Open Access Books

"This book is an anthology with a difference. It presents a distinctive variety of Anglo-Norman works, beginning in the twelfth century and ending in the nineteenth, covering a broad range of genres and writers, introduced in a lively and thought-provoking way. Facing-page translations, into accessible and engaging modern English, are provided throughout, bringing these texts to life for a contemporary audience. The collection offers a selection of fascinating passages, and whole texts, many of which are not anthologised or translated anywhere else. It explores little-known byways of Arthurian legend and stories of real-life crime and punishment; women’s voices tell history, write letters, berate pagans; advice is offered on how to win friends and influence people, how to cure people’s ailments and how to keep clear of the law; and stories from the Bible are retold with commentary, together with guidance on prayer and confession. Each text is introduced and elucidated with notes and full references, and the material is divided into three main sections based on Dean’s Catalogue: Story (a variety of narrative forms), Miscellany (including letters, law and medicine, and other non-fiction), and Religious (saints' lives, sermons, Bible commentary, and prayers). Passages in one genre have been chosen so as to reflect themes or stories that appear in another, so that the book can be enjoyed as a collection or used as a resource to dip into for selected texts. This anthology is essential reading for students and scholars of Anglo-Norman and medieval literature and culture. Wide-ranging and fully referenced, it can be used as a springboard for further study or relished in its own right by readers interested to discover Anglo-Norman literature that was written to amuse, instruct, entertain, or admonish medieval audiences."

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, conserving and enhancing forest carbon stocks, and sustainably managing forests (REDD+), has become a reference framework for national forest governance across many tropical and sub-tropical forest countries. These countries have used international funding to re-organize forest and conservation policy around the idea of mitigating climate change, including the development of carbon accounting protocols and national REDD+ strategies. In parallel, international conservation organizations have promoted small-scale pilot project activities, in order to capture the economic value of any resulting land-use emission reductions, mostly through voluntary carbon markets. This collection contributes with new evidence to the burgeoning research on REDD+. The first section of the collection includes eight articles that explore the politics of REDD+ design, which analyze how various governments have designed and rolled out their REDD+ strategies, and how and why a range of public and private actors become (or not) involved in such processes. These contributions explore which rationales, techniques, views and values are being contested and constructed in the design of REDD+ national strategies, which conflicts have emerged and why, or how coordination across competing actors and interests has been pursued. The second section encompasses six articles that examine the lessons of REDD+ early actions, which describe or quantify the effects of such interventions on local environments and participants’ socio-economic status and cultural contexts. Finally, the third section includes five articles that explore the interplays between REDD+ and other land-use policy domains, which focus on the synergies and contradictions between the aims and policy programs conforming REDD+ national strategies and other land-use policies. Specifically, these contributions explore if REDD+ is able to improve forest sector regulations in host countries and to to align other development and land-use planning policies with REDD+ objectives and aspirations.

This book addresses the issue of natural simultaneity of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in Categories 7, 7b15– 8a12. Natural simultaneity is a form of symmetrical ontological dependence that holds between items that are not causally linked. In this section of the Categories, Aristotle introduces this topic in his analysis of relatives and maintains that although relatives seem to be for the most part simultaneous by nature, there seem to be some exceptions. He mentions two pairs of relatives as exceptions, namely the pairs knowledge/knowable and perception/perceptible, and argues at length for the priority of the second relative over the first one in each case. Through a close reading of this text, the author analyses Aristotle’s arguments for the thesis of the exceptional character of these pairs and shows that all of them are unsuccessful in supporting the thesis. In order to draw this conclusion, the author highlights and carefully considers the properties that Aristotle is committed to attributing to relatives, taking into account the metaphysical framework of the Categories as well as their specificities within the set of nonsubstantial categories. Then, he shows that Aristotle’s mature views on relatives in the Metaphysics can be construed as committing him to the rejection of such a thesis. Although the issue of natural simultaneity is just one of several that Aristotle considers in his discussion of relatives throughout Categories 7, it is a particularly relevant issue, since it involves a number of puzzles whose analysis allows for a better understanding of the very notion of relativity in Aristotle. This is the first book to explore this issue from the perspective of illuminating the Aristotelian views on relatives. Aristotle on Natural Simultaneity of Relatives in the Categories will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Aristotle, ancient philosophy in general, and metaphysics.

HVAC systems, load shifting, indoor climate, and energy and ventilation performance analyses are the key topics when improving energy performance in new and renovated buildings. This development has been boosted by the recently established nearly zero energy building requirements that will soon be in use in all EU Member States, as well as similar long-term zero energy building targets in Japan, the US, and other countries. The research covered in this Special Issue provides evidence of how new technical solutions have worked, in practice, in new or renovated buildings, and also discusses problems and how solutions should be further developed. Another focus is on the more detailed calculation methods needed for the correct design and sizing of dedicated systems, and for accurate quantification of energy savings. Occupant behavior and building operation is also examined, in order to avoid common performance gaps between calculated and measured performance. These topics demonstrate the challenge of high performance buildings as, in the end, comfortable buildings with good indoor climate which are easy and cheap to operate and maintain are expected by end customers. Ventilation performance, heating and cooling, sizing, energy predictions and optimization, load shifting, and field studies are some of the key topics in this Special Issue, contributing to the future of high performance buildings with reliable operation.

This book brings together knowledge from different fields of science and presents advances in organ transplantation and donation. It uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the complex issues of the transplant process. Written by experts in the field, this volume is suitable for medical specialists and medical students alike.

The collection of chapters contained in this book originates from the first Raoul Wallenberg Institute Regional Africa Academic Network Conference held at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe in October 2022. The main aim of this book is to advance an understanding of the way Africa regional and sub-regional human rights systems contribute to access to justice on the continent and to generate further knowledge about the institutions that make up the African human rights adjudication system, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and sub-regional courts, such as the Economic Community of West African States Community Court of Justice.

Le futur de l’Afrique de l’Ouest dépend de la capacité du secteur de l’agriculture à s’adapter pour garantir la sécurité alimentaire dans un contexte de changement climatique et de croissance démographique. Pour faciliter cette adaptation, la recherche a déployé d’importants efforts pour améliorer les connaissances sur les mécanismes climatiques et leurs impacts sur les systèmes agropastoraux. Or, ces avancées issues de la recherche ne sont que rarement prises en compte dans la planification et la prise de décision. Partant de ce constat, un projet de recherche « Agriculture et gestion des risques climatiques : outils et recherches en Afrique », soutenu par le ministère français des Affaires étrangères et du Développement international est mené entre 2016 et 2018 dans plusieurs pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest. Il a pour objectif d’élaborer des outils efficaces de gestion du risque climatique pour les agriculteurs, en co-construisant avec des réseaux de chercheurs et d’acteurs directement impliqués dans l’accompagnement de l’agriculture des stratégies innovantes basées sur les résultats de la recherche. Cet ouvrage restitue les principales avancées de cette recherche-action sur trois thématiques prioritaires : les services climatiques pour l’agriculture, la gestion des ressources en eau et l’intensification écologique. Il permet aux acteurs du secteur agricole (organisations paysannes, filières, secteur privé agricole, banques de développement agricole, fournisseurs d’intrants, services agricoles et de météorologie) de s’approprier de nouvelles connaissances et de nouveaux outils pour une meilleure prise en compte des risques climatiques dans la gestion des systèmes de production.

The international history of the city of Tangier begins long before its time as a specific administrative zone. As early as 1840, the city became the seat of important commissions that controlled access to the Strait of Gibraltar on behalf of infrastructure projects and shaped the cityscape. Daniela Hettstedt examines the intertwining of international and colonial mechanisms of rule as "shared colonialism" in its local consequences.

Creating Chinese Urbanism describes the landscape of urbanisation in China, revealing the profound impacts of marketisation on Chinese society and the consequential governance changes at the grassroots level. During the imperial and socialist periods, state and society were embedded. However, as China has been becoming urban, the territorial foundation of ‘earth-bound’ society has been dismantled. This metaphorically started an urban revolution, which has transformed the social order derived from the ‘state in society’. The state has thus become more visible in Chinese urban life. Besides witnessing the breaking down of socially integrated neighbourhoods, Fulong Wu explains the urban roots of a rising state in China. Instead of governing through autonomous stakeholders, state-sponsored strategic intentions remain. In the urban realm, the desire for greater residential privacy does not foster collectivism. State-led rebuilding of residential communities has sped up the demise of traditionalism and given birth to a new China with greater urbanism and state-centred governance. Taking the vantage point of concrete residential neighbourhoods, Creating Chinese Urbanism offers a cutting-edge analysis of how China is becoming urban and grounds the changing state governance in the process of urbanization. Its original and material interpretation of the changing role of the state in China makes it suitable reading for researchers and students in the fields of urban studies, geography, planning and the built environment.

May Swenson Poetry Award Volume 5, with foreward by Richard Howard. An accomplished poet with credits in such literary magazines as APR, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and many others, Stephen McLeod is the 2001 recipient of the May Swenson Poetry Award. Judge for the competition was Richard Howard, internationally known poet and winner of the Pulitzer and many other poetry awards. Formerly of Dallas, Mr. McLeod lives in Brooklyn, where he is an Assistant District Attorney. He was educated at Southern Methodist University, Columbia University, and the Fordham University School of Law.

Since Hans Selye's seminal work in the 1930s, there have been numerous advances with respect to our understanding of how the nervous and endocrine systems interact to help animals cope with stressors and how chronic stress may adversely impact health. Our modern understanding of stress essentially began in 1954 with the race to discover the hypothalamic releasing factor controlling ACTH secretion and mediating the endocrine response to stressors. Since the isolation of corticotropin releasing factor (CRF) in 1981, interest in CRF has focused not only on its hypophysiotropic function, but also its much broader role in coordinating many of the endocrine, behavioral and autonomic nervous system changes that occur during stress. The goal of this Research Topic is to solicit reviews and general research articles highlighting new research into stress and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in the following areas: HPA axis interaction with energy regulating mechanisms during stress; and new studies on the role of CRF and urocortin and urocortins 2 and 3 in behavioral adaptation to stressors.

This open access two-volume set LNCS 10980 and 10981 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification, CAV 2018, held in Oxford, UK, in July 2018. The 52 full and 13 tool papers presented together with 3 invited papers and 2 tutorials were carefully reviewed and selected from 215 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics and techniques, from algorithmic and logical foundations of verification to practical applications in distributed, networked, cyber-physical, and autonomous systems. They are organized in topical sections on model checking, program analysis using polyhedra, synthesis, learning, runtime verification, hybrid and timed systems, tools, probabilistic systems, static analysis, theory and security, SAT, SMT and decisions procedures, concurrency, and CPS, hardware, industrial applications.

The monograph presents Badenian calcareous nannoplankton from NE Slovenia. Several hundred samples from 22 measured sections have been studied. In total, 109 species of calcareous nannoplankton are determined and described, many of which are new to Slovenia. The entire interval studied was assigned to the Middle Miocene. The excellent preservation and high species diversity enabled a precise subdivision of this interval into 6 successive interval zones, correlated with the absolute time scale (15.5 – 13.1 Ma) and with the 3rd order eustatic cycles (TB2.3, TB2.4 and TB2.5). Lists of all examined nannoplankton assemblages and their paleoecological analyses are also included. The monograph is a comprehensive review of the taxonomy, biostratigraphy and paleoecology of Miocene calcareous nannoplankton in the western part of the Central Paratethys.

Education; Teaching; Education—History; Communication; Russia—History; Europe, Eastern—History; Historiography

Faits sociaux autant qu’ensembles d’objets à valeur symbolique, les musées et les collections rassemblent des êtres humains autant que des spécimens et ont à voir, de plusieurs manières, avec des communautés. Les contributions suivantes proposent d’entrer dans l’histoire des amateurs en sciences en mettant l’accent sur les pratiques de collecte, de conditionnement, de classement et de mise en scène des collections. Elles évoquent la manière dont ces pratiques construisent des savoirs et analysent les circulations d'hommes et d'objets qu'elles impliquent, de même que les usages sociaux auxquels elles donnent lieu. Le Congrès national des sociétés historiques et scientifiques rassemble chaque année universitaires, membres de sociétés savantes et jeunes chercheurs. Ce recueil est issu de travaux présentés lors du 145e Congrès sur le thème « Collecter, collectionner, conserver ».