Open Access Books

In diesem Open-Access-Buch widmet sich Anna Maria Olivari der Forschungslücke der Vertonung von Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus. Sie untersucht ein Korpus von 13 unterschiedlichen Kompositionen aus dem Bereich der Neuen Musik (Opern, Monodramen, instrumentale Werke), die zwischen 1952 und 2011 entstanden sind und bisher wenig bis gar nicht rezipiert wurden. Thomas Manns Doktor Faustus ist in vielerlei Hinsicht ein breit erforschtes Werk, jedoch nicht in Bezug auf seine Vertonungen. Der Vergleich zwischen Roman und Komposition ist im Forschungsparadigma der Intermedialität angesiedelt und ermöglicht die Rekonstruktion der kompositorischen Rezeptionsgeschichte von Doktor Faustus. Die Rückkopplungseffekte zwischen Text und Musik lassen Thomas Manns Roman neu lesen.

Der vorliegende Band schildert das Leben und Wirken des am 7. September 1862 im niederschlesischen Frankenstein geborenen Rabbiners Benno Jacob in Göttingen. Nach dem Studium in Breslau am „Jüdisch Theologischen Seminar (Fraenkelscher Stiftung)“ und zugleich an der dortigen Universität, war Göttingen die erste Station beruflicher Tätigkeit als Rabbiner und zudem auch der Anfang eigenen familiären Lebens.

This Special Issue of Philosophies is devoted to dialogue between feminist care ethics and mainstream philosophical figures and concepts. As care ethics has evolved from its origins in the 1980s, it is clear that it does not always fit neatly within traditional philosophical categories. Yet, the philosophical implications of the ethics of care are robust and extend beyond ethics as such, with care theorists positing ontological, epistemological, and political significance to its approach. Despite these implications, and the growing acceptance of care ethics in a variety of academic literatures, it remains a somewhat marginalized philosophical framework. The original contributions to this volume juxtapose care theory with established philosophers and philosophical thought. The goal is to catalyze further intellectual interest and attention in how care enriches philosophy across a variety of subjects. In attending to both the intersections and interstices between care ethics and established philosophical theories and approaches, the contributions in this Special Issue provide a unique intellectual space for dialogue between significant philosophical figures and care ethics, with the aim of enriching both philosophical traditions. Accordingly, this Special Issue will appeal to scholars and practitioners from mainstream philosophy traditions, as well as those engaged with feminist philosophy, care theory, and the ethics of care.

The Monte Carlo method is a numerical technique to model the probability of all possible outcomes in a process that cannot easily be predicted due to the interference of random variables. It is a technique used to understand the impact of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity in forecasting models. However, this technique is complicated by the amount of computer time required to achieve sufficient precision in the simulations and evaluate their accuracy. This book discusses the general principles of the Monte Carlo method with an emphasis on techniques to decrease simulation time and increase accuracy.

L’œuvre de Tom Murphy, dramaturge irlandais célébré dans le monde anglophone, mais encore méconnu en France, invente des histoires insolites pour dire une modernité paradoxale, grisée par une prospérité nouvelle mais mal partagée, et cependant hantée par les spectres du passé – comme celui de la Grande Famine qui dévasta l’Irlande au milieu du xixe siècle, et qui fait retour sous la forme d’une famine des âmes. Le présent ouvrage est une introduction critique à ce théâtre âpre et drôle, d’une poésie incandescente. Il situe chaque pièce dans son contexte historique et culturel, et en dégage les enjeux esthétiques et politiques, avec le souci constant de donner à entendre l’étrange beauté d’une langue qui, pour être absolument unique, résonne des échos de Synge, Yeats, O’Casey et Beckett.

If Hardin’s (1968) widely cited case of a pasture accessible to everyone were the standard for public natural resources, those resources would have the tendency to be depleted, degraded, destroyed or overexploited. Hardin explains that each herdsman found it more profitable to graze more animals than the pasture could support, since each took all the profit from an extra animal but bore only a fraction of the cost of overgrazing. Yet, what Hardin calls a “Tragedy of the Commons” is rather a “Tragedy of Open Access” (Feeny et al., 1990), since Hardin confuses the characteristics of a resource, such as low excludability and high rivalry in consumption, with its property rights regime which can take diverse forms. Hardin describes an open access system, meaning no rules and no property rights regime in place, that leads to overuse and degradation, instead of a resource that is held in common. Later, Hardin (1994) refers to the same case as an “unmanaged commons”. With his pasture example, he aimed to contradict the laissez-faire attitude shared by economists in the late 1800s, which was that if each man pursued his own interest then the interests of all would be best served in the long run. To motivate this chapter, I will recall four possible methods of natural resource management that can resolve this tragedy. I will also highlight the fourth, often overlooked approach, i.e. the public manager option. In fact, there is a continuum between the two polar ends of the spectrum, from governance enacted by a single central authority to a fully decentralized system of individual decision making. Between these two extremes lies a range of governance regimes that might involve higher levels of government along with local systems (Theesfeld, 2008a; Frey et al., 2016).

Binocular vision is achieved by five neurovisual systems originating in the retina but varying in their destination within the brain. Two systems have been widely studied: the retino-tectal or retino-collicular route, which subserves an expedient and raw estimate of the visual scene through the magnocellular pathway, and the retino-occipital or retino-cortical route, which allows slower but refined analysis of the visual scene through the parvocellular pathway. But there also exist further neurovisual systems: the retino-hypothalamic, retino-pretectal, and accessory optic systems, which play a crucial role in vision though they are less understood. The retino-pretectal pathway projecting onto the pretectum is critical for the pupillary or photomotor reflex. The retino-hypothalamic pathway projecting onto the suprachiasmatic nucleus regulates numerous behavioral and biological functions as well as circadian rhythms. The accessory optic system targeting terminal lateral, medial and dorsal nuclei through the paraoptic fasciculus plays a role in head and gaze orientation as well as slow movements. Taken together, these neurovisual systems involve 60% of brain activity, thus highlighting the importance of vision in the functioning and regulation of the central nervous system. But vision is first and foremost action, which makes perception impossible without movement. Binocular coordination is a prerequisite for binocular fusion of the object of interest on the two foveas, thus ensuring visual perception. The retino-collicular pathway is sufficient to elicit reflexive eye movements with short latencies. Thanks to its motor neurons, the superior colliculus activates premotor neurons, which themselves activate motor neurons of the oculomotor, trochlear and abducens nuclei. At a higher level, a cascade of neural mechanisms participates in the control of decisional eye movements. The superior colliculus is controlled by the substancia nigra pars reticulata, which is itself gated by subcortical structures such as the dorsal striatum. The superior colliculus is also inhibited by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex through a direct prefrontotectal tract. Cortical areas are crucial for the triggering of eye movements: the frontal eye field, supplementary eye field, and parietal eye field. Finally the cerebellum maintains accuracy. The focus of the present research topic, entitled Neural bases of binocular vision and coordination and their implications in visual training programs, is to review the most recent findings in brain imaging and neurophysiology of binocular vision and coordination in humans and animals with frontally-placed eyes. The emphasis is put on studies that enable transfer of knowledge toward visual training programs targeting visual field defects (e.g., hemianopia) and binocular functional disorders (e.g., amblyopia).

Based on the field of experience of ideality and reality, Karin Schulz develops a history of behavior diagnostics concerning French parlor conversation.

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In recent years, researchers have shown a special interest in the role of signaling pathways as disease molecular targets and capitalized on such pathways to derive natural products, biologics, and synthetic scaffold-based prevention and treatments. These can lead to naturally available, efficacious, low-cost, and minimally toxic long-term therapies for human diseases. This Special Issue of Cells comprises an array of literature reviews, original communications, and studies on the roles of the PI3K/AKT/mTOR and associated pathways in a diversity of pathways using in vitro cell-based assays and preclinical animal models. The authors of the papers also explore technologies designed to improve the bioavailability and delivery of certain compounds. In lieu of ongoing research on a variety of human disorders, the wealth of information published in this Special Issue can act as a springboard for the identification of novel disease targets and the development of new preventive and therapeutic modalities for the management of human diseases.

The sudden emergence of the Trump nation surprised nearly everyone, including journalists, pundits, political consultants, and academics. When Trump won in 2016, his ascendancy was widely viewed as a fluke. Yet time showed it was instead the rise of a movement—angry, militant, revanchist, and unabashedly authoritarian. How did this happen? Twilight of the American State offers a sweeping exploration of how law and legal institutions helped prepare the grounds for this rebellious movement. The controversial argument is that, viewed as a legal matter, the American state is not just a liberal democracy, as most Americans believe. Rather, the American state is composed of an uneasy and unstable combination of different versions of the state—liberal democratic, administered, neoliberal, and dissociative. Each of these versions arose through its own law and legal institutions. Each emerged at different times historically. Each was prompted by deficits in the prior versions. Each has survived displacement by succeeding versions. All remain active in the contemporary moment—creating the political-legal dysfunction America confronts today. Pierre Schlag maps out a big picture view of the tribulations of the American state. The book abjures conventional academic frameworks, sets aside prescriptions for quick fixes, dispenses with lamentations about polarization, and bypasses historical celebrations of the American Spirit.

This report describes RAND’s Health Care Payment and Delivery Simulation Model (PADSIM), developed to more effectively analyze the impacts of current and future reforms to provider payment policy, such as changes in how much providers are paid for their services and the degree to which payments are determined by the volume of services. PADSIM offers a systematic framework for quantifying such reforms and providers’ responses to them.

Plant reproductive ecology has emerged as an indispensable discipline for enhancing crop productivity and conserving biodiversity. The adaptive significance of variation in traits associated with floral biology, pollination, seed dispersal, and seedling establishment is an integral component of plant reproductive ecology and evolutionary biology. This book explores the diversity of flower symmetry and the evolutionary patterns of internal structures of generative organs in angiosperms. The rapidly emerging global crisis of declining pollinators poses a major threat to food security. As such, the book also covers the diversity of plant-pollinator interactions, the impact of non-native exotic plant communities on native plants and pollinators, and strategies for the restoration of pollinator communities.

Os textos aqui apresentados, sob a forma de reflexões, artigos, ensaios, relatos de experiências, cujos autores e autoras sentem-se na responsabilidade de publicizar os resultados de seus estudos e pesquisas, intencionam contribuir para o fortalecimento da Educação Inclusiva, oportunizando que as pessoas com deficiências, ou outras diferenças, possam ocupar os espaços que desejam, sem medo da discriminação, preconceito e em concomitância com a defesa de uma sociedade inclusiva, onde todas as pessoas possam manifestar livremente suas diferenças, divergências e convergências, construindo, desse modo, um projeto coletivo substancial e acolhedor pelo reconhecimento e valorização da diversidade humana.