Search results for ""Author Laurent""

Mathematical Morphology allows for the analysis and processing of geometrical structures using techniques based on the fields of set theory, lattice theory, topology, and random functions. It is the basis of morphological image processing, and finds applications in fields including digital image processing (DSP), as well as areas for graphs, surface meshes, solids, and other spatial structures. This book presents an up-to-date treatment of mathematical morphology, based on the three pillars that made it an important field of theoretical work and practical application: a solid theoretical foundation, a large body of applications and an efficient implementation. The book is divided into five parts and includes 20 chapters. The five parts are structured as follows: Part I sets out the fundamental aspects of the discipline, starting with a general introduction, followed by two more theory-focused chapters, one addressing its mathematical structure and including an updated formalism, which is the result of several decades of work. Part II extends this formalism to some non-deterministic aspects of the theory, in particular detailing links with other disciplines such as stereology, geostatistics and fuzzy logic. Part III addresses the theory of morphological filtering and segmentation, featuring modern connected approaches, from both theoretical and practical aspects. Part IV features practical aspects of mathematical morphology, in particular how to deal with color and multivariate data, links to discrete geometry and topology, and some algorithmic aspects; without which applications would be impossible. Part V showcases all the previously noted fields of work through a sample of interesting, representative and varied applications.

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Architecture that is meant to have a sensuous connection to life calls forthinking that goes far beyond form and construction. In his texts, Peter Zumthor articulates what motivates him to design his buildings, which appeal to the visitor's heart and mind in so many different ways and possess a compelling and unmistakable presence and aura. Now in its second edition, this book has been expanded to include two new essays: „Architecture and Lanscape” deals with the relationship between the structure and its surroundings, with the secret of the successful placement and topographical integration of architecture. In „The Leis Houses,” Peter Zumthor describes the genesis of two wooden houses in the town of Leis in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, thus thematizing the special challenge of integrating contemporary architecture into a traditional architectural context.

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With more than 150 million people, Muslims are the largest Indian minority but are facing a significant decline in socio-economic as well as political terms - not to say anything about the communal waves of violence that have affected them over the last 25 years. In India's cities, these developments find contrasted expressions. While Muslims are everywhere lagging behind, local syncretic cultures have proved to be resilient in the South and in the East (Bangalore, Calicut, Cuttack). In the Hindi belt and in the North, Muslims have met a different fate, especially in riot-prone areas (Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Jaipur, Aligarh) and in the former capitals of Muslim states (Delhi, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Lucknow). These developments have resulted in the formation of Muslim ghettos and Muslim slums in places like Ahmedabad and Mumbai. But (self-)segregation also played a role in the making of Muslim enclaves, like in Delhi and Aligarh, where traditional elites and the new Muslim middle class searched for physical as well as cultural protection through their regrouping. This book supplements an ethnographic approach of Muslims in 11 Indian cities with a quantitative methodology in order to give a first hand account of an untold story.

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Using plant material as raw materials for construction is a relatively recent and original topic of research. This book presents an overview of the current knowledge on the material properties and environmental impact of construction materials made from plant particles, which are renewable, recyclable and easily available. It focuses on particles and as well on fibers issued from hemp plant, as well as discussing hemp concretes. The book begins by setting the environmental, economic and social context of agro-concretes, before discussing the nature of plant-based aggregates and binders. The formulation, implementation and mechanical behavior of such building materials are the subject of the following chapters. The focus is then put upon the hygrothermal behavior and acoustical properties of hempcrete, followed by the use of plant-based concretes in structures. The book concludes with the study of life-cycle analysis (LCA) of the environmental characteristics of a banked hempcrete wall on a wooden skeleton. Contents 1. Environmental, Economic and Social Context of Agro-Concretes, Vincent Nozahic and Sofiane Amziane. 2. Characterization of Plant-Based Aggregates. Vincent Picandet. 3. Binders, Gilles Escadeillas, Camille Magniont, Sofiane Amziane and Vincent Nozahic. 4. Formulation and Implementation, Christophe Lanos, Florence Collet, Gérard Lenain and Yves Hustache. 5. Mechanical Behavior, Laurent Arnaud, Sofiane Amziane, Vincent Nozahic and Etienne Gourlay. 6. Hygrothermal Behavior of Hempcrete, Laurent Arnaud, Driss Samri and Étienne Gourlay. 7. Acoustical Properties of Hemp Concretes, Philippe Glé, Emmanuel Gourdon and Laurent Arnaud. 8. Plant-Based Concretes in Structures: Structural Aspect – Addition of a Wooden Support to Absorb the Strain, Philippe Munoz and Didier Pipet. 9. Examination of the Environmental Characteristics of a Banked Hempcrete Wall on a Wooden Skeleton, by Lifecycle Analysis: Feedback on the LCA Experiment from 2005, Marie-Pierre Boutin and Cyril Flamin. About the Authors Sofiane Amziane is Professor and head of the Civil Engineering department at POLYTECH Clermont-Ferrand in France. He is also in charge of the research program dealing with bio-based building materials at Blaise Pascal University (Institut Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France). He is the secretary of the RILEM Technical Committee 236-BBM dealing with bio-based building materials and the author or co-author of over one hundred papers in scientific journals such as Cement and Concrete Research, Composite Structures or Construction Building Materials as well as international conferences. Laurent Arnaud is a Bridges, Waters and Forestry Engineer (Ingénieur des Ponts, Eaux et Forêts) and researcher at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. He is also Professor at ENTPE (Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l’Etat). Trained in the field of mechanical engineering, his research has been directed toward the characterization and development of new materials for civil engineering and construction. He is head of the international committee at RILEM – BBM, as well as the author of more than one hundred publications, and holder of an international invention patent.

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New in the Art Essentials series, an introductory guide to the art of looking at and engaging with photography. Everything counts in a good photograph, even down to the smallest details. This introductory guide is structured to help you develop new and more in-depth ways of looking at images, whether as a viewer or practitioner or just out snapping with your smartphone. Looking at Photographs outlines key approaches to help us understand why a photograph captures our attention and moves us. Across seven chapters, visual culture expert Laurent Jullier discusses themes and concepts that are essential to understanding the medium, including: photography as a reflection of reality; manipulation and defamiliarization; focus, perspective and space; time and the moment; identity, portraits and selfies; the power of images. With examples drawn from across the world and throughout the history of photography, from Louis Daguerre to Julia Margaret Cameron, László Moholy-Nagy, Dorothea

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Explore the beginning of Steven Spielberg's remarkable career with this definitive retrospective that covers Duel, The Sugarland Express, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. In the first ten years of his career, Steven Spielberg directed some of the most influential and beloved films in cinema history. Movies such as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial introduced audiences to the modern blockbuster and cemented Spielberg as a monumental figure in pop culture. Through exclusive imagery and unparalleled insight from Spielberg's longtime documentarian, Laurent Bouzereau, this deluxe volume explores how a young filmmaker reinvented American cinema within just ten years. Featuring a fresh perspective on films including Duel, The Sugarland Express, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1941, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, this book is an essential exploration of an iconic filmmaker's early career.

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This book offers an incomparable spectacle, that of an intimate face-to-face with the animal, here treated as a subject in its own right, on an equal footing with man, and it encourages us to take the time to contemplate it, to better question our relationship to the wild world and our place in it. And if the photographer has long since chosen black and white, it is to better play with the incomparable light of Africa, its singular purity that gives the feeling of being in direct contact with the material, without filter. Laurent Baheux's approach is not that of a naturalist or ethology-loving photographer, he does not seek to describe behavior or to unravel the mystery of a sensitive area of the animal that has remained unknown until now. What he finds with African elephants is the feeling of a rediscovered plenitude, of wonder at the world, of a rebirth, of a reconnection with the living. Far from the crowds and the urban world, it is in the heart of African national parks that he experiences the deep meaning of life, and that he offers himself the luxury of slowness, essential when he is 'is about letting the animal approach. The elephant obliges man to humility. We are nothing compared to his power and his intelligence. It is he who decides on the meeting, or, on the contrary, who imposes his distance. We are only "tolerated guests", as Laurent Baheux reminds us. The elephant is not a predator and it is the man who threatens its existence today, competing with it for the control of a territory which is shrinking more and more every day. The pressure of human activities, the demographic growth are the dangers which endanger its survival. As an extension of his militant commitment and his anti-speciesist discourse which seeks to break down the psychological barriers linked to the categorization of animals – wild, farmed, domesticated – according to their degree of utility or their "nuisance" power, Laurent Baheux provides new proof of the need to save elephants and protect their environment, not just because they populate our collective subconscious, from illustrated children's books to the travel stories of early explorers, but because they are closely linked to the balance of our planet and that they refer us, like mirrors, to our own finitude, ineluctable, we who resemble them so much, so strong and so fragile at the same time. "Courage is the reverse, the armed arm of wonder. [...] Where many, cynical or disillusioned have retreated, [Laurent Baheux] has this power to rely on the beauty of things, to believe in it and to be enraged at seeing it mistreated. He has that faith."

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Beautifully drawn collections of similar houses invite young children to explore shapes, colors, and details until they can put their finger on the exact house shown on the previous page. Farmhouse, igloo, skyscraper, teepee, hut, pagoda—there is a house type for everyone! As a bonus, children can play the game with friends to see who will find the house first, play with the book upside-down, or search for the stray object that doesn't belong on each page.

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A primatologist and a humanist together explore the meaning of being a “human animal”Humanness is typically defined by our capacity for language and abstract thinking. Yet decades of research led by the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has shown that chimpanzees and bonobos can acquire human language through signing and technology. Drawing on this research, Dialogues of the Human Ape brings Savage-Rumbaugh into conversation with the philosopher Laurent Dubreuil to explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of what being a “human animal” means. In their use of dialogue as the primary mode of philosophical and scientific inquiry, the authors transcend the rigidity of scientific and humanist discourses, offering a powerful model for the dissemination of speculative hypotheses and open-ended debates grounded in scientific research.Arguing that being human is an epigenetically driven process rather than a fixed characteristic rooted in genetics or culture, this book suggests that while humanness may not be possible in every species, it can emerge in certain supposedly nonhuman species. Moving beyond irrational critiques of ape consciousness that are motivated by arrogant, anthropocentric views, Dialogues on the Human Ape instead takes seriously the continuities between the ape mind and the human mind, addressing why language matters to consciousness, free will, and the formation of the “human animal” self.

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What do the invention of anaesthetics in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Nazis' use of cocaine, and the development of Prozac have in common? The answer is that they're all products of the same logic that defines our contemporary era: 'the age of anaesthesia'. Laurent de Sutter shows how large aspects of our lives are now characterised by the management of our emotions through drugs, ranging from the everyday use of sleeping pills to hard narcotics. Chemistry has become so much a part of us that we can’t even see how much it has changed us. In this era, being a subject doesn't simply mean being subjected to powers that decide our lives: it means that our very emotions have been outsourced to chemical stimulation. Yet we don't understand why the drugs that we take are unable to free us from fatigue and depression, and from the absence of desire that now characterizes our psychopolitical condition. We have forgotten what it means to be excited because our only excitement has become drug-induced. We have to abandon the narcotic stimulation that we’ve come to rely on and find a way back to the collective excitement that is narcocapitalism’s greatest fear.

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What do the invention of anaesthetics in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Nazis' use of cocaine, and the development of Prozac have in common? The answer is that they're all products of the same logic that defines our contemporary era: 'the age of anaesthesia'. Laurent de Sutter shows how large aspects of our lives are now characterised by the management of our emotions through drugs, ranging from the everyday use of sleeping pills to hard narcotics. Chemistry has become so much a part of us that we can’t even see how much it has changed us. In this era, being a subject doesn't simply mean being subjected to powers that decide our lives: it means that our very emotions have been outsourced to chemical stimulation. Yet we don't understand why the drugs that we take are unable to free us from fatigue and depression, and from the absence of desire that now characterizes our psychopolitical condition. We have forgotten what it means to be excited because our only excitement has become drug-induced. We have to abandon the narcotic stimulation that we’ve come to rely on and find a way back to the collective excitement that is narcocapitalism’s greatest fear.

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In 500, the legal order in Europe was structured around ancient customs, social practices and feudal values. By 1500, the effects of demographic change, new methods of farming and economic expansion had transformed the social and political landscape and had wrought radical change upon legal practices and systems throughout Western Europe. A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages explores this change and the rich and varied encounters between Christianity and Roman legal thought which shaped the period. Evolving from a combination of religious norms, local customs, secular legislations, and Roman jurisprudence, medieval law came to define an order that promoted new forms of individual and social representation, fostered the political renewal that heralded the transition from feudalism to the Early Modern state and contributed to the diffusion of a common legal language. Drawing upon a wealth of textual and visual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Middle Ages presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.

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Opened up by the revival of Classical thought but riven by the violence of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, the terrain of Early Modern law was constantly shifting. The age of expansion saw unparalleled degrees of internal and external exploration and colonization, accompanied by the advance of science and the growing power of knowledge. A Cultural History of Law in the Early Modern Age, covering the period from 1500 to 1680, explores the war of jurisdictions and the slow and contested emergence of national legal traditions in continental Europe and in Britannia. Most particularly, the chapters examine the European quality of the Western legal traditions and seek to link the political project of Anglican common law, the mos britannicus, to its classical European language and context. Drawing upon a wealth of textual and visual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Early Modern Age presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.

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Aggregates and assesses Deleuze's claims about law, decision, judgement and related themes for the first time Develops a complete and self-sustaining Deleuzian philosophy of law where others have found only fragmentation Examines and uses various interdisciplinary connections, including law and literature, law and political theory, law and metaphysics, law and history of philosophy, and legal history Critiques several approaches to the question of Deleuze's legal thought Promises to ignite debate and draw attention to the importance of legal theory for other fields, including social and political philosophy Gilles Deleuze has provided the most fascinating account of law of the 20th century. Yet it is hidden in a just a few clues dispersed throughout his work and no complete reconstruction of it has ever been produced before. Laurent de Sutter gathers all the elements that compose Deleuze's philosophy of law and articulates them for the first time in a real system. The result is the most devastating critique of the very idea of law. But it is also surprising, praising the actual practice of jurisprudence. This is not simply a practice of judgment; it is a practice of radical creation and leads to an intriguing question: what if lawyers were the only true revolutionaries of our time?

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Between 1492 and 1820, about two-thirds of the people who crossed the Atlantic to the Americas were Africans. With the exception of the Spanish, all the European empires settled more Africans in the New World than they did Europeans. The vast majority of these enslaved men and women worked on plantations, and their labor was the foundation for the expansion of the Atlantic economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Until relatively recently, comparatively little attention was paid to the perspectives, daily experiences, hopes, and especially the political ideas of the enslaved who played such a central role in the making of the Atlantic world. Over the past decades, however, huge strides have been made in the study of the history of slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic world. This collection brings together some of the key contributions to this growing body of scholarship, showing a range of methodological approaches, that can be used to understand and reconstruct the lives of these enslaved people.

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Subtexts are all around us. In conversation, business transactions, politics, literature, philosophy, and even love, the art of expressing more than what is explicitly said allows us to live and move in the world. But rarely do we reflect on this subterranean dimension of communication.In this book, renowned classicist and scholar of rhetoric Laurent Pernot explores the fascinating world of subtext. Of the two meanings present in any instance of double meaning, Pernot focuses on the meaning that is unstated—the meaning that counts. He analyzes subtext in all its multifarious forms, including allusion, allegory, insinuation, figured speech, irony, innuendo, esoteric teaching, reading between the lines, ambiguity, and beyond. Drawing on examples from figures as varied as Homer, Shakespeare, Molière, Proust, Foucault, and others, as well as from popular culture, Pernot shows how subtext can be identified and deciphered as well as how prevalent and essential it is in human life.With erudition and wit, Pernot explains and clarifies a device of language that we use and understand every day without even realizing it. The Subtle Subtext is a book for anyone who is interested in language, literature, hidden meanings, and the finer points of social relations.

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Law is the most sacred fetish of our time. From radicals to conservatives, there is no militant, activist or thinker who would consider doing without it. But the history of our fascination with law is long and complex, and reaches deeper into our culture than we might think. In After Law, Laurent de Sutter takes us on a journey to uncover the sources of our fascination. He shows that at a certain moment in our history a choice was made to treat law as a decisive feature of civilization, but this choice was neither obvious nor necessary. Other political, social, religious or cultural possibilities could have been chosen instead – from ancient Egypt to Mesopotamia, from medieval Japan to China, from Islam to Judaism, other cultures have devised sophisticated tools to help people live together without having to deal with norms, rules and principles. This is a lesson worth reflecting on, especially at a time when the rule of law and the functioning of justice are increasingly showing their sinister side – and their impotence. Is there life beyond law?

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