Open Access Books

This Open Access volume aims to methodologically improve our understanding of biodiversity by linking disciplines that incorporate remote sensing, and uniting data and perspectives in the fields of biology, landscape ecology, and geography. The book provides a framework for how biodiversity can be detected and evaluated—focusing particularly on plants—using proximal and remotely sensed hyperspectral data and other tools such as LiDAR. The volume, whose chapters bring together a large cross-section of the biodiversity community engaged in these methods, attempts to establish a common language across disciplines for understanding and implementing remote sensing of biodiversity across scales. The first part of the book offers a potential basis for remote detection of biodiversity. An overview of the nature of biodiversity is described, along with ways for determining traits of plant biodiversity through spectral analyses across spatial scales and linking spectral data to the tree of life. The second part details what can be detected spectrally and remotely. Specific instrumentation and technologies are described, as well as the technical challenges of detection and data synthesis, collection and processing. The third part discusses spatial resolution and integration across scales and ends with a vision for developing a global biodiversity monitoring system. Topics include spectral and functional variation across habitats and biomes, biodiversity variables for global scale assessment, and the prospects and pitfalls in remote sensing of biodiversity at the global scale.

Response[ability] brings together contributions from graduate researchers, artists, and thinkers critically examining destruction, not merely as an end, but as a generative space for resistance, co-creation, and reimagining. Expanding on discussions from the 1st Graduate Conference on Science and Technology of the Arts, that took place at School of Arts, at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, the book explores how the concept of "response-ability" serves as an ethical and political form of resistance rooted in sensitivity, collectivity, and relational care. It addresses the impact of accelerating ecological collapse and violent political regimes on collective life, engaging the interconnection between human and nonhuman worlds, and fostering collaborative and participatory processes in arts, science, and heritage. The volume also considers the implications of speculative methodologies, embodied practices, and posthuman imaginaries, questioning how art and research might offer new ways of living, resisting, and imagining futures in the face of material loss. The book opens with an essay by Işıl Eğrikavuk, The Other Garden: Artistic Research, Ecology, and Belonging in the Academy, which explores how artistic research and storytelling can generate affective solidarities and new forms of agency. Enriching the discussion, this volume also contains contributions from Laila Algaves Nuñez, Filippo Deorsola, Nuno Da Luz, Isidora Correa Allamand, Pedro Andrade, Shahriar Khonsari, Rita Xavier, and Grécia Paola Matos.

Endocrinology

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The volume celebrates the fifty-year history of the Vascular Surgery Unit of the University of Florence, tracing its scientific, clinical, and academic development and highlighting its contribution to the advancement of the discipline at both national and international levels. Over the past half century, the Center has accompanied and often anticipated major changes in vascular medicine, from traditional reconstructive surgery to endovascular techniques, while promoting multidisciplinary integration, research, and education. A pivotal role was played by the founding Masters, particularly Professors Domenico Bertini and Carlo Pratesi, who provided solid foundations and international recognition to the School. The book also acknowledges the contribution of all healthcare professionals involved and looks to the future as an ongoing challenge of innovation and growth.

Ángel Bonomini was born in Buenos Aires in 1929 where he lived until his death at the age of sixty-four in 1994. He worked for various newspapers and magazines as an art critic and translator, but always maintaining his literary activity. He inherited the tradition of the Argentine fantastic and was a prolific writer: his production includes essays, poems and fantastic tales.Although he lived in a period of great cultural splendor and his literary talent was recognised by authors such as Borges and Bioy Casares, he fell into an unexplained oblivion, disappearing quite early from the contemporary intellectual environment. His first poems, which date back to the 1950s, were published in Sur magazine and some of his tales were included in well-known anthologies of fantastic literature.Among his collections of poems there are: Primera enunciación (1947), Argumento del enamorado. Baladas con Ángel (1952) written with María Elena Walsh, Torres para el silencio (1982) and Poética (1994). In 1972 he achieved great success with the publication of his first collection of fantastic tales, Los novicios de Lerna, followed by the publication of other books: Libro de los casos (1975), Los lentos elefantes de Milán (1978), Cuentos de amor (1982), Historias secretas (1985) and Más allá del puente (1996), posthumously published.A particular use of the fantastic characterises his work and distinguishes him from his contemporary authors. In his tales there is a continuous contrast between metaphysics and existentialism; in this way, he makes a deep investigation of the reality and, at the same time, he tries to go beyond it.This volume aims to analyse some emblematic tales by Bonomini in which it is possible to find the main topoi of Argentine fantastic and to understand why the author’s literary work is worth studying.

Sinopsis Según la Ley 949 de 2005: La Terapia Ocupacional es una disciplina que estudia la naturaleza del desempeño ocupacional de las personas y las comunidades, la promoción de los estilos de vida saludables y la prevención, el tratamiento y rehabilitación de personas con discapacidades y limitaciones, utilizando procedimientos de acción que comprometen el autocuidado, el juego, el esparcimiento, la escolaridad y el trabajo como áreas esenciales de su ejercicio, proporcionando bienestar y calidad de vida a los beneficiados, ya sea a nivel individual o comunitario. (p. 1) Por ello, a través de diversos métodos, técnicas y actividades con propósito, se busca favorecer la participación en las ocupaciones, generando la mayor funcionalidad, independencia y autonomía posible. Desde el ámbito de la Seguridad Social, la precitada ley menciona que, el terapeuta ocupacional “lidera la construcción y ejecución de planes y proyectos de aporte a sus fines, promoviendo competencias ocupacionales en los campos en los cuales aquella se desarrolle en función del desempeño ocupacional” (p. 1). Para efectos de este documento, el campo en el que se aporta es el de la seguridad social con la población de personas mayores, que son aquellas que superan los 60 años, sujetos de derecho y de especial protección constitucional, que están inmersos en la comunidad, con garantías y responsabilidades respecto de sí mismas, su familia, su sociedad, su entorno inmediato y, con las futuras generaciones (Ministerio de Salud y Protección Social, 2021).

Women’s tanci, or “plucking rhymes,” are chantefable narratives written by upper-class educated women from seventeenth-century to early twentieth-century China. Writing Gender in Early Modern Chinese Women’s Tanci Fiction offers a timely study on early modern Chinese women’s representations of gender, nation, and political activism in their tanci works before and after the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864), as well as their depictions of warfare and social unrest. Women tanci authors’ redefinition of female exemplarity within the Confucian orthodox discourses of virtue, talent, chastity, and political integrity could be bourgeoning expressions of female exceptionalism and could have foreshadowed protofeminist ideals of heroism. They establish a realistic tenor in affirming feminine domestic authority, and open up spaces for discussions of “womanly becoming,” female exceptionalism, and shifting family power structures.The vernacular mode underlying these texts yields productive possibilities of gendered self-representations, bodily valences, and dynamic performances of sexual roles. The result is a vernacular discursive frame that enables women’s appropriation and refashioning of orthodox moral values as means of self-affirmation and self-realization. Validations of women’s political activism and loyalism to the nation attest to tanci as a premium vehicle for disseminating progressive social incentives to popular audiences. Women’s tanci marks early modern writers’ endeavors to carve out a space of feminine becoming, a discursive arena of feminine appropriation, reinvention, and boundary-crossings. In this light, women’s tanci portrays gendered mobility through depictions of a heroine’s voyages or social ascent, and entails a forward-moving historical progression toward a more autonomous and vested model of feminine subjectivity.

Marking a century of the German balance of payments, this open access book covers the main historical, conceptual, analytical and institutional aspects of external statistics. It explores how the balance of payments has evolved as a multipurpose set of statistics for macroeconomic analysis and shows why it matters today for sound economic and monetary policy decisions in a globalised world. This book brings together academics, statisticians and practitioners from national, European and global institutions to look back on 100 years of the balance of payments in Germany in the context of European and global developments. Their contributions offer different perspectives on how results have been interpreted over a century, describe current challenges and look to the future. They formulate new insights into how to measure globalisation, international economic relations and interdependencies. Across four sections, this book covers the history and informational value of balance of payments statistics, their importance in international policymaking as well as selected aspects concerning the quality of statistics and measurement of globalisation. This book is essential reading not just for economists, policymakers, statisticians, researchers and advanced students of economics and official statistics, but also for anyone looking to understand the intricate economic ties between nations and the role that the balance of payments statistics play in supplying the information underpinning economic policy in today’s interconnected global economy.

This publication describes in detail the preparation and realization of the forcibly sterilization of numerous women and men Vienna from 1940 to 1945. These forced sterilizations of individuals, being categorized as 'hereditary ill', were based on the 'Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring' (GzVeN). In Nazi Germany it took effect in January 1934, and until the outbreak of the war, when most of the court-proceedings had already ended, 300.000 women and men, had been forcibly sterilized. In January 1940 the law was implemented in the 'Ostmark', and at least 6.000 women and men had been forcibly sterilized during the war. In Vienna, the then second-largest city of the 'German Reich' 1.203 court-decisions in favour of a forcibly sterilization could be traced-back. These court-files of the 'Viennese Hereditary Health Court' (Erbgesundheitsgericht) became accessible for research only recently. The quantitative and qualitative analysis indicates three parameters for the implementation of the GzVeN in Vienna: First of all, the reduction of lawsuits to 'urgent' cases, i.e. persons of a 'particularly great danger of procreation'; secondly, the personal and structural restrictions resulting from war; and thirdly, the Nazi Euthanasia: Different from Nazi Germany the forced sterilizations had not been preceding the murder of disabled persons, but were rather implemented in the same period of time. Several doctors in Vienna were responsible for both, forced sterilizations and murder. Both judges and doctors of the 'Viennese Hereditary Health Court' were keen to contribute to the radical efforts to create the visional 'healthy national body' by fulfilling the GzVeN independent of the above mentioned parameters: they implemented a National Socialist tort-law, which included a surgical intervention with severe and lifelong psychical and physical consequences - against the will of the people who were affected. After the end of the war, the judges and doctors did not have to take any kind of responsibility for their decisions to sterilize people forcibly. This was not surprising, taking into account that the categorization of persons due to their 'value of hereditage' ('Erbwert') continued: Firstly, the then-chancellor Renner announced to pass a similar law when the GzVeN was repealed in Mai 1945; secondly, the forcibly sterilized women and men were partly acknowledged only in 1995 as victims of Nazi-persecution and fully acknowledged only 2005; and thirdly, until to the present, women, being categorized as 'disabled', are still sterilized without their knowledge and therefore without their consent. However, this bodily injury does not carry a penalty, since there is no contradiction to the so called 'good manners' ('gute Sitten'), incorporated in the criminal law.

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book presents a comprehensive examination of Chinese consumer behaviour and challenges the previously dichotomous interpretation of the consumption of Western and non-Western brands in China. The dominant position is that Chinese consumers are driven by a desire to imitate the lifestyles of Westerners and thereby advance their social standing locally. The alternative is that consumers reject Western brands as a symbolic gesture of loyalty to their nation-state. Drawing from survey responses and in depth interviews with Chinese consumers in both rural and urban areas, Kelly Tian and Lily Dong find that consumers situate Western brands within select historical moments. This embellishment attaches historical meanings to Western brands in ways that render them useful in asserting preferred visions of the future China. By highlighting how Western brands are used in contests for national identity, Consumer-Citizens of China challenges the notion of the "patriot’s paradox" and answers scholars’ questions as to whether Chinese nationalists today allow for a Sino-Western space where the Chinese can love China without hating the West. Consumer-Citizens of China will be of interest to students and scholars of business studies, Chinese and Asian Studies and Political Science. Kelly Tian is Professor of Marketing and holds the Anderson Chair of Business at New Mexico State University. Lily Dong is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

Published

This book aims to illustrate the value of design in a systematic and scientific manner to reap the full benefits of design. The authors aim to address the challenges in the quantification and evaluation of the value of design. It will also help readers understand how impactful design can support the future of innovation and a sustainable future life when coupled with the power of artificial intelligence (AI). The sharing of knowledge from subject matter experts from institutes of higher learning and industry brings content rigor and real-life scenarios which enhance the readers’ learning. A key topic of discussion is design and AI, which showcases current technological advances that inspire readers to think creatively and explore new frontiers in cutting-edge design. Design can play a significant role in urbanism, food resiliency, urban robotics, consumer durables, productivity and efficiency enhancement, human-centric design for technology, ethics, physical and digital spaces, etc. In the area of consumer durables, design that prioritizes durability and longevity is integral to fostering a sustainable lifestyle. Human-centric design technology ensures that solutions are designed to meet the needs, behaviors, and preferences of individuals, thereby driving user engagement, adoption, and sustained use of sustainable technologies. Both physical and digital spaces are integral to shaping a sustainable future. Thoughtful urban planning, sustainable architecture, and the responsible use of digital technologies ensure that environments are designed to enhance quality of life, reduce environmental impact, and promote a more equitable and resilient society. This book will be of interest to industry professionals in the fields of urbanism, sustainability, design, and AI. It also serves as a good reference for students in architecture, engineering, and AI programs that study the intersection of technology and design.

La soft law est un concept doctrinal issu du droit international public. Conçue à l'origine comme un ensemble d'énoncés à la force obligatoire atténuée ou inexistante, elle se conçoit désormais comme un concept englobant à même de rassembler tous les phénomènes éloignés d'une certaine idée du droit, fait d'un système de normes obligatoires et sanctionnées par l'État. Technique particulière de formulation des énoncés concrétisée dans des actes informels, la soft law recommande un modèle de comportement à ses destinataires. En ce sens, elle s'éloigne considérablement de la norme juridique. Pourtant, la technique recommandatoire renoue des liens avec cette dernière à l'aune des fonctions qu'elle assure : instrument de l'effectivité de la norme juridique, la soft law s'entend comme une technique accessoire et subsidiaire au droit. Cette continuation du droit par d'autres moyens ne peut-elle alors s'intégrer totalement à l'ordre juridique ? Celui-ci en fait une réception graduée qui oscille entre l'absence de prise en considération et l'acceptation ponctuelle de ses effets. Globalement exclue du contentieux de l'excès de pouvoir du fait de sa nature non prescriptive, mais envisagée comme une source de responsabilité de l'État dans le cadre du contentieux de pleine juridiction, la soft law fait l'objet d'un contrôle juridictionnel qui traduit l'ambivalence de Tordre juridique. Le principe de sécurité juridique tend ainsi à l'exclure de ce dernier, alors que dans le même mouvement, on constate une volonté intégratrice du juge qui voit de plus en plus souvent dans la technique une norme impérative. Une norme juridique en somme.

This book consists of nine chapters covering a variety of bioinformatics subjects, ranging from database resources for protein allergens, unravelling genetic determinants of complex disorders, characterization and prediction of regulatory motifs, computational methods for identifying the best classifiers and key disease genes in large-scale transcriptomic and proteomic experiments, functional characterization of inherently unfolded proteins/regions, protein interaction networks and flexible protein-protein docking. The computational algorithms are in general presented in a way that is accessible to advanced undergraduate students, graduate students and researchers in molecular biology and genetics. The book should also serve as stepping stones for mathematicians, biostatisticians, and computational scientists to cross their academic boundaries into the dynamic and ever-expanding field of bioinformatics.