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Chronic low back represents one of the major causes of disability worldwide. Our narrative review has the purpose of highlighting the evidence supporting the different rehabilitative techniques described for its management. In total, 26 studies were found suitable to be included in the review (14 articles about pilates, six about McKenzie (MK), one article about Feldenkrais, three about Global Postural Rehabilitation (GPR) and two about Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation). The effect of exercise therapy was examined for each single study through changes in the main clinical outcomes (pain, disability,) quality of life (QoL) and psychological aspects and the targeted aspects of physical function (muscle strength, mobility, muscular activity and flexibility). All the techniques are effective for the study groups with respect to the control groups in reducing pain and disability and improving the QoL and maintaining benefits at follow-up; pilates, Back School, MK and Feldenkrais methods reduce pain and are more efficient than a pharmacological or instrumental approach in reducing disability and improving all psychological aspects also. GPR shows long lasting results for the last outcome. To date, it is difficult to affirm the superiority of one approach over another. Further high quality research is needed to confirm the effect of these techniques, together with the use of more appropriate evaluation measures.

Background/Objectives: Postural therapies have emerged as effective non-invasive approaches to managing and preventing LBP in athletes. These therapies focus on correcting muscular imbalances, enhancing body awareness, and promoting proper alignment. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing the Mézières method and isostretching postures in Spanish high-level national rhythmic gymnasts with low back pain (LBP). Specifically, the study aims to assess the impact of these postural therapies on functional limitations associated with LBP. Methods: This study was a parallel group, randomized controlled trial implemented in 17 rhythmic gymnastics athletes with low back pain conducted at baseline, at 2, 4, and 6 weeks, and upon completion of the 12-week intervention period. The outcome measures included pain measurement, the Borg effort scale, and trunk movement as flexion, extension, inclination, and rotation assessed using a wearable device sensor. Results: The trial included eight participants in the Mézières group and nine in the isostretching group, with no significant age difference between the groups (p = 0.589). Significant differences were found for time (p = 0.000) and group (p = 0.001), indicating variations in left trunk inclination performance over time and between the groups. Both groups showed increased trunk flexion, with the Mézières group demonstrating higher values at all time points. Right trunk rotation fluctuated, with a notable increase in the Mézières group at 6 weeks. The Mézières group also showed higher left trunk rotation values, peaking at 6 weeks. Conclusions: Although the Mézières method showed certain advantages in right trunk rotation and left tilt, the results overall suggest that both approaches are effective in the specific context of this population.

This paper analyses the history, cultural background, geometric configuration and stereotomic apparatus of one of the most interesting buildings in the urban landscape of Paris between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Halle au Blé in Rue de Viarmes, also known in English as Corn Exchange. This building, which over the years underwent several formal, functional and structural transformations, is particularly interesting to scholars because of the innovations researched and designed by the French architect Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières, who tried to solve some novel geometric and constructive issues drawing from available treatises, probably most of all that of Frézier. His contribution to the Halle au Blé includes the invention of particular vaulted surfaces assembled by blending stone ashlars and bricks.

This volume, the first to address Philippe Mézières (1327-1405) and his legacy comprehensively since 1896, gathers twenty-two contributions shedding new light on Philippe's literary, political, and mystical writings, and places him in the context of his age and his contemporaries.

The outcome of the Nicopolis crusade (1396)—a crushing victory for the Ottoman Turks over a crusader army led by Franco-Burgundian knights—had particularly deep resonances in the Kingdom of France. This was reflected in several contemporary works that lamented and/or criticised the crusaders’ defeat. Among these, Philippe de Mézières’s Une Epistre lamentable (1397) and Honorat Bovet’s L’Apparicion Maistre Jehan de Meun (1398) are of special note because they contain not only remarkable reflections on the campaign but also interesting observations on the successful Ottomans. Their praise of the Turks, especially regarding their military organisation and discipline, served both to criticise the crusaders’ own lack of discipline but also to present an example for them to follow in order to avenge the defeat. As Nicopolis marked the beginning of a Burgundian claim to champion the crusading movement, these works were primarily addressed to the Duke of Burgundy, among other European princes and nobility. In the mid-fifteenth century, Duke Philip the Good would carry this claim to its zenith by several undertakings that included sending envoys to the East to gather information about the enemy. One of these envoys, Bertrandon de la Broquière, visited the Ottoman lands in 1432–1433 and some twenty years later wrote his Le Voyage d’Outremer to communicate the observations and intelligence gathered during his journey. The fact that this work, written almost six decades after Nicopolis, contains multiple allusions to the defeat, in addition to similar portrayals and comments on the Turks within the two earlier works, can be taken to suggest a continuity in Western military portrayals of the Turks from Nicopolis onwards.

This contribution focuses on studies concerning the art of défilement (defilade) of fortifications, that is, the art of using uneven terrain to provide protection from the enemy; in particular it will analyse the issues and events which made this military technique one of the first chapters of descriptive geometry, and the important role played by Nicolas-François-Antoine de Chastillon, the first commandant of the School of Mézières. As firearms became more powerful new studies were required about how to defend military fortifications from enemy fire. To solve these, Chastillon first highlighted the flaws of Vauban’s empirical approach and then radically overhauled the study of défilement by tackling it theoretically using graphic analyses carried out ‘on the drawing board’. This new approach concentrated on the depiction of space in two dimensions the need to graphically manage the territory around the fortification. Thus it is Chastillon who, well before Gaspard Monge, identified a method which was to rapidly lead to the definition of the basic operations of descriptive geometry. Together with the study of wood and stone stereotomy, it also paved the way for the new science of scientific representation, the invention of cartography and the geometric control of topographical surfaces.

The Stone site (41ML38), referred to as \"El Quiscat's Village\" by renchman turned Spanish explorer, Athanase de Mézères, is located on the horseshoe bend of the Brazos River, north of present day Waco. It is the last remaining of several documented Waco Indian village sites in the area from the 1770s. The personal journal of de Mézères confirms his visit to the village in 1772, 1778, and again in 1779. But in 1786, the explorer found the village abandoned. This gives archaeologists an exclusive chance to study the impact of European contact over a short time frame, by studying the archaeological record of both trade and native made goods from the site. Researchers found almost equal amounts of French and Spanish goods, including large quantities of weaponry parts as well as articles for ornamentation. But as important as the trade goods recovered, was the lack of certain types of objects such as pottery and cookware.

The outcome of the Nicopolis crusade (1396)—a crushing victory for the Ottoman Turks over a crusader army led by Franco-Burgundian knights—had particularly deep resonances in the Kingdom of France. This was reflected in several contemporary works that lamented and/or criticised the crusaders’ defeat. Among these, Philippe de Mézières’s Une Epistre lamentable (1397) and Honorat Bovet’s L’Apparicion Maistre Jehan de Meun (1398) are of special note because they contain not only remarkable reflections on the campaign but also interesting observations on the successful Ottomans. Their praise of the Turks, especially regarding their military organisation and discipline, served both to criticise the crusaders’ own lack of discipline but also to present an example for them to follow in order to avenge the defeat. As Nicopolis marked the beginning of a Burgundian claim to champion the crusading movement, these works were primarily addressed to the Duke of Burgundy, among other European princes and nobility. In the mid-fifteenth century, Duke Philip the Good would carry this claim to its zenith by several undertakings that included sending envoys to the East to gather information about the enemy. One of these envoys, Bertrandon de la Broquière, visited the Ottoman lands in 1432–1433 and some twenty years later wrote his Le Voyage d’Outremer to communicate the observations and intelligence gathered during his journey. The fact that this work, written almost six decades after Nicopolis, contains multiple allusions to the defeat, in addition to similar portrayals and comments on the Turks within the two earlier works, can be taken to suggest a continuity in Western military portrayals of the Turks from Nicopolis onwards.

Marie Jeanne Riccoboni (1713-1792), one of the foremost proto-feminist women writers of Enlightenment France, has offered conflicting and enigmatic information about her childhood. While her desire for privacy regarding her own biography can be understood and respected, when (new) personal details elucidate her published oeuvre, both her fiction and her correspondence, they hold a particular fascination for readers and scholars alike. This essay will shed light on a notoriously blank page of Riccoboni's life, her childhood, through two newly uncovered lettres de cachet pertaining to her mother Marie Marguerite Dujac and her grandfather Jean Baptiste Dujac. An analysis of these documentsas lettres de cachet through the lens of royal and paternal authority as well as female agency, will provide new context for Riccoboni's biography regarding her relationship with her mother and her childhood, as well as offer important clues for some essential elements of her fiction, including her proto-feminism.