Open Access Books

This Special Issue of Bioengineering explores topics in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology ranging from preclinical modeling to translational research and neurocognitive outcomes. The topics are as below. 1. Radiotherapy advances in pediatric brain tumors; 2. Neurofibromatosis 1 and brain tumors in children; 3. Molecular biology of pediatric gliomas and therapeutic insights; 4. Embryonal tumors of the central nervous system in children-era of targeted therapeutics; 5. Preclinical models in pediatric brain tumors—clinical relevance; 6. Molecular neuroimaging of brain tumors; 7. Palliative care for children with central nervous system malignancies; 8. Neurocognitive and psychosocial outcomes following pediatric brain tumors.

Vigorously advocates for realising translanguaging’s transformative potential in education. This book examines diverse aspects of advocacy for translanguaging as a legitimate educational practice. It advances a practical theory of the translanguaging of education that is informed by deliberative advocacy and based in evidence. Combinations of quantitative and qualitative research from preschool to higher and adult education in different parts of the world give insight into current translanguaging strategies and pedagogies. From translanguaging and transsemiotising in subject lessons such as Mathematics and Geography, to transdisciplinary engagement with poetry and music beyond the classroom, the findings contribute to the development of a practical theory of translanguaging in education, and demonstrate how translanguaging plays a part in everyday language learning and language use. This book is open access under a CC BY ND licence.

Narrative has been the subject of theoretical reflection and empirical investigation since Aristotle’s Poetics. However, with the turn of the millennium, we are witnessing a real narrative turn in the humanities and social sciences. This volume aims to provide an overview of recent developments in the theoretical analysis of narrative, offering the reader a series of contributions that are organized along the following three theoretical-disciplinary axes: theories of narrative at the intersection of cognitive, evolutionary, and computational approaches; narrative theory and cognitive neuroscience; and narrative and storytelling as socio-communicative phenomena.

It is known today that more than 61% of human pathogens are zoonotic, representing 75% of all emerging pathogens during the past decade, presenting an increasing a matter of concern, particularly in modern days where global warming keeps is causing climatic conditions conducive to the introduction of exotic infectious agents or disease vectors in new territories. This book compiles studies that approach a myriad of zoonotic infectious diseases and their complex mechanisms. This is a brief but in-depth collection that showcases the need to address health at the animal–human–environment interface, in a One Health perspective.

"Abusive posts on social media target women engaged in online conversation with words and images that affirm patriarchal ideologies and fixed gender identities, to maintain cyberspace as a man’s world. This book investigates online misogyny as a pervasive yet little-researched form of hate speech. By focusing on six cases of cyber harassment directed at women in Australia, Italy, and the United States, this qualitative analysis reveals specific discursive strategies along with patterns of escalation and mobbing that often intertwine gender-based harassment with racism, homotransphobia, xenophobia, and ageism. The author provides a taxonomy of negative impacts on targets that integrates findings across cases and indicates pathways from hate speech to harms. The study suggests an urgent need for effective measures against the threat posed by misogynistic hate speech to individuals and to an open, respectful forum for online communication. Beatrice Spallaccia is Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the University of Bologna (Department of Interpreting and Translation, Forlì Campus). In 2017 she completed an International PhD (University of Bologna – Monash University) with a thesis on online misogyny. Her academic research focuses on gendered hate speech, anti-gender discourses in Europe, and the translation of LGBTQ-themed literature for young readers."

This article analyzes the functional interaction between bureaucracy and associations within organizational structures. Associations, such as those of farmers, merchants, and livestock producers, act as key players representing collective interests within a structured bureaucracy, facilitating decision-making and the creation of more efficient policies. Through a theoretical analysis, the study examines the collaborative dynamics that emerge from these interactions, highlighting how associations overcome bureaucratic barriers and optimize organizational processes. This research offers a new perspective on the ability of associations to influence organizational management, promoting a framework of functional collaboration within public and private institutions.

In Judentum, Christentum und Islam ist die Orientierung an "Heiligen Texten" zentral. War früher unstrittig, dass diese Texte aufgrund einer "Offenbarung" als direkt von Gott gegeben und als "Wort Gottes" verstanden werden können, ist seit der Aufklärung und historisch-kritischer Methoden die Normativität dieser Texte fraglich geworden. Inwiefern können Glaubende diese Texte als "Wort Gottes" verstehen, ohne in einen "Offenbarungspositivismus" zu verfallen? Wie können sich Religionen bei ethischen Themen oder gesellschaftlichen Positionierungen auf diese Texte aus der Vergangenheit beziehen? Kann der historische Abstand überhaupt überbrückt werden, oder sind diese Texte nur noch aus "rein historischen" Gründen von Interesse? Der Band diskutiert diese Fragen angesichts neuerer Schrifthermeneutik der drei großen monotheistischen Religionen in der Perspektive aufgeklärter Normativität.

Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration.

Cell communication and signaling are essential functions for life. The topic encompasses all basic and translational aspects of cellular communication and signaling pathways in normal and pathological conditions. Many diseases are the result of dysfunction in cell communication and signaling. This book presents contributions ranging from studies of sensory transduction, membrane receptors, ion channels, protein modification, cell transformation, receptor internalization, and trafficking to disease-oriented studies focusing on neurodegenerative diseases or cancer. As such, the book will provide a gateway for newly interested investigators and serve as a resource for seasoned researchers of cell biological phenomena in health and disease. Targeted at students and researchers in biological, medical, and chemical disciplines, this book will provide an overview of the work that is being done on this cell biology topic. The book highlights any gaps and areas that would benefit from further exploration pertaining to both intracellular and intercellular cell communication and signaling. In addition, the book will contribute to the training of current and future cell biologists.

Sinopsis La propuesta investigativa brindó una ruta de acercamiento hacia el rescate de las técnicas, artes y métodos interculturales propios del municipio de San Pablo de Borbur, logrando vincularlos en los procesos formativos de la educación matemática. Lo planteado generó impacto debido a que, según el reporte del Instituto Colombiano para la Evaluación de la Calidad Educativa (Icfes, 2021), para el año 2020, la Institución Educativa Técnica Pablo Valette presentó un bajo nivel en la comprensión, implementación de estrategias y validación de procedimientos en planteamientos de problemas matemáticos. Esto evidenció un escenario desfavorable, ya que el educando debe implementar los conocimientos implícitos en problemas cotidianos y, desde la interpretación, generar una ruta de trabajo para llegar a respuestas correctas que sean validadas desde los diferentes procedimientos aritméticos necesarios para demostrar su veracidad.

Fear and Primordial Trust explores fear as an existential phenomenon and how it can be overcome. Illustrated by clinical examples from the author’s practice as a psychotherapist and spiritual caregiver working with the severely ill and dying, the book outline theoretical insights into how primordial trust and archaic fear unconsciously shape our personality and behavior. This book discusses in detail how in our everyday world, we lack primordial trust. Nevertheless, all of us have internalized it: as experiences of another nondual world, of being unconditionally accepted, then sheltered and nurtured. The book outlines how from a spiritual viewpoint, we come from the non-dual world and experience a transition by becoming an ego, thereby experiencing archaic fear. This book explains fear in terms of two challenges encountered in this transition: firstly, leaving the non-world world when everything changes and we feel forlorn. Secondly, on awakening in the ego when we feel dependent and overwhelmed by otherness. The book also helps readers to understand trust as the emotional and spiritual foundation of the human soul, as well as how fear shapes us and how it can be outgrown. The book makes the case that understanding fear and primordial trust improves care and helps us to better understand dying. It will be of interest to academics, scholars and students in the fields of psychiatry, counselling, psychotherapy, and palliative care and to all those interested in understanding fear, trust, and the healing potential of spiritual experiences.

Socialist Subjectivities works within the logics of queer time to reanimate East German subjectivities in the 1970s and 1980s beyond the narrative of the German Democratic Republic’s long march towards demise. While East Germany certainly ended in dissolution, not all East Germans experienced late socialism in a singular manner. Rather, even after a generation of building socialism, East Germans under Honecker continued to pursue a range of socialist presents and a multiplicity of socialist futures up to and beyond 1989. This edited volume utilizes queer temporalities to interrogate how individuals lived non-normative possibilities in a highly normative world. Whether one was an apparatchik, artist, or alcoholic, the everyday interactions, experiences, and rituals of late socialism proved crucial to establishing the conditions around which subjecthood was constructed. Despite stereotypes of apathy and inertia, East Germans lent a considerable dynamism to their society, and by generating a cacophony of opinions and a heterogeneity of ideas, they constantly transformed state socialism. By foregrounding socialist subjects and the iterative nature of socialism during these decades, this volume paints a richer portrait of East Germany—one that illuminates how East Germans imagined their futures in a society whose collapse they could not foresee.

Human Rights; liberty

This book investigates the formation of subaqueous patterns by means of high-fidelity numerical simulations which resolve all the relevant scales of the flow and the sediment bed. This is required to provide a space- and time-resolved information on the flow field and the sediment bed. Secondly, detailed analysis of the generated data allows to address the different governing mechanisms involved in the formation of patterns as well as to access the validity of various existing models.

It is in general well appreciated that the cortical interneurons play various important roles in cortical neuronal networks both in normal and pathological states. Based on connectivity pattern, developmental, morphological and electrophysiological properties, distinct subgroups of GABAergic interneurons can be differentiated in the neocortex as well as in the hippocampal formation. In this E-Book, we are focusing our attention on inhibitory interneurons expressing calcium-binding protein calretinin (CR). The aim of the E-Book is to consolidate the knowledge about this interneuronal population and to inspire further research on the function and malfunction of these neurons, which – functionally – seem to stand "at the top of the pyramid" of cortical interneuronal types.