In an era where climate change, natural catastrophes and land degradation are major issues, the conservation of soil and vegetation in mountainous or sloping regions has become an international priority. How to avoid substrate mass movement through landslides and erosion using sustainable and ecologically sound techniques is rapidly becoming a scientific domain where knowledge from many different fields is required. These proceedings bring together papers from geotechnical and civil engineers, biologists, ecologists and foresters, who discuss current problems in slope stability research, and how to address those problems using ground bio- and eco-engineering techniques.

First full-scale examination of the phenomenon of the English Vernacular minuscule, analysing the full corpus and giving an account of its history and development. A new, distinct script, English Vernacular minuscule, emerged in the 990s, used for writing in Old English. It appeared at a time of great political and social upheaval, with Danish incursions and conquest, continuing monastic reform, and an explosion of writing and copying in the vernacular, including the homilies of AElfric and Wulfstan, two different recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two of the four major surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry (the "Beowulf" and "Junius" books), and many original royal and ecclesiastical diplomas, writs and wills. However, although these important manuscripts and documents have been studied extensively, this has tended to be in isolation or small groups, never before as a complete corpus, a gap which this volume aims to rectify. It opens with the historical context, followed by a thorough reexamination of the evidence for dating and localising examples of thescript. It then offers a full analysis of the complete corpus of surviving writing in English Vernacular minuscule, datable approximately from its inception in the 990s to the death of Cnut in 1035. While solidly grounded in palaeographical methodology, the book introduces more innovative approaches: by examining all of the approximately 500 surviving examples of the script as a whole rather than focussing on selected highlights, it presents a synthesis ofthe handwriting in order to identify local practices, new scribal connections, and chronological and stylistic developments in this important but surprisingly little-studied script. Peter Stokes is Senior Lecturer at King's College London.

More than ever, international security and economic prosperity depend upon safe access to the shared domains that make up the global commons: maritime, air, space, and cyberspace. Together these domains serve as essential conduits through which international commerce, communication, and governance prosper. However, the global commons are congested, contested, and competitive. In the January 2012 defense strategic guidance, the United States confirmed its commitment "to continue to lead global efforts with capable allies and partners to assure access to and use of the global commons, both by strengthening international norms of responsible behavior and by maintaining relevant and interoperable military capabilities". In the face of persistent threats, some hybrid in nature, and their consequences, "Conflict and Cooperation in the Global Commons" provides a forum where contributors identify ways to strengthen and maintain responsible use of the global commons. The result is a comprehensive approach that will enhance, align, and unify commercial industry, civil agency, and military perspectives and actions.

This publication comprises the proceedings of the first International Conference devoted to the structural roots of trees and woody plants. 'The Supporting Roots - Structure and Function, ' 20-24 July 1998, Bordeaux, France. The meeting was held under the auspices ofIUFRO WPS 2. 01. 13 'Root Physiology and Symbiosis, ' and its aim was to bring together scientific researchers, foresters and arboriculturalists, to discuss current problems in structural root research and disseminate knowledge to an audience from a wide disciplinary background. For the first time in an international conference, emphasis was placed on presenting recent reseach in the field of tree anchorage mechanics and root biomechanics. The way in which tree stability can be affected by root system symmetry and architecture was addressed, as well as how movement during wind sway can influence the development and shape of woody roots. The role of different nursery and planting techniques was discussed, in relation to effects on root system form and development. Root response to different environmental stresses, including water, temperature, nutrient and mechanical stress was addressed in detail. The structure and function of woody roots was also considered at different levels, from coarse to fine roots, with several papers discussing the interaction between roots and the rhizosphere. One of the conference highlights was the presentation of new methods in root research, by a series of workshops held at LRBB-INRA, Pierroton, on the northern border of the Gascony forest.

This volume brings together papers from geotechnical and civil engineers, biologists, ecologists and foresters. They discuss current problems in slope stability research and how to address them using ground bio- and eco-engineering techniques. Coverage presents studies by scientists and practitioners on slope instability, erosion, soil hydrology, mountain ecology, land use and restoration and how to mitigate these problems using vegetation.

This book presents a new model of vowel perception and production derived from visual cues identified in waveform displays. In addition to describing waveform displays of vowels beyond previous descriptions, included in the book are descriptions of experimental evidence supporting near 100% vowel identification accuracy across 20 male talkers using the concepts in the model. The book content will be of interest to several academic fields including Cognitive Science, Psychology, Linguistics, Speech and Hearing, Language Acquisition, Neurolinguistics, Phonetics, and areas within Physics and Mathematics. Beyond these academic fields, the new model of vowel perception presented here could possibly be used to improve accuracy and speed within existing speech recognition systems, or it could be used to generate a new speech recognition program. Many speech recognition programs are based on simple statistical programs like Hidden Markov Models that ignore any theoretical basis to speech recognition. The Waveform Model differs from the HMM approaches since it has a theoretical basis rooted in articulation and that has potentially more promise than these simple HMM models that just take overall similarities in waveforms and try to match them to phonemes and words. Furthermore, many of the speech recognition programs use extensive training by a single user (in quiet conditions) in order to attain over 90% accuracy, which is still a relatively poor performance. The Waveform Model requires no training, can be used across talkers, and has accuracy above reported speech recognition performance (specific to vowels). In summary, the Waveform Model is innovative, and new to the literature and research communities.