Open Access Books

Within this work, the friction coefficient is calculated for the dry contact of two sliding metallic bodies as a function of various physical parameters. For this purpose, a thermomechanical model is developed and evaluated for different contact configurations considering the surface roughness of both contact bodies. Subsequent investigations on the consequences of the calculated friction coefficient in the context of friction-induced vibrations are carried out.

This book provides a historical inquiry into the quantification of needs in humanitarian assistance. Needs are increasingly seen as the lowest common denominator of humanity. Standard definitions of basic needs, however, set a minimalist version of humanity – both in the sense that they are narrow in what they compare, and that they set a low bar for satisfaction. The book argues that we cannot understand humanitarian governance if we do not understand how humanitarian agencies made human suffering commensurable across borders in the first place. The book identifies four basic elements of needs: As a concept, as a system of classification and triage, as a material apparatus, and as a set of standards. Drawing on a range of archival sources, including the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and the Sphere Project, the book traces the concept of needs from its emergence in the 1960s right through to the present day, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for “evidence-based humanitarianism.” Finally, the book assesses how the international governmentality of needs has played out in a recent humanitarian crisis, drawing on field research on Central African refugees in the Cameroonian borderland in 2014–2016. This important historical inquiry into the universal nature of human suffering will be an important read for humanitarian researchers and practitioners, as well as readers with an interest in international history and development.

The main thesis of this book is that, given that South African education faces major challenges, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) constellation of states offers — thus far overlooked — a valuable tertium comparationis, a source of international comparative perspectives, to inform the domestic scholarly discourse on education. This book first investigates the national contexts and development of education in the BRICS countries, arguing that this grouping represents a valuable but yet overlooked field for illuminating South African education issues with international perspectives. The book consists of chapters arguing for and illustrating this thesis from a variety of angles. Common to all chapters is that authors used the comparative method in education, that is comparing the national education system, in their education societal context interrelationships, of the BRICS countries. The chapters focus on a number of critical issues in South African education, including the language of learning and teaching issue, the alignment of the world of education with the world of work, early childhood education, and the development of world-class universities. Regarding the last, for example, China has been the terrain of the most intensive national projects of establishing world-class universities, with Project 985, Project 211, and the “Double First Class University” project. The chapters demonstrate what South Africa, in approaching her education issues, can learn from the experience of the BRICS countries.

Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union: The European Heritage Label provides an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which European cultural heritage is created, communicated, and governed via the new European Heritage Label scheme. Drawing on ethnographic field research conducted across ten countries at sites that have been awarded with the European Heritage Label, the authors of the book approach heritage as an entangled social, spatial, temporal, discursive, narrative, performative, and embodied process. Recognising that heritage is inherently political and used by diverse actors as a tool for re-imagining communities, identities, and borders, and for generating notions of inclusion and exclusion in Europe, the book also considers the idea of Europe itself as a narrative. Chapters tackle issues such as multilevel governance of heritage; geopolitics of border-crossings and border-making; participation and non-participation; and embodiment and affective experience of heritage. Creating and Governing Cultural Heritage in the European Union advances heritage studies with an interdisciplinary approach that utilises and combines theories and conceptualizations from critical geopolitics, political studies, EU and European studies, cultural policy research, and cultural studies. As such, the volume will be of interest to scholars and students engaged in the study of heritage, politics, belonging, the EU, ideas, and narratives of Europe.

This book introduces a unique approach to the interconnections between music education and politics. By taking a broader, more diverse, and explicitly ethico-political philosophical and theoretical stance, the book challenges institutional and structural conditions that may be resistant to change and expands the understanding of the professional responsibility of music educators in the 21st century to meet a variety of societal and ecological challenges. Emerging from a collaboration between international music education scholars and prominent contemporary educational theorist Gert Biesta, this book connects contemporary educational theories with music education to unlock its transformational capacity. In eight chapters, the contributors show how music education can move towards ways of being and doing that are attuned to social justice and to the broader social and ecological responsibility of music professionals. Strengthening the interdisciplinary connections between music education and education, philosophy, sociology, policy, systems thinking, and more, the volume offers a renewed vision of the scope and boundaries of both music teacher education and professional work in music more widely. Connecting the decades-long work of internationally established music educator scholars and ideas from large-scale research projects with a shared interest in transformative theorisation, this book fills a knowledge gap and reframes the philosophy of music education as a vibrantly multidisciplinary, theory-generating field. Relevant to researchers and students across music teacher education and performance studies, this book speaks to both conservatoires and university contexts across Europe and North America, helping us unlock the transformative capacity of music education.

Aus dem Inhalt: Gudrun Goes, Vorwort; Rudolf Neuhauser, Laudatio für Swetlana Geier; Horst-Jürgen Gerigk, Dostojewskijs Tatorte; Tom Kraft, Raskol'nikovs Beil - Opfermesser, Schwert der Gerechtigkeit oder Messer für den Kaiserschnitt?; Annelore Engel-Braunschmidt, Methoden der Umgehung des Fünften Gebots: F. M. Dostojewskij, Vladimir Makanin, Woody Allen; Andrea Zink, Der Diskurs über Todesstrafe und Haft. Zum europäischen Geist in Dostoevskijs "Der Idiot"; Rudolf Neuhauser, Der Lohn des Glaubens und der Bürger des Kantons Uri. Dostojewskijs "Böse Geister" (Kurzfassung); Rainer Grübel, Dostojewskijs "Großinquisitor" in literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht - Legende oder Parabel?; Maike Schult,Tod und Leben mit Dostoevskij: Der Fall Schümer. Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Dostoevskij-Rezeption während des Nationalsozialismus; Rolf-Dieter Kluge, Nachruf auf Ludolf Müller; Clemens Heithus, Deutsche Dostojewskij-Bibliographie 2008; Rezensionen.

This book provides an introduction to the study of meaning in human language, from a linguistic perspective. It covers a fairly broad range of topics, including lexical semantics, compositional semantics, and pragmatics. The chapters are organized into six units: (1) Foundational concepts; (2) Word meanings; (3) Implicature (including indirect speech acts); (4) Compositional semantics; (5) Modals, conditionals, and causation; (6) Tense & aspect. Most of the chapters include exercises which can be used for class discussion and/or homework assignments, and each chapter contains references for additional reading on the topics covered. As the title indicates, this book is truly an INTRODUCTION: it provides a solid foundation which will prepare students to take more advanced and specialized courses in semantics and/or pragmatics.

The construction industry stands to greatly benefit from the technological advancements in deep learning and computer vision, which can automate time-consuming tasks such as quality control. In this paper, we introduce a framework that incorporates two advanced tools - the Visual Quality Control (VQC) tool and the Digital Twin visualization with Augmented Reality (DigiTAR) tool - to perform semi-automated visual quality control in the construction site during the execution phase of the project. The VQC tool is a backend service that detects potential defects on images captured on-site using the Mask R-CNN algorithm trained on annotated images of concrete and railway defects. The surveyor, aided by the Augmented Reality (AR) technology through the DigiTAR tool, can in-situ confirm/reject the detected defects and propose remedial actions. All the quality control results are recorded in the relevant BIM model and can be viewed on-site overlaid on the physical construction elements. This solution offers a semi-automated visual inspection that can speed up and simplify the quality control process, especially in case of large linear infrastructures, illustrating the added value of AR-based applications in Digital Twins

This article analyzes the issues of identity and social integration of Chinese youth in the Marche region. The focus on these two themes arises from the recent increase in the number of Chinese students in schools in this region. This change points to a need to study an unexplored phenomenon. In this regard, the intention of this contribution is, on the one hand, to observe the dynamics related to social integration of these young people and to understand how they navigate their multiple identities, and, on the other hand, to provide guidance for future research as well as useful tools to create a welcoming and inclusive environment for them to live in. Following a review of the literature, this article analyzes research results regarding data collected from 198 young people and 21 teachers, and concludes with insights into the identity and social integration problems confronting Chinese youth in the region.

How might inclusive arts practices strengthen active citizenship and community participation? This is the main question that inspired the global collegial networks that led to this book project. The authors of the introductory chapter, 12 peer-reviewed research chapters and six practical encounters engage with theatre, performance, dance, visual arts and/or other cultural practices from critical disability perspectives in local contexts in the Global South and North. The authors critically present and discuss methods and models for inclusive and innovative arts and cultural citizenship practices that leverage off of disability as the special driving force and game changer for a more open society. The perspectives and practices elaborated on reveal how art-practice in the community is a way of activating partnership and participation. With this book the editors and authors argue that through artistic citizenship practices, the space and possibilities of being a citizen develop.

Through a series of empirically and theoretically informed reflections, Opening Up the University offers insights into the process of setting up and running programs that cater to displaced students. Including contributions from educators, administrators, practitioners, and students, this expansive collected volume aims to inspire and question those who are considering creating their own interventions, speaking to policy makers and university administrators on specific points relating to the access and success of refugees in higher education, and suggests concrete avenues for further action within existing academic structures.

The translation of a text belonging to a culturally distant age is like a journey across time: relying on the guidance of a translator, the new readers can delve into the past and explore a world that otherwise would remain accessible only to a restricted number of experts. Through examples from medieval Germanic texts, the papers collected in this volume offer significant insights into the specific role played by philology in the field of ‘intertemporal translation’, thus casting light on the central function, especially in the current cultural situation, of a discipline that values the ability of ‘reading slowly’ and a respectful approach towards the datum.

The author pursues the hypothesis that tortured bodies are the sites of ‘knowing’ for torturous societies, the ‘places’ into which unprocessed social contents are stored and interrogated through torture by the ruling group and/or made disappear through enforced disappearances. The combination of crimes such as torture and enforced disappearance perpetrated by states represents an extreme social case that illustrates the processes leading to the social dynamics of massive denial (‘knowing and not knowing’) of what is happening in a society slipped into a monolithic societal state for perpetrators, bystanders and victims. The concept of embeddedness expresses the notion that social actors exist within relational, institutional, and cultural contexts and cannot be seen as atomized decision-makers. The body of the victim of torture and enforced disappearance seems to be the site where, in case of severe social violence, the ‘truth’ is stored and can be regained, together with the possibility of collective healing that repairs social ties, be it a body that survived torture, or one that succumbed, like in the case of many disappeared. Psychotherapy with torture survivors and the collective process of restoring the historical truth in societies that lived enforced disappearances seem to point in this direction.

Living with History focuses on a particular aspect of heritage preservation in the 20th century: destruction and post-war reconstruction in Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and The Netherlands. This book establishes a status quaestionis for the historiography of wartime and post-war preservation, and sets these particular developments in preservation history in the context of the general evolution of architecture and urbanism. It studies the specific role of conservationists and heritage institutions and administrations in the overall reconstruction, and examines the specific role of architects and planners in preservation matters. Living with History se concentre sur un aspect particulier de la conservation du patrimoine au XXe siècle : les destructions et la reconstruction d’ après-guerre en Belgique, en France, en Allemagne, en Grande-Bretagne et aux Pays-Bas. Cet ouvrage dresse un état de la question sous l’ angle de l’ évolution d’ ensemble de l’ architecture et de l’ urbanisme. Il étudie le rôle des conservateurs et des institutions patrimoniales dans la reconstruction en général et examine le rôle spécifique des architectes et urbanistes dans les domaines liés à la conservation.

This book examines, from a contemporary research perspective, various dimensions and questions of auditing and sustainability assurance, which also relate to issues of management and corporate governance. These three perspectives – sustainability, management and corporate governance – run through the entire work and serve as its thematic focus areas. The book consists of 15 peer-reviewed research articles. This multidisciplinary yet practical volume covers perspectives from business economics, administrative sciences, and law. The articles are divided into two sections: auditing and sustainability. The first section takes a broad look at the different dimensions of assurance and their development costs, especially from the perspective of management and corporate governance. The focus is on good governance and its components. In the second section, the focus is on sustainability reporting, and various issues related to the management and assurance of sustainability information are examined.