Open Access Books

"BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance. The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance. While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers."

The establishment of the Ordinary Financing Fund (Fondo per il finanziamento ordinario – FFO) for Italian state universities in 1993, with the redefinition of the mechanisms for allocating state resources among universities, marked a decisive turning point in the reform processes of the university system in Italy. Following an introduction to the main models of public funding, the volume focuses on performance-based funding (PBF), outlining its characteristics, strengths, and challenges. It then provides a diachronic reconstruction of the FFO, analyzing its transformations over time and their impact in terms of change. In conclusion, the effects of these changes in the funding system on the relationship between the state and universities, as well as on universities’ internal decision-making processes, are discussed.

This book is designed to explain, in the simplest way possible, the Theories of Special and General Relativity to students who are approaching them for the first time. The contents of these two theories are now part of the cultural background needed by every physicist and mathematician, and, in particular, they constitute an indispensable body of knowledge for anyone involved in physics, astrophysics and cosmology.

Heritage, history and geopolitics? — a question of great interest when it comes to understanding what is going on in the world today. How do states or communities use memory as an instrument of cultural influence? How is history instrumentalised for geopolitical ends? This book addresses these questions using case studies that take us to the heart of the heritage ecosystem, from the Statue of Liberty to the destruction of statues of Lenin in Ukraine. At a time when heritage has become a global phenomenon, it's time to question its uses and political misuses. Robert Belot, a graduate of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, is a professor of contemporary history at Jean Monnet University (Saint-Etienne, France). Once the holder of a Jean Monnet European Chair (2013–2018), he is now the holder of the Jean Monnet European module ‘HISTEUROPA’ and director of the Erasmus mundus DYCLAM+ European Master's programme (2018–2024), which focuses on the geopolitical challenges of cultural heritage.

This volume presents eleven original and experimental research studies and review works on current challenges and trends in magnetic materials, thin films, and nanostructures, with a special focus on the design, synthesis, and characterization of various types of magnetic materials, and the study of their structure–property relationships. The developments in new experimental concepts and their state-of-the-art results, which can lead to the transfer, chemical transformation, and high-resolution patterning of advanced thin films and nanomaterials and to the design and fabrication of devices, are also presented and discussed.

La Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspesie de Chrestien Leclercq présente un témoignage personnel et un plaidoyer en faveur des récollets. Elle constitue en même temps une source indispensable pour connaître le mode de vie des Micmacs gaspésiens au moment de leurs premiers contacts intensifs avec les Européens. Mais sa richesse tient surtout à la dimension mythique et comparative que Leclercq donne à son entreprise ethnographique. Il recrée ainsi une Gaspésie remarquablement vivante, avec sa culture matérielle, ses croyances et ses pratiques.

Synaesthesia is a rare experience in which one property of a stimulus evokes a secondary experience that is not typically associated with the first (e.g. hearing words can evoke tastes). In recent years a number of studies have highlighted the authenticity of synaesthesia and attempted to use the experience to inform us about typical processes in perception and cognition. This Research Topic brings together research on synaesthesia and typical cross modal interactions to discuss the mechanisms of synaesthesia and what it can tell us about typical perceptual processes. Topics include, but are not limited to, the neurocognitive mechanisms that give rise to synaesthesia; the extent to which synaesthesia does / does not share commonalities with typical cross-modal correspondences; broader cognitive and perceptual consequences that are linked to synaesthesia; and perspectives on the origins / defining characteristics of synaesthesia.

Shaped around the stories of one extended family, their friends, neighbours and community, this offers an intimate portrait of everyday life in Botswana's time of AIDS. It tackles questions relevant to scholars and practitioners of anthropology, public health, social work, and development. This title is available Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Shedding fresh light on the life and work of William Butler Yeats—widely acclaimed as the major English-language poet of the twentieth century—this new study by leading scholar Patrick J. Keane questions established understandings of the Irish poet’s long fascination with the occult: a fixation that repelled literary contemporaries T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden, but which enhanced Yeats’s vision of life and death. Through close reading of selected poems, the first section of Making the Void Fruitful assesses Yeats’s spiritualised treatment of corporeal themes, exploring sex and eroticism as the expression of a duality inherent to his ontological and supernatural convictions. The power-producing tension in Yeats’s work is not only intellectual but emotional. At its vital centre is his Muse: the beautiful political firebrand, Maud Gonne, whose activist Republican politics he considered his one real rival. Through close engagement with the poems and plays she inspired, the second section explores Yeats’s complex relationship with Maud, an obsessive and unrequited love which he sublimated and transformed into the greatest body of Muse poetry since Petrarch, in whose tradition of spiritualized eroticism Yeats, perhaps the last of the great Romantics, was consciously writing. Shaped by the conviction that no modern poet exceeded Yeats in animating the enduring themes of love and spirituality through poetry, this book emphasises the influence, of Blake, Nietzsche, and John Donne, on what Yeats called ‘the thinking of the body’. Grounded firmly in the textual materiality of Yeats’s oeuvre, this book will be of interest to researchers and students of W.B. Yeats, as well as to those in the fields of Anglophone literatures and cultures, and philosophy.

“The vision of Pikangikum people for research in support of the Whitefeather Forest Initiative is that it will enhance their ability to take care of the land and resources in the Traditional Territories of Pikangikum First Nation… This vision honours the teachings and wisdom of Pikangikum Elders that support the effective care and protection of the diversity of life on the land. This vision supports dialogue and working together to carry out research on the basis of respect and in a manner that will bring together the best of different knowledge traditions.”—Excerpt from the Whitefeather Forest Research Cooperative agreement.

The article analyzes the statements of sports journalists in various media (especially television and the Internet). Its purpose was to answer the question of what language they use. It was assumed that this is mainly colloquial Polish, which was proved during the analysis of the material. This conclusion prompted reflection on the question of the legitimacy of expecting journalists, especially sports journalists, to use standard Polish.

This book documents the increased number of stem cell-related research, clinical applications, and views for the future. The book covers a wide range of issues in cell-based therapy and regenerative medicine, and includes clinical and preclinical chapters from the respected authors involved with stem cell studies and research from around the world. It complements and extends the basics of stem cell physiology, hematopoietic stem cells, issues related to clinical problems, tissue typing, cryopreservation, dendritic cells, mesenchymal cells, neuroscience, endovascular cells and other tissues. In addition, tissue engineering that employs novel methods with stem cells is explored. Clearly, the continued use of biomedical engineering will depend heavily on stem cells, and this book is well positioned to provide comprehensive coverage of these developments.

In recent decades, levels of childlessness have been increasing rapidly in most European countries. German-speaking countries seem to be at the forefront of this development, as more than 20% of the women living in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria who are now reaching the end of their reproductive period will remain childless. But other European countries, such as the UK and Finland, also report high levels of childlessness. Eastern and Southern Europe did not have high levels of childlessness a decade ago, but are now seeing steady increases. This book provides an overview of the recent trend toward a “life without children” across Europe. It seeks answers to questions like: What are the determinants of childlessness in the twenty-first century? Is there an unbroken trend in childlessness, or is there evidence of trend reversals? How does the likelihood of remaining childless differ across social strata? To what extent do economic uncertainties affect childlessness? How do fertility desires evolve over the life course? To what extent does the situation of a woman’s partner affect her fertility decisions? How far can we push the biological limits of fertility? What role can assisted reproduction play in reducing childlessness? How many men fail to have children of their own? What impact can family policies have on fertility decisions? Can governments reverse the trend toward childlessness—and, if so, should they?

Driven by the increasing necessity to define the biological diversity frame of widespread, endemic and threatened species, as well as by the stimulating chance to describe new species, the study of the evolutive and spatial dynamics is in constant execution. Systematic overviews, biogeographic and phylogenic backgrounds, species composition and distribution in restricted areas are focal topics of the 15 interesting independent chapters collected in this book, chosen to offer to the reader an overall view of the present condition in which our planet is.

Prominent economists reconsider the fundamentals of economic policy for a post-crisis world. In 2011, the International Monetary Fund invited prominent economists and economic policymakers to consider the brave new world of the post-crisis global economy. The result is a book that captures the state of macroeconomic thinking at a transformational moment. The crisis and the weak recovery that has followed raise fundamental questions concerning macroeconomics and economic policy. These top economists discuss future directions for monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial regulation, capital-account management, growth strategies, the international monetary system, and the economic models that should underpin thinking about critical policy choices. Contributors Olivier Blanchard, Ricardo Caballero, Charles Collyns, Arminio Fraga, Már Guðmundsson, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Otmar Issing, Olivier Jeanne, Rakesh Mohan, Maurice Obstfeld, José Antonio Ocampo, Guillermo Ortiz, Y. V. Reddy, Dani Rodrik, David Romer, Paul Romer, Andrew Sheng, Hyun Song Shin, Parthasarathi Shome, Robert Solow, Michael Spence, Joseph Stiglitz, Adair Turner