Open Access Books

With communication playing an increasingly important role in contemporary society, rhetoric appears to have gained in influence and importance. The ancients knew all along: power belongs to those who know how to use their words. Nowadays, we know that rhetoric pervades all discourse. There is no communication without rhetoric. In a society with ever-increasing amounts of information, and with media whose significance cannot be overestimated, we need to know all the mechanisms playing a role in the gathering, making and reporting of information and opinions, and its processing by an audience. Rhetoric is, from both a practical and a theoretical perspective, essential to the conduct, analysis and evaluation of public debates. After all, the idea of democracy is closely intertwined with the ideal of transparent decision-making on the basis of open, informed discussions in the public domain, in political, organizational and journalistic discourse. Bending Opinion cites a host of relevant examples, from Barack Obama to Geert Wilders, as well as compelling case studies.

Nutraceuticals are a challenge for the future of prevention and therapy in healthcare. The possibility to prevent and/or support pharmacological therapy, which is nowadays mainly based on pharmaceuticals, can be a powerful tool to face pathological, chronic, long-term diseases in subjects who do not qualify for a pharmacological therapy. Nutraceuticals are obtained from vegetal or animal origin foods, and prospective research on these products will clarify their role, safety and efficacy by substantiating their role with clinical data. An effort to clarify their mechanism of action will open a door to the next generation of therapeutic agents that do not propose themselves as an alternative to drugs, but, instead, can be helpful to complement a pharmacological therapy, and to prevent the onset of chronical diseases. The market as well as the interest of people in naturally-derived remedies and less synthetic pharmaceuticals is growing, and the attention of the collective public imagination is nowadays more strongly focused on these food-derived products. This Special Issue is dedicated to the role of and perspectives on nutraceuticals in human health, examined from different angles ranging from analytical aspects to clinical trials, and from efficacy studies to beneficial effects on health conditions.

"Dante and Epicurus seem poles apart. Dante, a committed Christian, depicted in the Commedia a vision of the afterlife and God's divine justice. Epicurus, a pagan philosopher, taught that the soul is mortal and that all religion is vain superstition. And yet Epicurus is, for Dante, not only the quintessential heretic but an ethical ally. The key to this apparent paradox lies in the heterodox dualism - between man's two goals of secular felicity and spiritual beatitude - at the heart of Dante's ethical, political and theological thought. Corbett's full-length treatment of Dante's reception and polemical representation of Epicurus addresses a major gap in the scholarship. Furthermore the study's focus on fault lines in Dante's vision of the afterlife- where the theological tensions implicit in his dualism surface - opens a new way to read the Commedia as a whole in dualistic terms."

Der Dirigent und Komponist John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) war eine Ikone der amerikanischen Massenkultur um 1900. Seine Märsche und die internationalen Tourneen seines zivilen Blasorchesters machten ihn zu einem der bekanntesten Musiker seiner Zeit. Tobias Faßhauer zeichnet erstmals Sousas kontinentaleuropäische Konzertreisen nach, um seine Rolle im frühen Transfer amerikanischer populärer Musik nach Europa aufzudecken. Eingebettet in den Kontext der Debatte über Amerikanismus zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts entsteht so ein luzides Bild von der Rezeption und dem Einfluss Sousas auf die europäische Musik.

The volume proposes a corpus-driven study on the 14,000 occurrences of the verb “essere” (to be) in a corpus of Italian speech C-ORAL-ROM, in the light of the main proposals for the semantic interpretation of the verb. Thus, the very possibility of carrying out research that is strongly characterised in a theoretical sense on a large amount of oral data, generally not very inclined to a systematic taxonomic treatment, is put to the test. The observable datum therefore defines the explicandum of linguistic reflection and the analysis on corpus guarantees the observational adequacy with respect to the actual production data. The proposed results show that the wide semantic variation in the use of the verb is structured in broadly comprehensive macro-classes: the copula (attributive) uses, the identifying uses and the predicative uses with a locative basis. Within each of these classes, primary, consistent and productive variation lines are found.

Pedagogy and politics have arguably never been so closely intertwined as they were in Sweden after the Second World war. For some decades, researchers in pedagogy took up a central role in reforming the welfare state’s education system, which resulted in the introduction of nine years compulsory schooling, a greatly expanded preschool program, and major changes to the higher education sector. Many appreciated the close collaborative toes between educational research and educational policy, but it also became the subject of criticism both within and outside academia. This edited anthology presents some notable cases from Sweden’s post-second world war educational reforms, highlighting the complex relationship between pedagogy and public policy. The volume offers in-depth knowledge of how educational researchers and pedagogical experts were involved in influencing public policy, but also how political forces and actors directly or indirectly influenced educational research.

This book examines supportive and palliative care and quality of life in cancer patients. Chapters address such topics as anxiety, depression, and delirium in terminally ill cancer patients, ethics in palliative care, palliative care medications, assisted suicide and euthanasia, and much more.

This reprint features 18 selected high-quality research articles spanning diverse domains in the field of energy-efficient wireless communication and networking. The contributions in this reprint collectively underscore the significance of energy optimization in wireless systems, illuminating innovative approaches, algorithms, and technologies that pave the way for sustainable and efficient wireless communication in various application scenarios. This reprint brings together a rich tapestry of research that illuminates the ongoing efforts to design, optimize, and implement energy-efficient wireless communication and networking solutions. This reprint also encourages researchers to explore finer areas in the energy-efficient wireless network domain and provides a significant contribution to the research community to help further extend their areas of research.

« En ma fin est mon commencement »… dernières paroles attribuées à Marie Stuart, au matin de son exécution le 7 février 1587, qui furent immédiatement retranscrites par Adam Blackwood dans le Martyre de la Royne d'Escosse publié la même année. Quarante ans plus tard, c'était au tour de Charles Ier de monter sur l'échafaud pour être décapité à la hache, devant la foule rassemblée à Whitehall. En France, le supplice de Louis XVI et de Marie-Antoinette, les 21 janvier et 16 octobre 1793, se fit lui aussi à la suite d'un procès et en place publique. D'autres princes, érigés en ennemis publics, furent encore exécutés pour abattre leur pouvoir jusque dans sa symbolique, comme Maximilien d'Autriche au Mexique ou encore le tsar Nicolas II. Leur mort, préméditée et largement informée, a pu apparaître comme la condition nécessaire à l'affermissement d'un nouveau régime ou d'une nouvelle dynastie. Pourtant, comme l'écrivait Olympe de Gouges à la veille du procès de Louis XVI, « il ne suffit pas de faire tomber la tête d'un roi pour le tuer, il vit encore longtemps après sa mort ». Le condamné est en effet considéré comme un authentique martyr par les nostalgiques de l'ordre ancien. Mué en icône partisane, symbole fédérateur d'une opposition parfois divisée, le souvenir de son sacrifice a permis et permet encore de conserver et illustrer une tradition, tout en participant à la délégitimation des institutions politiques fondées sur le régicide. Néanmoins, tous les princes martyrs ont, à un moment ou à un autre, fini par devenir des objets mémoriels gênants, témoins d'une guerre civile que l'on préfère oublier ou dépasser, même si de persévérants thuriféraires entretiennent toujours leur culte, que ce soit par espérance providentialiste ou par simple fidélité désabusée.

To integrate the regions of the early Islamic Empire from Central Asia to North Africa, transregional and regional elites of various backgrounds were essential. The papers analyze elite groups, their structures and networks, within selected regions across geographical, religious and social boundaries. While each region seems to be different, certain common patterns of governance and interaction made the largest empire of Late Antiquity work.

Higher Education; Educational Policy and Politics; International and Comparative Education

Valeria Bril’s book studies both established and alternative imaginaries of the bedroom in housing in Buenos Aires during the period 1950–1970, based on a selection of novels and architectural publications from the time. The author proposes a journey through the bedroom spaces depicted in novels, revealing a range of images and metaphors that, from the realm of the “unreal,” question the “real” images produced by the discipline regarding this same space—one whose function and meaning quickly escape the boundaries of its own definition as a place for sleeping. It is through the contrast between literature and architecture that the book seeks to shed light on issues related to the inhabitant, spatial configurations, objects, and the symbolic dimension that distinguish the bedroom from other parts of the house. In doing so, the author demonstrates the complexity and multiplicity of meanings condensed in this space. Ultimately, she invites the reader to cross the threshold of the bedroom door and enter a different universe, where images of intimacy, confinement, the soul, and death, among others, may take on new meaning—and thus contribute to rethinking the established representations of bedrooms in architecture.

Décentrer et élargir l’histoire de la France Libre en analysant l’extraordinaire diversité des imaginaires et des expériences des Français libres, tel est le but du livre. Il tente de repenser la manière dont le projet commun de la France Libre s’est élaboré sur plusieurs continents, et interroge la « mystique du mouvement » qui tend à présenter les Françaises et les Français libres comme des aventuriers apolitiques, à l’opposé des membres de la Résistance intérieure. En mobilisant des archives privées et le regard de l’anthropologie historique, il s’intéresse aux « mots » de la Résistance, aux émotions associées à la guerre et aux représentations mémorielles. Ce faisant, il participe au renouvellement de l’histoire transnationale des résistances pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en appréhendant ses silences et ses tabous. Il lève ainsi un coin du voile sur des trajectoires et des imaginaires trop souvent négligés tels que, par exemple, ceux des volontaires étrangers, des tirailleurs africains, des femmes et, plus largement, des civils.

How the Soviet forestry industry developed a unique form of industrial ecology—a commonsense approach toward natural resources for the economy and society.In The Green Power of Socialism, Elena Kochetkovaexamines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how professionals working in the forestry industry of the Soviet state viewed the present and future of forests by considering them both a natural resource and a trove of industrial material. When faced with the prospect of wood shortages, these specialists came to develop new industry-ecology paradigms. Kochetkova looks at the materiality of Soviet industry through forests and wood to show how, paradoxically, industrial ecology emerged and developed as a by-product of the Soviet industrialization project. The Green Power of Socialism also discusses how post-Soviet industry has abandoned these socialist practices and the idea of nature as a complicated ecosystem that provides a crucial service to society. Emphasizing the technological and environmental impacts of the Cold War, Kochetkova critically reconsiders two explanatory models that have become dominant in the historiography of Soviet approaches to nature over the last decades—ecocide and environmentalism. Within the context of the current environmental crisis, the book invites readers to reevaluate state socialism as a complex phenomenon with sophisticated interactions between nature and industry. In so doing, it contributes a fresh perspective on the activities of socialist experts and their view of nature, shedding light on Soviet state industrial and environmental policy and its continuing legacy in the present day.

Over the last few years, interest in the industrial applications of AI and learning systems has surged. This book covers the recent developments and provides a broad perspective of the key challenges that characterize the field of Industry 4.0 with a focus on applications of AI. The target audience for this book includes engineers involved in automation system design, operational planning, and decision support. Computer science practitioners and industrial automation platform developers will also benefit from the timely and accurate information provided in this work. The book is organized into two main sections comprising 12 chapters overall: •Digital Platforms and Learning Systems •Industrial Applications of AI