Search

The present study analyzes the representation of the anomaly in Oscar de profundis by Catherine Mavrikakis. This inexplicable event is paradoxically ever-present and completely absent in end of world literature. In particular, we will examine the role of ruins in the portrayal of the post-catastrophe scenario. This paper argues that the anomaly invites the reader to investigate further. However, they will only find ruins which are a constant reminder of what was lost and not an explanation of how these memories were erased from the collective conscience. The concept of depicting the anomaly through ruins will allow us to better understand how end of world literature may propose a critique of contemporary society.

There is a growing demand for detailed building façade models (Level-of-Detail 3: LoD 3) in a variety of applications. Despite the increasing number of papers addressing this issue in the literature, occlusions are still a significant problem when processing building façade elements. Conversely, depending on the view angle of the images, the detected elements might not be projected to their accurate locations causing uncertainties in their 3D locations. In this paper, we address the aforementioned issues utilizing multi-view images. Using a building footprint layer, we first locate the points belonging to buildings. We then detect the 2D windows and doors in images by combining Faster R-CNN and Segment Anything (SAM) deep learning models. The 2D borders are projected into the 3D object space using a pinhole camera model and collinearity equations. Utilizing the multi-view capabilities of mobile scanning systems, this method effectively mitigates uncertainties associated with occlusion and exterior orientation parameters (EOP). This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of 3D spatial accuracy, achieving an average of 84% Intersection over Union (IoU) accuracy for 12 different single-sided façades over 750 multi-view images for 312 windows and doors of various sizes with rectangular and curved shapes.

According to the infrared patch image (IPI) model theory, the infrared image background has a low rank and the target is sparse. The low-rank model can be used to separate the background and identify the target. However, in a noisy environment, the recognition effect will be affected. The higher the noise, the harder it would be to detect a small target. The residual strong fault and background edges could reduce the detection rate and increase false alarms. The traditional IPI model is adaptable to the background with the lower noise. This paper combines weighted nuclear norm minimization (WNNM) optimization with sparse representation based on the local IPI model. The background details are described more prominently by improving the nuclear norm weighting factor. The target is much easier to detect under the specific bright clouds and ground buildings background with high noise. At the same time, post-processing with image local contrast analysis is performed to compare traditional spatial filtering and local infrared patch image model algorithms. Our method has a good suppression effect on complex noise backgrounds and achieves a higher signal to clutter ratio gain (SCRG). It could also improve the target detection rate and reduce false alarms.

Accurate three-dimensional mapping and digital twinning provides a powerful tool for effective maintenance of civil infrastructure and supports efficient future planning of new developments. Three-dimensional mapping can be efficiently performed with a Mobile Mapping System (MMS) that records geospatial data from platform-mounted sensors. However, it is expensive to continuously update datasets by re-capturing with MMS. This paper outlines a novel method allowing camera-only approaches for updating and change detection. It resolves key issues with inherent resolution differences between MMS laser scanner point-clouds and camera images. An intermediary is used to register two disparate datasets. This novel approach to synthetic camera images (SCIs) bridges the differences between MMS point-clouds and camera images and aid in coarse registration of camera images to an outdoor MMS point-cloud. SCI coarse registration precision is maximized by generating surfaces, interpolating intensity values, and reducing noise with a median filter. Landmark features coarsely register the camera image to the MMS point-cloud. The coarse registration is most precise when the whole scene is captured either from the same location as the SCI or further from the scene. Landmarks precisely detect scenes when changes are less than 20%, and foliage does not exceed 20% of the camera image.

In this paper, the central Indian Ocean (60°–95°E, 0°–37°S) has been selected as the research area, and Argo salinity data are used as the measured values. The Catboost algorithm is introduced for the first time to retrieve sea surface salinity, and a comparison is made with the traditional artificial neural network (ANN) and random forest (RF) machine learning algorithm. The results show that: (1) Through linear fitting with the Argo salinity, the R2 of the three machine learning methods are 0.9299, 0.88 and 0.83, respectively. The corresponding RMSE were 0.2360, 0.3004, and 0.3156 psu, and MAE were 0.1816, 0.2486, and 0.2641 psu, respectively. (2) The spatial distribution of salinity of Argo and SMOS was compared with the inversion results of the model. It was found that the salinity of the sea area was lower at (83°–88°E, 24°–27°S) and (68°–72°E, 17°–20°S), and higher at 30°–35° south latitude, showing consistent with Argo. (3) The stability of the model was independently verified using the data from January to March 2020, and it was found that the R2 of the RF model shows the best stability, while the R2 of the ANN model shows the worst stability.

Introduction In the new globalized world, noise pollution has started to become a public health problem. We searched for publications about noise pollution in our study. In our study, we examined the noise pollution articles in the Web of Science (WoS) database. Material and Methods A total of 2722 papers were identified which were published between 2001 and 2020, finally, 1815 articles were analyzed. VOSviewer (version 1.6.11) tool used for bibliometric web visualizations. Results When trend analysis was applied to the number of articles by years, a statistically significant increase was detected. The United States contributed the most publications. The countries with the most articles per million population were determined to be Scotland, Singapore, and Ireland, respectively. Most articles on noise pollution were published in the journal Applied Acoustics. The three most used keywords are “noise pollution”, “noise” and “traffic noise”. Conclusions This study showed that there has been a trend of an increasing number of articles on noise pollution in recent years. Also it can be considered that this bibliometric study will help identify gaps in the current research data.

Copyright of Cahiers d'Études Africaines is the property of Editions EHESS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Francis Bacon says knowledge is power. The creation of knowledge and its dissemina-tion largely depends on the creation of literary works. The great works of Shakespeare, da Vinci, Homer, Picasso, Milton, Tagore etc. have been a treasure trove of mankind. Human beings have enjoyed the work, been inspired by the work, taken joy and eternal bliss in such works. However, the creation of knowledge is dependent on pre-existing knowledge. Creators create a work which requires hard work, imagi-nation, creativity and which is incentivised by recognition of their work. The legal order of a couth society affords protection to such a work by copyright law & fair use. Fair use allows a person to use a work by duly acknowledging and referencing the work. Issue of plagiarism and abuse of fair use was aggravated by human greed. The economic implication of copyright infringement aggravated the whole issue. Referencing turned into war. The Bluebook, the Maroonbook, the ALWD, the APA and OSCOLA citation styles engaged in some kind of a war. Reference management systems like Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley etc. just fanned the flame. Disruptive and generative artificial intelligence has created a serious challenge to academic research. In this paper, the author attempts to delve into the inter-linkage of academic writing, research, citation, copyright, referencing mechanism and plagiarism in contempo-rary society, and the aftermath of it. The author attempts to investigate the challenges of writing and the protection of works vis-a-vis referencing tools and techniques

The paper focuses on the multi-faceted personality and work of Piero Calamandrei – an outstanding protagonist in the sphere of law, academia, institutions and culture – highlighting how many provisions of the Constitution are indebted to his proposals. In particular, Calamandrei contributed to the drafting of norms on civil rights, the constitutionalisation of social rights, and the protection of the autonomy and independence of the judiciary, an aspect to which the Author pays specific attention along with the principle of the separation of powers, which constitutes the ‘beating heart’ of the relations between politics and the judiciary.

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the main features and historical-political reasons behind the presidentialism proposal advanced by Piero Calamandrei in the Constituent Assembly. The Author illustrates this proposal not only within the context of the Florentine jurist’s thought, but also within the broader field of institutional reforms and the Italian political system, highlighting the factors that undermine the stability of the executive.

The paper concerns the contribution given by Calamandrei with the Mexican conferences to the transformative constitutionalism that spread in Latin America. In particular, it dwells on the role of the judge as an engine of social transformation. After a brief introduction on the role of the judge in pre-1944 works, the Author emphasizes the liberal-socialist culture as the matrix of the social justice promised in the Republican Constitution. Secondly, the Author focuses on the inaugural conference of the 1950 International Congress, in which Calamandrei invites us to read the trial in the light of the constitutional principles of the welfare state. The Mexican conferences, in which the judge becomes an engine of social transformation, are then analysed. The paper concludes with an analysis of the legacy of the Mexican conferences in Latin America: the ‘transformative constitutionalism’.

The paper focuses on the Risorgimento roots of Piero Calamandrei’s thought, on his firm and open opposition to Fascism from the very beginning, and on his relationship with the Resistance. Through the pages of his Diary, the atmosphere of heavy oppression endured by many anti-fascist intellectuals is reconstructed. For Calamandrei, the liberation struggle became a historical moment of reconciliation not only with the ‘homeland’ vilified by Fascism, but also with the generation of which his son Franco was part, who had made a fundamental contribution to the Resistance.

Finally, in 2024, a unique tool for consulting the Calamandrei archives sees the light of day, thanks to the digitization of the fonds held at institutions and foundations located in Florence, Rome, Trento and Montepulciano. For the time being, the correspondences, but the project Kaleodoscope of papers, launched in 2009, continues on the entire documentary heritage, allowing valuable cross-fertilization to scholars and full accessibility to the public.

The paper analyses the multi-faceted personality and work of Piero Calamandrei, highlighting how the Florentine jurist was an outstanding protagonist in the sphere of law, academia, institutions and Italian culture in the 20th century, also thanks to his important contribution to the Constituent Assembly. In particular, the Author emphasises Calamandrei’s commitment to democracy, the defence of rights, the Welfare State and, in general, the implementation of the Constitution, which had to be ‘far-sighted’, meaning capable of looking to future generations.

The paper focuses on the emergence of the European Federalist Movement between the two World Wars up to the establishment of the Association of European Federalists in 1944. The Author pays particular attention to Piero Calamandrei’s significant contribution to European federalism. The Florentine jurist envisioned federalism as closely linked to regionalism and peace, in an international context marked by a world divided into two opposing blocs by the Cold War.

The paper analyses the genesis of social rights in the Italian legal system and examines the complex debate on the social question, which was animated by different awareness. The debate was inspired by Santi Romano’s crucial reflections in the early 1900s and continued throughout the century thanks to the contribution of important jurists, including Piero Calamandrei. The Florentine jurist is credited with having clearly outlined the different legal structure and political function of social rights compared to the traditional rights of freedom. A special attention is therefore paid to Calamandrei’s interventions during the Constituent Assembly debates, which resulted in the full recognition of social rights in the 1948 Republican Constitution.

The paper traces the history of the journal Il Ponte, founded by Piero Calamandrei in April 1945, in order to capture the ideal roots of this audacious publishing initiative. The Author focuses on the liberal-socialist vocation of the journal and on the ideals of European federalism that led Calamandrei to oppose the Atlantic Pact. Lastly, he delves into the commitment of the Florentine jurist in support of the Constitution, democracy and the Welfare State.

Te paper reconstructs the profound intellectual connection between Piero Calamandrei and the brothers Carlo and Nello Rosselli, which began in the 1920s with the foundation of the Circolo di Cultura in Florence, and prosecuted through the collaboration with the underground newspaper Non Mollare, until the establishment of the Partito d’Azione that inherited the legacy of the Giustizia e Libertà movement founded by Carlo Rosselli in 1929. Particular attention is paid to the commemorative plaques dedicated by Calamandrei to the Rosselli brothers and to the ideas of liberal socialism, actively cultivated by the Florentine jurist in the Constituent Assembly.

The paper focuses on the lectures given by Piero Calamandrei in 1952 at the University of Mexico, which were collected in the famous volume Processo e democrazia published by Cedam in 1954. The volume, translated in China in 2005, has aroused lively interest among Chinese scholars. The Author expresses his appreciation for the scholarly tradition stemming from Calamandrei and, in particular, he emphasises the profile of judiciary’s autonomy and independence, which distinguishes liberal and democratic systems from authoritarian ones. Lastly, the Author dwells on the relationship between judges and lawyers, which should take place in a climate of active and mutual trust.

Te paper reconstructs the genesis of the ‘Centro di iniziativa giuridica Piero Calamandrei’ Foundation, from the initiative of the Radical Party to its progressive autonomy. After outlining the characteristic features of its statutory purposes, the Author highlights the main actions of the Foundation, among which the very recent publication in open access of the ten hard-to-find volumes of Calamandrei’s Opere giuridiche, edited by Mauro Cappelletti, stands out.

This paper deals with an optimization problem of determining the maintenance units and age‐based inspection schemes to minimize the expected maintenance cost rate and satisfy a target system availability for multi‐indenture systems that have a modular structure with redundant units. Failures of primary components directly lead to system failures and can therefore be identified and maintained immediately, while failures of redundant components need to be identified by inspections. And the designated maintenance units need to be replaced during maintenance. By constructing the dual structure of the fault tree, we present a failure path enumeration method, based on which the system availability and expected maintenance cost rate models considering maintenance time are derived. For redundant units, two types of inspection policies are considered in our models: one is the corrective maintenance (CM)‐based inspection policy, and the other one is the age‐based inspection (PM) policy, inspections are performed at failures or age h, depending on which occurred earlier. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to find the reasonable maintenance units and inspection intervals simultaneously, and its performance is also compared and analyzed. Several numerical examples are studied to investigate the effect of parameters on optimal solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the exhibition in the Chinese pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale entitled Continuum – Generation by Generation (buxi 不息) mobilize the concept of buxi, which translates literally as “endlessness” or “never ceasing”? What does it mean to conceive of art, the world, and oneself through the lens of buxi, as endlessly intrarelated? This paper delves into this question from a multi-pronged perspective. First, it explains the meaning of buxi and analyzes how the show engages with aesthetic, epistemological, social and political implications of art and the world conceived through a contemporary perspective on the concept of “endlessness”. Second, the paper explores how a reading of the show and the artworks – their adopted aesthetic strategies, media, techniques, and materialities – through the lens of buxi complicates the critical and aesthetic framework for contemporary art in the global context. Finally, the paper evaluates the engagement with buxi – and the respective alternative processual ontology and temporality of art and world – as a useful mode of decolonizing the discipline of art history, even as it emphasizes the importance of adopting a dynamic pluriversal approach that attends to the transcultural relations that shape and reshape the multiplicity of meanings of art in a global framework, its multiple and entangled critical and aesthetic discourses, and the complexity of power structures, and avoids obscuring significant contexts and experiences.

Casualties of nuclear technologies are not immediate, and the populations that bear the most significant burden are too sparse to be noteworthy, especially in the case of uranium mining industries. Shaped by forms of settler colonialism – the US and Canada mine on Indigenous and First Nation reservations – effects of radioactive exposure produce slow, recursive forms of nuclear suffering as illness may take up to thirty years to manifest. This article zooms in on the case of uranium mining and the violence of the temporal lag between uranium exposure and the appearance of symptoms. It explores how this lag is critically interrogated by two contemporary artists that approach uranium mining histories as unresolved; as a series of situations whose unfolding goes on, thus going against the closure of narratives of uranium mining. Two artworks that critically engage with the slow temporality of uranium and its violent effects, and that this paper closely reads, are Bonnie Devine’s drawing series The Book of Radiance (1999) and video Rooster Rock, the Story of Serpent River and Eve Andrée Laramée’s installation Halfway to Invisible (2009). Both artists lay bare the temporal possibilities of turning our gaze away from obvious nuclear symbols, such as bombs and reactors, or what technology historian Gabrielle Hecht calls our fetishes of nuclear histories (Being Nuclear. Africans and the Global Uranium Trade), to rather engage with less obvious nuclear histories. Drawing on theoretical insights from recent scholarship in science and technology studies and art history around time, the paper emphasizes the affordances of contemporary art in redressing uranium mining as a slow and latent modality of the nuclear complex.

This paper focuses on the first installment of Qiu Anxiong’s trilogy of animations New Book of Mountains and Seas (2006, 2008, 2017). Replete with fantastical creatures, Qiu’s films immediately call to mind their namesake, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, an encyclopedia of strange beasts written and compiled between the fourth to first century BCE. His animations show the contemporary world as if seen through the eyes of someone living thousands of years ago, alive during the time of the original classic. Rather than casting this subject-position as “irrational” and backwards, Qiu mines the generative possibilities of adopting this new logic of perception. In doing so, he brings together two distinct ways of presenting the world. The first relays the modern myths and universal assumptions constituting our contemporary reality. The second destabilizes divisions between the animate and inanimate to challenge how this narrative led to the disavowal of animism to begin with. In restituting animism, the artist offers an alternative to the pictured story of predation, extraction, and consumption.

In South Africa, freedom of testation has been an enjoyed practice from ancient times. It gave testators comfort in knowing that when they depart, their legacies and property would be looked after by those they had chosen to survive their estates. Before the advent of the Constitution, testators used to abuse this freedom. There existed a tendency to exercise this freedom without limitations. However, the Constitutional epoch brought about changes in the manner the testators exercised their freedom of testation. Amongst other things, was the limitation to freedom of testation. Legislation and Common Law also contributed to restricting or limiting this freedom. Against this backdrop, this article investigates the impact of the Constitution on freedom of testation in South Africa under the current constitutional dispensation. The paper is predicated on the assumption that freedom of testation gave testators leeway to promote discrimination and unfairness. Therefore, this paper will show that freedom of testation has evolved and no longer absolute in South Africa, with the Courts playing an important role in the process.

The appearance of new notions in economic theories is due to the dynamic and applied nature of the economy regarding the involvement of studies and researches in the solution of pressing problems. The notion of economic resilience appears as a new concept provided by the community of scientists from various continents, a fact that confirms the synergy and rationale of economic thinking on the phenomena that are increasingly being approached at the global level. The author's interest in this phenomenon comes in the context of the joint study initiated by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Economic Research in the Republic of Moldova concerned with the issues of adapting the national economy to current challenges. In this context, we would like to present this study as an analysis of the concepts of the world's scientists, who had in their study objectives the element of economic resilience and on which they expressed their own opinion. This study is of particular importance for the researches initiated by clarifying the diversity and size of the concept and the conclusions of all those cited in this paper as reference points to some formulations and the process of developing the subject in the context of the Republic of Moldova.

Background: As medical institutions shift towards Competency Based Education, more effort is being directed towards understanding how healthcare teams' function competently. While many have studied the competencies required to be a successful clerk, few have examined this question within the context of team function and integration. Our primary objective is to identify how medical clerks successfully integrate and contribute to clinical teaching teams. Methods: We performed a scoping review of the literature using the Ovid MEDLINE database. Data was extracted and thematically analysed in accordance with Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) approach to descriptive analysis. Results: Out of 1368 papers returned by our search, 12 studies were included in this review. Seven main themes were identified amongst the included studies: (1) Communication (2) Taking Responsibility and Appropriate Autonomy (3) Humility and Knowing When to Ask for Help (4) Identity as a Team Member, (5) Self-Efficacy (6) Rapport and Relationship Building (7) Patient Advocacy Conclusion: Analysis of these themes revealed four major findings: (i) The importance of documentation skills and communication towards team contribution (ii) The important connection between professional identity development and self-efficacy (iii) The impact of rapport on the reciprocity of trust between team members (iv) The role of clerks as patient advocates is poorly understood. This review also illustrates that there is a relative dearth of literature in this area. Future studies are needed to develop clear guidance on how clerks should perform these competencies in the context of team function and integration.

This study, by examining the mechanisms of qualification of the French Protestants’ relationship with the past by the royal power in the 1620s, would like to explore a hypothesis: one of the means of expression by the royal power of its domination over the French Reformed, and consequently one of the tools of the widely documented annihilation of their faculty of partisan political action, would reside in the shameful qualification of the Reformed’s understanding, and, in particular, by an attack on their political recourse to the faculty of memory. In the first place, the study emphasizes the expression in the sources of these defects of understanding and memory among the Huguenots. Present from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIII, the accusation of a defective memory was used by the agents of the royal power to criticize the reception by the Huguenots of the measures taken on questions of religion, but also by the Reformed themselves, in a perspective of transformation of their political action. In the second part of the paper, we shall study the way in which royalist libels, particularly those grouped in the Mercure François, were part of a shared desire to equate the Huguenot relationship with the past with both error and disordered reasoning, which was more a matter of weaknesses in their understanding than of political tricks, thereby denying them any capacity for political action. In this way, the royal authorities made political use of the shame, which served to requalify the place of the Reformed in the kingdom.

Starting from the impossible question “what is music?”, the paper attempts to circumscribe its meaning through different epistemological strategies: historical, empirical, objective. An attempt is made to reflect on the character of intangibility and sensoriality of musical experience that reveals its antinomic essence. Musical experience appears stretched between ineffable and exact, useless and necessary. The second part of the work is dedicated to the observation of the music phenomenon through the neuroscientific perspective.

This paper analyses the main concepts of Florensky's technical works – namely his studies on topology and his engineering work at Glavelektro and at the Technical Encyclopedia – within the framework of an allegedly 'new and future' conception of the world. The aim is to show that not only is Florensky's technical-scientific work detachable from his metaphysics, but that it is possible to identify the theoretical and methodological features of an original scientific approach and a transversal model of rationality capable of overcoming the rigid demarcations between nature and culture. Such science shall contain both an Ars inveniendi and a morphology of particularities.

In this paper, I propose a hermeneutic reading of the beginning of the first letter entitled Los dos mundos in the book La Columna y el Fundamento de la Verdad. I consider this text important,as it offers us the epistemological principles that will guide Florensky's investigation. I understand that Florensky proposes a phenomenology, in which the phenomenological reduction is the Cross of Christ. A perspective that brings it closer to the hesychast tradition, which considers the purification of the heart through the Cross, the path to the visit of the Uncreated Light, as a path towards theosis. In the case of Florensky, we have a similar path to achieving a mystical modality of knowledge, in which the intuitive and discursive register are combined in a fertile and rigorous way.

The paper investigates the salient features of Florensky's "concrete metaphysics" and the interpretative and forecasting framework he draws from it to prefigure the features of future science. The intent is to reconstruct, through a documented analysis based on the texts, his attitude towards Europe and the western world, certainly characterised by a critical confrontation, based on the perception and denunciation of the crisis of the hegemonic models of rationality and civilisation in their cultures, but anything hostile and antagonistic, and never evaluated by him as foreign realities, neither as regards their destiny, nor that of Russia, Christianity and philosophical and scientific thought in general.

This article examines the issue of heterogeneity in relation to workers' representation within digital platforms. Specifically, the research analyses the regulatory process that took place within the food-delivery sector in Italy, investigating how the heterogeneity of couriers is reflected in the Just Eat Takeaway agreement signed in 2021. The novel contribution of this paper is to relate two perspectives – those of workers and unions – that have rarely been considered together in the literature on digital labour platforms. Based on extensive qualitative research in Milan, the heterogeneity of riders is synthesized into a threefold typology identified by three metaphors: the explorer, the entrepreneur and the labourer. It is argued that the introduction of a standard employment contract has led to an increase in workers’ rights and social protection. However, the current form of the agreement favours less vulnerable riders – the explorer – at the expense of those who are more numerous and dependent on platform income – the entrepreneur and the labourer. We conclude that this agreement can be interpreted mainly as a means for trade unions to legitimise their institutional role in the socio-economic arena and strengthen their power resources for future negotiations.