Open Access Books

Les touristes qui visitent la Cité interdite à Pékin sont souvent surpris d’y trouver un observatoire équipé de sextants, de théodolites, de sphères armillaires et d’autres instruments de l’ancienne astronomie occidentale. Malgré leur facture indéniablement chinoise, ces instruments de bronze ont en effet été exécutés sous la supervision d’un jésuite flamand, à la demande d’un empereur Qing qui espérait trouver dans la science occidentale un appui à son pouvoir. Les sextants de Pékin témoignent ainsi de l’intérêt et de la curiosité que les Chinois ont pu manifester à l’égard d’une culture pourtant bien éloignée de la leur, et ce, il y a déjà plus de trois cents ans, à une époque où l’Occident ne montrait pas tant d’ouverture d’esprit. C’est au mythe d’une Chine monolithique, refermée sur elle-même, immobile et figée dans sa grandeur antique, que s’attaque ici Joanna Waley-Cohen. Cette idée reçue ne résiste pas à l’analyse. Toute l’histoire de l’Empire du milieu montre au contraire que les Chinois ont toujours accueilli avec intérêt les produits, les techniques, les idées, et même les religions des autres cultures, dans la mesure où l’on ne tentait pas de les leur imposer par la force. En s’appuyant sur les résultats les plus récents de la recherche historique, l’auteur montre les relations fructueuses que les Chinois ont su entretenir avec leurs voisins asiatiques et avec les Occidentaux, depuis les temps anciens de la Route de la soie jusqu’à nos jours.

L'histoire agraire du Pérou contemporain est exemplaire parce que typique de l'histoire agraire néo-coloniale du continent sud-américain et, au-delà, des pays dits « sous-développés ». Elle concerne ce qui, jusqu'à une date récente, formait l'essentiel de l'activité économique occupant la majorité de la population du pays. Elle explique la situation sociale critique à laquelle on parvient dans les Andes et en Amérique Latine des 1910-1920 au moment de la Révolution mexicaine, et plus encore d...

Glass Science - Innovations and Applications presents a comprehensive overview of recent progress in glass materials and technologies. Covering topics such as rare-earth doped thin films, radiation shielding glass systems, and the use of recycled glass in sustainable construction, this volume brings together diverse perspectives from research, engineering, and industrial practice. It emphasizes the broad functionality of glass in areas including photonics, solar energy, structural design, and biopreservation. With a focus on both theoretical understanding and practical implementation, the book serves as a valuable reference for scientists, engineers, and professionals engaged in glass-related innovation. Through its multidisciplinary scope, it demonstrates how glass continues to shape and support advances across multiple technological domains.

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact

This open access book presents evidence-based participant and facilitator perspectives on later-life music learning and participation. The chapters explore the principles and practices that can facilitate and support meaningful music-making in a range of non-formal later-life contexts, highlighting consistent as well as context-specific pedagogical issues. Case study examples are used to examine issues relating to pedagogy as improvisation, the use of technology to support creativity and meaningful music experience, facilitation of the use of music for creativity, sense of belonging, musical identities and musical development in later-life, and more. The book concludes with an innovative and creative pedagogical model to support critical reflection on values, frameworks, and practices in later-life music learning and participation. The book will be accessible and relevant for music researchers and educators, music education students and community music leaders alike.

"This is the third volume in a series that sets out to provide a phonemic transcript and an audio recording of each individual poem in Barnes’s three collections of Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect. With 96 poems in an astonishing variety of metrical forms, the volume includes some of those that are most loved and admired: poems of tragedy (“Woak Hill”, “The turnstile”) and comedy (“John Bloom in Lon’on”, “A lot o’ maïdens a-runnèn the vields”); celebrations of love anticipated (“In the spring”) and love fulfilled (“Don’t ceäre”); protests against injustice and snobbery (“The love child”); struggles to accept God’s will (“Grammer a-crippled”); and poems on numerous other subjects, with an emotional range stretching from the deepest of grief to the highest of joy."

Na década de 1950, São Paulo tornou-se a maior e mais importante cidade do Brasil. O seu futuro, até então, era hegemonicamente representado como o de uma metrópole gigantesca, moderna e pujante, desembaraçada de quaisquer dificuldades graças a intervenções urbanísticas de precisão cirúrgica. Nesta perspetiva, São Paulo estava destinada à glória. No entanto, esse futuro começou rapidamente a transformar-se, quando projeções concorrentes, que imaginavam o caos e a paralisia como desdobramentos inevitáveis do gigantismo metropolitano, passaram a ganhar força. São Paulo, na verdade, estaria condenada à tragédia, caso nada fosse feito para interromper imediatamente o seu crescimento. O choque entre esses futuros produziu uma cidade esgarçada, cujo destino paradoxal era constituir-se em paraíso e inferno simultaneamente. Este livro conta a história desse esgarçamento, analisando como e por que essas (e outras) representações ganhavam ou perdiam força na sociedade paulistana de meados do século XX. Com esse objetivo, ele segue as trajetórias de políticos, intelectuais e articuladores culturais, além de examinar a imprensa local, em função dos papéis que estes agentes desempenharam na produção dos futuros em disputa.

Kulturelle Bildung erfuhr in den letzten Jahren viel Aufmerksamkeit. Dabei wurden ländliche und periphere Regionen jedoch eher vernachlässigt. Das breite Spektrum der sozial-, kultur- und bildungswissenschaftlichen Beiträge zielt darauf, das Forschungsdesiderat zu ländlichen Räumen teilweise zu beheben. Das Buch präsentiert Ansätze, Forschungsinteressen und erste Ergebnisse aus einer Förderrichtlinie des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung zu kultureller Bildung in ländlichen Räumen. Im Mittelpunkt stehen theoretische und methodische Herausforderungen der laufenden Forschung.

In this work, thermal grooving experiments were performed on anode microstructures, Ni polycrystals and Ni bicrystals. The grain boundary grooves were measured by means of an AFM. The results provide for the first time reliable values as well as the complete anisotropy of the relevant material parameters - the relative grain boundary energies and the surface diffusion coefficients - of nickel under realistic operating conditions of an SOFC anode.

Le corps malmené, violenté, brutalisé a fait l’objet, pour la période moderne et contemporaine, d’un certain nombre de travaux remarquables, mais souvent épars. L’étude des « corps saccagés », vivants ou morts, pose la question d’une « cruauté résiduelle » et celle du transfert de la violence concrète vers l’imaginaire. Mais faire l’inventaire des corps dégradés, lacérés ou encore démembrés s’avère sans doute une entreprise démesurée. Il reste toutefois possible de multiplier les approches et de s’attacher aussi bien à décrire les corps brutalisés, qu’à s’interroger sur les logiques du passage à l’acte ou à analyser la « réception » des violences corporelles. Dans le même temps s’élabore une science des « indices », étudiant les plaies et les traces sanguinolentes, tentant d’expliquer les crimes particulièrement horribles. À leur tour, des artistes se mettent à la recherche de la matérialité du corps, quitte à s’attacher plus particulièrement « à cette charogne des corps morcelés enfouie en chacun de nous ». Le crime individuel comme le massacre, les violences sexuelles à l’intérieur de la famille ou l’instrumentalisation des violences corporelles donnent au « corps saccagé » une actualité sans cesse renouvelée. Du corps des enfants violentés aux corps malmenés des soldats, il s’agit de varier les échelles d’analyse et d’examiner aussi bien les brutalités individuelles que les drames collectifs. Les usages du corps renseignent sur la volonté de savoir ce qui s’est passé ; ils informent sur les pratiques inavouables à l’encontre des corps vivants ou morts ; ils fixent, selon les époques, les formes de violences corporelles jugées inacceptables.

This exciting and innovative Handbook provides readers with a comprehensive and globally relevant overview of the instruments, actors and design features of social protection systems, as well as their application and impacts in practice. It is the first book that centres around system building globally, a theme that has gained political importance yet has received relatively little attention in academia.

William Rimmer (1816–1879) is arguably the first modernist American sculptor, although his inventive originality has not been fully acknowledged. Rimmer cultivated an art of ideas and personal expression whilst supporting himself as a physician and, later, as a teacher of art anatomy at the Cooper Union School of Design for Women in New York. Unlike his contemporaries, he advocated the creation of sculpture drawn entirely from the artist’s imagination, as opposed to antique archetypes or live models. In this way, he sought to reframe excellence in American art as something that must be found within, rather than derived from Europe. In this new monograph, the meaning of Rimmer’s works is for the first time considered from a combination of perspectives, such as close visual analysis (including X-ray and infrared), historical documentation, and social context. These are enriched with discussion of the artist’s own bipolar disorder, deeply-held spiritualism, and views on gender equality—considering women just as talented as men, he used naked male models in all-female classes long before his contemporaries, and produced an allegorical sculpture of fighting lions that criticized the tyranny of men over women. This book will be of great interest to academics, students, art museums, collectors, dealers, art historians, and members of the public with an affinity for Rimmer’s work. It will also appeal to those with a broader interest in American culture.

Poverty and hunger, a contemporary story analyzes poverty and hunger, current problems seen in a space-time dimension, bringing together multidisciplinary approaches from 29 researchers from the IHC and other research centers. Considering political, economic, social, cultural and environmental dimensions, it aims to stimulate critical thinking about environmental degradation, inequality and social discrimination, while also considering issues such as racism, the over-exploitation of humans and non-humans, gender issues, pollution and climate change. Published within the scope of the current programmatic project of the IHC and organized in three parts, this work identifies and reviews some of the most relevant themes for an understanding of the phenomena of poverty and hunger in contemporary Portugal.