100 Years of Chronogeometrodynamics : the Status of the Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation in Its Centennial Year

The present Editorial introduces the Special Issue dedicated by the journal Universe to the General Theory of Relativity, the beautiful theory of gravitation of Einstein, a century after its birth. It reviews some of its key features in a historical perspective, and, in welcoming distinguished researchers from all over the world to contribute it, some of the main topics at the forefront of the current research are outlined.

The Fairy Tale and Its Uses in Contemporary New Media and Popular Culture

Ever since the beginning of the 21st century, the fairy tale has not only become a staple of the small and silver screen around the globe, it has also migrated into new media, overwhelming audiences with imaginative and spectacular retellings along the way. Indeed, modern fairy-tale adaptations pervading contemporary popular culture drastically subvert, shatter, and alter the public’s understanding of the classic fairy tale. Because of the phenomenally increasing proliferation of fairy-tale transformations in today’s “old” and “new” media, we must reflect upon the significance of the fairy tale for society and its social uses in a nuanced fashion. How, why, and for whom have fairy-tale narratives, characters, and motifs metamorphosed in recent decades? What significant intermedial and intertextual relationships exist nowadays in connection with the fairy tale?

Austerity baby

Austerity Baby might best be described as an ‘oblique memoir’. Janet Wolff’s fascinating volume is a family history – but one that is digressive and consistently surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s); the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters.

Il libro de la cocina : Un ricettario tra Oriente e Occidente

Tutta la cucina europea, quindi anche il senese Libro de la cocina, è un prodotto della storia. Le sue origini sono da ricercare in parte in Italia e in parte in altre civiltà: esso propone infatti ricette della cucina toscana e altre attinte da un ricettario napoletano, il Liber de coquina, a sua volta punto di incontro della letteratura culinaria orientale con quella dell’Europa occidentale. Il Libro de la cocina (metà del Trecento) rivela tutta la ricchezza della cucina italiana medievale: cibi semplici o di elaborata preparazione, verdure, carni, pesci, dolci e ricette per malati. Molte delle circa 200 ricette hanno legami con piatti e testi orientali, francesi, inglesi e italiani, attestati in tempi precedenti e successivi. Un glossario critico chiarisce le ricette; vengono riportati inoltre passi paralleli di opere latine e volgari.

Friendly Rest Room : Developing Toilets of the Future for Disabled and Elderly People

This book addresses the topic of toilet design, but instead of focusing on the typical able bodied user, it takes the various needs and limited abilities of older and/or disabled people as its starting point (human centered design). This follows the principles of ‘Inclusive Design’: designs taking into account the needs of the most challenged, will also have benefits for the healthy. For the most part, this book is a spin-off of an EU-funded research and development project called the ‘Friendly Rest Room for Elderly People'(FFR), which ran from 2001 to 2005. During that period a consortium of 10 institutions in 7 European countries collaborated on the research, design and development of a friendlier toilet for elderly and disabled users.

Empire Girls: the colonial heroine comes of age

Empire Girls: the colonial heroine comes of age is a critical examination of three novels by writers from different regions of the British Empire: Olive Schreiner’s The Story of An African Farm (South Africa), Sara Jeannette Duncan’s A Daughter of Today (Canada) and Henry Handel Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom (Australia). All three novels commence as conventional Bildungsromane, yet the plots of all diverge from the usual narrative structure, as a result of both their colonial origins and the clash between their aspirational heroines and the plots available to them. In an analysis including gender, empire, nation and race, Empire Girls provides new critical perspectives on the ways in which this dominant narrative form performs very differently when taken out of its metropolitan setting.

Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo

How do keyboards make music playable? Drawing on theories of media, systems, and cultural techniques, Keys to Play spans Greek myth and contemporary Japanese digital games to chart a genealogy of musical play and its animation via improvisation, performance, and recreation. As a paradigmatic digital interface, the keyboard forms a field of play on which the book’s diverse objects of inquiry-from clavichords to PCs and eighteenth-century musical dice games to the latest rhythm-action titles-enter into analogical relations. Remapping the keyboard’s topography by way of Mozart and Super Mario, who head an expansive cast of historical and virtual actors, Keys to Play invites readers to unlock ludic dimensions of music that are at once old and new.

Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era

Years of surveillance-related leaks from US whistleblower Edward Snowden have fuelled an international debate on privacy, spying, and Internet surveillance. Much of the focus has centered on the role of the US National Security Agency, yet there is an important Canadian side to the story. The Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian counterpart to the NSA, has played an active role in surveillance activities both at home and abroad, raising a host of challenging legal and policy questions. With contributions by leading experts in the field, Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era is the right book at the right time: From the effectiveness of accountability and oversight programs to the legal issues raised by metadata collection to the privacy challenges surrounding new technologies, this book explores current issues torn from the headlines with a uniquely Canadian perspective.

Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures

In Playful Identities, eighteen scholars examine the increasing role of digital media technologies in identity construction through play. Going beyond computer games, this interdisciplinary collection argues that present-day play and games are not only appropriate metaphors for capturing postmodern human identities, but are in fact the means by which people create their identity. From discussions of World of Warcraft and Foursquare to digital cartographies, the combined essays form a groundbreaking volume that features the most recent insights in play and game studies, media research, and identity studies.

Tagebuch aus dem Siebenjährigen Krieg

In abgewichener Nacht frühe gegen 5 Uhr haben die Franz[osen] von Göttingen Besitz genommen. Es sollen 250 Mann seyn, welche d[en] H[err]n Major van der Märsch, ein feiner Mann, zum commandanten haben. In dem gestrigen Scharmützel ist d[em] H[err]n Maj[or] Friedrichs das Pferd todt geschossen, und er gefangen. Abends gegen 7 Uhr sind die Herren Grafen von Schwerin und v[on] Münch, desg[leichen] verschiedene andere Bursche, unter welchen d[er] H[err] von Biederitz, von dem Jacobithurm durch Franz[osen] herunter geholet, jedoch nach Ankunft des Commandanten auf dem Jacobi-Kirchhofe sogleich wieder loßgelassen worden.