Open Access Books

Environmental Impact of Aviation and Sustainable Solutions is a compilation of review and research articles in the broad field of aviation and the environment. Over three sections and thirteen chapters, this book covers topics such as aircraft design and materials, combustor modeling, atomization, airport pollution, sonic boom and street noise pollution, emission mitigation strategies, and environmentally friendly contributions from a Russian aviation pioneer. This volume is a useful reference for both researchers and students interested in learning about various aspects of aviation and the environment

This work offers three solutions tailored to specific applications to overcome NMR challenges in the micro-domain. As the first sub-topic of this work, different potential electrode designs, compatible with NMR technique, are suggested and experimentally evaluated. As the second focus point, this work tackles multinuclear detection challenges. In parallel, a low-cost, broadband insert is discussed to enhance the sensitivity of standard NMR coils when a small sample volume is available.

Predicting the time needed to complete a project, task or daily activity can be difficult and people frequently underestimate how long an activity will take. This book sheds light on why and when this happens, what we should do to avoid it and how to give more realistic time predictions. It describes methods for predicting time usage in situations with high uncertainty, explains why two plus two is usually more than four in time prediction contexts, reports on research on time prediction biases, and summarizes the evidence in support of different time prediction methods and principles. Based on a comprehensive review of the research, it is the first book summarizing what we know about judgment-based time predictions. Large parts of the book are directed toward people wishing to achieve better time predictions in their professional life, such as project managers, graphic designers, architects, engineers, film producers, consultants, software developers, or anyone else in need of realistic time usage predictions. It is also of benefit to those with a general interest in judgment and decision-making or those who want to improve their ability to predict and plan ahead in daily life.

Discovered in 1973, the Port Berteau wreck lies at a depth of 7 metres in the Charente river below Samtes. Excavations (1992-1997) were carried out with the dual objective of studying both the hull’s remains and its natural environment.Using the traditional techniques of ship archaeology to examine the wreck from the stem to the stern-post has enabled archaeologists to draw an ‘architectural portrait" of an early 7th century coaster. The 14.30 metre carvel built "frame-first" boat was intended for river navigation and built to carry a cargo of up to ten tonnes. Using what could be called a naval archaeology approach, researchers have analysed the nver environment to reconstruct the natural landscape of the period. The Port Berteau II coaster thus provides a reference for carvel construction history in the Ponant, reviously attested only in 15th century texts.

Miroslav Krleža ist nicht nur das stärkste literarische Talent der Kroaten, sondern zweifellos auch einer der bedeutendsten Vertreter der jugoslawischen Literatur des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Er ist der Typ des unbequemen, weil leidenschaftlich engagierten, kompromisslosen, revolutionären Schriftstellers, der sich sein ganzes Leben unbeugsam für seine Überzeugung einsetzte und daher immer wieder auf erhebliche Schwierigkeiten stieß und heftigen Angriffen ausgesetzt war.

This reprint comprises one Editorial and twenty-three peer-reviewed papers from the concluded Special Issue “Intelligent Techniques Applied in Infrastructure, Engineering and Construction” in Buildings. Together they capture the rapid transition of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-centric analytics from research prototypes to indispensable tools across the infrastructure lifecycle. The contributions address underground excavation, bridge and tunnel risk governance, ballastless-track monitoring, hybrid optimization of concrete thermodynamics, UAV-assisted defect localisation, explainable deep-learning for cost estimation, and the uptake of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies on construction sites. Methodological advances range from ensemble classifiers, Bayesian networks and transformer-enhanced computer vision to physics-informed surrogate modelling and mixed-heuristic optimization, while materials investigated span ultra-high-performance concrete, fiber-reinforced polymers, unsaturated clayey sands and mechanically connected precast piles. By fusing domain knowledge with advanced algorithms, the articles demonstrate measurable gains in safety, efficiency, carbon reduction and lifecycle resilience, offering engineers and researchers actionable guidance for responsible, data-driven infrastructure practice.

The theological role of African women and men in sustainable development and environmental justice strongly emerges in this book. Picking up the theme and metaphor of the fifth pan-African conference of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (hereafter ‘Circle’), ‘Mother Earth and Mother Africa’, this book titled Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Theology presents original and innovative research by scholarly members and friends of the Circle. The main contribution of the volume is its multi- and trans-disciplinary exploration and reimagining of human relationships to Earth from an African ecofeminist and ecowomanist theological perspective. It engages in critical conversations of re-interpreting and re-imagining African cultural, religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives on gender and the Earth. The aim is to construct Earth-friendly relationships in the face of the growing global environmental crisis. Scholarly voices of African women and men from fields such as Theology, Environmental Law and Policy, Tourism, Agricultural Science and Natural Resources, and Economics are reflected in this book, which consists of three parts: Creation, the Trinity, and Mother Africa; Caring for Mother Africa; and Mother Africa and her daughters’ (in)fertility. Each of the eleven chapters in the volume presents the metaphor of Mother Earth, Mother Africa, and gender relations, with the aim to explore life-affirming, life-enhancing human relationships to Earth from the author’s particular area of specialisation and context.

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The author's contribution is dedicated to the Italian cities of communal tradition, which addresses a theme of long tradition, ideological as well as historiographical, namely the connection between libertas and the 'people' regime established, as is known at its origins, in the humanistic Florentine chancellery , of Western republicanism. The author shows how the connection took shape in the political reflection of some late 'people' regimes in Siena, Lucca and Bologna from the mid-fourteenth century when it became common for those involved in politics to think in terms of forms of government and to discuss their characteristics, their merits, their defects: it was in this melting pot that the belief took shape that the status popularis was a political regime preferable to any other because it was closely associated with the ideal of freedom.

This is a chapter from Safety and Security in Transit Environments: An Interdisciplinary Approach edited by Vania Ceccato and Andrew Newton. This chapter is available open access under a CC BY license. As other chapters in Safety and Security in Transit Environments assert, crimes such as pickpocketing can concentrate near bus stops, and crowding and congestion is a factor that heightens this risk. But to target interventions effectively, it is useful to determine what local-level interactions characterise this crowding behaviour. This paper aims to provide a first step to using data collected from laboratory experiments to address questions from crime and transport research. The experiment considered differences in interpersonal distances to further analyse crowding behaviour to attain further insight that could narrow the focus of possible interventions. Audio warnings are examined as a possible solution, and findings show that crowding peaks when passengers board the bus, and audio messages may be one approach for addressing this. To conclude, implications of identifying boarding as a problem area, and the effectiveness of warning messages as a situational crime prevention tool are discussed.

Focusing on concepts, practices and images associated with purity in the ancient Mediterranean, this volume contributes new aspects to the current discussion about the forming of religious traditions, from a comparative perspective that acknowldges individual developments, mutual exchanges, as well as transcultural processes.; Readership: Scholars interested in the history of religions, religious contacts and social-cultural interactions in Antiquity, purity and impurity in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as mechanisms of social control and regulation in ancient societies.

This Special Issue contains novel results in the area of out-of-equilibrium classical and quantum thermodynamics. Contributions are from different areas of physics, including statistical mechanics, quantum information and many-body systems.

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The Routledge Companion to Narrative Theory brings together top scholars in the field to explore the significance of narrative to pressing social, cultural, and theoretical issues. How does narrative both inform and limit the way we think today? From conspiracy theories and social media movements to racial politics and climate change future scenarios, the reach is broad. This volume is distinctive for addressing the complicated relations between the interdisciplinary narrative turn in the academy and the contemporary boom of instrumental storytelling in the public sphere. The scholars collected here explore new theories of causality, experientiality, and fictionality; challenge normative modes of storytelling; and offer polemical accounts of narrative fiction, nonfiction, and video games. Drawing upon the latest research in areas from cognitive sciences to complexity theory, the volume provides an accessible entry point for those new to the myriad applications of narrative theory and a point of departure for new scholarship.

L’Union européenne est en crise. Pourtant l’attractivité des métiers de l’Europe politique ne se dément pas : de nombreux jeunes souhaitent s’orienter vers des carrières en lien avec les institutions européennes. Partant de ce paradoxe, cet ouvrage présente une enquête sur la genèse de la vocation européenne d’un ensemble de candidats aux métiers de l’Europe politique en France. Il analyse les dispositions favorables à cette vocation et la différenciation des profils vocationnels au principe d’une diversité à la fois des sens donnés à l’orientation vers l’UE, des socialisations européennes, ainsi que des trajectoires professionnelles. La part circonscrite de ceux qui souhaitent vivre de l’Europe et pour l’Europe, illustre la perte d’importance de la vocation au sein du champ de l’Eurocratie, et tout particulièrement de ses zones périphériques. Cette enquête apporte une contribution à la compréhension des processus plus généraux d’intégration européenne, d’européanisation, et dans une certaine mesure des aspects sociologiques de la crise traversée par l’Europe.