Open Access Books

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and the disease now affects nearly every country and region. Caused by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 presents significant challenges to health systems and public health in both hemispheres as well as to the economies of each country. The morbidity and mortality due to infections caused by SARS-CoV-2 have been significant despite the short duration since its discovery and initially overwhelmed many hospitals and clinics. It influences everyone, and countermeasures have been dramatic in their impact on employment, social systems, and mental health. This Special Issue provides an avenue for authors from various disciplines to provide feedback on our responses and preparedness to COVID-19 globally as well as to disseminate critical information about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the associated COVID-19 pandemic. It consists of 22 peer-reviewed papers that cover worldwide perspectives encompasses the following: Original articles about COVID-19 (including epidemiology, modelling, clinical data, treatment, prevention, countermeasures, impacts on tropical regions, response, and preparedness);Original articles about SARS-CoV-2 (microbiology, virology, transmission, pathology, and vaccinology);Perspectives about COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 (comparisons with past coronavirus outbreaks, impactful local initiatives, novel responses, and commentaries);Reviews on COVID-19 (based on systematic and narrative reviews);and Innovations (vaccine development, drug trials, and original countermeasures).

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Using long-ignored constitutions of various Jewish organizations, this unique book uncovers the political history of Canadian Jewry since its beginning during the 1700s. Building on the premise that Jews, since time immemorial, have written down their values and ideologies, this study effectively demonstrates how these writings record the principles and values that motivated a community.

This chapter outlines a research area that is termed the scientific governing of life. The chapter includes sections on ‘Populations’, ‘Biologies’, and ‘Futures’, showing how these themes are crucial in the study of biomedicine and society. Within each theme, research is introduced that exemplifies different aspects of the social study of biomedical knowledge production and related power relations. The focus is on how biomedical research and treatment practices orientate towards human life as an object of governing. Studies mapped also include those that expand the relationship between knowledge and governing through foregrounding the agency of more-than-human participants in biomedical practice. Finally, the chapter discusses scholarship that focuses on highly experimental technologies which call for novel methodological explorations on biomedical knowledge applications. The chapter argues that many studies within this research area work at the intersection of Foucauldian analytics of power, new materialist theorizing, and speculative social research.

Aufgrund der steigenden Anforderungen an Elektroniksysteme im Kraftfahrzeug werden auch immer höhere Anforderungen an die Kommunikationssysteme gestellt. In dieser Arbeit wird ein Kommunikationssystem vorgestellt, welches basierend auf einer speziellen Topologie und verteilten Algorithmen einen neuartigen Lösungsansatz verfolgt. Hierdurch kann eine worst-case Zeit für die Nachrichtenausbreitung trotz bedarfsabhängigem Senden der einzelnen Geräte angegeben werden.

Chinese cities have been expanding since the early 1980s under trends of rapid modernization, urbanization and globalization. Since then they have changed dramatically, and have in the process lost many of their traditional environments and spatial characteristics. Urban planners and designers have been and are facing unprecedented challenges in China. They not only have to learn to understand the constantly emerging new urban mechanisms, and seek balance among stakeholders, but they also need to cope with the political pressures and the changing context under often extreme time pressure. In such circumstances, future- and design-oriented analysis based on a designerly way of thinking is useful - if not indispensable - for understanding the existing city and deciding on its transformations in a responsible and accountable way that is communicable among designers and with the public. This is especially so, in light of the growing awareness - also in China - of the value and importance of local urban identity, that is always - at least partially - based on history. In this atlas the Delft method of historical morphological analysis is applied to the city of Wuhan, valuing the importance of and finding meaning in the local urban identity of a city with a population over 11 million with a floating population of 14 million. The series of maps show the urban development, covering a century and a half.

After World War II, the architectural historian Arnold Tschira taught for almost two decades architecture students to understand their future field of activity as a historically shaped environment. His interdisciplinary lectures were attended by students from other faculties as well as an interested audience from outside the university. As a member of the supervisory board of the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, DAI) representing his profession, he succeeded Robert Koldewey and Armin von Gerkan and significantly contributed to the field of architectural history research. As the Director of the Institute of Architectural History at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Karlsruhe (TH), his research activities included, besides the era of antiquity, the architectural art of the Middle Ages in Baden and the classicism of Friedrich Weinbrenner, who founded the first building school in Baden in 1800, from which later the Technical University of Karlsruhe and finally today's research and education institution KIT (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) were to emerge. This commemorative volume for Arnold Tschira, with which former students and colleagues of his institute trace his career and his fields of activity, represents a piece of research history rooted in the formidable tradition in the field of architectural history in Karlsruhe.

Plutarch of Chaeronea was by no means an armchair philosopher. He believed in the necessity for a philosopher to affect the lives of his fellow citizens. That urge inspired many of his writings to meet what he considered people's true needs. Although these writings on practical ethics illustrate in various ways Plutarch's authorial talents and raise many challenging questions (regarding their overall structure, content, purpose, and underlying philosophical and social presuppositions), they have attracted only limited scholarly attention.Virtues for the People’s collected essays deal with these questions from different perspectives and throw a new light upon this multifaceted domain of Plutarch's thinking and writing. Special points of interest are the concept of ‘popular philosophy' itself and its implications, its dependence on a more theoretical philosophical background, and the importance of moral progress, the therapy of wickedness, and the common experiences of everyday life.

The book, Nanorods and Nanocomposites aims to provide the reader with an overview of the recent advances made on the synthesis of nanorods and nanocomposites and their emerging applications for a better lifestyle. The nanorods are a surprising gift to materials science from the research field of nanoscale materials. Nanorods promise to serve as a building block of the next-generation electronic and optoelectronic devices. Nanocomposite materials are multiphase solid materials that have one organic or inorganic nanoarchitectured compound with various nanostructures, such as nanoparticles, nanowires, nanorods, and nano-films, etc., or with multiphase solid materials (metals, oxides, polymers, and carbon). Due to the progressive physical, chemical, electrical, thermal, optical, electrochemical, and catalytic properties of nanocomposites, they exhibit multi-functional characteristics in a variety of engineering applications such as piezoelectrics, thermoresistors, sensors, energy-related technologies, water purification catalysts, electro-photonics, and so on. Despite the wide variety of applications due to their unique nanostructures, the fabrication of nanocomposites and the realization of their applications in different fields remains a challenging task. The focus of this book is to provide a platform for presentation of the latest knowledge and recent progress in synthesis, functionalization, and applications of nanocomposite materials. It is expected that this book presents the most attractive and versatile technological developments in the field of nanorods and nanocomposite materials and their applications that will provide a better understanding of the currently ongoing research in related fields.

This book is a joint project of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and the Utah State Historical Society. It is distributed to the book trade by Utah State University Press. The valleys, mountains, and deserts of Utah have been home to native peoples for thousands of years. Like peoples around the word, Utah's native inhabitants organized themselves in family units, groups, bands, clans, and tribes. Today, six Indian tribes in Utah are recognized as official entities. They include the Northwestern Shoshone, the Goshutes, the Paiutes, the Utes, the White Mesa or Southern Utes, and the Navajos (Dineh). Each tribe has its own government. Tribe members are citizens of Utah and the United States; however, lines of distinction both within the tribes and with the greater society at large have not always been clear. Migration, interaction, war, trade, intermarriage, common threats, and challenges have made relationships and affiliations more fluid than might be expected. In this volume, the editor and authors endeavor to write the history of Utah's first residents from an Indian perspective. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Utah's American Indians and a concluding chapter summarizes the issues and concerns of contemporary Indians and their leaders. Chapters on each of the six tribes look at origin stories, religion, politics, education, folkways, family life, social activities, economic issues, and important events. They provide an introduction to the rich heritage of Utah's native peoples. This book includes chapters by David Begay, Dennis Defa, Clifford Duncan, Ronald Holt, Nancy Maryboy, Robert McPherson, Mae Parry, Gary Tom, and Mary Jane Yazzie. Forrest Cuch was born and raised on the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. He graduated from Westminster College in 1973 with a bachelor of arts degree in behavioral sciences. He served as education director for the Ute Indian Tribe from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994 he was employed by the Wampanoag Tribe in Gay Head, Massachusetts, first as a planner and then as tribal administrator. Since October 1997 he has been director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

L’épigramme est le genre littéraire le plus bref qu’ait connu l’Antiquité romaine. C’est aussi le plus productif. Des premières adaptations, sous influence hellénistique, jusqu’aux VIe et VIIe siècles de notre ère, il a été particulièrement prisé à Rome. Sa pratique impose au lecteur une attention aigüe aux détails du style et illustre l’ingenium du poète. Les études réunies dans ce volume proposent des analyses nouvelles sur ce qui caractérise la stylistique et, par-delà, la poétique de l’épigramme : aspects métriques, outils rhétoriques à l’œuvre, de la figure de style aux manipulations syntaxiques, jeux intertextuels et enjeux métapoétiques. Les divers aspects des techniques propres à ce genre poétique, abordés ici, sont aussi au service de l’exercice périlleux de la traduction, plus ardu encore, du point de vue stylistique en tout cas, dans le genre épigrammatique, que dans tous les autres.

This Special Issue includes articles which discuss the longstanding recognition of diverse connections between spirituality and addiction, as well as emerging discussions regarding the spiritual dimensions of addiction treatments. The overall focus is on the overlaps between the journey into addiction and the spiritual journey, informed by the insight of Carl Jung that addictive craving and the seeking of ultimate meaning may be intimately connected. The multiplicity of forms which addiction can assume in contemporary society are the scope of the issue. The overall purpose of the Special Issue is to extend the range of manifestations of addiction which are part of a discussion relating to the soul of recovery. Through this extended agenda of forms of addiction, the Special Issue supplements existing literature on the subject of spirituality and addiction.

Sustainability has become a key socio-political issue over recent years. However, whilst the literary-critical community has advanced enthusiastically on an exciting range of environmentally-based analyses (most obviously through the work of ecocriticism), its response specifically to sustainability—as an attempt to reconceptualise the way we live, as an idea with a particular history, and as a ubiquitous term driven through over-use to near meaninglessness—has been extremely limited. The basic idea of the volume is to make a start on filling this gap. Split into four sections: Historicising sustainability, Discourses of sustainability, The sustainability of literature, Sustainability in literature – it has some very good contributors, and starts off with an introduction about the history of the term, looks at its beginnings in the C19th, and goes onto show how contemporary authors are dealing with it including Jeanette Winterson, Michel Houellebecq, Margaret Atwood and Amitav Ghosh.

This book collects 25 scientific articles from laboratories around the world, all of which use botulinum neurotoxins as the main protagonists of their studies. The use of botulinum neurotoxin in medicine, following its ability to inhibit the effects of various disorders of different etiology on the human organism, constitutes the main topic of each article presented here. This book, which is aimed at both students and medical professionals, attempts to summarize current knowledge about the use of botulinum toxin as a therapeutic agent in many diseases, ranging from spasticity to tremor, form motor dysfunction after stroke to neuropathic pain, from hyperactive muscle to migraine, and so on. Thanks to its simplified writing, accessible to an audience who may not be familiar with the mysteries of science, readers will get new insights into this biological toxin and its multiple applications, not simply relegated to its historical use to correct of face wrinkles. Both review and research articles are presented, not only concerning animal studies, but also clinical reports. This book will provide an up-to-date picture of the state-of-the-art of the possible development of novel applications of botulinum neurotoxins for future therapeutic purposes.