Daoism and Environmental Philosophy explores ethics and the philosophy of nature in the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, and related texts to elucidate their potential significance in our contemporary environmental crisis. This book traces early Daoist depictions of practices of embodied emptying and forgetting and communicative strategies of undoing the fixations of words, things, and the embodied self. These are aspects of an ethics of embracing plainness and simplicity, nourishing the asymmetrically differentiated yet shared elemental body of life of the myriad things, and being responsively attuned in encountering and responding to things. These critical and transformative dimensions of early Daoism provide exemplary models and insights for cultivating a more expansive ecological ethos, environmental culture of nature, and progressive political ecology. This work will be of interest to students and scholars interested in philosophy, environmental ethics and philosophy, religious studies, and intellectual history.

Climate Change, Ecological Catastrophe, and the Contemporary Novel responds to the critical need for transdisciplinary research on the relationship between colonialism and catastrophe. It represents the first sustained analysis of the connection between colonial legacy and present-day ecological catastrophe in postcolonial fiction. Analyzing contemporary South Asian and South Pacific novels that grapple with climate change and catastrophe, environmental exploitation and instability, and human-nonhuman relationships in degraded environments, it offers a much-needed corrective to dominant narratives about climate, crisis, and the everyday. Highlighting the contributions of literary fiction from the postcolonial South to the growing field of the environmental humanities, this book reconsiders the novel's relationship with climate change and the contemporary environmental imaginary. Counter to dominant current theoretical discourses, it demonstrates that the novel form is ideally suited to literary and imaginative engagements with climate change and ecological catastrophe. The six case studies it examines connect contemporary ecological vulnerability to colonial legacies, reveal the critical role animals and the environment play in literary imaginations of post-catastrophe recovery, and together constellate a decolonial perspective on ecological catastrophe in the era of climate change. Drawing on the work of Indigenous authors and scholars who write about and against the Anthropocene, this book displaces conventional ways of thinking about the relationship between the mundane and the catastrophic and promotes greater dialogue between the largely siloed fields of postcolonial, Indigenous, and disaster studies.

This book develops and demonstrates an interdisciplinary method that reads literary works as a way of thinking about the city. Literary works do not only provide reflections of the city – depictions of the city as an aesthetically compelling setting – but the literary reflection of the city also offers a critical reflection on the city. How can spatial difference be conceived in cities that are changing beyond the form of the classical modern metropolis of the early 20th century? How can one think of the relation between individual urban subjects and their urban environment, when neither spaces nor discourses of the city provide them with an answer to the question where they might "belong"? How does the human body interact with its urban surroundings, and how should technological mediations be thought of? This book approaches these questions through analysing literary texts, focusing on concepts like heterotopia, non-place and the posthuman. This book will be of interest to interdisciplinary scholars and students of the city, particularly in the fields of Urban Studies, Literary Studies, Geography, and Architecture.

Articulates a series of scientific and technological developments described in a didactic way Shows a broad view of biometrics in several contexts: Current cases of study in five different areas Provides experimental results in different environments (availability of data and computer code to reproduce the experiments) Includes transdisciplinary approaches and discussions for each chapter Innovation as part of the final cases of study: developments are already affecting the new businesses of the digital age and the era of the brain

This book presents a comprehensive analysis and modelling of demand, capacity, quality of services, economics, and sustainability of the air transport system and its main components - - airports, airlines, and ATC/ATM (Air Traffic Control/Management). Airports consist of the airside and landside area characterized by their capacities for handling demand such as aircraft, air passengers, and air freight/cargo shipments. Regarding spatial configuration, airlines generally operate hub-and-spoke (conventional or legacy airlines) and point-to-point (LCCs - Low Cost Carriers) air route networks. Their fleets consisting of different aircraft types provide transport capacity for serving demand including air passengers and freight/cargo shipments. The ATC/ATM includes the controlled airspace, traffic management and control facilities and equipment on the ground, space, and on board aircraft, and the ATC Controllers). They all provide capacity to handle demand consisting of the flights between origin and destination airports carried out by airline aircraft. The outcome from the interrelationships between demand and capacity at these components materializes as the quality of services. At airports and airlines this is generally expressed by congestion and delays of aircraft, air passengers, and freight/cargo shipments. At ATC/ATM, this is expressed by delays, horizontal and vertical in-efficiency, and safety of flights. Economics of each component relate to its revenues, costs, and profits from handling demand, i.e., providing services of given quality. The sustainability of air transport system has become increasingly important issue for many internal and external actors/stakeholders involved to deal with. This has implied increasing the system's overall social-economic effects/benefits while reducing or maintaining constant impacts/costs on the environment and society at both global and regional/local scale under conditions of continuous medium- to long term growth.

This book casts a light on the daily struggles and achievements of 'gender experts' working in environment and development organisations, where they are charged with advancing gender equality and social equity and aligning this with visions of sustainable development. Developed through a series of conversations convened by the book's editors with leading practitioners from research, advocacy and donor organisations, this text explores the ways gender professionals - specialists and experts, researchers, organizational focal points - deal with personal, power-laden realities associated with navigating gender in everyday practice. In turn, wider questions of epistemology and hierarchies of situated knowledges are examined, where gender analysis is brought into fields defined as largely techno-scientific, positivist and managerialist. Drawing on insights from feminist political ecology and feminist science, technology and society studies, the authors and their collaborators reveal and reflect upon strategies that serve to mute epistemological boundaries and enable small changes to be carved out that on occasions open up promising and alternative pathways for an equitable future. This book will be of great relevance to scholars and practitioners with an interest in environment and development, science and technology, and gender and women's studies more broadly. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351175180, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This important text develops an institutional response to the core issues raised in public policy making and develops a distinct understanding of the role of institutions, not least in the study of environmental problems. It questions: how are conflicting interests shaped and taken into account in policy making? How should they be accounted for? What motivates the behaviour of firms and individuals, and how is it possible to change these motivations to produce the favoured common outcomes? The author addresses these questions by integrating elements from classical institutional economics, neoclassical economics, sociology and ecological economics. He argues that public policy in general, and environmental policy in particular, are best examined from an institutional perspective. In this way the author presents a distinct and consistent alternative to standard neoclassical economics for students and scholars who are interested in an institutional understanding of environmental policy making. The book is written in a clear and accessible style with boxes and figures to help explain the issues and, as such, would be an ideal alternative or supplement to the standard environmental economics texts.

This new book, Advances in Energy Materials and Environment Engineering, covers the timely issue of green applications of materials. It covers the diverse usages of carbon nanotubes for energy, for power, for the protection of the environment, and for new energy applications. The diverse topics in the volume include energy saving technologies, renewable energy, clean energy development, nuclear engineering and hydrogen energy, advanced power semiconductors, power systems and energy and much more. This timely book addresses the need of the hour and will prove to be valuable for environmentally conscious industry professionals, faculty and students, and researchers in materials science, engineering, and environment with interest in energy materials.

Provides understanding of the device architecture, electrode design, and pros-cons of classical supercapacitors Explains material design in the context of electrochemical energy storage Covers state-of-the-art quantum supercapacitor and technological challenges Describes advanced version of supercapacitor devices describing macro-to-micro scale devices and applications at different scales Include details of challenges and outline of future designs

This book takes a deep dive into several key linear algebra subjects as they apply to data analytics and data mining. The book offers a case study approach where each case will be grounded in a real-world application. This text is meant to be used for a second course in applications of Linear Algebra to Data Analytics, with a supplemental chapter on Decision Trees and their applications in regression analysis. The text can be considered in two different but overlapping general data analytics categories, clustering and interpolation. Knowledge of mathematical techniques related to data analytics, and exposure to interpretation of results within a data analytics context, are particularly valuable for students studying undergraduate mathematics. Each chapter of this text takes the reader through several relevant and case studies using real world data. All data sets, as well as Python and R syntax are provided to the reader through links to Github documentation. Following each chapter is a short exercise set in which students are encouraged to use technology to apply their expanding knowledge of linear algebra as it is applied to data analytics. A basic knowledge of the concepts in a first Linear Algebra course are assumed; however, an overview of key concepts are presented in the Introduction and as needed throughout the text.

Provides a contemporary view of the impact of climate change on cultivation of various fruit species. Offers modern approaches for mitigating the adverse impact of climate change on fruits cultivation. Describes case studies, empirical experiments and observations emphasizing the research progress of understanding and combating the impact of climate change on fruits production. Illustrates presented concepts with relevant figures and tabulated data.

This book explores how equestrians are highly invested in the idea of profound connection between horse and human and focuses on the ethical problem of knowing horses. In describing how ‘true’ connection with horses matters, Rosalie Jones McVey investigates what sort of thing comes to count as a ‘good relationship’ and how riders work to get there. Drawing on fieldwork in the British horse world, she illuminates the ways in which equestrian culture instils the idea that horse people should know their horses better. Using horsemanship as one exemplary instance where ‘truth’ holds ethical traction, the book demonstrates the importance of epistemology in late modern ethical life. It also raises the question of whether, and how, the concept of truth should matter to multispecies ethnographers in their ethnographic representations of animals.

Updated to integrated modular avionics, and cabin and aircraft information systems Ideal for students gaining EASA Part 66 licences, particularly the B1 or B2 licence One of Routledge's core aircraft maintenance titles.

Coaching is a necessary skill for managers. It is important as a fundamental part of an organization's talent efforts-including talent acquisition, development and retention strategies. For a coaching program to succeed in an organization, it should be recognized as a useful approach throughout the organization and become part of the fabric of the corporate culture. Performance Coaching for Managers provides an important tool for organizations to use to train their managers on coaching. This book differs significantly from other books in the coaching market. Many books on coaching cast coaches as facilitators who question their clients (the coachees), helping them to articulate their own problems, formulate their own solutions, develop their own action plans to solve problems, and measure the success of efforts to implement those plans. That is called a nondirective approach. But this book adopts a directive approach by casting the coach as a manager who diagnoses the problems with worker job performance and offers specific advice on how to solve those problems. While there is nothing wrong with a nondirective approach, it does not always work well in job performance reviews in which the manager must inform the worker about gaps between what is needed (the desired) and what is performed (the actual). The significant difference between what is currently available in the market and what is offered in this book is the authors' collective experience of over 70 combined years of hands-on research and delivery experiences in the Human Resources Development field. According to the Harvard Business Review (2015), workers generally expect their immediate supervisors to give them honest feedback on how well they do their jobs-and specific advice on what to do if they are not performing in alignment with organizational expectations. When workers do not receive advice-but instead are questioned about their own views-they regard their managers as either incompetent or disingenuous. Effective managers should be able to offer direction to their employees. After all, managers are responsible for ensuring that their organizational units deliver the results needed by the organization. If they fail to do that, the organization does not achieve its strategic goals. This book gives managers direction in how to offer directive coaching to their workers.

This book is an introductory text on building measurement and estimating for simple buildings in Hong Kong, based on the Hong Kong Standard Method of Measurement of Building Works 4th Edition Revised 2018 (HKSMM4 Rev 2018). It provides a toolkit for students and surveying technicians who are new to the subject. This second edition updates the contents in line with the HKSMM4 Rev 2018 and incorporates the latest industry developments such as BIM. The main text is divided into five parts following the development of a typical project. Part 1, Building the project team, introduces the team setup for a typical project. Part 2, Deciding the procurement strategy, explains the various procurement decisions to be made by an employer before any cost estimating and measurement work takes place. Part 3, Preparing for tender, covers the tendering methods, tender documentation and approximate estimating techniques used by Quantity Surveyors. Part 4, Measuring quantities, introduces measurement principles and HKSMM4 Rev 2018, followed by a detailed review of the measurement methods for each major trade, with worked examples. Part 5, Estimating unit rates, explores the basic techniques for unit rate preparation. The book contains worked examples from real Hong Kong building projects, self-assessment questions, reminders and points of note. It is essential reading for Hong Kong construction and surveying students, international Quantity Surveyors working in the local area and those wanting international examples of Quantity Surveryors practice.

Landscapes are being degraded and simplified across the globe. This book explores how forest restoration might be carried out to increase landscape heterogeneity, improve ecological functioning and restore ecosystem services in such landscapes. It focuses on large, landscape-scale reforestation because that is the scale at which restoration is needed if many of the problems that have now developed are to be addressed. It also shows how large-scale forest restoration might improve human livelihoods as well as improve conservation outcomes.

A number of governments have undertaken national reforestation programs in recent years; some have been more successful than others. The author reviews these to explore what type of reforestation should be used, where this should be carried out and how much should be done? For example, are the traditional industrial forms of reforestation necessarily the best to use in all situations? How can forest restoration be reconciled with the need for food security? And, are there spatial thresholds that must be exceeded to generate economic and environmental benefits? The book also examines the policy and institutional settings needed to encourage large-scale reforestation. This includes a discussion of the place for incentives to encourage landholders to undertake particular types of reforestation and to reforest particular locations. It also considers forms of governance that are likely to lead to an equitable sharing of the costs and benefits of forest restoration.

Includes a balanced coverage of modeling as well as applications of layout, materials handling, and warehousing Presents automated materials handling and warehousing along with queuing, queuing network, and basic simulation modeling Introduces new material on supply chain designing and management, aggregate planning and stochastic inventory control, transportation, and logistics/distribution Provides Layout-iQ software and data files from the authors own website Offers a solutions manual and PowerPoint slides for qualified textbook adoption

It has been estimated that over 75% of the innovative projects that begin through the Innovation Management System (IMS) are either failures or they failed to produce the desired results. The biggest wastes most medium- to large-size organizations face are the waste of money, time, reputation, opportunity, and income that these failures are costing them. Following this book's recommendations could reduce this failure cost by as much as 70%. The purpose of this book is to provide a step-by-step procedure on how to process a medium- or large-size project, program, or product using an already-established IMS that considers the guidance given in ISO 56002:2019 - Innovation Management Systems Standard. Often the most complicated, complex, difficult, and challenging system used in an organization is the IMS. At the same time, it usually is the most important system because it is the one that generates most of the value-adding products for the organization, and it involves most of the key functions within the organization. The opportunity for failure in time and the impact on the organization is critical and often means the difference between success and bankruptcy. Throughout this book, the authors detail the high-impact inputs and activities that are required to process individual projects/programs/products through the innovation cycle. Although this book was prepared to address how medium to large projects, programs, and products proceed through the cycle, it also provides the framework that can be used for small organizations and simple innovation activities. Basically, the major difference between large- and small-impact innovation projects is that the small projects can accept more risks, require less formal documentation, use simpler communication systems, and require fewer resources. It's important to remember that the authors are addressing an existing IMS rather than trying to create an entirely new one. Currently, this is the only book geared for professionals responsible for managing innovative projects and programs using ISO 56002:2019 - Innovation Management - Innovation Management System - Guidance to provide a comprehensive management strategy and step-by-step plan and ISO 56004 Innovation Management Assessment -Guidance. It provides a comprehensive analysis of what is required from the time an opportunity is recognized to the time the customer is using the innovative product. The book also introduces a new Process modeling cloud service that allows you to drill down 5 levels from the system level to the job description level and includes free access to many of the book's best practice Process models.

Author Prof Jim Lynch is widely known and very experienced, well-connected with wide international networks, and globally distinguished. He was awarded the UNESCO Prize in Microbiology and Einstein Medal and Distinguished Scientist of the US Department of Agriculture. His OUP textbook Soil Microbiology was a bestseller. Taps directly into the topical area of the COVID-19 pandemic and One Health. Affordable and accessible to a wide interdisciplinary audience.

This volume comprises three keynote lectures by internationally well-known experts in the field of underground construction, the inaugural Fujita lecture to honor professor Keiichi Fujita, and the regular papers presented at the 8th International Symposium on Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground (IS-Seoul 2014). Topics covered in the present volume include: - Design, analysis, and construction of tunnels and underground space in soft ground - Excavation and tunnelling in difficult ground conditions - Physical and numerical modelling of deep excavation and tunnel - Interaction between underground construction and adjacent structures - Monitoring of underground construction - Risk management and mitigation - Sustainable development of underground space and its application - Climate change and environmental-friendly underground development, and - Mechanized tunnelling in soft ground Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground is particularly aimed at academics and professionals interested in geotechnical and underground engineering. The symposium was organized under the auspices of the Korean Geotechnical Society (KGS) and the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) Committee TC204. IS-Seoul 2014 is the latest in a series which began in New Delhi in 1994, and was followed by symposia in London (1996), Tokyo (1999), Toulouse (2002), Amsterdam (2005), Shanghai (2008), and Rome (2011).

Increased industrial capacity, manufacturing output, and manufacturing technology all contribute significantly to a country's GDP. Manufacturing is the foundation of industrial production, so improving its methods and infrastructure is crucial for progress. Recent years have seen the introduction of a wide range of energy- and resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, and occupationally safe manufacturing techniques, and this book focuses on these latest techniques, as well as continuous advancement, in order to meet current challenges. The book is divided into three sections: (1) subtractive manufacturing, (2) additive manufacturing, and (3) the use of artificial intelligence in manufacturing. It discusses micromaching, metal-based additive manufacturing, polymer-based additive manufacturing, hybrid additive manufacturing, and finally artificial intelligence in manufacturing. Futuristic Manufacturing: Perpetual Advancement and Research Challenges connects modern manufacturing methods and emerging trends in the industry. It adds a thorough examination of modern manufacturing techniques and modifications that may be implemented in the future, and is an excellent resource of information for undergraduate and graduate students in manufacturing.

This book covers computational statistics-based approaches for Artificial Intelligence. The aim of this book is to provide comprehensive coverage of the fundamentals through the applications of the different kinds of mathematical modelling and statistical techniques and describing their applications in different Artificial Intelligence systems. The primary users of this book will include researchers, academicians, postgraduate students, and specialists in the areas of data science, mathematical modelling, and Artificial Intelligence. It will also serve as a valuable resource for many others in the fields of electrical, computer, and optical engineering. The key features of this book are: Presents development of several real-world problem applications and experimental research in the field of computational statistics and mathematical modelling for Artificial Intelligence Examines the evolution of fundamental research into industrialized research and the transformation of applied investigation into real-time applications Examines the applications involving analytical and statistical solutions, and provides foundational and advanced concepts for beginners and industry professionals Provides a dynamic perspective to the concept of computational statistics for analysis of data and applications in intelligent systems with an objective of ensuring sustainability issues for ease of different stakeholders in various fields Integrates recent methodologies and challenges by employing mathematical modeling and statistical techniques for Artificial Intelligence

This book is about the behaviour of systems. Systems are important, for we interact with them all the time, and many of the actions we take are influenced by a system - for example, the system of performance measures in an organisation influences, often very strongly, how individuals within that organisation behave. Furthermore, sometimes we are involved in the design of systems, as is any manager contributing to the definition of what those performance measures might be. That manager will want to ensure that all the proposed performance measures will drive the 'right' behaviours rather than (inadvertently) encouraging dysfunctional 'game playing', and so anticipating how the performance measurement system will work in practice is a vital part of a wise design process. Some of the systems with which we interact are local, such as your organisation's performance measurement system. Some systems, however, are distant, but nonetheless very real, such as the healthcare system, the education system, the legal system and the climate system. Systems, therefore, exist on all scales, from the local to the global. And all systems are complex, some hugely so. That's why understanding how systems behave can be very helpful. Systems are complex for two main reasons. First, the manner in which they behave over time can be very hard to anticipate - and anticipating the future sensibly is of course a key objective of management. Second, the 'entities' within a system can be connected together in very complex ways, so that an intervention 'here' can result in an effect 'there', perhaps a long time afterward. Sometimes this can be surprising, and so we talk of 'unintended consequences' - but this is of course a euphemism for 'because I didn't understand how this system behaves, I had not anticipated that'. Systems thinking, the subject matter of this book, is the disciplined study of systems, and causal loop diagrams - the 'pictures' of this 'picture book' - are a very insightful way to represent the connectedness of the entities from which any system is composed, so taming that system's complexity.

Deep learning is an artificially intelligent entity that teaches itself and can be utilized to make predictions. Deep learning mimics the human brain and provides learned solutions addressing many challenging problems in the area of visual computing. From object recognition to image classification for diagnostics, deep learning has shown the power of artificial deep neural networks in solving real world visual computing problems with super-human accuracy. The introduction of deep learning into the field of visual computing has meant to be the death of most of the traditional image processing and computer vision techniques. Today, deep learning is considered to be the most powerful, accurate, efficient and effective method with the potential to solve many of the most challenging problems in visual computing. This book provides an insight into deep machine learning and the challenges in visual computing to tackle the novel method of machine learning. It introduces readers to the world of deep neural network architectures with easy-to-understand explanations. From face recognition to image classification for diagnosis of cancer, the book provides unique examples of solved problems in applied visual computing using deep learning. Interested and enthusiastic readers of modern machine learning methods will find this book easy to follow. They will find it a handy guide for designing and implementing their own projects in the field of visual computing.