Open Access Books

Mathematical models are useful tools to understand the epidemiology and agent-host interaction of diseases. They are developed and applied since over a century, but with increasing computer capacity, they become increasingly prominent as part of evidence based decision making. Mathematical models are frequently used to construct preparedness and contingency plans for highly contagious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease. This allows proposing effective strategies to control the spread of the disease in case of an incursion, and avails useful tools to support decision making during an outbreak. They are also used to monitor, prevent and control endemic diseases within populations or farms. In addition, mathematical models improve our understanding of the contact structure between farms, pointing out risky elements in the contact network for disease introduction or further spread within the population. This Research Topic presents valuable studies presenting different aspects and implementations of mathematical modeling for disease spread and control in the veterinary field. The areas covered include model construction, network analysis, tools for decision makers, and cost-effective control of endemic diseases.

Maaloula, dernier endroit au monde où se parle la langue du Christ, l’araméen… Lové au creux des montagnes du Qalamoun, le petit village ne cesse de fasciner tous les voyageurs depuis la fin du XVIIIe siècle. En effet depuis cette époque, il demeure une sorte de « lieu commun » orientaliste où se pressèrent érudits et missionnaires européens jusqu’à la première moitié du XXe siècle. Les plus grands orientalistes comme Theodor Nöldeke, des aventuriers tels que Richard Burton et même Alexandre ...

Young scientists are a powerful resource for change and sustainable development, as they drive innovation and knowledge creation. However, comparable findings on young scientists in various countries, especially in Africa and developing regions, are generally sparse. Therefore, empirical knowledge on the state of early-career scientists is critical in order to address current challenges faced by those scientists in Africa. This book reports on the main findings of a three-and-a-half-year international project in order to assist its readers in better understanding the African research system in general, and more specifically its young scientists. The first part of the book provides background on the state of science in Africa, and bibliometric findings concerning Africa�s scientific production and networks, for the period 2005 to 2015. The second part of the book combines the findings of a large-scale, quantitative survey and more than 200 qualitative interviews to provide a detailed profile of young scientists and the barriers they face in terms of five aspects of their careers: research output; funding; mobility; collaboration; and mentoring. In each case, field and gender differences are also taken into account. The last part of the book comprises conclusions and recommendations to relevant policy- and decision-makers on desirable changes to current research systems in Africa.

Hungerstreiks gehören zu den bedeutendsten Protestformen der Gegenwart. Das Buch untersucht ihre »Erfindung« und Etablierung in den USA in transnationaler Perspektive. Eng an den Akteur:innen und ihren Lebenswelten orientiert, rekonstruiert es die verschlungenen und konflikthaften Aneignungsprozesse und Debatten über Hungerstreiks als soziale Praxis von ihrer Erfindung im späten 19. Jahrhundert bis zur Rezeption Gandhis im Kampf gegen die rassistische Segregation. Maximilian Buschmann zeigt auf, dass es in Hungerstreiks sowohl um eine Politik des Körpers und der Anerkennung als auch um die Verteidigung eines durch Straf- und Wissensregime herausgeforderten rebellischen Selbst ging.

Cryopreservation of germ cells has potential applications not only for production of next generations of animals but also for general reproductive biology including several field of biology. The present book Recent Advances in Cryopreservation is written by scientists from 5 countries in the field of somatic cells, fish, livestock and humans. In the near future, frontiers in cryopreservation will conceptualise new cryobiological ideas and technologies. We hope the book will be interesting to wide audience.

International arbitration has enjoyed remarkable success. However, in recent years repeated concerns relating to the efficiency of the proceedings have emerged. These concerns have led to the introduction of provisions for expedited arbitral procedures. Through analysing various arbitration rules, this book will examine the require-ments under which expedited procedures are admissible, what the central char-acteristics of such procedures are, and how such procedures can be classified and described in comparison to a conventional arbitral procedure. A significant part will examine the tension between procedural efficiency on the one hand and on quality of the procedure and award on the other. In an excursus, early determination procedures will be examined to complete the tool box to increase procedural efficiency.

The paper is essentially based on two writings by Hannah Arendt: Marx and the tradition of Western political thought and Vita activa. In her confrontation with Marx, the author denounces the ambiguity of the glorification of labour and rejects the idea that absolute domination of necessity may well be lost. In the analysis of the different forms of operating Arendt persists in a characterization of work as a low level of existence because it pertains to the body, needs, the simple preservation of individual life. In this way the feeling of a mutual curlency of labour, work and action is lost. At the bottom of the labour society, Arendt finds marked attention to the happiness of the unhappy people, who would be at the origin of dangerous revolutionary excesses.

Several species of Dinophysis produce one or two groups of lipophilic toxins: okadaic acid (OA) and its derivatives; or the dinophysistoxins (DTXs) (also known as diarrhetic shellfish poisons or DSP toxins) and pectenotoxins (PTXs). DSP toxins are potent inhibitors of protein phosphatases, causing gastrointestinal intoxication in consumers of contaminated seafood. Forty years after the identification of Dinophysis as the causative agent of DSP in Japan, contamination of filter feeding shellfish exposed to Dinophysis blooms is recognized as a problem worldwide. DSP events affect public health and cause considerable losses to the shellfish industry. Costly monitoring programs are implemented in regions with relevant shellfish production to prevent these socioeconomic impacts. Harvest closures are enforced whenever toxin levels exceed regulatory limits (RLs). Dinophysis species are kleptoplastidic dinoflagellates; they feed on ciliates (Mesodinium genus) that have previously acquired plastids from cryptophycean (genera Teleaulax, Plagioselmis, and Geminigera) nanoflagellates. The interactions of Dinophysis with different prey regulate their growth and toxin production. When Dinophysis cells are ingested by shellfish, their toxins are partially biotransformed and bioaccumulated, rendering the shellfish unsuitable for human consumption. DSP toxins may also affect shellfish metabolism. This book covers diverse aspects of the abovementioned topics—from the laboratory culture of Dinophysis and the kinetics of uptake, transformation, and depuration of DSP toxins in shellfish to Dinophysis population dynamics, the monitoring and regulation of DSP toxins, and their impact on the shellfish industry in some of the aquaculture regions that are traditionally most affected, namely, northeastern Japan, western Europe, southern Chile, and New Zealand.

Road pricing is not a new concept—toll roads have existed in Australia since Governor Macquarie established one from Sydney to Parramatta in 1811—and distance-based charging schemes have been trialled and implemented with varying success overseas. But how would full market reform of roads look in a federation like Australia? In its responses to the 2016 Australian Infrastructure Plan and the 2015 Competition Policy Review, the Australian Government explicitly supported investigating cost-reflective road pricing as a long-term reform option, and has committed to establishing a study chaired by an eminent Australian to look into the potential impacts of road pricing reform on road users. The challenges we face in this space are manifold and complex, and we still have a long road ahead of us. However, with advocacy for reform coming from interest groups as diverse as governments, private transport companies, peak industry bodies, policy think tanks and state motoring clubs, there is now more support than ever before for changing the way we provide for and fund our roads. This book seeks to advance the road reform agenda by presenting some of the latest thinking on road pricing and provision from a variety of disciplinary approaches—researchers, economists and public sector leaders. It stresses the need for reform to ensure Australians can enjoy the benefits of efficient and sustainable transport infrastructure as our population and major metropolitan cities continue to grow. Traffic congestion is avoidable, but we must act soon. The works presented here all point to the need for change—the expertise and the technology are available, and the various reform options have been mapped out in some detail. It is time for the policy debate to shift to how, rather than if, road reform should progress.

In diesem Buch wird das Verhältnis zwischen dem Islam und der Moderne, insbesondere aus der muslimischen Perspektive, behandelt. Ausgangspunkt hierfür ist die, vor allem im Westen, weit verbreitete Annahme, der Islam habe den Anschluss an die Moderne verpasst, welche auch als Erklärung für die Rückständigkeit in der muslimischen Welt dient. So soll das muslimische Denken beleuchtet werden, wobei Themen wie Demokratie, Modernisierung, Säkularisierung im Fokus stehen.

In Repentance for the Holocaust, C. K. Martin Chung develops the biblical idea of "turning" (tshuvah) into a conceptual framework to analyze a particular area of contemporary German history, commonly referred to as Vergangenheitsbewältigung or "coming to terms with the past." Chung examines a selection of German responses to the Nazi past, their interaction with the victims’ responses, such as those from Jewish individuals, and their correspondence with biblical repentance. In demonstrating the victims’ influence on German responses, Chung asserts that the phenomenon of Vergangenheitsbewältigung can best be understood in a relational, rather than a national, paradigm. By establishing the conformity between those responses to past atrocities and the idea of "turning," Chung argues that the religious texts from the Old Testament encapsulating this idea (especially the Psalms of Repentance) are viable intellectual resources for dialogues among victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants in the discussion of guilt and responsibility, justice and reparation, remembrance and reconciliation. It is a great irony that after Nazi Germany sought to eliminate each and every single Jew within its reach, postwar Germans have depended on the Jewish device of repentance as a feasible way out of their unparalleled national catastrophe and unprecedented spiritual ruin.In Repentance for the Holocaust, C. K. Martin Chung develops the biblical idea of "turning" (tshuvah) into a conceptual framework to analyze a particular area of contemporary German history, commonly referred to as Vergangenheitsbewältigung or "coming to terms with the past." Chung examines a selection of German responses to the Nazi past, their interaction with the victims' responses, such as those from Jewish individuals, and their correspondence with biblical repentance. In demonstrating the victims’ influence on German responses, Chung asserts that the phenomenon of Vergangenheitsbewältigung can best be understood in a relational, rather than a national, paradigm.By establishing the conformity between those responses to past atrocities and the idea of "turning," Chung argues that the religious texts from the Old Testament encapsulating this idea (especially the Psalms of Repentance) are viable intellectual resources for dialogues among victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and their descendants in the discussion of guilt and responsibility, justice and reparation, remembrance and reconciliation. It is a great irony that after Nazi Germany sought to eliminate each and every single Jew within its reach, postwar Germans have depended on the Jewish device of repentance as a feasible way out of their unparalleled national catastrophe and unprecedented spiritual ruin.

This edited collection arrives at a crucial moment in the evolution of Writing Studies research. It brings together well-known and emerging scholars in the field of Writing Studies, broadly defined, to explore the range of research methods and methodologies, the types of research questions asked, and the types of data in play in research about higher education writing in the 21st century. Its contribution is unique in the current landscape—a collection of carefully detailed descriptions of the research methods that constitute the field today, after fifty years of development—as marked by the 50th anniversary of the 1966 Dartmouth Seminar. The chapters focus on writing and writers in higher education, foregrounding research questions, methods, and data, while defining the areas of research that constitute this interdisciplinary field and offering examples of studies that employ the methods in these areas. Initial chapters address broad questions: the state of the field today, with a special focus on the field’s methods and their (inter)disciplinary history. Contributions then cover domains such as sociological ethnography, cultural-historical activity theory, linguistics, decolonial translation, cognitive science, corpus linguistics in the study of writing in university first year and upper-level contexts, recurring features in writing across academic contexts, work from psychologists studying college writers’ neuroplasticity, and many other domains of writing research. The final chapter argues for the value of lifespan writing research as an emerging domain, while the conclusion presents a synthesis of the major themes of the collection from leading scholars in the field.

The smartphone has become one of the main tenets of contemporary spatial as well as digital migration routes that are increasingly determined by technologies, platforms and networks. Such routes have become increasingly dangerous and uncertain, which testifies of structural criminalisation and control of people on the move, but also raises important questions about autonomy and agency of individuals as a response to restrictive migration and border policies. The monograph explores such transformations by focussing on the movement of refugees across the borders of nation-states through a rethinking of the notion of vulnerability (especially of women and children), the examination of perceptions of refugees and migrants by the public and a reflection of the notions of climate change and climate refugees that all challenge the main classificatory mechanisms constructing more or less “legitimate” groups of migrants. In this vein, the authors argue for more solidarity throughout the movement of individuals through the “gates” and “violent borders” of contemporary nation-states.

This book is a must for librarians with international interest in access to knowledge. It includes a collection of 15 chapters written by authors from all over the world and covers different approaches to the vital role of libraries driving access to knowledge. There are chapters that offer solutions and ideas to enable libraries to become the knowledge engine in society. Other chapters discuss the conceptual part of the subject and related services. The book was compiled as part of the presidential theme of Ellen Tise, IFLA President 2009-2011, with the aim of offering the reader a good portrait of the opportunities and challenges that libraries have in driving access to knowledge.

Fascism is uncontestably one of the great signature phenomena of the 20th century. Debates about the nature of fascism began as early as in the 1920s, but they persist to this day. This volume takes stock of international research on fascism since the 1990s and includes commentary by authors from Germany, the UK, Italy, and the US.