Open Access Books

Climate change is increasing due to the anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases. The majority of these are due to the production and consumption of energy. According to the latest estimates, global energy demand could triple by 2050, and by then, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. The challenge for future cities is the implementation of a mechanism that minimizes the need for injection of new energy resources in them, so that a high level of self-sufficiency can be achieved through the concept of circular economy, thus partially mitigating the impacts of climate change. Using solar energy today is considered to be one of the best solutions that can be installed in buildings to help with this issue. This book addresses several relevant aspects related to energy saving at cities, including a deep survey of research topics and scientific collaborations in energy saving. The main research topics carried out are related to sustainability, solar energy, the use of rooftops for energy generation, energy conversion from urban biomass or residues, wind energy, and public and private urban energy saving.

The aim of this book is to present and discuss new advances in serious games to show how they could enhance the effectiveness and outreach of education, advertising, social awareness, health, policies, etc. We present their use in structured learning activities, not only with a focus on game-based learning, but also on the use of game elements and game design techniques to gamify the learning process. The published contributions really demonstrate the wide scope of application of game-based approaches in terms of purpose, target groups, technologies and domains and one aspect they have in common is that they provide evidence of how effective serious games, game-based learning and gamification can be.

Those who look for the traces of a new universalism of our time are themselves its critical builders. The conversations documented in this book echo recordings of encounters online, and sow their own traces of a minor universalism that can be imagined in-between and across differences. Conversations with: Arjun Appadurai, Leyla Dakhli, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Giovanni Levi, Gisèle Sapiro, David Scott, Adania Shibli, and Maria Stavrinaki.

The Revolution Will Be Improvised: The Intimacy of Cultural Activism traces intimate encounters between activists and local people of the civil rights movement through an archive of Black and Brown avant-gardism. In the 1960s, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) activists engaged with people of color working in poor communities to experiment with creative approaches to liberation through theater, media, storytelling, and craft making. With a dearth of resources and an abundance of urgency, SNCC activists improvised new methods of engaging with communities that created possibilities for unexpected encounters through programs such as The Free Southern Theater, El Teatro Campesino, and the Poor People’s Corporation. Reading the output of these programs, Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder argues that intimacy-making became an extension of participatory democracy. In doing so, Rodriguez Fielder supplants the success-failure binary for understanding social movements, focusing instead on how care work aligns with creative production. The Revolution Will Be Improvised returns to improvisation’s roots in economic and social necessity and locates it as a core tenet of the aesthetics of obligation, where a commitment to others drives the production and result of creative work. Thus, this book puts forward a methodology to explore the improvised, often ephemeral, works of art activism.

This volume analyses the judgement techniques and the substantial protection offered by the Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights in the context of 'ethically sensitive' issues, such as medically assisted procreation and homo-affective unions. The investigation touches on different profiles of constitutional law: the multilevel protection between Rome, Strasbourg and common judges; the problematic emergence of 'new rights' in the face of scientific evolution and changing social sentiment; the dynamics between case and statutory law. The author proposes new judging techniques aimed at guaranteeing an effective protection of the interests at stake, as well as at reducing the distances between case and statutory power.

Published

Das hier beschriebene Projekt startete vor dem Hintergrund der steigenden Zahlen von Menschen auf der Flucht und in Kenntnis der Bedingungen für Menschen, die sich auf der Flucht nach Deutschland befinden. Hierbei wird das Augenmerk besonders auf minderjährige begleite und unbegleitete Geflüchtete und deren traumatische Erfahrungen gerichtet. Ziel des Projekts ist es, einen niedrigschwelligen Zugang zum deutschen Hilfesystem zu ermöglichen und so die Unterstützung dieser vulnerablen Gruppe zu verbessern. Im hier vorliegenden abschließenden Projektbericht werden die einzelnen Projektteile, ihre Zusammenführung sowie die Hürden, die beispielsweise auch im Zusammenhang mit der Corona Pandemie im Laufe des Projekts auftraten, beschrieben.

This Special Issue deals with the fascinating material class of nanocomposites consisting of extremely small particles (nanoparticles) which are embedded in polymers. Such materials are of paramount interest in various disciplines, especially chemistry, physics, biomedicine and materials science. Due to the diversity of the components of nanocomposites, they provide a broad spectrum of material properties and applications. The versatility of nanocomposites is indeed reflected by the research covered in this Special Issue. The field of nanocomposites includes innovative science and a source of inspiration for currently relevant economic topics as well as for envisaged technologies of the future. Indeed, this volume alludes to strategies for the preparation of nanocomposites and possibilities for a variety of applications, such as catalytic reactions, gas barriers, high refractive index materials, corrosion protection, electromagnetic inference (EMI) shielding, lithium ion batteries, tissue engineering and plastic surgery.

Wie reagieren Kommunen auf steigende Sozialhilfekosten? Am Beispiel der neun badenwürttembergischen Stadtkreise werden die sozialpolitischen Reaktionen - Zuschußkürzungen und Kostenverlagerungen - im Zeitraum 1980 bis 1992 untersucht. Einen weiteren Schwerpunkt bildet die Analyse finanzpolitischer kommunaler Reaktionen auf «fiscal stress» durch Sozialhilfekostenzuwächse und Einnahmenausfälle. Dabei wird insbesondere das «Cutback Management» der Städte Freiburg, Mannheim und Stuttgart betrachtet. Es zeigt sich, daß die «Flucht aus dem Haushalt» eine wichtige Anpassungsreaktion darstellt. Die Daten für die empirischen Untersuchungen wurden vor Ort erhoben und durch Informationen aus über hundert Interviews im sozialen, administrativen und politischen Bereich ergänzt.

Mehrsegmentige Roboter können verschiedene Umgebungen befahren und inspizieren. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Steuerung entwickelt, die die selbständige Durchführung komplexer Bewegungen in unstrukturierten Umgebungen ermöglicht. Vorgaben eines menschlichen Operators und Zustandsinformationen des Roboters werden in einem Regelkreis verarbeitet. Drei Sensorsysteme erfassen diesen Zustand. Die Teilkomponenten und das Gesamtsystem werden auf den Zielsystemen MakroPlus und Kairo-II evaluiert.

Thirty-three internationally renowned scholars of the text and transmission of the New Testament offer original contributions on ancient manuscripts and digital editing in honour of Klaus Wachtel, a pioneer in the use of computers to edit the New Testament. The individual chapters in English, German and French represent new research on a wide range of important manuscripts, early translations and editorial approaches.

The manuscript is the first volume of an encyclopedic reference work that, as the result of basic research in literary studies, represents the first systematic attempt to provide comprehensive documentation of the literary events that took place within the official system of the Third Reich as promoted, or at least tolerated, by the decision-makers in the cultural industry more accessible, without resorting to limiting, biased attempts to define a canon. Materials will be presented for the analysis and interpretation of genesis and effects of these events and institutions. For this reason, the study is based on a functional understanding of literature and has taken key institutional elements of the literary communication system into consideration: authors and their works (including radio and film writers), scholars of German studies, the decision-makers of cultural policy (promotion/censure, literary awards), literary associations, publishing houses and theaters, anthologies and periodicals. The total control of all public creative and media activities in the year 1938 through the Third Reich dictatorship rarely provides good sources for the testing of this method. Our systematic research of the phase between 1938 and 1945 intends to create the most comprehensive description possible of the institutions within the literary system and the integration of authors. Apart from printed material in files pertaining to individuals, we primarily scrutinized the contents of the National Archive Berlin / Division on National Socialism (BDC) and what is known as the Gauakten or District Files for this purpose (the vast majority of personal information related to authors was provided by the authors themselves). The most important archival basis for the description of the institutions are files from the National Archive Koblenz (now in the National Archive Berlin) and the Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna. In the survey of material, some of the events that transpired before and after the critical Nazi years were systematically included in order to draw attention to continuities and breaks. Especially significant were literary awards and honors, which illustrate the integration of writers in the various governments from the monarchy up through the Second Republic. For this reason, we have included all such prizes that are known. The first attempt to list all literary organizations in Austria and all German-language anthologies, in which Austria texts were included, covers the period between 1933 and 1945. The subsequent period has been documented not only through literary awards and honors, but also through the inclusion of the so-called "Gauakten" in the Austrian National Archive (Österreichisches Staatsarchiv / Archiv der Republik). In order to explore the institutional factors of the literary sub-system in German-speaking regions, a new kind of handbook was created in accordance with this methodological approach, a combination of encyclopedia of persons and specialized dictionary, which should be combined in a network to form a whole. Another factor that led to this format was the division of Austria by the Nazis into seven divisions subject directly to the German government.

The essay addresses the traditional yet very relevant topic of protecting workers' professional skills, with particular attention to the intricate relationship between the two main sources: law and collective bargaining. The latter is considered a fundamental "filter" for balancing the protection of professional skills between guarantees for the worker and organizational dynamism. Reexamining the relationship between the two sources from a historical-critical perspective in light of the text of Article 2103 of the Civil Code, revised in 2015, the author argues that the current framework effectively weakens the role of collective bargaining. Instead, it expands both the boundaries of the legal category of the worker and the scope of professional skills as a object of the contract that must be protected according to civil law rules. These rules, it is clarified, cannot be interpreted in a way that reduces the protections afforded to workers compared to any other contracting party, nor to bend labor law to notions of professionalism derived from other scientific approaches. The systemic limit arising from the classification of professionalism as an essential element of the contract (object) also applies to collective bargaining. However, the author ultimately believes that professionalism is a common good for both the worker and the organization and, as such, should be protected through more modern approaches and techniques, such as those found in recent legislation aimed at overcoming the gender pay gap.

Psychoanalysis is facing a severe crisis. Contemporary epistemology relies on an extreme materialistic reductionism and human sciences seem eager to conform as much as possible to the models and procedures of hardcore science and somatic medicine. Western society is currently harboring a deep mistrust for a discipline that fully incorporates the flesh and blood of interpersonal emotions. The standing of psychoanalysis as a basic dimension of human culture is threatened more than ever and psychoanalysis is badly in need of new strategies and new models. Unluckily, and - I must add - quite dismayingly, psychoanalytic institutions have generally appeared shy, even helpless in front of such an impressive army of critics and opponents. Nowadays, psychoanalysis appears weak. We may even qualify it as wounded. The development of the interpersonal model and of the Kleinian school in the second half of the last century has set the stage for the emergence of an original conceptualization of the unconscious mind. Within the intersubjective paradigm, the psychoanalytic situation is conceptualized as an interpersonal field to which both the analyst and the patient substantially contribute. We believe that the failure to fully integrate such an intersubjective dimension in both psychoanalytic theory and practice amounts to a core liability in 21st-century psychoanalysis. This book gathers several contributions discussing the contemporary crises of psychoanalysis and offering new perspectives. Some contributors lament that the prevailing psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice have been unable to stay true to the fundamentals of the discipline. Other chapters explore the intersections between psychoanalysis and neural sciences. Finally, the last section demonstrates how psychoanalysis can still be fruitfully applied to the understanding of contemporary culture and society, including basic issues such as identity politics and climate change.

In the 1930s, the rise of fascism forced dozens of philosophers to flee to the United States. How did immigrant scholars such as Rudolf Carnap, Max Horkheimer, and Alfred Schütz influence the development of philosophy? And why were American philosophers more receptive to logical empiricism than to critical theory or phenomenology? This volume brings together fifteen scholars to explore the impact of the intellectual migration on U.S. philosophy.