For some time now, in newspapers and books, a series of words keep ap-pearing that begin with the pref ix “post-.” As for these new words, the key to understanding seems to be a semantics of ambiguity. Post does not indicate something absolutely different but something in-between: postcapital-ism would be a new phase of capitalism; postmodernism, a new f igure of modernism; and post-history…
The 2018 presidential election result in Brazil surprised many. Since then, numerous debates and a growing body of texts have attempted to understand this result and unearth the seeds that sowed what was understood by different analysts as the country’s ‘conservative turn’. In this introduction, we will not elaborate on all the factors that const…
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most frequent neurodegenerative disorder, with approximately 6.1 million people who live with PD in 2016 worldwide [1]. For several reasons that are not yet fully understood, the prevalence and incidence are expected to increase in the next years. According to the World Health Organization, globally, disability and death due to PD …
In 1909, the book Reinforced Concrete in Europe by Albert Ladd Colby (1860–1924) was pub-lished with the aim of disseminating in the USA the advances in reinforced concrete made in each of the European countries at that time. Besides introducing the main systems, types of reinforcement bars and their applications, the work describes an intermediate phase of a para-digm shift in…
Our conception of what parenting should look like has changed considerably in our society. This is due not only to the large variety of family structures and the diversity of cultures that currently co-exist in our society, but also to a shift in mindset that touches the very heart of the parenting task. This can be expressed as the need to replace the concept of parental authority, which focu…
In the twenty-first century, the internationalcommunity and states face the challenge ofreconciling the economic and technologicaldevelopment of our post-industrial societieswith the prevention or mitigation of globalenvironmental problems such as climatechange, ocean degradation, and biodiversityloss. Nowadays, international environmentallaw leaves up to the sovereignty of each statemost o…
Heritage managers and caretakers often have to prioritize and make choices about how best to use the available resources to protect collections, buildings, monuments and sites. This means, for instance, having to decide among options such as increasing security against theft and vandalism, improving building maintenance to reduce water leaks, installing air conditioning in collection storage ar…
Women present a historic and worrying gap in science and technology-related disciplines, generally knowns as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering,and Mathematics), except in the case of health professions. A holistic approach isneeded to support policymakers worldwide in bridging the gender gap in STEM, inwhich higher education institutions have a crucial role. Promoting this active impli-cat…
This chapter sets out the aims of this book and explains themethods and approaches applied in its production. It alsoaspires to be a guide, offering readers instructions as to howbest to use the book. We therefore strongly encourage allreaders to read this chapter carefully, so as to gain a clearerunderstanding of all the different aspects analysed in thisbook. This chapter also provides essent…
Since 1948, the study of human rights has been dominated by legal scholarship that has sought to investigate the development of human rights law, emerging jurisprudence, regional systems, the decisions and recommendations of human rights mechanisms and institutions and to a lesser extent the ‘compliance gaps’ between state commitments and actions. Even so, in all of these spheres there are …