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This book constitutes the full research papers and short monographs developed on the base of the refereed proceedings of the International Conference: Information and Communication Technologies for Research and Industry (ICIT 2020). The book brings accepted research papers which present mathematical modelling, innovative approaches and methods of solving problems in the sphere of control engineering and decision making for the various fields of studies: industry and research, energy efficiency and sustainability, ontology-based data simulation, theory and use of digital signal processing, cognitive systems, robotics, cybernetics, automation control theory, image and sound processing, image recognition, technologies, and computer vision. The book contains also several analytical reviews on using smart city technologies in Russia. The central audience of the book are researchers, industrial practitioners and students from the following areas: Adaptive Systems, Human–Robot Interaction, Artificial Intelligence, Smart City and Internet of Things, Information Systems, Mathematical Modelling, and the Information Sciences.

This edited collection draws upon interdisciplinary research to explore new dimensions in the politics of image and aid. While development communication and public diplomacy are established research fields, there is little scholarship that seeks to understand how the two areas relate to one another. However, international development doctrine in the US, UK and elsewhere increasingly suggests that they are integrated–or at the very least should be–at the level of national strategy. This timely volume considers a variety of cases in diverse regions, drawing upon a combination of theoretical and conceptual lenses that combine a focus on both aid and image. The result is a text that seeks to establish a new body of knowledge on how contemporary debates into public diplomacy, soft power and the national image are fundamentally changing not just the communication of aid, but its wider strategies, modalities and practices.

The growing influence of Russia on the Western far right has been much discussed in the media recently. This book is the first detailed inquiry into what has been a neglected but critically important trend: the growing links between Russian actors and Western far right activists, publicists, ideologues, and politicians. The author uses a range of sources including interviews, video footage, leaked communications, official statements and press coverage in order to discuss both historical and contemporary Russia in terms of its relationship with the Western far right. Initial contacts between Russian political actors and Western far right activists were established in the early 1990s, but these contacts were low profile. As Moscow has become more anti-Western, these contacts have become more intense and have operated at a higher level. The book shows that the Russian establishment was first interested in using the Western far right to legitimise Moscow's politics and actions both domestically and internationally, but more recently Moscow has begun to support particular far right political forces to gain leverage on European politics and undermine the liberal-democratic consensus in the West.Contributing to ongoing scholarly debates about Russia's role in the world, its strategies aimed at securing legitimation of Putin's regime both internationally and domestically, modern information warfare and propaganda, far right politics and activism in the West, this book draws on theories and methods from history, political science, area studies, and media studies and will be of interest to students, scholars, activists and practitioners in these areas.

This thesis is improving the understanding of the gating process of the voltage dependent anion channel (VDAC). VDAC is the most abundant protein in the outer mitochondrial membrane of eukaryotes and has a plethora of different functions there. It is the main pathway for metabolites that are going in and out the mitochondria. Ever since its discovery in the 1970s and especially since the publication of three high resolution structures of VDAC in 2008 the mechanism of the voltage gating of the protein is a scientific question. In this thesis, the assignment of hVDAC1 in liquid state NMR is further improved and Cβ assignments are determined. Based on a vastly improved NOE network and previously recorded R1/R2 relaxation data, a 3D solution state structure of E73V hVDAC1 was determined. Furthermore, an hVDAC1 mutant that is stabilizing a closed state of the protein was developed and is described. This “Quintuple hVDAC1” is exhibiting properties previously determined for N-terminal deletion constructs in solid state NMR and BLM measurements, but can – contrary to the deletion constructs – still be investigated by liquid state NMR measurements. Several lines of evidence point to and suggest a partial movement of the protein's N-terminal α-helix in this mutant. Based on the results, two possible models for a closed state of hVDAC1 are developed and discussed.

There is no question that tensions between Russia and American are on the rise. The forced annexation of Crimea, the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17, and the Russian government's treatment of homosexuals have created diplomatic standoffs and led to a volley of economic sanctions. Much of the blame for Russia's recent hostility towards the West has fallen on steely-eyed President Vladimir Putin and Americans have begun to wonder if they are witnessing the rebirth of Cold War-style dictatorship.Not so fast, argues veteran historian Walter Laqueur.For two decades, Laqueur has been ahead of the curve, predicting events in post-Soviet Russia with uncanny accuracy. In Putinism, he deftly demonstrates how three long-standing pillars of Russian ideology: a strong belief in the Orthodox Church, a sense of Eurasian'manifest destiny'and a fear of foreign enemies, continue to exert a powerful influence on the Russian populous. In fact, today's Russians have more in common with their counterparts from 1904 than 1954 and Putin is much more a servant of his people than we might think.Topical and provocative, Putinism contains much more than historical analysis. Looking to the future, Laqueur explains how America's tendency to see Russia as a Cold War relic is dangerous and premature. As the situation in Ukraine has already demonstrated, Russia can and will challenge the West and it is in our best interest to figure out exactly who it is we are facing—and what they want—before it is too late.

Advances in the field of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) over the last decade have led to a great number of available hardware platforms and operating systems for embedded devices. With the upcoming research area called Internet of Things (IoT) even more new platforms appeared. Consequently, we are now faced with a vast amount of different embedded systems, ranging from tiny microcontrollers to comparably powerful smartphones. Unfortunately, this diversity of hardware architectures has not yet been fully addressed by any generic software architecture. Various operating systems for embedded devices are available, however, each of them cover only a few architectures. Using Java is not possible on tiny microcontrollers because of the lack of a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) on these platforms. Similarly, the entire field of testing is not geared towards dealing with the amount of heterogeneity. Testing environments are mostly homogeneous, and it is not possible to evaluate ideas on large-sized networks consisting of heterogeneous nodes. In this work, we present techniques to address the aforementioned problems. We introduce modern programming paradigms known from desktop computers and transfer these ideas to embedded systems. Furthermore, we built a testing platform consisting of heterogeneous wireless nodes and sensors. Finally, we present novel communication channels that are able to connect nodes that cannot communicate physically, or even real nodes with simulated ones. Hence, this work consists of three parts: While the dominant programming language on embedded systems is still C, we show that more efficient and comfortable results can be achieved by utilizing modern programming paradigms using C++. We therefore transfer the established template-based design of well-known libraries such as the Standard Template Library (STL) or Boost to embedded systems. After thoroughly studying the design of a software architecture based on C++, we present a successful implementation of our ideas: The Wiselib, a generic algorithms library for distributed heterogeneous embedded systems. To run algorithms in an appropriate test scenario, we built a heterogeneous testbed, consisting of different types of nodes and sensors. To this end, we installed self-designed low-cost load sensors based on strain gauges beneath the floor of a hallway in our institute, capable of identifying passers-by. The load sensors are wired to sensor nodes, which in turn allows for the design of sophisticated algorithms doing in-network data processing. The nodes are additionally connected to passive infrared sensors (PIRs) and actuator units---light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and speakers---for interaction with passers-by. The hallway serves as a platform for various application areas. Examples are target tracking, medical testing, and interactive games. Finally, we present virtualized communication links. This technique allows to connect nodes with incompatible radio transceivers or at distant locations. Furthermore, it can be used to let real nodes communicate with virtual nodes in a simulator, which allows for novel debugging mechanisms for distributed embedded systems such as the instantiation of unit tests.