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Towards a Convergence Between Science and Environmental Education: The selected works of Justin Dillon
by Justin DillonIn the World Library of Educationalists, international scholars themselves compile career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces—extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions—so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers thus are able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field, as well as the development of the field itself. Internationally recognized for his research on environmental education, science engagement, learning outside the classroom, and teacher identity and development, in this volume Justin Dillon brings together a thoughtfully crafted selection of his writing representing key aspects of his life and work leading to his current thinking on the need for a convergence of science and environmental education. The chapters are organized around 7 themes: On Habitus; On methodological issues; Developing theories of learning, identity and culture; Challenges and opportunities—science, the environment and the outdoors; Classroom issues—the emergence of Science|Environment|Health; Science engagement and communication; Science, environment and sustainability.
Towards a Design Flow for Reversible Logic
by Rolf Drechsler Robert WilleThe development of computing machines found great success in the last decades. But the ongoing miniaturization of integrated circuits will reach its limits in the near future. Shrinking transistor sizes and power dissipation are the major barriers in the development of smaller and more powerful circuits. Reversible logic provides an alternative that may overcome many of these problems in the future. For low-power design, reversible logic offers significant advantages since zero power dissipation will only be possible if computation is reversible. Furthermore, quantum computation profits from enhancements in this area, because every quantum circuit is inherently reversible and thus requires reversible descriptions. However, since reversible logic is subject to certain restrictions (e.g. fanout and feedback are not directly allowed), the design of reversible circuits significantly differs from the design of traditional circuits. Nearly all steps in the design flow (like synthesis, verification, or debugging) must be redeveloped so that they become applicable to reversible circuits as well. But research in reversible logic is still at the beginning. No continuous design flow exists so far. In Towards a Design Flow for Reversible Logic, contributions to a design flow for reversible logic are presented. This includes advanced methods for synthesis, optimization, verification, and debugging. Formal methods like Boolean satisfiability and decision diagrams are thereby exploited. By combining the techniques proposed in the book, it is possible to synthesize reversible circuits representing large functions. Optimization approaches ensure that the resulting circuits are of small cost. Finally, a method for equivalence checking and automatic debugging allows to verify the obtained results and helps to accelerate the search for bugs in case of errors in the design. Combining the respective approaches, a first design flow for reversible circuits of significant size results.
Towards a Dynamic Regional Innovation System
by Wenying FuEmbedding the theoretical discussion on the framework of evolutionary regional innovation systems (RIS), this book reveals the informal nature of the emerging RIS in China, within which interactive learning is organized on the basis of social networks. Furthermore, in a comparative study in the Pearl River Delta, China demonstrates that dirigiste governance in the initial industrialization phase leads to a more mature and developed RIS than does grassroots governance. The theoretical developments and empirical investigation presented in this book will grant readers a deeper understanding of the specific features of RIS within the transitional context of emerging economies.
Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), Volume 2 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #900)
by Michael E. Auer Uriel R. Cukierman Eduardo Vendrell Vidal Edmundo Tovar CaroThis book contains papers in the fields of educational virtual environments, future of education, project-based learning (PBL), and digital education strategy and engineering pedagogy. The authors currently witnessing a significant transformation in the development of education on all levels and especially in post-secondary education. To face these challenges, higher education must find innovative and effective ways to respond in a proper way. The pandemic period left us with profound changes in the way we teach and learn, including the massive use of new means of communication, such as videoconferencing and other technological tools. Moreover, the current explosion of artificial intelligence tools, mainly used by students, is challenging teaching practices maintained for centuries. Scientifically based statements as well as excellent best practice examples are absolutely necessary. The 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), which took place in Madrid, Spain, between September 26 and 30, 2023, was the perfect place where current trends in higher education were presented and discussed. Since its beginning in 1998, this conference has been devoted to new approaches in learning with a focus on collaborative learning in higher education. Nowadays, the ICL conferences are a forum of the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in learning and engineering pedagogy. In this way, the authors try to bridge the gap between ‘pure’ scientific research and the everyday work of educators. Interested readership includes policy makers, academics, educators, researchers in pedagogy and learning theory, schoolteachers, learning industry, further and continuing education lecturers, etc.
Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), Volume 1 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #899)
by Michael E. Auer Uriel R. Cukierman Eduardo Vendrell Vidal Edmundo Tovar CaroThis book contains papers in the fields of collaborative learning, digital transition in education, and AI and learning analytics in engineering education. The authors are currently witnessing a significant transformation in the development of education on all levels and especially in post-secondary education. To face these challenges, higher education must find innovative and effective ways to respond in a proper way. The pandemic period left us with profound changes in the way we teach and learn, including the massive use of new means of communication, such as videoconferencing and other technological tools. Moreover, the current explosion of artificial intelligence tools, mainly used by students, is challenging teaching practices maintained for centuries. Scientifically based statements as well as excellent best practice examples are absolutely necessary. The 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), which took place in Madrid, Spain, between September 26 and 30, 2023, was the perfect place where current trends in higher education were presented and discussed. Since its beginning in 1998, this conference has been devoted to new approaches in learning with a focus on collaborative learning in higher education. Nowadays, the ICL conferences are a forum of the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in learning and engineering pedagogy. In this way, the authors try to bridge the gap between ‘pure’ scientific research and the everyday work of educators. Interested readership includes policy makers, academics, educators, researchers in pedagogy and learning theory, schoolteachers, learning industry, further and continuing education lecturers, etc.
Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), Volume 3 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #901)
by Michael E. Auer Uriel R. Cukierman Eduardo Vendrell Vidal Edmundo Tovar CaroThis book contains papers in the fields of engineering pedagogy education, research in engineering pedagogy, and games in engineering education. The authors are currently witnessing a significant transformation in the development of education on all levels and especially in post-secondary education. To face these challenges, higher education must find innovative and effective ways to respond in a proper way. The pandemic period left us with profound changes in the way we teach and learn, including the massive use of new means of communication, such as videoconferencing and other technological tools. Moreover, the current explosion of artificial intelligence tools, mainly used by students, is challenging teaching practices maintained for centuries. Scientifically based statements as well as excellent best practice examples are absolutely necessary. The 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), which took place in Madrid, Spain, between September 26 and 30, 2023, was the perfect place where current trends in higher education were presented and discussed. Since its beginning in 1998, this conference has been devoted to new approaches in learning with a focus on collaborative learning in higher education. Nowadays, the ICL conferences are a forum of the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in learning and engineering pedagogy. In this way, the authors try to bridge the gap between ‘pure’ scientific research and the everyday work of educators. Interested readership includes policy makers, academics, educators, researchers in pedagogy and learning theory, schoolteachers, learning industry, further and continuing education lecturers, etc.
Towards a Hybrid, Flexible and Socially Engaged Higher Education: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), Volume 4 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #911)
by Michael E. Auer Uriel R. Cukierman Eduardo Vendrell Vidal Edmundo Tovar CaroWe are currently witnessing a significant transformation in the development of education on all levels and especially in post-secondary education. To face these challenges, higher education must find innovative and effective ways to respond in a proper way. The pandemic period left us with profound changes in the way we teach and learn, including the massive use of new means of communication, such as videoconferencing and other technological tools. Moreover, the current explosion of artificial intelligence tools, mainly used by students, is challenging teaching practices maintained for centuries. Scientifically based statements as well as excellent best practice examples are absolutely necessary.The 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2023), which will take place in Madrid, Spain, between 26th and 30th September 2023, will be the perfect place where to present and discuss current trends in Higher Education.Since its beginning in 1998 this conference is devoted to new approaches in learning with a focus on collaborative learning in Higher Education. Nowadays the ICL conferences are a forum of the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in Learning and Engineering Pedagogy. In this way we try to bridge the gap between ‘pure’ scientific research and the everyday work of educators.
Towards a Peaceful Development of Cyberspace: De-Escalation of State-Led Cyber Conflicts and Arms Control of Cyber Weapons (Technology, Peace and Security I Technologie, Frieden und Sicherheit)
by Thomas ReinholdThe cyberspace and its global infrastructures are essential for our civilizations, the economy and administration. However, cyberspace is also increasingly developing into an intelligence and military operational area, visible in the creation of military cyber departments and the integration of cyberspace into states' security and defense strategies. Unfortunately, many of the established toolset of transparency, de-escalation and arms control measures do not work for cyberspace due to its specific technical characteristics. But how de-escalation of state-led conflicts in cyberspace can be achieved and how arms control of cyber weapons can be developed? Based on a technical perspective with regard to the underlying political challenges, the book follows an approach of adopting already existing technical measures from other fields of the computer science. It presents a classification system for cyberweapons, an approach for the mutual reduction of vulnerability stockpiles and provides an approach to prove the non-involvement in a cyber conflict. Beyond this, it aims to provide some impulses regarding the responsibility and creative options of the computer science with a view to the peaceful development and use of cyberspace.
Towards a Scalable Quantum Computing Platform in the Ultrastrong Coupling Regime (Springer Theses)
by Thi Ha KyawThis thesis devotes three introductory chapters to outlining basic recipes for constructing the quantum Hamiltonian of an arbitrary superconducting circuit, starting from classical circuit design. Since a superconducting circuit is one of the most promising platforms for realizing a practical quantum computer, anyone who is starting out in the field will benefit greatly from this introduction. The second focus of the introduction is the ultrastrong light-matter interaction (USC), where the latest developments are described. This is followed by three main research works comprising quantum memory in USC; scaling up the 1D circuit to a 2D lattice configuration; creation of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum era quantum error correction codes and polariton-mediated qubit-qubit interaction. The research work detailed in this thesis will make a major contribution to the development of quantum random access memory, a prerequisite for various quantum machine learning algorithms and applications.
Towards a Smart, Resilient and Sustainable Industry: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Industrial Engineering and Automation ISIEA 2023 (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #745)
by Yuri Borgianni Guido Orzes Dominik T. Matt Margherita MolinaroThis book offers insights into the new trends that are pushing industries toward the 5.0 paradigm. Digitalization has made tremendous inroads, and the key enabling technologies for Industry 4.0 are increasingly mature. “Towards a Smart, Resilient and Sustainable Industry” not only strikes a balance among the current benefits, issues, and limitations of the current wave of digitalization, but also identifies the key challenges for making new industrial developments favorable for people and the environment. The different perspectives presented in this collection are gathered from contributions presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Industrial Engineering and Automation (ISIEA 2023), which took place at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano on June 22-23, 2023. Readers will realize how aspects from different disciplines are interwoven to allow positive changes across industries: from engineering to artificial intelligence, from management to design, and from health care to biology.
Towards a Sustainable Construction Industry: Proceedings of 12th Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Postgraduate Research Conference
by Clinton Aigbavboa Wellington Thwala Douglas AghimienThis book gathers papers from the 12th Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) Postgraduate Research Conference, which was held at the International Convention Centre, East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa, from July 10 to 12, 2022. The conference directly addresses the objectives of SDG9: “Building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization and fostering innovation”. Moreover, the conference is designed to promote capacity development and transformation within the built-environment space by providing an all-inclusive platform to established and emerging researchers to discuss the recent advancements needed to move the industry forward.
Towards a Sustainable Economy: Paradoxes and Trends in Energy and Transportation (Sustainability and Innovation)
by Pascal Da Costa Danielle AttiasThis book provides an interdisciplinary account of how technological advances – mainly in the domains of energy and transportation – contribute to the transformation towards a more sustainable economic system. Drawing on methods from engineering, the management sciences and economics, which it combines in the framework of a systems sciences approach, the book presents qualitative and quantitative studies on government regulation, resources management and firms' strategy. Topics covered include the state-market dilemma of government CO2 emission targets, implications of the electrification of the economy, incentives and coercion in government transport policies, and innovations in the electric vehicle industry.
Towards a Sustainable Future - Life Cycle Management: Challenges and Prospects
by Zbigniew Stanisław Kłos Joanna Kałkowska Jędrzej KasprzakThis open access book includes a selection of contributions from the Life Cycle Management 2019 Conference (LCM) held in Poznań, Poland, and presents different examples of scientific and practical contributions, showing an incorporation of life cycle approach into the decision processes on strategic and operational level. Special attention is drawn to applications of LCM to target, organize, analyze and manage product-related information and activities towards continuous improvement, along the different products life cycle. The selection of case studies presents LCM as a business management approach that can be used by all types of businesses and organizations in order to improve their sustainability performance. This book provides a cross-sectoral, current picture of LCM issues. The structure of the book is based on five-theme lines. The themes represent different objects that are focused on sustainability and LCM practices mainly related to: products, technologies, organizations, markets and policy issues as well as methodological solutions. The book brings together presentations from the world of science and the world of enterprises as well as institutions supporting economic development.
Towards a Territorial Multi-Disaster Buildings' Resistance Certification
by Daniele Fabrizio BignamiDisaster risk is increasing, not only in number of events, but also in incurred losses. Such increases are being driven also by the growing exposure of assets, due to the rapid urban growth, because vulnerability decreases as countries develop, but not enough to compensate. The situation will be more and more critical, due to the growth of the amount of the building stock. Thus we need new initiatives to foster upgrading of existing building and enhancement of land planning strategies. "Safe Home" scheme is aimed at increasing urban safety requirements against hazards under an advanced labeling approach. It provides a quantitative evaluation of building performance through an objective, reproducible approach, assessing risks at a land, urban and building scale. Aim of this rating system is to result in useful information to different users, like land planning decision makers, owners, purchasers, tenants or property and real estate managers.
Towards a Wireless Connected World: Achievements and New Technologies
by Al-Sakib Khan PathanThis book gathers key advances in various areas related to using wireless Internet and wireless connectivity to achieve a more connected world.The world is now highly dependent on Internet connectivity. Even though some parts of the globe remain isolated, the smoothly running world all around us relies on Internet services for countless businesses and activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen that exclusively relying on wired Internet would leave out a large part of our tech-savvy world. Hence, wireless connectivity is essential to anywhere, anytime connectivity. Further, in the event of a new pandemic or other disaster of global scale, wireless Internet offers a reliable way to keep us all connected. The contributors to this book, hailing from academia, industrial and research laboratories, report on the latest solutions, trends and technologies with the potential to make wireless Internet more reliable and secure for the years to come.
Towards Adaptive Spoken Dialog Systems
by Alexander Schmitt Wolfgang MinkerIn Monitoring Adaptive Spoken Dialog Systems, authors Alexander Schmitt and Wolfgang Minker investigate statistical approaches that allow for recognition of negative dialog patterns in Spoken Dialog Systems (SDS). The presented stochastic methods allow a flexible, portable and accurate use. Beginning with the foundations of machine learning and pattern recognition, this monograph examines how frequently users show negative emotions in spoken dialog systems and develop novel approaches to speech-based emotion recognition using hybrid approach to model emotions. The authors make use of statistical methods based on acoustic, linguistic and contextual features to examine the relationship between the interaction flow and the occurrence of emotions using non-acted recordings several thousand real users from commercial and non-commercial SDS. Additionally, the authors present novel statistical methods that spot problems within a dialog based on interaction patterns. The approaches enable future SDS to offer more natural and robust interactions. This work provides insights, lessons and inspiration for future research and development, not only for spoken dialog systems, but for data-driven approaches to human-machine interaction in general.
Towards an Emissions Trading System in Mexico: Outlook on the first ETS in Latin-America and Exploration of the Way Forward (Springer Climate)
by Simone LucatelloThis Open Access book provides detailed information about the incoming Mexican Emissions Trading System, including an analysis on why the system was implemented, how the system was designed, how it operates, how it could work, and how it could be strengthened by 2023 when it will be formally launched. This document is aimed at those who want to understand how an ETS can operate in an emerging economy. Although it has been written for experts and non-experts, this book does not provide the underlying theory of market-based instruments and emissions trading systems in general. The book can be read from start to finish, but can also be used as a reference for specific components of regional ETSs. The book draws upon a meticulous study of background documents and fieldwork from different authors to tell the story of how a Mexican ETS, the first of its kind in Latin America, can be set in the country. The emissions trading system cover many greenhouse gas emissions and has been hailed as one of the cornerstones of the Mexican climate policy. The book also examines and explains how the ETS is designed and implemented.
Towards an Increased Security: Green Innovations, Intellectual Property Protection and Information Security (Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems #372)
by Elena G. Popkova Andrey A. Polukhin Julia V. RagulinaThis book aims to show that modern socio-economic and entrepreneurial systems are on the path to the increase of security and to determine the obstacles they face on this path, as well as determine the opportunities for overcoming these obstacles. The purpose of this book is to study new achievements in the sphere of the provision of security. The originality of this book consists in the development of the fundamental basis of the provision of modern socio-economic systems’ security through development and application of the new classification of the directions of provision of security—food and ecological, information and technological, and personnel and intellectual—and their systemic consideration.Five parts of this book elaborate on progressive green innovations in agriculture and the modern experience of food security provision; legal regulation of sustainable development and environmental security; economic security of regions and green innovations in natural resources management; technological security in the digital environment, data protection and information security; and security and the priority for personnel management and intellectual property protection.The target audience of this book are scholars, who will find in it the fundamental inventions and empirical studies of the international experience of security provision; representatives of public authorities, who will find in the book the recommendations on monitoring and regulation of food and ecological, information and technological, and personnel and intellectual security; and subjects of entrepreneurship, who will find in the book the applied solutions for corporate management of security.
Towards an Information Theory of Complex Networks: Statistical Methods and Applications
by Alexander Mehler Matthias Dehmer Frank Emmert-StreibFor over a decade, complex networks have steadily grown as an important tool across a broad array of academic disciplines, with applications ranging from physics to social media. A tightly organized collection of carefully-selected papers on the subject, Towards an Information Theory of Complex Networks: Statistical Methods and Applications presents theoretical and practical results about information-theoretic and statistical models of complex networks in the natural sciences and humanities. The book's major goal is to advocate and promote a combination of graph-theoretic, information-theoretic, and statistical methods as a way to better understand and characterize real-world networks. This volume is the first to present a self-contained, comprehensive overview of information-theoretic models of complex networks with an emphasis on applications. As such, it marks a first step toward establishing advanced statistical information theory as a unified theoretical basis of complex networks for all scientific disciplines and can serve as a valuable resource for a diverse audience of advanced students and professional scientists. While it is primarily intended as a reference for research, the book could also be a useful supplemental graduate text in courses related to information science, graph theory, machine learning, and computational biology, among others.
Towards an Intelligent Learning Management System Under Blended Learning
by Sofia B. Dias José A. Diniz Leontios J. HadjileontiadisWhat are the key channels to change in blended instructional practice as they relate to the use of a learning management system (LMS)? What role LMS users' profiles play in facilitating change in practice? Can we model users' quality of interaction (QoI) with LMS? How inclusiveness and affectiveness could lead to a personalized intelligent LMS (iLMS)? If these questions sound intrinsic to you and to your own experience and circumstance, then this book fits absolutely to you. Here, the term Blended - viewed as a fuzzy concept - is understood as a stepping-stone on the way to the future, to explain the multiple ways human beings think/act/feel of society in the 21st century and to embrace the opportunity of humans to re/co-construct new knowledge through the intermediation role of the technology. Initially, based on an online learning environment' theoretical framework, some current issues of the educational processes in the digital age of Web 2. 0 are analyzed. Then, after exploring the main methodological procedures, characteristic examples of research case studies follow, including LMS users' trends and profiles and modeling of their QoI using fuzzy logic. This book offers useful information that evokes initiatives towards rethinking of the value, efficiency, inclusiveness, affectiveness and personalization of the iLMS-based b-learning environment, both by the educators, the LMS designers and educational policy decision makers.
Towards Analytical Techniques for Systems Engineering Applications (Studies in Systems, Decision and Control #286)
by Griselda Acosta Eric Smith Vladik KreinovichThis book is intended for specialists in systems engineering interested in new, general techniques and for students and practitioners interested in using these techniques for solving specific practical problems. For many real-world, complex systems, it is possible to create easy-to-compute explicit analytical models instead of time-consuming computer simulations. Usually, however, analytical models are designed on a case-by-case basis, and there is a scarcity of general techniques for designing such easy-to-compute models. This book fills this gap by providing general recommendations for using analytical techniques in all stages of system design, implementation, testing, and monitoring. It also illustrates these recommendations using applications in various domains, such as more traditional engineering systems, biological systems (e.g., systems for cattle management), and medical and social-related systems (e.g., recommender systems).
Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems
by Lyuba Alboul Dana Damian Jonathan M. AitkenThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference on Towards Autonomous Robotics, TAROS 2016, held in Sheffield UK, in June/July 2016. The 23 revised full papers presented together with 15 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 56 submissions. The overall program covers various aspects of robotics, including navigation, planning, sensing and perception, flying and swarm robots, ethics, humanoid robotics, human-robot interaction, and social robotics.
Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems
by Ashutosh Natraj Stephen Cameron Chris Melhuish Mark WitkowskiThis book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th Conference on Advances in Autonomous Robotics, TAROS 2013, held in Oxford, UK, in August 2013. The 36 revised full papers presented together with 25 extended abstracts were carefully reviewed and selected from 89 submissions. The papers cover various topics such as artificial intelligence, bio-inspired and aerial robotics, computer vision, control, humanoid and robotic arm, swarm robotics, verification and ethics.
Towards Autonomous Soft Matter Systems: Experiments on Membranes and Active Emulsions
by Shashi ThutupalliThis book focuses on the assembly, organization and resultant collective dynamics of soft matter systems maintained away from equilibrium by an energy flux. Living matter is the ultimate example of such systems, which are comprised of different constituents on very different scales (ions, nucleic acids, proteins, cells). The result of their diverse interactions, maintained using the energy from physiological processes, is a fantastically well-organized and dynamic whole. This work describes results from minimal, biomimetic systems and primarily investigates membranes and active emulsions, as well as key aspects of both soft matter and non-equilibrium phenomena. It is shown that these minimal reconstitutions are already capable of a range of complex behaviour such as nonlinear electric responses, chemical communication and locomotion. These studies will bring us closer to a fundamental understanding of complex systems by reconstituting key aspects of their form and function in simple model systems. Further, they may also serve as the first technological steps towards artificial soft functional matter.
Towards Better Work
by Arianna Rossi Amy Luinstra John PicklesGlobalization of production has created opportunities and challenges for developing country producers and workers. This volume provides solutions-oriented approaches for promoting improved working conditions and labour rights in the apparel industry.