Scholars from all the continents have written articles to celebrate the 70th birthday of Jan Srzednicki, a thinker still at the height of his powers. Srzednicki's scientific work alternates between problems of Austrian and German philosophy and questions of political philosophy. The papers published in this volume discuss topics of general philosophy, in the clear and deep style both of Srzednicki's own philosophical work and of the authors investigated in his writings (mainly Brentano and the Polish tradition of analytic philosophy). The topics developed pertain to the fields of epistemology (common sense, knowledge and objectivity, truth and perception) and of logic and philosophy of logic (paraconsistent logic, definition and duality).

Eleonora Poli analyses how ideas and material interests have come to determine the evolution of antitrust policies in the USA, EU, Japan and BRICS. She argues that three major economic crises together with market globalisation have changed governments' perceptions of market competition, giving rise to a neo-liberal global phase.

This book presents research from leading researchers in the European banking field to explore three key areas of banking. In Bank Risk, Governance and Regulation, the authors conduct micro- and macro- level analysis of banking risks and their determinants. They explore areas such as credit quality, bank provisioning, deposit guarantee schemes, corporate governance and cost of capital. The book then goes on to analyse different aspects of the relationship between bank risk management, governance and performance. Lastly the book explores the regulation of systemic risks posed by banks, and examines the effects of novel regulatory sets on bank conduct and profitability. The research in this book focuses on aspects of the European banking system; however it also offers wider insight into the global banking space and offers comparisons to international banking systems. The study provides in-depth insight into many areas of bank risk, governance and regulation, before finally addressing the question: which banking strategies are actually feasible?

The complex relationships between alcohol use and human health represent an area of increasing interest to specialists interested in preventive cardiology. The inverse relationship between alcohol consumption and the incidence of cardiovascular diseases, especially myocardial infarction and ischemic stroke, has in fact gained sound scientific support in the last few years of the 20th century. This book, based in an international symposium on the topic held in Venice, October 30-31, 1999, analyzes in depth the epidemiological association between alcohol consumption and human diseases and discusses the possible mechanisms involved in alcohol-associated protection from atherosclerotic diseases. The oxidative effects of different amounts of alcohol intake and of various alcoholic beverages in the production of these effects - subjects of considerable debate - are also analyzed. This book should be of interest to clinicians and researchers active in the areas of atherosclerosis, public health, preventive medicine, and preventive cardiology. It is intended to specifically help practising clinicians provide their patients with evidence-based answers to the most commonly asked questions regarding alcohol use.

The many abuses of authority in homes, schools, churches, and government have left people with the determination to avoid relationships with authority, if at all possible, fostering an "independent spirit" that leads to isolation. The result is fear and insecurity in the lives of many people suffering from a basic distrust in authority structures. These people could be benefiting from the many blessings of being aligned with God's order in Creation. In "Biblical Headship," we seek to show that the real purpose of delegated authority under God is so that "He has someone to call into account for His will being done on Earth as it is in heaven." Biblical authority is for the purpose of serving as God's representative in every institution of society, implementing His will and not our own. "Biblical Headship" offers freedom, peace, and joy to the hearts of God's people and releases a new level of promotion and prosperity into people's lives. "Biblical Headship" is really a book about personal revival that results from aligning with God's purposes.

Nicolai Hartmann's Possibility and Actuality is the second volume of a four-part investigation of ontology. It deals with such questions as: How do we know that something is really possible? Is the possible only the actual? Is the actual only the possible? What is the difference between ideal and real possibility? This groundbreaking work of modal analysis describes the logical relations between possibility, actuality, and necessity, and it provides insight into the relations between modes of knowledge and modes of being. Hartmann reviews the history of philosophical concepts of possibility and necessity, from ancient Megarian philosophy to Aristotle, to Medieval Scholasticism, to Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel. He explains the importance of modal analysis as a basic investigative tool, and he proposes an approach to understanding the nature of human existence that unifies the fields of ontology, modal logic, metaphysics, and epistemology. This brilliant and fascinating work is relevant to many topics of debate in contemporary philosophy, including the ontology of possible worlds, the metaphysics of modality, the logic of counterfactual conditionals, and modal epistemology. It illuminates the nature of real, ideal, logical, and epistemic possibility.

This illuminating, engaging book offers an introduction to the art of sound design and postproduction audio, written especially for for directors, producers, sound designers, and teachers without a technical background in sound. Building on over 50 years of combined expertise in teaching, filmmaking, and sound design, experienced instructor and author Peter Rea and sound designer Matthew Polis offer a cogent, clear, and practical overview of sound design principles and practices, from exploring the language and vocabulary of sound to teaching readers how to work with sound professionals, and later to overseeing the edit, mix, and finishing processes. In this book, Rea and Polis focus on creative and practical ways to utilize sound in order to achieve the filmmaker's vision and elevate their films. Balancing practical, experienced-based insight, numerous examples, and unique concepts like storyboarding for sound, A Filmmaker’s Guide to Sound Design arms students, filmmakers, and educators with the knowledge to creatively and confidently navigate their film through the post audio process.

The central idea developed by the contributions to this book is that the split between analytic philosophy and phenomenology - perhaps the most impor tant schism in twentieth-century philosophy - resulted from a radicalization of reciprocal partialities. Both schools of thought share, in fact, the same cultural background and their same initial stimulus in the thought of Franz Brentano. And one outcome of the subsequent rift between them was the oblivion into which the figure and thought of Brentano have fallen. The first step to take in remedying this split is to return to Brentano and to reconstruct the 'map' of Brent ani sm. The second task (which has been addressed by this book) is to revive inter est in the theoretical complexity of Brentano' s thought and of his pupils and to revitalize those aspects that have been neglected by subsequent debate within the various movements of Brentanian inspiration. We have accordingly decided to organize the book into two introductory es says followed by two sections (Parts 1 and 2) which systematically examine Brentano's thought and that of his followers. The two introductory essays re construct the reasons for the 'invisibility', so to speak, of Brentano and set out of his philosophical doctrine. Part 1 of the book then ex the essential features amines six of Brentano's most outstanding pupils (Marty, Stumpf, Meinong, Ehrenfels, Husserl and Twardowski). Part 2 contains nine essays concentrating on the principal topics addressed by the Brentanians."

The belief is widely held that the physical world is causally-driven. The world is one because a tangled web of causally-driven processes keeps it together. However, both the psychological and the social worlds cannot be articulated in causal terms only. Hereby, "motivation" is used as the most general term referring to whatever keeps (synchronically) together and provides (diachronic) reasons explaining the behavior of psychological and social systems. In order to systematically address these problems, a categorical framework is needed for understanding the various types of realities populating the world and their multifarious interrelations. The papers collected in this volume dig into some of the intricacies presented by these problems. The papers here presented have been selected from those presented at the workshops bearing the very same name, "Causality and Motivation" organized in Bolzano and Rome.

Genetic programming (GP), one of the most advanced forms of evolutionary computation, has been highly successful as a technique for getting computers to automatically solve problems without having to tell them explicitly how. Since its inceptions more than ten years ago, GP has been used to solve practical problems in a variety of application fields. Along with this ad-hoc engineering approaches interest increased in how and why GP works. This book provides a coherent consolidation of recent work on the theoretical foundations of GP. A concise introduction to GP and genetic algorithms (GA) is followed by a discussion of fitness landscapes and other theoretical approaches to natural and artificial evolution. Having surveyed early approaches to GP theory it presents new exact schema analysis, showing that it applies to GP as well as to the simpler GAs. New results on the potentially infinite number of possible programs are followed by two chapters applying these new techniques.

This book is intended to provide an expert guidance through the properties of photonic crystal fibers, with a specific focus on the telecommunication aspects. The authors believe that photonic crystal fibers can revolutionize the field of guided optics and its applications, especially when considering signal processing and specific functions rather than the usage in long distance transmission. They provide a deep analysis of how the physical and geometrical characteristics of these new fibers can be tailored to achieve the goal of ad hoc performances, using the powerful numerical approach of the finite element method, and keeping in mind the possibilities and limits of photonic crystal fiber fabrication technology.

"Mobility and Environment" calls for a mobility revolution which does not simply mean taking a bus instead of a car: it implies a dramatic shift in the political debate from a technical to a political culture. The author introduces his book by disputing non-political Sustainable Development policies which are among the major culprits for the conservatism in environmental policies.

For at least forty years, urban mobility policies, based on compulsive infrastructure building, have failed both in satisfying transportation demand and in coping with high environmental impacts. Nonetheless decision-makers keep employing the same professionals and therefore they act as shepherds who commit their sheep in the wolf s custody. Corrado Poli treats mobility policy as a political, ethical, social and educational issue rather than as a mere civil engineering one.

"Mobility and Environment "challenges some deeply entrenched professional and economic monopolies which negatively affect urban and transportation planning in North America and Europe, and argues the old idea which bounded transportation and communication. A real environmentalist effort in traffic planning should begin from new technologies and from the analysis of citizens preferences. A series of new projects are presented which include mobility demand reduction and focus on democracy in planning."

This comprehensive and engaging text explores contemporary Mexico's political, economic, and social development and examines the most important policy issues facing the country today. Readers will find this widely praised book continues to be the most current and accessible work available on Mexico's politics and policy.

Nicolai Hartmann was one of the most prolific and original, yet sober, clear and rigorous, 20th century German philosophers. Hartmann was brought up as a Neo-Kantian, but soon turned his back on Kantianism to become one of the most important proponents of ontological realism. He developed what he calls the "new ontology", on which relies a systematic opus dealing with all the main areas of philosophy. His work had major influences both in philosophy and in various scientific disciplines. The contributions collected in this volume from an international group of Hartmann scholars and philosophers explore subjects such as Hartmann's philosophical development from Neo-Kantianism to ontological realism, the difference between the way he and Heidegger overcame Neo-Kantianism, his Platonism concerning eternal objects and his interpretation of Plato, his Aristotelianism, his theoretical relation to Wolff's ontology and Meinong's theory of objects, his treatment and use of the aporematic method, his metaphysics, his ethics and theory of values, his philosophy of mind, his philosophy of mathematics, as well as the influence he had on 20th century philosophical anthropology and biology.

This proposed text appears to be a good introduction to evolutionary computation for use in applied statistics research. The authors draw from a vast base of knowledge about the current literature in both the design of evolutionary algorithms and statistical techniques. Modern statistical research is on the threshold of solving increasingly complex problems in high dimensions, and the generalization of its methodology to parameters whose estimators do not follow mathematically simple distributions is underway. Many of these challenges involve optimizing functions for which analytic solutions are infeasible. Evolutionary algorithms represent a powerful and easily understood means of approximating the optimum value in a variety of settings. The proposed text seeks to guide readers through the crucial issues of optimization problems in statistical settings and the implementation of tailored methods (including both stand-alone evolutionary algorithms and hybrid crosses of these procedures with standard statistical algorithms like Metropolis-Hastings) in a variety of applications. This book would serve as an excellent reference work for statistical researchers at an advanced graduate level or beyond, particularly those with a strong background in computer science.

This book details the development of methods and models to study the HIV-1 viral reservoir with the ultimate goal of achieving a functional cure of HIV infection. Chapters are divided into six parts covering cell lines, in vitro and ex vivo primary cell models of persistent infection, in vitro and ex vivo tissue-derived models, infected animal models human immune cells, methods of detection and analysis of the reservoir, and current approaches to achieve either a functional cure or cART-free long-term remission. Written in the format of the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, each chapter includes an introduction to the topic, lists necessary materials and reagents, includes tips on troubleshooting and known pitfalls, and step-by-step, readily reproducible protocols. Authoritative and cutting-edge, HIV Reservoirs: Methods and Protocols provides a comprehensive, updated collection of state-of-art methodologies and models to tackle the HIV-1 viral reservoir.

This book highlights the recent advances and state of the art in the use of functionalized nanostructured environments on catalysis. Nanoconfinements considered include well-defined molecular cages, imprinted self-assembled supramolecules, polymers made by living or controlled polymerization, metallorganic frameworks, carbon nanotubes, mesoporous inorganic solids, and hybrids thereof. Advantages of nanoconfinement of catalysts discussed include higher activities, improved selectivities, catalyst stabilization, cooperativity effects, simplified protocols for cascade syntheses, better catalyst recovery, and recyclability. The multiple applications that these materials offer are revolutionizing industrial sectors such as energy, electronics, sensors, biomedicine, and separation technology.

Over the past 20 years, the increased dominance in banking of the shareholder ownership model, whose main purpose is to maximize financial returns for shareholders, has proved to be a toxic combination with the financial deregulation the sector has undergone, the creation of new financial instruments and the concomitant rising levels of debt. Despite the growing role of private limited-liability banks around the world, co-operative banking still offers a compelling alternative, especially in Europe where the roots of co-operative institutions date back to the nineteenth century. This book studies the characteristics of different co-operative banking models of networks across several European countries to assess their impact on the profitability and resilience of the networks and their co-operative components. To date, empirical studies have neglected to examine the features of the networks to which co-operative banks belong. Surprisingly, there is little evidence on the extent to which the diverse organizational network structures determine differences in the profits and stability of individual banks and their networks across different countries. The principal objective of this book is to fill this gap in the literature. The European countries considered are Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. In these countries, co-operative banks constitute a significant presence although the organizational forms their networks take are quite different. Focusing on this sample of European countries therefore affords insights and reveals policy implications about the role that network organizations play in driving the performances of co-operative banks, which will be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of banking and financial institutions.