Providing an insightful analysis of the key issues and significant trends relating to labour within the platform economy, this Modern Guide considers the existing comparative evidence covering all world regions. It also provides an in-depth look at digital labour platforms in their historical, economic and geographical contexts. Highlighting the diversity of experience of platform work, case studies illustrate how general trends play out, both in online and location-based labour platforms, across the globe. Chapters illustrate a need for a post-pandemic regulatory requirement of digital labour platforms at different policy levels, whilst providing a general overview of key topics. Interlinking contributions with a global scope and coverage identify the challenges faced and offer thoughtful regulatory solutions. This engaging book will be an invaluable resource for academics of labour economics, legal and business studies and sociology. It will also benefit policy makers in social and political geography and political science looking for a deeper understanding of the topic.

This comprehensive and innovative Research Handbook tackles the pressing issues confronting us at the dawn of the global network society, including freedom of speech, government transparency and the digital divide. Representing a milestone in information policy research, this new volume edited by Alistair Duff brings together leading contributors from a wide range of disciplines to discuss important topics such as genetic information, news and privacy, and provides case studies on cyber harms, freedom of information and national digitization policy. Engaging with controversial problems of public policy including freedom of expression, copyright and information inequality, the Research Handbook on Information Policy offers a well-rounded exploration of the history and future of this vital field. Systematically addressing both general theory and specific issues, as well as providing international perspectives, this Research Handbook will be of particular interest to academics and students in the disciplines of information science, journalism and media studies, politics, sociology, philosophy and law.

In recent years, China has become a world leader in e-commerce, e-currency, 5G and artificial intelligence, cementing itself as a major competitor to established powers. Gerald Chan poses the question: How has China pulled this off? Arguing that the answer lies in the country's Digital Silk Road, a multi- faceted programme to connect the world via digital means, the book explores how China has shaped the development of the digital order, secured a critical role in internet governance and upset the status-quo powers. Integrating empirical research with innovative theory, this forward-looking book is the first of its kind to unravel the complex web spun through China's Digital Silk Road. Chapters offer a unique Chinese perspective on the evolution of the global digital economy and digital currencies, highlighting China's growing influence in driving technological development and setting global industrial standards. Following on from Chan's previous publications on the country's high-speed rail networks and maritime infrastructure, China's Digital Silk Road offers a timely look at China's predominant role in shaping the global digital order. Advancing a geo-developmental framework to analyse China's Belt and Road Initiative, the book will be of unique interest to students and scholars of Chinese politics and global development.

In this unique and unprecedented study of birding in Africa, historian Nancy Jacobs reconstructs the collaborations between well-known ornithologists and the largely forgotten guides, hunters and taxidermists who worked with them. Drawing on ethnography, scientific publications, private archives and interviews, Jacobs asks: How did white ornithologists both depend on and operate distinctively from African birders? What investment did African birders have in collaborating with ornithologists? By distilling the interactions between European science and African vernacular knowledge, this work offers a fascinating examination of the colonial and postcolonial politics of expertise about nature. It is also a riveting history of the discovery of certain bird species.

Theories of Emotion is a philosophical introduction to the most influential theories of emotion of the past 60 years in philosophy, psychology, and biology. This multi-disciplinary approach provides the reader with a one-stop shop for encountering the key debates and cutting-edge ideas in what is becoming a central focus of contemporary thought. An introductory chapter on definitions of emotion is followed by three main sections on the way emotions are expressed, subjectively experienced, and related to action and motivation. This accessible but probing approach integrates philosophical analysis with innovative research in psychology and cognitive science, contextualizing current debates in the history of ideas from Darwin to pragmatism. Each section is introduced by a detailed illustration of a foundational thinker's work on emotion (Charles Darwin, William James, and John Dewey, respectively), showing how their insights and discoveries have shaped current views and suggesting ways in which they might still enrich contemporary approaches.

The Industrial Revolution meets the quantum-technology revolution! A steampunk adventure guide to how mind-blowing quantum physics is transforming our understanding of information and energy. Victorian era steam engines and particle physics may seem worlds (as well as centuries) apart, yet a new branch of science, quantum thermodynamics, reenvisions the scientific underpinnings of the Industrial Revolution through the lens of today's roaring quantum information revolution. Classical thermodynamics, understood as the study of engines, energy, and efficiency, needs reimagining to take advantage of quantum mechanics, the basic framework that explores the nature of reality by peering at minute matters, down to the momentum of a single particle. In her exciting new book, intrepid Harvard-trained physicist Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern introduces these concepts to the uninitiated with what she calls "quantum steampunk," after the fantastical genre that pairs futuristic technologies with Victorian sensibilities. While readers follow the adventures of a rag-tag steampunk crew on trains, dirigibles, and automobiles, they explore questions such as, "Can quantum physics revolutionize engines?" and "What deeper secrets can quantum information reveal about the trajectory of time?" Yunger Halpern also describes her own adventures in the quantum universe and provides an insider's look at the work of the scientists obsessed with its technological promise. Moving from fundamental physics to cutting-edge experimental applications, Quantum Steampunk explores the field's aesthetic, shares its whimsy, and gazes into the potential of a quantum future. The result is a blast for fans of science, science fiction, and fantasy.

This workbook provides reading and writing skill practice corresponding to the science content of each lesson. Graphic organizers, vocabulary practice, and lesson outlines are included for every lesson.

How did time begin? What conditions led to humans evolving on Earth? Will we survive the Anthropocene? And is it really true that we're all made from stars? Combining knowledge from chemistry, biology, and physics, with insights from the social sciences and humanities, A Brief History of the Last 13.8 Billion Years follows the continuum of historical change in the cosmos - from the Big Bang, through the evolution of life, to human history. In this compelling and revealing book, David Baker traces the rise of complexity in the cosmos, from the first atoms to the first life and then to humans and the things we have made. He shows us how simple clumps of hydrogen gas transformed into complex human societies. This approach - Big History - allows us to see beyond the chaos of human affairs to the overall trajectory. Finally, Baker looks at the dramatic and sudden changes we're making to our planet and its biosphere and how history hints at what might come next.

Acclaimed mathematician David Sumpter shows how we can deal with the chaos and complexity of our lives What is the best way to think about the world? How often do we consider how our own thinking might impact the way we approach our daily decisions? Could it help or hinder our relationships, our careers, or even our health? Thinking about thinking is something we rarely do, yet it is something science questions all the time. David Sumpter has spent decades studying what we could all learn from the mindsets of scientists, and Four Ways of Thinking is the result. Here he reveals the four easily applied approaches to our problems: statistical, interactive, chaotic and complex. Combining engaging personal experience with practical advice and inspiring tales of ground-breaking scientific pioneers (with a tiny bit of number crunching along the way), Sumpter explains how these tried and tested methods can help us with every conundrum, from how to bicker less with our partners to pitching to a tough crowd - and in doing so change our lives.

The Extinction of Experience explores the way a broad range of technologies, from the microwave to the sophisticated computer simulator, now influence our everyday choices-what we eat, how we educate our children, how we get to and from work, and how we spend our leisure time. It is about one of the defining challenges of our age: how to live in the real world, with all of its messy physical realities, unmediated? Daily intimacy with the physical world recedes, little by little, at the same time that the worlds we access through the screen grow exponentially. More and more, we know our world through information about it rather than experience with it. And it is changing who we are. The Extinction of Experience is a book about this transformation.

The solar photovoltaic sector is moving forward very fast, both in terms of its own technological advancement and its standing among global renewable energy technologies. Rapid increases in solar cell efficiencies, fast technical change in solar batteries and solar glass, and economies of scale in production fuel its rapid adoption and it is becoming clear that existing forecasts about its adoption need to be updated extensively. This timely and distinctive examination of the economic side of the field takes into account solar PV's recent and growing lead among renewable energies competing to replace fossil fuels. The Revolution in Energy Technology examines the birth of this technology in the United States, where the main innovators are still located, the emergence of China as a main production hub, and new and growing contributions to the innovation cascades from other countries including Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The participation of universities as investors and the role of venture capital are discussed, and particular emphasis is given to the domination of the sector by large firms. The book is interesting for both academics and graduate students as well as policy makers, technicians, engineers and companies involved in the field.

This book introduces the reader to the exciting new field of plant philosophy and takes it in a new direction to ask: what does it mean to say that plants are sexed? Do 'male' and 'female' really mean the same when applied to humans, trees, fungi and algae? Are the zoological categories of sex really adequate for understanding the - uniquely 'dibiontic' - life cycle of plants? Vegetal Sex addresses these questions through a detailed analysis of major moments in the history of plant sex, from Aristotle to the modern day. Tracing the transformations in the analogy between animals and plants that characterize this history, it shows how the analogy still functions in contemporary botany and asks: what would a non-zoocentric, plant-centred philosophy of vegetal sex be like? By showing how philosophy and botany have been and still are inextricably entwined, Vegetal Sex allows us to think vegetal being and, perhaps, to recognize the vegetal in us all.

Providing a comprehensive overview of the urban sharing economy, this Modern Guide takes a forward-looking perspective on how sharing goods and services may facilitate future sustainability of consumption and production. It highlights recent developments and issues, with cutting-edge discussions from leading international scholars in business, engineering, environmental management, geography, law, planning, sociology and transport studies. A Modern Guide to the Urban Sharing Economy begins with basic concepts and definitions, providing broad context with a focus on shifting service modalities, regulatory frameworks, and a historical overview of how sharing came to be a staple feature of the economies of contemporary cities. The second section focusses on shared mobility, with a particular lens on micromobility, parking, ride-hailing, car-sharing and ride-sharing. The third section focusses on shared space, including coworking office spaces and short-term rentals, as well as shared goods and services, including streaming music services, clothing rental services, food sharing and tool libraries. The book concludes by outlining the key ethical challenges that face the sharing economy. Real-world case studies are presented from authors in more than a dozen countries, making this a helpful and invigorating read for scholars of the sharing economy, urban studies and sustainable development. A Modern Guide to the Urban Sharing Economy is likely to also be of interest to those studying urban planning, human geography, and other disciplines focussing on the future of planetary urbanisation.