20 research outputs found

    Would Trotsky Wear a Bluetooth?

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    After visiting Russia in 1921, the journalist Lincoln Steffens famously declared, ”I have seen the future, and it works.” Steffens referred to the social experiment of technological utopianism he found in the Soviet Union, where subway cars and farm tractors would carry the worker and peasant—figuratively and literally—into the twentieth century. Believing that socialism and technology together created a brave new world, Boleslaw Bierut of Poland and Kim Il Sung of North Korea—and other leaders—joined Russia’s Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in embracing big technology with a verve and conviction that rivaled the western world's.Paul R. Josephson here explores these utopian visions of technology—and their unanticipated human and environmental costs. He examines the role of technology in communist plans and policies and the interplay between ideology and technological development. He shows that while technology was a symbol of regime legitimacy and an engine of progress, the changes it spurred were not unequivocally positive. Instead of achieving a worker’s paradise, socialist technologies exposed the proletariat to dangerous machinery and deadly pollution; rather than freeing women from exploitation in family and labor, they paradoxically created for them the dual—and exhausting—burdens of mother and worker. The future did not work. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of communism’s self-proclaimed glorious quest to "reach and surpass" the West. Josephson’s intriguing study of how technology both helped and hindered this effort asks new and important questions about the crucial issues inextricably linked with the development and diffusion of technology in any sociopolitical system

    Knowledge Capturing in Design Briefing Process for Requirement Elicitation and Validation

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    Knowledge capturing and reusing are major processes of knowledge management that deal with the elicitation of valuable knowledge via some techniques and methods for use in actual and further studies, projects, services, or products. The construction industry, as well, adopts and uses some of these concepts to improve various construction processes and stages. From pre-design to building delivery knowledge management principles and briefing frameworks have been implemented across project stakeholders: client, design teams, construction teams, consultants, and facility management teams. At pre-design and design stages, understanding the client’s needs and users’ knowledge are crucial for identifying and articulating the expected requirements and objectives. Due to underperforming results and missed goals and objectives, many projects finish with highly dissatisfied clients and loss of contracts for some organizations. Knowledge capturing has beneficial effects via its principles and methods on requirement elicitation and validation at the briefing stage between user, client and designer. This paper presents the importance and usage of knowledge capturing and reusing in briefing process at pre-design and design stages especially the involvement of client and user, and explores the techniques and technologies that are usable in briefing process for requirement elicitation

    An Investigation on Benefit-Cost Analysis of Greenhouse Structures in Antalya

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    Significant population increase across the world, loss of cultivable land and increasing demand for food put pressure on agriculture. To meet the demand, greenhouses are built, which are, light structures with transparent cladding material in order to provide controlled microclimatic environment proper for plant production. Conceptually, greenhouses are similar with manufacturing buildings where a controlled environment for manufacturing and production have been provided and proper spaces for standardized production processes have been enabled. Parallel with the trends in the world, particularly in southern regions, greenhouse structures have been increasingly constructed and operated in Turkey. A significant number of greenhouses are located at Antalya. The satellite images demonstrated that for over last three decades, there has been a continuous invasion of greenhouses on all cultivable land. There are various researches and attempts for the improvement of greenhouse design and for increasing food production by decreasing required energy consumption. However, the majority of greenhouses in Turkey are very rudimentary structures where capital required for investment is low, but maintenance requirements are high when compared with new generation greenhouse structures. In this research paper, life-long capital requirements for construction and operation of greenhouse buildings in Antalya has been investigated by using benefit-cost analysis study

    Computational Verification of Security Requirements

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    Effective Deterrence of White-collar Crime under the New “Sanctions Act,” and Reform of Criminal Justice System in Japan

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    Treballs Finals del Màster de Criminologia i Sociologia Jurídicopenal, Facultat de Dret, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2013-2014, Tutor: Dr. Iñaki Rivera BeirasIn this thesis, the author exemplifies many severe accidents caused by some white-collar offenders, which could be considered as crimes caused by the willful negligence, ignorance or misconduct. The white-collars, i.e. the organization leaders, have committed various crimes one after another without end, having a high recidivism in many cases. The criminal punishment against such white-collar crime consists of the punishment of the representative individuals and the economical penalty of fine to the organization. However, neither sanction does work as deterrence of white-collar crime. On the other hand, current administrative sanction also does not work as an effective measure, because it is too lenient as the punishment. Reviewing many accidents in Japan, the causes have been analyzed. Most of them were treated as the negligence of bottom operators, although behind such surficial causes, there were white-collar crimes of the executives and/or governmental negligence or corruptions. The root of white-collar crime is the insufficient power of the Public Prosecutors Office and the criminal act of punishment, which have been worn out since 60 years ago. Further, the knowledge and technical levels of administrative staffs in some ministries or institutions are lower than those of private corporations. Therefore, a revolutionary change is needed to deter severe accidents caused by white-collar crime. The proposals of this thesis are to establish a new prosecution system including citizens and to pass legislation of a new Sanctions Act, which cover the functions of both criminal punishment and the administrative sanction, and includes the advantages of both of them

    Kiel Declarative Programming Days 2013

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    This report contains the papers presented at the Kiel Declarative Programming Days 2013, held in Kiel (Germany) during September 11-13, 2013. The Kiel Declarative Programming Days 2013 unified the following events: * 20th International Conference on Applications of Declarative Programming and Knowledge Management (INAP 2013) * 22nd International Workshop on Functional and (Constraint) Logic Programming (WFLP 2013) * 27th Workshop on Logic Programming (WLP 2013) All these events are centered around declarative programming, an advanced paradigm for the modeling and solving of complex problems. These specification and implementation methods attracted increasing attention over the last decades, e.g., in the domains of databases and natural language processing, for modeling and processing combinatorial problems, and for high-level programming of complex, in particular, knowledge-based systems
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