Open Access Books

In 1900, David Hilbert asked whether each locally euclidean topological group admits a Lie group structure. This was the fifth of his famous 23 questions which foreshadowed much of the mathematical creativity of the twentieth century. It required half a century of effort by several generations of eminent mathematicians until it was settled in the affirmative. These efforts resulted over time in the Peter-Weyl Theorem, the Pontryagin-van Kampen Duality Theorem for locally compact abelian groups, and finally the solution of Hilbert 5 and the structure theory of locally compact groups, through the combined work of Andrew Gleason, Kenkichi Iwasawa, Deane Montgomery, and Leon Zippin. For a presentation of Hilbert 5 see the 2014 book “Hilbert’s Fifth Problem and Related Topics” by the winner of a 2006 Fields Medal and 2014 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, Terence Tao. It is not possible to describe briefly the richness of the topological group theory and the many directions taken since Hilbert 5. The 900 page reference book in 2013 “The Structure of Compact Groups” by Karl H. Hofmann and Sidney A. Morris, deals with one aspect of compact group theory. There are several books on profinite groups including those written by John S. Wilson (1998) and by Luis Ribes and ‎Pavel Zalesskii (2012). The 2007 book “The Lie Theory of Connected Pro-Lie Groups” by Karl Hofmann and Sidney A. Morris, demonstrates how powerful Lie Theory is in exposing the structure of infinite-dimensional Lie groups. The study of free topological groups initiated by A.A. Markov, M.I. Graev and S. Kakutani, has resulted in a wealth of interesting results, in particular those of A.V. Arkhangelʹskiĭ and many of his former students who developed this topic and its relations with topology. The book “Topological Groups and Related Structures” by Alexander Arkhangelʹskii and Mikhail Tkachenko has a diverse content including much material on free topological groups. Compactness conditions in topological groups, especially pseudocompactness as exemplified in the many papers of W.W. Comfort, has been another direction which has proved very fruitful to the present day.

Marseille ist nicht nur Frankreichs älteste und größte Mittelmeermetropole. Neben Paris ist sie auch die bekannteste Filmstadt der Grande Nation. Es gibt eine Vielzahl von Produktionen, die hier angesiedelt sind, etwa John Frankenheimers »French Connection« mit Gene Hackman, Jacques Demys »Drei Karten für den 26.« mit Yves Montand oder die diversen Verfilmungen von Jean-Claude Izzos Kriminalromanen mit Richard Bohringer, Alain Delon und Marie Trintignant. Die Stadt, die als Film- und Kulturmetropole gerade in den letzten Jahren zunehmend von sich Reden gemacht hat, verfügt darüber hinaus über eine lange Tradition lokalen Filmschaffens, die eng mit den Namen Marcel Pagnol, Paul Carpita, René Allio und Robert Guédiguian verbunden ist. Dieses Buch, die erste deutschsprachige Einzelstudie über Frankreichs 'zweite Stadt', befasst sich insbesondere mit diesem Regionalkino, das sich gegenüber den oft klischeereichen B-Movies durch eine liebevolle und differenzierte Annäherung an die Metropole auszeichnet.

This open access book introduces the theoretical frameworks and academic debates concerning sexual cultural practices and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It shows how these frameworks have been applied in a practical sense in Africa to investigate sexual cultural practices and their link with HIV/AIDS. The author provides an overview of both the field of study and the methods used during fieldwork. Finally, it assesses the implications of the findings for the conceptualization and provision of current and future HIV/AIDS policies and programs in Africa. This monograph will appeal to policy makers and practitioners working in the field of HIV/AIDS in the Global South as well as academics and students.

The management of maintenance processes and their integration with production processes is one of the significant challenges faced by industries today. It is known that maintenance must be carried out to guarantee the quality and continuity of production processes. Thus, manufacturing routines, production bottlenecks, and the criticality of each component or subsystem in the overall process should be considered not only by production management but also (and increasingly) by maintenance management. The latter should consider repair (or replacement) costs and miscellaneous expenses, plan to work on maintenance effectively, reduce repair times, and establish clear repair procedures and instructions. Maintenance process management can be deployed in several ways and following several strategies depending on the type of industry, its size, and the criticality of its processes. However, even being a unique company, it is always possible to take advantage of the experiences of other industries and their implementations. The advent of new technologies (such as automation, the Internet of Things, and cloud computing), along with new statistical and artificial intelligence techniques, has created an environment referred to as Industry 4.0, of which maintenance management systems are a part. This book presents aspects of predictive maintenance in industries and shows the possibility of reaching the creation of prognostic maintenance. It offers techniques for managing maintenance processes theoretically and practically as examples of possible industrial implementations.

O livro apresenta, de forma sintética e linguagem simples, os 500 anos de história do Brasil: da “nação em construção” às ameaças atuais à nação brasileira (nação em desmonte), propondo, um exemplo para o desenvolvimento que leve à saída do pântano em que a nação adentrou. Caminhando em meio a vários períodos da história brasileira Brasil Colônia, Brasil Império e Brasil República, o livro busca evidenciar o quão recorrente é o domínio da elite encastelada no poder, interrompido por curtos períodos de avanço libertário. Nesse percurso, salienta a ação de brasileiros notáveis, como: José Bonifácio de Andrade e Silva, André Rebouças, Irineu Evangelista de Sousa e outros. Além disso, explicita as lutas constantes travadas ao longo da história do Brasil e a forte contribuição do negro brasileiro. Por fim, analisa as ameaças que pairam sobre a nação em busca da sua construção e apresenta uma proposta exemplo para a retomada do desenvolvimento.

Contemporary exploitation of natural raw materials by borehole, opencast, underground, seabed, and anthropogenic deposits is closely related to, among others, geomechanics, automation, computer science, and numerical methods. More and more often, individual fields of science coexist and complement each other, contributing to lowering exploitation costs, increasing production, and reduction of the time needed to prepare and exploit the deposit. The continuous development of national economies is related to the increasing demand for energy, metal, rock, and chemical resources. Very often, exploitation is carried out in complex geological and mining conditions, which are accompanied by natural hazards such as rock bursts, methane, coal dust explosion, spontaneous combustion, water, gas, and temperature. In order to conduct a safe and economically justified operation, modern construction materials are being used more and more often in mining to support excavations, both under static and dynamic loads. The individual production stages are supported by specialized computer programs for cutting the deposit as well as for modeling the behavior of the rock mass after excavation in it. Currently, the automation and monitoring of the mining works play a very important role, which will significantly contribute to the improvement of safety conditions. In this Special Issue of Energies, we focus on innovative laboratory, numerical, and industrial research that has a positive impact on the development of safety and exploitation in mining.

Les travaux de Françoise Desbordes, disparue prématurément à l’âge de 54 ans, font autorité auprès de la communauté des chercheurs en sciences humaines. Leur nombre et leur dispersion les rendent aujourd’hui difficilement accessibles. Leur republication s’imposait. Ce volume est centré sur l’histoire des disciplines qui traitent du langage. Le domaine gréco-latin y est exploré avec une ampleur et une richesse de documentation qui ont renouvelé ce champ du savoir. Les réflexions sur les philosophies du langage (Aristote, Platon, Sextus Empiricus et d’autres), l’histoire de la linguistique (écrit/oral, sens/référence/signification, étymologie, grammaire), l’étude attentive de corpus anciens qui ont servi de base à la tradition occidentale, intéresseront un large public d’historiens et d’épistémologues.

Today, detailed reports of travellers, traders and diplomats are interesting and often pleasurable sources for the conditions in Central Greece. This book shows how the landscapes of Phokis and Lokris changed in the medieval age and during the Ottoman regency. It also pictures how Greece changed from the time of the Kingdom to the present-days.

The appearance of Dr Vesco’s translation and study of Hokusai’s Ryakuga haya oshie, together with a full reproduction of the original book, is a matter of great excitement in the field of Japanese Studies. Hokusai has been known in Europe and North America for some 150 years. In his own country, he came to public attention about 1800, with youthful work produced under the name of Shunrô. He lived to the advanced age of 88, and when he died in 1849, he was one of the best-known artists in Japan. He was soon to be the best-known Japanese artist in the West, a status that he probably still holds. ‘Under the Great Wave off Kanagawa’ – often referred to simply as ‘Hokusai’s Great Wave’ (from the Thirty-six View of Mt Fuji) – is said to be the most immediately-recognisable piece of graphic design worldwide. Hokusai was a townsman living in a socially stratified society. He was not a member of the elite, though other famous artists were. He did neither depict elite topics, nor work for elite clients. Rather, Hokusai associated with the ‘Floating World’ (ukiyo) that is Edo’s leisure-time distractions. He also made views of his city, its surroundings, and the wider Japanese countryside, but he was not a great traveller, other than in his mind.Rather unrecognised is what Dr Vesco now brings to our attention. Hokusai saw his role as promoting the practice of art. Of course, he had his students, but as we see here, Hokusai also published out-reach volumes, aimed at introducing the joys of picture-making to amateurs who were not being formally instructed. The lessons were easy to follow, and also fun, as he reduced people animals and plants to basic shapes and formulae. Starting with the auspicious subject of Tang lions (kara shishi), Hokusai leads us through a range of topics, down to the demotic, such as clothes washing. Readers today will certainly find a smile crossing their face as they look through the pictures. Thanks to Dr Vesco’s careful translations, we can also understand the advice and commentaries supplied in Hokusai’s accompanying texts. An additional feature of Dr Vesco’s work will be of assistance to more specialist readers, as she has transcribed the original Japanese. This was no simple task, as it is written in abbreviated calligraphy (kuzushiji). At all levels, readers, art enthusiasts and those who love to create pictures will now have access to Hokusai’s most important study aid. We can delve into it, copy from, and chuckle at, just as people did when the volumes first appeared. Western readers might ponder something else: Ryakuga haya oshie appeared in 1812, as European countries were tearing themselves apart.

Com base em 15 anos de pesquisa na Bahia, no Rio, no Suriname e na Holanda, Livio Sansone indaga sobre as formas específicas que "raça" e etnicidade assumem no Brasil e no resto da América Latina. Ele compara as concepções latino-americanas de "raça" com as concepções dominantes nas ciências sociais, centradas em contextos determinados por identidades branco-negro claramente definidas, formuladas na base da situação dos Estados Unidos e da Europa do Noroeste. Sansone sugere que o estudo de noções de identidade e cultura mais complexas e até "ambíguas", certamente contribui para uma compreensão mais universal das tensões etno-raciais e de por que o pensamento racial continua tão forte. Ele também investiga os efeitos da globalização sobre as diferentes construções da noção de raça.

In the discourse of the social sciences, it has been commented to be more successful to talk about practices than of qualitative techniques given the open and flexible nature of the procedures from which to address social research.In this work, the authors and as a result of their research in recent years exemplify the adaptation made to the Nominal Group technique in order to provide the design, development and implementation of a social intervention model.

Cet ouvrage rassemble seize communications sur le Pouvoir au Moyen Âge présentées en 2002-2004 au séminaire de l'Équipe de Recherches SICMA (Sociétés, Idéologies, Croyances au Moyen Âge) rattachée à l'Université de Provence. Ces études recouvrent un large espace chronologique et géopolitique. Plusieurs thèmes y sont traités : les lieux et les signes du pouvoir, les liens entre les différents détenteurs du pouvoir, les fondements du pouvoir. Pouvoir d'origine divine, dont le bienfait s'exprim...

Machine learning is a relatively new field, without a unanimous definition. In many ways, actuaries have been machine learners. In both pricing and reserving, but also more recently in capital modelling, actuaries have combined statistical methodology with a deep understanding of the problem at hand and how any solution may affect the company and its customers. One aspect that has, perhaps, not been so well developed among actuaries is validation. Discussions among actuaries’ “preferred methods” were often without solid scientific arguments, including validation of the case at hand. Through this collection, we aim to promote a good practice of machine learning in insurance, considering the following three key issues: a) who is the client, or sponsor, or otherwise interested real-life target of the study? b) The reason for working with a particular data set and a clarification of the available extra knowledge, that we also call prior knowledge, besides the data set alone. c) A mathematical statistical argument for the validation procedure.

Die Politische Theorie ist gegenwärtig und nicht zuletzt in Reaktion auf veränderte gesellschaftliche Verhältnisse durch eine angeregte Diskussion über das Politische geprägt. Brigitte Bargetz greift diese aktuellen Debatten auf und schlägt mit dem Konzept des Alltags einen neuen Weg vor, das Politische zu denken: Im Anschluss an Henri Lefebvre, Agnes Heller und Lawrence Grossberg entwirft sie eine vielschichtige politische Theorie des Alltags, die es ermöglicht, Alltag als ambivalenten politischen Kampfplatz zwischen Herrschaft und Widerstand zu fassen, der den Ausgangspunkt für eine praxisorientierte Theorie des Politischen auch jenseits des Staates bildet.

Practice and Prestige: An Exploration of Neolithic Warfare, Bell Beaker Archery, and Social Stratification from an Anthropological Perspective investigates the appearance of the ‘archer’s package’ in select Bell Beaker burials raising questions of daily life, warfare, and social stratification during the Neolithic period. It draws on a recent study by the author that applied an anthropological methodology to assess the bone morphology of these skeletons for signs of specialised archery activity. These analyses revealed results at both a population as well as an individual level. In order to contextualise these osteological findings, the book explores the evidence for warfare and archery throughout the Neolithic period in general and the Bell Beaker period in particular. This perspective considers warfare to be a primary function of archery, thereby associating ‘archer’ burials with concepts of warfare and the warrior. A second perspective delves into prehistoric concepts of specialisation and social hierarchy in order to situate archers, archery, and warfare within potentially stratified populations. These two perspectives allow for the contextualisation of the anthropological results within a broad archaeological framework in which archers and archery were prominent parts of a complex Bell Beaker society.