Open Access Books

Late 19th-century Britain experienced an explosion of visual print culture and a simultaneous rise in literacy across social classes. New printing technologies facilitated quick and cheap dissemination of images—illustrated books, periodicals, cartoons, comics, and ephemera—to a mass readership. This Victorian visual turn prefigured the present-day impact of the Internet on how images are produced and shared, both driving and reflecting the visual culture of its time. From this starting point, Drawing on the Victorians explores the relationship between Victorian graphic texts and today’s steampunk, manga, and other neo-Victorian genres that emulate and reinterpret their predecessors. Neo-Victorianism is a flourishing worldwide phenomenon, but one whose relationship with the texts from which it takes its inspiration remains underexplored.

This open access book reports on recent developments of artificial intelligence applications in the manufacturing industry. Gathering contributions to the second European Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing, held on October 16, 2024, in Athens, Greece, it reports on machine learning, deep learning and generative AI models for process monitoring, optimization, and control, flexible and precise industrial robots, human-robot collaboration, data management and information technologies, digital twins, data augmentation and synthetic data. Giving a special emphasis to the integration of artificial intelligence in manufacturing systems, automation and processes, this book offers a timely and practice-oriented guide to a multidisciplinary audience of engineering researchers, system developers, AI scientists and industrial managers.

Die Dissertation ist an der Schnittstelle von Betriebswirtschaftslehre und Entwicklungsökonomie angesiedelt. Basierend auf einem Multimethodenansatz werden jeweils zwei Fallstudien in Vietnam und auf den Philippinen aus beiden Perspektiven dargestellt. Der entwicklungsökonomische Teil der Arbeit umfasst die Darstellung von Good Governance und Global Governance. Anschließend werden die Auswirkungen von ausländischen Direktinvestitionen und von Energie- und Straßeninfrastruktur auf Wirtschaftswachstum und Armutsreduktion diskutiert. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Darstellung von Public Private Partnerships. Keine Fallstudie liefert einen direkten langfristigen Beitrag zur Armutsreduktion, aber sie tragen zum Wirtschaftswachstum bei. Zusammenfassend kann festgehalten werden, dass die positiven Auswirkungen von privat finanzierter Infrastruktur auf die Armutsreduktion überschätzt werden.

Sanātana Gosvāmin’s Haribhaktivilāsa (ca. 1540) describes the normative ritual life of a Vaiṣṇava devotee. As it is one of the first Sanskrit texts of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition begun by Śrī Kṛṣṇa Caitanya (1486–1533) it presents a fascinating meeting between this ecstatic new religious movement and older, Brahminical tradition. On the basis of eleven manuscripts, this important text has now been for the first time been critically edited. In his extensive introduction, Måns Broo engages with many of the questions that have vexed earlier scholars of this text (such as who really was the author?) by exploring its extensive intertextualities.

Biographical Dictionary of Communists and non-Communists related to the Communist International in Latin America, 1918-1943

The text approaches the idea of labour in the classifications of knowledge (13th-16th c.), especially concerning liberal and mechanical arts. The authors addressed show an increased interest in manual work. The mechanical arts, in a first moment and starting from Hugh of Saint Victor are included in the cognitive ascent to God (Bonaventure) or in the theoretical philosophy as subaltern sciences (Kilwardby); in a second moment, also the «sordid and sedentary arts» are also part of a renewed educational project (Poliziano). In parallel, the valorisation of some mechanicae emerges in the dispute on the arts paragon. While certain authors aim to elevate the «drawing arts» to the liberal status (Alberti, Varchi), Leonardo da Vinci recognises painting as a leading liberal art.

The rapid increase of cloud computing, high performance computing (HPC) and the vast growth in Internet and Social Media use have aroused the interest in energy consumption and the carbon footprint of Data Centres. Data Centres primarily contain electronic equipment used for data processing (servers), data storage (storage equipment), and communications (network equipment). Collectively, this equipment processes, stores, and transmits digital information and is known as information technology (IT) equipment. Advanced Concepts for Renewable Energy Supply of Data Centres introduces a number of technical solutions for the supply of power and cooling energy into Data Centres with enhanced utilisation of renewable energy sources in order to achieve low energy Data Centres. Because of the high energy density nature of these unique infrastructures, it is essential to implement energy efficiency measures and reduce consumption before introducing any renewable energy source. A holistic approach is used with the objective of integrating many technical solutions such as management of the IT (Information Technology) load, efficient electrical supply to the IT systems, Low-Ex air-conditioning systems, interaction with district heating and cooling networks, re-use of heat, free cooling (air, seawater, groundwater), optimal use of heat and cold storage, electrical storage and integration in smart grids. This book is therefore a catalogue of advanced technical concepts that could be integrated into Data Centres portfolio in order to increase the overall efficiency and the share of renewable energies in power and cooling supply. Based on dynamic energy models implemented in TRNSYS some concepts are deeply evaluated through yearly simulations. The results of the simulation are illustrated with Sankey charts, where the energy flows per year within the subsystems of each concept for a selected scenario are shown, and graphs showing the results of parametric analysis. A set of environmental metrics (as the non-renewable primary energy) and financial metrics (CAPEX and OPEX) as well of energy efficiency metrics like the well-known PUE, are described and used to evaluate the different technical concepts.

Using a representative sample of European firms, this paper studies whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers’ decisions to invest in employee training. It combines survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index of financing constraints. It estimates that a 10 percent increase in this index reduces investment in training as a share of fixed assets by 2.9 to 4.5 percent and investment in training per employee by 1.8 to 2.5 percent. The paper documents that lower investment in training reduces productivity, and show that firms facing tighter financing constraints cut back the investment in training and tangible assets less than investment in R&D and software and data.

A number of political and technical guidelines suggest reinvesting wasteland, developing urban community gardens, oasis courtyards and a circular waste economy. Nevertheless, soil quality is often overlooked in urban environments. Urban soil pollution is therefore at the crossroads of global health, environmental protection and sustainable land use. The long history of these soils raises the question of the legacy of past or present potentially polluting uses. How can such pollution be managed to reduce its impact on the areas concerned and on the health of local residents? Soil management also has an impact on air quality, water quality and biodiversity. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this book provides answers to societal and health challenges for a more sustainable city. Promising avenues are proposed for taking better account of urban soils in the concept of global health, at the interface between the health of humans, animals and their environment, at local, national and European levels. This book is aimed at managers, urban planners, architects and local authorities, researchers in the biotechnical and social sciences, as well as users of these urban environments.

Living through imperial border disputes resulting in the separation of many communities and families, Pamiris find themselves surrounded by rupture, both in memory and contemporary situations in this transborder mountainous region, divided since 1895 by British and Russian imperial border demarcation. This monograph, drawing from ethnographic interviews with Pamiris from Gorno-Badakhshon Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), Tajikistan collected between 2021 and 2023, investigates how Pamiris continue to respond to rupture, using memories of past ruptures to position themselves within their own cartography of Pamir. For some, rupture takes the form of (im)mobility and a fear of coming too close to the border, while others turn to creativity to make sense of the ruptures around them. Through oral narrations and material artefacts, Pamiris learn, feel, and recreate a Pamiri cultural identity which provides continuity in times of rupture, helping younger generations to experience the interconnection of the lifeworld in which they find themselves and, ultimately, imagining Pamir through emotion and memory. This monograph challenges the anthropological assumption that ruptures represent breaks in continuity, arguing that materiality provides continuity in times of instability, with cultural heritage giving Pamiris a way to position themselves in the uncertain present by way of the material turn. In this way, this monograph attempts to draft a Pamiri history of rupture, challenging assumptions of global continuity and relocating historical narratives of the past century to Pamir by presenting Pamiri perspectives on rupture and examining how people remember and respond to times of redirection, uncertainty, and instability. In doing so, this monograph strengthens the growing focus in historical studies on non-elite, marginalised perspectives, for example in the fields of Oral History, Salvage Ethnography, as well as the larger historical debates in the field of Subaltern Studies, ultimately drafting a history of Pamir from a regional perspective. The regional is understood here both spatially and temporally as an overarching perspective, whereby, in contrast to global approaches to space and time, the regional represents part of an inward-outward approach which is distinctive of the New Area Studies. The regional is therefore understood as a perspective which, while existing in relation but not necessarily tied to the geography of Pamir, for example Pamiris living in diaspora in Russia or North America, is in this case a Pamiri experience of being-in-the-world. Drawing from the experiences of Pamiri people articulated using Pamir languages, this book locates such shifts in temporality on a community level, examining how rupture has affected interconnection and understandings of space and time. By shifting to a regional scale, experiences from preconceived peripheries like Pamir are brought to the forefront, highlighting at times the subjectivity of rupture and challenging the concept of the global epoch for the fact that, when you live far from the political centres of nation states or at the vague edges of the mandala, their ruptures lose the relevance a global epoch demands.

The book examines the growing tension between social movements that embrace egalitarian and inclusivist views of national and global politics, most notably classical liberalism, and those that advance social hierarchy and national exclusivism, such as neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and national populism. In exploring issues relating to tensions and conflicts around globalization, the book identifies historical patterns of convergence and divergence rooted in the monotheistic traditions, beginning with the ancient Israelites that dominated the Near East during the Axial age, through Islamic civilization, and finally by considering the idealism-realism tensions in modern times. One thing remained constant throughout the various historical stages that preceded our current moment of global convergence: a recurring tension between transcendental idealism and various forms of realism. Transcendental idealism, which prioritize egalitarian and universal values, pushed periodically against the forces of realism that privilege established law and power structure. Equipped with the idealism-realism framework, the book examines the consequences of European realism that justified the imperialistic venture into Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America in the name of liberation and liberalization. The ill-conceived strategy has, ironically, engendered the very dysfunctional societies that produce the waves of immigrants in constant motion from the South to the North, simultaneously as it fostered the social hierarchy that transfer external tensions into identity politics within the countries of the North. The book focuses particularly on the role played historically by Islamic rationalism in translating the monotheistic egalitarian outlook into the institutions of religious pluralism, legislative and legal autonomy, and scientific enterprise at the foundation of modern society. It concludes by shedding light on the significance of the Muslim presence in Western cultures as humanity draws slowly but consistently towards what we may come to recognize as the Global Age. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781003203360, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book challenges widespread assumptions about Hippocrates (and, in the process, about ancient Greek medicine) and will also explore the creation of modern myths about the ancient world. Through the lens of reception studies Helen King considers what ‘Hippocrates’ means today. He features powerfully in our assumptions about ancient medicine, and our beliefs about what medicine – and the physician himself – should be. In ethics, as well as in actual treatments recommended by both orthodox and alternative medicine, ‘Hippocrates’ still features as a model to be emulated. Why do we continue to use him in this way, and how are new myths constructed around his name? And what can this tell us about popular engagements with the classical world today?

Since the Middle Ages, universities have displayed impressive resourcefulness in their ability to adapt to the changing dynamics and demands of their times. But in the last fifty years, the landscape of higher education - with the emergence of online and mass education, skyrocketing tuition, and a controversial system for ranking institutions - has begun evolving so rapidly and profoundly that the concept of the university now needs to be rethought. This book explores the future of modern higher education by looking at it on a global scale. Bert van der Zwaan compares European developments with those taking place in North America and Asia to argue that the phoenix of an entirely new type of university will rise from the ashes of the classical system: less tied to buildings and set locations, the new university will embed itself more deeply in society by offering innovative forms of digital knowledge and making customized teaching available on demand. A timely discussion of a topic whose worldwide impact continues to grow, this is essential reading for anyone concerned about the state of higher education - both for today's students and in the decades to come.

Humanity today holds unprecedented power over nature, but this achievement has led to crises—from extreme inequality to climate disaster—that seem beyond our control. Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy offers a profound perspective on this paradox and points to a possible solution. Spinoza suggests that real empowerment comes from enhancing the kind of knowledge we possess, revealing a limitless source of vitality in understanding ourselves as part of a greater whole. But to fully grasp and apply Spinoza's ideas, we must see him not just as a philosopher, but as a practitioner of a discipline akin to the “yoga” of India. Unlike most Indian yogic traditions, however, Spinoza’s approach emphasizes not renouncing desire but intensifying it. This fresh view makes Spinoza’s philosophy a practical guide for transforming how we live in the world, while also offering new insights into the relevance and application of Indian yogic traditions. Published by University of Groningen Press Broerstraat 4 9712 CP Groningen Typesetting: LINE UP boek en media bv | Mirjam Kroondijk Production support: LINE UP boek & media bv Cover artwork: Matteo Ciardini This is the author’s English translation of Andrea Sangiacomo, Lo yoga di Spinoza. Pratica della potenza ed esperienza dell’infinito, Milan: Mimesis 2024. This is also the third volume of the Dhammavicaya Trilogy, which includes The Tragedy of the Self: Lectures on Global Hermeneutics (UGP 2023) as first volume, (https://doi.org/10.21827/63cfc0e9db70b) and An Introduction to Friendliness (mettā): Emotional Intelligence and Freedom in the Pāli Discourses of the Buddha (UGP 2022) as second volume (https://doi.org/10.21827/618a51bdd6187). The softcover version of this book (ISBN: 9789403431048) can be ordered via Print on demand directly on the site of our partner Uitgeverij kleine Uil, and through all regular (internet) bookshops. International shipping is possible via Amazon.

The Gandhāran birch-bark scrolls preserve the earliest remains of Buddhist literature known today and provide unprecedented insights into the history of Buddhism. This volume presents three manuscripts from the Bajaur Collection (BC), a group of nineteen scrolls discovered at the end of the twentieth century and named after their findspot in northwestern Pakistan. The manuscripts, written in the Gāndhārī language and Kharoṣṭhī script, date to the second century CE. The three scrolls—BC 4, BC 6, and BC 11—contain treatises that focus on the Buddhist concept of non-attachment. This volume is the first in the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts series that is devoted to texts belonging to the Mahāyāna tradition. There are no known versions of these texts in other Buddhist traditions, and it is assumed that they are autographs. Andrea Schlosser provides an overview of the contents of the manuscripts and discusses their context, genre, possible authorship, physical layout, paleography, orthography, phonology, and morphology. Transliteration and translation of the texts are accompanied by notes on difficult terminology, photographs of the reconstructed scrolls, an index of Gāndhārī words with Sanskrit and Pali equivalents, and a preliminary transliteration of the scroll BC 19. The ebook edition of Three Early Mahāyāna Treatises of Gandhāra is openly available at DOI 10.6069/9780295750750.