|
Showing 1 - 25 of
120 matches in All Departments
Marxist discourse around automation has recently become waylaid
with breathless techno-pessimist dystopias and fanciful
imaginations of automated luxury communism. This collection of
essays by both established veterans of the field and new voices is
a refreshingly sober materialist reflection on recent technological
developments within capitalist production. It covers a broad range
of digital aspects now proliferating across our work and lives,
including chapters on the digitalisation of agriculture, robotics
in the factory and the labour process on crowdworking platforms. It
looks to how 20th century Marxist predictions of the 'workerless
factory' are, or are not, coming true, and how 'Platform
Capitalism' should be understood and critiqued. Through rich
empirical, theoretical and historical material, this book is
necessary reading for those wanting a clear overview of our digital
world.
This book is based upon more than two years of ethnographic
fieldwork and personal experiences with the Teetl'it Gwich'in
community in northern Canada. The author provides insight into
Gwich'in understandings of life as well as into historical and
political processes that have taken place in the North. He outlines
the development of an educational approach towards conducting
ethnography and writing anthropological literature, starting with
the premise 'you have to live it'. The book focuses on ways of
knowing and collaboration through learning and being taught by
interlocutors. Building on the work of Tim Ingold, Loovers
investigates the notion of reading life - land, water and weather
as well as texts - and analyses the reading of texts as acts of
conversations or correspondences.
Dogs in the North offers an interdisciplinary in-depth
consideration of the multiple roles that dogs have played in the
North. Spanning the deep history of humans and dogs in the North,
the volume examines a variety of contexts in North America and
Eurasia. The case studies build on archaeological, ethnohistorical,
ethnographic, and anthropological research to illuminate the
diversity and similarities in canine-human relationships across
this vast region. The book sheds additional light on how dogs
figure in the story of domestication, and how they have
participated in partnerships with people across time. With
contributions from a wide selection of authors, Dogs in the North
is aimed at students and scholars of anthropology, archaeology, and
history, as well as all those with interests in human-animal
studies and northern societies.
This book deals with the issue of sustainable development in a
novel and innovative way. It examines the governance implications
of reflexive modernisation - the condition that societal
development is endangered by its own side-effects. With
conceptualising reflexive governance the book leads a way out of
endless quarrels about the definition of sustainability and into a
new mode of collective action. The authors assert that
sustainability is not a defined end-state, but should be understood
as the capacity of society to learn about the conditions of its
future existence and wants. This requires, in their view, a
specific kind of problem solving framework which emphasises the
interlinkage of problems and scales, as well as long-term and
indirect effects of various actions. Sustainability calls for new
forms of governance with attention given to uncertainty,
ambivalence about multiple goals and distributed power. The book
develops an alternative framework with which to address the
challenge of sustainability and derives a set of strategy elements
for dealing with sustainability in practice. These are discussed
from conceptual as well as practical perspectives. Bringing recent
insights from innovation research, governance studies and
complexity theory in common focus, Reflexive Governance for
Sustainable Development will be of great interest to researchers in
social change, innovation and governance studies, as well as
policymakers confronted with sustainable development issues.
Courts and the complex phenomenon of the courtly society have
received intensified interest in academic research over recent
decades, however, the field of Islamic court culture has so far
been overlooked. This book provides a comparative perspective on
the history of courtly culture in Muslim societies from the
earliest times to the nineteenth century, and presents an extensive
collection of images of courtly life and architecture within the
Muslim realm. The thematic methodology employed by the contributors
underlines their interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to
issues of politics and patronage from across the Islamic world
stretching from Cordoba to India. Themes range from the religious
legitimacy of Muslim rulers, terminologies for court culture in
Oriental languages, Muslim concepts of space for royal
representation, accessibility of rulers, the role of royal
patronage for Muslim scholars and artists to the growing influence
of European courts as role models from the eighteenth century
onwards. Discussing specific terminologies for courts in Oriental
languages and explaining them to the non specialist, chapters
describe the specific features of Muslim courts and point towards
future research areas. As such, it fills this important gap in the
existing literature in the areas of Islamic history, religion, and
Islam in particular.
This Element examines the development and current state of
virtuosic rock guitar in terms of playing, technology, and culture.
Supported by technological advances such as extended-range guitars,
virtuosos in the 21st century are exploring ways to expand standard
playing techniques in a climate expecting ever-higher levels of
perfection. As musician-entrepreneurs, contemporary rock guitar
virtuosos record, produce, and market their music themselves,
operate equipment companies, and sell merchandise, tablature, and
lessons online. For their social media channels, they regularly
create videos and interact with their followers while having to
balance building their tribe and finding the time to develop their
craft to stay competitive. For a virtuoso, the working situations
have changed considerably since the last century; the aloof rock
star has been replaced by the approachable
virtuoso-guitarist-composer-innovator-producer-promoter-YouTuber-teacher-entrepreneur.
Courts and the complex phenomenon of the courtly society have
received intensified interest in academic research over recent
decades, however, the field of Islamic court culture has so far
been overlooked. This book provides a comparative perspective on
the history of courtly culture in Muslim societies from the
earliest times to the nineteenth century, and presents an extensive
collection of images of courtly life and architecture within the
Muslim realm. The thematic methodology employed by the contributors
underlines their interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to
issues of politics and patronage from across the Islamic world
stretching from Cordoba to India. Themes range from the religious
legitimacy of Muslim rulers, terminologies for court culture in
Oriental languages, Muslim concepts of space for royal
representation, accessibility of rulers, the role of royal
patronage for Muslim scholars and artists to the growing influence
of European courts as role models from the eighteenth century
onwards. Discussing specific terminologies for courts in Oriental
languages and explaining them to the non specialist, chapters
describe the specific features of Muslim courts and point towards
future research areas. As such, it fills this important gap in the
existing literature in the areas of Islamic history, religion, and
Islam in particular.
Sustainable development stirs up debate about the capacities of
political steering and governance. The complexity of the task
expounds limits of steering in three dimensions: goals, knowledge,
and power: Sustainability goals are subject to changing and
controversial risk perceptions, values and interests. Moreover,
knowledge of the coupled dynamics of society, technology and nature
is limited. Finally, the power to shape structural change in
society and technology is distributed across a multitude of actors
and societal subsystems. Steering attempts therefore have to cope
with conflict and ambivalence, with uncertainty, and with a lack of
central control; and they have to face the necessity of
coordinating different actor groups and social networks. This
volume explores steering strategies and governance arrangements for
sustainable development with a view to these problem dimensions.
The contributions by authors from various disciplines approach
these challenges from different conceptual angles, ranging from
positivist, managerial up to post-modern, constructivist
perspectives. By combining theoretical reflections with insights
from empirical research in European and American contexts, the
volume maps out conditions and identifies approaches which both
reflect the limits of steering and reveal options for
constructively taking up the task of sustainable development in
science and practice.
Sustainable development stirs up debate about the capacities of
political steering and governance. The complexity of the task
expounds limits of steering in three dimensions: goals, knowledge,
and power: Sustainability goals are subject to changing and
controversial risk perceptions, values and interests. Moreover,
knowledge of the coupled dynamics of society, technology and nature
is limited. Finally, the power to shape structural change in
society and technology is distributed across a multitude of actors
and societal subsystems. Steering attempts therefore have to cope
with conflict and ambivalence, with uncertainty, and with a lack of
central control; and they have to face the necessity of
coordinating different actor groups and social networks. This
volume explores steering strategies and governance arrangements for
sustainable development with a view to these problem dimensions.
The contributions by authors from various disciplines approach
these challenges from different conceptual angles, ranging from
positivist, managerial up to post-modern, constructivist
perspectives. By combining theoretical reflections with insights
from empirical research in European and American contexts, the
volume maps out conditions and identifies approaches which both
reflect the limits of steering and reveal options for
constructively taking up the task of sustainable development in
science and practice.
Jan Peter Hildebrandt, Horst Bleckmann und Uwe Homberg haben das
Standardlehrbuch der Tierphysiologie von Heinz Penzlin komplett
überarbeitet und modernisiert. Den Studierenden bietet es nun den
aktuellen State of the Art der vergleichenden Tierphysiologie.
Diese integrative Wissenschaftsdisziplin ist wichtig für all jene,
die sich in den Bachelor-Vertiefungsphasen oder in
Master-Studiengängen der Biowissenschaften mit Fragen der
funktionellen Anatomie, der vegetativen Physiologie, der
Neurobiologie, der Stoffwechselphysiologie, der Sinnes- und der
Muskelphysiologie mit ökologischen, systemisch-vergleichenden oder
molekularen Ansätzen beschäftigen. Die neue Auflage nutzt
didaktische Elemente, erklärt in Fußnoten Herkunft und Bedeutung
von Fachbegriffen, enthält ein Glossar und bietet elektronische
Zusatzmaterialien.
This book is based upon more than two years of ethnographic
fieldwork and personal experiences with the Teetl'it Gwich'in
community in northern Canada. The author provides insight into
Gwich'in understandings of life as well as into historical and
political processes that have taken place in the North. He outlines
the development of an educational approach towards conducting
ethnography and writing anthropological literature, starting with
the premise 'you have to live it'. The book focuses on ways of
knowing and collaboration through learning and being taught by
interlocutors. Building on the work of Tim Ingold, Loovers
investigates the notion of reading life - land, water and weather
as well as texts - and analyses the reading of texts as acts of
conversations or correspondences.
This book series is based on the book "Biogene Gifte", 3. Edition,
published 2010 by Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft Stuttgart
in German language. Because of the enormous increase in knowledge
in the field of natural poisons and venoms the topic is now covered
in 5 volumes in English language. The focus of this volume is on
the toxic ingredients of animal poisons and venoms, their chemical
structures, their effects and modes of actions in target organisms,
and on the biology of poisonous or venomous animals. It highlights
the symptoms of poisoning or envenoming in humans or animals, cite
case reports were available, and gives hints on poisoning
prevention and on potential treatments.
This book reviews research developments in diverse areas of
reinforcement learning such as model-free actor-critic methods,
model-based learning and control, information geometry of policy
searches, reward design, and exploration in biology and the
behavioral sciences. Special emphasis is placed on advanced ideas,
algorithms, methods, and applications. The contributed papers
gathered here grew out of a lecture course on reinforcement
learning held by Prof. Jan Peters in the winter semester 2018/2019
at Technische Universitat Darmstadt. The book is intended for
reinforcement learning students and researchers with a firm grasp
of linear algebra, statistics, and optimization. Nevertheless, all
key concepts are introduced in each chapter, making the content
self-contained and accessible to a broader audience.
Marxist discourse around automation has recently become waylaid
with breathless techno-pessimist dystopias and fanciful
imaginations of automated luxury communism. This collection of
essays by both established veterans of the field and new voices is
a refreshingly sober materialist reflection on recent technological
developments within capitalist production. It covers a broad range
of digital aspects now proliferating across our work and lives,
including chapters on the digitalisation of agriculture, robotics
in the factory and the labour process on crowdworking platforms. It
looks to how 20th century Marxist predictions of the 'workerless
factory' are, or are not, coming true, and how 'Platform
Capitalism' should be understood and critiqued. Through rich
empirical, theoretical and historical material, this book is
necessary reading for those wanting a clear overview of our digital
world.
This book reviews research developments in diverse areas of
reinforcement learning such as model-free actor-critic methods,
model-based learning and control, information geometry of policy
searches, reward design, and exploration in biology and the
behavioral sciences. Special emphasis is placed on advanced ideas,
algorithms, methods, and applications. The contributed papers
gathered here grew out of a lecture course on reinforcement
learning held by Prof. Jan Peters in the winter semester 2018/2019
at Technische Universitat Darmstadt. The book is intended for
reinforcement learning students and researchers with a firm grasp
of linear algebra, statistics, and optimization. Nevertheless, all
key concepts are introduced in each chapter, making the content
self-contained and accessible to a broader audience.
Experimental advances in helium atom scattering spectroscopy over
the last forty years have allowed the measurement of surface phonon
dispersion curves of more than 200 different crystal surfaces and
overlayers of insulators, semiconductors and metals. The first part
of the book presents, at a tutorial level, the fundamental concepts
and methods in surface lattice dynamics, and the theory of
atom-surface interaction and inelastic scattering in their various
approximations, up to the recent electron-phonon theory of helium
atom scattering from conducting surfaces. The second part of the
book, after introducing the experimentalist to He-atom
spectrometers and the rich phenomenology of helium atom scattering
from corrugated surfaces, illustrates the most significant
experimental results on the surface phonon dispersion curves of
various classes of insulators, semiconductors, metals, layered
crystals, topological insulators, complex surfaces, adsorbates,
ultra-thin films and clusters. The great potential of helium atom
scattering for the study of atomic scale diffusion, THz surface
collective excitations, including acoustic surface plasmons, and
the future prospects of helium atom scattering are presented in the
concluding chapters. The book will be valuable reading for all
researchers and graduate students interested in dynamical processes
at surfaces.
This book identifies, analyzes and discusses the current trends of
digitalized, decentralized, and networked physical value creation
by focusing on the particular example of 3D printing. In addition
to evaluating 3D printing's disruptive potentials against a broader
economic background, it also addresses the technology's potential
impacts on sustainability and emerging modes of bottom-up and
community-based innovation. Emphasizing these topics from economic,
technical, social and environmental perspectives, the book offers a
multifaceted overview that scrutinizes the scenario of a
fundamental transition: from a centralized to a far more
decentralized system of value creation.
The harmful consequences of alcoholism for the unborn child are
still largely unknown. This book presents a detailed description of
fetal alcohol syndrome as well as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders
with respect to their clinical presentation, diagnosis,
epidemiology, and pathogenesis. It also includes detailed
considerations of underlying psychopathology, prevention, and
therapy as well as the social consequences and impacts to patients.
Drawing on empirical insights from the field of desktop 3D
printing, this book elaborates the concept of innovation
communities as a pattern of open and distributed innovation. As
these communities spur a fruitful exchange of explorative, open
source knowledge, they represent a novel mode of "doing
innovation", which considerably differs from established practices
in market and business realms. Hence, the people that participate
in these collective endeavors often develop entrepreneurial
ambitions and start to exploit community-based innovations
commercially. The book presents deep insights on the institutional
idiosyncrasies of innovation communities, the associated dilemma of
entrepreneurship and the strategies of 3D-printing startups to face
the corresponding challenges.
This book reports an approach developed to research and apply
methods of assessing patterns of processes in the landscape, and
suitability of different types of vegetation to mitigate soil
erosion and sediment flux. Practical guidelines on a spatially
strategic approach to management of land degradation at a range of
spatial scales were produced. Originally developed for the
Mediterranean environment, it has much wider potential global
application. It provides researchers with methods to acquire the
knowledge necessary for such an approach and provides practitioners
with guidance on implementation and benefits of targeted methods of
soil erosion control. It includes substantial information about
processes and vegetation in the Mediterranean environment and the
species effectiveness in soil erosion control.
This book presents the state of the art in reinforcement learning
applied to robotics both in terms of novel algorithms and
applications. It discusses recent approaches that allow robots to
learn motor. skills and presents tasks that need to take into
account the dynamic behavior of the robot and its environment,
where a kinematic movement plan is not sufficient. The book
illustrates a method that learns to generalize parameterized motor
plans which is obtained by imitation or reinforcement learning, by
adapting a small set of global parameters and appropriate
kernel-based reinforcement learning algorithms. The presented
applications explore highly dynamic tasks and exhibit a very
efficient learning process. All proposed approaches have been
extensively validated with benchmarks tasks, in simulation and on
real robots. These tasks correspond to sports and games but the
presented techniques are also applicable to more mundane household
tasks. The book is based on the first author’s doctoral thesis,
which won the 2013 EURON Georges Giralt PhD Award.
This book identifies, analyzes and discusses the current trends of
digitalized, decentralized, and networked physical value creation
by focusing on the particular example of 3D printing. In addition
to evaluating 3D printing's disruptive potentials against a broader
economic background, it also addresses the technology's potential
impacts on sustainability and emerging modes of bottom-up and
community-based innovation. Emphasizing these topics from economic,
technical, social and environmental perspectives, the book offers a
multifaceted overview that scrutinizes the scenario of a
fundamental transition: from a centralized to a far more
decentralized system of value creation.
Knowing Governance sets out to understand governance through the
design and making of its models and instruments. What kinds of
knowledge do they require and reproduce? How are new understandings
of governance produced in practice, by scientists and policy makers
and by the publics with whom they engage?
|
You may like...
Loot
Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
(2)
R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
Hampstead
Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson, …
DVD
R66
Discovery Miles 660
|