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Publication50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict & Reconciliation( 2022)This open access book identifies various forms of heritage destruction and analyses their causes. It proposes strategies for avoiding and solving conflicts, based on integrating heritage into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It reflects on the identity-building role of heritage, on multidimensional conflicts and the destruction of heritage, and considers conflict-solving strategies and future perspectives. Furthermore, it engages theoretically and practically with the concepts of responsibility, reconciliation and sustainability, relating mainly to four Sustainable Development Goals, i.e. SDGs 4 (education), 11 (e.g. World Heritage), 13 (climate action) and 17 (partnerships for the goals).More than 160 countries have inscribed properties on the UNESCO World Heritage list since the World Heritage Convention came into force. Improvements in the implementation of the Convention, such as the Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List, have occurred, but other conflicts have not been solved. The book advocates for a balanced distribution of properties and more effective strategies to represent the global diversity of cultural and natural heritage. Furthermore it highlights the importance of heritage in identity building.
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Publication70 Years of Levothyroxine( 2021)"This open access book presents the history, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of levothyroxine, discussing its role in the thyroid pathophysiology of patients of various ages and during pregnancy. It also describes the influence of levothyroxine on heart, bone and in cancer. When it was first synthesized in 1949, levothyroxine represented a significant advance in the treatment of hypothyroidism, providing a safe and effective treatment option for millions of hypothyroid patients around the globe. This synthetic form of thyroxine is now one of the most prescribed drugs in the world. Levothyroxine was first introduced by Merck KGaA,Darmstadt, Germany, in 1972, and since then the company has remained actively engaged in research on this mainstay of hypothyroidism treatment. This book is intended for healthcare professionals." This work is licensed under a CC BY
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PublicationA Background Note on "Unskilled" Jobs in the United States - Past, Present, and Future( 2021)Since 1917, American jobs have been classified by their skill level. “Unskilled work” was said to, “require no special training, judgment, or manual dexterity, but supply mainly muscular strength for the performance of coarse, heavy workdexterity.” It was the largest category of work and included mostly non-white and foreign-born workers who were employed in farm labor, factory labor, servant occupations, and “other labor” occupations. In 2020, the largest category remained “low-skilled work,” in farms, factories, in low-wage service and care occupations, and in on-demand gig and warehousing jobs. Although government regulation, labor activity, voluntary decisions from employers led to some improvements from the 1940s to the 1970s, low wages, dangerous conditions, perception of low-value, and overrepresentation of people-of-color have persisted for workers in these jobs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many of these jobs had a new label: “essential.” Workers risked their lives to keep the economy running—in grocery stores, meat packing plants, transportation, and elder care. If “unskilled” work is also “essential” work, how should we think about work, workers, and pay for jobs that have historically been categorized as “unskilled”?
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PublicationA Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs:( 2021)Ammiel Alcalay’s groundbreaking work, After Jews and Arabs, published in 1993, redrew the geographic, political, cultural, and emotional map of relations between Jews and Arabs in the Levantine/Mediterranean world over a thousand-year period. Based on over a decade of research and fieldwork in many disciplines—including history and historiography; anthropology, ethnography, and ethnomusicology; political economy and geography; linguistics; philosophy; and the history of science and technology—the book presented a radically different perspective than that presented by received opinion. Given the radical and iconoclastic nature of Alcalay’s perspective, After Jews and Arabs met great resistance in attempts to publish it. Though completed and already circulating in 1989, it didn’t appear until 1993. In addition, when the book was published, there wasn’t enough space to include its original bibliography, a foundational part of the project. A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs presents the original bibliography, as completed in 1992, without changes, as a glimpse into the historical record of a unique scholarly, political, poetic, and cultural journey. The bibliography itself had roots in research begun in the late 1970s and demonstrates a very wide arc. In addition to the bibliography, we include two accompanying texts here. In “Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs," Alcalay takes us behind the closed doors of the academic process, reprinting the original readers reports and his detailed rebuttals, and in “On a Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs," Alcalay contextualizes his own path to the work he undertook, in methodological, historical, and political terms.
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PublicationA Black Odyssey: John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 18781900( 2021)This book focuses on the career of a single individual-an ambitious, resourceful Black American-and his efforts to realize personal fulfillment in a racist world. No Black American was more determined to realize the promise of American life following the Civil War, nor more frustrated by his inability to do so than John Lewis Waller. Waller, whose first twelve years were spent in slavery, overcame his humble beginnings to become a politician, lawyer, journalist, and diplomat. Nevertheless, his life provides a case study of a middle class black caught between a desire to work within the existing political and economic framework and a need to reject a milieu that was becoming increasingly racist. Waller spent his childhood as a slave in Missouri, and his adolescence on a farm in Iowa. Circumstances and personal ambition combined to allow Waller to acquire a trade-barbering-and a profession-lawyering-in the 1870s. In 1878 he migrated to frontier Kansas, where he practiced law, edited a newspaper, rose to a position of leadership in the black community, and became an important figure in the state Republican party. His political career ended abruptly in 1890, however, when the Republicans rejected his bid to be nominated as the party's candidate for state auditor. Convinced that his defeat was due to the rising tide of racism throughout the nation, he turned his attentions abroad. Waller was particularly susceptible to the lure of overseas empire because he had spent much of his adult life in the midst of a community of people who had succumbed to the myth of a "promised land," who were convinced that the Black person would be best able to realize his potential in economically underdeveloped regions not yet exploited and controlled by the white man. In 1891 President Benjamin Harrison appointed Waller United States consul to the east African island of Madagascar. By 1894 Waller had obtained a huge land grant there for the founding of a black utopia. He hoped to establish a plantationcolony that would simultaneously advance his personal fortunes, serve as an investment opportunity for aspiring black capitalists, and constitute a refuge for oppressed AfroAmericans who wished to immigrate. He was thwarted once again by racism, however-this time in the guise of French imperialism. Viewing Waller and his plans as a threat to their hegemony in Madagascar, French authorities quashed the concession, arrested Waller on a charge of being a spy, and sentenced him to twenty years in prison. There followed a fullscale diplomatic confrontation between the United States and France. Waller was released after serving ten months in a French prison, but only after the Cleveland administration agreed to discredit him to the point where he would seem guilty as charged. In his early manhood John Lewis Waller had realized that because he was a Negro personal achievement could not be separated from racial advancement. Responding to that perception, he spent a lifetime searching for a frontier where blacks could enjoy the blessings of democracy and capitalism, and yet be free of the blight of racism. Unlike the vast majority of American Blacks of his time, Waller was able to articulate his dreams, have an impact on the larger, white dominated environment, and realize his individual potential to a remarkable degree. Nevertheless, his dreams were ultimately dashed by racism. His sad but fascinating story deserves the careful attention of all students of politics and race relations during the complex postCivil War year.
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PublicationA Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism( 2022)In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a “radical Buddhism" seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism asks whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism" are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world." Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world.
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PublicationA City Against Empire: Transnational Anti-Imperialism in Mexico City, 1920-30( 2023)An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. A City Against Empire is the history of the anti-imperialist movement in 1920s Mexico City. It combines intellectual, social, and urban history to shed light on the city's role as an important global hub for anti-imperialism, exile activism, political art, and solidarity campaigns. After the Russian and the Mexican Revolution, Mexico City became a space and a symbol of global anti-imperialism. Radical politicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, migrants, and revolutionary tourists took advantage of the urban environment to develop their visions of an anti-imperialism for the twentieth-century. These actors imagined national self-determination, international solidarity, and an emancipation from what they called "the West." Global, local, and urban factors interacted to transform Mexico City into the most important hub for radicalism in the Americas. By weaving together the intellectual history of Mexico, the urban and social histories of Mexico City, and the global history of anti-imperialist movements in the 1920s, this books analyses the perfect storm of anti-imperialism in Mexico City.
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PublicationA City in Blue and Green( 2019)This open access book highlights Singapore’s development into a city in which water and greenery, along with associated environmental, technical, social and political aspects have been harnessed and cultivated into a liveable sustainable way of life. It is also a story about a unique and thoroughgoing approach to large-scale and potentially transferable water sustainability, within largely urbanized circumstances, which can be achieved, along with complementary roles of environmental conservation, ecology, public open-space management and the greening of buildings, together with infrastructural improvements
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PublicationA Civil Society: The Public Space of Freemason Women in France, 1744-1944( 2021)James Smith Allen explores the two-hundred-year struggle to initiate women as full participants in the masonic brotherhood that shared in the rise of France's civil society and its "civic morality" on behalf of women's rights.
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PublicationA Collaborative Teaching Model for Heterogeneous Class in a Computer Assisted Listening Course( 2020)Collaborative teaching (CT) has long been considered as an effective teaching paradigm in English language teaching (ELT) domain. However, few studies showed how co-teachers could provide additional support for lower-level students in heterogeneous CALL classes. This study aims at proposing a co-teaching model in the computer-assisted listening course, in which lower level students received a 15-minute intervention every teaching session to help them catch up with the pace of the class. The quasi-experimental research design was employed with control and experimental groups. Thirty-nine Vietnamese Englishmajor freshmen, from two intact classes at Van Lang University, and two EFL lecturers participated in the study. The 10-week listening course was implemented with similar procedures for both groups except the fact that only deficient students in the experimental group received additional support with 15-minute interventions. The collected data from the pre-test and post-test were analyzed by t-test using SPSS software. The yielded result of the experimental group outweighed that of the control group which confirmed the effectiveness of the investigated CT model for supporting lower-level students of a diverse level class in the computer-assisted environment.
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PublicationA compilation of illicit enrichment legislation and other relevant legislation: Annex I of Illicit enrichment: A guide to laws targeting unexplained wealth( 2021)This annex is a compilation of all the relevant legislative instruments located during the research process behind the book Illicit Enrichment: A Guide to Laws Targeting Unexplained Wealth by Andrew Dornbierer, published by the Basel Institute on Governance in June 2021.In line with the definitions contained in Part 1 of the main publication, the laws included in this annex have been categorised as either:- Criminal Illicit Enrichment Laws- Qualified Criminal Illicit Enrichment Laws- Civil Illicit Enrichment Laws- Qualified Civil Illicit Enrichment Laws- Administrative Illicit Enrichment Laws- Other Relevant LawsThe laws are available as an interactive database alongside the main Illicit Enrichment book on Basel LEARN, see illicitenrichment.baselgovernance.org
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PublicationA Composite Method for Improving the Pulse Shape Discrimination Efficiency of a Scintillation Detector Using EJ-301 Liquid( 2021)This article presents a composite (COM) method to obtain the high-resolution pulse shape discrimination (PSD) for the neutron and gamma-ray pulses generated from scintillation detectors. The method, which is based on a selective combination of the digital charge integration (DCI) with the reference pulse method, aims to reduce the mixed radiation events in the low-energy range. An EJ-301 liquid scintillation detector together with a fast sampling analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is used to measure and digitize the pulses induced from the radioactive decays of 60 Co and 252 Cf, which are then analyzed by our COM method. The proposed method is evaluated using the figure of merit (FoM) and separation quality function F(u), and the results are compared with three known methods, namely the DCI, standard event fit (SEF), and artificial neural network (ANN) methods. We show that the average values of FoM and F(u) obtained within the COM method are about ten times higher than those obtained within the DCI and SEF in the whole energy range from 50 to 1000 keV electron equivalent (keVee). In particular, by using the COM method, the percentage of gamma events being confused as neutrons ranges from 0.32% to 8.80% when the energy is reduced from 400 to 50 keVee. This finding, which is significantly lower than those obtained by using the DCI and SEF, indicates that the proposed COM method should be considered as a leading method for producing a neutron/gamma PSD counter system with high resolution.
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PublicationA Credible Utopia: Essays on Selected Films of Werner Schroeter( 2022)A Credible Utopia: Essays on Selected Films of Werner Schroeter offers unique and personal insights into Schroeter’s cinematic universe. Many of the films discussed in this book are those upon which Schroeter’s worldwide reputation rests: Der Bomberpilot, an absurdist comedy; The Death of Maria Malibran, a film about ecstatic redemption in death; Willow Springs, about the complex relationships between men and women; Day of the Idiots, a visually baroque, operatic and highly dramatic film about madness; The Kingdom of Naples, Schroeter’s visually stunning depiction of Italy in the post-war years; and Palermo or Wolfsburg, for which Schroeter won the Golden Bear, an epic film about love, violence, and cultural malaise. But Valente also addresses Schroeter's early experimental films that don't get as much attention, such as Aggression, Neurasia, and Argila, all of which are about the struggle between repression and desire, and Deux, a late work that Schroeter considered his masterpiece, a film about the double and the ways in which identity is formed by integrating the abject part of ourselves with the good. Valente concludes with an analysis of Nuit de Chien, Schroeter's final film, a powerful summation of a live devoted to art, music, literature, and film. When the Museum of Modern Art staged a retrospective of Schroeter's ouevre in 2012, there was hardly anything in English on his films and only one film available on DVD in the US, such that Schroeter's work as a director has remained largely invisible in the English-speaking world. A Credible Utopia repairs this lacuna in film history, and, in a detailed and intimate reading of Schroeter's queer ouevre, links all these films together through Schroeter's desire for a “credible utopia," despite our shared awareness of dis
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PublicationA Critical View of Tube-House Architecture on Urban Type in Vietnam( 2021)Hanoi is the largest city in Vietnam. It is a political and socio-economic center, where attracting planners’ and environmentalist’s interests. Nowadays, Hanoi has been facing problems of rapid urbanization like many major cities in developing countries. Major commercial activity and pressure occur on almost all streets of the Ancient Quarter and causing local housing issues in a different socio-economic context. This paper aims to provide a deep view of housing issues and tube-house heritage in Vietnam referenced shop-houses in Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia, respectively. The research used methods collecting primary data (observation, purposeful discussion) and secondary data to clarify factors, which are related to tube-house in the Quarter. It also presents the findings of such developmental history of tube-house, its typical structure, composition, and construction method as considerably important foundations for conservation activities. To enhance conservation strategy and improve “spirit” protection of Ancient Quarter for a better living environment to the year 2025, a framework for tube-house preservation covering “Inside-to-Outside” approach is proposed accordingly.
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PublicationA current sensor fault diagnosis method based on phase angle shift technique applying to induction motor drive( 2022)An improved method using the phase angle shift characteristic of the sine wave is proposed to diagnose the fault states of the current sensors in an induction motor drive. The induction motor drive (IMD) system applied in this study uses the field-oriented control (FOC) loop with integrated two current sensors and a speed encoder to control the rotor speed. The space vectors created from the phase angle shift technique are compared to the estimated current for the fault diagnosis algorithm. Various types of current sensor failures are investigated by MATLAB/Simulink software to check the effectiveness of the proposed method. The simulation results have proved the performance of the proposed method in enhancing the reliability and stability of the IMD system.
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PublicationA density functional theory study on silver and bis-silver complexes with lighter tetrylene: are silver and bis-silver carbenes candidates for SARS-CoV-2 inhibition? Insight from molecular docking simulation( 2020)Ribavirin and remdesivir have been preclinically reported as potential drugs for the treatment of SARS-CoV- 2 infection, while light silver tetrylene complexes (NHEPh–AgCl and (NHEPh–AgCl)2 with E ¼ C, Si, and Ge) have gained significant interest due to their promising applicability on the cytological scale. Firstly, the structures and bonding states of silver–tetrylene complexes (NHE–Ag) and bis-silver–tetrylene complexes (NHE–Ag-bis) were investigated using density functional theory (DFT) at the BP86 level with the def2-SVP and def2-TZVPP basis sets. Secondly, the inhibitory capabilities of the carbene complexes (NHC–Ag and NHC–Ag-bis) and the two potential drugs (ribavirin and remdesivir) on human-protein ACE2 and SARS-CoV-2 protease PDB6LU7 were evaluated using molecular docking simulation. The carbene ligand NHC bonds in a head-on configuration with AgCl and (AgCl)2, whereas, the other NHE (E ¼ Si and Ge) tetrylene ligands bond in a side-on mode to the metal fragments. The bond dissociation energy (BDE) of the NHE–Ag bond in the complex families follows the order of NHC–Ag > NHSi–Ag > NHGe–Ag and NHSi–Ag-bis > NHGe–Ag-bis > NHC–Ag-bis. The natural bond orbital analysis implies that the [NHEPh/AgCl] and [(NHEPh)2/(AgCl)2] donations are derived mainly from the s- and pcontributions of the ligands. The docking results indicate that both the ACE2 and PDB6LU7 proteins are strongly inhibited by silver–carbene NHC–Ag, bis-silver–carbene NHC–Ag-bis, ribavirin, and remdesivir with the docking score energy values varying from 17.5 to 16.5 kcal mol 1 and 16.9 to 16.6 kcal mol 1, respectively. The root-mean-square deviation values were recorded to be less than 2 A in all the calculated systems. Thus, the present study suggests that silver–carbene NHC–Ag and bissilver– carbene NHC–Ag-bis complexes are potential candidates to inhibit ACE2 and PDB6LU7, and thus potentially conducive to prevent infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
