A core function of social work is to assist, empower, and protect the most vulnerable in society. Social workers make difficult decisions in complex and challenging situations every day. They work in organizations that have clear statutory duties. Therefore, it is essential that social work students know what their responsibilities are. Familiarity with law, legislation, and legal processes is consequently fundamental to sound social work practice. This best-selling book helps social work students gain this foothold in understanding law as it applies to social work practice. It avoids complicated legal jargon remote from the everyday realities of practice, offering instead a grounding in legally-appropriate, rights-based social work. It covers the full range of social work law, including services for children and families and child protection, adult care law, youth justice, court work, professional regulation, and human rights.

Puzzled by terminology, skills, law, or theory? Revising for your placement or exam? Then look no further! This series of concise and easy-to-use A-Zs will be your guide. Designed for both students and newly-qualified social workers, this book will introduce you to over 300 key laws, legal terms, and legal processes in a concise and no-nonsense way. It covers all areas of social work practice - adults, children and families, mental health, and youth justice - ensuring you have the knowledge you need to apply the law appropriately, ethically and with confidence.

"Science Fiction "is a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to one of the most popular areas of modern culture. This second edition reflects how the field is rapidly changing in both its practice and its critical reception. With an entirely new conclusion and all other chapters fully reworked and updated, this volume offers:
- A concise history of science fiction and the ways in which the genre has been used and defined
- Explanations of key concepts in SF criticism and theory through chapters such as Gender, Race, Technology and Metaphor
- Examines the interactions between Science Fiction and Science Fact
- Anchors each chapter with a case study drawn from short story, book or film, from Frank Herbert's Dune to Star Wars, from The Left Hand of Darkness to Neuromancer.
Introducing the reader to nineteenth-century, Pulp, Golden Age, New Wave, Feminist and Cyberpunk science fictions, this is the essential contemporary guide to a major cultural movement.

"Science Fiction "is a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to one of the most popular areas of modern culture. This second edition reflects how the field is rapidly changing in both its practice and its critical reception. With an entirely new conclusion and all other chapters fully reworked and updated, this volume offers:
- A concise history of science fiction and the ways in which the genre has been used and defined
- Explanations of key concepts in SF criticism and theory through chapters such as Gender, Race, Technology and Metaphor
- Examines the interactions between Science Fiction and Science Fact
- Anchors each chapter with a case study drawn from short story, book or film, from Frank Herbert's Dune to Star Wars, from The Left Hand of Darkness to Neuromancer.
Introducing the reader to nineteenth-century, Pulp, Golden Age, New Wave, Feminist and Cyberpunk science fictions, this is the essential contemporary guide to a major cultural movement.

Boreal Shield Watersheds: Lake Trout Ecosystems in a Changing Environment brings together the work of a renowned international group of scientists who specialize in aquatic science and environmental management. They explore the functioning of Boreal Shield ecosystems, focusing on the lake trout, the classic coldwater species of northern glaciated lakes, using it as an indicator of environmental change and as a model to measure the effectiveness of management actions. This book demonstrates how boreal waters have served as a crucible for decades of environmental research into the impacts of nutrient additions, trace contaminants, acid rain, climate change, sport fishing, invasive species, and watershed disturbances. The text builds on this substantial research legacy and explores our ability to manage human interactions with ecosystems across the vast Boreal Shield ecozone of North America, and with other important ecosystems worldwide. It also provides models and new methods of assessing the risk to and the durability of ecosystems in relation to local, regional, and global human activities. Maps and descriptions of several important long-term monitoring sites and an atlas describing more than 3,000 lake trout lakes in the region are special components of the book.

Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing interest to historians, poets, and dramatists. Writing some 1,200 years later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on this rich literary heritage to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. Luo's novel offers a startling and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought; it has influenced the ways the Chinese think about power, diplomacy, and war even to this day. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and remains a great work of world literature. The University of California Press is pleased to make the complete and unabridged translation available again.

How great groups make great schools Training leaders how to conduct effective meetings is important, but it's not enough to ensure that the professional development process is valuable. This field book shows educators how to develop group culture, enhance facilitators' skills, and optimize the group's most precious resource-its members. The authors describe how to form working committees, task forces, grade-level, and department teams, and faculties that are more effective and better equipped to resolve complex issues around student learning. Specific topics include Understanding eight principles that underlie effective groups Learning the five standards for effective meetings Setting clear goals and roles Practicing new ways of talking for improved collaboration Examining perceptions and mental models Enhancing energy sources Working with conflict Developing basic facilitation skills This practical guide's special features include the newly updated seven norms of collaboration, a sample team assessment survey, instruments for assessing meeting effectiveness, an extensive bibliography, and practical examples embedded throughout the text. Practitioners will find a valuable road map for leading effective, student-focused school improvement efforts.

Boreal Shield Watersheds: Lake Trout Ecosystems in a Changing Environment brings together the work of a renowned international group of scientists who specialize in aquatic science and environmental management. They explore the functioning of Boreal Shield ecosystems, focusing on the lake trout, the classic coldwater species of northern glaciated lakes, using it as an indicator of environmental change and as a model to measure the effectiveness of management actions.

This book demonstrates how boreal waters have served as a crucible for decades of environmental research into the impacts of nutrient additions, trace contaminants, acid rain, climate change, sport fishing, invasive species, and watershed disturbances.

The text builds on this substantial research legacy and explores our ability to manage human interactions with ecosystems across the vast Boreal Shield ecozone of North America, and with other important ecosystems worldwide. It also provides models and new methods of assessing the risk to and the durability of ecosystems in relation to local, regional, and global human activities. Maps and descriptions of several important long-term monitoring sites and an atlas describing more than 3,000 lake trout lakes in the region are special components of the book.

This book explores recent perspectives on type-2 fuzzy sets. Written as a tribute to Professor Jerry Mendel for his pioneering works on type-2 fuzzy sets and systems, it covers a wide range of topics, including applications to the Go game, machine learning and pattern recognition, as well as type-2 fuzzy control and intelligent systems. The book is intended as a reference guide for the type-2 fuzzy logic community, yet it aims also at other communities dealing with similar methods and applications.

"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" With those words, David Glasgow Farragut led a fleet of Union warships into Mobile Bay, where he achieved one of the most celebrated victories in American naval history. What separates the good officer from the great one, writes Robert J. Schneller, Jr., is the courage to make difficult decisions in the heat of combat despite personal fear or the awful realization that some men will have to pay in blood. Farragut's personal attributes, such as his sharp intelligence and confidence, and his careful preparations, keen situational awareness, and courage to act boldly at decisive moments produced the Union's most important naval victories and resulted in his appointment as the U.S. Navy's first admiral. These qualities also made Farragut the greatest naval officer, Union or Confederate, of the Civil War and, indeed, the most outstanding U.S. naval officer of the nineteenth century.

This book explores recent perspectives on type-2 fuzzy sets. Written as a tribute to Professor Jerry Mendel for his pioneering works on type-2 fuzzy sets and systems, it covers a wide range of topics, including applications to the Go game, machine learning and pattern recognition, as well as type-2 fuzzy control and intelligent systems. The book is intended as a reference guide for the type-2 fuzzy logic community, yet it aims also at other communities dealing with similar methods and applications.

This thesis develops a nested sampling algorithm into a black box tool for directly calculating the partition function, and thus the complete phase diagram of a material, from the interatomic potential energy function. It represents a significant step forward in our ability to accurately describe the finite temperature properties of materials. In principle, the macroscopic phases of matter are related to the microscopic interactions of atoms by statistical mechanics and the partition function. In practice, direct calculation of the partition function has proved infeasible for realistic models of atomic interactions, even with modern atomistic simulation methods. The thesis also shows how the output of nested sampling calculations can be processed to calculate the complete PVT (pressure-volume-temperature) equation of state for a material, and applies the nested sampling algorithm to calculate the pressure-temperature phase diagrams of aluminium and a model binary alloy.

This book studies Seneca's poetic drama from a novel point of view. Whereas most criticism of Seneca's dramas has tended to focus on their relationship to Stoicism, I approach them from the perspective of Seneca's own theory of literary decadence, which he sets forth in the 114th of his letters to Lucilius. His theory can be summed up as follows: the various forms of stylistic corruption are the result of a straining for effect, which itself reflects a taste for the extreme. A writer or speaker's stylistic vices thus mirror the vices of his character; they also reflect the vices of the time and place in which he lives, since every user of language is conditioned by his environment. What is especially striking about Seneca's discussion is that a number of the vices he lists - hyperbole, disruption of natural word order, excessive metaphor - are notable features of the poetic style of his own dramas. I argue for a rehabilitation of the 'decadent' style of Seneca's tragedies: in Seneca's hands, this style is a precise diagnostic tool for revealing the self-destructive irrationality that governs not only the individual, but also his society and the entire universe.

A core function of social work is to assist, empower, and protect the most vulnerable in society. Social workers make difficult decisions in complex and challenging situations every day. They work in organizations that have clear statutory duties. Therefore, it is essential that social work students know what their responsibilities are. Familiarity with law, legislation, and legal processes is consequently fundamental to sound social work practice. This best-selling book helps social work students gain this foothold in understanding law as it applies to social work practice. It avoids complicated legal jargon remote from the everyday realities of practice, offering instead a grounding in legally-appropriate, rights-based social work. It covers the full range of social work law, including services for children and families and child protection, adult care law, youth justice, court work, professional regulation, and human rights.

The authors present two opposing, yet strangely interlaced historical accounts for the Exodus, naming the historical Pharaohs and surprising candidates for the historical Moses. While Roberts presents an account that finds its moorings in the efficacy of scriptural historicity, Ward presents a new and completely unique theory for the Exodus and its cast of characters.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the North-West Passage, a trade route from the Atlantic to the Pacific, had been sought for centuries without success. The Franklin expedition of 1845 became the latest victim, and Irish naval officer Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure (1807-73) took part in the attempts to ascertain its fate. His ship, H.M.S. Investigator, spent the years 1850-4 in the Arctic, and in the course of their search for the lost expedition, the crew discovered the North-West Passage. Upon his return to England, following the loss of the Investigator to pack ice, McClure handed over his journals to author and fellow officer Sherard Osborn (1822-75), who prepared this narrative of the pioneering expedition. First published in 1856, the work remains a compelling account of Arctic exploration, revealing how McClure and his men survived four forbidding winters.

In the context of their war experience in the First World War, the changes and developments of the Executive branch of the Royal Navy between the world wars are examined and how these made them fit for the test of the Second World War are critically assessed.

The world's population is growing at an unsustainable rate. From a baseline ?gure of one billion in 1800, global population is predicted to exceed nine billion by 2050 and 87. 8% of this growth will be localized in less developed countries. Such uneven population growth will yield a harvest of poverty, malnutrition, disease and en- ronmental degradation that will affect us all. Amongst the complex mixture of political, social, cultural and technological changes needed to address this issue, the development of improved methods of fertility regulation will be critical. The inadequacy of current contraceptive technologies is indicated by recent data s- gesting that the contraceptive needs of over 120 million couples go unmet every year. As a direct consequence of this de?cit 38% of pregnancies are unplanned and more than 50% end in an abortion, generating a total of 46 million abortions per annum particularly among teenagers. If safe, effective contraceptives were ava- able to every couple experiencing an unmet family planning need, 1. 5 million lives would be saved each year (UNFPA 2003). Progress in contraceptive technology should not only generate more effective methods of regulating fertility, but should also provide a range of methods to meet the changing needs of the world's population. Contraceptive practice was revo- tionized in 1960 in the US and 1961 in Europe by the introduction of the oral contraceptive pill by Gregory Pincus, MC Chang and colleagues, based on fun- mental hormone research conducted in Germany.

"Studies on Men s Health and Fertility "provides a comprehensive series of up-to-the-minute reviews addressing the role of oxidative stress in the aetiology of reproductive pathologies in the male. This volume represents by far the most detailed, authoritative review of the field that has been produced to date. The text encompasses the basic science of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by mammalian spermatozoa, the way in which these highly reactive molecules are processed by the germ line and the physiological significance of this redox activity in the generation of a functional gamete. The factors responsible for perturbing the delicate balance between physiological redox signaling on the one hand and oxidative stress on the other are also extensively reviewed and some of the first clues concerning the underlying mechanisms (age, heat, infection, cryostorage, aberrant lipid metabolism), clearly identified. From a clinical perspective there are chapters setting out the methods we should be using to diagnose oxidative stress in the male germ line, a clinical perspective on the aetiology of this condition and detailed considerations of the most suitable means of ameliorating such stress from a therapeutic point of view.

"Studies on Men s Health and Fertility "is intended to provide clinicians and scientists with a snap shot of the current status of this exciting, rapidly moving field. The book will be of value to clinicians interested in strategies for the management of oxidative stress in their infertility patients and scientists wishing to understand the molecular mechanisms underpinning the generation of ROS by these cells and its pathophysiological significance. It was not so long ago that the ability of spermatozoa to generate ROS was a hotly disputed topic. With the publication of this book such doubts can finally be laid to rest. There is now no doubt that these cells actively generate ROS, that oxidative stress is a major contributor to defects in male reproductive health and that the successful clinical management of this condition depends on developing a deeper understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms. In this quest, "Studies on Men s Health and Fertility "will be seen as a clear and important milestone. "

With the aid of the most extensive and comprehensive survey data extracted from voters during the 2011 Scottish General, this book analyses the reasons behind why the SNP not only retained their mandate from the people to govern Scotland but further succeeded in winning a resounding majority in the Scottish Parliament. In tackling this overarching question other complex issues are also explored such as whether a pre-occupation with events at Westminster confined the Scottish Elections to the realm of 'second-order' elections? What impact the financial crisis had on elected a parliament that in reality has little economic power? The volume also has a broader appeal to devolved parliamentary elections more broadly by exploring what matters to voters when they cast their ballots for their national parliament in a complex, multi-level Political system. Examining performance evaluations, party loyalties and constitutional preferences, the authors show that Scottish elections are increasingly Scottish affairs, where voters are concerned with government competence - in domestic matters and in managing relations with Westminster.

Using official statistics, this book explores how the SNP managed to confound expectations and win a parliamentary majority in the 2011 Scottish General Election. Perhaps surprisingly, it was not constitutional politics or the return of the Conservatives to power in Westminster but domestic issues that decided the vote in the SNP's favour.

It is essential for social work students to know about social policy, to know why studying social policy is important in the social work degree, and to understand how social policy, when implemented, has a real impact on the everyday life of vulnerable people. This book provides plenty of examples of this impact, tracing the development of welfare provision for older people right through the twentieth century, leading up to an analysis of contemporary developments, which students will need to know about in order to practice effectively.