Open Access Books

In many ways, divorce is a quintessentially personal decision—the choice to leave a marriage that causes harm or feels unfulfilling to the two people involved. But anyone who has gone through a divorce knows the additional public dimensions of breaking up, from intense shame and societal criticism to friends’ and relatives’ unsolicited advice. In Intimate Disconnections, Allison Alexy tells the fascinating story of the changing norms surrounding divorce in Japan in the early 2000s, when sudden demographic and social changes made it a newly visible and viable option. Not only will one of three Japanese marriages today end in divorce, but divorces are suddenly much more likely to be initiated by women who cite new standards for intimacy as their motivation. As people across Japan now consider divorcing their spouses, or work to avoid separation, they face complicated questions about the risks and possibilities marriage brings: How can couples be intimate without becoming suffocatingly close? How should they build loving relationships when older models are no longer feasible? What do you do, both legally and socially, when you just can’t take it anymore? Relating the intensely personal stories from people experiencing different stages of divorce, Alexy provides a rich ethnography of Japan while also speaking more broadly to contemporary visions of love and marriage during an era in which neoliberal values are prompting wide-ranging transformations in homes across the globe.

The Lived Ancient Religion project has radically changed perspectives on ancient religions and their supposedly personal or public character. This volume applies and further develops these methodological tools, new perspectives and new questions. The religious transformations of the Roman Imperial period appear in new light and more nuances by comparative confrontation and the integration of many disciplines. The contributions are written by specialists from a variety of disciplinary contexts (Jewish Studies, Theology, Classics, Early Christian Studies) dealing with the history of religion of the Mediterranean, West-Asian, and European area from the (late) Hellenistic period to the (early) Middle Ages and shaped by their intensive exchange. From the point of view of their respective fields of research, the contributors engage with discourses on agency, embodiment, appropriation and experience. They present innovative research in four fields also of theoretical debate, which are “Experiencing the Religious”, “Switching the Code”, „A Thing Called Body“ and “Commemorating the Moment”.

Environment perception with cameras is an important requirement for many applications for autonomous vehicles and robots. This work presents a stereoscopic omnidirectional camera system for autonomous vehicles which resolves the problem of a limited field of view and provides a 360° panoramic view of the environment. We present a new projection model for these cameras and show that the camera setup overcomes major drawbacks of traditional perspective cameras in many applications.

Published

This Reprint explores the intricate and evolving interactions between wildlife and domestic animals, emphasizing how these relationships drive the spread and evolution of viral diseases. As human activities lead to habitat encroachment, agricultural expansion, and climate change, the boundaries between wildlife and domestic animal populations blur, heightening the risk of cross-species viral transmission. This Reprint explores critical topics such as viral spillover events, the intricate pathways and mechanisms that enable cross-species transmission, and the significant role played by environmental changes in accelerating these processes. Additionally, it examines the broader implications for public health, agriculture, and biodiversity conservation, highlighting the interconnectedness of these fields. This Reprint deepens our understanding of the complex factors driving these viral interfaces by featuring cutting-edge research and diverse perspectives. It also addresses the development of robust strategies for monitoring, preventing, and controlling disease spread, thereby safeguarding wildlife and domestic animal health at this pivotal crossroads.

The colour of carbon matters. Green carbon is the carbon stored in the plants and soil of natural ecosystems and is a vital part of the global carbon cycle. This report is the first in a series that examines the role of natural forests in the storage of carbon, the impacts of human land use activities, and the implications for climate change policy nationally and internationally. REDD (“reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation") is now part of the agenda for the “Bali Action Plan" being debated in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009. Currently, international rules are blind to the colour of carbon so that the green carbon in natural forests is not recognised, resulting in perverse outcomes including ongoing deforestation and forest degradation, and the conversion of extensive areas of land to industrial plantations. This report examines REDD policy from a green carbon scientific perspective. Subsequent reports will focus on issues concerning the carbon sequestration potential of commercially logged natural forests, methods for monitoring REDD, and the long term implications of forest policy and management for the global carbon cycle and climate change.

Telemetry is based on knowledge of various disciplines like Electronics, Measurement, Control and Communication along with their combination. This fact leads to a need of studying and understanding of these principles before the usage of Telemetry on selected problem solving. Spending time is however many times returned in form of obtained data or knowledge which telemetry system can provide. Usage of telemetry can be found in many areas from military through biomedical to real medical applications. Modern way to create a wireless sensors remotely connected to central system with artificial intelligence provide many new, sometimes unusual ways to get a knowledge about remote objects behaviour. This book is intended to present some new up to date accesses to telemetry problems solving by use of new sensors conceptions, new wireless transfer or communication techniques, data collection or processing techniques as well as several real use case scenarios describing model examples. Most of book chapters deals with many real cases of telemetry issues which can be used as a cookbooks for your own telemetry related problems.

This volume documents and reflects on an intercultural and interprofessional exchange about teaching between schools and classroom research. A teacher from Germany opens her classroom to the videographic observations of a Japanese and a German research group. In order to build bridges between the different fields of work related to the same object - the teacher's teaching - the researchers and the teacher open their analytical perspectives of teaching to each other. The volume maps discursive border crossings between an action-oriented didactic, a qualitative-reconstructive and a development-oriented view of the Japanese Jugyo Kenkyu (Lesson Study), in which the different professional cultures meet without intervening transformatively in each other's fields. The different perspectives invite to perceive ideas and concepts of teaching and its research with other than the usual readings and to productively introduce related irritations into the debates about the research and development of teaching.

This book is a self-contained collection of scholarly papers targeting an audience of practicing researchers, academics, PhD students, and other scientists. This book describes the rapidly developing field of fiber laser technology filling the very important role of

This book approaches metaphor in specialised discourses, covering various fields. The studies presented in the book adopt different research frameworks, ranging from pragmatics to conceptual metaphor theory, among others. The book is divided into three Sections that analyse major specialised discourses where metaphor is frequently found and the role that metaphor plays in these discourses. The first Section approaches the discourse of Business and Economics from different perspectives. The second Section addresses the use of metaphor in politics, diplomacy and law. Finally, Section three covers the use of metaphors in other specialised discourses such as marine, fashion, gender or health.

"Newly arrived in New York in 1882 from Tsarist Russia, the sixteen-year-old Bernard Weinstein discovered an America in which unionism, socialism, and anarchism were very much in the air. He found a home in the tenements of New York and for the next fifty years he devoted his life to the struggles of fellow Jewish workers. The Jewish Unions in America blends memoir and history to chronicle this time. It describes how Weinstein led countless strikes, held the unions together in the face of retaliation from the bosses, investigated sweatshops and factories with the aid of reformers, and faced down schisms by various factions, including Anarchists and Communists. He co-founded the United Hebrew Trades and wrote speeches, articles and books advancing the cause of the labor movement. From the pages of this book emerges a vivid picture of workers’ organizations at the beginning of the twentieth century and a capitalist system that bred exploitation, poverty, and inequality. Although workers’ rights have made great progress in the decades since, Weinstein’s descriptions of workers with jobs pitted against those without, and American workers against workers abroad, still carry echoes today. The Jewish Unions in America is a testament to the struggles of working people a hundred years ago. But it is also a reminder that workers must still battle to live decent lives in the free market. For the first time, Maurice Wolfthal’s readable translation makes Weinstein’s Yiddish text available to English readers. It is essential reading for students and scholars of labor history, Jewish history, and the history of American immigration."

Debate on public issues--and where candidates stand on them-- have traditionally represented the focal point of presidential campaigns. In recent decades, however, rather than asking where candidates stand on the issues, the public increasingly wants to know who they are. The issue of character has thus come to dominate presidential elections. While there is increasing public awareness that the psychology, judgment, and leadership qualities of presidential candidates count, the basis on which these judgments should made remains unclear. Does it matter that Gary Hart changed his name or had an affair? Should Ed Muskie's loss of composure while defending his wife during a campaign speech, or Thomas Eagleton's hospitalization for depression, have counted against them? Looking back over the past 25 years, Stanley Renshon, a political scientist and psychoanalyst, provides the first comprehensive accounting of how character has become an increasingly important issue in a presidential campaign. He traces two related but distinctive approaches to the issue of presidential character and psychology. The first concerns the mental health of our candidates and presidents. Are they emotionally and personally stable? Is their temperament suitable for the presidency? The second concerns character. Is the candidate honest? Does he possess the necessary judgment and motivation to deal with the tremendous responsibilities and pressures of the office? Drawing on his clinical and political science training, Renshon has devised a theory which will allow the public to better evaluate presidential candidates. Why are honesty, integrity, and personal ideals so important in judging candidates? Is personal and political ambition necessarily a bad trait? Do extra-marital affairs really matter? Finally, and most importantly, how can the public tell whether a candidate's leadership will be enhanced or impeded by aspects of his personality?With this sweeping volume, Stanley Renshon has provided us with the most comprehensive account to date of how the public judges, and should judge, our future presidents.

Zentrifugal-Partikelreceiver stellen eine neuartige Komponente für die konzentrierende solare Energiegestehung (CSP) dar. Sie werden in punktfokussierenden CSP-Kraftwerken eingesetzt und gehören - im Gegensatz zu den bereits im Markt befindlichen indirekt absorbierenden Rohrreceivern - der Gruppe der direktabsorbierenden Receiver an. Als Wärmeträgermedium wird hierbei Granulat genutzt, wie beispielsweise Bauxit-Proppants. Bauxit als Wärmeträgermedium ermöglicht höhere Prozesswirkungsgrade aufgrund von höheren Anwendungstemperaturen als in aktuell kommerziell eingesetzten, indirekt absorbierenden Systemen. Gleichzeitig ist Bauxit-Granulat als Wärmespeichermedium einsetzbar, da es besonders kostengünstig ist. Das Potential des Zentrifugal-Partikelreceiver wurde bereits erfolgreich in einem 15kWth Laborreceiver am Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. bewiesen. Darauf aufbauend verfolgt diese Arbeit das Ziel, die Strömungsmechanik von fließenden Granulaten zu modellieren.

Blended learning is not a new topic for educational research in Higher Education (HE). However, before the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, blended learning was studied by a "niche" of researchers and educators interested in technology integration in teaching and learning. It was not difficult to meet HE professionals who had never or only poorly reflected on the topic of how to integrate digital technology in teaching and learning before March 2020. All in all, this special issue provides a deeper understanding of what Blended Learning will be in the near feature, encompassing not the simple combination of online and physical presence, but a combination of delivery tools and media used to provide information and to support interaction, a combination of different methods of instruction and teaching/learning, and a combination of learning contexts.