile gas blend derived from sources like coal, biomass, and even waste. Immerse yourself in the research. Unlock the door to a future powered by cleaner and more sustainable energy. This comprehensive volume takes you on a journey through the forefront of syngas innovation. Embark on its evolution from a relic to a potential champion in clean energy. Then, delve into the science behind it, examining how different materials are transformed into fuel while uncovering strategies for environmentally friendly production. Research Advances in Syngas doesn't confine itself to laboratories; it also explores the aspects of syngas integration, providing insights into market forces and paving the way for cost-effective implementation. Moreover, looking ahead to tomorrow, discover how this technology not only generates energy but also actively removes carbon dioxide—a glimpse into a truly sustainable future. Research Advances in Syngas is a roadmap towards a cleaner and more prosperous future. If you care about our planet’s well-being, this book is an essential guide to harnessing syngas power and illuminating our path towards a brighter and more sustainable tomorrow.

Chinese Poetry and Translation: Rights and Wrongs offers fifteen essays on the triptych of poetry + translation + Chinese. The collection has three parts: "The Translator's Take," "Theoretics," and "Impact." The conversation stretches from queer-feminist engagement with China's newest poetry to philosophical and philological reflections on its oldest, and from Tang- and Song-dynasty classical poetry in Western languages to Baudelaire and Celan in Chinese. Translation is taken as an interlingual and intercultural act, and the essays foreground theoretical expositions and the practice of translation in equal but not opposite measure. Poetry has a transforming yet ever-acute relevance in Chinese culture, and this makes it a good entry point for studying Chinese-foreign encounters. Pushing past oppositions that still too often restrict discussions of translation-form versus content, elegance versus accuracy, and "the original" versus "the translated"-this volume brings a wealth of new thinking to the interrelationships between poetry, translation, and China.

This book brings together cutting-edge research presented at the 11th International Conference on Development and Investment in Infrastructure (DII 2025), held from 6th–8th August 2025, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Centred on the theme Building Infrastructure Better: Digitalisation, Decarbonisation and Decentralisatio n , the volume captures emerging insights that are redefining infrastructure delivery and sustainable development across Africa and the Global South. This volume features a diverse and rigorous collection of papers that delve into smart cities, digital transformation, infrastructure investment, sustainable construction, renewable energy, climate resilience, and circular economy transitions. The contributions address the sector’s most urgent challenges including inequality in urban systems, barriers to technology adoption, climate-induced vulnerabilities, sustainable building practices, and the strategic integration of advanced digital tools such as BIM, AI, IoT, VR, and automation. Insights presented across the six thematic tracks illuminate pathways for improving infrastructure planning, enhancing project performance, strengthening resilience, and accelerating low-carbon development. Together, the papers demonstrate how technological innovation, policy reform, and contextualised research can drive inclusive, future-ready infrastructure systems capable of supporting national and regional development ambitions. This book is intended for academics, researchers, policymakers, industry practitioners, and postgraduate students engaged in infrastructure development, construction management, urban planning, digital transformation, and sustainability. It also serves as a valuable resource for governments, development agencies, and technology stakeholders seeking evidence-based strategies to strengthen infrastructure resilience and accelerate socio-economic development.

Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? Studying closely the oral narrations and writings of four Indian authors in colonial India, The Audacious Raconteur argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. By drawing attention to the vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism in the narratives of these raconteurs, Leela Prasad shows how the ideological bulwark of colonialism—formed by concepts of colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledge—is dismantled. Audacious raconteurs wrest back meanings of religion, culture, and history that are closer to their lived understandings. The figure of the audacious raconteur does not only hover in an archive but suffuses everyday life. Underlying these ideas, Prasad's personal interactions with the narrators' descendants give weight to her innovative argument that the audacious raconteur is a necessary ethical and artistic figure in human experience. Thanks to generous funding from Duke University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Die Chronik dokumentiert 30 Jahre Gleichstellungsarbeit an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in ihrer facettenreichen Entwicklung. Nach einer Einführung in die Geschichte der Wissenschaftlerinnen an den deutschen Universitäten und an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität bis zum Einsetzen der offiziellen Frauenförderung im Jahre 1989 werden die wichtigsten Maßnahmen und Initiativen, die in den dann folgenden drei Dekaden durch die Arbeit der Frauenbeauftragten in Gang gesetzt wurden, geschildert und danach in einer detaillierten und reich bebilderten chronologischen Übersicht dargestellt. Im Anschluss daran folgen ausführlichere Berichte über die wichtigsten Felder der Gleichstellungsarbeit, Auflistungen der mit Preisen ausgezeichneten Projekte sowie ein kurzer Überblick über die Frauen- und Genderforschung in Deutschland und an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität. Die Chronik endet mit einer Bestandsaufnahme der aktuellen Situation und einem Ausblick auf die zukünftigen Aufgaben und Desiderate des Amtes. Der Chronik, der ein umfangreiches Literaturstudium zugrunde liegt, basiert auf zahlreichen Archivdokumenten, die teilweise in einem elektronischen Anhang verfügbar sind. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird erstmals das über 30 Jahre gezeigte Engagement zahlreicher Akteurinnen und Akteure an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität deutlich, das hiermit entsprechend gewürdigt werden soll. Zugleich wirft die Chronik Schlaglichter auf den gesellschaftspolitischen Rahmen, in dem sich dieses Engagement entwickelt hat, auf die Erfolge, die es zu verzeichnen hat, aber auch auf die Defizite, die noch zu beklagen sind.

One of the main aims of modern mental health care is to understand a person's explicit and implicit ways of thinking and acting. So, it may seem like the ultimate paradox that mental health care services are currently overflowing with brain concepts belonging to the external, visible brain-world and that neuroscientists are poised to become new experts on human conduct. An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Human Mind shows that to create care that is truly innovative, mental health care workers must not only ask questions about how their conceptions of human beings and psychological phenomena came into being, but should also see themselves as co-creators of the mystery they seek to solve. Looking at the human being as a being with a biological body and unique subjective experiences, living in a reciprocal relationship with its sociocultural and historical environment, the book will provide examples and theories that show the necessity of an innovating, interdisciplinary mental health care service that manages to adapt its theory and methods to environmental, biological, and subjective changes. To this end, the book will provide an innovating psychology that offers a broad kaleidoscope of perspectives about the relations between the history of psychology, as a scientific discipline oriented to interpret and explain subject and subjectivity phenomenon, and the social construction of subjectified experience. This unique and timely book should be of great interest to critical and cultural psychologists and theorists; clinical psychologists, therapists, and psychiatrists; sociologists of culture and science; anthropologists; philosophers; historians; and scholars working with social and health theories. It should also be essential reading for lawyers, advocates, and defenders of human rights. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315309682 has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 licence.

Personnage complexe, le savant fou renvoie à une opposition remontant à l'Antiquité qui perçoit folie et génie comme deux notions complémentaires. Cette complémentarité perdure et se nourrit des crises épistémologiques qui bouleversent la perception du monde et de lui-même qu'a l'être humain. La figure du savant fou cristallise de nombreuses peurs diffuses qui peuvent être d'ordre politique, social, religieux, économique ou idéologique et qui ont trait à la possibilité même de se définir en tant qu'être humain. La figure a par ailleurs accédé au rang de figure mythique « moderne » avec le mythe de Faust qui ré-active le mythe antique de Prométhée. Cet ouvrage fournit l’occasion d’explorer plus particulièrement les avatars contemporains du savant fou ainsi que la spécificité des questionnements qu’il met en jeu dans le roman et les arts visuels de la fin du XXe siècle et du début du XXIe siècle. Il permet également d’aborder la dimension mythique de cette figure qui du Victor Frankenstein de Mary Shelley à nos jours ne se lasse pas de resurgir dans les représentations imaginaires et fictives.

Georges Perec, novelist, filmmaker and essayist, was one of the most inventive and original writers of the twentieth century. A fascinating aspect of his work is its intrinsically geographical nature. With major projects on space and place, Perec’s writing speaks to a variety of geographical, urban and architectural concerns, both in a substantive way, including a focus on cities, streets, homes and apartments, and in a methodological way, experimenting with methods of urban exploration and observation, classification, enumeration and taxonomy.

Conservation biology is called a "crisis discipline." In a world undergoing rapid change, this science informs us about research, technologies, management practices, and policies that can help protect the earth's naturally-occurring biological diversity. The six chapters of this book provide insightful analysis on managing protected areas (Middle East), conserving biochemical and genetic diversity of carob tree (Tunisia) and wild pear (Japan), determining the health status of Amazon manatee, manipulating sex ratios to benefit wildlife, and narrowing the gap between religion and conservation. The authors approach threats to biological diversity from varied angles, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the field. This book offers room for reflection on the definition and utility of the word 'natural' on a planet now overwhelmingly dominated by people.

Complex systems are unified wholes formed by many interacting units. One key source of their complexity lies in the intricate entanglement of causal structures. A notable feature of these systems is the phenomenon of emergent causality, where stronger causal relationships may arise at the macro-scale rather than the micro-scale, as seen in fields like statistical mechanics. This Special Issue focuses on "Causality and Complex Systems", examining the interplay of causal relationships and the emergence of causal structures within complex systems. The 17 articles in this issue encompass a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from theoretical frameworks to practical applications, with the shared goal of advancing our understanding of causality in dynamic, interconnected systems.Key contributions of this issue include novel theoretical frameworks for quantifying causal emergence, innovative causal machine learning algorithms, and information-theoretic measures for analyzing causality. Methodological advancements are also presented for causal discovery in complex and nonlinear systems. Furthermore, this issue features interdisciplinary applications across neuroscience, biology, sociology, and environmental science, demonstrating the versatility of causal methods in addressing real-world phenomena. Ultimately, this Special Issue enhances both the theoretical understanding of causality in complex systems and provides practical tools and methodologies to tackle challenges in data-driven research.

An essential guide for writers on how to record and use rich detail to enliven their work.The goal of the writer is to live with the keenness of the foreigner. To experience, wide-eyed, the sensations aroused and the events offered up by peculiar surrounds and then to evoke them so brightly on the page that the reader, too, experiences the foreigner’s frisson. A time-honored way this is accomplished is through the keeping of a field notebook—through the faithful recording of the this-and-that of life; the atmospheres and incidents; the bells, the beer, the bread.Based on what accomplished nonfiction writer Sara Mansfield Taber learned in her many years of field notebook keeping, Chance Particulars is a unique and handy primer for writers who want to use their experiences to tell a lively, satisfying story. Often, writers try to turn their notes into a memoir, essay, travel piece, or story, only to find that they haven’t recorded enough of the concrete, sensory details necessary to create evocative description. To help writers overcome this problem, Taber has composed a true “field notebook for field notebook keepers.” Enhanced by beautiful illustrations, this charming and comprehensive guide is a practical manual for anyone who wishes to learn or hone the crafts of writing, ethnography, or journalism.Writers of all levels, genres, and ages, as well as teachers of writing, will appreciate this useful tool for learning how to record the details that build vibrant prose. With this book in hand, you will be able to recreate times and places, conjure up intricate character portraits, and paint pictures of particular landscapes, cultures, and locales.

Rural health is the study of healthcare systems in rural settings. This book presents a comprehensive overview of rural health care and addresses such topics as human resources, maternal mortality in developing countries, safety of healthcare workers, zoonotic and veterinary diseases, and much more. Chapters include case studies and research in the field of rural health.

Une ville "" rattachée "" à une nouvelle souveraineté est toujours une ville "" reconfigurée "". Des débuts de l'époque moderne aux événements les plus contemporains, en Europe et sur le pourtour de la Méditerranée, les bouleversements politiques internationaux ont donné forme aux villes, les ont modelées et marquées de leurs empreintes successives. Sur les trois aspects privilégiés dans cet ouvrage - la reconfiguration des réseaux sociaux, la recomposition des espaces, l'évolution de la mémoire ...