Een prototype voor een database-interface in LISP: vertaling van Nederlandse vragen naar SQL-queries

KULeuven Campusbibliotheek Exacte Wetenschappen / UCL - Université Catholique de LouvainSIGLEBEBelgiu

Italians in the Shadow of Abdulhamid Khan

Shortly after Abdulhamid II had become padishah, a book that would prove to be highly influential would be published by the Milanese Treves publishing house: "Costantinopoli" by Edmondo De Amicis. This travel account that shows the influence of earlier French writing (Lamartine, Flaubert, Nerval and others) may be considered the Italian key text on the formative years of Abdulhamid during the reign of Abdulaziz. Not only Italian travelers would be strongly influenced by his impressions and descriptions, but also many European tourists would look at the Ottoman court and capital through his eyes. It can be supposed that the sovereign himself showed a great interest in foreign travel accounts. He certainly did as far as the Italian presence in his state is concerned. He well knew that the Italian presence in Constantinople (Pera, Galata) preceded the city’s Ottoman conquest, this making it the oldest ethnic group – if it is allowed to speak of Venetians, Genoese and many others as a nation, while in reality they had quite recently joined in a process of nation building – after the original Greek population. Not only that: the Italian states had been business partners from the Late Middle Ages (as well as military antagonists). The sympathetic Italian outlook on Constantinople will have contributed in a notable way to the Sultan’s benevolence vis-à-vis Italian culture. Orientalist tendencies in Italian art such as represented by some of Verdi’s operas or Donizetti Pasha’s musical creations, excellent painters such as Zonaro, architects as D’Aronco, tailors as Parma were much welcomed and supported by the Sultan whose keen interest in European culture and technical know-how would be unjustly overshadowed by his political conservatism and his struggle for autonomy as a world leader. Thanks to his efforts contemporary Ottoman culture will find its place among the nations. In this article we will examine some prominent Italian artists and their creations for the Ottoman court

Guido Artom e "I giorni del mondo"

Guido Artom (1910-1982), once director of the Italian Culture Institute in Brussels, writer of several books with a 19th century French (often of Napoleonic or of Belgian) background, and a novel on the theft of two paintings by the Van Eyck brothers in Gent, has written on the end of his life a book in which he turns to his Jewish background. The principal characters of the novel are his ancestors Zaccaria and Raffaele. Their personal history, presented into some detail and not without humour, coincides with that of Jewish emancipation in Cavour’s Risorgimento. Impressive is the autobiographic chapter at the novel’s beginning where the author during a visit to his family home reflects on his position as a Jew in the middle of Roman Catholic Italian culture

Exploring farmer perceptions of agricultural innovations for maize-legume intensification in the mid-hills region of Nepal

Maize-legume intercropping is a fundamental component of mixed farming systems in the mid-hills of Nepal. However, its productivity is constrained by several biophysical and social factors, and limited adoption of proven agricultural innovations. In this study, we assessed the productivity impact of a selection of relevant agricultural innovations and changes in the associated perceptions of farmers through a series of two-year participatory on-farm trials. The evaluated innovations resulted in higher yields as compared to farmers' current practices. The active involvement of farmers enlarged our understanding of underlying decision-making factors to adopt or non-adopt agricultural innovations. Additionally, the in-depth farmer engagement in our onfarm trials positively influenced farmer perceptions of the innovations and their interest to adopt the agricultural innovations. Yet, farmers final decisions to adopt some of the evaluated innovations were limited by a host of factors including labour scarcity, the availability of inputs, and by cultural preferences despite the increased yields. This was particularly true for low and medium resource-endowed farmers. This study shows the importance of active farmer participation and context-specific design of research and development projects aiming for local impact

Exploring farmer perceptions of agricultural innovations for maize-legume intensification in the mid-hills region of Nepal

Maize-legume intercropping is a fundamental component of mixed farming systems in the mid-hills of Nepal. However, its productivity is constrained by several biophysical and social factors, and limited adoption of proven agricultural innovations. In this study, we assessed the productivity impact of a selection of relevant agricultural innovations and changes in the associated perceptions of farmers through a series of two-year participatory on-farm trials. The evaluated innovations resulted in higher yields as compared to farmers' current practices. The active involvement of farmers enlarged our understanding of underlying decision-making factors to adopt or non-adopt agricultural innovations. Additionally, the in-depth farmer engagement in our onfarm trials positively influenced farmer perceptions of the innovations and their interest to adopt the agricultural innovations. Yet, farmers final decisions to adopt some of the evaluated innovations were limited by a host of factors including labour scarcity, the availability of inputs, and by cultural preferences despite the increased yields. This was particularly true for low and medium resource-endowed farmers. This study shows the importance of active farmer participation and context-specific design of research and development projects aiming for local impact