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With the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence, governments are integrating AI technologies into administrative and even judicial decision-making, aiding and in some cases even replacing human decision-makers. Predictive policing, automated benefits administration, and automated risk assessment in criminal sentencing are but a few prominent examples of a general trend. While the turn towards governmental automated decision-making promises to reduce the impact of human biases and produce efficiency gains, reducing the human element in governmental decision-making also entails significant risks. This book analyses these risks through a comparative constitutional law and human rights lens, examining US law, German law, and international human rights law. It also highlights the structural challenges that automation poses for legal systems built on the assumption of exclusively human decision-making. Special attention is paid to the question whether existing law can adequately address the lack of transparency in governmental automated decision-making, its discriminatory processes and outcomes, as well as its fundamental challenge to human agency. Building on that analysis, it proposes a path towards securing the values of human dignity and agency at the heart of democratic societies and the rule of law in an increasingly automated world. This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars focusing on the evolving relationship of law and technology as well as human rights scholars. Further, it represents a valuable contribution to the debate on the regulation of artificial intelligence and the role human rights can play in that process.

This book critically analyses the availability of environmental counterclaims in investment arbitration presented by the respondent host state against the claimant investor. It starts from the premise that the conflicting relation between investment law and environmental protection cannot always be avoided. Yet, the instrument of environmental counterclaims in investment arbitration might alleviate such relation. Throughout its chapters, this book addresses the questions about the societal and practical relevance of seeking redress for environmental damage in investment arbitration, the functioning of such instrument both in contract-based and treaty-based investment arbitration, the suitability of arbitral tribunals to rule upon environmental issues, and the kind of environmental damages that could be redressed. Most importantly, by deconstructing the requirements of jurisdiction, connection between main claim and counterclaim, and cause of action, this book provides the tools for there-conceptualisation of the instrument of counterclaims with the hope of harnessing its utility to achieve appropriate redress for environmental damages caused by foreign investors.

This book considers the meaning of the term, considers the value and characteristics of Google Earth, and discusses the main driving forces of landscape change. Google Earth provides a means whereby one can identify changes in the landscapes of Earth over recent decades. This has been a time of great human activity, and landscapes have been transformed as a result of such factors as land use and land-cover change, climate change, the intensive harnessing of new energy sources, population pressures, and globalization. Many geologists now believe that the whole Earth System is being changed and that there is thus a need to introduce the concept of the Anthropocene. It then looks at specific landscape types, including rivers, coasts, lakes, deserts, tundra, and glaciers.

This book contributes to the emerging field of men¿s health studies, delving into how men incorporate, adapt, negotiate, or reject health care practices to perform masculinities in social interactions. By moving beyond the simplistic association between men, masculinity and the adoption of ¿risky¿ or ¿unhealthy¿ practices, this book draws from recent critical perspectives on the study of men¿s health, seeking to challenge and problematize the relationship between masculinities and health. The text presents original empirical findings derived from qualitative and digital research examining the different ways in which men (re)negotiate their masculinities after the onset of a chronic illness, focusing on diabetes as a strategic case study. Living with a chronic illness implies that those gender practices that are usually taken for granted suddenly become unachievable and impose a reconfiguration of the masculine self, as well as a negotiation of the very meaning of masculinity. The volume aims to critically examine this interactive process of (re)negotiation, while also reflecting on men, masculinities and their health on a more general level. This book serves as a valuable resource for students and scholars in social sciences working on the intersection of gender and health, as well as for health professionals seeking a deeper understanding of the connection between men, gender and health.

Vector Quantization, a pioneering discretization method based on nearest neighbor search, emerged in the 1950s primarily in signal processing, electrical engineering, and information theory. Later in the 1960s, it evolved into an automatic classification technique for generating prototypes of extensive datasets. In modern terms, it can be recognized as a seminal contribution to unsupervised learning through the k-means clustering algorithm in data science.In contrast, Functional Quantization, a more recent area of study dating back to the early 2000s, focuses on the quantization of continuous-time stochastic processes viewed as random vectors in Banach function spaces. This book distinguishes itself by delving into the quantization of random vectors with values in a Banach space¿a unique feature of its content. Its main objectives are twofold: first, to offer a comprehensive and cohesive overview of the latest developments as well as several new results in optimal quantization theory, spanning both finite and infinite dimensions, building upon the advancements detailed in Graf and Luschgy's Lecture Notes volume. Secondly, it serves to demonstrate how optimal quantization can be employed as a space discretization method within probability theory and numerical probability, particularly in fields like quantitative finance. The main applications to numerical probability are the controlled approximation of regular and conditional expectations by quantization-based cubature formulas, with applications to time-space discretization of Markov processes, typically Brownian diffusions, by quantization trees.While primarily catering to mathematicians specializing in probability theory and numerical probability, this monograph also holds relevance for data scientists, electrical engineers involved in data transmission, and professionals in economics and logistics who are intrigued by optimal allocation problems.

This book addresses the recent trends in high-temperature coatings that are used to provide oxidation and wear resistance to metallic/ceramic components in extreme environments. Ceramics, intermetallics, organosilicon polymers, cermets, and other materials with great thermal stability have long been recognized for these applications. This book introduces the state of the art in coating materials and processes for high-temperature environments and identifies areas for improvement in materials selection, performance upgrades, design considerations, and manufacturing methods. The book covers a variety of high-temperature coatings prepared through various synthesis processes such as thermal spraying, physical vapor deposition, electrodeposition, and sol¿gel methods. It covers corrosion/oxidation, phase stability, and thermal and mechanical behavior of high-temperature coating materials having greater thermal stability.With contributions from international researchers active in the field, this edited book features the most recent and up-to-date literature references for a broad readership consisting of academic and industrial professionals. It is suitable for graduate students as well as scientists and engineers working in the area of anti-corrosion and anti-wear resistant high-temperature coatings for industrial applications.

British Foreign Policy in former Yugoslavia 1989-1999: Brotherhood and Unity Lost, gives a broad analysis of Britain¿s foreign policy during the wars of Yugoslav secessions from 1992 to 1999. Normative approaches to Britain¿s foreign policy during this period ¿have tended to place it¿ in to two halves. The notion, there was a new morality in Britain¿s foreign policy appeared after New Labour¿s election landslide on 1 May 1997. Robin Cook declared shortly after the victory there would be an ¿ethical dimension¿ to Labour¿s foreign policy, and this appeared to chart new territory. As a result, this would be a departure from what former US Assistant Secretary of State, James Rubin, believed was the hyper-realism of the traditional British kind under British Prime Minister, John Major. The book includes interviews with key actors, provides new archive material and re-examines claims by the ¿New Orthodoxy¿ which became prevalent after 1999.

This book is concerned with the study of climate change from the perspective of risks for the economy and business. Rethinking climate change from a risk perspective allows making a significant transition from the consideration of climate as a predetermined and permanent context to its interpretation as a factor that influences the economy and business. Thanks to the new risk perspective on climate change, the book offers opportunities and offers recommendations for adapting businesses and economic sectors to climate risks.As a forward-looking response (management measure) to the risks of climate change in the economy and business, this book suggests using smart green innovations in Industry 4.0 ¿ high technologies in support of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The advantage of smart technologies to combat climate change is their increased flexibility and adaptability, as well as the resistance of smart (automated, robotic) machines to different environmental conditions.The academic significance of the book is attributable to the fact that it covers, as widely and comprehensively as possible, the full range of ground-breaking smart green innovations in Industry 4.0 with a potential of climate change risk management: from green finance (for example, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies) to smart and clean energy, as well as smart industrial innovations in Industry 4.0. The combination of public and corporate risk management measures of climate change allows achieving a ¿synergetic effect¿ in the form of enhanced support for the implementation of the SDGs.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and opportunities for achieving a net-zero energy transition in Africa. With a focus on policy, technology, financing, and socio-political factors, the book presents four potential scenarios for a sustainable energy transition in the continent. The scenarios presented highlight the importance of balancing economic growth with environmental sustainability and social development. While foreign investments in renewable energy could be beneficial, they must be carefully monitored and regulated to prevent exploitation and ensure accountability. The book also emphasizes the need for collaboration and a calculated transition to ensure that all stakeholders are involved in the process. Additionally, the challenges of achieving self-sufficiency and export-free energy are discussed, with the importance of setting limitations and regulations to prevent a vicious cycle of poverty and dependency on foreign aid. With a deep understanding of Africa's environmental, socio-political, and socio-cultural complexities, ¿Africa's Path to Net-Zerö offers valuable insights for policymakers, investors, and anyone interested in promoting a sustainable energy future for the continent.

Data Science in Engineering, Volume 10: Proceedings of the 41st IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, 2023, the tenth volume of ten from the Conference brings together contributions to this important area of research and engineering. The collection presents early findings and case studies on fundamental and applied aspects of Data Science in Engineering, including papers on:Novel Data-driven Analysis MethodsDeep Learning Gaussian Process AnalysisReal-time Video-based AnalysisApplications to Nonlinear Dynamics and Damage DetectionHigh-rate Structural Monitoring and Prognostics

This book examines the relationship between immigration, crime, police and politics in the city of Buenos Aires during the Cambiemos ("Let's Change") administration, which took place in Argentina between 2015 and 2019. It draws on semi-structured interviews with migrants to offer insights into interactions between police and migrants, narratives of police violence, police attitudes towards migrants, the nexus between police and politics and the perception of the vulnerability of the migratory community of belonging to police action. Using a mixed methods approach, it also draws on secondary quantitative data regarding police practices of detention of migrants and examines political discourses around the immigration-crime association. In essence, it discusses the changes in attitude of the police towards different ethnic-national groups during the administration Cambiemos. In this sense, it presents empirical research and methodological insights fromthe Global South.

¿This book constitutes the revised selected papers from the workshops affiliated with the 27th International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security, FC 2023, which took place in Bol, Brä, Croatia, in May 2023. The 7 full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 18 submissions. They stem from the following workshops:CoDecFin 2022: 3rd Workshop on Coordination of Decentralized FinanceDeFi 2022: 2nd Workshop on Decentralized FinanceVoting 2022: 7th Workshop on Advances in Secure Electronic VotingWTSC 2022: 6th Workshop on Trusted Smart Contracts

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, BDA 2023, held in Delhi, India, during December 7¿9, 2023. The17 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: ¿Keynote Lectures, Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, Large Language Models, Data Analytics for Low Resource Domains, Artificial Intelligence for Innovative Applications and Potpourri.

This book offers an incisive account of correctional officers¿ daily practices, their role and how they represent themselves in relation to the prison, and by extension, the state. Drawing on ethnographic research undertaken in an Italian prison, Doing Shifts explores how correctional officers¿ perspectives and shared views reproduce and reinforce working behaviors with specific administrative and bureaucratic features. It explores how global penal trends are enacted in a local context and how the prison systems plays into our understanding of institutional and administrative power. It advances the discussion on organizational and institutional power through the lens of social control and street-level bureaucracy literature. It also explores gender variations in the discretional use of correctional officers¿ power. This book has a cross-disciplinary appeal for criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists and to policy-makers.

¿This open access book addresses the problem of creation and reproduction processes of contemporary urban communities, as well as cultural mechanisms and factors of these processes. Rejecting both the environmental determinism, and cultural reductionism of community studies, the book assumes that the postmodern city is a space of diverse urban communities that go far beyond the traditional concept of neighbourhood as well as personal and imagined communities, and thus proposes to comprehend urban community as social practice embedded in urban space. The book applies the Theory of Social Practice and the Theory of Scenes and develops the concept of socio-cultural opportunity structures in order to explain how cultural practices of individuals and symbolic dimensions of territory interact, leading to (re)production of various forms of urban community. It is assumed that culture in general and symbolic meanings of territory in particular, play a crucial role in the process of (re)production of urban communities, that this process takes place in collective cultural consciousness and is mediated by territorially embedded cultural practices of individuals. The book overcomes theoretical gaps in classical community studies and develops a new perspective on urban communal processes based on the analysis of social practices in urban cultural scenes.

The book explores the advanced façade systems according to the productive and constructive contents, in a cognitive and operative form, as a manual text to provide guidelines for researchers, technicians and professionals. It provides operational guidance for the technological design, production planning and site executive coordination for the realization of façade systems. The analysis deals with the main building elements and technical interfaces. The study of the façade systems, after explaining the anchoring structures and their connections to the load-bearing elements, investigates the criteria for the assembly between the framings. In particular, the book examines the technical interfaces of the main advanced envelope systems with respect to the functional, constructive and applicative coordination procedures of the mullions and transoms framing, of the structural sealant glazing façade system, of the unit façade system, of the suspended façade system and of the double skin façade system. The technical and manual character of the book is also expressed through the analysis of the functional and application procedures of the gaskets with respect to the façade systems in order to prevent the transmission of air and water loads: the analysis focuses on the connections between the framing and the enclosure elements of the envelope, in accordance with the compensation of height differences in order to guarantee impermeability, airtightness and insulation. Then, the book describes the assembly and interface conditions between elements of different composition and production within the façade systems: the examination of the technical interfaces involves the development and application of sealants, based on the loads exerted on the jointing devices, in order to fulfill the requirements of sealing and tightness with respect to mechanical, thermal and hygrometric, water, air and wind stresses. Moreover, the study of the envelope systems examines the methodologies directed toward fulfilling the requirements with respect to the actions caused by fire loads, considering the contents related to both components and connections and fixing surfaces.

This book presents an extension of fuzzy set theory allowing for multi-polar information, discussing its impact on the theoretical and practical development of multi-criteria decision making. It reports on set of hybrid models developed by the authors, and show how they can be adapted, case by case, to the lack of certainty under a variety of criteria. Among them, hybrid models combining m-polar fuzzy sets with rough, soft and 2-tuple linguistic sets, and m-polar hesitant fuzzy sets and hesitant m-polar fuzzy are presented, together with some significant applications. In turn, outranking decision-making techniques such as m-polar fuzzy ELECTRE I, II, III and IV methods, as well as m-polar fuzzy PROMETHEE I and II methods, are developed. The efficiency of these decision-making procedures, as well as other possible extensions studied by the authors, is shown in some real-world applications. Overall, this book offers a guide on methodologies to deal with the multi-polarity and fuzziness of the real-world problems, simultaneously. By including algorithms and computer programming codes, it provides a practice-oriented reference guide to both researchers and professionals working at the interface between computational intelligence and decision making.

This textbook presents an extensive manual of crystallography, including geometric crystallography, crystallochemistry, and crystallophysics. Illustrated with a wealth of figures and diagrams, it offers a thorough introduction to crystals for undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning the essentials and advanced concepts of crystallography.The book begins with basic concepts such as the geometry, morphology and symmetry of lattices, allowing readers to approach the subject from a mathematical point of view, abstracting it from its material content. In turn, the second part focuses on crystallochemistry and explains the differences between ideal and real crystals, and between static and dynamic ones. The third part of the textbook concerns crystallophysics and addresses the electrical, magnetic, mechanical, elastic and optical properties of crystals, as well as the fundamental laws and methods of X-ray diffraction.

This book offers a current image of modern mechanics. The book reflects current state of the art in the field of continuum mechanics and mechanics of structures including recent achievements in classic and non-classic approaches. The chapters are written by leading specialist in the field, so the book collects cutting edge investigations in the field. As a target we consider the society starting from beginners, i.e. master and PhD students, and also leaders in the field, that is professors of universities and civil, mechanical and aerospace engineers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Search-Based Software Engineering, SSBSE 2023, which took place in San Francisco, CA, USA, during December 8, 2023.The 7 full and 7 short papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 23 submissions. They focus on formulating various optimization problems in software engineering as search problems, addressing them with search techniques, intending to automate complex software engineering tasks.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 19th International Symposium on Algorithmics of Wireless Networks, ALGOWIN 2023, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, during September 7¿8, 2023.The 10 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 22 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: design and analysis of algorithms, models of computation and experimental analysis.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 26th Brazilian Symposium on Formal Methods, SBMF 2023, held in Manaus, Brazil, during December 4-8, 2023.The 7 full papers and 2 short papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 16 submissions.The papers are divided into the following topical sections: specification and modeling languages; testing; and verification and validation.

This open access book focuses on the energy sector and will make a significant contribution to its continued evolution. For many years, the energy sector has been missing a raison d¿etre and now finally there are increased calls for that to be justice. Hence, this book will develop the concept of energy justice and how it needs to be formalised in a new ¿social contract¿ with all stakeholders in society. The focus will be on improving legal systems at local, national and international levels while ensuring that justice is a core issue within energy law, the legal system and more broadly in society.

This book aims to gather high-quality research papers on developing theories, frameworks, architectures, and algorithms for solving complex challenges in smart healthcare applications for real industry use. It explores the recent theoretical and practical applications of metaheuristics and optimization in various smart healthcare contexts. The book also discusses the capability of optimization techniques to obtain optimal parameters in ML and DL technologies. It provides an open platform for academics and engineers to share their unique ideas and investigate the potential convergence of existing systems and advanced metaheuristic algorithms. The book's outcome will enable decision-makers and practitioners to select suitable optimization approaches for scheduling patients in crowded environments with minimized human errors.The healthcare system aims to improve the lives of disabled, elderly, sick individuals, and children. IoT-based systems simplify decision-making and task automation, offering an automated foundation. Nature-inspired metaheuristics and mining algorithms are crucial for healthcare applications, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, enabling accurate data analysis, and enhancing patient care. Metaheuristics improve algorithm performance and address challenges in data mining and ML, making them essential in healthcare research. Real-time IoT-based healthcare systems can be modeled using an IoT-based metaheuristic approach to generate optimal solutions.Metaheuristics are powerful technologies for optimization problems in healthcare systems. They balance exact methods, which guarantee optimal solutions but require significant computational resources, with fast but low-quality greedy methods. Metaheuristic algorithms find better solutions while minimizing computational time. The scientific community is increasingly interested in metaheuristics, incorporating techniques from AI, operations research, and soft computing. New metaheuristicsoffer efficient ways to address optimization problems and tackle unsolved challenges. They can be parameterized to control performance and adjust the trade-off between solution quality and resource utilization. Metaheuristics manage the trade-off between performance and solution quality, making them highly applicable to real-time applications with pragmatic objectives.

This book reports on research findings and practical lessons featuring advances in the areas of digital and interaction design, graphic design and branding, design education, society and communication in design practice, and related ones. Gathering the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Digital Design and Communication, Digicom 2023, held on November 9-11, 2023, as a hybrid event, in/from Barcelos, Portugal, this book continues the tradition of the previous ones reporting on new design strategies to foster digital communication within and between the society, institutions and brands. By highlighting innovative ideas and reporting on multidisciplinary projects, it offers a source of inspiration for designers of all kinds, including graphic and web designers, UI, UX and social media designers, and to researchers, advertisers, artists, and brand and corporate communication managers alike.

This volume describes the latest advances and perspectives in hydrosilylation, with a focus on new organometallic catalysts and their mechanistic aspects. Hydrosilylation is the reaction of ¿SiH with carbon-carbon, carbon-heteroatom or heteroatom-heteroatom bonds and is the most fundamental and elegant method for laboratory and industrial synthesis of organosilicon molecular and macromolecular compounds. Yet these reactions do require a catalyst, for which initially homogeneous noble metal catalyst, mainly platinum, rhodium, iridium or ruthenium were used. However the high prices, metallic residues of these valuable catalysts as well as issues with product purification, did increase the interest in developing new catalysts. Noteworthy in this regard are the recently developed hydrosilylation reactions using catalysts based on earth-abundant transition metals (for example Mn, Fe, Co, Ni) and heterogeneous catalysts presented here. This volume of Topics in Organometallic Chemistry is written for scientists interested in silicon chemistry and its catalytic aspects, but can also be used as valuable handbook for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students working with organometallic chemistry, catalysis as well as synthesis of fine chemicals.

The book delivers an excellent professional development resource for educators and practitioners on the cutting-edge computational intelligence techniques and applications. It covers many areas and topics of computational intelligence techniques and applications proposed by computational intelligence experts and researchers and furthers the enhancement of the community outreach and engagement component of computational intelligence techniques and applications. Furthermore, it presents a rich collection of manuscripts in highly regarded computational intelligence techniques and applications topics that have been creatively compiled. Computers are capable of learning from data and observations and providing solutions to real-life complex problems, following the same reasoning approach of human experts in various fields. This book endows a rich collection of applications in widespread areas. Among the areas addressed in this book are Computational Intelligence Principles andTechniques; CI in Manufacturing, Engineering, and Industry; CI in Recognition and Processing; CI in Robotics and Automation; CI in Communications and Networking; CI in Traditional Vehicles, Electric Vehicles, and Autonomous Vehicles; CI in Smart Cities and Smart Energy Systems; and CI in Finance, Business, Economics, and Education. These areas span many topics including repetitive manufacturing, discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, electronic systems, speech recognition, pattern recognition, signal processing, image processing, industrial monitoring, vision systems for automation and robotics, cooperative and network robotics, perception, planning, control, urban traffic networks control, vehicle-to-roadside communications, smart buildings, smart urbanism, smart infrastructure, smart connected communities, smart energy, security, arts, and music.