Browsing by Title
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Publication:(((( 2021)((( is conceived of not only as a poetry collection and an artist book, but also as a series of actions, a sculpture, an installation, a living object, and a verbal ecosystem. The poetic voyage of (((, recounted in a concrete yet mysterious, abstract yet bodily language, is proposed here in a trilingual English–Italian–French edition. In the spirit of Uitgeverij’s editorial approach, this will allow readers from different parts of the world to discover in their own ways how ((( explores some of the author’s recurring themes through highly innovative poetic and narrative processes: the effects of war on children; technology and surveillance systems; immaterial and unknown phenomena; human emotions and non-human manifestations of nature via undefined objects and bodies, animals, and cosmological landscapes. The three parentheses of the title hint at multiple layers that are opened and never closed: ((( seeks to push language out of its verbal and human boundaries, towards unobservable territories. The genre of this book, although stemming from poetry in the sense of Dichtung, that is, concentration of meaning in highly dense verbal structures, is eminently queer, as it escapes identities and definitions. Through its multidimensional, intense, and surprising writing architecture, ((( explores new conceptual and emotional possibilities in the 21st century, confirming poetry and post-genre writing as powerful forms of inquiry in the contemporary era
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Publication50 years of Democracy in Botswana : The study of the democratic consolidation from 1965-2015 / 50 år av Demokrati i Botswana : En studie av den demokratiska konsolideringen från 1965-2015( 2015)Botswana's democracy has been labeled as ‘the African Miracle’ by the international community. However, in its 50 years of independence, there has been no change in government from the ruling party and the opposition is institutionally weak. The purpose for this study is to analyze the extent of democratic consolidation in Botswana and to try to analyze the challenges in the processes of democratic consolidation. In order to answer the research questions that are put forth in this study, Linz and Stepan’s theoretical framework were used against empirical evidence about Botswana from its independence in 1965 to 2015. The results show that in Botswana the democracy is not consolidated and point toward a more stable democracy than a deeply consolidated democracy. Stable democracy is centered upon the actual functions rather the depth of democracy. The main challenges for further democratic consolidation is the constitutional framework that lack accountability for the executive, the longevity of a dominant party system, the uneven ‘playing field’, the weak opposition, the restrictions and limitation upon the independent media and the civil society. Botswana’s exceptional reputation is exaggerated, while the country have had uninterrupted elections, the depth and quality of the democracy is shallow.
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Publication50 Years World Heritage Convention: Shared Responsibility – Conflict & Reconciliation( 2022)This open access book identifies various forms of heritage destruction and analyses their causes. It proposes strategies for avoiding and solving conflicts, based on integrating heritage into the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It reflects on the identity-building role of heritage, on multidimensional conflicts and the destruction of heritage, and considers conflict-solving strategies and future perspectives. Furthermore, it engages theoretically and practically with the concepts of responsibility, reconciliation and sustainability, relating mainly to four Sustainable Development Goals, i.e. SDGs 4 (education), 11 (e.g. World Heritage), 13 (climate action) and 17 (partnerships for the goals).More than 160 countries have inscribed properties on the UNESCO World Heritage list since the World Heritage Convention came into force. Improvements in the implementation of the Convention, such as the Global Strategy for a Representative, Balanced and Credible World Heritage List, have occurred, but other conflicts have not been solved. The book advocates for a balanced distribution of properties and more effective strategies to represent the global diversity of cultural and natural heritage. Furthermore it highlights the importance of heritage in identity building.
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Publication70 Years of Levothyroxine( 2021)"This open access book presents the history, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of levothyroxine, discussing its role in the thyroid pathophysiology of patients of various ages and during pregnancy. It also describes the influence of levothyroxine on heart, bone and in cancer. When it was first synthesized in 1949, levothyroxine represented a significant advance in the treatment of hypothyroidism, providing a safe and effective treatment option for millions of hypothyroid patients around the globe. This synthetic form of thyroxine is now one of the most prescribed drugs in the world. Levothyroxine was first introduced by Merck KGaA,Darmstadt, Germany, in 1972, and since then the company has remained actively engaged in research on this mainstay of hypothyroidism treatment. This book is intended for healthcare professionals." This work is licensed under a CC BY
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PublicationA Background Note on "Unskilled" Jobs in the United States - Past, Present, and Future( 2021)Since 1917, American jobs have been classified by their skill level. “Unskilled work” was said to, “require no special training, judgment, or manual dexterity, but supply mainly muscular strength for the performance of coarse, heavy workdexterity.” It was the largest category of work and included mostly non-white and foreign-born workers who were employed in farm labor, factory labor, servant occupations, and “other labor” occupations. In 2020, the largest category remained “low-skilled work,” in farms, factories, in low-wage service and care occupations, and in on-demand gig and warehousing jobs. Although government regulation, labor activity, voluntary decisions from employers led to some improvements from the 1940s to the 1970s, low wages, dangerous conditions, perception of low-value, and overrepresentation of people-of-color have persisted for workers in these jobs. During the Covid-19 pandemic, many of these jobs had a new label: “essential.” Workers risked their lives to keep the economy running—in grocery stores, meat packing plants, transportation, and elder care. If “unskilled” work is also “essential” work, how should we think about work, workers, and pay for jobs that have historically been categorized as “unskilled”?
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PublicationA bi-objective home care scheduling problem: Analyzing the trade-off between costs and client inconvenience( 2016)"Organizations providing home care services are inclined to optimize their activities in order to meet the constantly increasing demand for home care. In this context, home care providers are confronted with multiple, often conflicting, objectives such as minimizing their operating costs while maximizing the service level offered to their clients by taking into account their preferences. This paper is the first to shed some light on the trade-off relationship between these two objectives by modeling the home care routing and scheduling problem as a bi-objective problem. The proposed model accounts for qualifications, working regulations and overtime costs of the nurses, travel costs depending on the mode of transportation, hard time windows, and client preferences on visit times and nurses. A distinguishing characteristic of the problem is that the scheduling problem for a single route is a biobjective problem in itself, thereby complicating the problem considerably. A metaheuristic algorithm, embedding a large neighborhood search heuristic in a multi-directional local search framework, is proposed to solve the problem. Computational experiments on a set of benchmark instances based on reallife data are presented. A comparison with exact solutions on small instances shows that the algorithm performs well. An analysis of the results reveals that service providers face a considerable trade-off between costs and client convenience. However, starting from a minimum cost solution, the average service level offered to the clients may already be improved drastically with limited additional costs. (authors' abstract)"
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PublicationA Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs:( 2021)Ammiel Alcalay’s groundbreaking work, After Jews and Arabs, published in 1993, redrew the geographic, political, cultural, and emotional map of relations between Jews and Arabs in the Levantine/Mediterranean world over a thousand-year period. Based on over a decade of research and fieldwork in many disciplines—including history and historiography; anthropology, ethnography, and ethnomusicology; political economy and geography; linguistics; philosophy; and the history of science and technology—the book presented a radically different perspective than that presented by received opinion. Given the radical and iconoclastic nature of Alcalay’s perspective, After Jews and Arabs met great resistance in attempts to publish it. Though completed and already circulating in 1989, it didn’t appear until 1993. In addition, when the book was published, there wasn’t enough space to include its original bibliography, a foundational part of the project. A Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs presents the original bibliography, as completed in 1992, without changes, as a glimpse into the historical record of a unique scholarly, political, poetic, and cultural journey. The bibliography itself had roots in research begun in the late 1970s and demonstrates a very wide arc. In addition to the bibliography, we include two accompanying texts here. In “Behind the Scenes: Before After Jews and Arabs," Alcalay takes us behind the closed doors of the academic process, reprinting the original readers reports and his detailed rebuttals, and in “On a Bibliography for After Jews and Arabs," Alcalay contextualizes his own path to the work he undertook, in methodological, historical, and political terms.
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PublicationA Black Odyssey: John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 18781900( 2021)This book focuses on the career of a single individual-an ambitious, resourceful Black American-and his efforts to realize personal fulfillment in a racist world. No Black American was more determined to realize the promise of American life following the Civil War, nor more frustrated by his inability to do so than John Lewis Waller. Waller, whose first twelve years were spent in slavery, overcame his humble beginnings to become a politician, lawyer, journalist, and diplomat. Nevertheless, his life provides a case study of a middle class black caught between a desire to work within the existing political and economic framework and a need to reject a milieu that was becoming increasingly racist. Waller spent his childhood as a slave in Missouri, and his adolescence on a farm in Iowa. Circumstances and personal ambition combined to allow Waller to acquire a trade-barbering-and a profession-lawyering-in the 1870s. In 1878 he migrated to frontier Kansas, where he practiced law, edited a newspaper, rose to a position of leadership in the black community, and became an important figure in the state Republican party. His political career ended abruptly in 1890, however, when the Republicans rejected his bid to be nominated as the party's candidate for state auditor. Convinced that his defeat was due to the rising tide of racism throughout the nation, he turned his attentions abroad. Waller was particularly susceptible to the lure of overseas empire because he had spent much of his adult life in the midst of a community of people who had succumbed to the myth of a "promised land," who were convinced that the Black person would be best able to realize his potential in economically underdeveloped regions not yet exploited and controlled by the white man. In 1891 President Benjamin Harrison appointed Waller United States consul to the east African island of Madagascar. By 1894 Waller had obtained a huge land grant there for the founding of a black utopia. He hoped to establish a plantationcolony that would simultaneously advance his personal fortunes, serve as an investment opportunity for aspiring black capitalists, and constitute a refuge for oppressed AfroAmericans who wished to immigrate. He was thwarted once again by racism, however-this time in the guise of French imperialism. Viewing Waller and his plans as a threat to their hegemony in Madagascar, French authorities quashed the concession, arrested Waller on a charge of being a spy, and sentenced him to twenty years in prison. There followed a fullscale diplomatic confrontation between the United States and France. Waller was released after serving ten months in a French prison, but only after the Cleveland administration agreed to discredit him to the point where he would seem guilty as charged. In his early manhood John Lewis Waller had realized that because he was a Negro personal achievement could not be separated from racial advancement. Responding to that perception, he spent a lifetime searching for a frontier where blacks could enjoy the blessings of democracy and capitalism, and yet be free of the blight of racism. Unlike the vast majority of American Blacks of his time, Waller was able to articulate his dreams, have an impact on the larger, white dominated environment, and realize his individual potential to a remarkable degree. Nevertheless, his dreams were ultimately dashed by racism. His sad but fascinating story deserves the careful attention of all students of politics and race relations during the complex postCivil War year.
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PublicationA Bridge Between: Spanish Benedictine Missionary Women in Australia( 2020)This sensitive account of Spanish Benedictine women at an Aboriginal mission in Western Australia is poignant and disturbing. Notable for its ecumenical spirit, depth of research and deep engagement with the subject, A Bridge Between is a model of how religious history, in its broader bearings, can be written. — Graeme Davison, Monash University With great insight and care, A Bridge Between presents a sympathetic but not uncritical history of the lives of individuals who have often been invisible. The story of the nuns at New Norcia is a timely contribution to Australia's religious history. Given the findings of the Royal Commission, it will be widely read both within and beyond the academy. History is, here, a spiritual discipline, and an exercise in hope and reconciliation. — Laura Rademaker, The Australian National University A Bridge Between is the first account of the Benedictine women who worked at New Norcia and the first book-length exploration of twentieth-century life in the Western Australian mission town. From the founding of a grand school intended for 'nativas’, through links to Mexico and Paraguay then Ireland, India and Belgium, as well as to their house in the Kimberley, and a network of villages near Burgos in the north of Spain, this is a complex international history. A Bridge Between gathers a powerful, fragmented story from the margins of the archive, recalling the Aboriginal women who joined the community in the 1950s and the compelling reunion of missionaries and former students in 2001. By tracing the all-but-forgotten story of the community of Benedictine women who were central to the experience of the mission for many Aboriginal families in the twentieth century, this book lays a foundation for further work.
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PublicationA Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism( 2022)In the early twentieth century, Uchiyama Gudō, Seno’o Girō, Lin Qiuwu, and others advocated a Buddhism that was radical in two respects. Firstly, they adopted a more or less naturalist stance with respect to Buddhist doctrine and related matters, rejecting karma or other supernatural beliefs. And secondly, they held political and economic views that were radically anti-hegemonic, anti-capitalist, and revolutionary. Taking the idea of such a “radical Buddhism" seriously, A Buddha Land in This World: Philosophy, Utopia, and Radical Buddhism asks whether it is possible to develop a philosophy that is simultaneously naturalist, anti-capitalist, Buddhist, and consistent. Rather than a study of radical Buddhism, then, this book is an attempt to radicalize it. The foundations of this “radicalized radical Buddhism" are provided by a realist interpretation of Yogācāra, elucidated and elaborated with some help from thinkers in the broader Tiantai/Tendai tradition and American philosophers Donald Davidson and W.V.O. Quine. A key implication of this foundation is that only this world and only this life are real, from which it follows that if Buddhism aims to alleviate suffering, it has to do so in this world and in this life. Twentieth-century radical Buddhists (as well as some engaged Buddhists) came to a similar conclusion, often expressed in their aim to realize “a Buddha land in this world." Building on this foundation, but also on Mahāyāna moral philosophy, this book argues for an ethics and social philosophy based on a definition of evil as that what is or should be expected to cause death or suffering. On that ground, capitalism should be rejected indeed, but utopianism must be treated with caution as well, which raises questions about what it means – from a radicalized radical Buddhist perspective – to aim for a Buddha land in this world.
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PublicationA Case Study on the Extraction of the Natural Cities from Nightlight Image of the United States of America( 2013)The boundaries of the cities are not immutable, they can be changed. With the development of the economies and societies, the population and pollution of cities are increasing. Some urban areas are expanding with more population or other dynamics of urbanization, while other urban areas are reducing with the changing of the dynamics. Therefore, detecting urban areas or delineating the boundaries of the cities is one of the most important steps for urban studies, which is closely related to human settlements and human activities. Remote sensing data (RS) is widely used to monitor and detect land use and land cover on the surface of the earth. But the extraction of urban areas from the ordinary RS data is not easy work. The Operational Linescan System (OLS) is the sensors of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). The nighttime lights from the DMSP/OLS provide worldwide remotely sensed data to analyze long-term light emissions which are closely related to human activities. But the nighttime lights imagery data contains inherent errors. Therefore, the approaches to calibrate the data and extract the urban areas from the data are complicated. The long-term objective of this thesis is to delineate the boundaries of the natural cities of the continental United States of America (USA) from 1992 to 2010 of nightlight imagery data with all the different satellites. In this thesis, the coefficients for the intercalibration of the nightlight imagery data have been calculated based on the method developed by Elvidge, et al. (2009), but the coefficients are new and available. The approach used to determine the most appropriate threshold value is very important to eliminate the possible data error. The method to offset this possible error and delineate the boundaries of the cities from nightlight imagery data is the head/tail breaks classification, which is proposed by Jiang (2012b). The head/tail breaks classification is also useful for finding the ht-index of the extracted natural cities which is developed by Jiang and Yin (2013). The ht-index is an indicator of the underlying hierarchy of the data. The results of this study can be divided into two categories. In the first, the achieved coefficients for the intercalibration of nightlight images of the continental USA are shown in a table, and the achieved data of the urban areas are stored in a data archive. In the second, the different threshold values of the uncalibrated images and the individual threshold value of the calibrated images are shown in tables, and the results of the head/tail breaks classification and power law test are also drawn. The results show that the acquired natural cities obey the power law distribution. And the results also confirm that the head/tail breaks classification is available for finding a suitable threshold value for the nightlight imagery data. Key words: cities’ boundaries; DMSP/OLS; head/tail breaks classification; nighttime lights; power law; urban areas
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PublicationA Catalog of Reusable Design Decisions for Developing UML/MOF-based Domain-specific Modeling Languages( 1900)In model-driven development (MDD), domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) act as a communication vehicle for aligning the requirements of domain experts with the needs of software engineers. With the rise of the UML as a de facto standard, UML/MOF-based DSMLs are now widely used for MDD. This paper documents design decisions collected from 90 UML/MOF-based DSML projects. These recurring design decisions were gained, on the one hand, by performing a systematic literature review (SLR) on the development of UML/MOF-based DSMLs. Via the SLR, we retrieved 80 related DSML projects for review. On the other hand, we collected decisions from developing ten DSML projects by ourselves. The design decisions are presented in the form of reusable decision records, with each decision record corresponding to a decision point in DSML development processes. Furthermore, we also report on frequently observed (combinations of) decision options as well as on associations between options which may occur within a single decision point or between two decision points. This collection of decision-record documents targets decision makers in DSML development (e.g., DSML engineers, software architects, domain experts). (authors' abstract) / Series: Technical Reports / Institute for Information Systems and New Media
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PublicationA Cautious New Approach: China's Growing Trilateral Aid Cooperation( 2020)‘As a student of international relations and a former diplomat, Zhang brings the insights of a practitioner and the eye of scholar to explain why Chinese actors choose to engage in aid cooperation with traditional donors in the Asia-Pacific. This book is among the first to take a holistic approach to understanding the motivations of the many agencies involved in China’s aid program, and it will challenge the expectations of many readers.’ —Dr Graeme Smith, The Australian National University ‘This book breaks new ground by examining a little-known dimension of China’s foreign policy: trilateral aid cooperation. Denghua Zhang sets this highly original analysis in the context of the new assertiveness of Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping, the China International Development Cooperation Agency established in 2018, and the Belt and Road Initiative, which now serves as the framework for Chinese overseas aid and engagement. At a time when the debate in the West about the rise of China has intensified, not always knowledgeably, this book fills an important gap in our understanding of China in Southeast Asia and the Pacific.’ —Dr Stewart Firth, The Australian National University ‘This thoroughly researched work examines trilateral cooperation as a new and interesting aspect of China’s growing international aid program, and as a window into the changing nature of that program as well as the wider foreign policy in which it is embedded. The broad themes and topics discussed are clearly significant, ultimately touching on one of the most important international issues of our time, the implications of the rise of China for a long-established Western-dominated international system.’ —Prof. Terence Smith-Wesley, University of Hawai‘i
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PublicationA City Against Empire: Transnational Anti-Imperialism in Mexico City, 1920-30( 2023)An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library as part of the Opening the Future project with COPIM. A City Against Empire is the history of the anti-imperialist movement in 1920s Mexico City. It combines intellectual, social, and urban history to shed light on the city's role as an important global hub for anti-imperialism, exile activism, political art, and solidarity campaigns. After the Russian and the Mexican Revolution, Mexico City became a space and a symbol of global anti-imperialism. Radical politicians, artists, intellectuals, scientists, migrants, and revolutionary tourists took advantage of the urban environment to develop their visions of an anti-imperialism for the twentieth-century. These actors imagined national self-determination, international solidarity, and an emancipation from what they called "the West." Global, local, and urban factors interacted to transform Mexico City into the most important hub for radicalism in the Americas. By weaving together the intellectual history of Mexico, the urban and social histories of Mexico City, and the global history of anti-imperialist movements in the 1920s, this books analyses the perfect storm of anti-imperialism in Mexico City.
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PublicationA City in Blue and Green( 2019)This open access book highlights Singapore’s development into a city in which water and greenery, along with associated environmental, technical, social and political aspects have been harnessed and cultivated into a liveable sustainable way of life. It is also a story about a unique and thoroughgoing approach to large-scale and potentially transferable water sustainability, within largely urbanized circumstances, which can be achieved, along with complementary roles of environmental conservation, ecology, public open-space management and the greening of buildings, together with infrastructural improvements
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PublicationA Civil Society: The Public Space of Freemason Women in France, 1744-1944( 2021)James Smith Allen explores the two-hundred-year struggle to initiate women as full participants in the masonic brotherhood that shared in the rise of France's civil society and its "civic morality" on behalf of women's rights.
