Bøger udgivet af Verlagsgruppe Mainz

Zahlreich und vielfältig sind die Wege, die die Interkulturelle Philosophie heute weltweit geht, wie ihre Geschichte und Entwicklung zeigen. Von dieser Pluralität der Wege werden nun in diesem Band nur jene im Fokus stehen, die sich aus der Initiative der Internationalen Kongresse für Interkulturelle Philosophie und der Internationalen Schule für Interkulturelle Philosophie (span. EIFI) entwickelt haben. Diese Tatsache erklärt sich dadurch, dass dieser Sammelband als Hommage für Raúl Fornet-Betancourt anlässlich seines 75. Geburtstages (2021) geplant war, auf dessen Wirken diese beiden Initiativen zurückgehen.Ein herzliches Dankeschön sage ich allen Autorinnen und Autoren. Mit ihren Beiträgen, die wertvolle Einblicke in die aktuelle Weiterarbeit am Projekt der Interkulturellen Philosophie geben, haben sie diese Publikation ermöglicht. Aus verschiedenen Gründen hat sich die Herausgabe des Bandes leider verzögert. Er soll jedoch, wie geplant, Raúl Fornet-Betancourt gewidmet sein.

The need for artificial intelligence systems that are not only capable of mastering complicated tasks but also of explaining their decisions has massively gained attention over the last years. This also seems to offer opportunities for further interconnecting different approaches to artificial intelligence, such as machine learning and knowledge representation.This work considers the task of learning knowledge bases from agent behavior, with a focus on human-readability, comprehensibility and applications in games. in this context, it will be presented how knowledge can be organized and processed on multiple levels of abstraction, allowing for efficient reasoning and revision. It will be investigated how learning agents can benefit from incorporating the approaches into their learning processes.Examples and applications are provided, e.g., in the context of general video game playing. The most essential approaches are implemented in the InteKRator toolbox and show potential for being applied in other domains (e.g., in medical informatics).

The annual EURAS Conferences bring together academics from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, representatives from national and regional standards bodies, and government agencies, and company representatives. They all share an interest in standardisation research and education. The papers presented at EURAS conferences address a broad variety of issues relating to standards and the underlying standardisation process. These include, among many others, standardisation policies, the economics of standardisation, participatory, legal and regulartory issues, as well as the history and the future of standards and standardisatoin.Since 1999, SIIT conferences are bringing together experts from academia, government and industry with an interest in ICT standardisation. It thus serves as a platform to foster the exchange of insights and views on all issues surrounding standards, standardisation and innovation. Contributing academic disciplines include, but are by no means limited to: Business Studies, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, History, Information Systems, Law, Management Studies and Sociology.The theme of the 2023 joint EURAS & SIIT converence was '(Responsible) Standardisation for Smart Systems'. The injection of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into more 'traditional' technologies has created a wide range of 'smart' systems. Specifically, 'smartness' is based on a number of enabling technologies, including the internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data and Machine Learning (ML). Taken together, these technologies may help establish a perfect Orwellian surveillance society, a more liveable, greener and more secure environment or something in between. In any case, smart technologies will affect individuals, governments, businesses and society at large alike. As one of the earliest stages in the technology development process standardisation can help ensure that smart systems will not exhibit any undesired and undesirable characteristics. To this end, the standards setting process will have to leave the techno-economic realm and to also take into account e.g. societal, environmental and ethical aspects. To do so, a much broader variety of stakeholders will have to be involved in the process. This, in turn, may imply that the process will need to be adapted.

»Vernünftige Hoffnung - hoffende Vernunft. Quellen der Hoffnung in schwierigen Zeiten«, so lautete das zentrale Thema des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses für Interkulturelle Philosophie, der vom 25. bis 27. Mai 2022 in Aachen stattfand. Mit der Dokumentation der auf diesem Kongress gehaltenen Vorträge bietet der vorliegende Band exemplarische Einblicke in das Ringen der Menschheit um Hoffnung in den verschiedenen Religionen der Welt.

Plastics are on the rise to conquer every area of modern human life but lead to increased pollution of nature, enormous oil consumption, and large-scale greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, to avoid climate change above 1.5¿C, net-zero greenhouse gas emission plastics are needed by the second half of this century. To reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastics, three circular technologies can be used: (1) chemical or mechanical recycling, (2) carbon capture and utilization, and (3) biomass utilization. However, current environmental assessments of these circular technologies focus solely on individual or partly combined circular technologies, are limited to regional scopes, and often apply inconsistent methodologies. Thus, it is currently unclear if net-zero emission plastics can actually be achieved with the current set of circular technologies. Furthermore, shifting from the linear to a circular economy is regarded as energy-intensive and costly, hindering strong policy implementation from fostering the transition to a circular economy.To assess if net-zero emission plastics can actually be achieved, this thesis builds and uses the first global, industry-wide and systematic bottom-up model for plastics production and waste treatment, representing the global life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of 90% of global plastic production. Using that model reveals that net-zero emission plastics can be achieved by combining biomass and CO2 utilization with an effective recycling rate of 70% while saving up to to 53% of energy and 288 billion USD compared to a fossil-based benchmark applying large-scale carbon capture and storage. Achieving the full potential of energy and cost savings while achieving netzero emissions requires the supply of biomass and CO2 at low cost, while cost of oil supply must be increased. To incentivize this shift, investment barriers for all available circular technologies have to be lowered by implementing consistent emission pricing schemes, using deposit systems for plastics to increase recyclability and stopping to subsidize fossil resources. Thus, this thesis shows that the greenhouse gas emission problem of plastics can be solved with technologies and solutions already available today.

Das große Interesse an der kommerziellen Anwendung von Vakuumschaltern im Mittelspannungs- und in zunehmendem Maße auch im Hochspannungsbereich führte zu umfassenden und grundlegenden Forschungen an diesem Betriebsmittel.Eine Erweiterung des Anwendungsbereichs der Vakuumschalter ist abhängig von bestimmten Anodenphänomenen, welche bei hohen Strömen auftreten und die Fähigkeit zur Stromunterbrechung limitieren.Ziel der Arbeit ist die Untersuchung dieser Hochstrom-Anodenmodi mit optischen, insbesondere spektroskopischen Methoden sowie mit elektrischen Messungen. Um die zeitliche und räumliche Verteilung der Linienstrahlung von Kuperatomen (Cu I) sowie von einfach (Cu II) und doppelt geladenen Ionen (Cu III) zu untersuchen, wird optische Emissionsspektroskopie in Kombination mit einer Hochgeschwindigkeitsvideokamera verwendet (Videospektroskopie). Es werden verschiedene Stromformen angewandt, insbesondere Wechselstrom- und Gleichstromimpulse unterschiedlicher Dauer. Darüber hinaus wird der Einfluss diverser Spezifikationen von Vakuumschaltern, wie z.B. Elektrodengeometrien, Kontaktmaterialien, Lichtbogendauer und Öffnungsgeschwindigkeit, auf die Entstehung der Hochstrom-Anodenmodi erforscht.