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Drawing upon Alfred Sohn-Rethel's work, we argue that, just as capitalism produces abstract labor, it coproduces both abstract mind and abstract life. Abstract mind is the split between mind and nature and between subject/observer and observed object that characterizes scientific epistemology. Abstract mind reflects an abstracted objectified world of nature as a means to be exploited. Biological life is rendered as abstract life by capitalist exploitation and by the reification and technologization of organisms by contemporary technoscience. What Alberto Toscano has called “the culture of abstraction” imposes market rationality onto nature and the living world, disrupting biotic communities and transforming organisms into what Finn Bowring calls “functional bio-machines.”

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the numerical aspects of the electromagnetic scattering of a plane wave by a set of buried cylinders.

The cylindrical wave approach is employed. The analytical model is implemented in a Fortran code. The numerical aspects of the technique are presented, with particular emphasis on the numerical evaluation of the integrals involved in the procedure.

The tool obtained allows a fast computation of the electromagnetic field scattered by an arbitrary disposition of circular cylinders below an interface. Comparisons with the finite element method are proposed, showing the very good agreement between the results obtained with the two different approaches.

The advantages of the proposed technique in terms of computational weight are explained. The method can be useful in a wide class of application, e.g. in the ground penetrating radar applications, microscopy, biomedical applications, etc.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of electromagnetic band‐gap (EBG) materials in the enhancement of antennas' directivity.

An analysis of a woodpile EBG material is performed, which points out its band properties. Woodpile cavities are then considered, obtained by interrupting the periodicity of the crystal. A woodpile cavity is then superimposed to a double‐slot antenna, resulting in a compound radiating device. The behavior of the EBG and of the radiating structure are simulated through Ansoft HFSS V11.

The woodpile EBG, when used as a cavity, acts as a spatial filter for the radiation coming from the antenna. The directivity of the new radiator is considerably increased, since now the illumination covers an area larger than the antenna.

Using new materials to obtain high‐directivity and compact radiators.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of the characteristics, content, procedures, processes, and outcomes of effective educator preparation programs for teachers of students with behavioral disorders (BD). We emphasize the need for teachers of students with BD to be fluent with the identification and application of evidence-based practices and discuss how teacher preparation programs best prepare these teachers for the challenges they will face in the classroom. The chapter includes an evaluation checklist for programs preparing educators to teach students with BD; this checklist lists critical competencies, content, and practices (e.g., implementation fidelity, collaboration, classroom management) that should be part of the training for all teachers of students with BD. In addition, we discuss future directions for the field and suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of teacher preparation programs that prepare teachers of students with BD.

This research investigates the means of tacit knowledge (TK) communication between the designer and the computer in architectural design. Despite the integration of state-of-the-art computational technologies in different design phases, this integration happens within a limited scope, focusing mainly on tangible aspects of the design process, such as technical systems and visual representations. This lets architectural design miss the wider scope technology provides, where it can help in developing the computational design process through incorporating new intangible knowledge domains that were usually neglected, such as tacit knowledge, and through incorporating more design entities that were not included in the design process before.

The study conducts an interdisciplinary analytical review of the literature to achieve two main research goals. The first goal investigates TK communication between human beings and the second understands approaches of TK communication between humans and computers. For each goal, three phases were implemented; an initial research phase, where main keywords are identified, a sampling and selection of literature phase and an analysis of literature phase.

Through interlinking findings from different disciplines, the study presents a theoretical framework for TK communication. The framework provides architects with an approach to construct and transfer TK while using the computer in a computational design environment, presenting an individual and a social set of conditions and factors revealed from the review of the analyzed literature. The framework particularly emphasizes the significance of a human–computer symbiotic relationship for the process of TK communication to take place.

This paper presents a novel interdisciplinary reading into the literature of fields beyond architectural design, incorporating intangible knowledge domains into the computational design process and expanding the capabilities of computational design tools to allow for the transfer of intangible design attributes between different design entities, particularly tacit design knowledge.

School-wide positive behavior support (PBS) is a systems approach to prevention and intervention involving multiple levels of support. At the universal level (all students), prevention of behavior problems involves four very basic steps that are repeated with smaller numbers of students and greater intensity as directed by data. The first step is the prediction of problems or failures. To the extent to which we can predict a problem by time, location, student, and other contexts, we have the information to prevent. Prediction leads directly into the second step, which involves the development of effective prevention practices. The key to effective prevention is to approach all problems from an instructional perspective by considering what needs to be taught and how the environment can be arranged to increase the probability of success. The third step involves creating consistency with prevention efforts. Instructional efforts that are inconsistent are not effective in teaching new behavior. The last step involves development of the simplest way of monitoring performance so that those students who are not responding (i.e., are falling through the screen) may be quickly identified. This chapter describes the key features of effective universal systems as they are specifically related to the prevention of behavior problems and provides an overview of how such systems are developed, implemented, and sustained.

The concept of institution has been used by scholars from across a number of disciplines to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, the philosophical roots of this concept have not been well examined, nor have implications for contemporary institutional analysis been fully appreciated. Returning to the works of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty reveals a depth of thinking that has otherwise been overlooked by institutional theorists. In particular, the author’s analysis reveals two critical insights. First, whereas organizational scholars have closely linked the concepts of institution and taken-for-grantedness, these two concepts were originally understood to be phenomenologically distinct. Second, a detailed examination of Merleau-Ponty’s later work poses the concept of flesh – the twining of the visible and the invisible – as the basis for the interplay of institutions. In turn, the idea of flesh as the foundation of institution invites a more radical reimagining of the growing bifurcation between microfoundations and macrofoundations.

Based on a critique of reductive understandings of physicality, this chapter explores the significance of embodied materiality, the artefactual physical, the role of the living body and embodiment in relation to ‘intra and inter’ practices of leadership from a phenomenological perspective. Using a phenomenological and cross-disciplinary approach, issues of an embodied physicality in leadership are systematically explored and implications discussed beyond physicalist empiricism and meta-physical idealism. Furthermore, the chosen phenomenological approach reveals problematising limitations of naturalist and constructionist approaches.

Following Merleau-Ponty an extended understanding of physicality as well as the significance of the co-constitutive role of embodiment, inter-corporeality and intra-action in and of leadership practices in organisational life-worlds are identified and discussed. Insights into the role of corporeal materio-socio phenomena and expressions of meaningful practices of leading and following are rendered. The chapter concludes by noting limitations and implications of embodied physicality and physical inter-becoming of ‘bodiment’ for a more integral and sustainable conception of leader-and followership in organisations. Through its specific post-dualistic approach the chapter provides an innovative perspective on the interrelations between living, material, bodily and embodied dimensions of physicality in leadership.

The purpose of the present study is to use an amino-functional polysiloxane for the surface modification of red iron oxide (Fe₂O₃) pigment particles for their improved dispersion stability and hydrophobicity and to study the chemical interactions of polysiloxanes with the particle surface.

Surface-treated red Fe₂O₃ pigment particles were prepared by treatment of the particles with different quantities of the (aminopropylmethylsiloxane)-dimethylsiloxane copolymer in concentrated suspensions in water. The samples were analysed with different instrumental and spectroscopic techniques to study the interaction of the polysiloxane with the particle surface and the effect of the surface treatment of the particles on their dispersion stability and hydrophobicity.

Chemisorption of the amino-polysiloxane onto the surface of Fe₂O₃ particles resulted in stable layers which turned out to be helpful in improving greatly the dispersion stability of the particles as shown by the Static Light Scattering and Dynamic Light Scattering results. Formation of a polysiloxane coating onto the surface of the pigment particles was confirmed by studying the interactions of the polymer molecules with Fe₂O₃ surfaces by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy techniques.

The surface-treated red Fe₂O₃ particles with improved dispersion stability can be important components of various formulations in applications such as the colouring of the cement or inorganic pigment-based paint formulations.

The study provides mechanistic insights about the interactions of amino-polysiloxane with the red Fe₂O₃ particles. The process of surface modification of red Fe₂O₃ particles with the amino-functional polysiloxane showed increased hydrophobicity and dispersion stability which is an important requirement of the pigment-based formulations in real applications.