Open Access Books

Digital methods such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be leveraged, to improve the efficiency of maintenance planning of bridges. However, this requires digital building models, which are rarely available. Consequently, these models must be created retrospectively, which is time-consuming when done manually. Naturally, there is a great interest in the industry to automate the process of retro-digitization. This paper contributes to these efforts by proposing a multistage pipeline to automatically extract the gradient of a bridge from pixel-based construction drawings using deep learning. The bridge gradient, a key element of the structure’s axis, is critical for describing the elevation profile and axis slope. This information is implicitly contained in the longitudinal view of bridge drawings as gradient symbols. To extract this information, the well-established object detection model YOLOv5 is employed to locate the gradient symbols inside the drawings. Subsequently, EasyOCR and heuristic rules are applied to extract the relevant gradient parameters associated with each detected symbol. The extracted parameters are then exported in a machine-interpretable format to facilitate seamless integration into other applications. The results show a promising 98% accuracy in symbol detection and an overall accuracy of 70%. Consequently, the pipeline represents a significant advance in automating the retro-digitization process for existing bridges by reducing the time and effort required

Dieser Jahrgangsband der Simpliciana enthält elf Vorträge, die während der Tagung zum Thema Grimmelshausens Der seltzame Springinsfeld Mitte Juni 2015 in Oberkirch und Renchen gehalten wurden. Sieben weitere Beiträge ergänzen das neue Jahrbuch. Die Rubrik «Rezensionen und Hinweise auf Bücher» bietet Besprechungen von Neuerscheinungen zum simplicianischen Erzähler, zu anderen Autoren und zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit.

Formeln sind eine wichtige mathematische Darstellungsform im Physikunterricht. Jedoch haben Lernende häufig Schwierigkeiten bei der Verbalisierung der inhaltlichen Bedeutung von Formeln. Dies wirft die Frage auf, wie Lehrende diese inhaltliche Seite von Formeln vermitteln. Der Theorieteil stellt den Empiriestand zu den Themenkomplexen Formeln und Kommunikation, Alltagssprache, Unterrichts -sprache und Fachsprache im Physikunterricht ausführlich dar. Auf Grundlage sprachwissenschaftlicher Überlegungen wurde ein Ebenenmodell der Versprachlichung von Formeln entwickelt und durch Lehrbuchanalysen validiert, mit dessen Hilfe das Sprechen von und über Formeln analysiert werden kann. In einer qualitativen, explorativ ausgerichteten Feldstudie wurde Physikunterricht von 10 Lehrenden zum elektrischen Widerstand beobachtet und ihre Sprache mit Hilfe der qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse und des entwickelten Ebenenmodells ausgewertet. Das entstandene Kategoriensystem zeigt ein vielfältiges Sprechen über Formeln, das viele Aspekte von Formelverständnis abdeckt. Eine explizite qualitative Interpretation von Formeln bleibt jedoch meist aus. Es zeigt sich in vielen Aspekten ein eher technischer Umgang mit Formeln, der die strukturelle Rolle der Mathematik vernachlässigt. Das Sprechen der Lehrenden im Umgang mit Formeln kann als entweder fachsprachlich, schülernah oder ausgewogen, in einigen Fällen zusätzlich als reflektierend charakterisiert werden.

Plant breeding aims to bring together in a single population, called a variety, the maximum number of favorable genetic traits to better meet the demands of agriculture, users of agricultural production and society. This book presents today's plant breeding methods and tools in simple, concise terms, and answers three questions: What is a variety in plant breeding? What methods and tools are available to the breeder? How is a variety created? The book concludes with a description of the supply chain set up to ensure that the seeds of selected varieties are the vehicle of genetic progress. This book is aimed at non-specialists with an interest in genetics and plant breeding, and a basic understanding of biology: high school students and their biology teachers; graduate students who are studying plant breeding, and their teachers; technicians, engineers and managers of plant breeding programs; and all professionals wishing to have an overview of the plant breeding tools available today.

This book explores the societal resistance to accessibility for persons with disabilities, and tries to set an example of how to study exclusion in a time when numerous policies promise inclusion. With 12 chapters organised in three parts, the book takes a comprehensive approach to accessibility, covering transport and communication, knowledge and education, law and organisation. Topics within a wide cross-disciplinary field are covered, including disability studies, social work, sociology, ethnology, social anthropology, and history. The main example is Sweden, with its implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities within the context of the Nordic welfare state. By identifying and discussing persistent social and cultural conditions as well as recurring situations and interactions that nurture resistance to advancing accessibility, despite various strong laws promoting it, the book’s conclusions are widely transferable. It argues for the value of alternating between methods, theoretical perspectives, and datasets to explore how new arenas, resources and technologies cause new accessibility concerns — and possibilities — for persons living with impairments. We need to be able to follow actors closely to uncover how they feel, act, and argue, but also to connect to wider discursive and institutional patterns and systems. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of disability studies, social work, sociology, ethnology, social anthropology, political science, and organisation studies.

The task of ending famine in India was taken up by many at the beginning of the twentieth century. Only decades earlier, famine in India had been believed to be a necessary evil. Now it was the reason for the increasing activities of doctors, nutritionists, social reformers, agricultural experts, missionaries, anti-colonial activists and colonial administrators, all involved in temporary relief and finding permanent solutions to famine.

In der Reihe Slavistische Beiträge werden vor allem slavistische Dissertationen des deutschsprachigen Raums sowie vereinzelt auch amerikanische, englische und russische publiziert. Darüber hinaus stellt die Reihe ein Forum für Sammelbände und Monographien etablierter Wissenschafter/innen dar.

Analysis of the transformations in the sphere of work in Chile and Latin America. Precarization processes. Immigration and social exclusion

In the past fifteen years, file sharing of digital cultural works between individuals has been at the center of a number of debates on the future of culture itself. To some, sharing constitutes piracy, to be fought against and eradicated. Others see it as unavoidable, and table proposals to compensate for its harmful effects. Meanwhile, little progress has been made towards addressing the real challenges facing culture in a digital world.Sharing is LegitimateAn in-depth exploration of digital culture and its dissemination,Sharing: Culture and the Economy in the Internet Age offers a counterpoint to the dominant view that file sharing is piracy, analyzing it rather as the modern form of long recognized rights to share in culture. Sharing starts from a radically different viewpoint, namely that the non-market sharing of digital works is both legitimate and useful. Philippe Aigrain looks at the benefits of file sharing, which allows unknown writers and artists to be appreciated more easily. It supports this premise with empirical research, demonstrating that non-market sharing leads to more diversity in the attention given to various works. New Business ModelsConcentrating not only on the cultural enrichment caused by widely shared digital media, Sharing also discusses new financing models that would allow works to be shared freely by individuals without aim at profit. Aigrain carefully balances the needs to support and reward creative activity with a suitable respect for the cultural common good and proposes a new interpretation of the digital landscape.

This book analyses the threats to academic freedom in the twenty-first century across the globe, and the various ways to face them.

This book examines the central role media and communication play in the activities of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) around the globe, how NGOs communicate with key publics, engage stakeholders, target political actors, enable input from civil society, and create participatory opportunities. An international line-up of authors first discuss communication practices, strategies, and media uses by NGOs, providing insights into the specifics of NGO programs for social change goals and reveal particular sets of tactics NGOs commonly employ. The book then presents a set of case studies of NGO organizing from all over the world—ranging from Sudan via Brazil to China – to illustrate the particular contexts that make NGO advocacy necessary, while also highlighting successful initiatives to illuminate the important spaces NGOs occupy in civil society. This comprehensive and wide-ranging exploration of global NGO communication will be of great interest to scholars across communication studies, media studies, public relations, organizational studies, political science, and development studies, while offering accessible pieces for practitioners and organizers.

The current resurgence of Marxism is based on new sources of inspiration and creativity from movements that seek democratic, egalitarian and ecological alternatives to capitalism. The Marxism of many of these movements is neither dogmatic nor prescriptive, but rather, open, searching, utopian. It revolves around four primary factors: the importance of democracy for an emancipatory project; the ecological limits of capitalism; the crisis of global capitalism; and the learning of lessons from the failures of Marxist-inspired experiments. Marxisms in the Twenty-First Century challenges vanguardist Marxism featured in South Africa and beyond. Featuring leading thinkers from the Left, the book offers provocative ideas on interpreting our current world and serves as an excellent introduction to new ways of thinking about Marxism to students and scholars in the field. Many anti-capitalist traditions and themes - including democracy, globalisation, feminism, critique and ecology inform and shape the contributions in this volume.

This Handbook is the first systematic effort to map the fast-growing phenomenon of memory activism and to delineate a new field of research that lies at the intersection of memory and social movement studies. From Charlottesville to Cape Town, from Santiago to Sydney, we have recently witnessed protesters demanding that symbols of racist or colonial pasts be dismantled and that we talk about histories that have long been silenced. But such events are only the most visible instances of grassroots efforts to influence the meaning of the past in the present. Made up of more than 80 chapters that encapsulate the rich diversity of scholarship and practice of memory activism by assembling different disciplinary traditions, methodological approaches, and empirical evidence from across the globe, this Handbook establishes important questions and their theoretical implications arising from the social, political, and economic reality of memory activism.

Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit den Wirkungen permanenter staatlicher Budgetdefizite auf die intertemporale Allokation. Im Rahmen einer Partialanalyse wird der Einfluss der Staatsverschuldung auf die privaten Spar- und Investitionsentscheidungen untersucht. Unter Zugrundelegung eines neoklassischen Wachstumsmodells werden die Auswirkungen der Staatsverschuldung auf Kapitalakkumulation, Steuerlast pro Kopf und Konsum pro Kopf dargestellt. Dabei werden Vermögenseffekte in der Konsumfunktion und staatliche Investitionen berücksichtigt.

"This book is the first typological study of adjective attribution marking. Its focus lies on Northern Eurasia, although it covers many more languages and presents an ontology of morphosyntactic categories relevant to noun phrase structure in general. Beside treating synchronic data, the study contributes to historical linguistics by reconstructing the origin of new types specifically in the language contact area between the Indo-European and Uralic families."