As the ice around the Arctic landmass recedes, the territory is becoming a flashpoint in world affairs. New trade routes, cutting thousands of miles off journeys, are available, and the Arctic is thought to be home to enormous gas and oil reserves. The territorial lines are new and hazy. This book looks at how Russia deals with the outside world vis a vis the Arctic. Given Russia's recent bold foreign policy interventions, these are crucial issues and the realpolitik practiced by the Russian state is essential for understanding the Arctic's future.Here, Geir Honneland brings together decades of cutting-edge research - investigating the political contexts and international tensions surrounding Russia's actions. Honneland looks specifically at 'region-building' and environmental politics of fishing and climate change, on nuclear safety and nature preservation, and also analyses the diplomatic relations surrounding clashes with Norway and Canada, as well as at the governance of the Barents Sea. The Politics of the Arctic is a crucial addition to our understanding of contemporary International Relations concerning the Polar North.

Food Rebellions! takes a deep look at the world food crisis and its impact on the global South and underserved communities in the industrial North. Eric Holt-Gimenez and Raj Patel unpack the planet's environmentally and economically vulnerable food systems to reveal the root causes of the crisis. They shows us how the steady erosion of local and national control over their food systems has made nations dependent on a volatile global market and subject to the short-term interests of a handful of transnational agri-food monopolies. Food Rebellions! is a powerful handbook for those seeking to understand the causes and potential solutions to the current food crisis now affecting nearly half of the world's people. Why are food riots occurring around the world in a time of record harvests? What are the real impacts of agrofuels and genetically engineered crops? Food Rebellions! suggests that to solve the food crisis, we must change the global food system-from the bottom up and from the top down. The book frames the current food crisis as unique opportunity to develop productive local food systems that are engines for sustainable economic development. Hunger and poverty, the authors insist, can be eliminated by democratising food systems and respecting people's right to safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food and to food-producing resources-in short, by advancing food sovereignty.

Over the last two decades global production of soybean and palm oil seeds have increased enormously. Because these tropically rainfed crops are used for food, cooking, animal feed, and biofuels, they have entered the agriculture, food, and energy chains of most nations despite their actual growth being increasingly concentrated in Southeast Asia and South America. The planting of these crops is controversial because they are sown on formerly forested lands, rely on large farmers and agribusiness rather than smallholders for their development, and supply export markets. The contrasts with the famed Green Revolution in rice and wheat of the 1960s through the 1980s are stark, as those irrigated crops were primarily grown by smallholders, depended upon public subsidies for cultivation, and served largely domestic sectors. The overall aim of the book is to provide a broad synthesis of the major supply and demand drivers of the rapid expansion of oil crops in the tropics; its economic, social, and environmental impacts; and the future outlook to 2050. After introducing the dramatic surge in oil crops, chapters provide a comparative perspective from different producing regions for two of the world's most important crops, oil palm and soybeans in the tropics. The following chapters examine the drivers of demand of vegetable oils for food, animal feed, and biodiesel and introduce the reader to price formation in vegetable oil markets and the role of trade in linking consumers across the world to distant producers in a handful of exporting countries. The remaining chapters review evidence on the economic, social, and environmental impacts of the oil crop revolution in the tropics. While both economic benefits and social and environmental costs have been huge, the outlook is for reduced trade-offs and more sustainable outcomes as the oil crop revolution slows and the global, national, and local communities converge on ways to better managed land use changes and land rights.

Theory of Electromagnetic Well Logging provides a much-needed and complete analytical method for electromagnetic well logging technology. The book presents the physics and mathematics behind the effective measurement of rock properties using boreholes, allowing geophysicists, petrophysisists, geologists and engineers to interpret them in a more rigorous way. Starting with the fundamental concepts, the book then moves on to the more classic subject of wireline induction logging, before exploring the subject of LWD logging, concluding with new thoughts on electromagnetic telemetry. Theory of Electromagnetic Well Logging is the only book offering an in-depth discussion of the analytical and numerical techniques needed for expert use of those new logging techniques.

Food is a necessary aspect of human life, and agriculture is crucial to any country's global economy. Because the food business is essential to both a country's economy and global economy, artificial intelligence (AI)-based smart solutions are needed to assure product quality and food safety. The agricultural sector is constantly under pressure to boost crop output as a result of population growth. This necessitates the use of AI applications. Artificial Intelligence Applications in Agriculture and Food Quality Improvement discusses the application of AI, machine learning, and data analytics for the acceleration of the agricultural and food sectors. It presents a comprehensive view of how these technologies and tools are used for agricultural process improvement, food safety, and food quality improvement. Covering topics such as diet assessment research, crop yield prediction, and precision farming, this premier reference source is an essential resource for food safety professionals, quality assurance professionals, agriculture specialists, crop managers, agricultural engineers, food scientists, computer scientists, AI specialists, students, libraries, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

Blowout and Well Control Handbook, Second Edition, brings the engineer and rig personnel up to date on all the useful methods, equipment, and project details needed to solve daily well control challenges. Blowouts are the most expensive and one of the most preventable accidents in the oil and gas industry. While some rig crews experience frequent well control incidents, some go years before seeing the real thing. Either way, the crew must always be prepared with quick understanding of the operations and calculations necessary to maintain well control. Updated to cover the lessons learned and new technology following the Macondo incident, this fully detailed reference will cover detection of influxes and losses in equipment and methods, a greater emphasis on kick tolerance considerations, an expanded section on floating drilling and deepwater floating drilling procedures, and a new blowout case history from Bangladesh. With updated photos, case studies, and practice examples, Blowout and Well Control Handbook, Second Edition will continue to deliver critical and modern well control information to ensure engineers and personnel stay safe, environmentally-responsible, and effective on the rig.

To understand the catastrophic processes of forest fire danger, different deterministic, probabilistic, and empiric models must be used. Simulating various surface and crown forest fires using predictive information technology could lead to the improvement of existing systems and the examination of the ecological and economic effects of forest fires in other countries. Predicting, Monitoring, and Assessing Forest Fire Dangers and Risks provides innovative insights into forestry management and fire statistics. The content within this publication examines climate change, thermal radiation, and remote sensing. It is designed for fire investigators, forestry technicians, emergency managers, fire and rescue specialists, professionals, researchers, meteorologists, computer engineers, academicians, and students invested in topics centered around providing conjugate information on forest fire danger and risk.

A heartwarming snapshot of the horse-and-buggy era? On the contrary -- Jeff Mcpherson reports that honor systems are making a comeback in the 21st century. Drawing on years of personal experience and interviews with dozens of fellow farmers, business owners and customers, he shows how you can make the honor system work to your advantage. Honor System Marketing tells how to adapt honor marketing to fit your own needs and capacities. Mcpherson details how to avoid common pitfalls, manage finances, and maintain a sense of optimism. This book shows how honor system marketing can become an essential tool for doing business and reviving our spirit of trust in humanity.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a commercially attractive phase of the commodity that facilitates the efficient handling and transportation of natural gas around the world. The LNG industry, using technologies proven over decades of development, continues to expand its markets, diversify its supply chains and increase its share of the global natural gas trade. The Handbook of Liquefied Natural Gas is a timely book as the industry is currently developing new large sources of supply and the technologies have evolved in recent years to enable offshore infrastructure to develop and handle resources in more remote and harsher environments. It is the only book of its kind, covering the many aspects of the LNG supply chain from liquefaction to regasification by addressing the LNG industries' fundamentals and markets, as well as detailed engineering and design principles. A unique, well-documented, and forward-thinking work, this reference book provides an ideal platform for scientists, engineers, and other professionals involved in the LNG industry to gain a better understanding of the key basic and advanced topics relevant to LNG projects in operation and/or in planning and development.

Agricultural Law in Sub-Saharan Africa: Cases and Comments introduces the subject of agricultural law and economics to researchers, practitioners, and students in common law countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and presents information from the legal system in Botswana, Gambia, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The law and economics approach entails the use of quantitative methods in research. This is consistent with the expectations in an applied economics field such as agricultural economics. Covering the general traditional law topics in contracts, torts, and property, the book goes further to introduce cutting-edge and region-relevant topics, including contracts with illiterate parties, contract farming, climate change, and transboundary water issues. The book is supported by an extensive list of reference materials, as well as study and enrichment exercises, to deepen readers' understanding of the principles discussed in the book. It is a learning tool, first and foremost, and can be used as a stand-alone resource to teach the subject matter of agricultural law and economics to professionals new to the subject area as well as to students in law school, agricultural economics, economics, and inter-disciplinary classes.

Malgré de multiples efforts, les économies fragiles d'Afrique subsaharienne (ASS) comme celles du Mali, du Tchad, du Niger et de la Guinée se classent toujours parmi les moins diversifiées du monde, avec une part élevée des ressources naturelles dans leur produit intérieur brut ou dans leurs exportations. La production à grande échelle d'or pour le Mali, de pétrole pour le Tchad, d'uranium pour le Niger, et de bauxite pour la Guinée offre des opportunités importantes, mais aussi des défis majeurs pour ces pays. Des évidences concluantes mettent en exergue la mauvaise performance économique des pays fragiles d'ASS riches en ressources naturelles. La raison principale d'un tel constat n'est pas seulement leur grande vulnérabilité aux chocs externes, mais la cupidité ou les griefs qui conduisent généralement à l'accaparation des rentes par des petit groups qui conforment les élites dans des pays sujets aux conflits.Au moment où ces pays ont réaffirmé leur vision pour la diversification de leurs économies, ce livre explore les questions suivantes : Quelles sont les principales contraintes à la diversification des exportations telles que perçues par les principales entreprises exportatrices auditionnées dans ces pays ? Ces pays ont-ils bien fait de cibler certains produits d'exportation ? Les interventions actuelles de ces pays dans les chaînes de valeurs mondiales (CVM) sont-elles adéquates ? Quelles leçons peut-on tirer de cas spécifi ques de réussite/d'échec dans ces pays ? Quelles politiques commerciales et logistiques peuvent favoriser (ou entraver) la croissance tirée par la diversifi cation des exportations dans ces pays ?Le livre jette les bases d'interventions multidimensionnelles plus efficaces pour propulser la diversification des exportations dans les économies fragiles d'ASS entravées non seulement par une gouvernance et des institutions faibles, mais aussi par leur position enclavée (sauf la Guinée), la taille limitée des marchés domestiques, et les politiques défavorables au développement des entreprises. En suivant une approche graduelle, le livre préconise une CVM 2.0, basée sur des politiques de promotion des clusters pour la diversification des exportations. Tout en reconnaissant que plusieurs interventions des projets antérieurs dans ces pays ont eu un succès limité, principalement en raison de leur concentration unidimensionnelle dans des objectifs isolés des chaînes de valeur agricoles, l'approche spatiale CVM 2.0 propose plutôt des efforts multidimensionnelles axés sur des objectifs complémentaires de la part des futurs projets pour attirer des entreprises étrangères sélectionnées et réaliser des investissements publics complémentaires qui favorisent l'agro-industrie. Des exemples pilotes prometteurs de projets de bailleurs de fonds exécutés conjointement, de mécanismes financiers de partage des risques, de grappes agro-industrielles, et d'autres interventions de développeurs de chaînes de valeur sont décrits en détail dans ce livre.

Humpback Dolphins (Sousa spp.): Current Status and Conservation, Part 2 is part of Advances in Marine Biology, a series that has been providing in-depth and up-to-date reviews on all aspects of marine biology since 1963 - more than 50 years of outstanding coverage from a reference that is well known for its contents and editing. This latest addition to the series includes updates on many topics that will appeal to postgraduates and researchers in marine biology, fisheries science, ecology, zoology, and biological oceanography. Specialty areas for the series include marine science, both applied and basic, a wide range of topical areas from all corners of marine ecology, oceanography, fisheries management, and molecular biology, and the full range of geographic areas from polar seas to tropical coral reefs.

Knowledge Driven Development: Private Extension and Global Lessons uses actual cases written specifically to study the role and capacity of private companies in knowledge sharing and intensification through agricultural extension. Descriptions of specific models and approaches are teased out of complex situations exhibiting a range of agricultural, regulatory, socio-economic variables. Illustrative cases focus on a particular agricultural value chain and elaborate the special feature of the associated private extension system. Chapters presenting individual cases of private extension also highlight specific areas of variations and significant deviance. Each chapter begins with a section describing the background and agricultural context of the case, followed by a description of the specific crop value chain. Based on understanding of this context, extension models and methods by private companies receive deeper analysis and definition in the next section. This leads to a discussion of the private extension with respect to its relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, equity, sustainability and impact. Following that, comparison with public extension, the uniqueness of the knowledge intensification model, and lessons for its replication and scaling up are elaborated. The final chapter summarizes the major results from the ten cases presented, looking at the trends, commonalities and differences of various extension approaches and the general lessons for success or failure. It concludes with a set of messages around value creation, integrated services, market links, inclusive innovation, and capacity development.

The oil and gas engineer on the job requires knowing all the available oil field chemicals and fluid applications that are applicable to the operation. Updated with the newest technology and available products, Petroleum Engineer's Guide to Oil Field Chemicals and Fluids, Second Edition, delivers all the necessary lists of chemicals by use, their basic components, benefits, and environmental implications. In order to maintain reservoir protection and peak well production performance, operators demand to know all the options that are available. Instead of searching through various sources, Petroleum Engineer's Guide to Oil Field Chemicals and Fluids, Second Edition, presents a one-stop non-commercialized approach by organizing the products by function, matching the chemical to the process for practical problem-solving and extending the coverage with additional resources and supportive materials. Covering the full spectrum, including fluid loss additives, drilling muds, cement additives, and oil spill treating agents, this must-have reference answers to every oil and gas operation with more options for lower costs, safer use, and enhanced production.

The series Advances in Marine Biology has been providing in-depth and up-to-date reviews on all aspects of marine biology since 1963 - more than 50 years of outstanding coverage from a reference that is well known for its contents and editing. This latest addition to the series includes updates on many topics that will appeal to postgraduates and researchers in marine biology, fisheries science, ecology, zoology, and biological oceanography. Specialty areas for the series include marine science, both applied and basic, a wide range of topical areas from all areas of marine ecology, oceanography, fisheries management, and molecular biology, and the full range of geographic areas from polar seas to tropical coral reefs.

This comprehensive reference delivers key information on all aspects of sunflower. With over 20 chapters, this book provides an extensive review of the latest developments in sunflower genetics, breeding, processing, quality, and utilization; including food, energy and industrial bioproduct applications. World-renowned experts in this field review U.S. and international practices, production, and processing aspects of sunflower.

Thanks to breakthroughs in production and food science, agribusiness has been able to devise new ways to grow more food and get it more places more quickly. There is no shortage of news items on hundreds of thousands of hybrid poultry - each animal genetically identical to the next - packed together in megabarns, grown out in a matter of months, then slaughtered, processed and shipped to the other side of the globe. Less well known are the deadly pathogens mutating in, and emerging out of, these specialized agro-environments. In fact, many of the most dangerous new diseases in humans can be traced back to such food systems, among them Campylobacter, Nipah virus, Q fever, hepatitis E, and a variety of novel influenza variants.Agribusiness has known for decades that packing thousands of birds or livestock together results in a monoculture that selects for such disease. But market economics doesn't punish the companies for growing Big Flu - it punishes animals, the environment, consumers, and contract farmers. Alongside growing profits, diseases are permitted to emerge, evolve, and spread with little check. "That is," writes evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace, "it pays to produce a pathogen that could kill a billion people."In Big Farms Make Big Flu, a collection of dispatches by turns harrowing and thought-provoking, Wallace tracks the ways influenza and other pathogens emerge from an agriculture controlled by multinational corporations. Wallace details, with a precise and radical wit, the latest in the science of agricultural epidemiology, while at the same time juxtaposing ghastly phenomena such as attempts at producing featherless chickens, microbial time travel, and neoliberal Ebola. Wallace also offers sensible alternatives to lethal agribusiness. Some, such as farming cooperatives, integrated pathogen management, and mixed crop-livestock systems, are already in practice off the agribusiness grid.While many books cover facets of food or outbreaks, Wallace's collection appears the first to explore infectious disease, agriculture, economics and the nature of science together. Big Farms Make Big Flu integrates the political economies of disease and science to derive a new understanding of the evolution of infections. Highly capitalized agriculture may be farming pathogens as much as chickens or corn.

Recent progress in enhancing and refining the performance and properties of wood composites by chemical and thermal modification and the application of smart multi-functional coatings have made them a particular area of interest for researchers. Wood Composites comprehensively reviews the whole field of wood composites, with particular focus on their materials, applications and engineering and scientific advances, including solutions inspired biomimetrically by the structure of wood and wood composites. Part One covers the materials used for wood composites and examines wood microstructure, and wood processing and adhesives for wood composites. Part Two explores the many applications of wood composites, for example plywood, fibreboard, chipboard, glulam, cross-laminated timber, I-beams and wood-polymer composites. The final part investigates advances in wood composites and looks at the preservation and modification of wood composites, environmental impacts and legislative obligations, nano-coatings and plasma treatment, biomimetic composite materials, the integration of wood composites with other materials and carbonized and mineralized wood composites.