In this comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume, former NASA Chief Historian Steven Dick reflects on the exploration of space, astrobiology and its implications, cosmic evolution, astronomical institutions, discovering and classifying the cosmos, and the philosophy of astronomy. The unifying theme of the book is the connection between cosmos and culture, or what Carl Sagan many years ago called the "cosmic connection." As both an astronomer and historian of science, Dr. Dick has been both a witness to and a participant in many of the astronomical events of the last half century. This collection of papers presents his reflections over the last forty years in a way accessible to historians, philosophers, and scientists alike. From the search for alien life to ongoing space exploration efforts, readers will find this volume full of engaging topics relevant to science, society, and our collective future on planet Earth and beyond.

This book gathers the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of energy, environmental and construction engineering, as presented by international researchers and engineers at the International Scientific Conference Energy, Environmental and Construction Engineering, held in St. Petersburg, Russia on November 19-20, 2019. It covers highly diverse topics, including BIM; bridges, roads and tunnels; building materials; energy efficient and green buildings; structural mechanics; fluid mechanics; measuring technologies; environmental management; power consumption management; renewable energy; smart cities; and waste management. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, highlight numerous exciting ideas that will spur novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaborations.

This book focuses on recent advances in our understanding of wild edible mycorrhizal fungi, truffle and mushrooms and their cultivation. In addition to providing fresh insights into various topics, e.g. taxonomy, ecology, cultivation and environmental impact, it also demonstrates the clear but fragile link between wild edible mushrooms and human societies. Comprising 17 chapters written by 41 experts from 13 countries on four continents, it enables readers to grasp the importance of protecting this unique, invaluable, renewable resource in the context of climate change and unprecedented biodiversity loss. The book inspires professionals and encourages young researchers to enter this field to develop the sustainable use of wild edible mushrooms using modern tools and approaches. It also highlights the importance of protecting forested environments, saving species from extinction and generating a significant income for local populations, while keeping alive and renewing the link between humans and wild edible mushrooms so that in the future, the sustainable farming and use of edible mycorrhizal mushrooms will play a predominant role in the management and preservation of forested lands.

As we begin the third decade of the twenty-first century, women have entered the workplace in unprecedented numbers, are now outperforming men in terms of educational qualifications, and are excelling across a range of professional fields. Yet men continue to occupy the positions of real power in large corporations. This book draws on unique, unprecedented access to Chairs of FTSE 350 Chairs, boardroom aspirants and executive head-hunters, to explain why this is the case. The analysis it presents establishes that the relative absence of women in boardroom roles is not explained by their lack of relevant skills, experience or ambition, but instead by their exclusion from the powerful male-dominated networks of key organisational decision-makers. It is from within these networks that candidates are sourced, endorsed, sponsored, and championed. Yet women's efforts to penetrate these networks are instead likely to trap them into network relationships that will be of little value in helping them to fulfil their career aspirations. The analysis also identifies why women struggle to gain access to these networks, and in doing so, it demonstrates that the network trap in which women find themselves will not be overcome simply by encouraging them to change their networking behaviours. Instead, there is a need for a fundamental reconsideration of how boardroom recruitment and selection is conducted and regulated, to ensure the development of a more open, transparent and equitable process.

This book explores the impact of eLearning on the quality of teaching in higher education, focusing on three main issues: university teachers' perception of quality teaching, their strategies for achieving quality teaching in practice, and interventions that design and implement online collaborative activities in a large class. The book argues that if eLearning targets the real problems in practice and is appropriately designed and implemented, it can improve the teaching quality at universities. It also demonstrates the complexity of teachers' perception of quality teaching and contextual factors that affect teaching practice and quality. Further, it explores university teachers' perception of quality teaching in Italy, the UK and China - an aspect that is rarely addressed in the literature - and reveals why the impact of ICTs on university teaching is not as great as in other fields by explaining the issues that threaten the quality of day-to-day teaching. Lastly, it confirms that traditional lecturing, combined with online collaborative activities, improves the quality of teaching compared to traditional lecturing alone. As such, this book is a necessary and important resource for the research community.

What is this thing called literature? What is the point of studying literature? How do I study literature?

Relating literature to timeless topics such as dreams, politics, life, death, the ordinary and the crazy, this beautifully written book establishes a sense of why and how literature is an exciting and rewarding subject to study. Bennett and Royle delicately weave an essential love of literature into an account of what literary texts do, how they work and what sort of questions and ideas they provoke.

The book s three parts reflect the key components of studying literature: reading, thinking and writing. Part One comprises short chapters on reading a poem, reading a novel, reading a story, and reading a play. Part Two considers what thinking is, especially in relation to critical thinking and thinking about literature. Part three includes practical chapters on writing an essay, creative writing, and writing fiction. The authors use helpful, familiar examples throughout and offer brief reflections on questions such as 'What is literature?', on 'English' as a war zone, on crisis management and literary criticism, on dictionaries and on what the authors call creative reading

Bennett and Royle s lucid and friendly style engages and encourages personal experience of this thing called literature."

This book draws together the perceptions and experiences from a range of international professionals with specific reference to food education. It presents a variety of teaching, learning and curriculum design approaches relating to food across primary, secondary and vocational school education, undergraduate initial teacher education programs, and in-service professional development support contexts. Contributions from authors of a variety of background and countries offer insight into some of the diverse issues in food education internationally, lessons to be learned from successes and failures, including action points for the future. The book will be both scholarly and useful to teachers in primary and secondary schools.

This books documents the salient characters of the tectonic evolution of the Indian subcontinent. It showcases the well investigated subcontinent of Gondwana. The book is linked to an updated geological and tectonic map of this region on 1:12,000,000 in scale. The Indian subcontinent displays almost uninterrupted and unique the geological history since about Eo-Archean (~3800 Ma) to recent, with the development of many Proterozoic deformed and metamorphosed fold belts around Archean nuclei, and enormously thick undeformed platform deposits. After their stabilization during late Proterozoic, the subcontinent underwent Paleozoic rifting and deposition of coal-bearing thick sequences, followed by enormously-thick outpouring of Deccan volcanics as a consequence of huge mantle plume. The youngest event in its evolution is the Cenozoic Himalayan Orogenic Mountains, spanning the area between Nanga Parbat and Namcha Barwah; a part of which extends both in Pakistan and Myanmar.

This edited collection analyses the reception of a selection of key thinkers, and the dissemination of paradigms, theories and controversies across the social sciences and humanities since 1945. It draws on data collected from textbooks, curricula, interviews, archives, and references in scientific journals, from a broad range of countries and disciplines to provide an international and comparative perspective that will shed fresh light on the circulation of ideas in the social and human sciences. The contributions cover high-profile disputes on methodology, epistemology, and research practices, and the international reception of theorists that have abiding and interdisciplinary relevance, such as: Antonio Gramsci, Hannah Arendt, Karl Polanyi, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak. This important work will be a valuable resource to scholars of the history of ideas and the philosophy of the social sciences; in addition to researchers in the fields of social, cultural and literary theory.

This book presents selected papers from the 3rd International Conference on Micro-Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, held at SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Ghaziabad, India, on 30-31 August 2019. It covers a wide variety of topics in micro-electronics and telecommunication engineering, including micro-electronic engineering, computational remote sensing, computer science and intelligent systems, signal and image processing, and information and communication technology.

This book evaluates Bangladesh's impressive economic and social progress, more often referred to as a 'development surprise'. In doing so, the book examines the gap in existing explanations of Bangladesh's development and then offers an empirically informed analysis of a range of distinctive factors, policies, and actions that have individually and collectively contributed to the progress of Bangladesh. In an inclusive way, the book covers the developmental role, relation, and impact of poverty reduction, access to finance, progress in education and social empowerment, reduction in the climatic vulnerability, and evolving sectoral growth activities in the agriculture, garments, and light industries. It also takes into account the important role of the government and NGOs in the development process, identifies bottlenecks and challenges to Bangladesh's future development path and suggests measures to overcome them. By providing an inclusive narrative to theorize Bangladesh's development, which is still missing in the public discourse, this book posits that Bangladesh per se can offer a development model to other developing countries.

This book is a collection of selected research papers presented at the International Conference on Innovations in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (ICIEEE 2019), which was organized by the Guru Nanak Institutions, Ibrahimpatnam, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, on July 26-27, 2019. The book highlights the latest developments in electrical and electronics engineering, especially in the areas of power systems, power electronics, control systems, electrical machinery, and renewable energy. The solutions discussed here will encourage and inspire researchers, industry professionals, and policymakers to put these methods into practice.

This book examines the major economic challenges associated with the sustainability of public pensions, specifically demographic change, labor-market relations, and risk sharing. The issue of public pensions occupies the political and economic agendas of many major governments in the world. International organizations such as the World Bank and the OECD warn that the economic changes driven by an aging society negatively affects the sustainability of pension systems. This book analyzes different global public pension systems to offer policies, methods and tools for sustainable public pensions. Real case studies from France, Sweden, Latin America, Algeria, USA and Mexico are featured.

This book explores how and why an event is a precursor to the emergence of a crisis and how a given crisis affects an organization and its stakeholders. Using existing systems theory blended with innovative use of wave, epidemiological, immunological and psycho-social theories, the author discusses ways to understand the effects of different types of crises while showing how to document and/or quantitatively measure those effects. The book offers new models illustrating how events trigger crises and how they subsequently morph into catastrophes and disasters. Using theories and tools tested in organizational settings to identify contributors to a traumatic event, this book makes a valuable contribution to organizational and crisis management literature.

This book presents a philosophy of science, based on panenmentalism: an original modal metaphysics, which is realist about individual pure (non-actual) possibilities and rejects the notion of possible worlds. The book systematically constructs a new and novel way of understanding and explaining scientific progress, discoveries, and creativity. It demonstrates that a metaphysics of individual pure possibilities is indispensable for explaining and understanding mathematics and natural sciences. It examines the nature of individual pure possibilities, actualities, mind-dependent and mind-independent possibilities, as well as mathematical entities. It discusses in detail the singularity of each human being as a psychical possibility. It analyses striking scientific discoveries, and illustrates by means of examples of the usefulness and vitality of individual pure possibilities in the sciences.

All sub disciplines in Organic Geochemistry (Petroleum Geochemistry, Environmental Geochemistry etc.) are linked by the basic analytical approaches used for identification and quantitation of individual organic substances. Hence, a fundamental prerequisite for organic geochemists is the knowledge not only about the individual analytical techniques but more about their potential as well as their limitations. In this issues basic analytical procedures and techniques are introduced comprising fundamental steps like sampling and sample storage, aspects of sample treatment like extraction and fractionation procedures and finally the specific techniques used for organic analyses on partially very low concentration levels such as mass spectrometry or infrared spectroscopy. Beside the technical aspects also application on organic-geochemical problems and the standard data evaluation practice is introduced. Finally, special chapters point to analytical pitfalls and to principal standard operation procedures. The intention of this issue is to get the readers familiar with analytical Organic Geochemistry and to enable them to assess the quality and suitability of specific analytical approaches, in particular with respect to the organic-geochemical problems.

Over the last decade, there has been a growing interest in human behavior analysis, motivated by societal needs such as security, natural interfaces, affective computing, and assisted living. However, the accurate and non-invasive detection and recognition of human behavior remain major challenges and the focus of many research efforts. Traditionally, in order to identify human behavior, it is first necessary to continuously collect the readings of physical sensing devices (e.g., camera, GPS, and RFID), which can be worn on human bodies, attached to objects, or deployed in the environment. Afterwards, using recognition algorithms or classification models, the behavior types can be identified so as to facilitate advanced applications. Although such traditional approaches deliver satisfactory performance and are still widely used, most of them are intrusive and require specific sensing devices, raising issues such as privacy and deployment costs. In this book, we will present our latest findings on non-invasive sensing and understanding of human behavior. Specifically, this book differs from existing literature in the following senses. Firstly, we focus on approaches that are based on non-invasive sensing technologies, including both sensor-based and device-free variants. Secondly, while most existing studies examine individual behaviors, we will systematically elaborate on how to understand human behaviors of various granularities, including not only individual-level but also group-level and community-level behaviors. Lastly, we will discuss the most important scientific problems and open issues involved in human behavior analysis.

This book is an innovative presentation of the way in which the descendants of Muslim immigrants from Algeria in France perceive and deal with multiple social identifications. Against the background of the theory and methodology (such as Saussure's sign theory, Znaniecki's sociology, and Brubaker and Cooper's concepts), Kubera offers a new analysis into identity in a multicultural society. The book revolves around a combination of the modernist and post-modernist paradigms: highlighting both the constant and situational aspects of social identity. By focusing on identifications, the author shows how to overcome the problem of "intangibility" of identity in research practice. Touching on colonialism, gender, religion, migration, and racism, this will be an important contribution to students and scholars across sociology, anthropology, political science, law, and international relations.

The hilarious and heart-wrenching memoir from a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire--with a new introduction

Lovers of fine travel- and adventure-writing will savor Mike Tidwell's richly acclaimed narrative of his days as a Peace Corps volunteer. His task was to help people in the remote corners of Zaire raise tilapia in ponds they would dig themselves, with muscle-power alone. By turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this book--whose new edition includes a new introduction by the author--is a masterful account of culture clash, generosity of spirit, and true grit. It is a must-read for anyone with aspirations to "change the world."

This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics includes selected papers from the 25th Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Berlin, Germany, in May 2018. While the theoretical and empirical papers presented cover diverse areas of economics and finance from different geographic regions, the main focus is on the latest research in the economics of innovation, investment and risk management together with regional studies. The book also includes studies on law and regulation themes such as economic offences by women, formation of contracts via the internet and public tender for residents of communes.

This book examines resolution of the disputes between both sides of Belt and Road economic cooperation. To address the problems surrounding legal guarantee and dispute resolution, the International Academy of the Belt and Road has gathered almost 50 experts from over 30 Belt and Road countries and regions to utilize current advances in the dispute resolution mechanism, taking into account the legal systems, legal environment and historical and cultural characteristics of Belt and Road countries and regions. The dispute resolution mechanism presented advocates giving priority to mediation when a dispute arises-arbitration is necessary only when mediation is ineffective. In addition, arbitration should be highly transparent, show respect to both contracting parties, and be equipped with an appeal system. This hands-on book offers detailed explanations of mediation rules, arbitration rules and appeal procedures. On the one hand, this mechanism embodies the integration of the cultures, traditions, legal systems, legal values and legal thoughts of Belt and Road countries and regions. On the other hand, it highlights the importance of mediation, which not only is the idea of oriental culture carrying forward traditional Chinese culture, but also follows the trend of dispute resolution. As a result, the dispute resolution mechanism established in this book is beneficial to the development of the Belt and Road Initiative.

This book addresses a range of complex issues associated with condition monitoring (CM), fault diagnosis and detection (FDD) in smart buildings, wide area monitoring (WAM), wind energy conversion systems (WECSs), photovoltaic (PV) systems, structures, electrical systems, mechanical systems, smart grids, etc. The book's goal is to develop and combine all advanced nonintrusive CMFD approaches on a common platform. To do so, it explores the main components of various systems used for CMFD purposes. The content is divided into three main parts, the first of which provides a brief introduction, before focusing on the state of the art and major research gaps in the area of CMFD. The second part covers the step-by-step implementation of novel soft computing applications in CMFD for electrical and mechanical systems. In the third and final part, the simulation codes for each chapter are included in an extensive appendix to support newcomers to the field.

This book provides a thorough overview of transport phenomena in complex fluids, based on the latest research results and the newest methods for their analytical prediction and numerical simulation. The respective chapters cover several topics, including: a description of the structural features of the most common complex fluids (polymer and surfactant solutions, colloidal suspensions); an introduction to the most common non-Newtonian constitutive models and their relationship with the fluid microstructure; a detailed overview of the experimental methods used to characterise the thermophysical properties, bulk rheology, and surface properties of complex fluids; a comprehensive introduction to heat, mass, and momentum transport, and to hydrodynamic instabilities in complex fluids; and an introduction to state-of-the-art numerical methods used to simulate complex fluid flows, with a focus on the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and the Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) techniques. Subsequent chapters provide in-depth descriptions of phenomena such as thermal convection, elastic turbulence, mixing of complex fluids, thermophoresis, sedimentation, and non-Newtonian drops and sprays. The book addresses research scientists and professionals, engineers, R&D managers and graduate students in the fields of engineering, chemistry, biology, medicine, and the applied and fundamental sciences.

This book provides a thorough discussion about fundamental questions regarding urban theories and modeling. It is a curated collection of contributions to a workshop held in Paris on October 12th and 13th 2017 at the Institute of Complex Systems by the team of ERC GeoDiverCity. There are several chapters conveying the answers given by single authors to problems of conceptualization and modeling and others in which scholars reply to their conception and question them. Even, the chapters transcribing keynote presentations were rewritten according to contributions from the respective discussions. The result is a complete "state of the art" of what is our knowledge about urban processes and their possible formalization.

Kgalekgale, nakong ya ge Kubu le Mollo e sa le bokgotse, ba be ba fela ba raloka mmogo. Letcatsi le lengwe Mollo a etela Kubu legaeng la gagwe, gomme Kubu a ithuta thuto e bohlokwa kudu mabapi le go raloka ka mollo. Long ago when Hippopotamus and Fire were friends, they would often play together. One day, Fire visited Hippopotamus at his home and Hippopotamus learnt a valuable lesson about playing with Fire.