Open Access Books

From large cities to rural communities, gay men have long been impassioned pioneers as keepers of culture: rescuing and restoring decrepit buildings, revitalizing blighted neighborhoods, saving artifacts and documents of historical significance. This penchant to preserve, though widely observed, is typically ignored or dismissed as a stereotypical gay cliché, even by many gay men themselves. A Passion to Preserve explores this authentic and complex dimension of gay men’s lives by profiling early and contemporary preservationists from throughout the United States. This eye-opening and provocative book illuminates neglected facets of what it means to be gay and highlights contributions to the larger culture that gays are exceptionally inclined to make.

Perceptual processes mediating recognition, including the recognition of objects and spoken words, is inherently multisensory. This is true in spite of the fact that sensory inputs are segregated in early stages of neuro-sensory encoding. In face-to-face communication, for example, auditory information is processed in the cochlea, encoded in auditory sensory nerve, and processed in lower cortical areas. Eventually, these _sounds_ are processed in higher cortical pathways such as the auditory cortex where it is perceived as speech. Likewise, visual information obtained from observing a talker’s articulators is encoded in lower visual pathways. Subsequently, this information undergoes processing in the visual cortex prior to the extraction of articulatory gestures in higher cortical areas associated with speech and language. As language perception unfolds, information garnered from visual articulators interacts with language processing in multiple brain regions. This occurs via visual projections to auditory, language, and multisensory brain regions. The association of auditory and visual speech signals makes the speech signal a highly _configural_ percept. An important direction for the field is thus to provide ways to measure the extent to which visual speech information influences auditory processing, and likewise, assess how the unisensory components of the signal combine to form a configural/integrated percept. Numerous behavioral measures such as accuracy (e.g., percent correct, susceptibility to the _McGurk Effect_) and reaction time (RT) have been employed to assess multisensory integration ability in speech perception. On the other hand, neural based measures such as fMRI, EEG and MEG have been employed to examine the locus and or time-course of integration. The purpose of this Research Topic is to find converging behavioral and neural based assessments of audiovisual integration in speech perception. A further aim is to investigate speech recognition ability in normal hearing, hearing-impaired, and aging populations. As such, the purpose is to obtain neural measures from EEG as well as fMRI that shed light on the neural bases of multisensory processes, while connecting them to model based measures of reaction time and accuracy in the behavioral domain. In doing so, we endeavor to gain a more thorough description of the neural bases and mechanisms underlying integration in higher order processes such as speech and language recognition.

"The collection, first one ever on Aino Kallas in English, highlights her significance to the artistic and intellectual horizons of modernity of Finland and Estonia as well as those of Scandinavia and Europe. In the 1920s and 30s, Aino Kallas became an internationally renowned author and a selection of her work was translated into English. For her, participating in the immediate cultural debates in Estonia and Finland was a priority, yet her whole oeuvre is a negotiation between her more immediate contexts and the leading conceptual frameworks of aesthetics, geniality, knowledge, subjectivity, race, sexuality, nature, etc., circling in Europe at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Containing articles focusing on the question of female voice and echoes of feminist ecological thought in her fiction, a contrapuntal reading of her fiction and that of Isak Dinesen, her unknown manuscript “Bathseba”, the implications of existentialist thought for her work, Kallas’ engagement in her cultural criticism and life writings with decadent modernism, issues of race and heredity, subjectivity and borders, travel, ageing, her interpretation of Goethe, and the iconography of Kallas, the collection features the work of today’s leading Aino Kallas scholars in Finland and in Estonia. "

This document contains a timeline of key events in the history of the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site. Since it was built in the 1950s, the site’s mission, management structure, and operational partners have changed several times to accommodate the contemporary challenges and research tools. This timeline documents some of these historical changes. The timeline is provided in both tabular and printable wall chart formats.

In recent years, inorganic oxidic nanomaterials have been extensively investigated for their outstanding properties that allow for their use within a large variety of emerging fields of interest, ranging from (photo)catalysis to the development of functional nanocomposites. Nanoscopic metal (eventually mixed) oxides are often fabricated following soft-chemistry approaches, characterized by the possibility of favoring specific morphologies, particle dimensions, and surface porosities through different synthetic methods and templating processes. In this context, surface functionalities and reactivity play a major role in the determination of the final properties of nanomaterials. For this reason, further surface functionalization with specific chemical moieties is often recommended to extend their field of application. This Special Issue aims at extending the comprehension of the mechanisms involved in the synthesis and templating of inorganic oxidic nanomaterials, as well as in their surface functionalization and reactivity. Additionally, this Special Issue aims at increasing the knowledge on the latest advances of these systems in (photo)catalysis; environmental clean-up processes; energy storage; controlled transport and/or release; biomedicine; sensing; and the development of smart-materials, stimuli-responsive materials, and nanocomposites. Furthermore, particular attention is dedicated toward studies describing alternative ecofriendly preparation methods.

This open access volume surveys the state of the field to examine whether a fifth wave of deterrence theory is emerging. Bringing together insights from world-leading experts from three continents, the volume identifies the most pressing strategic challenges, frames theoretical concepts, and describes new strategies. The use and utility of deterrence in today’s strategic environment is a topic of paramount concern to scholars, strategists and policymakers. Ours is a period of considerable strategic turbulence, which in recent years has featured a renewed emphasis on nuclear weapons used in defence postures across different theatres; a dramatic growth in the scale of military cyber capabilities and the frequency with which these are used; and rapid technological progress including the proliferation of long-range strike and unmanned systems. These military-strategic developments occur in a polarized international system, where cooperation between leading powers on arms control regimes is breaking down, states widely make use of hybrid conflict strategies, and the number of internationalized intrastate proxy conflicts has quintupled over the past two decades. Contemporary conflict actors exploit a wider gamut of coercive instruments, which they apply across a wider range of domains. The prevalence of multi-domain coercion across but also beyond traditional dimensions of armed conflict raises an important question: what does effective deterrence look like in the 21st century? Answering that question requires a re-appraisal of key theoretical concepts and dominant strategies of Western and non-Western actors in order to assess how they hold up in today’s world. Air Commodore Professor Dr. Frans Osinga is the Chair of the War Studies Department of the Netherlands Defence Academy and the Special Chair in War Studies at the University Leiden. Dr. Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies and a Research Fellow at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy in Breda.

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of the relationship between art and the archive. The author examines how artists have engaged with archival materials, practices and methodologies throughout history, from the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century to contemporary artistic practices. She explores the ways in which artists have appropriated, transformed and recontextualized archival documents and narratives to create new meanings and perspectives on history, memory, and identity. Guasch also discusses the role of the archive in shaping artistic production, reception and historiography, highlighting its significance as a site of cultural memory and knowledge production. Through a series of case studies and theoretical reflections, the book offers insights into the diverse ways in which artists have navigated the archive as a source of inspiration, critique and intervention in the artistic process. Art and Archive represents an archaeological and genealogical history of the relationships, sometimes linear, sometimes discontinuous, between art and the archive. The archive ceases to be a dusty space or a repository of historical artifacts, to become an active discursive and relational system that establishes — aesthetically, socially and politically — new relationships of temporality between past, present, and future, in what is understood as the time of the “future perfect”.

Chitin is the second most abundant biopolymer after cellulose and is a resourceful copious and cheap biomaterial discovered in 1859 owing to significant industrial and technological utility. Raw chitin-chitosan resembles keratin in its biological functions. Chitin chemistry vastly developed via innate unparalleled biological features and exceptional physicochemical characters. Chitosan endures assorted chemical/physical modifications easily at free proactive functionalities, yet intact bulk properties are achieved through processing, viz., film, membrane, composite, hybrid, nanofibre, nanoparticle, hydrogel and scaffolds. Rapidly lessen bioresources signify chitosan as an option due to renewable eco-friendliness and drive embryonic myriad applications in S&T. Controlled surface modification in its flexible framework imparts advanced functionalized applications in science and technology developments. Chitosan-matrix is advantageous over biopolymers due to inherent economic, versatile and unequivocal portfolio from bio-molecule to quantum dots which traced its great journey in modern S&T. Overall, chitosan chemistry boosted R&D in countless domains like agriculture, biochemical, medicine, pharmaceutics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, material/food science, microbiology, biomedicine, bioengineering, biochemistry, bioprocessing and environment.

Die Religionspädagogik wird in zunehmendem Maße öffentlich. Damit reiht sie sich in den ¼public turn½ der Wissenschaften ein, wie er derzeit in der Soziologie, der Theologie oder den Erziehungswissenschaften zu beobachten ist. Bernhard Grümme zeigt: Was in den verheißungsvollen Aufbrüchen der öffentlichen Religionspädagogik unterbleibt, ist das Bedenken des Öffentlichkeitsbegriffs selbst. Es fehlt vor allem eine Kritik seiner Konstruktionsmechanismen, was dazu führt, dass die Religionspädagogik weder ihr kritisch-konstruktives Potenzial ausloten noch ihre eigenen Verwicklungen in hegemoniale Strukturen von Macht und Exklusion selbstkritisch reflektieren kann.

La Faculté de droit des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis et l’Association pour le droit des étrangers (A.D.D.E.) ont organisé, les 16 et 30 octobre 1992, des journées d’étude destinées à permettre aux étrangers et à ceux qui interviennent à leurs côtés ou sont en contact avec eux de disposer d’une information claire et aussi complète que possible des règles juridiques applicables. Ces journées d’étude ont été centrées sur deux grands axes : - le statut des étrangers - ou, plus exactement, les différents statuts de ceux-ci : ressortissants C.E.E., ressortissants hors C.E.E., réfugiés, étudiants, ainsi que l’examen de diverses questions spéciales relatives à ces différents statuts. - les conditions et modalités de reconnaissance de droits économiques et sociaux aux étrangers, situées dans une perspective européenne. Le présent ouvrage rassemble les contributions présentées à l’occasion de ces journées d’étude.

The volume, dedicated to the 44th International Conference of the Italian Union for Drawing, investigates the theme of ‘Transitions’, which particularly effectively represents our time and the current condition of the discipline of Drawing. The term, beyond its generic meaning of an intermediate stage in a process in which a condition changes from one state to another, has always been used in various fields, from music to geophysics. In fact, the disciplines of drawing have always been confronted with themes and issues relating to transitions from one condition to another. The history of representation tells us of transformations, even epochal ones, relating to ‘drawing’, with all that such transitions entail: suffice it to think of the evolution of forms of representation, of instrumental apparatuses, of the mutability of supports, of the analogical-digital transition underway, of the new modes of communication on platforms, of the hypertrophic offer of images also on the net that confirms Guy Debord’s intuitions relating to the new spectacularisation of society. Similarly, representation triggers transitions in the prefiguration and communication of design, the anticipation and foreshadowing of future events.The challenges posed by the digital pose open questions whose scope can only be glimpsed, such as the relationship between drawing and the act of modelling, and the construction of new paradigms of visual language and communication. ‘Transitions’, almost implicitly, points to possible futures, the evolution of technique and the search for new modes of expression; at the same time, however, it can suggest silences and reflections in a process of connection between history, theory, criticism and construction.

Jednym z najważniejszych zadań, jakie stoją przed nauczycielem języka polskiego na każdym poziomie nauczania, a także przed nauczycielem przedmiotów literaturoznawczych w szkole wyższej, jest przygotowanie ucznia lub studenta do samodzielnego, kompetentnego i wiarygodnego interpretowania tekstów literackich. Tymczasem współczesna szkoła ma wciąż na sumieniu rozmaite grzechy uniemożliwiające realizację tego celu. Jest wśród nich między innymi wciąż pokutujące, choć tyle razy wyśmiewane założenie, że uczeń powinien odgadnąć, „co autor miał na myśli”. Nowszym grzechem jest ukierunkowanie lekcji języka polskiego na nauczanie przede wszystkim wypełniania testów zamiast czytania tekstów. Zdajemy sobie sprawę, że wynika to ze szczególnego, „testowego” zorientowania procesu edukacji, ale nie można usprawiedliwiać wymuszonych w ten sposób działań do tego stopnia, by przestać uczyć rozumienia tekstu.

Published

The coronavirus has questioned many old principles. This also applies to the measurement of economic activities. Methods from the heyday of industrialisation no longer fit to the structural change, first towards a service society, later towards a digital economy and now towards a data economy. A reorientation is urgently needed. This is the focus of this book. The first part deals with the extent to which the current measurement of economic activities - i.e. in particular the gross domestic product and productivity data derived from it - is accompanied by problems that lead to analytical errors in diagnosing and forecasting economic developments. The second part provides an overview of new empirical approaches that can be used to better capture what is happening in the (data) economy.

The issue of psychological contract is of interest to management theoreticians and practice. The current of research on the development and role of psychological contracts in Poland is included in this monograph, which addresses this issue in theoretical terms by presenting the current state of knowledge, and in practical terms by discussing the results of research with recommendations for building psychological contracts. The aim of this monograph was to illustrate the psychological contracts of Polish employees in the changing world of work, and the main purpose of the research was to investigate the differences in the psychological contracts of employees and employers and to find factors that cause these differences and shape the framework of psychological contracts. The measurement of trait-based psychological contracts became the basis of the research model adopted. Six dimensions were proposed and traits were identified for each dimension to capture the nature of contemporary psychological contracts. To achieve the research objective, two quantitative studies were conducted in a time lag. Both research endeavours provided new data to extend the knowledge on psychological contracts, especially their characteristics in the period before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study contributes to the research on psychological contracts using a trait-oriented approach to find differences in the psychological contracts of Polish employees and to find the factors that cause these differences and shape psychological contracts. As a result of the discussions, knowledge in the area of contractual understanding was expanded to include a number of other issues that make up the employer-employee relationship, and the perception of contract from the perspective of the manager in the role of employee and employer was brought closer, indicating the specificity of psychological contracts prevalent before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.