Humanities & Social Sciences

This Open Access Book explores how classical information theory’s focus on syntactic information has limited the further development of communication science. Recently, communication technologies that handle and transmit semantic information have gained widespread attention in academia. Semantic communication has paved new directions for the future of communication technology development, yet it lacks a general mathematical guiding theory. To address this challenge, this open access book constructs a theoretical framework for semantic information theory and provides a systematic exposition of the measurement system for semantic information and the theoretical limits of semantic communication. It serves as a professional reference for researchers in information and communication. The book begins by deeply analyzing the data characteristics of various information sources and the needs of downstream tasks to summarize and generalize the universal attribute of semantic information—synonymity and to define the synonymous mapping between semantic information and syntactic information. Stemming from this core concept, synonymous mapping, this book introduces the measures of semantic information. It then introduces a new mathematical tool, Synonymous Asymptotic Equipartition (AEP), to explore the mathematical properties of synonymous typical sequences and applies random coding and synonymous typical sequence decoding/encoding to prove the semantic lossless source coding theorem, semantic channel coding theorem, and semantic limited distortion source coding theorem. In addition, the semantic information measures in the continuous caseare discussed and a new channel capacity formulaof the band-limited Gaussian channelis obtained, which is an important extension of the classical channel capacity. The book is a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and professionals in the field of information and communication, particularly those interested in advancing the frontiers of semantic communication technology.

Unter dem Vorzeichen der »Reform« kündigen sich heute fundamentale Veränderungen der Institution Universität an. Die Prinzipien der Hochschulautonomie, der Wissenschaftsfreiheit und einer Bildung, die mehr ist als Ausbildung, werden dabei in nie gekanntem Maße ausgehöhlt. Die Konsequenzen für Universität und Gesellschaft sind noch kaum bedacht und analysiert worden. Was ist aus der modernen Universität geworden, wie sie um 1800 entworfen wurde? Wie behauptet sie ihren Anspruch gegenüber den aktuellen Forderungen nach Effizienz und Exzellenz? Die Beiträge des Bandes widmen sich diesen Fragen aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven.

Mit diesem Open-Access-Buch zeigt Stefan Lüder auf, dass die Geschichte der Himalaya-Region mit der übrigen Welt weitaus verflochtener ist als bisher angenommen wird. Die historische Legitimationsforschung ist bisher durch europa- und amerikazentrische Perspektiven geprägt. Auch wenn in den letzten Jahren vereinzelt auch die Zentren Asiens, insbesondere China und Indien, zunehmend in den Fokus genommen werden, bleibt die Himalaya-Region, trotz ihrer steigenden Bedeutung für Geopolitik und Klimawandel, in dieser Hinsicht bisher gänzlich unerforscht und wird in Medien, Politik und Wissenschaft weiterhin als unzugängliche Grenzregion wahrgenommen. Dies ist ein Open-Access-Buch.

Digital and communication technologies, from cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoTs), big data and analytics, to artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and blockchain, are having a profound impact on individuals, organisations and society. The devastation caused by the global Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the fact that digital transformation is no longer an option but a survival necessity. In the supply chain field, technology developments require companies to rethink the way they design and manage their supply chains, in order to cope with ever-growing customer expectations and to remain competitive in the marketplace. Meanwhile mega-trends and geo-political uncertainties such as Brexit, US-China trade wars and climate change have increased the pressure for supply chains to become more agile, resilient and sustainable. This edited book aims to provide readers with deep insights into how those emerging digital technologies, if deployed effectively, will allow organisations to reach the next level of operational effectiveness, and leverage emerging digital supply chain business models to transform their traditional supply chain into a sustainable digital supply chain ecosystem. The book brings together contributions from world-leading experts in supply chain digitalisation from both academia and industry, analysing cutting-edge developments observed in industries and drawing insights from the latest research in the field, such as EU Horizon 2020 project research. The contributors deliberately shy away from more established technological developments such as supply chain planning and execution systems, cloud computing and electronic platforms/networks. They focus entirely on the latest emerging digitalisation developments instead, bringing readers up to date so that they can appreciate how these are disrupting and will disrupt the status quo of supply chains. The target audiences include academics, students (undergraduates and postgraduates) and practitioners who are interested in supply chain digitalisation and transformation.

This book is a collection of chapters based on original research dealing with issues of discipline and disciplinary practices in educational institutions. The aim of the book is to provide a scholarly and scientific perspective on the current state of discipline and disciplinary practices in schools and tertiary education settings. The issue of discipline is investigated from diverse paradigmatic and methodological perspectives, presenting empirical as well as also philosophical research. The empirical perspective includes quantitative (positivistic), qualitative (interpretive) and mixed methods (pragmatic), designs and worldviews. This book offers a ground-breaking contribution to the field of learner and student discipline, with insights into disciplinary practices and issues in educational institutions not hitherto researched, such as Technical Vocational Education and Training colleges and universities.

This book explores the big data evolution by interrogating the notion that big data is a disruptive innovation that appears to be challenging existing epistemologies in the humanities and social sciences. Exploring various (controversial) facets of big data such as ethics, data power, and data justice, the book attempts to clarify the trajectory of the epistemology of (big) data-driven science in the humanities and social sciences.

Villa Borbone show up to the eye of the attentive traveler immersed in the geometries of a lush garden, fading into the motility of the coastal landscape. A set of buildings, including the small chapel steeped in classical suggestions, is a part of what once constituted the vast property of the ducal family. An incredibly precious heritage, which this book aims to account for, restoring its history, its materiality, but also all its fragility, in an attempt to define a path that can contribute to its preservation.

Abstract: This article explores the personal garments present in the probate inventories of 83 individuals that lived in the city of Valencia and its hinterland during the long fourteenth century. The paper explores the differences between both groups of individuals, the urban and the rural one, in aspects such as the typologies of the pieces of clothing, the colours, finishes, complements and fabrics employed in their design. It also tracks the spread of particular pieces of clothing across both groups of deceased before and after the Black Death, and discusses how far these changes were guided by emulative motivations.

With Mexico’s War on Crime as the backdrop, Making Things Stick offers an innovative analysis of how surveillance technologies impact governance in the global society. More than just tools to monitor ordinary people, surveillance technologies are imagined by government officials as a way to reform the national state by focusing on the material things—cellular phones, automobiles, human bodies—that can enable crime. In describing the challenges that the Mexican government has encountered in implementing this novel approach to social control, Keith Guzik presents surveillance technologies as a sign of state weakness rather than strength and as an opportunity for civic engagement rather than retreat.

In the recent cultural heritage boom, community-based and national identity projects are intertwined with interest in cultural tourism and sites of the memory of enslavement. Questions of historical guilt and present responsibility have become a source of social conflict, particularly in multicultural societies with an enslaving past. This became apparent in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, when statues of enslavers and colonizers were toppled, controversial debates about streets and places named after them re-ignited, and the European Union apologized for slavery after the racist murder of George Floyd. Related debates focus on museums, on artworks acquired unjustly in societies under colonial rule, the question of whether and how museums should narrate the hidden past of enslavement and colonialism, including their own colonial origins with respect to narratives about presumed European supremacy, and the need to establish new monuments for the enslaved, their resistance, and abolitionists of African descent. In this volume, we address this dissonant cultural heritage in Europe, with a strong focus on the tangible remains of enslavement in the Atlantic space in the continent. This may concern, for instance, the residences of royal, noble, and bourgeois enslavers; charitable and cultural institutions, universities, banks, and insurance companies, financed by the traders and owners of enslaved Africans; merchants who dealt in sugar, coffee, and cotton; and the owners of factories who profited from exports to the African and Caribbean markets related to Atlantic slavery. ; In the recent cultural heritage boom, community-based and national identity projects are intertwined with interest in cultural tourism and sites of the memory of enslavement. Questions of historical guilt and present responsibility have become a source of social conflict, particularly in multicultural societies with an enslaving past. This became apparent in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, when statues of enslavers and colonizers were toppled, controversial debates about streets and places named after them re-ignited, and the European Union apologized for slavery after the racist murder of George Floyd. Related debates focus on museums, on artworks acquired unjustly in societies under colonial rule, the question of whether and how museums should narrate the hidden past of enslavement and colonialism, including their own colonial origins with respect to narratives about presumed European supremacy, and the need to establish new monuments for the enslaved, their resistance, and abolitionists of African descent. In this volume, we address this dissonant cultural heritage in Europe, with a strong focus on the tangible remains of enslavement in the Atlantic space in the continent. This may concern, for instance, the residences of royal, noble, and bourgeois enslavers; charitable and cultural institutions, universities, banks, and insurance companies, financed by the traders and owners of enslaved Africans; merchants who dealt in sugar, coffee, and cotton; and the owners of factories who profited from exports to the African and Caribbean markets related to Atlantic slavery.

In this thesis, the emerging analytical technique laser‐induced breakdown spectroscopy(LIBS) is investigated as a diagnostic tool for biological tissues analysis. The two main objectives of the work are using LIBS to provide tissue type feedback information during laser surgery and to use LIBS as an imaging modality by mapping the distribution of elements in tissues. The viability of LIBS for the direct measurement of elements in biological tissue and indirect measurement of molecules has been presented. The applicability of LIBS for real‐time tissue classification to use it as a feedback control mechanism of clinical laser surgery systems has been demonstrated. High classification accuracy of different tissues has been achieved. The results of measuring the distribution of elements in tissues shows that LIBS can be a powerful imaging modality for medical applications that seek to understand the chemical microenvironment of tissues. This has been demonstrated by mapping the different distribution of certain elements between cancerous and healthy tissues.

The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures is a collection of essays by literary scholars from Germany, the US, and Central Eastern Europe offering insight into the specific ways of representing the Shoah and its aftereffects as well as its entanglement with other catastrophic events in the region. Introducing the conceptual frame of postcatastrophe, the collected essays explore the discursive and artistic space the Shoah occupies in the countries between Moscow and Berlin. Postcatastrophe is informed by the knowledge of other concepts of "post" and shares their insight into forms of transmission and latency; in contrast to them, explores the after-effects of extreme events on a collective, aesthetic, and political rather than a personal level. The articles use the concept of postcatastrophe as a key to understanding the entangled and conflicted cultures of remembrance in postsocialist literatures and the arts dealing with events, phenomena, and developments that refuse to remain in the past and still continue to shape perceptions of today’s societies in Eastern Europe. As a contribution to memory studies as well as to literary criticism with a special focus on Shoah remembrance after socialism, this book is of great interest to students and scholars of European history, and those interested in historical memory more broadly.

humanitarianism, armed conflict, artificial intelligence, posthuman legal scholarship, posthuman ecology monochrome wooden sculptures, remote cultures, formalist aesthetics, contextualist aesthetics, vertical bilateral symmetry, split representation, aesthetic status

This book examines the transcultural and global turn in art research as well as in curatorial and artistic practice. Bringing together contributions from scholars, curators, and artists, the volume approaches transculturation as a critical lens for understanding the complex flows of people, objects, and ideas across the globe. The authors examine how knowledge systems are challenged and reconfigured, how plural identities are negotiated within entangled communities, and how alternative historiographic frameworks take shape beyond western paradigms. Attention to material practices highlights the role of objects and artworks as carriers of memory and affective solidarity. In this way, transculturation emerges as both an analytical framework and a transformative practice shaped by movement across borders. Transdisciplinary approaches to modern and contemporary visual art Includes interviews, photo essays, artworks, and scholarly articles Broad outlook from different geographical positions and viewpoints

This open access handbook aims to constitute a reference point on political norm dynamics in Southeast Asia, by bringing together the array of normative repertoires that frame the possibilities for citizens to participate in, set agendas for, make decisions in, and contest, not only electoral and institutional politics but also informal and imaginary political spaces. It sheds light on intersecting political and social transformations and their consequences from the vantage point of political norms. While chapters lay out and analyse how political norms across Southeast Asia have been shaped in successive historical phases, the core of the handbook addresses current dynamics involved in defining and transforming political norms.