Open Access Books

How and under what conditions does the European Union (EU) shape processes of institution building in other regional organizations? This book develops and tests a theory of interorganizational diffusion in international relations that explains how successful pioneer organizations shape institutional choices in other organizations by affecting the institutional preferences and bargaining strategies of national governments. The author argues that Europe’s foremost regional organization systematically affects institution building abroad, but that such influence varies across different types of organization. Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, it shows how the EU institutionally strengthens regional organizations through active engagement and by building its own institutions at home. Yet the contractual nature of other regional organizations bounds this causal influence: EU influence makes an identifiable difference primarily in those organizations that, like the EU itself, rest on an open-ended contract. Evidence for these claims is drawn from the statistical analysis of a dataset on the institutionalization of 35 regional organizations in the period from 1950 to 2017, as well as from detailed single and comparative case studies on institutional creation and (non-)change in the Southern African Development Community, Mercosur, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

This open-access textbook provides a comprehensive, up-to-date guide for students and practitioners wishing to access in a single volume the key disciplines and principles of wheat breeding. Wheat is a cornerstone of food security: it is the most widely grown of any crop and provides 20% of all human calories and protein. The authorship of this book includes world class researchers and breeders whose expertise spans cutting-edge academic science all the way to impacts in farmers’ fields. The book’s themes and authors were selected to provide a didactic work that considers the background to wheat improvement, current mainstream breeding approaches, and translational research and avant garde technologies that enable new breakthroughs in science to impact productivity. While the volume provides an overview for professionals interested in wheat, many of the ideas and methods presented are equally relevant to small grain cereals and crop improvement in general. The book is affordable, and because it is open access, can be readily shared and translated -- in whole or in part -- to university classes, members of breeding teams (from directors to technicians), conference participants, extension agents and farmers. Given the challenges currently faced by academia, industry and national wheat programs to produce higher crop yields --- often with less inputs and under increasingly harsher climates -- this volume is a timely addition to their toolkit.

This book is a rich text for introducing diverse aspects of real-time systems including architecture, specification and verification, scheduling and real world applications. It is useful for advanced graduate students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines impacted by embedded computing and software. Since the book covers the most recent advances in real-time systems and communications networks, it serves as a vehicle for technology transition within the real-time systems community of systems architects, designers, technologists, and system analysts. Real-time applications are used in daily operations, such as engine and break mechanisms in cars, traffic light and air-traffic control and heart beat and blood pressure monitoring. This book includes 15 chapters arranged in 4 sections, Architecture (chapters 1-4), Specification and Verification (chapters 5-6), Scheduling (chapters 7-9) and Real word applications (chapters 10-15).

In this book, we discuss the changing medical and public profile of fungal infections in the period 1850–2000. We consider four sets of diseases: ringworm and athlete’s foot (dermatophytosis); thrush or candidiasis (infection with Candida albicans); endemic, geographically specific infections in North America (coccidioidomycosis, blastomycosis and histoplasmosis) and mycotoxins; and aspergillosis (infection with Aspergillus fumigatus). We discuss each disease in relation to developing medical knowledge and practices, and to social changes associated with ‘modernity’. Thus, mass schooling provided ideal conditions for the spread of ringworm of the scalp in children, and the rise of college sports and improvement of personal hygiene led to the spread of athlete’s foot. Antibiotics seemed to open the body to more serious Candida infections, as did new methods to treat cancers and the development of transplantation. Regional fungal infections in North America came to the fore due to the economic development of certain regions, where population movement brought in non-immune groups who were vulnerable to endemic mycoses. Fungal toxins or mycotoxins were discovered as by-products of modern food storage and distribution technologies. Lastly, the rapid development and deployment of new medical technologies, such as intensive care and immunosuppression in the last quarter of the twentieth century, increased the incidence of aspergillosis and other systemic mycoses.

In 2015, Miguel Real publishes O último europeu 2284 (The Last European 2284), where he conducts, through the tale of an ideal and utopian city, an analysis of a European Union crumbling around all sorts of conflicts. In the current context, does Europe have a future? Is the future of a community compatible with human nature? These are the questions we will be reflecting upon in this article, through the study of this work.

This open access book explores the socio-economic challenges and recovery efforts in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the pandemic’s wide-ranging impacts, particularly on individuals, households, and small and medium-sized enterprises across key sectors such as agriculture, garment manufacturing, and tourism. The analysis incorporates cross-cutting themes, including gender disparities and social protection, highlighting the uneven effects on different demographics. The book also discusses the policy responses adopted by these countries to mitigate socio-economic challenges. It examines the mechanisms employed during policy implementation, identifying key lessons for managing crises in the region. The book aims for a diverse audience, including students, researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners. Offering evidence-based insights, this volume is an important resource for understanding crisis management and policy development in the context of developing countries.

In January 1995, four Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay joined their destinies within a common and ambitious enterprise called MERCOSUR. MERCOSUR, the Common Market of the South, represents an important economic integration area that generates a GDP of $US 600 billion, providing a market of 200 million people spread over an area of 12 million square km. Initially, MERCOSUR performance has been more than successful, as intra-MERCOSUR trade has increased significantly. However, the elimination of intra-MERCOSUR tariffs will not be efficient if at the same time the sharp variability of nominal exchange rates artificially affects the relative prices of different products. The question as to the choice of the optimal exchange rate system to be adopted among MERCOSUR countries becomes critical if MERCOSUR states attempt to go further along the path of increasing their trade flows of goods and services. The study contributes to filling this gap by providing some alternative answers to this issue. The analysis has been based on three pillars: a theoretical review of exchange rate systems; a review of the European experience; and an analysis of the Latin American experience.

Heated debates about Muslim women's veiling practices have regularly attracted the attention of European policymakers over the last decade. The headscarf has been both vehemently contested by national and/or regional governments, political parties and public intellectuals and passionately defended by veil wearing women and their supporters. Systematically applying a comparative perspective, this book addresses the question of why the headscarf tantalises and causes such controversy over issues about religious pluralism, secularism, neutrality of the state, gender oppression, citizenship, migration, and multiculturalism. Seeking also to establish why the issue has become part of the disciplinary practices of some European countries but not of others, this work brings together an important collection of interpretative research regarding the current debates on the veil in Europe, offering an interdisciplinary scope and European-wide setting. Brought together through a common research methodology, the contributors focus on the different religious, political and cultural meanings of the veiling issue across eight countries and develop a comparative explanation of veiling regimes. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion & politics, gender studies and multiculturalism.

To several governments, modern international terrorism cannot be handled adequately within the ordinary criminal justice system. To fight terrorism (including the criminalization of certain “abstract danger”, preparatory activities such as terrorist training, membership in a terrorist organization) more effectively, criminal law had to be adapted.

Building on concepts from Science & Technology Studies, Simon David Hirsbrunner investigates practices and infrastructures of computer modeling and science communication in climate impact research. The book characterizes how scientists calculate future climate risks in computer models and scenarios, but also how they circulate their insights and make them accessible and comprehensible to others. By discussing elements such as infrastructures, visualizations, models, software and data, the chapters show how computational modeling practices are currently changing in light of digital transformations and expectations for an open science. A number of inventive research devices are proposed to capture both the fluidity and viscosity of contemporary digital technology.

The 43rd UID conference, held in Genova, takes up the theme of ‘Dialogues’ as practice and debate on many fundamental topics in our social life, especially in these complex and not yet resolved times. The city of Genova offers the opportunity to ponder on the value of comparison and on the possibilities for the community, naturally focused on the aspects that concern us, as professors, researchers, disseminators of knowledge, or on all the possibile meanings of the discipline of representation and its dialogue with ‘others’, which we have broadly catalogued in three macro areas: History, Semiotics, Science / Technology. Therefore, “dialogue” as a profitable exchange based on a common language, without which it is impossible to comprehend and understand one another; and the graphic sign that connotes the conference is the precise transcription of this concept: the title ‘translated’ into signs, derived from the visual alphabet designed for the visual identity of the UID since 2017. There are many topics which refer to three macro sessions: - Witnessing (signs and history) - Communicating (signs and semiotics) - Experimenting (signs and sciences) Thanks to the different points of view, an exceptional resource of our disciplinary area, we want to try to outline the prevailing theoretical-operational synergies, the collaborative lines of an instrumental nature, the recent updates of the repertoires of images that attest and nourish the relations among representation, history, semiotics, sciences.

Schneller, weiter, billiger, mehr – ein Blick auf die Strassen und Schienen der Schweiz scheint zu bestätigen, was offizielle Statistiken seit Jahrzehnten mit eindrücklichen Zahlen belegen: Der Verkehr hat im Verlauf des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts massiv zugenommen. Doch ist dieses Wachstum mit gesteigerter Mobilität gleichzusetzen? Sind wir, wie gerne argumentiert wird, tatsächlich in jeglicher Hinsicht mobiler als früher? Ausgehend von diesen Leitfragen wirft der Autor einen umfassenden Blick auf die Verkehrs- und Mobilitätsgeschichte der letzten hundert Jahre. Das Buch zeigt zunächst auf, wie sich das Verkehrssystem seit 1918 im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft angebots- und nachfrageseitig entwickelt hat. Danach wird die Perspektive stärker auf Fragen der Alltagsmobilität verlagert: Wie lassen sich die alltäglichen Mobilitätsbedürfnisse der Bevölkerung im Zeitverlauf beschreiben? Welche Konstanten und Veränderungen kennzeichnen die Entwicklung? Wie verteilten sich Mobilitätschancen in der Gesellschaft? Der dritte und letzte Teil widmet sich der noch relativ jungen Mobilitätsbiografieforschung. Zwölf Interviews mit Frauen und Männern im Alter zwischen 30 und 85 Jahren zeigen auf, wie sich Mobilität und Verkehr über die Zeit und im intergenerationalen Vergleich entwickelt haben.

This open access book constitutes a transnational and multidisciplinary inquiry of the most pressing challenges faced by young people Not in Employment, nor in Education or Training (NEET) in rural areas across Europe. . Rural NEETs are one of the most invisible segments of the youth population, in spite of the fact that the percentage of NEETs is higher in the countryside, compared to those in suburban and urban areas across the EU and many of the Southern and Eastern European countries. This book identifies and analyses different factors that may contribute to or hamper youth social development and social inclusion. Among them are main individual features of rural NEETs, the quality and characteristics of rural NEETs' informal social networks and support, the singularities of formal and non-formal education in rural areas and how they shape the transition from school to work, the role of employment services in providing adequate institutional support, the importance of policy package designor the role of new paradigms of rural development to uphold vulnerable young people in the European countryside . The contributions offered in this book provide a new model of analysis and comprehension of rural NEETs' personal development and social inclusion. This book therefore establishes the state of the art regarding available knowledge on rural NEETs, and represents an inspirational resource for new research agendas on the subject of vulnerable rural youth in Europe. This book also forms the policy design in areas such as education, employment, and social welfare in rural areas.

Acoustics of Empire articulates what we might call a cultural history of global acoustics in the Age of Empire. Increasingly, music and sound studies have turned their attention to questions of empire and postcolonial thought, raising new questions about the forms and circulation of cultural, technological, and military power as manifest in and through sound. However, most of this scholarship has focused on the twentieth century. Conversely, sound and media studies have made nineteenth-century histories of science and technology a central part of their canonical repertoire, but largely overlooked the ways in which these technological developments emerged from contexts of empire. Examining histories of sound, listening practices, and audiovisual technologies of the Long Nineteenth Century through the lens of geopolitical power, Acoustics of Empire recovers a history of sound that is bound up with, even as it elides, questions of imperial and colonial rule. Bringing together contributions from historians, musicologists, anthropologists, and literary critics, the book emphasizes historical moments in which academic disciplines like musicology and history were created at the same moment and often in connection with global empires.

Taking South Africa as an important case study of the challenges of structural transformation, the book offers a new micro-meso level framework and evidence linking country-specific and global dynamics of change, with a focus on the current challenges and opportunities faced by middle-income countries. Detailed analyses of industry groupings and interests in South Africa reveal the complex set of interlocking country-specific factors which have hampered structural transformation over several decades, but also the emerging productive areas and opportunities for structural change. The structural transformation trajectory of South Africa presents a unique country case, given its industrial structure, concentration, and highly internationalized economy, as well as the objective of black economic empowerment. The book links these micro-meso dynamics to the global forces driving economic, institutional, and social change. These include digital industrialization, global value-chain consolidation, financialization, and environmental and other sustainability challenges which are reshaping structural transformation dynamics across middle-income countries like South Africa. While these new drivers of change are disrupting existing industries and interests in some areas, in others they are reinforcing existing trends and configurations of power. The book analyses the ways in which both the domestic and global drivers of structural transformation shape—and, in some cases, are shaped by—a country’s political settlement and its evolution. By focusing on the political economy of structural transformation, the book disentangles the specific dynamics underlying the South African experience of the middle-income country conundrum. In so doing, it brings to light the broader challenges faced by similar countries in achieving structural transformation via industrial policies.