Open Access Books

Military Revolution and the Thirty Years War 1618–1648 investigates change and decline in military institutions during a period of protracted and destructive European warfare. Conceptual background is provided by the Military Revolution thesis, which argues that changes in military technology and tactics drove revolutionary transformation in the way states organised and waged war in the early modern era. This transformation of military institutions became evident during the long and destructive Thirty Years War in 1618–1648. The outcome of the Military Revolution was the centralised fiscal-military state that possessed a strong claim to the monopoly of violence within its territorial boundaries. The book examines how the Thirty Years War accelerated and even initiated transformation in four military institutions that defined land warfare: feudal cavalry services, militias, regular armies, and war commissariats. The regional scope of the investigation covers the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and the Dutch Republic. The book combines military-historical inquiry with ancillary sciences of sociology and economics. It argues that the Military Revolution of the Thirty Years War stimulated institutions capable of increased complexification and specialisation while curtailing those that were locked in stasis and immutability. The institutional legacy of the Thirty Years War was the emergence of complex military organisations that are characteristic to the modern society and its self-renewing social subsystems. Previous scholarship on the Military Revolution has concentrated on military technicalities and the wider process of early modern state formation. This book proposes an alternative way of viewing early modern military transformations from the perspectives of institutions and systems. System-analytical survey of change and decline in the military institutions of the Thirty Years War introduces qualifications to the Military Revolution theory and offers a novel way of conceptualising early modern military history.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse how two documentary films, Elisabetta Lodoli's Ma l'amore c'entra? and Isabel de Ocampo's Serás Hombre, critically explore the interrelation between the performance of hegemonic masculinities and gender-based violence. Our methodology focuses on the affective and performative dimensions of documentary cinema since we look for ways in which emotions work in and through gender-based violence, shaping performances of masculinity. We also identify ‘moments of affection’, where possibilities of transformation can be envisioned. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first provides the theoretical framework, which combines feminist critiques of how gender-based violence is represented in mainstream media, the intersections between the exercise of violence and the performance of masculinity, and a description of what a performative and affective approach to the analysis of documentary cinema entails. The second and third sections present the analysis of our case studies. With hate and anger as our entry points, we close-read selected scenes from each film, incorporating opinions expressed by their directors and reactions from spectators. We conclude by summarising the modes in which our case studies set into motion ways of performing cultures of gender equality on both sides of the camera and the screen.

Die europäische AVMD-Richtlinie, die auch die deutsche Medienregulierung determiniert, befindet sich seit 2016 in einem Reformprozess. Insbesondere der materielle Anwendungsbereich der Richtlinie wird dem Anspruch einer rechtssicheren Unterscheidung zwischen regulierungsbedürftigen und nicht-regulierungsbedürftigen Diensten nicht gerecht. Auch mit der Neugestaltung der Richtlinie werden die Herausforderungen der Medienkonvergenz nicht angemessen bewältigt. Ausgehend von diesen Defiziten konzipiert die Autorin eine alternative Ausgestaltung des materiellen Anwendungsbereiches, die auf rechtsvergleichende Erkenntnisse der Medienregulierung in Großbritannien, Australien, Neuseeland und Deutschland zurückgreift und maßgeblich an die Meinungsbildungsrelevanz der Angebote anknüpft.

Migration; Population Economics; Sociology, general; Political Science; Human Geography

Although still in a provisional form, as befits a field of study still undergoing consolidation, the text tries to summarize the results that emerged from the contributions collected in the volume and from their comparison; outlining, even before real conclusions, a series of clues, cues and problematic issues with which scientific reflection will have to face in the near future. Therefore, they are to be read as many beginnings of research paths, to be followed towards a plausible way of including ecosystem services in the bioregional planning of the territory.

The people of the late medieval city of Hamburg laid the foundations for power, prosperity and influence on the banks of the river Elbe. The more important the city became, the greater the need was to store important documents safely. While this task was initially only taken over by a small crate, the so-called "Threse" soon grew into a cabinet with drawers and finally into a room of the town hall.Although the holdings in the Hamburg State Archives have been handed down to a large extent in their entirety, there was no comprehensive scientific analysis. Therefore, a project of the University of Hamburg from February 2010 to March 2012 took on a contemporary edition of the collection. This volume titled "Hamburg's Memory - the Threse of the Hamburg Council, covers the years 1350 to 1399. Under the direction of Prof. Dr. Jürgen Sarnowsky, scientific authors Jeanine Marquard and Nico Nolden draw up Regesta who represent all aspects of the content, not only legally relevant ones. The annotation apparatus links the pieces with each other, explains people, places and terms and gives text-critical hints. In the registers, keywords classify the pieces 1) according to persons, 2) offices and institutions and 3) places and terms. In addition, a picture attachment shows chancellery signs, notarial instruments and other symbols."

This collection is the first of its kind to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the caseloads and clinical practice of speech-language pathologists. The volume synthesises existing data on the wide-ranging effects of COVID-19 on the communication, swallowing, and language skills of individuals with COVID infection. Featuring perspectives of scholars and practitioners from around the globe, the book examines the ways in which clinicians have had to modify their working practices to prioritise patient and clinician safety, including the significant increase in the use of telepractice during the pandemic. The volume also reflects on changes in training and education which have seen educators in the field redesign their clinical practicum in order to best prepare students for professional practice in an age of COVID-19 and beyond, as the field continues to grapple with the long-term effects of the pandemic. Offering a holistic treatment of the impact of COVID-19 on the work of speech-language pathologists, this book will be of interest to students, researchers, and clinicians working in the discipline.

The here collected contributions relating to the 46th International Conference of the Representation Disciplines Teachers, organized jointly by Sapienza University of Rome, Roma Tre University, and San Raffaele Roma University, aim to offer the scientific community a reflection on the theoretical and methodological aspects related to the concept of èkphrasis, a term that, in the field of representation, concerns descriptive, analogical, and digital activities that generate new knowledge in several areas of application. The Conference aims to place at the center of the discussion an interpretation of the concept of research that, without neglecting an idea of study, protection, and enhancement of environmental and cultural heritage, focuses on the needs of contemporary society and its possible developments, making use of innovative theoretical, methodological, and operational activities, including those characterized by an interdisciplinary approach. According to this interpretation, research can also be seen as a foreshadowing of the definition and testing of experimental proposals aimed at exploring new areas of investigation: this opens up imaginative and utopian perspectives in the relationship between the sciences, the arts, and the disciplines that contribute to common goals, through the experimentation of methods, techniques, and languages for conceiving, prefiguring, designing, and representing.

This open access book provides a comprehensive review of technological innovation in China, focusing on some existing challenges and the debate on the role of public policies in promoting innovation. Technological innovation has become a vital factor in promoting high-quality development in China. By examining the current state of and challenges confronting China's technological innovation from both the supply side (talent and R&D) and the demand side (domestic and international demand), this book offers a view on how to enhance the efficiency of industry chain while ensuring security through innovation. Public policy often plays a crucial role in shaping and improving the national innovation system when new challenges emerge. We put special emphasis on innovation in strategically important sectors, which include the digital, green, and biotech industries, as well as the manufacturing and logistics sectors that are fundamental to the working of the whole innovation system. This book explains academically rigorous content in a simple manner, and is therefore suitable for readers from the fields of public policy, economics, finance, and innovative sectors who seek to better understand China’s path of innovation. The book cites information from various credible sources, including academic journals, policy institutions, and a network of primary sources such as industry experts and renowned academics.

This work explores laser-based interconnection and structuring of perovskite solar modules for industrial production and scaling. The goal is to develop efficient processes for high-performance modules, including transparent and tandem PV for building-integrated applications. Using innovative laser techniques, a scaling factor of up to 500 is achieved with minimal efficiency losses, highlighting the technology's potential for sustainable energy solutions.

This valuable collection of eight original and penetrating essays by American scholars honors the centenary of the Austrian dramatist's birth. The contributors are Kurt Bergel, Joseph Dayag, Lore Foltin, Robert Kann, Richard Lawson, Walter Perl, Herbert Reichert, and Robert Donald Spector and they attend to themes from depictions of death to the influence of Nietzsche on Schnitzler's work and his reception in France.

Cartels, trusts and agreements to reduce competition between firms have existed for centuries, but became particularly prevalent toward the end of the 19th century. In the mid-20th century governments began to use so called ‘cartel registers’ to monitor and regulate their behaviour. This book provides cases studies from more than a dozen countries to examine the emergence, application and eventual decline of this form of regulation. Beginning with a comparison of the attitudes to regulation that led to monitoring, rather than prohibiting cartels, this book examines the international studies on cartels undertaken by the League of Nations before World War II. This is followed by a series of studies on the context of the registers, including the international context of the European Union, and the importance of lobby groups in shaping regulatory outcomes, using Finland as an example. Section two provides a broad international comparison of several countries’ registers, with individual studies on Norway, Australia, Japan, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. After examining the impact of registration on business behaviour in the insurance industry, this book concludes with an overview of the lessons to be learnt from 20th century efforts to regulate competition. With a foreword by Harm Schroter, this book outlines the rise and fall of a system that allowed nations to tailor their approach to regulating competition to their individual circumstances whilst also responding to the pressures of globalisation that emerged after the Second World War. This book is suitable for those who are interested in and study economic history, international economics and business history.

The book presents an outline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the 16th to the 18th century and offers a view of the realities of political life, organization of the judiciary, the economy, coexistence of different ethnic groups and religions, high and popular culture and achievements of art. While the federal character of the state and multicultural society is often overlooked in the synthesis of this period, the creation of civil society in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the cultural heritage was the joint achievement of its residents, regardless of their state and ethnic divisions.

This book provides an introduction to the field-theoretic methods and computer simulation techniques used in the design of structured polymeric fluids for a wide variety of applications. By such methods, the principles that dictate equilibrium self-assembly in systems ranging from block and graft copolymers, to polyelectrolytes, liquid crystalline polymers, and polymer nanocomposites can be established. Building on an introductory discussion of single-polymer statistical mechanics, the book provides a detailed treatment of analytical and numerical techniques for addressing the statistical properties of polymers subjected to spatially-varying potential fields. This problem is shown to be central to the field-theoretic description of interacting polymeric fluids, and models for a number of important polymer systems are elaborated. Self-consistent field theory is treated in detail, which is a collection of analytical and numerical techniques for obtaining solutions of polymer field theory models in the mean-field approximation. The book concludes with a discussion of analytical methods for going beyond the mean-field approximation and an introduction to the exciting new field of field-theoretic polymer simulations — the direct numerical simulation of polymer field theory models.

This volume presents the findings of the cooperative religious education project “Christian-Islamic Religious Education in Teamteaching”. In this specific teaching setting, one Catholic and one Islamic teacher taught religious education in teamteaching, which was subsequently evaluated by an interreligious research team. The contributions provide multi-layered insights into the framework, conception, implementation and evaluation of the project and show what can be derived from it for the didactics of interreligious school education. The focus is on concrete results from classroom research, the clarification of the learning situations of the students as well as the prerequisites and conditions for the successful cooperation of the teachers.