Open Access Books

This paper uses the land distribution derived from the Maria Theresa cadastre in Luxembourg from 1766 and a land registry of 1842 to compare wealth inequality in Luxembourg City and Dudelange, a rural municipality in the south of the country. The Gini coefficients for the two areas show a big difference in inequality. In 1766, Dudelange, with a Gini coefficient of 0.84, seems to be much more unequal than Luxembourg City that registers a Gini coefficient on land distribution of 0.53. The inequality analysis in 1842 shows a reduction in the inequality estimates mainly driven by the abolishment of the feudal taxes and a reduction in the inequality gap between Luxembourg City and Dudelange. When looking at social mobility, however, the results for the two places are quite similar.

Former news reporter and founder of Africa’s first fact-checking organisation Peter Cunliffe-Jones argues that since concern about ‘information disorder’ soared in 2016, we have laboured under flawed assumptions about the nature and effects of ‘fake news’ and misinformation. Based on a four-year review of 250 case studies, Cunliffe-Jones sets out four ideas for fact-checkers, policymakers and platforms to curb harmful consequences and protect wider freedom of speech. First, information disorder is about more than misinformation. Second, misinformation in offline settings can cause as big a problem as misinformation online. Third, misinformation that affects policymakers can be as bad as misinformation that affects the public. Fourth, he proposes a model for fact-checkers, researchers and platforms to distinguish false claims that do and do not have substantive potential to cause substantive consequences.

This manual presents the training process for the Gender-Responsive Plant Breeding course, implemented by Makerere and Cornell Universities, over a period of five years (2016-2020), under the Gender-Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It has five broad parts: I) Introduction; II) Required preparation before the course; III) Phase one (9-day, face-to-face training); IV) the 5-month Field Training phase; and V) Phase two (5-day, face-to-face training). Each session consists of specific learning objectives, session plans and slides, delivery methods, practical exercises and examples, as well as relevant tips and synthesized take-home messages. The sessions were developed by an international multidisciplinary team of experts in gender and agriculture and subjected to a rigorous peer review and quality assurance process. GREAT aims to contribute to building a pool of gender-responsive agricultural researchers able to advance more equitable and effective agricultural systems in Africa and beyond. This manual is for all facilitators/trainers interested in applied, gender responsive agricultural research.

The series Marburg Treatises on the History and Culture of Eastern Europe contains monographs and anthologies from the field of Slavic Studies. Besides literary and historical studies, which are the thematic focus of the series, studies in linguistics are also considered.

Twenty-three-year-old Laura Fish Judd left rural Massachusetts in 1827 for the Hawaiian islands, one of eighty young American women who enlisted in the effort to Christianize the islands between 1819 and 1850. Only a month before, after receiving a marriage proposal from a young physician in need of a wife to qualify for mission service, she had written in her diary: "'The die is cast.' I have in the strength of the Lord, consented Rebecca-like--I WILL GO, yes, I will leave friends, native land, everything for Jesus." Laura Judd and other ambitious young women consented to hasty marriages with virtual strangers to achieve their goal of carrying Christ's message to the heathen. As Patricia Grimshaw's compelling study makes clear, these women were driven by a desire for important, independent life-work that went well beyond their expected roles as dutiful wives.The ambitions, hopes, and fears of those eighty pioneer women make a poignant and fascinating story. But Paths of Duty does more than recount the experiences of a group of individuals. Grimshaw shows how the mission women reflected the larger society of which they were part, and through their story shed new light on the role of American Protestant mission in Hawaii. Although the women's public role in mission work was limited, they were highly influential in their daily and seemingly mundane interactions with Hawaiian women. The American women's ethnocentricity made them quite incapable of appreciating Hawaiian culture on its own terms, but their notions of proper femininity and female behavior were effectively transmitted to Hawaiian girls and women. Paths of Duty provides a deeper understanding of this neglected process of acculturation in the islands and its eventual implications for Hawaii's entry into the American sphere of influence.

Le thème des minorités n’a émergé que tardivement dans l’historiographie socio-économique, principalement sous la forme des recherches consacrées à la pauvreté ; c’est surtout l’histoire religieuse et culturelle, notamment après les inflexions données par l’anthropologie historique, qui, plus récemment, a repris les dossiers des déviances religieuses et des exclusions. Pour les temps médiévaux, surtout à partir de la « révolution grégorienne », l’accent est mis surtout sur le facteur religieux, comme élément discriminatoire majeur opposant l’ecclesia des fidèles à des groupes déviants numériquement minoritaires. Comme son titre l’indique, ce volume entend diversifier les approches, par une forte intégration des modèles sociologiques, en envisageant les processus d’exclusion comme des mécanismes indispensables à la construction des sociétés ; les groupes « minoritaires » (et pas forcément au sens numérique) issus de ces processus ne sont que l’institutionnalisation de positionnements sociaux : à côté du volontarisme politique – évident quand on étudie ces groupes pour eux-mêmes – qui se caractérise par des « mesures d’exception » discriminatoires, il nous semble qu’il existe des « effets de système » conduisant les régulations sociales ordinaires à inférioriser jusqu’à des pans entiers du corps social, par rapport à un système de valeurs exigeant et élitiste. Ainsi, les femmes, les cadets de famille, les indigènes soumis à des processus de conquête militaire et même les paysans doivent être intégrés dans notre analyse, au même titre que les Juifs ou les hérétiques. Mais tout n’est pas noir avant l’invention de la citoyenneté de masse. À l’échelle locale, essentielle aux temps médiévaux, les communautés d’habitants fonctionnent assez bien comme machines à intégrer. Et la tolérance sociale s’oppose à l’intolérance idéologique, dans des rapports complexes avec les processus d’exclusion eux-mêmes. Une autre originalité de ce livre est d’associer presque à égalité, dans le cadre de la Méditerranée médiévale, les zones de culture arabo-musulmane et celles de culture latino-chrétienne, dans une perspective comparative que nous pensons fructueuse.

Tribology has rapidly expanded in recent years as the demand for improved materials has increased. The good function of numerous electrical, electrochemical, mechanical, and biological systems or components depends on suitable friction, lubrication, and wear as well as tribological values. In this context, the study of friction, wear, and lubrication is of tremendous pragmatic importance. The reduction of friction and loss of materials in relative motion are important challenges to improveing energy efficiency. This book guides the rational design of material for technological application. Chapters cover topics such as the resistance of dry abrasive wear, the role of a brand-new additive in the minimization of friction and wear, the structural-energy model of elastic-plastic deformation, the influence of micro-abrasive wear modes, tribological characteristics of magneto-rheological fluids (MRFs) and magneto-rheological elastomers (MREs), and different treatment technologies to improve tribological properties, among others.

This book focuses on Abraham Abulafia's esoteric thought in relation to Maimonides, Maimonideans, and Islamic thought in the line of Leo Strauss' theory of the history of philosophy. A survey of Abulafia's sources leads into an analysis of the esoteric meaning on the famous parable of the three rings, considering also the possible connection between this parable, which Abdulafia inserted into a book dedicated to his student, the 13th century rabbi Nathan the wise, and the Lessing's Play Nathan the Wise. The book also examines Abulafia's universalistic understanding of the nature of the Bible, the Hebrew language, and the people of Israel (or the Sinaic revelation). The universal aspects of Abulafia’s thought have been put in relief against the more widespread Kabbalistic views which are predominantly particularistic. A number of texts have also been identified here for the first time as authored by Abulafia.

River deltas are among the most sensitive and widely exploited territories habitats on Earth. Although predominantly shallow aquatic environments, river deltas are extremely important environments socioeconomically and their usage places ever-increasing stresses on these habitats, especially where there is any anthropogenic involvement. The effective governance and administration of river delta regions often requires an intricate scientific understanding of the various contributary natural processes. River Deltas Research - Recent Advances is a book that draws on the most recent world-class scientific research on river delta topics including climate change, water quality, geomorphology, anthropogenic stresses, water quality, sedimentation, ecosystems, and many more. The research was carried out by researchers who specialise in the river deltas and related issues.

This first open access European CAR-T Handbook, co-promoted by the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) and the European Hematology Association (EHA), covers several aspects of CAR-T cell treatments, including the underlying biology, indications, management of side-effects, access and manufacturing issues. This book, written by leading experts in the field to enhance readers’ knowledge and practice skills, provides an unparalleled overview of the CAR-T cell technology and its application in clinical care, to enhance readers’ knowledge and practice skills.

Current worldwide estimates suggest that approxiamtely 11% of all cancers are caused by viral infections. At present, there are eight viruses that have a strong association with cancer development namely, human papillomavirus, Epstein-Barr virus, Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpes virus, human T-cell lymphotrophic virus type I, Merkel cell polyomavirus, hepatitis B and C viruses and human immunodeficiency virus. Some of these viruses and associated cancers, such as human papillomavirus and cervical cancer, are well studied and the causal link between infection and cancer development is established. However, the involvement of these known oncogenic viruses in cancer development at other body sites is not well understood and further study of these viruses continues to highlight novel mechanisms of cellular transformation. Other cancer-associated viruses are only recently discovered, such as Merkel cell polyomavirus, and further work is required to formally prove their role in cancer development. In this Special Issue, we seek to explore novel mechanisms of cellular transformation by oncogenic viruses, the role of viral infection in cancer development in understudied body sites and the potential role of novel viral pathogens in cancer development.

The term “true fabrications” refers to an idiom “true false” created by a Polish writer Marek Hłasko and used in his late novel Beautiful Twentysomethings. However, it is just an attempt to translate this idiom into English without losing its meaning. “True false” is a literary strategy applied to show the experience of living in Poland ruled for fifty years by communists. From Hłasko’s perspective the communism past was both contrived and fantastic. Nonetheless, it is also a way to create an auto- identity by means of putting on masks taken from books and films to breath life into that fantastic social system which is formed out of true and false. Life has become a story to tell. In another dimension, the article contains autobiographical reflections on Hłasko`s “true fabrication” metaphor as a tool of interpretation with which I contemplate my anthropological career path. The problem here is my perception of culture as a source of fabrications and social world as a reservoir of social masks, stemming from the anthropological rite de passage, to which I was subjected during the disciplinary forming process.

The railway from Naples to Nocera with a side branch to Castellammare, whose project was approved in 1836 and which was completed in 1844, represents the first and the most significant stage of the construction of the Bourbon railway infrastructure. The absolute novelty of the enterprise, a work of public utility entrusted in concession to the French engineer Armand Bayard de la Vingtrie, led to the development of new and pressing issues, which concern not only the physical dimension of the Vesuvian coast and its new structure, but also important matters of economy, law, administration, archaeological protection, as well as infrastructure and territory promotion issues. The volume, through the research and comparison of different archival and documentary sources, is intended to reread the history of the first Bourbon railway by bringing together the many aspects that characterized its design, construction and use up to the Unification of Italy. From this study emerges a perspective on the Vesuvian landscape and on its multiple and complex components, integrated in the new perception, intermittent and cursory, offered by the moving train.

Health and development require one another: there can be no development without a critical mass of people who are sufficiently healthy, and people cannot be healthy without societal developments. 11 case studies from 9 countries on 3 continents since the late 19th century show how different actors have struggled to reconcile the nature of health and development policies, and the subordination of these policies to a range of political objectives.

***