In the face of so many daunting near-term challenges, U.S. government and industry are letting the crucial strategic issues of U.S. competitiveness slip below the surface. Five years ago, the National Academies prepared Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a book that cautioned: "Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position." Since that time we find ourselves in a country where much has changed-and a great deal has not changed. So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous view of the authors is that our nation's outlook has worsened. The present volume, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, explores the tipping point America now faces. Addressing America's competitiveness challenge will require many years if not decades; however, the requisite federal funding of much of that effort is about to terminate. Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited provides a snapshot of the work of the government and the private sector in the past five years, analyzing how the original recommendations have or have not been acted upon, what consequences this may have on future competitiveness, and priorities going forward. In addition, readers will find a series of thought- and discussion-provoking factoids-many of them alarming-about the state of science and innovation in America. Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited is a wake-up call. To reverse the foreboding outlook will require a sustained commitment by both individual citizens and government officials-at all levels. This book, together with the original Gathering Storm volume, provides the roadmap to meet that goal. While this book is essential for policy makers, anyone concerned with the future of innovation, competitiveness, and the standard of living in the United States will find this book an ideal tool for engaging their government representatives, peers, and community about this momentous issue. Table of Contents Front Matter Executive Summary 1.0 The Gathering Storm, Revisited 2.0 Efforts to Avert the Storm 3.0 Changing Circumstances 4.0 The Ingredients of Innovation 5.0 A Category 5 Storm Appendix A: Some Perspectives Appendix B: Report Reviewers Appendix C: Project Staff Appendix D: Bibliography

The Belt And Road Initiative takes part of the speech Work Together to Build the Silk Road Economic Belt made by President Xi Jinping in Nazarbayev University of Kazakhstan in September 2013 as the starting chapter and part of the speech made by President Xi Jinping on the opening of the eighth ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) as the closing chapter.

It includes 42 scripts of building the Belt and the Road Initiative made by President Xi Jinping, with approximately 130,000 Chinese characters.

Swarm intelligence is an innovative computational way to solve hard problems. This discipline is inspired by the behaviour of social insect (e.g. ants, termites, bees and wasps) colonies as well as fish schools and bird flocks. The content of this book is divided into two main parts: ant colony optimisation and particle swarm optimisation. The former describes systems that have been engineered using ant colony optimisation and the latter presents systems that were designed based on particle swarm optimisation.

Understanding and improving your organization's business processes is vital in today's economy. Using non-technical language, this book describes the importance of these processes and the internal and external forces that shape them. It then explains the kinds of computer software available for improving and managing business processes in a flexible way. Detailed case studies illustrate that successful process management depends on attention to the human, organizational and financial factors involved, as well as the strategic implications. Finally, the book gives even-handed guidance on what to look for in Business Process Management software and discusses current technical trends. With many clear diagrams and footnotes throughout, a glossary of terms and suggestions on further reading, the book enables the non-specialist reader to take a broad and informed view of business processes, free from technical imperatives. Ideal for non-technical managers, this book will also appeal to MBA and business studies students.

What useful changes has feminism brought to science? Feminists have enjoyed success in their efforts to open many fields to women as participants. But the effects of feminism have not been restricted to altering employment and professional opportunities for women. The essays in this volume explore how feminist theories and practices have had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices of such research.
In archeology, evidence of women's hunting activities suggested by spears found in women's graves is no longer dismissed; computer scientists have used feminist epistemologies for rethinking the human-interface problems of our growing reliance on computers. Attention to women's movements often tends to reinforce a presumption that feminism changes institutions through critique-from-without. The examples of change in this volume reveal, however, the potent but not always visible transformations feminism has brought to science, technology, and medicine from within.
Contributors:
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Linda Marie Fedigan
Scott Gilbert
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Evelyn Fox Keller
Pamela E. Mack
Michael S. Mahoney
Emily Martin
Ruth Oldenziel
Nelly Oudshoorn
Carroll Pursell
Karen A. Rader
Alison Wylie

Bilingualism and multilingualism both make a major contribution in cross-cultural interaction, but, at the same time, improve various cognitive abilities, such as better attention and multitasking. Meaning in the world around us is represented by means of the language that is used for communication and knowledge exchange between intelligent individuals. The phenomena of human interaction and communication are recently experiencing unprecedented influence from digital technologies. Language learning is part of the global revolution, meaning that language learning technologies are playing an increasingly important role in learning English for Specific Purposes. This volume addresses theoretical and practical aspects of learning, technology adoption and pedagogy in the context of English for Specific Purposes.

Fossil fuels are limited resources and are anticipated to be exhausted within the next few decades. Solar energy is the only renewable resource capable of adequately meeting today's total global energy demand. Dye-sensitised solar cells (DSCs) represent a novel class of photovoltaic devices that mimic nature's photosynthesis process. This book focuses on the possibilities of optimising the dye-sensitised solar cells' efficiency, and also presents the historical background of DSCs, their efficiency timeline, key components, and the principle of operation. Some powerful nanotechnology tools and methods used to investigate and enhance this type of solar cell are also presented in detail. The methods and findings detailed here combine both experimental and computational studies. They pave the way towards enhancing the efficiency of dye-sensitised solar cells.

In recent decades, media theory has become one of the most influential trends in contemporary thinking, namely within cultural studies, the arts and humanities. Spreading mostly from the German scholarly scene, under the influence of post-structuralism, media theory has developed as a fundamental theoretical framework, for many fields of theoretical and applied research, through authors such as the late Friedrich Kittler, 1943-2011. Commenting on several aspects of Kittler's work, and on its impact in different fields of art and culture, this essay collection examines recent developments in media theory brought about by concepts such as "cultural techniques" and "operative ontologies" and by key authors, contributing to this volume, such as Bernhard Siegert, Sybille Kramer and Peter Weibel.

Decreasing power dissipation per logic function has become a primary concern in virtually all CMOS system chips designed today as a result of the relentless progress in processing technology that has led us into the deep-submicron age. Evolution from 1 micron to 0.1 micron lithography in the next decade will not be possible without a change in the way we design CMOS systems. But power reduction requires an overall optimisation, ranging from software compilation over instruction set design down to the introduction of much more parallelism in the architecture, the optimal use of memory hierarchy, new clocking strategies, use of asynchronous techniques, new CMOS circuit techniques and management of leakage currents in new low power technologies. Moreover, performance and power dissipation will come to be dominated by interconnect and thus completely new floor planning and place and route strategies are emerging. The chapters in this book present a systematic coverage of deep submicron CMOS digital system design for low power, from process technology all the way up to software design and embedded software systems. Audience: An excellent guide for the practising engineer, researcher and student interested in this crucial aspect of actual CMOS design.