Open Access Books

The volume is a collection of works devoted to teaching academic writing in additional languages (Lx) and academic discourse, presented from the perspective of four languages: English, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish. It serves as a valuable source of both theoretical knowledge for scholars studying discourse in academic contexts and practical knowledge for teachers. Particular focus is placed on the impact on the teaching process of linguistic theories (like functional linguistics and metadiscourse theory) and emerging technologies (like large language models, artificial intelligence, and gamification).

This book brings together an international array of stars of the mental health professions to create a cutting edge volume that sheds light on many important and heretofore poorly understood issues in psychopathology. Mental Disorders-Theoretical and Empirical perspectives will be an important addition to the libraries of scholars and clinicians.

EVALITA is a periodic evaluation campaign of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and speech tools for the Italian language. The general objective of EVALITA is to promote the development of language and speech technologies for the Italian language, providing a shared framework where different systems and approaches can be evaluated in a consistent manner. The diffusion of shared tasks and shared evaluation practices is a crucial step towards the development of resources and tools for NLP and speech sciences. The good response obtained by EVALITA, both in the number of participants and in the quality of results, showed that it is worth pursuing such goals for the Italian language. As a side effect of the evaluation campaign, both training and test data are available to the scientific community as benchmarks for future improvements. EVALITA is an initiative of the Italian Association for Computational Linguistics (AILC) and it is endorsed by the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA) and the Italian Association for Speech Sciences (AISV).

This eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contact

It is always hard to set manufacturing systems to produce large quantities of standardized parts. Controlling these mass production lines needs deep knowledge, hard experience, and the required related tools as well. The use of modern methods and techniques to produce a large quantity of products within productive manufacturing processes provides improvements in manufacturing costs and product quality. In order to serve these purposes, this book aims to reflect on the advanced manufacturing systems of different alloys in production with related components and automation technologies. Additionally, it focuses on mass production processes designed according to Industry 4.0 considering different kinds of quality and improvement works in mass production systems for high productive and sustainable manufacturing. This book may be interesting to researchers, industrial employees, or any other partners who work for better quality manufacturing at any stage of the mass production processes.

Inwiefern kann das Recht sozialen Zusammenhalt stärken? Einerseits wird ihm traditionell eine Ordnungs- und damit zugleich eine Befriedungsfunktion zugeschrieben, ohne die eine komplexe Gesellschaft nicht existieren kann. Andererseits organisiert es diese Gesellschaft zunächst nur als ein Nebeneinander von Rechtspersonen, wodurch nicht notwendig ein Miteinander von Bürger:innen entsteht. Ausgehend von dieser Analyse gehen die Beiträge des Bandes der Frage nach, welche weiteren Leistungen das Recht für sozialen Zusammenhalt erbringen kann, welche Grenzen ihm dabei gesetzt sind und welche Folgeprobleme hieraus entstehen. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode

Consumers trust is a key factor in dealing with rising concerns about food safety and food quality, but only few studies have dealt with consumer attitudes and none of them has tried to model the process of consumer response. This book reports the main findings of an european project aimed at analysing trust along the food chain and its relationship with food risk communication. The papers collected investigate the mechanisms that determine the social diffusion of trust, examining the interplay of the psychological, sociological and economic factors; and analyze the impact of the food risk communication policies on consumers and producers and on the society as a whole.

This open access book is a compilation of selected papers from 2020 DigitalFUTURES—The 2nd International Conference on Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication (CDRF 2020). The book focuses on novel techniques for computational design and robotic fabrication. The contents make valuable contributions to academic researchers, designers, and engineers in the industry. As well, readers will encounter new ideas about understanding intelligence in architecture.

Unter dem Begriff der imitatio heroica lassen sich Formen des Auftretens und der Darstellung historischer Personen zusammenfassen, die sich heroische Figuren zum Vorbild nehmen. Seit der Antike gehört dies zu den häufigsten Formen vor allem, aber nicht nur der Bildnisrepräsentation politisch oder kulturell bedeutender Personen. Der Sammelband Imitatio heroica, Heldenangleichung im Bildnis widmet sich erstmals epochen- und disziplinenübergreifend diesem Phänomen. Dabei wird ein Zeitraum von der Antike bis zum 18. Jahrhundert in den Blick genommen. Ein grundsätzlicher Phänomenaufriss und Fallstudien aus den Bild- und Literaturwissenschaften machen die formalen und semantischen Grundlagen, Bedeutungen und historischen Tiefendimensionen der imitatio heroica anschaulich. In Heldenangleichungen wird das Heroische in seinen je historisch, medial und sozial bedingten Formen erkennbar, vor allem aber im Hinblick auf seine sinnliche Erfahrbarkeit das spezifische Potenzial visueller und habitueller Ausdrucksformen.

La violenza è l’impensato della politica e al medesimo tempo ciò che ne scuote l’ordine presunto. Numerosi pensatori hanno proposto delle teorie per dare un ruolo alla violenza nelle faccende della politica. Eppure a noi giunge chiara una duplicità: la violenza o è minimizzata per proporre un’immagine edulcorata e bonaria di coloro che la adoperano, oppure viene presa per sinonimo di criminalità. Abbiamo provato, con queste ricerche empiriche e teoriche, a smontare i meccanismi che la filosofia e le scienze sociali ci hanno consegnato, per ripensare il nesso fra politica e violenza nelle società contemporanee.

The book presents the current state of the art for assessing the overheating risk of buildings. This includes the main effects and correlations related to site climate (including meso- and microclimate), comfort assessment, building-occupant interaction, and building design. Findings and action strategies are summarised.

An increasing number of people live in cities. In recent decades, this, combined with rural abandonment and landscape polarisation, has resulted in high land ownership concentrations and agricultural intensification. This, in turn, has resulted in a significant decrease in the resilience of agriculture and overall food systems and threatens the maintenance of traditional indigenous and peasant farming. Therefore, there is an urgent need to reconnect society with the sustainable use of agroecosystems by fostering resilient social–ecological systems, emphasising the links between the functioning of natural systems and human well-being, and stressing the benefits that people derive from them. This Special Issue aims to highlight impactful research and commentaries that focus on attempts to connect people with nature for the promotion of sustainable agricultural transitions. This Issue embraces inter- and trans-disciplinary studies from multiple disciplines (e.g., agricultural sciences, environmental sciences, geography, economy, and sociology), as well as those incorporating other knowledge systems (e.g., local and indigenous) in the co-construction of knowledge for sustainable agriculture, including studies in rural areas (e.g., GIAHS or HNV farmland) and initiatives that address urban–rural relationships or those developed within metropolitan areas (e.g., community-supported agriculture, food hubs, domestic gardens, multifunctional agriculture, and farmers´ or consumers´ cooperatives) and studies assessing the societal and ecological impacts of those initiatives.

For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the role of the Sun in the Earth’s climate system. Recent discoveries, outlined in this book, have gradually unveiled a complex picture, in which our variable Sun a¬ffects the climate variability via a number of subtle pathways, the implications of which are only now becoming clear. This handbook provides the scientifically curious, from undergraduate students to policy makers with a complete and accessible panorama of our present understanding of the Sun-climate connection. 61 experts from di¬fferent communities have contributed to it, which reflects the highly multidisciplinary nature of this topic. The handbook is organised as a mosaic of short chapters, each of which addresses a specific aspect, and can be read independently. The reader will learn about the assumptions, the data, the models, and the unknowns behind each mechanism by which solar variability may impact climate variability. None of these mechanisms can adequately explain global warming observed since the 1950s. However, several of them do impact climate variability, in particular on a regional level. This handbook aims at addressing these issues in a factual way, and thereby challenge the reader to sharpen his/her critical thinking in a debate that is frequently distorted by unfounded claims.

Este trabajo se realizó con el objetivo de brindar un contexto exhaustivo a un fenómeno social de interés: la participación ciudadana de las y los jóvenes en México, impulsada por las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC). En el primer capítulo se profundiza en el universo investigativo que constituye la base conceptual para comprender el fenómeno en cuestión, a través del análisis de las dinámicas de la sociedad del conocimiento y, por ende, la era digital. Asimismo, se destaca especialmente el surgimiento de la Web 2.0 y de las redes sociales como agentes transformadores de la comunicación política. Este análisis plantea cuestionamientos cruciales sobre cómo la cultura visual predominante en los entornos digitales puede afectar la capacidad de análisis y pensamiento crítico de la ciudadanía joven. Además, se explora la relación entre la cultura cívica y la cultura política, elementos fundamentales para entender la participación ciudadana en un contexto democrático. Se analizan las teorías fundacionales que definen estos conceptos y se destaca la importancia de alinear la cultura política con las estructuras democráticas para garantizar la estabilidad y efectividad del sistema político. Asimismo, se examina el impacto de las TIC en la cultura política, señalando tanto sus beneficios —como la mayor accesibilidad a la información política y la democratización de la participación— como los desafíos y la propagación de la desinformación y la polarización en línea. Por otro lado, se elaboran diversas hipótesis sobre cómo la política configura vivencias distintas para las y los jóvenes actuales, en comparación con las de las generaciones anteriores. Esto se debe fundamentalmente al cambio de época y a la existencia de valores que son asumidos de manera distinta, mismos que se han exacerbado debido a los avances tecnológicos, por lo que la forma en la que se comprende la participación política se refiere al contenido de dichos valores, ya que genera fenómenos nuevos que deben ser estudiados. El segundo capítulo se enfoca en el situacional actual, proporcionando una visión detallada de cómo las TIC influyen en la participación ciudadana de las y los jóvenes mexicanos hoy en día. Se contextualiza la participación ciudadana y política en México dentro del marco democrático, examinando su evolución histórica desde un contexto autoritario hacia uno más participativo, marcado por reformas constitucionales y políticas públicas innovadoras. Se destaca especialmente el impacto de la era digital en esta dinámica, con la introducción del gobierno electrónico como respuesta a la demanda de modernización y eficiencia en la administración pública. Asimismo, en este segundo capítulo se lleva a cabo un análisis detallado de la participación política juvenil en la era digital, explorando cómo las TIC han transformado la manera en la que las y los jóvenes interactúan con la política y la sociedad. Se examina el debate acerca de la efectividad de la participación política en línea versus fuera de línea, así como el papel de las TIC en la organización electoral en México y se analiza el impacto de las redes sociales en las campañas electorales, centrándose en aspectos normativos y en el perfil del usuario de las redes sociales en estos procesos. Finalmente, se plantean algunos aspectos de la participación política de las y los jóvenes en México, así como la forma en la que las TIC han incidido en algunas experiencias estudiadas en el contexto de la investigación sobre juventudes. Del mismo modo, se plantea la relevancia del ciberactivismo, así como la de la inteligencia artificial (IA) como mecanismos para generar engagement y motivadores para la participación electoral. En resumen, se ofrece un análisis exhaustivo y detallado del fenómeno estudiado desde diferentes perspectivas, lo que permite comprender su complejidad y sus implicaciones en el contexto mexicano. Tanto el análisis conceptual como el enfoque situacional actual contribuyen significativamente a brindar un contexto completo y profundo sobre la transformación de la participación ciudadana de las y los jóvenes mexicanos, que ha sido impulsada por las TIC.

An investigation into the spatial politics of separation and division in South Africa, principally during the apartheid years, and the effects of these physical and conceptual barriers on the land. In contrast to the weight of literature focusing on post-apartheid South Africa, the focus of this book includes the spatial, political and cultural landscape practices of the apartheid government and also refers to contemporary work done in Australia, England and the US. It probes the uncertainty and ambiguity of identities and cultures in post-apartheid society in order to gain a deep understanding of the history that individuals and society now confront. Drawing on a wealth of research materials including literature, maps, newspapers, monuments, architectural drawings, government legislation, tourist brochures, political writing and oral histories, this book is well illustrated throughout and is a unique commentary on the spatial politics of a time of enormous change.