6,393 research outputs found
The Council of Europeâs Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture: Hope for democracy or an allusive Utopia?
Democracies around the world are increasingly polarized along political and cultural lines. To address these challenges, in 2016, the Council of Europe (CoE) produced a model of twenty competences for democratic culture. In 2018, this same model became the basis of the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC). The RFCDC provides pedagogical instructions to help implement these competences. Together, I call this set of materials âthe Frameworkâ.
This thesis begins with the premise that utopia has long played an important role in the way power is maintained or resisted in democratic education. It questions the assumption that democratic culture can be cultivated instrumentally through policy- based competences without imposing power on subjects and views this assumption to be utopian. It thus excavates the potential utopian ideals at play in the Framework using âhidden utopiasâ as a conceptual lens and method, which draws inspiration from the theories of MichĂšl Foucault, Ernst Bloch and Ruth Levitas.
It investigates how using âhidden utopiasâ as a theoretical lens might facilitate a deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of the Framework, how implicit utopias might be at play, how this could be problematic and how these theories might shed light on the application of the Framework in pedagogical contexts. The contribution of this thesis is to make visible potential utopias at the heart of the Framework. It suggests that making implicit utopias visible in democratic education can help educators and learners engage with these discourses in critical and innovative ways and think beyond them
An advanced deep learning models-based plant disease detection: A review of recent research
Plants play a crucial role in supplying food globally. Various environmental factors lead to plant diseases which results in significant production losses. However, manual detection of plant diseases is a time-consuming and error-prone process. It can be an unreliable method of identifying and preventing the spread of plant diseases. Adopting advanced technologies such as Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) can help to overcome these challenges by enabling early identification of plant diseases. In this paper, the recent advancements in the use of ML and DL techniques for the identification of plant diseases are explored. The research focuses on publications between 2015 and 2022, and the experiments discussed in this study demonstrate the effectiveness of using these techniques in improving the accuracy and efficiency of plant disease detection. This study also addresses the challenges and limitations associated with using ML and DL for plant disease identification, such as issues with data availability, imaging quality, and the differentiation between healthy and diseased plants. The research provides valuable insights for plant disease detection researchers, practitioners, and industry professionals by offering solutions to these challenges and limitations, providing a comprehensive understanding of the current state of research in this field, highlighting the benefits and limitations of these methods, and proposing potential solutions to overcome the challenges of their implementation
Mathematical Problems in Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering
With increasing requirements for energy, resources and space, rock engineering projects are being constructed more often and are operated in large-scale environments with complex geology. Meanwhile, rock failures and rock instabilities occur more frequently, and severely threaten the safety and stability of rock engineering projects. It is well-recognized that rock has multi-scale structures and involves multi-scale fracture processes. Meanwhile, rocks are commonly subjected simultaneously to complex static stress and strong dynamic disturbance, providing a hotbed for the occurrence of rock failures. In addition, there are many multi-physics coupling processes in a rock mass. It is still difficult to understand these rock mechanics and characterize rock behavior during complex stress conditions, multi-physics processes, and multi-scale changes. Therefore, our understanding of rock mechanics and the prevention and control of failure and instability in rock engineering needs to be furthered. The primary aim of this Special Issue âMathematical Problems in Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineeringâ is to bring together original research discussing innovative efforts regarding in situ observations, laboratory experiments and theoretical, numerical, and big-data-based methods to overcome the mathematical problems related to rock mechanics and rock engineering. It includes 12 manuscripts that illustrate the valuable efforts for addressing mathematical problems in rock mechanics and rock engineering
Robust face recognition using convolutional neural networks combined with Krawtchouk moments
Face recognition is a challenging task due to the complexity of pose variations, occlusion and the variety of face expressions performed by distinct subjects. Thus, many features have been proposed, however each feature has its own drawbacks. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a robust model called Krawtchouk moments convolutional neural networks (KMCNN) for face recognition. Our model is divided into two main steps. Firstly, we use 2D discrete orthogonal Krawtchouk moments to represent features. Then, we fed it into convolutional neural networks (CNN) for classification. The main goal of the proposed approach is to improve the classification accuracy of noisy grayscale face images. In fact, Krawtchouk moments are less sensitive to noisy effects. Moreover, they can extract pertinent features from an image using only low orders. To investigate the robustness of the proposed approach, two types of noise (salt and pepper and speckle) are added to three datasets (YaleB extended, our database of faces (ORL), and a subset of labeled faces in the wild (LFW)). Experimental results show that KMCNN is flexible and performs significantly better than using just CNN or when we combine it with other discrete moments such as Tchebichef, Hahn, Racah moments in most densities of noises
LadleNet: Translating Thermal Infrared Images to Visible Light Images Using A Scalable Two-stage U-Net
The translation of thermal infrared (TIR) images to visible light (VI) images
presents a challenging task with potential applications spanning various
domains such as TIR-VI image registration and fusion. Leveraging supplementary
information derived from TIR image conversions can significantly enhance model
performance and generalization across these applications. However, prevailing
issues within this field include suboptimal image fidelity and limited model
scalability. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm, LadleNet, based on the
U-Net architecture. LadleNet employs a two-stage U-Net concatenation structure,
augmented with skip connections and refined feature aggregation techniques,
resulting in a substantial enhancement in model performance. Comprising
'Handle' and 'Bowl' modules, LadleNet's Handle module facilitates the
construction of an abstract semantic space, while the Bowl module decodes this
semantic space to yield mapped VI images. The Handle module exhibits
extensibility by allowing the substitution of its network architecture with
semantic segmentation networks, thereby establishing more abstract semantic
spaces to bolster model performance. Consequently, we propose LadleNet+, which
replaces LadleNet's Handle module with the pre-trained DeepLabv3+ network,
thereby endowing the model with enhanced semantic space construction
capabilities. The proposed method is evaluated and tested on the KAIST dataset,
accompanied by quantitative and qualitative analyses. Compared to existing
methodologies, our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of
image clarity and perceptual quality. The source code will be made available at
https://github.com/Ach-1914/LadleNet/tree/main/
Sensing Collectives: Aesthetic and Political Practices Intertwined
Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders
From novel to webcomic:Transmedial translation and collaborative process in graphic storytelling
The subject of this PhD will analyse the collaborative process within a creative team and the practice of writing as research when it explores a new medium under emergence, in this case webcomics. As the project is concerned with the transposition of my trilogy of novels, I assumed the responsibilities of translating the prose into script and creating the story boarding. After the first brainstorming session with the illustrator on panels design and flow, changes are negotiated by the team and worked by the artist in the final draft of the panels. It is important to note that, while the illustratorâs input is a vital part of this project, choices concerning the structure and the narrative of the project are in the hands of the author. The research project will take into consideration the dynamics of such partnership and how the loop of creating and feedbacking challenges previously established creative processes while it helps to set new ones. Similarly, as the project has taken the shape of a webcomic, the behaviour of online readers and their response to the content will be monitored through tracking tools on media platforms to see if and to what extent (likes, shares, visit prior posts) readers interact, thus affecting dissemination. This project will research how modern politics, historical events (the Italian Years of Lead) and attitudes feed the narrative, and show how these are balanced and blended with fictional elements. It will also take into consideration the inner mechanisms of both genre and medium as tools capable of dissecting, analysing, and offer alternatives to the questions asked by the contemporary discourse. Finally, as an Italian/English bilingual Fantasy writer, I will reflect on how writing in English has actively shaped my work and argue that my conscious decision to write in English aims at placing my work within the British comic booksâ tradition. This choice is also motivated by the lack of an Italian academic tradition in studying creative writing and genres other than literary fiction
African American Masculinities in Ann Petryâs Oeuvre
This dissertation articulates how Ann Petry challenges the traditional notions about African American masculinities and redefines them with more positive and progressive attributes in her works. It probes the ways Petryâs black male characters face oppression, stereotypes, and systemic barriers, in relation to American hegemonic masculinity and (black) femininity. As black men, they are in the process of being permanently constructed due to the intersecting power of race, gender, class, and other categories on personal, social, and state levels in a context specific manner. I implement an intersectional reading method to analyze Petryâs constructions of African American masculinities, enhanced by a two-step strategy of identify-by-explaining categories and asking the other question about their constitutive and overlapping dynamics. This dissertation also addresses Petryâs underrepresented role in subverting the socially constructed and maintained stereotypes about African American masculinities and proposes two reasons for it. Firstly, there is an actual interplay between reinforcing and subverting stereotypes in Petryâs novels and short stories, which I regard as part of an evaluation of her oeuvre. On the one hand, she depicts stereotypical African American male characters in âLike a Winding Sheetâ (1945), The Street (1946), and âIn Darkness and Confusionâ (1947) in order to revisit and refine the violent and sexually driven black masculine stereotypes. On the other, she represents black male characters as racially-conscious and diverse in âSolo on the Drumsâ (1947), The Narrows (1953), and âThe New Mirrorâ (1965) to maintain her non-essentialist and progressive definitions of black masculinities. Secondly, reading Petry on the periphery of protest fiction â epitomized in the works of black male authors such as Richard Wright â overshadows her divergent aesthetics and impedes her contribution to the advancement of mid-century African American fiction. By depicting black male characters from the perspective of a female author, this dissertation showcases how Petry modifies the male-dominated modes of representation of black masculinities. The critique of Petryâs representations of African American masculinities, thus, expands outside the male vs. female dichotomy and repositions her beyond the confinements of protest novel aesthetics
Transition 2.0: Re-establishing Constitutional Democracy in EU Member States
The central question of Transition 2.0 is this: what (and how) may a new government do to re-establish constitutional democracy, as well as repair membership within the European Union, without breaching the European rule of law? This volume demonstrates that EU law and international commitments impose constraints but also offer tools and assistance for facilitating the way back after rule of law and democratic backsliding. The various contributions explore the constitutional, legal, and social framework of 'Transition 2.0'.Dieser Band zeigt, dass das EU-Recht und die internationalen Verpflichtungen zwar ZwĂ€nge auferlegen, aber auch Instrumente und Hilfestellungen bieten, um den Weg zurĂŒck in die EuropĂ€ische Union nach Rechtsstaatlichkeitsdefiziten und demokratischen RĂŒckschritten zu erleichtern. Die verschiedenen BeitrĂ€ge untersuchen den verfassungsrechtlichen, rechtlichen und sozialen Rahmen des "Ăbergangs 2.0"
Theologische ZugĂ€nge zu Technik und KĂŒnstlicher Intelligenz
The publication of this work was supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-UniversitĂ€t zu Berlin.Technik und KĂŒnstliche Intelligenz gehören zu den brisanten Themen der gegenwĂ€rtigen Theologie. Wie kann Theologie zu Technik und KI beitragen? Der Technikdiskurs ist aufgeladen mit religiösen Motiven, und Technologien wie Roboter fordern die Theologie, z. B. das Menschenbild, die Ethik und die religiöse Praxis, neu heraus. Der Sammelband erforscht aus theologischer Perspektive die drĂ€ngenden Themen unserer Zeit. Dazu begibt sich die Theologie in Dialog mit den Technikwissenschaften. Untersucht werden die VerĂ€nderungen des Menschenbildes durch Roboter, Religiöse Roboter, Optimierung des Körpers, medizinische Technologien, Autoregulative Waffensysteme und wie die Theologie durch die Technologisierung transformiert wird. Aus interdisziplinĂ€rer Perspektive werden neue Forschungsergebnisse aus dem internationalen Raum vorgestellt und neue Wege beschritten
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