Open Access Books

The embarrassing living conditions of more than one billion poor people in developing countries in combination with the increasing gap of living standards between the poor and the rich, has provided a strong motivation for development policy to change this situation. From its beginning, policy has aimed for stimulating economic growth in order to improve living conditions for everyone. The endurance of poverty, however, has motivated to extend the traditional »growth is good for the poor« by a more targeted policy that combines growth with a particular emphasis on improving the situation of the poor. This is exactly the objective of »pro-poor growth«, a term that became popular during the late 1990s and which seemed to dominate the stage with the propagation of the Millennium Development Goals, including its goal to halve poverty by 2015. This volume contains six papers that address various core issues of pro-poor growth policies. These papers were presented at the annual meeting of the Research Committee Development Economics (Ausschuss Entwicklungsländer des Vereins für Socialpolitik) in 2005. Papers were lively discussed at the meeting and later on improved by comments from anonymous referees. All authors have done extensive research in the field of pro-poor growth, including field studies. Accordingly, their contributions - reflecting this knowledge and proficiency - pick up recent developments in the field. The discussion of most appropriate pro-poor growth policies is an ongoing process which has been documented by a growing literature. The value added of the present volume is obviously not to be more comprehensive than others but rather to continue the line of work by bringing some recent research findings - with a focus on policy relevance and empirical substantiation - to a broader audience.

Aluminium alloys are among the most interesting materials being adopted for weight reduction and recycling benefits. The increasing importance of aluminium alloys over the years is due to their widespread use and applications in automotive, aerospace, food handling, building, heat exchange, and electrical transmission industries. Their high strength/weight ratio makes aluminium alloys useful for applications where simultaneous high strength and lightness are needed.This book provides a comprehensive review of the design and development of innovative aluminium alloys and composites. Chapters discuss manufacturing processes and applications and are heavily illustrated to make the concepts clear.

This book illuminates the personal experience of being at the centre of a media scandal. The existential level of that experience is highlighted by means of the application of ethnological and phenomenological perspectives to extensive empirical material drawn from a Swedish context. The questions raised and answered in this book include the following: How does the experience of being the protagonist in a media scandal affect a person’s everyday life? What happens to routines, trust, and self-confidence? How does it change the basic settings of his or her lifeworld? The analysis also contributes new perspectives on the fusion between interpersonal communication that takes place face to face, such as gossip and rumours, and traditional news media in the course of a scandal. A scandal derives its momentum from the audiences, whose engagement in the moral story determines its dissemination and duration. The nature of that engagement also affects the protagonist in specific ways. Members of the public participate through traditional oral communication, one vital aspect of which is activity in digital, social forums. The author argues that gossip and rumour must be included in the idea of the media system if we are to be able to understand the formation and power of a media scandal, a contention which entails critiques of earlier research. Oral interpersonal communication does not disappear when new communication possibilities arise. Indeed, it may be invigorated by them. The term news legend is introduced, to capture the entanglement between traditional news-media storytelling and oral narrative

Natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) are pharmaceutically accepted systems not only because they typically offer a serious enhancement of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) solubility, but also due to their non-toxicity. This fortunate conjuncture allows for designing new media for escalation and controlled release of APIs. For example, composition optimisation of a series of NADES comprising choline chloride with multi-hydroxyl compounds was successfully performed for a set of sulphonamide-based drugs. These results confirmed that NADES in general, and the ones based on choline chloride and glycerol particularly, are an attractive alternative to traditional solvents for sulphonamide dissolution. Experiments augmented with in silico modelling can offer deeper insights into the thermodynamic characteristics of these systems and an explanation for the origin of the observed solubility enhancement. Research of this type offers universal resolutions to the problem of low solubility issues for many types of drugs. Of particular interest is that such screening is not restricted to artificial in vitro environments but can be also easily adopted for the study of modelled in vivo situations. One of very important and interesting examples is a new curcumin–NADES formulation preserving its beneficial properties even after dilution with FaSSIF solution, which mimicks intestinal absorption.

History of Athenian figure-decorated pottery from the 6th to the 4th centuries BC, touching on technological aspects and iconography as well as on the find contexts of the vases. It also showcases current and past approaches to the study of Athenian pottery, making special emphasis on the figure of Sir John Beazley, the Oxford Professor who contributed to shape the discipline.

Adverse and reportable information must be considered at the time of assignments, promotions, and retirements of senior military officers. This monograph documents current policies and practices for identifying and considering such information, identifies potential gaps in these processes, and makes recommendations on how to make them more consistent and reliable.

Le thème des rapports entre corps et voix dans les danses du théâtre antique touche à une forme originale de spectacle dont certains aspects peuvent apparaître très contemporains : plusieurs chorégraphes actuels font parler leurs danseurs, ou les font évoluer sur un support sonore de paroles (ou de chants). La problématique de l’ouvrage rejoint donc certaines questions qui se posent dans les spectacles d’aujourd’hui, même si le théâtre grec conserve ses caractéristiques spécifiques (notamment le port du masque, la langue grecque, la musique hellénique). Elle croise différentes approches (iconographie, mise en scène, métrique, musicologie, chorégraphie).

Alexandra T. Vazquez listens to the music and history of Miami to explore the city’s sonic cultures and its material and social realities.

Human lactation has evolved to produce a milk composition that is uniquely-designed for the human infant. Not only does human milk optimize infant growth and development, it also provides protection from infection and disease. More recently, the importance of human milk and breastfeeding in the programming of infant health has risen to the fore. Anchoring of infant feeding in the developmental origins of health and disease has led to a resurgence of research focused in this area. Milk composition is highly variable both between and within mothers. Indeed the distinct maternal human milk signature, including its own microbiome, is influenced by environmental factors, such as diet, health, body composition and geographic residence. An understanding of these changes will lead to unravelling the adaptation of milk to the environment and its impact on the infant. In terms of the promotion of breastfeeding, health economics and epidemiology is instrumental in shaping public health policy and identifying barriers to breastfeeding. Further, basic research is imperative in order to design evidence-based interventions to improve both breastfeeding duration and women’s breastfeeding experience.

This volume comprises the published proceedings of a conference organized by the Société d’archéologie médiévale and the Groupement de recherche 94 of the CNRS which was held at Aix-en-Provence between September 1989 28th and 30th. The papers were grouped according to three themes which play a leading part in the study of medieval rural settlement. The first deals with the influence of late Antiquity on the religious topography of the medieval countryside and the problem of continuity of the ecclesiastical and funerary use of sites. The second adresses the role of churches as foci for the organisation of settlement; this phenomenon, which was promoted by the interests of the Peace of God movement, formed the basis of units of population which appear sometimes to have been in competition with the emergent system of castellanies. The last theme concerns the organisation of ecclesiastical estates.

The award-winning novelist Rohinton Mistry is recognised as one of the most important contemporary writers of postcolonial literature. His subtle yet powerful narratives engross general readers, excite critical acclaim and form staple elements of literature courses across the world. This study - the first of its kind on this writer - will provide scholars and students with an insight into the key features of Mistry's work. Peter Morey suggests how the author's writing can be read in terms of recent Indian political history, his native Zoroastrian culture and ethos, and the experience of migration which now sees him living in Canada. The texts are viewed through the lens of diaspora and minority discourse theories to show how Mistry's writing is illustrative of marginal positions in relation to sanctioned national identities. In addition, Mistry utilises and blends the conventions of oral storytelling common to the Persian and South Asian traditions with nods in the direction of the canonical figures of modern European literature, sometimes reworking and reinflecting their registers and preoccupations to create a distinctive voice redolent of the hybrid inheritance of Parsi culture and of the postcolonial predicament more generally.

Parallel and distributed computing has been one of the most active areas of research in recent years. The techniques involved have found significant applications in areas as diverse as engineering, management, natural sciences, and social sciences. This book reports state-of-the-art topics and advances in this emerging field. Completely up-to-date, aspects it examines include the following: 1) Social networks; 2) Smart grids; 3) Graphic processing unit computation; 4) Distributed software development tools; 5) Analytic hierarchy process and the analytic network process

In recent years, the concern of society about how food influences the health status of people has increased. Consumers are increasingly aware that food can prevent the development of certain diseases, so in recent years, the food industry is developing new, healthier products taking into account aspects such as trans fats, lower caloric intake, less salt, etc. However, there are bioactive compounds that can improve the beneficial effect of these foods and go beyond the nutritional value. This book provides information on impact of bioactive ingredients (vitamins, antioxidants, compounds of the pulses, etc.) on nutrition through food, how functional foods can prevent disease, and tools to evaluate the effects of bioactive ingredients, functional foods, and diet.

Landulf of St Paul’s Historia Mediolanensis and the anonymous Narratio de Longobardie obpressione et subiectione were written in an environment in which it had become normal to use armed force to fight conflicts within society. The commune inherited this habit of using violence on a daily basis from the society of the late 11th century. The article analyses how this culture of violence was reflected in both historiographical texts. It shows that it was not only the intended messages of the two works that were decisive, but also the cultural patterns in Lombardy during the 12th century.

This publication belongs to the series coordinated by Jesús Rivas and Ignacio José García Zapata, of the Department of Art History of the University of Murcia, born in 2001 and published annually, coinciding with the feast of San Eloy, Patron of Los Plateros, aAnnual volume with works related to silverware and jewelry of the most accredited Spanish and foreign researchers in this area.They are themes from religious silverware to civil silverware, their teachers, marking as well as typologies, and the techniques of silverware and jewelry.