Open Access Books

In den meisten industriellen Anwendungen sind schnelle und zuverlässige Algorithmen zur Zeichenerkennung gefordert. Dazu werden verschiedene Zeichensegmentierungsansätze vorgestellt, die sich größtenteils adaptiv an die Gegebenheiten in den Aufnahmen anpassen. Weiterhin wird ein Segmentierungsverfahren beschrieben, das mögliches Vorwissen mit berücksichtigt. Zudem wurden Kombinationen von Merkmalen und Klassifikatoren bezüglich deren Robustheit unter dem Einfluss von Rauschen untersucht.

Sustainable agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa; Agricultural economics; Climate change economics; Agricultural productivity; Modern technology adoption by farmers; Agricultural sustainability; Bioenergy Crop Adoption; Agro-Industrialization; Agriculture sector development; Environmental Efficiency; Global Value Chains; Regional value chains; African economic development; African agricultural transformation; Labour productivity; Drought Index Insurance; Supplemental irrigation; Special Economic Zones; ECOWAS countries

Velen kennen de Boerenbond van naam. Weinigen hebben inzicht in zijn talrijke functies. Doorheen zijn honderdjarige geschiedenis werd hij opgehemeld en verguisd. Voor de enen is hij een emancipatorische kracht, voor anderen een bolwerk van katholiek conservatisme. De Boerenbond is een uniek organisatiemodel, steunend op een merkwaardige combinatie van economische, sociale, politieke en religieuze belangenverdediging. De effici

"There is a name for those under-and precariously employed, but actively working, academics in today’s society: the para-academic. Para-academics mimic academic practices so they are liberated from the confines of the university. Our work, and our lives, reflect how the idea of a university as a place for knowledge production, discussion and learning, has become distorted by neo-liberal market forces. We create alternative, genuinely open access, learning-thinking-making-acting spaces on the internet, in publications, in exhibitions, discussion groups or other mediums that seem appropriate to the situation. We don’t sit back and worry about our career developments paths. We write for the love of it, we think because we have to, we do it because we care."

The federal system adopted in the constituent process of 1853-1860 responded, on the one hand, to the confederative experience of previous years and, on the other, to the imprint of the model based on the Constitution of the United States of America of 1787. However, the Argentine constituents departed from this model by granting the National Congress the power to dictate the "civil, commercial, criminal and mining" Codes (Art. 67, sub. 11 CN). In this way, the constitutional organisation reflected the federal aspiration that allowed the provinces to preserve their historical-political identity, but various circumstantial reasons, such as the shortage of lawyers in the interior of the country and the felt need to standardise customs and legislation, led the Convention members to adopt the European system of codification in the area of substantive law. As a result of this process, a hybrid model was established, with federal features as regards the exercise of political and jurisdictional powers at the provincial level, but with a clear unitary element in the codification of substantive law. The reservation added in 1860 reinforced the intangibility of the jurisdictional power of the provinces, which thus retained their own courts and the power to regulate their procedural law. On the other hand, it was provided that until the National Congress enacted the substantive codes, the provinces were empowered to maintain their civil and criminal legislation (art. 108 CN). The first Argentine Criminal Code would not come into force until 1887, so, in exercise of this transitory power, many provinces adopted various codification projects in the previous years that were exclusively within their territorial scope. The Tejedor Project was adopted by the Province of Buenos Aires in 1877; La Rioja, which was the pioneer, adopted it in 1876; Entre Ríos, San Juan, Corrientes, San Luis and Catamarca in 1878; Mendoza in 1779; Santa Fe and Salta in 1880 and Tucumán in 1881; and the Provinces of Jujuy and Santiago del Estero did not adopt provincial codes but were governed by Castilian law until the first National Code was enacted. Cordoba, for its part, adopted, practically unchanged, the draft of the revision commission presented to the National Congress in 1881. This book attempts to analyse some aspects of that first moment of provincial codification, focusing on the Criminal Code in force in the Province of Cordoba between 1882 and 1886, trying to understand the way in which the operators of justice in Cordoba represented the codified law and to determine to what extent it is possible to associate that representation with what has been called "code culture". We believe that the experience of provincial codification cannot be fully understood without taking into account the way in which the new law was used in the courts. In this sense, the Historical Archive of the Province of Cordoba preserves, in its Crime Fund, an important number of cases that were consulted and analysed in this work. The documentary universe for the period in which the code was in force (1883-1886) is 403 cases. The aim is to offer a qualitative analysis which, based on the documentary testimonies, allows us to offer an adequate description of the features which, in terms of legal culture, can be considered characteristic of the practical experience of the provincial penal codification.

In Pursuing Truth, Mary J. Oates explores the roles that religious women played in teaching generations of college and university students amid slow societal change that brought the grudging acceptance of Catholics in public life. Across the twentieth century, Catholic women's colleges modeled themselves on, and sometimes positioned themselves against, elite secular colleges. Oates describes these critical pedagogical practices by focusing on Notre Dame of Maryland University, formerly known as the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, the first Catholic college in the United States to award female students four-year degrees. The sisters and laywomen on the faculty and in the administration at Notre Dame of Maryland persevered in their work while facing challenges from the establishment of the Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches, and secular institutions. Pursuing Truth presents the stories of the institution's female founders, administrators, and professors whose labors led it through phases of diversification. The pattern of institutional development regarding the place of religious identity, gender and sexuality, and race that Oates finds at Notre Dame of Maryland is a paradigmatic story of change in US higher education. Similarly representative is her account of the school's effort, from the late 1960s to the present, to maintain its identity as a women's liberal arts college. Thanks to generous funding from the Cushwa Center at the University of Notre Dame, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

Rich connections between gaming and theater stretch back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when England's first commercial theaters appeared right next door to gaming houses and blood-sport arenas. In the first book-length exploration of gaming in the early modern period, Gina Bloom shows that theaters succeeded in London's new entertainment marketplace largely because watching a play and playing a game were similar experiences. Audiences did not just see a play; they were encouraged to play the play, and knowledge of gaming helped them become better theatergoers. Examining dramas written for these theaters alongside evidence of analog games popular then and today, Bloom argues for games as theatrical media and theater as an interactive gaming technology. Gaming the Stage also introduces a new archive for game studies: scenes of onstage gaming, which appear at climactic moments in dramatic literature. Bloom reveals plays to be systems of information for theater spectators: games of withholding, divulging, speculating, and wagering on knowledge. Her book breaks new ground through examinations of plays such as The Tempest, Arden of Faversham, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and A Game at Chess; the histories of familiar games such as cards, backgammon, and chess; less familiar ones, like Game of the Goose; and even a mixed-reality theater videogame.

In this collection, a mix of renowned academics and newer voices reflect on some of the realities of international research partnerships. They both question and highlight the agency of academics, donors and research institutions in the geopolitics of knowledge and power. The contributors offer fresh insights on institutional transformation, the setting of research agendas, and access to research funding, while highlighting the dilemmas researchers face when their institutions are vulnerable to state and donor influence. Offering a range of perspectives on why academics should collaborate and what for, this book will be useful to anyone interested in how scholars are adapting to the realities of international networking and how research institutions are finding innovative ways to make North–South partnerships and collaborations increasingly fair, sustainable and mutually beneficial.

This work is part of the research carried out within the EINITE and SMITE projects for the case of Catalonia. In this chapter, firstly, a brief state of the art of research carried out in recent years on the evolution of economic inequality in the pre-industrial world is traced. Subsequently, through the previously existing literature and the study of the empirical evidence compiled for this work, the characteristics of the fiscal sources available for some Catalan localities, i.e. the books of estimes, vàlues or manifests, and the sample of localities studied in the EINITE/SMITE projects are described in detail. The second part of the work focuses on the analysis of a case study, the town of Balaguer.

Die digitale Transformation erschließt neue Dimensionen für die wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung an Hochschulen. Dazu gehören digital unterstützte Konzepte und Formate sowie eine erweiterte zeitliche und räumliche Flexibilität. In dem Sammelband wird die digitale Transformation der wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung auf theoretischer, empirischer und praktischer Ebene betrachtet. Die Autor:innen thematisieren Chancen und Herausforderungen der Digitalisierung für die gesamte pädagogische Handlungskette und verschiedene Bereiche des Bildungsmanagements. Kernpunkte sind: transformative Forschung, Entwicklung und Evaluation digitaler Lerndesigns, Professionalisierung des Personals, digitale Lehrkompetenz, technisch-didaktisches Plattformdesign, Selbstlernangebote, Marketingmaßnahmen sowie Angebots- und Kursmanagement. Der Sammelband bietet einen Überblick zum aktuellen Stand der digitalen Transformation in der wissenschaftlichen Weiterbildung.

Institutionen bestimmen die Anpassungsfähigkeit und die Innovationsfähigkeit politischer und wirtschaftlicher Systeme und entscheiden damit mittel- und langfristig über deren Erfolg. Am Beispiel der Regionalpolitik in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern untersucht die Arbeit die institutionellen Strukturen in Europa und Deutschland. Regionalpolitik wird durch konstruktivistische Politikkonzeptionen geprägt und im Rahmen eines verflochtenen politischen Systems geplant und implementiert. Dies führt zur Zentralisierung der Entscheidungskompetenzen, zu massivem rent-seeking-Verhalten und somit zur ineffizienten Allokation knapper Mittel. Durch eine ordnungspolitische Reform der Regionalpolitik, die Entscheidungskompetenzen radikal dezentralisiert, könnte ihre Effektivität erheblich erhöht werden.

This new important book is a collection of research and review articles from different parts of the world discussing the dynamic and vibrant field of hydrogels. The articles are linking new findings and critically reviewing the fundamental concepts and principles that are making the base for innovation. Each chapter discusses the potential of hydrogels in diverse areas. These areas include tissue engineering, implants, controlled drug release, and oil reserve treatment. The book is offering an up-to-date knowledge of hydrogels to experienced as well as new researchers.

Plutarch gives Plato's philosophy of love a new direction by applying its basic ideas to marital love and by defending the significance of sexuality for personality development and human bonding. This work is presented here with a literary-oriented introduction, the Greek text has been checked carefully, the German translation aims to be readable and is supplemented by detailed notes. Four essays by various authors are included.