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Topic Review
Urban Futures Lab
Fonded in 2018 by Dr. Steffen Lehmann, the interdisciplinary  Urban Futures Lab is a collaboration between three units at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas: UNLV School of ArchitectureUNLV Howard R. Hughes College of EngineeringUNLV Greenspun College of Urban AffairsThe Urban Futures Lab (UFLab) has partners from industry and government contributing to the following research program.
  • 1.0K
  • 12 Apr 2021
Topic Review
Rock Art
The term ‘rock art’ defines non-utilitarian humanly made markings on natural rock surfaces, caused either by an additive (pictograms, made by the application of material) or a reductive process (petroglyphs, made by the removal of rock material). The former include rock paintings, pigment drawings, stencils, and beeswax figures; the latter term covers engravings, percussion petroglyphs, and finger flutings. Rock art occurs in nearly all countries. Its uneven distribution is attributable to differences in cultural conventions as well as a taphonomic attribute, i.e. a result of preservation bias. Prehistoric rock art represents by far the largest body of evidence we possess of humanity’s cultural, cognitive, and artistic beginnings. Through its relative permanence, it has profoundly influenced the beliefs and cultural conventions of subsequent societies up to the present. It is, therefore, an integral part of humanity's collective memory and the most significant surviving witness of our cultural evolution. 
  • 3.7K
  • 07 Apr 2021
Topic Review
MDPI English Writing Prize 2020
The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks. The winners of the 2020 MDPI Writing Prize about the theme “My work and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals” are posted on Encyclopedia. In this competition, we received many excellent submissions from entrants who shared their inspirational and thought-provoking work.
  • 1.4K
  • 01 Mar 2021
Topic Review
Water-Driven Music
Water-driven music technology has been one of the primary sources of human leisure from prehistoric times up until the present. Water powered, along with air pressure organs, have been used throughout history. One of them was an organ of fountains located inside a formal garden. 
  • 2.1K
  • 22 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Holography and Its Potential
In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes discusses the capacity of the photographic image to represent “flat death.” Documentation of an event, happening, or time is traditionally reliant on the photographic to determine its ephemeral existence and to secure its legacy within history. The event is date and time stamped by the photographic document, which stands as proof of its taking place. However, this type of document is often unsuitable to capture the real essence and experience of the artwork in situ. The depth and varied nuances of the event go largely unrepresented in this type of record. The two-dimensional photographic document resigns the embodied and three-dimensional experience to a flat death. The hologram, with its spatial and three-dimensional realization of an image, offers a potential solution to this problem. In providing a view of the dexterity and depth of an inert object or human body, it creates a more comprehensive photographic document as an act of legacy. Although this cannot fully account or attest to the experience (as that can only occur through active and present observation), the three-dimensional representation within the hologram allows for greater understanding of ‘being there’ at the time of its happening. The hologram therefore can be suggested to be a more suitable means of documentation for the active and first-hand art experience. However, there are issues concerning how this type of photographic document functions within an art context. Appropriateness and suitability is as open for debate with the hologram as with its two-dimensional counterpart, concerning how it successfully operates as a document. Attitudes to methods necessary for artistic production and holography’s place within the art process can be responsible for this problem. The seductive qualities of holography may be attributable to any failure that ensues, but if used precisely the process can be effective to create a document within an art context. The failures and successes of the hologram to be reliable as a document of experience are discussed in this article, together with a suggestion of how it might undergo a transformation and reactivation. When situated as an integral component within a new artwork the hologram exists both as a document of the past and an experience in the present, and the article will offer an example of how this can occur.
  • 799
  • 03 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Historic Garden Management
Historic garden management seeks to direct the evolution of complex cultural and natural heritage sites towards best meeting the needs of their owners, visitors and community. This entails balancing the conservation of these delicate socio-ecological systems with  accessibility to the many environmental, economic and socio-cultural benefits that they provide. Thus, historic garden management must be operational, continual and sustainable; it involves multiple stakeholders, and most of all, must be adaptive. That is why it is especially useful to conceive of historic garden management as a cyclical process that loops through a strategic phase, an operational phase and an assessment phase. In order to understand the many facets and challenges of historic garden management, a systematic review was carried out on international academic literature addressing this topic, with special attention regarding the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. Academic studies on this subject come from many different disciplines, making it both stimulating and fragmented. This review seeks to consolidate these interdisciplinary efforts into a clear vision, including a framework of key themes and research methods. An analysis of the reviewed literature shows that research has focused on describing the gardens themselves, with few studies interested in the people sustaining them. Future research should follow recent policy documents’ lead and pay more attention to community value and involvement. 
  • 1.5K
  • 27 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Sense of Belonging
A sense of belonging is a conjunctive interchange between the interests and the influences that guide our relationship to place. A sense of belonging is also its result: it is the formation of identity and of personhood, through participating in the production of place. To belong is a need of those experiencing place, but we can understand a sense of belonging as developed through the need to become part of the place through associative elements of kinship: responsibility to care for and strengthen place and the ability to subsist through place.
  • 1.3K
  • 20 Jan 2021
Topic Review
The EU's Green Deal
In December 2019, the European Union introduced its Green Deal in which the ecological crisis is prioritized. In doing so, the EU seems to be breaking with its traditional green growth discourse. Does it? In this article, we seek to find out whether and to what extent the EC indeed has such a revolutionary cultural, economic and political agenda in mind with its Green Deal. While the green growth discourse presumes a growth-based economy that must become greener, the degrowth discourse questions the growth model and perceives it as ecologically irresponsible. If the European Green Deal represents a third alternative, then it will somehow succeed in prioritizing ecology without welfare loss. To ascertain to what extent the European Green Deal is that third alternative, three preliminary steps need to be undertaken. The first step consists in a brief exposition of the key features of the traditional green growth discourse, as propounded by the EC and its various allies. Thereafter, the overlaps between the green growth discourse and the European Green Deal are noted. In the third section, the latter’s divergences from that previous model are highlighted. In the final section, the main question of the article is answered. It is also suggested that specific interpretations and implementations of the European Green Deal could possibly turn the original communication into an alternative to both green growth and degrowth.
  • 581
  • 20 Jan 2021
Topic Review
The Sexual Abuse Crisis
The sexual abuse crisis that has rocked the Catholic Church in recent decades has resulted in one major unintended casualty: creating a skeptical distance in the relationship between adult leaders and youth. 
  • 652
  • 15 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Aerogel-Based Plasters
Aerogel has entered the construction field in the last two decades as a component of many insulation products, due to its high thermal performance. Aerogel-based plasters allow the matching of high thermal performance and limited thickness. This makes them suitable when retrofitting an existing building and also when restoring a heritage building. This entry presents the state of the art of the research on aerogel-based plasters as a part of the aerogel-products for the building sector.
  • 1.9K
  • 08 Dec 2020
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