Open Access Books

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This series is directed to diverse managerial professionals who are leading the transformation of individual domains by using expert information and domain knowledge to drive decision support systems (DSSs). The series offers a broad range of subjects addressed in specific areas such as health care, business management, banking, agriculture, environmental improvement, natural resource and spatial management, aviation administration, and hybrid applications of information technology aimed to interdisciplinary issues. This book series is composed of three volumes: Volume 1 consists of general concepts and methodology of DSSs; Volume 2 consists of applications of DSSs in the biomedical domain; Volume 3 consists of hybrid applications of DSSs in multidisciplinary domains. The book is shaped decision support strategies in the new infrastructure that assists the readers in full use of the creative technology to manipulate input data and to transform information into useful decisions for decision makers.

AC motors play a major role in modern industrial applications. Squirrel-cage induction motors (SCIMs) are probably the most frequently used when compared to other AC motors because of their low cost, ruggedness, and low maintenance. The material presented in this book is organized into four sections, covering the applications and structural properties of induction motors (IMs), fault detection and diagnostics, control strategies, and the more recently developed topology based on the multiphase (more than three phases) induction motors. This material should be of specific interest to engineers and researchers who are engaged in the modeling, design, and implementation of control algorithms applied to induction motors and, more generally, to readers broadly interested in nonlinear control, health condition monitoring, and fault diagnosis.

Natural gas has become the world's primary supply of energy in the last decades. It is naturally occurring from the decomposition of organic materials, over the past 150 million years ago, into hydrocarbons. It is considered one of the most useful energy sources and the fastest growing energy source in the world. This book presents state-of-the-art advances in natural gas emerging technologies. It contains ten chapters divided into three sections that cover natural gas technology, utilization, and alternative.

This collection of essays, written by leading scholars in the fields of East German art, film, literature, music, and museum studies, seeks to renegotiate the artistic legacy of the German Democratic Republic. Combining a range of theoretical and practical perspectives, the volume challenges the narrow frameworks of totalitarianism and Ostalgie that have dominated discussions of art produced in the GDR. It explores the diversity of art produced in the state and contests the long-held perception that socialist realism and artistic innovation were mutually exclusive. Crucially, the collection puts art itself to the fore; GDR art is considered not simply as a political by-product, as is so often the case, but as an entity of innovation and aesthetic value in its own right.

This volume describes, compares, and analyses the experience of ‘defending’ the doctoral dissertation in a final oral examination in universities and traditions in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and beyond. Forming the basis for a comparative study of the different traditions, 11 case study chapters include analysis of the regulatory framework; semi-structured interviews with candidates, examiners, and supervisors; and ethnographic observations of the defence. Cases are drawn from universities in Bulgaria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, the USA, and China. Further chapters analyse comparatively the findings in the case studies and explore crucial themes such as the nature and purpose of the defence, the composition of examining committees, the role of supervisors, and the idea of the defence as ritual and performance. Providing unprecedented levels of detail into a process often perceived as hidden from academic debate, this book will enrich the experience of both new and existing candidates as well as examiners and supervisors, and will be of further interest to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students working on the study of higher education, international and comparative education, and assessment in higher education.

In 1927, upon his arrival in Berlin, D. Natsagdorj, one of approximately 45 young Mongolian students who participated in an educational program in Germany and France, composed a long travel poem, “Notes on the Trip to Berlin.” Not only does this poem serve as an early example of Natsagdorj’s writing, it emphasizes Natsagdorj’s role as a didactic writer for the early Mongolian People’s Republic, in particular in conveying the values of the cosmopolitan socialist, a modern subjectivity that quite consciously separated itself from the previous aristocratic, Buddhist, and pastoral identities of pre-revolutionary Mongolia. “Notes on the Trip to Berlin” provides a geographical orientation of the new economic and cultural flows from Mongolia to Western Europe through the Soviet Union. Natsagdorj’s poem is also significant because it is one of the few examples of Mongolian travel literature and enables Natsagdorj to actively resist the image of Mongolians perpetuated by Western travel writers. From the perspective of Natsagdorj’s Mongolian readers, “Notes on the Trip to Berlin” teaches them the process of navigating socialist and pre-revolutionary identities as Natsagdorj grapples with socialist and pre-revolutionary literary forms and language.

Intervening in the multidisciplinary debate on emotion, Tropes of Transport offers a fresh analysis of Hegel’s work that becomes an important resource for Pahl’s cutting-edge theory of emotionality. If it is usually assumed that the sincerity of emotions and the force of affects depend on their immediacy, Pahl explores to what extent mediation—and therefore a certain degree of manipulation but also of sympathy—is constitutive of emotionality. Hegel serves as a particularly helpful interlocutor not only because he offers a sophisticated analysis of mediation, but also because, rather than locating emotion in the heart, he introduces impersonal tropes of transport, such as trembling, release, and shattering.

By definition scientists are an inquisitive lot. But what are the scientific curiosities and concerns on the minds of Australians? What worries them, baffles them, and sets their curiosity meter to 10 out of 10? To find out, the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) took the nation’s intellectual temperature, surveying 1186 Australians: men and women aged 18 to 65, from all education levels and locations around Australia. The results frame this book: a collection of essays covering the diverse areas of science Australians are curious about. Edited by eminent science writer Leigh Dayton and including a foreword from Australia’s Chief Scientist, Ian Chubb. The collection covers a range of issues, including food and farming technology, environmental upheaval, health, fuel and energy technology and space exploration.

W podręczniku podjęto dwa kluczowe tematy, stanowiące najbardziej aktualne filary zrównoważonego rozwoju. W części pierwszej przedstawiono koncepcję polityki klimatyczno-energetycznej Unii Europejskiej oraz wybranych organizacji międzynarodowych (Światowej Organizacji Handlu - World Trade Organization, WTO, oraz ONZ) w kontekście Strategii Zrównoważonego Rozwoju i dążenia do budowy gospodarki „cyrkularnej”. Szczególny nacisk położono na działania Unii Europejskiej ukierunkowane na ochronę środowiska naturalnego, na zapobieganie oraz niwelowanie skutków niekorzystnych zmian klimatycznych, głównie w odniesieniu do zwiększenia efektywności energetycznej, rozwoju technologii niskoemisyjnych oraz lepszego wykorzystania odnawialnych źródeł energii. W części drugiej zaprezentowano koncepcję społecznej odpowiedzialności biznesu (corporate social responsiblity - CSR) i główne problemy związane z jej wdrażaniem do praktyki życia gospodarczego. Szczególną uwagę zwrócono na dobrowolne uwzględnianie przez przedsiębiorstwa problematyki społecznej i ekologicznej w swojej działalności i stosunkach z zainteresowanymi stronami oraz przeznaczanie przez przedsiębiorstwa zysków na rzecz społecznego interesu. Podręcznik jest adresowany do pracowników naukowych oraz studentów kierunków ekonomicznych i społecznych uczelni wyższych oraz do kadry menedżerskiej i pracowników przedsiębiorstw. Z wiedzy w nim zawartej skorzystać mogą również interesariusze firm współpracujących z przedsiębiorstwami wdrażającymi koncepcję CSR do praktyki gospodarczej. Publikacja została przygotowana w ramach projektu „Utworzenie nowych interdyscyplinarnych programów kształcenia w zakresie ekonomii ochrony środowiska (w języku polskim i angielskim) w Uniwersytecie Łódzkim” współfinansowanego ze środków funduszy norweskich i krajowych. (Nr umowy FSS/2014/HEI/W/0124/U/0014)

This self-reflexive anthropological reportage reveals how serendipity intersects both the anthropological research and the anthropologist`s life. Being open to what is unexpected is crucial for constructing knowledge in cultural anthropology ― fieldwork is not to confirm our assumptions, but to follow the people, the events and the meanings we come across. Ethnography is not about taking interviews ― it is about “deep hanging-out”, especially if we work in mobile fields with mobile people, i.e. refugees, migrants, tourists. This entails the necessity to reconceptualise our methodology, to go beyond the sedentarist perspective towards “nomadology”. My own long passage to anthropology ― from small town in postsocialist Poland, via journalism and fascination with undercover social reportage, and then working as a tour leader ― is a pretext to tell the story of engaged anthropology of the mobile world.

Este libro expone tanto el método desarrollado por la autora para analizar la obra del escritor mexicano como los hallazgos de su aplicación. Los análisis de "Los días enmascarados" y de "Aura" revelan las peculiaridades de la escritura de Fuentes, pues son libros idóneos para sorprender la génesis y reelaboración de temas, intereses e inquietudes.

Quelle définition donner au « topos » ? Au confluent de quelles traditions théoriques et critiques apparaît cette notion ? Quelle peut être sa pertinence comme noyau d'interprétation et de lecture sérielle du roman français, du Moyen-Âge jusqu'à la fin de l'Ancien Régime ? Depuis 1987, la Société d'Analyse de la Topique Romanesque (SATOR) s'efforce de constituer un thésaurus des topoi dans les romans de langue française avant 1800. Dix ans après sa fondation, elle a souhaité dresser un bilan...

Presenting an ethnographic account of the emergence and application of critical political alternatives in the Global South, this book analyses the opportunities and challenges of decolonizing and transforming a modern, hierarchical and globally-immersed nation-state on the basis of indigenous terminologies. Alternative development paradigms that represent values including justice, pluralism, democracy and a sustainable relationship to nature tend to emerge in response to – and often opposed to – the neoliberal globalization. Through a focus on the empirical case of the notion of Vivir Bien (‘Living Well’) as a critical cultural and ecological paradigm, Ranta demonstrates how indigeneity – indigenous peoples’ discourses, cultural ideas and worldviews – has become such a denominator in the construction of local political and policy alternatives. More widely, the author seeks to map conditions for, and the challenges of, radical political projects that aim to counteract neoliberal globalization and Western hegemony in defining development. This book will appeal to critical academic scholars, development practitioners and social activists aiming to come to grips with the complexity of processes of progressive social change in our contemporary global world.