Open Access Books

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting, E-Vote-ID 2024, held in Tarragona, Spain, during October 2-4, 2024. The 10 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. They present research on all aspects of the mechanization of reasoning with tableaux and related methods. The papers cover a wide range of topics connected with electronic voting, including experiences and revisions of the actual uses of E-voting systems and corresponding processes in elections.

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The advent of optical coherence tomography (OCT) has arrived in an era in which the in vivo, cross-sectional imaging of both the retina and choroid is possible. Infra-red rays of light are used to image the chorioretinal layers with an image resolution reaching 10-15 microns. During the last three decades, OCT technology has undergone several improvements, such as spectral domain OCT (SD-OCT), swept source OCT (SS-OCT), enhanced depth imaging (EDI-OCT), wide field OCT, intraoperative OCT, OCT angiography (OCTA), and adaptive optics OCT. These enhancements help in both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of chorioretinal parameters in pathologies such as macular edema, neurosensory detachment, retinoschisis, macular holes, epiretinal membranes, and choroidal tumors. An added advantage is the role of OCT in the evaluation of optic disc disorders, including optic neuritis and glaucoma, via the quantitative analysis of the retinal nerve fiber layer. Moreover, OCT being non-invasive provides an opportunity for serial imaging during follow-up visits. Overall, OCT imaging provides tissue details, closely mimicking the histopathology, and is an invaluable asset in the armamentarium of retina physicians. This special issue includes applications of OCT in various chorioretinal disorders.

This volume brings together the studies presented at the international colloquium ‘Writing to the monastery - writing from the monastery’, which was the fourth scientific meeting held as part of the research programme «MISSIVA, Letters from women in Medieval Europe (Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, 8th-15th centuries»), part of the multi-year programmes of the École des Hautes Études Hispaniques et Ibériques-EHEHI (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid). The published texts focus on letters written by medieval women who lived permanently or temporarily in a monastery, or who wrote to someone who was there.In fact, for these women, choosing divine service and spirituality as a way of life meant accepting cloistered life as their horizon, silence as their daily routine, writing as their select instrument of communication, and letters as their only possible means of contact with the outside world. Thus, these studies examine, on the one hand, the correspondence between nuns or abbesses and the outside world, as well as letters written by women of the nobility or the royal family who lived for varying lengths of time in a religious establishment. On the other hand, they seek to ascertain who the women were who corresponded with monasteries, and why they did so.

The high dynamism of the development of social processes and phenomena determines the formation of a new system of the worldview of mankind, the modification (change) of the hierarchy of needs and values, and challenges to the pace and quality of development. Solving complex problems associated with meeting the requirements of our time requires the use of innovative scientific approaches. Today, the use of modern intellectual technologies, such as neural networks, deep learning, and artificial intelligence, is a prerequisite for the proactive development of all spheres of human activity: medicine, technology, business, environmental protection, education, transport and communication, etc. Thus, the intellectualization of technical and managerial systems can be considered one of the key foundations of the new paradigm of science and technology. The phrase "artificial intelligence systems" today is understandable to everyone. The context of this term is associated with such concepts as robotics, forecasting, processing of large information flows, expert systems, diagnostics, smart home or smart tools projects, cyberphysical space and cyberphysical systems, computer translation, etc. There is a positive dynamics in the development and implementation of artificial intelligence elements in most types of software: mobile applications, information systems, electronic devices, etc. This process of "intellectualization" allows us to talk about a gradual increase in the intelligence of modern computer systems capable of performing functions that are traditionally considered intellectual: understanding language, logical inference, using the accumulated knowledge, learning, pattern recognition, as well as learning and explaining their decisions. The monograph provides methods for training artificial neural networks that have an adaptive structure and can evolve. They are set out in a separate section in the study. These methods are used by the authors in further studies to reduce errors that accumulate during the solution of optimization problems. A separate section presents the issue of self-organization of information networks, using artificial intelligence methods. This study is aimed at solving the scientific and applied problem in terms of increasing the efficiency of self-organization of information networks at the first four levels of the model of interaction of open systems. Separate sections include issues of evaluation and management of organizational and technical systems. These methods are based on metaheuristic algorithms. Assessment of the state of organizational and technical systems makes it possible to determine their state, taking into account the type of uncertainty about the available information, about their state, and in the future to develop adequate and reliable management decisions, taking into account the noise (distortion) of the data circulating in the organizational and technical system The authors' research is supported by appropriate analytical expressions, graphic dependencies, and table values. The monograph will be useful for researchers involved in solving optimization problems, using the theory of artificial intelligence, and developing new (improving existing) approaches to solving complex technical problems in various fields of human activity. The monograph is also useful for practitioners – designers, developers implementing modern solutions in the field of information technology, engaged in the development of information, information and analytical, as well as automated systems to create new schemes and algorithms, their adaptation to non-stereotypical conditions of use, including for the implementation of artificial intelligence methods in the conditions of autonomous work, limitation of computing resources, remote control, etc.

Risk assessment is one of the main parts of complex systematic research of natural and man-made hazards and risks together with the concepts of risk analysis, risk management, acceptable risk, and risk reduction. It is considered as the process of making a recommendation on whether existing risks are acceptable and present risk control measures are adequate, and if they are not, whether alternative risk control measures are justified or will be implemented. Risk assessment incorporates the risk analysis and risk evaluation phases. Risk management is considered as the complete process of risk assessment, risk control, and risk reduction. The book reflects on the state-of-the-art problems and addresses the risk assessment to establish the criteria for ranking risk posed by different types of natural or man-made hazards and disasters, to quantify the impact that hazardous event or process has on population and structures, and to enhance the strategies for risk reduction and avoiding.

Writings by American Indians from the early twentieth century or earlier are rare. Willie Ottogary's letters have the distinction of being firsthand reports of an Indian community's ongoing social life by a community member and leader. The Northwestern Shoshone residing at the Washakie colony in northern Utah descended from survivors of the Bear River Massacre. Most had converted to the Mormon Church and remained in northern Utah rather than moving to a federal Indian reservation. For over twenty years, local newspapers in Utah and southern Idaho regularly published letters from Ottogary reporting happenings-personal milestones and health crises, comings and goings, social events, economic conditions and activities, efforts at political redress-at Washakie and other Shoshone communities in the intermountain West. Matthew Kreitzer compiled and edited the letters of Ottogary and added historical commentary and appendices, biographical data on individuals Ottogary mentioned, and eighty-five rare historical photographs. Written in a vernacular English and printed unedited in the newspapers, the letters describe a society in cultural transition and present Ottogary's distinctively Shoshone point of view on anything affecting his people. Thus, they provide an unusual picture of Shoshone life through a critical period, a time when many Indian communities reached a historical nadir. While the letters unflinchingly report the many difficulties and challenges the Shoshone faced, they portray a vital and dynamic society, whose members led full lives and actively pursued their own interests. Ottogary lobbied constantly for Shoshone rights, forging alliances with Shoshone throughout the region, visiting Washington D.C., advocating legislation, and participating in Goshute-Western Shoshone draft resistance during World War I.

What does it mean to be a realist about science if one takes seriously the view that scientific knowledge is always perspectival, namely historically and culturally situated? In Perspectival Realism, Michela Massimi articulates an original answer to this question. The result is a philosophical view that goes under the name of ‘perspectival realism’ and it offers a new lens for thinking about scientific knowledge, realism, and pluralism in science. Perspectival Realism begins with an exploration of how epistemic communities often resort to several models and a plurality of practices in some areas of inquiry, drawing on examples from nuclear physics, climate science, and developmental psychology. Taking this plurality in science as a starting point, Massimi explains the perspectival nature of scientific representation, the role of scientific models as inferential blueprints, and the variety of realism that naturally accompanies such a view. Perspectival realism is realism about phenomena (rather than about theories or unobservable entities). The result of this novel view is a portrait of scientific knowledge as a collaborative inquiry, where the reliability of science is made possible by a plurality of historically and culturally situated scientific perspectives. Along the way, Massimi offers insights into the nature of scientific modelling, scientific knowledge qua modal knowledge, data-to-phenomena inferences, and natural kinds as sortal concepts. Perspectival realism offers a realist view that takes the multicultural roots of science seriously and couples it with cosmopolitan duties about how one ought to think about scientific knowledge and the distribution of benefits gained from scientific advancements.

This edited volume pays tribute to traditional and innovative language contact research, bringing together contributors with expertise on different languages examining general phenomena of language contact and specific linguistic features which arise in language contact scenarios. A particular focus lies on contact between languages of unbalanced political and symbolic power, language contact and group identity, and the linguistic and societal implications of language contact settings, especially considering contemporary global migration streams. Drawing on various methodological approaches, among others, corpus and contrastive linguistics, linguistic landscapes, sociolinguistic interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the contributions describe phenomena of language contact between and with Romance languages, Semitic languages, and English(es).

This open access book provides an integrated overview of the challenges and resources of large-scale social housing estates in Europe and outlines possible interdisciplinary approaches and tools to promote their regeneration. It especially focuses on the tool of urban living labs, as promising in promoting new and more effective local governance and in including the different actors into the planning process. The book combines theory and practice, since it is the result of action-research conducted in different social housing estates all over Europe. Building on the results of the SoHoLab project (2017–2020), the book benefits from a multidisciplinary perspective, since the researchers involved belong to the fields of anthropology, urban planning, architecture, urban sociology. The project combined theoretical reflections with the installation and/or the consolidation of Urban Living Labs, run by universities, in large social housing estates in three European cities: Brussels, Milan and Paris.

This open access book demonstrates the necessity, feasibility, and effectiveness of cultural adaptation in the translation of mental health scales into Chinese. It illustrates the key principles of culturally effective mental health translation, through offering in-depth discussions of the methods and techniques used to translate mental health materials into Chinese. This SpringerBrief title provides an essential reading for academics, researchers, students from language studies, public health and health communication who are interested to develop more advanced skills of translating and adapting mental health instruments for people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

"Conserving health in early modern culture explores the impact of ideas about healthy living in early modern England and Italy. The attention of medical historians has largely been focussed on the study of illness and medical treatment, yet prevention was one of the cornerstones of early modern medicine. According to Galenic-Hippocratic thought, the preservation of health depended on the careful management of the so-called six ‘Non-Naturals’: the air one breathed; food and drink; excretions; sleep; movement and rest; and emotions. Drawing on visual, material and textual sources, the contributors show the pervasiveness of the preventive paradigm in early modern culture and society. In particular it becomes apparent that concern for the non-naturals informed lay people’s daily lives and routines as well as stimulating innovation in material culture and painting, and influencing discourses in fields as diverse as geology, natural philosophy and religion. At the same time the volume challenges the common assumption that health advice was a uniform and stable body of knowledge, showing instead that models of healthy living were tailored to different genders, age-groups and categories of patients; they also varied over time and depended on the geographical context. In particular, significant differences emerge between what was regarded as beneficial or harmful to health in England and Italy. As well as showing the value of a comparative perspective of study, this interdisciplinary volume will appeal to a wide readership, interested not just in health practices, but in print culture, histories of women, infancy, the environment and of art and material culture."

Isabelle Dolezalek is the recipient of the 2018 ICMA Annual Book Prize. Roger II’s famous mantle and other royal garments from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Sicily prominently display Arabic inscriptions. While the phenomenon is highly unusual in the context of Latin Christian kingship, the use of inscriptions as a textile ornament was common and imbued with political functions in the Islamic courts of the medieval Mediterranean. This case study of the inscribed garments from Norman Sicily draws attention to the diverse functions of Arabic textile inscriptions using various contextual frames. Such a contextual approach not only highlights the specificities of the Norman textile inscriptions and emphasises the practical and political choices underlying their use at the Sicilian court, it also pinpoints the flaws of universalising approaches to transcultural ornamental in circulation in the medieval Mediterranean. This new perspective on the royal garments from Norman Sicily draws from a variety of disciplines, including Islamic and European art history, the history of textiles, epigraphy, legal history and historiography, and aims to challenge established notions of cultural and disciplinary boundaries.

The present work not only contributes to shedding light on the linguistic and socio-historical origins of Afro-Peruvian Spanish, it also helps clarify the controversial puzzle concerning the genesis of Spanish creoles in the Americas in a broader sense. In order to provide a more concrete answer to the questions raised by McWhorter’s book on The Missing Spanish Creoles, the current study has focused on an aspect of the European colonial enterprise in the Americas that has never been closely analyzed in relation to the evolution of Afro-European contact varieties, the legal regulations of black slavery. This book proposes the 'Legal Hypothesis of Creole Genesis', which ascribes a prime importance in the development of Afro-European languages in the Americas to the historical evolution of slavery, from the legal rules contained in the Roman Corpus Juris Civilis to the codes and regulations implemented in the different European colonies overseas. This research was carried out with the belief that creole studies will benefit greatly from a more interdisciplinary approach, capable of combining linguistic, socio-historical, legal, and anthropological insights. This study is meant to represent an eclectic step in such a direction.

The aim of this reprint is to immerse the readers in the latest advancement of nanomaterials for chemical engineering. The superior properties of nanomaterials are helping greatly to improve and even revolutionize the development of various technology- and industry-based sectors. Nonetheless, many challenges are still present in this area, which provide fascinating yet challenging research topics. This is a reprint of the Special Issue “Nanomaterials for Chemical Engineering (Volume II)”. It collects 15 original research articles and 1 comprehensive review paper by excellent scientists from relevant fields covering the topics of nanomaterials synthesis and characterization, the engineering of nanomaterials into composites with novel properties, the development of functional nanomaterials for applications in catalysis and pollutant treatment, the evaluation of the durability and environmental friendliness of the nanomaterials, etc. Moreover, this reprint is at the forefront of global scientific research by including studies on the application of machine learning in the field of nanomaterials for chemical engineering.