Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
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Understanding Past Earthquakes
No full textThis open access book presents the state of the art in research on the characteristics of past earthquakes. It presents an overview of contemporary developments, their use cases, and practical considerations, with the aim of introducing readers to recently developed methodologies as well as the sources, derivation, and handling of their uncertainties. The disparate fields of seismology, stratigraphy, geomorphology, and geodesy are all being applied to the common goal of understanding past earthquakes, and in this realm, each has experienced significant advances in the 2010s. The contents cover contemporary methods in remote sensing geomorphology, forensic pre-instrumental seismology, historic macroseismology, and paleogeodesy, some of which are already being employed together to derive a holistic picture of seismic events past. This book compiles in one resource the respective explanations of the diverse array of tools which are being used in the 2020s to investigate past seismic events to expand our seismic record
Formal Methods
No full textThe open access book set LNCS 14933 + 14934 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Formal Methods, FM 2024, which took place in Milan, Italy, in September 2024. The 51 full and 4 short papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 219 submissions. They also include 2 invited talks in full paper length and 10 tutorial papers. The contributions were organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: Invited papers; fundamentals of formal verification; foundations; learn and repair; programming languages.- logic and automata; Part II: Tools and case studies; embedded systems track; industry day track; tutorial papers
Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy
No full textDis- and misinformation propagated across traditional and social media clearly undermines democracy – yet so does repressing political speech in the name of truth. This book brings together legal experts from democracies worldwide to explore the challenges of balancing free speech and combatting dis- and misinformation
The Rise and Fall of the Sunbed in Britain
No full textThis open access book explores tanning culture: how the desire for tanned white skin led to the phenomenal growth in sunbed use and how the practice spread through Britain. By analysing the role of the media, medical experts, and socio-political changes, The Rise and Fall of the Sunbed exposes how sunbed providers, consumers and the ‘sunbed tan’ itself shifted from ‘healthy’ to ‘harmful’ in late twentieth-century depictions. Fabiola Creed examines print media, film, medical journals, trade directories, catalogues, and children’s toys to map this transition. The book begins in 1970s Liverpool when an affluent beauty businesswoman introduced sunbeds as a ‘revolutionary’ technology. In the early 1980s, the sunbed industry boomed with the mass advertising and fitness industry, epitomising Margaret Thatcher’s entrepreneurial spirit. Advertised as an everyday luxury for wealthy consumers, sunbeds became the acme of self-improvement. Yet, by the 1990s, sunbeds were a mundane technology associated with working-class people and ‘excess’ consumerism. Following the rise in Western countries’ skin cancer rates, and subsequent ultraviolet research and health campaigns, the media stigmatised ‘sunbed addicts’; these young white women and metrosexual men were condemned for being an ‘immoral’ drain on the National Health Service. Yet, tanning culture and its ever-evolving technologies remain popular to this day. Ultimately, The Rise and Fall of the Sunbed demonstrates how popular culture can reciprocally shape public health. It also sheds new light on key political, economic, medical and socio-cultural changes within everyday life in Britain. The book will appeal to those interested in the history of business, mass media, advertising, popular culture, public health, policy, and medicine, science and technology. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Wellcome Trust
Sustaining Development in Small Islands
No full textThe viability of SIDS is threatened by a backlash against globalisation; geopolitical competition between powers; and climate change. This Element suggests that reforms in policies can retain the international liberal order. Examples are measurement of ODA and restructuring of debt. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core
Pest, Krieg, Klima, Wirtschaft
No full textDie Krise des 14. Jahrhunderts gilt als tiefer Einschnitt in der europäischen Geschichte. Historiker schätzen, dass allein durch die Pest bis zu 50 Prozent der Bevölkerung ums Leben kamen. Manche vergleichen die Folgen der Pest sogar mit denen eines Atomkrieges. Berichte aus dem damaligen Italien beschreiben eine äußerst dramatische Situation. Für England und Frankreich konnten extreme Sterberaten nachgewiesen werden. Neuere Untersuchungen lassen jedoch auf regionale Differenzierungen in den Auswirkungen der Pest schließen. Einige Regionen waren schwer, andere weitaus weniger betroffen. Historiker benennen seit geraumer Zeit neben der Pest auch weitere Krisenfaktoren für die Bevölkerung: Veränderungen des Klimas, Hungersnöte und zahllose Kriege zeichnen im Zusammenspiel ein beklemmendes Gesamtbild. Gerhard Fritz geht der Frage nach, wie der südwestdeutsche Raum und seine Nachbarregionen diese Turbulenzen überstanden haben. Die Ergebnisse überraschen und differenzieren viele bisher als sicher geglaubte Forschungsmeinungen
Cybernetics and the Constructed Environment
No full textGrounded in contemporary landscape architecture theory and practice, Cybernetics and the Constructed Environment blends examples from art, design, and engineering with concepts from cybernetics and posthumanism, offering a transdisciplinary examination of the ramifications of cybernetics on the constructed environment. Cybernetics, or the study of communication and control in animals and machines, has grown increasingly relevant nearly 80 years after its inception. Cyber-physical systems, sensing networks, and spatial computing—algorithms and intelligent machines—create endless feedback loops with human and non-human actors, co-producing a cybernetic environment. Yet, when an ecosystem is meticulously managed by intelligent machines, can we still call it wild nature? Posthumanism ideas, such as new materialism, actor-network theory, and object-oriented ontology, have become increasingly popular among design disciplines, including landscape architecture, and may have provided transformative frameworks to understand this entangled reality. However, design still entails a sense of intentionality and an urge to control. How do we, then, address the tension between the designer’s intentionality and the co-produced reality of more-than-human agents in the cybernetic environment? Is posthumanism enough to develop a framework to think beyond our all-too-human ways of thinking? For researchers, scholars, practitioners, and students in environmental design and engineering disciplines, this book maps out a paradigm of environmentalism and ecological design rooted in non-communication and uncontrollability, and puts a speculative turn on cybernetics.
Chapters 8 and 9 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license
Exploring Remote Sensing
No full textExploring Remote Sensing - Methods and Applications is a comprehensive guide that examines the transformative world of remote sensing technologies. Structured into three distinct sections, the book begins with section 1, “Advanced Techniques in Remote Sensing”, which presents methodologies for landslide detection, asbestos-cement mapping, and wetland monitoring, highlighting the integration of computational optics and Google Earth Engine. Section 2, “Geospatial Frontiers: Challenges and Innovations”, addresses the complexities and opportunities within distributed geospatial information systems and the potential of geospatial data, emphasizing the need for adaptive strategies in an evolving landscape. In the final section, “Harnessing Remote Sensing for Agricultural Insights”, the readers will discover innovative crop yield prediction techniques and vegetation indices' impact on land surface temperature, showcasing the pivotal role of remote sensing in sustainable agriculture. This book is an essential resource for researchers, practitioners, and students aiming to explore the vast applications of remote sensing in addressing contemporary challenges
Medienkompetenz für die digitale Welt
No full textIn einer Zeit, in der neue Technologien und Künstliche Intelligenz allgegenwärtig sind, erweist sich der souveräne Umgang mit digitalen Medien als unerlässliche Schlüsselkompetenz. Der Einstiegskurs bietet einen umfassenden Einblick in vielfältige Dimensionen digitaler Medienkompetenz und befähigt dazu, digitale Medien reflektiert und kritisch zu nutzen, didaktisch einzusetzen und selbst kreativ zu gestalten. Zum Erwerb und zur Erprobung dieser Fähigkeiten bieten die Autorinnen eine crossmediale Lernumgebung an, die einen Online-Kurs sowie ein Handbuch umfasst. Zahlreiche Anschauungsbeispiele, Praxistipps, Reflexionsfragen sowie interaktive Übungsaufgaben unterstützen den individuellen Lernprozess und helfen Studierenden, Lehrenden sowie Interessierten aus der breiten Öffentlichkeit bei der Erschließung und Vertiefung von einem der wichtigsten Future Skills unserer Zeit
Chapter The difficulty of writing
No full textLi and his contributors explore how Taiwanese poets conceptualize their identities, employing multiple voices to challenge political hegemony and re-evaluate Taiwan’s colonial legacy and nationalism. Poetry in Taiwan exists at the intersection of Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Japanese languages and traditions. The rise of China has contributed to the shrinking of Taiwan’s international space, leading to Taiwanese cultures often being viewed as tributaries or by-products of China on the global stage. They focus on Taiwanese poetry to highlight a history of local resistance in gender, identity, cultural, and linguistic contexts. They deconstruct the hegemony and homogeneity of “Chineseness,” exploring multiple ways to reposition Taiwan on the map of world literature. Essential reading for scholars of Sinophone literature, as well as those interested in the history and culture of Taiwan