Open Access Books

This book explores the nature of technology – participatory media in particular – and its effects on our friendships and our fundamental sense of togetherness. Situating the notion of friendship in the modern era, the author examines the possibilities and challenges of technology on our friendships. Taking a media ecology approach to interpersonal communication, she looks at issues around phenomenology, recognition of friends as unique, hermeneutics in a digital world and mediated communication, social dimensions of time and space, and communication ethics. Examining friendship as a communicative phenomenon and exploring the ways in which it is created, sustained, managed, produced, and reproduced, this book will be relevant to scholars and students of interpersonal communication, mediated communication, communication theory and philosophy, and media ecology. This book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003188810/friendship-technology-tiffany-petricini

The monograph From Social Responsibility to ESG in Management. Selected Aspects explores the concept of corporate social responsibility by considering environmental, social, and managerial criteria, known as ESG criteria. It specifically examines the integration of ESG factors by companies and capital markets in response to stakeholder needs and expectations. The monograph provides up-to-date information, research findings, and the most recent guidelines for non-financial reporting. It focuses on the evolution of ESG factors integration in the Polish market, analyzing socially responsible investing, ESG indices on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and the current state of non-financial reporting in Poland. Using various research methods, this publication offers comprehensive analyses of the significance and role of CSR concepts and ESG dimensions, making it a valuable resource for both management theorists and practitioners.

Increasingly, iron oxide nanoparticles are being synthesized due to their unique properties and applications. They are some of the most abundant minerals on Earth and they exist in varying phases and possess different crystal structures, sizes, and shapes in nature. This book provides a comprehensive and updated review of iron oxide nanoparticles, including their newly discovered properties, their application prospects in biomedicine and green energy, and their synthesis. In addition to serving as a valuable reference, this book also provides a bridge between research in the fields of minerals, chemistry, geology, biology, agronomy, medicine, green energy, and nanotechnology.

The book minutely depicts the territorial organization of religions and confessions in the Crown part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the eighteenth century. It focuses on the spatial range and variety of the communities in the region, which was a melting pot of many different religions, confessions and denominations. The picture the book paints owes its depth and detail both to the characterization of the borderlands, and to the heterogeneous and homogeneous zones. Prof. Michael Müller: "The book represents a methodologically most innovative, and empirically very rich, contribution to at least three fields of study: historical geography, religious history and historical demography. For the first time, we get a full, and reliable, picture of the churches of all Christian denominations and of the synagogues (and of the religious institutions and organizations behind them) that existed in the lands of the Crown prior to the first partition of Poland."

Nowadays, the newest technologies, devices, and techniques related to IoT, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are constantly developing. Therefore, they have a significant impact on our sustainable lifestyle. Accordingly, the application domain of these technologies and tools involves agriculture, water management, healthcare, bioinformatics, smart grid, smart cities, security, and so on. In addition, the IoT has brought an innovative perspective that is totally distinct from the usual approaches: the former consists of a device that can communicate with the network and is capable of implementing intelligent solutions. The goal of this Special Issue is to create a common gateway between researchers, allowing them to exchange and share their results related to the application of IoT, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in various domains.

The modern US Army as we know it was largely created in the years between the two world wars. Prior to World War I, officers in leadership positions were increasingly convinced that building a new army could not take place as a series of random developments but was an enterprise that had to be guided by a distinct military policy that enjoyed the support of the nation. In 1920, Congress accepted that idea and embodied it in the National Defense Act. In doing so it also accepted army leadership’s idea of entrusting America’s security to a unique force, the Citizen Army, and tasked the nation’s Regular Army with developing and training that force. Creating the Modern Army details the efforts of the Regular Army to do so in the face of austerity budgets and public apathy while simultaneously responding to the challenges posed by the new and revolutionary mechanization of warfare. In this book Woolley focuses on the development of what he sees as the four major features of the modernized army that emerged due to these efforts. These included the creation of the civilian components of the new army: the Citizen’s Military Training Camps, the Officer Reserve Corps, the National Guard, and the Reserve Officer Training Corps; the development of the four major combat branches as the structural basis for organizing the army as well as creating the means to educate new officers and soldiers about their craft and to socialize them into an army culture; the creation of a rationalized and progressive system of professional military education; and the initial mechanization of the combat branches. Woolley also points out how the development of the army in this period was heavily influenced by policies and actions of the president and Congress. The US Army that fought World War II was clearly a citizen army whose leadership was largely trained within the framework of the institutions of the army created by the National Defense Act. The way that army fought the war may have been less decisive and more costly in terms of lives and money than it should have been. But that army won the war and therefore validated the citizen army as the US way of war. This book is published as part of the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

In Imposing Standards, Martin Hearson shifts the focus of political rhetoric regarding international tax rules from tax havens and the Global North to the damaging impact of this regime on the Global South. Even when not exploited by tax dodgers, international tax standards place severe limits on the ability of developing countries to tax businesses, denying the Global South access to much-needed revenue. The international rules that allow tax avoidance by multinational corporations have dominated political debate about international tax in the United States and Europe, especially since the global financial crisis of 2007–2008.Hearson asks how developing countries willingly gave up their right to tax foreign companies, charting their assimilation into an OECD-led regime from the days of early independence to the present day. Based on interviews with treaty negotiators, policymakers and lobbyists, as well as observation at intergovernmental meetings, archival research, and fieldwork in Africa and Asia, Imposing Standards shows that capacity constraints and imperfect negotiation strategies in developing countries were exploited by capital-exporting states, shielding multinationals from taxation and depriving nations in the Global South of revenue they both need and deserve.Thanks to generous funding from the Gates Foundation, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellopen.org) and other repositories.

International health security (IHS) is a broad and highly heterogeneous area. Within this general context, IHS encompasses subdomains that potentially influence (and more specifically endanger) the well-being and wellness of humans. The general umbrella of IHS includes, but is not limited to, natural disasters, emerging infectious diseases (EID) and pandemics, rapid urbanization, social determinants of health, population growth, systemic racism and discrimination, environmental matters, civilian violence and warfare, various forms of terrorism, misuse of antibiotics, and the misuse of social media. The need for this expanded definition of health security stems from the realization that topics such as EID; food, water, and pharmaceutical supply chain safety; medical and health information cybersecurity; and bioterrorism, although important within the overall realm of health security, are not only able to actively modulate the wellness and health of human populations, but also tend to do so in a synergistic fashion. This inaugural tome of a multi-volume collection, Contemporary Developments and Perspectives in International Health Security, introduces many of the topics directly relevant to modern IHS theory and practice. This first volume provides a solid foundation for future installments of this important and relevant book series.

Today's ignorance of German-Turkish relations before the 1961 recruitment agreement stands in astonishing contrast to the attention paid to the Ottoman Empire before and during the First World War. Using a variety of previously unknown historical sources, the author reconstructs how German pedagogy and teachers in the Wilhelmine Empire contributed to the shaping of a German-Turkish educational space. To this end, she takes a transnational perspective on the actors, networks, and discourses that flanked Germany's world power ambitions at the time in terms of cultural policy. With her study, she makes an insightful contribution to the postcolonial historiography of pedagogy and educational science.

« Le but de l’écriture, c’est de porter la vie à l’état d’une puissance non personnelle », nous dit Gilles Deleuze. En définissant ainsi la littérature, Deleuze nous demande de ne plus la penser en termes thématiques, ni même génériques, mais plutôt en termes d’activité et de créativité. De sa définition, entre esthétique et esquisse d’une théorie de la réception, de « l’impersonnel » du texte littéraire comme « flux qui conjugue avec d’autres flux », naissent de nombreuses questions : l’impersonnel peut-il nous aider à mieux penser le texte et, inversement, aider le texte à se penser soi-même ? Comment le texte et l’écriture amènent-ils l’écrivain à dépasser le seuil de sa propre vie, son propre contexte, sa propre histoire pour toucher quelque chose en dehors de la vie ? Qu’arrive-t-il au lecteur d’un tel texte ? Qu’advient-il dans cette rencontre entre lecteur et texte impersonnel ? Ouvert à toutes les littératures d’Europe et d’Amérique, cet ouvrage est la réponse de chercheurs, de philosophes et de poètes à cette notion problématique. Par-delà la définition deleuzienne, il s’agit d’établir un dialogue entre l’impersonnel et les concepts connexes d’impersonnalité, de dépersonnalisation et de voix collective en littérature. Pour que l’impersonnel ne soit pas simplement le négatif d’une personnalisation valorisée.

In childhood and youth, an engagement with aesthetic modes of representation and perception is of great importance. The significance of aesthetic positionings – for instance through the choice of clothing or accessories, through make-up or gadgets – can on the one hand be interpreted as signs of a successful commercialization of childhood and youth. On the other hand, however, they testify to the savvy with which children and teenagers make their daily world their own and develop their design aesthetics. In order to consider the related social conditions of aesthetics, economies, and inter-generational relationships, this transdisciplinary volume brings together a range of research perspectives on everyday aesthetics in childhood and youth.

Interest in the application of High-Value Products from natural sources for human health, the food and cosmetics industry, and animal feed has increased significantly as consumers increasingly prefer natural ingredients and show concerns about the toxic effects of synthetic compounds. Photosynthetic organisms have evolved different strategies to survive under complex and extreme environmental conditions (high light, high salinity, extreme temperature, nutrient deficiency, UV- radiation) by adapting their metabolism. Various species of algae can produce large amounts of secondary metabolites such as carotenoids, polyphenols, and essential oils, which have varied therapeutic properties, due to their antioxidant activity. This variation may depend mainly on the species, strains, genetic diversity, and/or abiotic stress. For this reason, numerous studies have been carried out to increase knowledge in this field and to optimize the recovery of natural antioxidant compounds under different growing conditions and with different stress factors. This Special Issue focuses on promoting algae capable of producing High-Value Products, as well as cultivation technologies, strategies, and growth conditions that lead to the popularization of these compounds; techniques for the extraction and purification of these compounds and their potential applications will also be explored.

This book explores in a comparative approach the astounding medial variety and intermedial interleaving of cultural engagements with the subject of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans in nineteenth-century Germany. Its main argument is that the pervasive discursive presence of the historical occurrence constitutes a significant but so far largely neglected arena for the negotiation of shifting German and Jewish imaginaries in which both German and Jewish creative minds engaged. Interpreted as pivotal not only for the progression of the history of salvation but also of universal history and responding to such decisive socio-cultural and political developments as the Kulturkampf and the rise of nationalism and antisemitism, the profusion of cultural engagements with the subject reveals its frequently contradictory polyvalence in the tense atmosphere of national unification, the negotiation of religious and national identities, and the positioning of the Jewish other; but also as a vehicle of Jewish self-definition and self-assertion in a period of proliferating antisemitism. The book addresses a broad readership of scholars of the culture of the nineteenth century, of intermediality, and of antisemitism.

Although the seminal work of Fujishima et al. dates back to 1971, TiO2 still remains the most diffused and studied semiconductor, employed in photo-oxidation processes for cleantech (i.e., polluted water and air treatment), in solar fuel production (mainly hydrogen production by water photo splitting), and in Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) processes by CO2 photoreduction. The eleven articles, among them three reviews, in this book cover recent results and research trends of various aspects of titanium dioxide photocatalysis, with the chief aim of improving the final efficiency of TiO2-based materials. Strategies include doping, metal co-catalyst deposition, and the realization of composites with plasmonic materials, other semiconductors, and graphene. Photocatalysts with high efficiency and selectivity can be also obtained by controlling the precise crystal shape (and homogeneous size) and the organization in superstructures from ultrathin films to hierarchical nanostructures. Finally, the theoretical modeling of TiO2 nanoparticles is discussed and highlighted. The range of topics addressed in this book will stimulate the reader’s interest as well as provide a valuable source of information for researchers in academia and industry.

The names of most of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s cabinet members are well known. Anyone familiar with FDR’s administration will remember Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Cordell Hull, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, and James Farley. One member of that circle, however, has remained a virtual unknown: Harry H. Woodring, the recalcitrant Secretary of War who was forced by Roosevelt to resign from the cabinet.It is doubtful that the story of any of Roosevelt’s cabinet members is more interesting than that of Woodring. With the breakdown of world peace in the 1930s, the matter of national defense became a major concern, and the United States military establishment became increasingly important. Woodring’s role in Washington during this time was a critical one; his dealings with Roosevelt were extensive, and on many key issues his influence was considerable. Why, then, his lack of notoriety?The simple fact is that until now almost nothing has been written of Woodring’s service as Secretary of War. He was one of the few individuals closely associated with Roosevelt who did not write an autobiography, memoirs, or some other personal account of what took place during those years. Keith D. McFarland is the first scholar to have had access to Woodring’s personal papers. Drawing from this new material, as well as from Woodring’s official correspondence and from personal interviews with the members of Woodring’s immediate family and dozens of Woodring’s associates, he provides in this volume the careful study that has long been needed.McFarland first traces Woodring’s early political career in Kansas. As a Democratic Governor from 1931 to 1933, Woodring worked successfully with the Republicandominated legislature to alleviate many of the physical and economic hardships facing residents of the state during the Depression, Nevertheless, he lost his bid for reelection to Alf M. Landon. When Roosevelt won the presidency that same year, he appointed Woodring as Assistant Secretary of War.Woodring served the country well on the national level. He was influential to expanding the Army Air Corps and in making practical the Army’s industrial and military mobilization plans. After the death of George Dern in 1936, Roosevelt demonstrated his confidence in Woodring by appointing him Secretary of War.The conflict between Woodring and the President arose over the sending of American military supplies and equipment to foreign nations. It was Woodring’s job as secretary of War to see that the War Department adhered to the neutrality legislation of the 1930s. Roosevelt believed that the United States should aid the enemies of Hitler, even if such action did not adhere to the spirit of the neutrality legislation. Upon the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, FDR did everything he could to supply Britain and France with American arms and munitions. Woodring was caught between is loyalty and devotion to the President and his sincere belief that the chief executive’s program would endanger the nation’s security. Maintaining that it was tactically unsound to give away supplies at a time when the U.S. Army was in desperate need of such items, Woodring made concerted efforts to prevent the implementation of FDR’s program. The President was forced to ask him to resign.Few American Presidents have been more respected and admired than Franklin D. Roosevelt. There has been a tendency to disregard, ignore, or ridicule those administrative officials who disagreed with his actions and objectives. In relating the viewpoint of a distinguished, patriotic American who strongly opposed FDR’s policies and tried to change them, this book provides a clearer understanding of politics and government in preWorld War II America.