The Roll in England and France in the Late Middle Ages


Book Description

In the Middle Ages, rolls were ubiquitous as a writing support. While scholars have long examined the texts and images on rolls, they have rarely taken the manuscripts themselves into account. This volume readdresses this imbalance by focusing on the materiality and various usages of rolls in late medieval England and France. Researchers from England, France, Germany and Singapore demonstrate in 11 contributions how this approach can increase our understanding of the rolls and their contents, as well as the contexts in which they were produced and used.




Design Theory


Book Description

This textbook presents the core of recent advances in design theory and its implications for design methods and design organization. Providing a unified perspective on different design methods and approaches, from the most classic (systematic design) to the most advanced (C-K theory), it offers a unique and integrated presentation of traditional and contemporary theories in the field. Examining the principles of each theory, this guide utilizes numerous real life industrial applications, with clear links to engineering design, industrial design, management, economics, psychology and creativity. Containing a section of exams with detailed answers, it is useful for courses in design theory, engineering design and advanced innovation management. "Students and professors, practitioners and researchers in diverse disciplines, interested in design, will find in this book a rich and vital source for studying fundamental design methods and tools as well as the most advanced design theories that work in practice". Professor Yoram Reich, Tel Aviv University, Editor-in-Chief, Research In Engineering Design. "Twenty years of research in design theory and engineering have shown that training in creative design is indeed possible and offers remarkably operational methods - this book is indispensable for all leaders and practitioners who wish to strengthen theinnovation capacity of their company." Pascal Daloz, Executive Vice President, Dassault Systèmes




Developing Translation Competence


Book Description

The questions which this volume seeks to address include: what is translation competence? How can it be built and developed? How can the product of the performance be used to measure levels of competence? These questions are addressed with specific reference to the training situation. They are arranged in three sections, the first focusing on the identification of subcompetences.




The Patient Will See You Now


Book Description

The essential guide by one of America's leading doctors to how digital technology enables all of us to take charge of our health A trip to the doctor is almost a guarantee of misery. You'll make an appointment months in advance. You'll probably wait for several hours until you hear "the doctor will see you now"-but only for fifteen minutes! Then you'll wait even longer for lab tests, the results of which you'll likely never see, unless they indicate further (and more invasive) tests, most of which will probably prove unnecessary (much like physicals themselves). And your bill will be astronomical. In The Patient Will See You Now, Eric Topol, one of the nation's top physicians, shows why medicine does not have to be that way. Instead, you could use your smartphone to get rapid test results from one drop of blood, monitor your vital signs both day and night, and use an artificially intelligent algorithm to receive a diagnosis without having to see a doctor, all at a small fraction of the cost imposed by our modern healthcare system. The change is powered by what Topol calls medicine's "Gutenberg moment." Much as the printing press took learning out of the hands of a priestly class, the mobile internet is doing the same for medicine, giving us unprecedented control over our healthcare. With smartphones in hand, we are no longer beholden to an impersonal and paternalistic system in which "doctor knows best." Medicine has been digitized, Topol argues; now it will be democratized. Computers will replace physicians for many diagnostic tasks, citizen science will give rise to citizen medicine, and enormous data sets will give us new means to attack conditions that have long been incurable. Massive, open, online medicine, where diagnostics are done by Facebook-like comparisons of medical profiles, will enable real-time, real-world research on massive populations. There's no doubt the path forward will be complicated: the medical establishment will resist these changes, and digitized medicine inevitably raises serious issues surrounding privacy. Nevertheless, the result-better, cheaper, and more human health care-will be worth it. Provocative and engrossing, The Patient Will See You Now is essential reading for anyone who thinks they deserve better health care. That is, for all of us.




Organizing Smart Buildings and Cities


Book Description

The United Nations included sustainable cities and communities in its 2030 SDGs. Cities and, on a smaller scale, neighborhoods, building managers and firms are now adopting technologies and information systems to help achieve the energy, economic, social and environmental transition. This volume gathers contributions on the key organizational success factors for this transition. To do so, it analyzes the role of information systems, use of data, and technological assistance solutions from multiple perspectives. The goal is to develop a framework that can successfully apply information systems to organizational and environmental issues for smart cities and smart buildings. Accordingly, the book addresses living-lab experiment evaluation techniques, and provides critical analyses of the role of the environment, context and users’ behavioral responses. In addition, it discusses key questions on the efficient management of resources, need for appropriate IT solutions, and employing co-creation with users to improve planning and organization.




English Government in the Thirteenth Century


Book Description

Papers on aspects of the growth of royal government during the century. The size and jurisdiction of English royal government underwent sustained development in the thirteenth century, an understanding of which is crucial to a balanced view of medieval English society. The papers here follow three central themes: the development of central government, law and justice, and the crown and the localities. Examined within this framework are bureaucracy and enrolment under John and his contemporaries; the Royal Chancery; the adaptation of the Exchequer in response to the rapidly changing demands of the crown; the introduction of a licensing system for mortmain alienations; the administration of local justice; women as sheriffs; and a Nottinghamshire study examining the tensions between the role of the king as manorial lord and as monarch. Contributors: NICK BARRATT, PAUL R. BRAND, DAVID CARPENTER, DAVID CROOK, ANTHONY MUSSON, NICHOLAS C. VINCENT, LOUISE WILKINSON




The Paradigm of Self-organization


Book Description

In April 1985, immediately following the European Meeting on Systems Research and Cybernetics, a small international group assembled to discuss the status of thought and work relating to "self-organizing systems"; this nicely produced volume contains 16 essays derived (in the main) from that meeting. Though a few of the papers contain mathematical material, most are qualitative, and would be accessible to attentive non-technical readers. Generally speaking, the effort of the authors is to identify and to underscore the radical elements in the self-organization concept, to promote that concept (now rather less talked about than for awhile it was) to the status of a "paradigm". (NW) Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




From Brows to Trust


Book Description

Embodied conversational agents (ECAs) are autonomous software entities with human-like appearance and communication skills. These agents can take on a number of different roles, for example, as an assistant, tutor, information provider, or customer service agent. They may also simply represent or entertain a user. The precise nature and benefits of different characteristics of ECAs requires careful investigation. Questions range from the function of an eyebrow raise to mechanisms for assessing and improving ECA trustworthiness. This book will help experts and designers in the specification and development of applications incorporating ECAs. Part 1 provides guidelines for evaluation methodologies and the identification of design and evaluation parameters. Part 2 demonstrates the importance of considering the user's perspective and interaction experience. Part 3 addresses issues in fine-tuning design parameters of ECAs and verifying the perceived effect. Finally, in Part 4 lessons learned from a number of application case studies are presented. The book is intended for both ECA researchers in academia and industry, and developers and designers interested in applying the technology.




The Origins of Comics


Book Description

In The Origins of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay, Thierry Smolderen presents a cultural landscape whose narrative differs in many ways from those presented by other historians of the comic strip. Rather than beginning his inquiry with the popularly accepted "sequential art" definition of the comic strip, Smolderen instead wishes to engage with the historical dimensions that inform that definition. His goal is to understand the processes that led to the twentieth-century comic strip, the highly recognizable species of picture stories that he sees crystallizing around 1900 in the United States. Featuring close readings of the picture stories, caricatures, and humoristic illustrations of William Hogarth, Rodolphe Töpffer, Gustave Doré, and their many contemporaries, Smolderen establishes how these artists were immersed in a very old visual culture in which images—satirical images in particular—were deciphered in a way that was often described as hieroglyphical. Across eight chapters, he acutely points out how the effect of the printing press and the mass advent of audiovisual technologies (photography, audio recording, and cinema) at the end of the nineteenth century led to a new twentieth-century visual culture. In tracing this evolution, Smolderen distinguishes himself from other comics historians by following a methodology that explains the present state of the form of comics on the basis of its history, rather than presenting the history of the form on the basis of its present state. This study remaps the history of this influential art form.