Traffic signs, which are extremely important for traffic safety, aims to regulate traffic by providing information about the characteristics of road and road environment for drivers. The success of traffic signs mainly rely on the easy comprehensibility of its meaning in a short time. Further more, today&rsquo / s global economies and transportation systems emphasize the need for more universial traffic signs which was the main motivation of two main treaties on traffic signs / Vienna Convetion in 1968 and European Aggreement Treaty in 1971, which are signed and followed by Turkey. For an effort to increase traffic safety, a Subcommittee of the Turkish Highway Traffic Safety (THTS) Council requested the determination of comprehensibility of critical signs with higher probability of impact on traffic safety selected by a group of experts from engineers and law enforcement agencies in a survey study. The survey questionnaire included 30 selected traffic signs (including two prohibition signs omitting oblique bar recently changed as a part of the European Union Participation Process) and 9 control group signs, a total of 39 traffic signs, and driver characteristic questions, such as gender, age, educational background, etc. to reveal insights about a) the level of comprehensibility of different groups of traffic signs and and b) driver characteristics that may affect the comprehensibility of these signs. A pilot study in the city of Ankara is conducted over a sample of 1,478 surveys. Answers for the meaning of each sign are coded using a scale of five (opposite, wrong, no comment, partially correct and correct responses). The results showed that the control group signs have very high comprehensibility as expected, while some of the critical signs were not known much, or mistaken for others, even mistaken for opposite meanings. The certain loss of comprehensibility of the traffic signs changed recently is seen in the comparative analysis of the signs before and after the change, as well as significant shift towards an opposite meaning. The significance of driver characteristics (gender, education, occupation etc.) affecting the comprehensibility of the traffic signs varies among traffic signs and characteristics. As the result of this study, (THTS) Council decided to support traffic and driver education more and mass promotion of mis- or un-comprehended signs without searching for more local solutions or versions.

This thesis focuses on the architectural production of Red Vienna in 1920s to examine the bourgeois conception of social housing program in a governmental socialist understanding of housing. Having a structural transformation through the First World War, Vienna became the enclave of Socialist Democrat Party and thereafter underwent radical housing and cultural transformative programs. Within these programs, it was intended to give the working-class the accurate social position by means of provided accessibility to their own private and public spheres. Among a wide range of housing examples built during the governance of the party, Karl Marx Hof, one of the largest projects, has been chosen to examine the reflections of bourgeois conception of culture. Based on the contradictory discourse and practices in political, architectural and cultural realms, the aim of the research is to redefine the privacy of the dwellings and the public qualities of the common spaces and thereafter to situate the proletarian housing in relation to bourgeois spatial values within the history of domestic space in Vienna.

To wield direct influence on the everyday lives of citizens, new political elites have often professed a profound interest in shaping the politics of dwelling. In the 1920s, Vienna’s Social Democrats built 400 communal housing blocks equipped with public gardens, theaters, libraries, kindergartens, and sports facilities, hoping that these facilities would serve as loci for “growing into socialism”. In the 1950s, housing construction in Berlin became a site of the Cold War. East Berlin’s social realist “workers palaces” on Stalinallee were meant to serve as an ideal flourishing ground for the “new socialist men and women”. In contrast, West Berlin's modernist Hansa-Viertel was designed to showcase an ideal dwelling culture and an urban environment that would cultivate individuality. This dissertation examines three historically situated and ideologically distinct responses to the housing question: social democracy in Red Vienna, state socialism in East Berlin, and liberal capitalism in West Berlin. It illuminates how political promises of a radical new beginning were translated into spatial arrangements—the private scale of the apartment and the urban scale of the city—as well as how citizens appropriated the social, political, and economic norms inherent to the new spaces they inhabited. More specifically, the following analyses demonstrate the fact that inherited social, technological, and economic practices have often subverted political visions of a radically different future. This was the case with pedagogy in Red Vienna’s municipal housing, instrumental reason in the form of Taylorism and Fordism in East and West Berlin’s mass housing, and gender relations in Red Vienna’s and East Berlin’s politics of dwelling. At the same time, this dissertation examines counter-spaces that emerged from the dialectics between political promises and actual socio-spatial realities, counter-spaces that both reflect critically on past hegemonic “politics of dwelling” and that foreshadow alternative political imaginations that are still relevant today. Of particular interest are counter-hegemonic practices of dwelling that embody possibilities of emancipation—of experiencing oneself as subject instead of object of social transformation, justice—of emphasizing considerations of equality and recognition, and radical democracy—of questioning power relations and of forming alliances among disadvantaged groups to transform everyday life.

No description available.

To wield direct influence on the everyday lives of citizens, new political elites have often professed a profound interest in shaping the politics of dwelling. In the 1920s, Vienna’s Social Democrats built 400 communal housing blocks equipped with public gardens, theaters, libraries, kindergartens, and sports facilities, hoping that these facilities would serve as loci for “growing into socialism”. In the 1950s, housing construction in Berlin became a site of the Cold War. East Berlin’s social realist “workers palaces” on Stalinallee were meant to serve as an ideal flourishing ground for the “new socialist men and women”. In contrast, West Berlin's modernist Hansa-Viertel was designed to showcase an ideal dwelling culture and an urban environment that would cultivate individuality. This dissertation examines three historically situated and ideologically distinct responses to the housing question: social democracy in Red Vienna, state socialism in East Berlin, and liberal capitalism in West Berlin. It illuminates how political promises of a radical new beginning were translated into spatial arrangements—the private scale of the apartment and the urban scale of the city—as well as how citizens appropriated the social, political, and economic norms inherent to the new spaces they inhabited. More specifically, the following analyses demonstrate the fact that inherited social, technological, and economic practices have often subverted political visions of a radically different future. This was the case with pedagogy in Red Vienna’s municipal housing, instrumental reason in the form of Taylorism and Fordism in East and West Berlin’s mass housing, and gender relations in Red Vienna’s and East Berlin’s politics of dwelling. At the same time, this dissertation examines counter-spaces that emerged from the dialectics between political promises and actual socio-spatial realities, counter-spaces that both reflect critically on past hegemonic “politics of dwelling” and that foreshadow alternative political imaginations that are still relevant today. Of particular interest are counter-hegemonic practices of dwelling that embody possibilities of emancipation—of experiencing oneself as subject instead of object of social transformation, justice—of emphasizing considerations of equality and recognition, and radical democracy—of questioning power relations and of forming alliances among disadvantaged groups to transform everyday life.

This study examines the relativistic aspects of Arnold Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic theories in the light of a framework of ideas presented in the early writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the logician, philosopher of language, and Schoenberg's contemporary and Austrian compatriot. The author has identified correspondences between the writings of Schoenberg, the early Wittgenstein (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in particular), and the Vienna Circle of philosophers, on a wide range of topics and themes. Issues discussed include the nature and limits of language, musical universals, theoretical conventionalism, word-to-world correspondence in language, the need for a fact- and comparison-based approach to art criticism, and the nature of music-theoretical formalism and mathematical modeling. Schoenberg and Wittgenstein are shown to have shared a vision that is remarkable for its uniformity and balance, one that points toward the reconciliation of the positivist-relativist dualism that has dominated recent discourse in music theory. Contrary to earlier accounts of Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic relativism, this study identifies a solid epistemological core underlying his thought, a view that was very much in step with Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, and thereby with the most vigorous and forward-looking stream in early twentieth century intellectual history.

Thesis (doctoral)--Technische Universität, Berlin, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 385-396).

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:23:37Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2010-12-06Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:50:33Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 hernandez_mc_me_mar.pdf: 1771466 bytes, checksum: 865effd50f4585a200abd045f2f6ed6a (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a II Conferência Mundial para os Direitos Humanos da ONU (1993), conhecida como Conferência de Viena, e averiguar sua importância no sistema internacional pós-Guerra Fria. Por meio do estabelecimento de duas hipóteses articuladas, argumenta-se em favor de que o espaço da Conferência e seus debates tiveram grande influência nos processos articulados de disseminação global da temática dos direitos humanos e de flexibilização da soberania. A fim de verificar as referidas hipóteses, analisa-se a complexa e transversal relação entre as concepções de direitos humanos – encarados como jurídico-morais – e a noção de soberania, à luz de sua natureza jurídico-política. Além disso, como meio de verificação das hipóteses, o trabalho reconstitui o processo histórico de internacionalização dos direitos humanos durante a Guerra Fria, assim como no imediato pós- Guerra Fria, cenário da Conferência. A Conferência é analisada em seus diversos aspectos: preparatórios e organizacionais, históricos, políticos e jurídicos. A formação dos consensos e dos dissensos durante o evento é discutida a partir do processo de elaboração da Declaração e Programa de Ação de Viena, com destaque para o posicionamento dos EUA. A dimensão implicativa da Conferência é explorada pelo estudo do fortalecimento – pós-1993 – do direito de petição individual no Sistema Interamericano de Direitos Humanos, haja vista sua inserção no movimento de ascensão do indivíduo como sujeito internacional de direitos, tendência esta altamente vinculada aos processos enunciados pelas hipóteses / This work aims to assess the II UN World Conference on Human Rights (1993), known as Vienna Conference, in order to check its relevance in the post-Cold War international system. By means of establishing two articulated hypotheses, it is argued, on behalf of the arena of the Conference and its debates, that they had major influence on the global articulated processes for dissemination of the human rights theme as well as of flexing of sovereignty. In order to check the aforementioned hypotheses, one shall analyze the complex and transversal relation between the conceptions of human rights – approached as juridical-moral – and the notion of sovereignty, under the light of its juridical-political nature. Besides that, as a mean of verification of hypotheses, the work reconstitutes the historical process of internationalization of human rights during the Cold War, as well as in the immediate post-Cold War period, scenario of the Conference. The conference is approached in its diverse aspects: preparatory and organizational, historical, politic and juridical. The formation of the consensus and dissensus during the event is argued over under the light of the process of elaboration of the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, highlighting the stand taken by the USA. The implicative dimension of the Conference is explored by the study of strengthening – after 1993 – of the right of individual petition within the Inter-American System of Human Rights, for its insertion in the movement of rising of the individual as an international subject of rights, a tendency highly linked to the processes listed by the hypotheses

Malgré sa condamnation post-positiviste et sa réception négative par la gauche, l’empirisme logique regagne en intérêt. Cette thèse est une contribution à la littérature émergente du «Cercle de Vienne de gauche» (CVG). Autour de Neurath et quelques autres personnalités de l’aile gauche du Cercle (Carnap, Frank, Hahn, Zilsel), nous proposons de repenser la relation de l’empirisme logique avec le marxisme. Ces deux courants se rejoignent dans leur défense d’une «conception scientifique du monde» et leur sécularisme radical. Les critiques communistes et néo-marxistes (l’École de Francfort, l’épistémologie féministe) adressées à l’empirisme logique sont recensées et leur pertinence questionnée à travers les données de l’historiographie du CVG. La politique de l’empirisme logique est examinée à travers les textes économiques de Neurath et son œuvre d’infographiste. Son engagement pour l’économie socialiste planifiée et ses efforts en graphisme pour la popularisation des méthodes quantitatives (la méthode Isotype pour la visualisation des statistiques sociales) sont présentés en vue d’une évaluation politique du CVG, ainsi que les connexions de l’empirisme logique avec le mouvement pour une langue auxiliaire internationale. / Despite logical empiricism’s dismissal by ambient postpositivism in academia as well as by the Far Left, a growing interest in its previously unknown socialist origins has resulted in a new topic in the history of philosophy of science : «Left Vienna Circle» (LVC). This thesis dedicated to LVC studies aims to clarify the politics of European logical empiricism. A presentation of its major critics from the Left (from communist parties to neo-Marxist trends like Frankfurt School and feminist epistemology) is followed by more recent arguments about its socialist politics. The «scientific world conceptions» of logical empiricism and Marxism will be compared through the work of Neurath and some other representatives of LVC (Carnap, Frank, Zilsel, Hahn). Alongside the connections of logical empiricism to the movement for an international auxiliary language, Neurath’s economical writings and his efforts to popularize quantitative methods in social sciences (the Isotype method of visual statistics) will be presented in an attempt to evaluate the politics of logical empiricism.

In the case of LaGrand (Germany v United States), the International Court of Justice held that the United States (US) had violated its international obligation to Germany under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations when it executed two German nationals without first informing them of their consular rights. The case came before the court after the United States had disregarded a preliminary ruling passed by the IC], which directed the US not to execute the German nationals pending the outcome of the ICJ case. The decision raised the issue of the effect of ICJ decisions in domestic proceedings and the effectiveness of ICJ enforcement mechanisms. This thesis considers the possibility of a role for national courts as active enforcers of ICJ decisions. It is argued that whilst evidence shows that there is no legal obligation on courts to enforce ICJ decisions, there is certainly room in international law to facilitate this development. In support of this argument, the thesis demonstrates how basic presuppositions about international law have shifted over the last few decades. This shift has been both the impetus and the result of globalisation. The case of LaGrand alongside similar cases is used to show how national courts may play an increased role in the enforcement of ICJ decisions.