Open Access Books

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is known to have far-ranging impacts on human health through to climate forcing. The characterization of emission sources and the quantification of specific source impacts to PM concentrations significantly enhance our understanding of, and our ability to, eventually predicting the fate and transport of atmospheric PM and its associated impacts on humans and the environment. Recent advances in source apportionment applications have contributed unique combinations of chemical and numerical techniques for determining the contributions of specific sources, including diesel exhaust and biomass burning. These advances also identify and help characterize the contributions of previously uncharacterized sources. Numerical modeling has also enabled estimations of contributions of emission sources to atmospherically processed PM in urban and rural regions. Investigation into the emissions sources driving air quality is currently of concern across the globe. This Special Issue offers studies at the intersection of air quality and source apportionment for study areas in China, Germany, Iceland, Mexico, and the United States. Studies cover diverse methods for chemical characterization and modeling of the impact of different emission sources on air quality.

The years 1676 and 1774 marked two turning points in the social and legal treatment of madness in England. In 1676, London’s Bethlehem Hospital expanded in grand new premises, and in 1774 the Madhouses Act attempted to limit confinement of the insane. This study explores almost a century of the English history of madness through the texts of five poets who were considered mentally troubled according to contemporary standards: James Carkesse, Anne Finch, William Collins, Christopher Smart and William Cowper were hospitalized, sequestered or exiled from society. Their works cope with representations of insanity, medical definitions or practices, imputed illness, and the judging eye of the ‘sane other’, shedding new light on the dis/continuities in the notion of madness of this period.

Les travaux sur les approches féminines de l’altérité ont largement privilégié, jusqu’à présent, l’Orient musulman et le monde colonial. Ce livre, faisant suite au recueil Le Voyage au féminin paru en 2008, a choisi de se centrer sur le regard porté par les femmes voyageuses sur l’Europe dite « périphérique », et à réfléchir sur le rôle qu’elles ont tenu dans l’identification progressive de ces territoires comme des régions marginales. Comment les femmes ont-elles pris part, au fil des deux derniers siècles, à la formation de cette étrange alliance de proximité et d’étrangeté qui unit les grands foyers de civilisation européens avec les confins du continent, c’est-à-dire ici l’aire scandinave, l’Écosse, le monde slave, les îles méditerranéennes comme les Baléares ou la Sicile. En quoi les voyageuses ont-elles entretenu un regard condescendant ou conformiste ou bien, au contraire, en quoi ont-elles travaillé à en faire bouger les lignes et à le subvertir ? À travers un parcours entre des figures célèbres d’écrivaines voyageuses comme Mary Wollstonecraft ou Louise Weiss et d’autres personnalités moins connues comme l’Anglaise Emily Lowe ou la Française Henriette Renan, cet ouvrage invite à mieux comprendre l’originalité des mobilités féminines de l’époque contemporaine, entre dilettantisme et professionnalisation, entre errance et ancrage, bien au-delà des pratiques propres au traditionnel voyage d’éducation et de culture.

Toute entière orientée vers l’interrogation du « problème d’être », l’œuvre poétique et picturale d’Henri Michaux associe étroitement corps et savoir, figuration et mouvement. Multipliant les déplacements, les passages, les trajets, elle emprunte la voie des rythmes pour prendre le malheur de vitesse et faire face à « ce qui se dérobe ». Les études réunies dans ce volume sont le fruit des travaux du groupe « Plume » du centre de recherches sur la création poétique de l’ENS de Fontenay/Saint-Cloud. Elles s’intéressent à Michaux moraliste, à son usage du fragment et de l’aphorisme, aussi bien qu’à ses figurations du corps et du sujet. Elles tentent de préciser les rapports que son œuvre entretient, entre autres, avec celle de Cioran, Dubuffet ou Levinas. Au fil de ces études, une trajectoire se dessine qui vérifie les mots du poète : « la poésie avant d’être œuvre est trajet. »

In the new millennium the increasing expectation of customers and products complexity has forced companies to find new solutions and better alternatives to improve the quality of their products. Lean and Six Sigma methodology provides the best solutions to many problems and can be used as an accelerator in industry, business and even health care sectors. Due to its flexible nature, the Lean and Six Sigma methodology was rapidly adopted by many top and even small companies. This book provides the necessary guidance for selecting, performing and evaluating various procedures of Lean and Six Sigma. In the book you will find personal experiences in the field of Lean and Six Sigma projects in business, industry and health sectors.

People who have chronic diseases spend a significant amount of time in self-management in out-of-hospital environments, in their homes and in their community settings. These patients have different disease statuses and management requirements, so providing personalized care is key.Personalized care is a collaborative process that should be used in chronic condition management in which patients, caregivers, and healthcare providers identify and discuss problems caused by or related to the patient's condition and then develop plans and goals to empower patients.Personalized care can improve aspects of physical health, mental health, and the ability to self-manage conditions. Thus, a personalized care approach could greatly benefit patients with chronic conditions.In this book, we have included 20 articles that expand the current knowledge on the personalized care approach to diagnosing and treating chronically ill patients.

Questo eBook è il primo rapporto di ricerca sulla dieta mediale dei giovani studenti universitari. La ricerca si occupa di indagare i loro consumi culturali, osservare da vicino la familiarità degli studenti con i piu innovativi strumenti tecnologici, monitorare le abitudini di consumo di contenuti e prodotti culturali, verificare la frequenza e le modalità principali con cui gli studenti si collegano a Internet, analizzare la conoscenza e l’utilizzo di piattaforme e strumenti del web 2.0.

In arid and semi -arid media, such as most of the territory of the Region of Murcia, there are a series of local water resources that have been subject to horizontal wells (galleries with lumbers and mined with mirrors). These water roads constitute the basis of human settlements, of rest for cattle, of bathroom establishments, energy for industrial mills such as mills and oil mills, and especially the development of the landscapes watered in the orchards.In addition to being, in its operation, sustainable development models

In the evolving field of orthopedics, the shift towards personalized medicine heralds a new era of patient care—promising enhanced treatment accuracy and improved outcomes. This collection, derived from the Special Issue in the Journal of Personalized Medicine, showcases cutting-edge research and reviews focusing on tailoring orthopedic treatments to individual patient needs. Emphasizing innovation in surgical technologies, implant designs, and non-operative approaches, this SI critically addresses the challenges of standardization and the necessity for patient-specific treatment strategies. Contributions delve into understanding the diverse responses to orthopedic treatments, exploring patient-specific disease mechanisms, and the potential for personalized therapeutic regimens to optimize clinical results and minimize complications. This reprint aims to inspire a future where orthopedic medicine not only addresses the disease, but also reflects the unique health blueprint of each patient. We thank our contributors for their insightful research, pushing the boundaries towards a personalized approach in orthopedic care.

"Humanizing Encounters is about the sense of community that exists between persons with dementia. This book is the outcome of a year of ethnographic fieldwork at the specialized dementia care units of two different long-term nursing facilities. Through participatory observation in these units, the author discerned the various ways residents interacted, collaborated and expressed care for each other. The potential for fellowship among residents of dementia care facilities is explored primarily through fieldwork, phenomenological perspectives and spatial theory. It suggests that persons with dementia experience a greater sense of community than previous research has recognized. Thus the book contributes to a widening of the relational focus in individually oriented caregiving practices to also include collaboration and relations between groups of people with dementia. Humanizing Encounters is a contribution to our evolving understanding of the development of community within the dementia care units of skilled nursing homes. It will be relevant to all those who work with and on behalf of people with dementia, as well as those with an interest in this area from a humanistic perspective."

Le monde des dieux est une construction humaine, certes organisée, mais instable. Sans cesse mis en question et reconfiguré, il offre au regard de l’historien une plasticité qui est d’autant plus manifeste en contexte polythéiste. Car ces systèmes religieux ne s’appuient pas sur une représentation dogmatique issue de textes révélés ou d’une autorité centrale. Des élaborations et des ajustements y sont sans cesse à l’oeuvre, selon des opérations pragmatiques que, avec Lévi-Strauss, on qualifiera de ‘bricolages’. L’enjeu de cette dynamique de la ‘fabrique’ du divin n’est rien moins que notre compréhension de chaque divinité en particulier - comment et pourquoi fait-on un dieu, ce dieu, tous les dieux, ou le dieu ? - et notre capacité à rendre compte des structurations et fonctionnements de ces ensembles complexes qui ont bel et bien une histoire. En quoi, par exemple, le genre littéraire est-il créateur de représentation, et de quel type de représentation, différente de celle que construirait un autre registre d’expression ? En quoi les formes rhétoriques ou iconographiques conditionnent-elles la représentation du divin et en sont-elles des facteurs de fixation ou d’évolution ? Comment le rituel est-il à même de modifier l’image d’un dieu, et pas seulement d’informer sur lui ? Comment les artisans créateurs d’images sont-ils capables, par leurs oeuvres, d’ouvrir à de nouvelles interprétations des divinités, tout en étant tenus de respecter une figuration reconnaissable, voire attendue, par les fidèles ? L’érudition à l’oeuvre dans des cercles d’intellectuels a-t-elle un impact sur la représentation des dieux en contexte rituel ? Autant de questions qui relèvent des processus par lesquels le divin se ‘fabrique’ et que le présent volume pose dans diverses aires culturelles de l’Antiquité méditerranéenne.

This open access book is both a memoir and a biography. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1924, Herwig Schopper is one of the few people able to bear witness to 100 years of European history. His career has taken him from research to management to diplomacy, with a major part devoted to, and inspired by, CERN. Herwig enjoyed a rich childhood, spending his summers at his grandparent’s hotel on the Adriatic coast. It is there that he developed an interest in physics though eavesdropping on holidaying professors from Budapest and Belgrade who conversed in German. His youthful idyll was shattered by the annexation of the Sudetenland, which lead to him serving in the Luftwaffe signals corps. Working as a translator for the British administration in Hamburg after the war, he also enrolled at the University and was soon granted leave to travel outside Germany for his research. So began a long string of professional relationships with leading scientists of the day: LiseMeitner, Otto Frisch, Bob Wilson, Chien Shiung Wu, Masatoshi Koshiba and Sam Ting to name but a few. Herwig came to consider them all as friends. Through his long career, Herwig has played a leading role in institutions from Erlangen to Karlsruhe, and from DESY, where he was director from 1973 to 1980, to CERN, where he served as Director-General from 1981 to 1988. Since its foundation CERN has had two major missions: to conduct first-class scientific research and to foster peaceful relations between nations. Following this example Herwig has played a key role in pioneering the deployment of science for peace, notably through the SESAME laboratory in the Middle East. This book gives a full account of Herwig’s rich and varied life and concludes with his reflections on the challenges that society faces today.

The school of thought surrounding the urban ecosystem has increasingly become in vogue among researchers worldwide. Since half of the world’s population lives in cities, urban ecosystem services have become essential to human health and wellbeing. Rapid urban growth has forced sustainable urban developers to rethink important steps by updating and, to some degree, recreating the human–ecosystem service linkage.Assessing as well as estimating the losses of ecosystem services can denote the essential effects of urbanization and increasingly indicate where cities fall short. This second book on urban ecosystem services contains 11 thoroughly refereed contributions published within the Special Issue “Urban Ecosystem Services II: Toward a Sustainable Future”. The book addresses topics such as cultural ecosystem services, green infrastructure, urban trees, urban green spaces, and more. The contributions highlight current knowledge, gaps, and future research with the focus on building a sustainable future.

De villages libanais vers les pays du Golfe, vers leurs possibilités et leurs richesses, allaient les espoirs d'entrepreneurs, marbriers, serruriers, métalliers, ou autres, qui, dans les succès de leur migration, n'oublient pas le sol natal. Leurs filières migratoires sont envisagées ici, ainsi que les relations de ces migrants avec les intermédiaires locaux obligés et avec la main d'œuvre nécessaire, souvent importée elle-même du tiers-monde pour leurs chantiers et leurs usines.

Il volume propone quattro inediti percorsi (e una prefazione) sulla presenza di Dante e la sua opera maggiore sulla scena teatrale Occidentale, a partire da una convinzione. Ossia che si tratti di un teatro immaginario, creato da un uomo piegato soprattutto dalle sue incongrue convinzioni politiche, come invocazione di quella democrazia delle anime planetaria che oggi più di ieri è la missione incompiuta dell’umanità. A partire dalla forma del Paradiso che nasce dalla viva contraddizione tra il sogno nefasto di una democrazia cristiana e lo straziato bisogno di un nuovo trasumanar individuale e collettivo. Tale contraddizione conosce qui un esito sorprendente: l’insieme delle partiture – quella ritmico-musicale, quella della luce e dei colori, quella coreografica e infine il sofisticato “montaggio multimediale” tramite il quale sono animati i diversi personaggi – esprime la voce più intima del poeta e al tempo stesso una singolare e vigorosa vox populi. In un virtuale Teatro della Commedía, che culmina nel Paradiso, l’atto poetico diventa la performance di un altro sapere, una fenomenale possibilità di comprendere il proprio fine nell’universo infinito, tra l’alba e il tramonto di una singola vita. L’incessante combattimento finale tra ideologia e poesia si conclude in effetti con una celebrazione della virtù della sconfitta e dell’infamia della vittoria.