Codes of Finance. Engineering Derivatives in a Global Bank

Codes of Finance is an ethnography of a global bank inventing new derivative products. It describes the multiple languages invented to describe and control these new products. It analyzes the recent discussions about financial derivatives and offers a new framework to understand financial innovation

Behavior-based Control for Service Robots inspired by Human Motion Patterns : a Robotic Shopping Assistant

Es wurde, unter Verwendung menschenähnlicher Bewegungsmuster und eines verhaltensbasierten Ansatzes, eine Steuerung für mobile Serviceroboter entwickelt, die Aufgabenplanung, globale und lokale Navigation in dynamischen Umgebungen, sowie die gemeinsame Aufgabenausführung mit einem Benutzer umfasst. Das Verhaltensnetzwerk besteht aus Modulen mit voneinander unabhängigen Aufgaben. Das komplexe Gesamtverhalten des Systems ergibt sich durch die Vereinigung der Einzelverhalten (\u27Emergenz\u27)

Towards inclusive GIS in the Congo Basin: an exploration of digital map creation and an evaluation of map understanding by non-literate hunter-gatherers

Sustainable and socially just natural resource management is one of the fundamental development challenges humanity is facing today. Communities living in remote areas possess unique insights about their natural resources. While this knowledge is critical to climate change, it is difficult for them to engage in environmental protection. Geographic Information Science (GIS) plays a central role in resource management, as it is utilised in spatial decision making processes. However, the literature argues that its use is too challenging for marginalised communities. Working with indigenous hunter-gatherers in the Congo Basin without prior exposure to technology or maps, this research moves towards enabling them to become active stakeholders in decision making so that they understand how to capture environmental knowledge and gain power through ownership. (Participatory) GIS, Human Computer Interaction, Action Research and Citizen Science concepts are adapted to the local context to address the lack of mapping of these areas, and the increased understanding of if and how digital, high resolution orthographic maps incorporated in digital mapping tools can be understood by people with no prior exposure to maps and technology. Different set-ups of low-cost Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and consumer grade cameras were tested and evaluated for suitability to generate high-resolution maps in-situ for previously unmapped and disconnected contexts. Applying a computer log analysis approach to overcome local obstacles, three experiments were carried out to test whether the resulting aerial orthophotos are understood as a representation of familiar geographical landscapes. For each of the experiments, a bespoke app functioning without an internet connection was developed. The research shows that the majority of the 136 participants could find as well as edit known features on the map and all participating groups were able to utilise a map for a Treasure Hunt game. Additionally, a number of methodological amendments are proposed to allow standardised research methods to be applied in a context where usability experiments are significantly challenged

Protecting the health of the poor: Social Movements in the South

Despite the colossal amount of spending on health and healthcare programmes globally, why do massive inequalities in health remain, both within and between countries? Drawing on in-depth empirical research spanning Asia, Latin America and Africa, this path-breaking collection offers an overview of the legal, political and social factors behind the poor performance of countries in the Global South in enforcing the right to health. In doing so, it argues that governments and NGOs should unite to set a comprehensive agenda for a fight against poverty and for protecting the health of the poor. Bringing together fresh perspectives from critically engaged scholars, Protecting the Health of the Poor makes a compelling case for the need to re-evaluate how we approach healthcare in developing countries at a global, national and local level.Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) at the University of BergenpublishedVersio

Strategic Latency Unleashed: The Role of Technology in a Revisionist Global Order and the Implications for Special Operations Forces

The article of record may be found at https://cgsr.llnl.govThis work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. ISBN-978-1-952565-07-6 LCCN-2021901137 LLNL-BOOK-818513 TID-59693This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The views and opinions of the author expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. ISBN-978-1-952565-07-6 LCCN-2021901137 LLNL-BOOK-818513 TID-5969

Mobile Robots Navigation

Mobile robots navigation includes different interrelated activities: (i) perception, as obtaining and interpreting sensory information; (ii) exploration, as the strategy that guides the robot to select the next direction to go; (iii) mapping, involving the construction of a spatial representation by using the sensory information perceived; (iv) localization, as the strategy to estimate the robot position within the spatial map; (v) path planning, as the strategy to find a path towards a goal location being optimal or not; and (vi) path execution, where motor actions are determined and adapted to environmental changes. The book addresses those activities by integrating results from the research work of several authors all over the world. Research cases are documented in 32 chapters organized within 7 categories next described

Security and defence research in the European Union: a landscape review

This landscape report describes the state of play of the European Union’s policies and activities in security and defence and the EU-funded research aimed at supporting them, with an exclusive focus on intentional harm. It is organised around several thematic building blocks under the umbrella of the three core priorities defined in the European agenda on security. The report reviews the current main risks and threats but also those that may emerge within the next 5 years, the policy and operational means developed to combat them, the main active stakeholders and the EU legislation in force. In this context, a short history of EU research on security and defence is presented, followed by an inventory of relevant research and development projects funded under the Horizon 2020 framework programme during the period 2014-2018. The specific contributions of the Joint Research Centre to security research are also highlighted. Finally, future avenues for security and defence research and development are discussed. Please note that the executive summary of this landscape report has been published simultaneously as a companion document.JRC.E.7-Knowledge for Security and Migratio

The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections

Screens are ubiquitous today. They display information; present image worlds; are portable; connect to mobile networks; mesmerize. However, contemporary screen media also seek to eliminate the presence of the screen and the visibilities of its boundaries. As what is image becomes increasingly indistinguishable against the viewer’s actual surroundings, this unsettling prompts re-examination about not only what is the screen, but also how the screen demarcates and what it stands for in relation to our understanding of our realities in, outside and against images. Through case studies drawn from three media technologies – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – this book develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed today, interrogating critical lines between art and life; virtuality and actuality; truth and lies. What we have today is not just the contestation of the real against illusion or the unreal, but the disappearance itself of difference and a gluttony of the unreal which both connect up to current politics of distorted truth values and corrupted terms of information. The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie is thus about not only where the image’s borders and demarcations are established, but also the screen boundary as the instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations that do not tell the truth. In all this, a new imagination for images emerges, with a new space for cultures of presence and absence, definitions of object and representation, and understandings of dis- and re-placement – the post-screen

Private irrigation in Sub-Saharan Africa: regional Seminar on Private Sector Participation and Irrigation Expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa, Accra, Ghana, 22-26 October 2001

Irrigation management / Privatization / Irrigated farming / Financing / Irrigation systems / Gender / Women / Government managed irrigation systems / Farmer managed irrigation systems / Rice / Horticulture / Technology transfer / Pumps / Drip irrigation / Filtration / Capacity building / Urban agriculture / Poverty / Water users associations / Agricultural credit

Essaying bodies, bodying essays: write in the middle is a creative-critical research practice

This PhD blends three practices that are not ordinarily put together: creative writing, acupuncture, and process-oriented philosophy (e.g. Spinoza, William James, Whitehead). An important aim of this practice-led research is to re-present notions of body through the writing of a series of essays that demonstrate how creative and critical components can move together within one body, and also within a collection of text-bodies. The PhD explores the relation between `lyric' and `essay' and how this relationship can generate a more-than quality that has the potential to affectively move the [dissertation's] body beyond the sum of its parts. The practice of experimenting with the essay's capacity to carry the force of thought forming can, by extension, make creative practice research a site for the production of knowledge. The project demonstrates how a method of making becomes the methodology. That is, the process of thinking and making, rhizomatically, from the Deleuzian middle, not only activates the practice(s), but also becomes the outcome. Or, as Whitehead says, "Knowledge is drawn up with the immediacy of its own importance, as fresh as fish.&quot