Open Access Books

This article is a discussion on the symbolism of the animals that appear in the Apocalypse of St. John, and of the part they play. Motives of the Satan and the lamb have been analyzed in special way. There is also a reference to how the particular species of the animals of the Apocalypse evolved throughout the pages of the Old Testament. The reference is supported by properly chosen citations.

This publication presents a methodology for the design of data warehouse and data mart, and basic techniques for exploring the data collected in them using the SQL. The introduction indicates the importance of data analysis for contemporary business organisations in supporting decision making. Then, various analytical data sources have been characterised and the architectures of modern analytical platforms have been presented. The following chapters provide a detailed presentation of the stages of activities leading to the building of a data warehouse or data mart as the main element of the data layer of an analytical application. In this part the reader will become familiar with the basic terms used in designing such solutions, the data models used in data warehouses and data marts, the methods of their building, and with techniques for exploring these data resources, using the SELECT statement from SQL, which provide support for decision-making processes.

Juvenile delinquency remains a complex, multifactorial challenge in Colombia and Latin America, carrying significant personal, social, and economic costs. Aggression in Juvenile Offenders explores the relationship between certain social cognition variables—such as empathy and affective theory of mind—and affective personality traits, and their influence on aggression in young people in conflict with the law. The study, grounded in an empirical-analytical approach and a non-experimental cross-sectional design, was conducted in two facilities within Colombia’s Juvenile Criminal Responsibility System. Findings indicate that affective traits are stronger predictors of aggressive behavior. In particular, hardness and interpersonal neglect were linked to proactive aggression, whereas hardness and emotional coldness were associated with reactive aggression. The book delivers a rigorous analysis of the investigative, clinical, and social implications of these results, with a focus on strategies for prevention, intervention, and treatment of aggressive behavior in adolescents.

This work, in three volumes, consists of a translation and critical commentary to folios 10b-17a of the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Megillah. The material contained therein comprises the only full midrashic exposition of an entire biblical book to have been incorporated into the Babylonian Talmud, making it the only complete midrashic work that has come down to us from that prominent Jewish community and its rabbinic teachers.

This interesting book takes you into the world of clinical audiology, where experts from all over the world share what they know about how we hear, why hearing can fail, and the best ways to protect and restore it at any age. Think about having to deal with everything from early newborn screenings in remote areas with few resources to figuring out how infections, everyday stress on our cells, and aging slowly take away our ability to hear. This book shows you how to prevent, find, and treat all kinds of hearing problems, whether you were born with them, got them later in life, or developed them over time. You will learn how hearing problems can sneakily affect our memory and thinking as we get older, and why simple tools like hearing aids and tests made for people with hearing problems can help keep our minds sharp and our days brighter. It also discusses personalized care for more complex cases, such as kids with developmental problems, and new ways to help people with tinnitus through gentle, brain-based therapies that are safe and easy to understand. This go-to guide gives doctors, families, and anyone who cares real-world tips on how to improve their hearing, talk more, connect with others, and live a fuller life. It shows that no one has to deal with silence alone.

Durante los siglos XVII y XVIII se presentaron varias querellas ante el tribunal de justicia criminal del Nuevo Reino de Granada, en las que se denunciaba que había personas que ejercían los oficios médicos sin tener títulos que los acreditaran como facultativos en las artes curativas. Por ese entonces, se creía que quienes utilizaban yerbas y conjuros como métodos terapéuticos, por lo general mujeres, debían ser juzgadas como yerbateras-envenenadoras, porque no pretendían curar sino matar a quien consumiera sus preparados. Este texto establece que los procesos criminales por envenenamiento constituyen un prisma en el que convergen diferentes problemáticas del periodo colonial neogranadino, relacionadas con la salud, los oficios médicos, las enfermedades, las creencias mágico-religiosas, el ideal de mujer en la época, la delincuencia, y las dinámicas de las instituciones españolas, entre otras.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) offers important challenges to understanding its complex genetics and molecular and immunological mechanisms, which eventually lead to relapsing and progressive clinical forms and a constellation of clinical manifestations. Along with the progress in knowledge, disease-modifying treatments and new therapeutic molecules have made an impact on the prognosis of the disease. Essential in the diagnostic identification process of MS is the differentiation of this major demyelinating disease with other inflammatory CNS disorders, including Neuromyelitis Optica and MOG antibody disease. MS is more prevalent in women; therefore, pregnancy and post-partum hormonal and immunological changes typically affect the clinical behavior of the disease. This Special Issue of Biomedicines addresses recent advances in the mechanistic genetic and immunological processes of MS, opening more options to future studies and to the consideration of further therapeutic possibilities. The issue discusses the application of modern therapies, including monoclonal antibodies, some still in the process of complete development, and the current strategies managing progressive MS. The aim of this issue is to stimulate basic and clinical research and promote observations on the ever-expanding and complex field of MS. Advancement in the understanding of the mechanisms and the clinical characterizations of this disease should result in improved therapeutic outcomes that reduce neurological and cognitive disability commonly associated with progressive disease.

In early March of 2020, Americans watched with uncertain terror as the novel coronavirus pandemic unfolded. One week later, Ohio announced its first confirmed cases. Just one year later, the state had over a million cases and 18,000 Ohioans had died. What happened in that first pandemic year is not only a story of a public health disaster, but also a story of social disparities and moral dilemmas, of lives and livelihoods turned upside down, and of institutions and safety nets stretched to their limits. Ohio under COVID tells the human story of COVID in Ohio, America’s bellwether state. Scholars and practitioners examine the pandemic response from multiple angles, and contributors from numerous walks of life offer moving first-person reflections. Two themes emerge again and again: how the pandemic revealed a deep tension between individual autonomy and the collective good, and how it exacerbated social inequalities in a state divided along social, economic, and political lines. Chapters address topics such as mask mandates, ableism, prisons, food insecurity, access to reproductive health care, and the need for more Black doctors. The book concludes with an interview with Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s top public health official at the time COVID hit Ohio. Ohio under COVID captures the devastating impact of the pandemic, both in the public discord it has unearthed and in the unfair burdens it has placed on the groups least equipped to bear them.

Real and virtual are often considered terms in reciprocal opposition, but the boundaries between the two are blurred. The main goal of our study consists in answering the question whether the presence of a third dimension (3D) is a fundamental step of the virtual toward the real world, and if it causes some difference in the neural activity of the spectator [8]. Also, the possibility to consider real what is virtual will be discussed [6, 7].

This volume serves as a contribution to the study of diasporas in antiquity and a stimulus to further investigations of other ancient diasporas and their effect. It is a culmination of discussions that took place during the conference, Diasporas in Antiquity, held on the 30th of April, 1992.

Relational database management systems, using as foundations a formal language, first-order logic, serve as mediators between individuals and machines. With the increase in the volume of data disseminated on the Web, a “collective intelligence” is currently emerging, shaped by large search engines whose monopoly raises ethical and political questions. One of the main challenges for the coming years is the development of technologies that will make it possible to find, evaluate, validate, veri...

Les mutations en cours de nos sociétés avivent le débat sur les identités politiques. Leur origine médiévale bénéficie ainsi d’un intérêt accru. La question s’inscrit simultanément dans une nouvelle histoire des pouvoirs, qui cherche leurs fondements. Entre ces bases, les sentiments d’appartenance tirent un rôle majeur. L’enjeu s’imposa avec acuité aux Capétiens de Sicile, ou « Angevins », entre XIIIe et XVe siècle. Ils gouvernaient des territoires dispersés de la Grèce voire de la Terre sainte à l’Anjou. Ils étaient d’origine étrangère à leurs peuples. Ils devaient gagner la reconnaissance de communautés et d’aristocraties multiples. Ils assirent pourtant une autorité acceptée pour légitime parce que capable d’unir autour de valeurs communes, tout en composant avec différentes traditions identitaires. Les seize contributions ici publiées analysent cette délicate combinaison, en privilégiant Provence et partie continentale du royaume de Sicile comme centres de gravité des domaines « angevins ».

Aunque hoy la idea del reconocimiento de la diversidad cultural, sobre todo en relación a las poblaciones originarias de América Latina, parezca obvia en su realidad y potencialidad, debemos recordar que durante la transición democrática de los años ochenta se imponía aún la visión de naciones homogéneas. ¿Se ocultaban así las fracturas que subyacen al principio nacional, igualador abstracto y negador concreto de asimetrías de clase, género y etnicidad? Por supuesto, y tales injusticias básicas persistían desde el nacimiento mismo de los Estados, escapando, década tras década, a la atención de izquierdas y derechas, de republicanismos y populismos, infaliblemente convocados por un supuesto «interés nacional» superador de diferencias. Sin embargo, en la actualidad, esa perspectiva es cuestionada por la pluralidad de voces que, desde las comunidades locales y en nombre de identidades nuevas o largo tiempo soterradas, buscan manifestarse, hacerse escuchar por el poder institucional y ganar en autonomía. Este volumen reúne trabajos de distinguidos especialistas que se abocan a examinar esta problemática a través de casos contemporáneos, poniendo de relieve, por ejemplo, los vínculos entre indigeneidad y política, los desafíos de la participación ciudadana y el reconocimiento constitucional de la plurinacionalidad.

The critical turn in religious studies proved an invaluable, contextual corrective to naïve essentializations of the category of mysticism. However, over the past few decades, this left comparative mysticism studies in a state of turmoil. Now, researchers are finding that this added sensitivity does not require abandoning the term altogether, and that we must somehow account for the self-evident similarity and spread of practices and phenomena that may be loosely grouped under the family-resemblance term of “mysticism.” Indeed, a post-critique recovery of mysticisms appears to be underway in multiple disciplines and settings. This Reprint developed as a Special Issue from this post-critique impulse to probe new approaches, methods, and theories to study mysticisms. It invited theoretical, methodological, and empirical research papers from any disciplinary perspective to shed new light on how to study mysticism in any religious or non-religious context. The papers may be used as independent, disciplinary references but also collectively by comparative mysticism scholars and advanced students. Contributions to the Reprint all relate to the general and comparative category of mysticism, but with light hands, so to speak. Above all, the papers all assume, if it may be put that way, a mysticality, a sense by which we can grasp something of what mystics say, even though those experiences might be ineffable and we do not (or cannot) have immediate access to what mystics claim. It is with this post-critique approach to mysticism that this Reprint seeks to contribute to the field and encourage further studies.

The high effectiveness of antibodies as anti-tumor therapeutic agents has led to a burst of research aiming to increase their therapeutic applications by the use of antibodies against new targets, new antibody formats or new combinations. In this e-book we present relevant research depicting the current efforts in the field.