The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes

This volume presents the results of the fourteenth workshop of the international network 'Impact of Empire'. It focuses on the ways in which Rome's dominance influenced, changed, and created landscapes, and in which ways (Roman) landscapes were narrated and semantically represented.; Readership: This publication will be of particular interest for institutions promoting Greek and Roman studies and for scholars and students of classical and archaeological studies, who explore the Roman Empire

The Impact of the Roman Empire on Landscapes

This volume presents the results of the fourteenth workshop of the international network 'Impact of Empire'. It focuses on the ways in which Rome's dominance influenced, changed, and created landscapes, and in which ways (Roman) landscapes were narrated and semantically represented.; Readership: This publication will be of particular interest for institutions promoting Greek and Roman studies and for scholars and students of classical and archaeological studies, who explore the Roman Empire

The Promenades of Paris. Alphand and the Urbanization of Garden Art, 1852-1871

This study investigates a formative episode in the history of modern landscape architecture and public space design: the rapid creation of public parks, squares, and tree-lined thoroughfares in Paris between 1852 and 1870, the period of the French Second Empire, to form a series of interconnecting “promenades.” It seeks to identify continuities and innovations with respect to traditions of garden art, urban art, and engineering in France. It asks how a multi-disciplinary team of public servants, led by the engineer Alphand, responded to the simultaneous demands of cultural and utilitarian necessities, and how the public received the new gardens. The research method consists primarily in interpretive analysis of archival and historic texts, design drawings, popular media accounts, art and literature, and physical landscapes. Of particular interest is Alphand’s treatise, Les Promenades de Paris (1867-73), which points back to a lineage of earlier texts, but also forward to an age in which environment and infrastructure are fundamental to the urban landscape. The record shows that Parisians had mixed reactions to the growth of the city and to the new vegetated spaces that would supposedly improve public health via fresh air. The promenades of Paris also show an intriguing ambiguity in defining the public good as collective health and/or collective pleasure. Alphand and his collaborators in the Service des Promenades et Plantations, or parks department—including Barillet-Deschamps, Davioud, Belgrand, Darcel, and André—forged a systematic approach that accommodated practical necessities, difficult sites, and a wide range of scales. Their work was bound by an ethics of purposefulness and respect for the limits of a given situation. Nonetheless they pursued an artistic and decorative agenda, reflecting a desire to ennoble the public sphere. The landscapes that they designed are marked by a frequent divergence between visible and invisible elements, the latter encompassing both buried infrastructures and intangible metaphors. Categories of true and false natures gave way to questions of what urban landscapes do, in relation to their surroundings, and what people do in them

Phylogenomic, Biogeographic, and Evolutionary Research Trends in Arachnology

This book focuses on systematics, biogeography, and evolution of arachnids, a group of ancient chelicerate lineages that have taken on terrestrial lifestyles. The book opens with the questions of what arachnology represents, and where the field should go in the future. Twelve original contributions then dissect the current state-of-the-art in arachnological research. These papers provide innovative phylogenomic, evolutionary and biogeographic analyses and interpretations of new data and/or synthesize our knowledge to offer new directions for the future of arachnology

European Atlas of Natural Radiation

Natural ionizing radiation is considered as the largest contributor to the collective effective dose received by the world population. The human population is continuously exposed to ionizing radiation from several natural sources that can be classified into two broad categories: high-energy cosmic rays incident on the Earth’s atmosphere and releasing secondary radiation (cosmic contribution); and radioactive nuclides generated during the formation of the Earth and still present in the Earth’s crust (terrestrial contribution). Terrestrial radioactivity is mostly produced by the uranium and thorium radioactive families together with potassium. In most circumstances, radon, a noble gas produced in the radioactive decay of uranium, is the most important contributor to the total dose. This Atlas aims to present the current state of knowledge of natural radioactivity, by giving general background information, and describing its various sources. This reference material is complemented by a collection of maps of Europe displaying the levels of natural radioactivity caused by different sources. It is a compilation of contributions and reviews received from more than 80 experts in their field: they come from universities, research centres, national and European authorities and international organizations. This Atlas provides reference material and makes harmonized datasets available to the scientific community and national competent authorities. In parallel, this Atlas may serve as a tool for the public to: • familiarize itself with natural radioactivity; • be informed about the levels of natural radioactivity caused by different sources; • have a more balanced view of the annual dose received by the world population, to which natural radioactivity is the largest contributor; • and make direct comparisons between doses from natural sources of ionizing radiation and those from man-made (artificial) ones, hence to better understand the latter.JRC.G.10-Knowledge for Nuclear Security and Safet