1,180 research outputs found

    Russian Sophiology and the Philosophers of Will: The Theanthropic Theology of Solovyov and Bulgakov and their Critical Appropriation of German Voluntarism.

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    This thesis explores potential theological contributions of Russian Sophiology. Its argument is twofold. First, it is argued that the Russian theologians’ development of the idea of God as eternal, divine-humanity in relation to Sophia enabled them to address both longstanding and contemporary theological problematics in bold and original ways. Second, it is argued that among the vastly diverse sources upon which Russian Sophiology drew, its critical reappropriation of elements of the German voluntarist tradition stands behind some of Sophiology’s most creative and controversial theological proposals. In order to demonstrate this twofold claim, this work is organized around the major systematic themes that form the Christian narrative of reality: Trinity-Christology, creation, fall, and eschatology. To limit our focus, the thought of Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov will be considered in relation to each of these themes, and the particular issues that attend them. It is argued that the theanthropic theology of divine-humanity is at work not only in their Christocentric redefinition of the Trinity, but also plays a critical role in the other theological loci surveyed. Furthermore, it will be argued that in each of these areas there is a critical appropriation of the voluntarist tradition, not only the sophiological theosophy of Jacob Boehme, but also the 19th century philosophers of Will: Friedrich Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Eduard von Hartmann. It is argued that the Russian theologians utilize this voluntarist legacy, particularly the metaphysical principle of an unconscious, impersonal, corporeal Will, not only in their development of the idea of God’s eternal divine-humanity, but also to explore the ultimate origins of matter and becoming, the nature of the fall and its connection to the evolutionary process, and the eschatological spiritualization of matter

    Exploring perceptions of interreligious learning and teaching and the interplay with religious identity

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    Toni Foley explored perceptions of interreligious learning and teaching starting with self, extending to other adults and then to participants in a Catholic School. The study revealed the importance of leadership, all voices counting, and an educational frame for learning. Resonances could assist all schools to work towards solidarity and a 'civilisation of love'

    Digital agriculture: research, development and innovation in production chains.

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    Digital transformation in the field towards sustainable and smart agriculture. Digital agriculture: definitions and technologies. Agroenvironmental modeling and the digital transformation of agriculture. Geotechnologies in digital agriculture. Scientific computing in agriculture. Computer vision applied to agriculture. Technologies developed in precision agriculture. Information engineering: contributions to digital agriculture. DIPN: a dictionary of the internal proteins nanoenvironments and their potential for transformation into agricultural assets. Applications of bioinformatics in agriculture. Genomics applied to climate change: biotechnology for digital agriculture. Innovation ecosystem in agriculture: Embrapa?s evolution and contributions. The law related to the digitization of agriculture. Innovating communication in the age of digital agriculture. Driving forces for Brazilian agriculture in the next decade: implications for digital agriculture. Challenges, trends and opportunities in digital agriculture in Brazil

    Application of knowledge management principles to support maintenance strategies in healthcare organisations

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    Healthcare is a vital service that touches people's lives on a daily basis by providing treatment and resolving patients' health problems through the staff. Human lives are ultimately dependent on the skilled hands of the staff and those who manage the infrastructure that supports the daily operations of the service, making it a compelling reason for a dedicated research study. However, the UK healthcare sector is undergoing rapid changes, driven by rising costs, technological advancements, changing patient expectations, and increasing pressure to deliver sustainable healthcare. With the global rise in healthcare challenges, the need for sustainable healthcare delivery has become imperative. Sustainable healthcare delivery requires the integration of various practices that enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare infrastructural assets. One critical area that requires attention is the management of healthcare facilities. Healthcare facilitiesis considered one of the core elements in the delivery of effective healthcare services, as shortcomings in the provision of facilities management (FM) services in hospitals may have much more drastic negative effects than in any other general forms of buildings. An essential element in healthcare FM is linked to the relationship between action and knowledge. With a full sense of understanding of infrastructural assets, it is possible to improve, manage and make buildings suitable to the needs of users and to ensure the functionality of the structure and processes. The premise of FM is that an organisation's effectiveness and efficiency are linked to the physical environment in which it operates and that improving the environment can result in direct benefits in operational performance. The goal of healthcare FM is to support the achievement of organisational mission and goals by designing and managing space and infrastructural assets in the best combination of suitability, efficiency, and cost. In operational terms, performance refers to how well a building contributes to fulfilling its intended functions. Therefore, comprehensive deployment of efficient FM approaches is essential for ensuring quality healthcare provision while positively impacting overall patient experiences. In this regard, incorporating knowledge management (KM) principles into hospitals' FM processes contributes significantly to ensuring sustainable healthcare provision and enhancement of patient experiences. Organisations implementing KM principles are better positioned to navigate the constantly evolving business ecosystem easily. Furthermore, KM is vital in processes and service improvement, strategic decision-making, and organisational adaptation and renewal. In this regard, KM principles can be applied to improve hospital FM, thereby ensuring sustainable healthcare delivery. Knowledge management assumes that organisations that manage their organisational and individual knowledge more effectively will be able to cope more successfully with the challenges of the new business ecosystem. There is also the argument that KM plays a crucial role in improving processes and services, strategic decision-making, and adapting and renewing an organisation. The goal of KM is to aid action – providing "a knowledge pull" rather than the information overload most people experience in healthcare FM. Other motivations for seeking better KM in healthcare FM include patient safety, evidence-based care, and cost efficiency as the dominant drivers. The most evidence exists for the success of such approaches at knowledge bottlenecks, such as infection prevention and control, working safely, compliances, automated systems and reminders, and recall based on best practices. The ability to cultivate, nurture and maximise knowledge at multiple levels and in multiple contexts is one of the most significant challenges for those responsible for KM. However, despite the potential benefits, applying KM principles in hospital facilities is still limited. There is a lack of understanding of how KM can be effectively applied in this context, and few studies have explored the potential challenges and opportunities associated with implementing KM principles in hospitals facilities for sustainable healthcare delivery. This study explores applying KM principles to support maintenance strategies in healthcare organisations. The study also explores the challenges and opportunities, for healthcare organisations and FM practitioners, in operationalising a framework which draws the interconnectedness between healthcare. The study begins by defining healthcare FM and its importance in the healthcare industry. It then discusses the concept of KM and the different types of knowledge that are relevant in the healthcare FM sector. The study also examines the challenges that healthcare FM face in managing knowledge and how the application of KM principles can help to overcome these challenges. The study then explores the different KM strategies that can be applied in healthcare FM. The KM benefits include improved patient outcomes, reduced costs, increased efficiency, and enhanced collaboration among healthcare professionals. Additionally, issues like creating a culture of innovation, technology, and benchmarking are considered. In addition, a framework that integrates the essential concepts of KM in healthcare FM will be presented and discussed. The field of KM is introduced as a complex adaptive system with numerous possibilities and challenges. In this context, and in consideration of healthcare FM, five objectives have been formulated to achieve the research aim. As part of the research, a number of objectives will be evaluated, including appraising the concept of KM and how knowledge is created, stored, transferred, and utilised in healthcare FM, evaluating the impact of organisational structure on job satisfaction as well as exploring how cultural differences impact knowledge sharing and performance in healthcare FM organisations. This study uses a combination of qualitative methods, such as meetings, observations, document analysis (internal and external), and semi-structured interviews, to discover the subjective experiences of healthcare FM employees and to understand the phenomenon within a real-world context and attitudes of healthcare FM as the data collection method, using open questions to allow probing where appropriate and facilitating KM development in the delivery and practice of healthcare FM. The study describes the research methodology using the theoretical concept of the "research onion". The qualitative research was conducted in the NHS acute and non-acute hospitals in Northwest England. Findings from the research study revealed that while the concept of KM has grown significantly in recent years, KM in healthcare FM has received little or no attention. The target population was fifty (five FM directors, five academics, five industry experts, ten managers, ten supervisors, five team leaders and ten operatives). These seven groups were purposively selected as the target population because they play a crucial role in KM enhancement in healthcare FM. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with all participants based on their pre-determined availability. Out of the 50-target population, only 25 were successfully interviewed to the point of saturation. Data collected from the interview were coded and analysed using NVivo to identify themes and patterns related to KM in healthcare FM. The study is divided into eight major sections. First, it discusses literature findings regarding healthcare FM and KM, including underlying trends in FM, KM in general, and KM in healthcare FM. Second, the research establishes the study's methodology, introducing the five research objectives, questions and hypothesis. The chapter introduces the literature on methodology elements, including philosophical views and inquiry strategies. The interview and data analysis look at the feedback from the interviews. Lastly, a conclusion and recommendation summarise the research objectives and suggest further research. Overall, this study highlights the importance of KM in healthcare FM and provides insights for healthcare FM directors, managers, supervisors, academia, researchers and operatives on effectively leveraging knowledge to improve patient care and organisational effectiveness

    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

    Engineering for a changing world: 60th Ilmenau Scientific Colloquium, Technische UniversitÀt Ilmenau, September 04-08, 2023 : programme

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    In 2023, the Ilmenau Scientific Colloquium is once more organised by the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The title of this year’s conference “Engineering for a Changing World” refers to limited natural resources of our planet, to massive changes in cooperation between continents, countries, institutions and people – enabled by the increased implementation of information technology as the probably most dominant driver in many fields. The Colloquium, supplemented by workshops, is characterised but not limited to the following topics: – Precision engineering and measurement technology Nanofabrication – Industry 4.0 and digitalisation in mechanical engineering – Mechatronics, biomechatronics and mechanism technology – Systems engineering – Productive teaming - Human-machine collaboration in the production environment The topics are oriented on key strategic aspects of research and teaching in Mechanical Engineering at our university

    Investigating patterns of deep sea coral and sponge diversity and abundance across multiple spatial scales in the Central Pacific

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    The deep sea is the largest ecosystem on the planet, comprising more than 90% of the volume that life can inhabit, yet it is the least explored biome in the world. The deep sea includes the benthos, which makes up 91.5 % of all the seafloor globally, and the water column deeper than 200 meters. It hosts a wealth of ecosystems including deep-sea vents, seamount coral gardens, abyssal plains, high-productivity whale falls, and life even in the deepest trenches. We now understand that all of these ecosystems host a variety of habitats, each with their own ecology and unique species. These ecosystems and habitats- and their associated biodiversity- provide essential ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, nutrient regeneration, microbial processes detoxification, fisheries provisioning, and many others. However, despite the uniqueness of these ecosystems and the importance of the services they provide, we still know far less about them than we do about their shallow water and terrestrial counterparts. In this dissertation, I contribute new insights about the patterns of biodiversity in the Pacific Ocean across a large geographic area, and across a wide range of depths. To that end, in Chapter 1, I have used one of the largest ocean exploration datasets to look for patterns of the abundance and diversity across the most common benthic invertebrate families found on Pacific seamounts: Anthozoa, Porifera, and Echinodermata across the Central and Western Pacific. In addition to quantifying the diversity and abundance of known taxa, I also documented patterns of as-of-yet unidentified taxa by region, depth, and deepwater feature (seamount shape). Building on patterns associated with seamount shape that were described in Chapter 2, I focused on the effect of seamount shape on the diversity and abundance of deep-sea coral communities in Chapter 3. The analysis presented in Chapter 3 provides strong support for the novel hypothesis that gross seamount morphology is a significant driver of community composition. In Chapter 4, I focused on a single seamount to investigate biodiversity and abundance of coral and sponge taxa on a finer spatial scale, examining the role of direction (N, S, E, W) on different flanks of a single equatorial seamount. This analysis yielded interesting consistent patterns of zonation on all sides of the seamount in terms of depth, but with differences in abundance patterns on each flank for individual taxa. Finally, in Chapter 5, I took a global perspective to investigate gaps in deepwater data, with the goal of determining what regions need further exploration to conclusively determine patterns of deep-sea biodiversity, which will be critical for determining the health of deepwater ecosystems under climate change conditions with increased exploitation pressure and cooccuring with increased conservation efforts. Merging Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) records with the largest collection of deep submergence dive records ever collected, I used proposed biogeographic provinces schema to identify areas with the least supporting data. Additionally, I coupled records from OBIS with climate change projections to identify the areas with the fewest number of biodiversity records that are likely to change the fastest under different IPCC projections. These areas of low number of records and high likelihood of change by the end of the century should become priority targets for future exploration. Taken together, this dissertation provides valuable insights and generates new hypotheses about patterns and drivers of deep-sea biodiversity, and puts forth recommendations for future research and exploration efforts

    Sustainable Design of Industrial Energy Supply Systems - Development of a model-based decision support framework

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    Energy and media supply systems and related infrastructure at industrial sites have grown historically and is largely dependent on the use of fossil fuels. High fuel prices and the emission reduction targets of companies challenge existing supply concepts. Supply concepts usually remain in place for decades due to the long-lived nature of generation technologies and distribution systems. Today's investment decisions are therefore confronted with a changing environment in which the share of volatile renewables from solar and wind is continuously increasing. The long planning horizons make design decisions very complex. Optimization-based design approaches automatically derive cost- or carbon-optimal selections of generation technologies and procurement tariffs. Thus, they enable faster and more accurate planning decisions in techno-economic feasibility studies. In this work, a novel optimization model for techno-economic feasibility studies in industrial sites is developed. The optimization model uses a generic technology formulation with base classes, which takes into account the large variety of technologies and procurement tariffs at industrial sites. The optimization model also includes two reserve concepts: an operating reserve concept for short-term disruptions and a redundancy concept for long-term plant failures. The two concepts ensure security of supply for production-related energy requirements and thereby contributes to avoidance of costly production outages. The optimization model is integrated into an optimization framework to effectively calculate decarbonization strategies. The framework uses time series aggregation and heuristic decomposition techniques. Time series aggregation is performed by an integer program and results in a robust selection of representative days. The selection of representative days is used in a multi-year planning model to derive transformation roadmaps. Transformation roadmaps analyze the evolution of energy supply systems to long-term trends and consider adaptive investment decisions. A transformation strategy with myopic foresight (MYOP) solves the multi-year planning problem sequentially and is solved up to 98 % faster than a transformation approach with perfect foresight (PERF). The high uncertainties in early planning phases and the resulting need for detailed sensitivity analysis make this approach the preferred choice for many feasibility studies. The newly developed optimization framework is used in numerous research and consulting projects for urban districts, microgrids and factories. In this work, the capabilities of the framework are demonstrated for three use cases (automotive, pharmaceutical, dairy) of factory sites in southern Germany. In the use cases, decarbonization strategies for electricity, steam, heating and cooling supply are analyzed. Simulation evaluations identify changing operating patterns of combined heat and power (CHP) plants along the 15-year planning horizon. In addition, electrification of heating demand leads to a significant increase of total electricity demands. The results derived with the framework provide decision makers in industrial companies a clear view of the long-term impact of their investment decisions on decarbonization strategies

    Digital agriculture: research, development and innovation in production chains.

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    Digital transformation in the field towards sustainable and smart agriculture. Digital agriculture: definitions and technologies. Agroenvironmental modeling and the digital transformation of agriculture. Geotechnologies in digital agriculture. Scientific computing in agriculture. Computer vision applied to agriculture. Technologies developed in precision agriculture. Information engineering: contributions to digital agriculture. DIPN: a dictionary of the internal proteins nanoenvironments and their potential for transformation into agricultural assets. Applications of bioinformatics in agriculture. Genomics applied to climate change: biotechnology for digital agriculture. Innovation ecosystem in agriculture: Embrapa?s evolution and contributions. The law related to the digitization of agriculture. Innovating communication in the age of digital agriculture. Driving forces for Brazilian agriculture in the next decade: implications for digital agriculture. Challenges, trends and opportunities in digital agriculture in Brazil.Translated by Beverly Victoria Young and Karl Stephan Mokross
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