Open Access Books

Today, newly developed materials synthesized by the most advanced technologies require additional deep research into their exploitation properties across various applications. The latest progressive technology approaches must be adapted to industrial realities in order to transition to the sixth technological paradigm. The fundamental issues of synthesizing and processing multicomponent objects, structures, and composites; the creation of new classes of materials and nanocrystalline alloys; advanced technologies of surface treatment and multilayer coatings; and the question of developing new approaches to searching for technology solutions using the last achievements in the information sphere of competencies remain especially in demand. This Special Issue is devoted to the latest achievements in the fields of technologies of production and the synthesis of innovative 0D-2D, nano-, and functionally graded objects; nanocomposites, nanoporous structures (aerogels), and coatings; new processing methods and technologies based on plasma and laser treatment and electrophysical and chemical processing and synthesis, and methods for research into their exploitation properties; the development of digital models and machine learning approaches for the needs of industry.

The research focuses on an approach for the development of an automated workflow in the field of fire prevention for the validation of BIM models regarding “Subjected Activities” (according to Italian law - Presidential Decree 151/2011), with reference to the contents of the Horizontal Technical Regulation of the Fire Prevention Code. In fact, since 2019, the Italian Fire Department, through the Fire Digital Check project, is seeking to digitize the Fire Prevention Code in order to allow professionals to integrate their BIM models with the objectives required by the fire regulations. The workflow proposed involves three distinct processes, integrating them within a single workflow: study of the technical regulations and transposition into the digital environment using proven methods such as RASE, Tx3 and TIO, information modelling of a case study and implementation of validation algorithms using Solibri software. One of the main points of the proposed process is to use an open and interoperable format such as that offered by the IFC schema for the information exchange between the different software involved

A obra reúne artigos que narram alguns episódios dos mais de 90 anos da história dos Comunistas no Brasil, desde a fundação do Partido Comunista do Brasil (PCB), em 1922, documenta à ascensão da história das lutas da juventude e dos trabalhadores nas décadas de 1930 e 1940, passando pela clandestinidade, com a Ditadura Militar, em 1964, e a retomada dos estudos voltados para esta área. Com o intuito de historiar algumas lacunas no conhecimento histórico sobre o tema, conhecidos historiadores se juntam a novos investigadores para oferecer capítulos da história de uma das mais importantes organizações de esquerda existentes no Brasil.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 mandated a review of gender-based assignment restrictions. To support this effort, RAND researchers analyzed service data to describe and quantify the military occupations that are closed to women, as well as occupations that are open with some positions that are closed.

This open access book examines how digital technologies are used to promote citizen participation in democratic urban development. It assesses the emergence, use, applicability and functions of digital modes of citizen participation in multiple cities around the world, where political regimes invite ordinary citizens to partake in policy processes through information technologies. The book also explores these initiatives alongside issues of democracy, social justice and power. It is an essential reference for practitioners, policymakers and academics interested in the relationship between citizen participation, technology and urban governance.

Authority is not a word with many positive connotations. It suggests power-hungry dictators, trigger-happy police, stifling bureaucracies, and monumental urban landscapes. In Nonauthoritarian Authority Julian Brigstocke argues that in these shattered times, anti-authoritarianism is not enough: a radical, speculative reinvention of authority is needed. He introduces the idea of nonauthoritarian authority: a form of power that pluralises marginalised and hidden voices, recognises diverse agencies, and amplifies heterogeneous demands. Engaging with key philosophical debates around materiality, experience, feeling, agency, and landscape, Nonauthoritarian Authority stages a series of experiments with thinking, reading, researching, and writing nonauthoritarian authority. Dramatising a speculative search for barely sensed, dispersed authorities, Brigstocke’s experiments in thinking explore the intrinsically spatial nature of authority, through empirical studies of violent urban borders in Rio de Janeiro, colonial material infrastructures in Hong Kong, monumental architecture in Paris, and everyday spaces of encounter in the UK. Offering an intricate and playful reflection on the relationship between authority, urban forms, and writing, each exercise in thinking links form and genre to a distinctive way of imagining authority. Each chapter simultaneously critiques a form of authoritarian authority and searches for a new, nonauthoritarian authority within the rubble of the old.

Steigende Anforderungen in der Industrie beispielsweise in Hinblick auf verkürzte Prozessketten, eine erhöhte Funktionsintegration oder ökologische Aspekte führen dazu, dass die konventionellen Verfahren der Blech- und Massivumformung an ihre Grenzen stoßen. Ein Lösungsansatz zur Erweiterung der Prozessgrenzen ist die Kombination beider Verfahrensklassen in der sogenannten Blechmassivumformung. Eine derartige Kombination resultiert in einem simultanen Auftreten von Bedingungen aus der Blech- und der Massivumformung. Dies führt wiederum zu einem unkontrollierten Stofffluss und einer reduzierten Bauteilqualität. Im Rahmen der Arbeit wurden globale Stoffflusssteuerungsmethoden über eine lokale Einstellung der tribologischen Bedingungen erforscht und im Hinblick auf ihre Wirksamkeit verifiziert. Um dies zu realisieren, wurden die tribologischen Wirkmechanismen der modifizierten Werkzeug- und Werkstückoberflächen identifiziert, um unabhängig vom in der Arbeit untersuchten Parameterraum, den Einsatz der Methoden für die Blechmassivumformung zu ermöglichen.

Despite many scholars noting the interdisciplinary approach of Aboriginal knowledge production as a methodology within a broad range of subjects – including quantum mathematics, biodiversity, sociology and the humanities - the academic study of Indigenous knowledge and people is struggling to become interdisciplinary in its approach and move beyond its current label of ‘Indigenous Studies’. Indigenous Knowledge Production specifically demonstrates the use of autobiographical ethnicity as a methodological approach, where the writer draws on lived experience and ethnic background towards creative and academic writing. Indeed, in this insightful volume, Marcus Woolombi Waters investigates the historical connection and continuity that have led to the present state of hostility witnessed in race relations around the world; seeking to further one’s understanding of the motives and methods that have led to a rise in white supremacy associated with ultra-conservatism. Above all, Indigenous Knowledge Production aims to deconstruct the cultural lens applied within the West which denies the true reflection of Aboriginal and Black consciousness, and leads to the open hostility witnessed across the world. This monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, interested in fields such as Sociology of Knowledge, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Ethnography and Methodology.

Examining the intersection of disability and genre in popular works of horror, crime, science fiction, fantasy, and romance published since the late 1960s, Disability, Literature, Genre is a major contribution to both cultural disability studies and genre fiction studies. Drawing on recent work on affect and emotion, the book explores how disability makes us feel, and how those feelings shape interpersonal and fictional encounters. Written in a clear and accessible style, Disability, Literature, Genre offers a timely reflection on the rapidly growing body of scholarship on disability representation, as well as an innovative new theorisation of genre. By reconceptualising genre reading as an affective process, Ria Cheyne establishes genre fiction as a key site of investigation for disability studies. She argues that genre fiction’s unique combination of affectivity and reflexivity makes it ideally suited to the production of reflexive representations of disability: representations which encourage the reader to reflect upon what they understand about disability, and potentially to rethink it. Examining the affective—and effective—power of disability representations in a wide range of popular genre fiction, this book will be essential reading for academics in disability studies, literary studies, popular culture studies, and the medical humanities.

The Thai—Yunnan Project is proud to present this English-language version of Professor Yos Santasombat’s fascinating ethnography of the Tai in Daikong, southwestern China. It represents a significant contribution to the ethnographic record of the Tai peoples. The village of Lak Chang is located close to the edge of the Tai world and is increasingly embraced by Chinese influence. Professor Yos skilfully weaves ethnographic and historical writing to chart the course of Lak Chang’s incorporation into the modern Chinese state. This has been a painful history but what emerges in this account is a sense of Tai cultural identity that is vigorous and adaptive. “The Tai ethnic category is thus a complex and dynamic construct which takes place within the context of changing power relations and socio-economic conditions where the past is reconstructed to give meaning to the present and hope for the future.” In his account of the labours, rituals and beliefs of the Tai villagers of Daikong, Professor Yos brings contemporary ethnic identity to their life. Among the patchwork paddyfields and haphazard laneways of Lak Chang we come to a greater understanding of how global and regional processes of modernisation are managed and selectively incorporated by one local community.

Intelligenztests werden häufig im Rahmen sonderpädagogischer Begutachtungen durchgeführt. Die empirische Studie untersucht, unter welchen Arbeitsbedingungen Intelligenztests angewendet werden und welche Problematiken daraus resultieren. Ergänzt wird die Studie durch die Analyse von 248 Intelligenztests auf Auswertungsfehler. Zusammengefasst belegen die Ergebnisse vielfältige Schwierigkeiten im Umgang mit den Tests, aber auch einen unterschiedlichen Umgang in den Bundesländern. Aus den Studienergebnissen resultierende Verbesserungsvorschläge für die Praxis werden abschließend vorgestellt.

Auch ein knappes Vierteljahrhundert nach seinem Ende beschäftigen die Folgen des Jugoslawienkrieges jene, die ihn direkt oder indirekt erlebt haben, sowie deren Folgegeneration. Dies verdeutlichen die postjugoslawischen Literaturen, in denen Narrative der Traumatisierung nach wie vor äußerst präsent sind. Ingeborg Jandl-Konrad entwirft zwei theoretische Ebenen, anhand derer subjektive Sichtweisen auf Krieg und Trauma untersucht werden. Als "Foto-Text" bezeichnet sie Diskurse, die durch Abbildung, Erwähnung oder Beschreibung von Fotografien in literarischen Werken entstehen. Unter "Sprechen" versteht sie Formungen des sprachlichen Ausdrucks, die den emotionalen Gehalt des Gesagten sowie suggestive Eigenschaften der Darstellung vermitteln oder metapoetisch reflektieren. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf Bild- und Text-Strategien, die Narrative der Traumatisierung verstärken oder aber zu deren Aufarbeitung beitragen. Dabei stehen vor allem Momente der Transformation im Zentrum, die im diachronen Blick auf autor:innenspezifische Poetiken deutlich werden. Die Kategorien "Foto-Text" und "Sprechen" sind so allgemein konzipiert, dass man mit ihrer Hilfe auch andere gesellschaftspolitische Diskurse untersuchen kann.

Der Sammelband bietet einen systematischen Überblick über Grundlagen, empirische Erkenntnisse und Reflexionen zur Umsetzung inklusiver Bildung im Bildungssystem Islands und regt so den internationalen Dialog an. Neben dem Fokus auf die gesellschaftliche Diskussion von Herausforderungen in Island im Vergleich zu deutschsprachigen Ländern werden von isländischen und deutschen Expert*innen Forschungs- und Qualifizierungsprojekte vorgestellt, Beispiele inklusiver Schulen und Lernprozesse erläutert sowie Erkenntnisse zur Gestaltung inklusionsorientierter Lehrer*innenbildung beschrieben.

Language plays an essential role both in creating law and in governing its implementation. Providing an accessible and comprehensive introduction to this subject, Language and Law:describes the different registers and genres that make up spoken and written legal language and how they develop over time; analyses real-life examples drawn from court cases from different parts of the world, illustrating the varieties of English used in the courtroom by speakers occupying different roles; addresses the challenges presented to our notions of law and regulation by online communication; discusses the complex role of translation in bilingual and multilingual jurisdictions, including Hong Kong and Canada; and provides readings from key scholars in the discipline, including Lawrence Solan, Peter Goodrich, Marianne Constable, David Mellinkoff, and Chris Heffer. With a wide range of activities throughout, this accessible textbook is essential reading for anyone studying language and law or forensic linguistics.

What was the function of representing deities and also humans in the ancient Near-East? Which were the different ways of making gods visible, and the specific functions of these representations? Might these material and visual representations help us to better understand official cults, as well as private cults? What was the role of images in the royal cult? Was the king the only “image” of the gods, or could all humans fulfill this role? Why were cult images forbidden? Does the biblical prohibition have any precedent or parallel in the ancient Near-East, or elsewhere? And how do the ways of representing gods and humans change in the absence of cultic images? The conference Representing Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near-East and in the Bible, held at the Collège de France, Paris, on May 5-6 2015, sought to shed light on these questions surrounding the image, a critical issue for our understanding of ancient as well as modern religions.