The financial Crash of 2008 was not just about government regulation or lack thereof; the low tide of the Crash also revealed just how vulnerable our societies are to those organizations which focus so much on their own self-serving goals, that they ignore the damage they can do outside their walls. To counter this, the authors ask whether there is a better way to run this capitalist system of ours, instead of being tempted to throw it out and replace it with something much worse. Their prescription is to create the high engagement work culture in our organizations through a greater balance between the urges of 'me' and the desires and needs of 'we'; a work culture which brings real benefits to all stakeholders, not just the few, and drives the performance of our organizations to new heights. This is not 'pie in the sky': it is being lived by those companies featured in detail in these pages, such as Whole Foods Market and BMW.

Performance is the key outcome of high morale, and the reason why it should be taken so seriously: with research gathered from some of the world's largest employee opinion databases and best academic centres, the authors lay out the morale-performance connection. Now raised from just 'touchy-feely' to 'mission critical', employee morale is finally getting the attention which it deserves. As it does, organizations are changing everything from their structure to their processes to take account of this fact, and starting to manage themselves around the need to measure and improve morale on an ongoing basis. Starting with the hiring process, to every single promotion, and via ongoing methods which the authors examine in detail, morale is increasingly the focus, high morale the goal. Check out Cary Cooper's Blog: http: //carycooperblog.com/ Check out David Bowles' Blog: www.davidbowles.wordpress.com

In this unique study, authors Komanduri Murty, Angela Owens, and Ashwin Vyas examine the life histories of Black male prisoners in the U.S. Federal Prison system to determine what patterns of behavior or life experiences influenced or precipitated their involvement in criminal behavior. The authors focus on Black male prisoners, using pre-sentence investigation reports to provide readers with detailed descriptions of prisoner characteristics. Through the use of lengthy interview processes, Murty, Owens, and Vyas investigate the phenomenology of Black male offenders, to give understanding to the circumstances under which their crimes were committed. Their study provides valuable lessons for rehabilitation through deterrence and rational theories of human behavior.

Modeling of the rainfall-runoff process is of both scientific and practical significance. Many of the currently used mathematical models of hydrologic systems were developed a genera tion ago. Much of the effort since then has focused on refining these models rather than on developing new models based on improved scientific understanding. In the past few years, however, a renewed effort has been made to improve both our fundamental understanding of hydrologic processes and to exploit technological advances in computing and remote sensing. It is against this background that the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Recent Advances in the Modeling of Hydrologic Systems was organized. The idea for holding a NATO ASI on this topic grew out of an informal discussion between one of the co-directors and Professor Francisco Nunes-Correia at a previous NATO ASI held at Tucson, Arizona in 1985. The Special Program Panel on Global Transport Mechanisms in the Geo-Sciences of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division agreed to sponsor the ASI and an organizing committee was formed. The committee comprised the co directors, Professor David S. Bowles (U.S.A.) and Professor P. Enda O'Connell (U.K.), and Professor Francisco Nunes-Correia (Portugal), Dr. Donn G. DeCoursey (U.S.A.), and Professor Ezio Todini (Italy)."

The 2008 crisis set off a systemic panic which almost engulfed the world's financial system. Through a lens of sustainability this book examines how organisations can explore a new business culture today. Drawing from real-life examples and new ideas Bowles and Cooper discuss how organisations can move from 'me' to 'we'.

Performance is the key outcome of high morale, and the reason why it should be taken so seriously: with research gathered from some of the world's largest employee opinion databases and best academic centres, the authors lay out the morale-performance connection.

Bringing Peace Into the Room examines the personal qualities that make a mediator effective. The eminent authors of this volume go beyond traditional descriptions of academic training, theoretical orientation, and refinement of technique to confront issues related to personal temperament and the crucial psychological, intellectual and spiritual qualities of the mediation professional— qualities that are often the most potent elements of successful mediation. In this comprehensive resource, Daniel Bowling and David Hoffman bring together a stellar panel of practitioners, academics, teachers, and trainers in the field— Michele LeBaron, Kenneth Cloke, Robert Benjamin, Don Saposnek, Sara Cobb, Peter Adler, Jonathan Reitman, Lois Gold, Marvin Johnson, and others— ¾who share their personal experiences as mediators. Each contributor demonstrates that at the very heart of conflict resolution is the subtle interaction between the parties and the mediator's personal and authentic style.

While growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Milton Wright, the Wright Brothers' father, liked to purchase toys for his sons that he hoped would stimulate their imagination. One of the most memorable gifts was a toy helicopter that was designed by the French aeronautical experimenter Alphonse Penaud. Milton gave his sons this gift in 1878, and, though it was a simple device with a stick bound to a four-blade rotor set in a spindle, it had the intended effect-it caused them to dream. Twenty-five years separated the gift of this toy and their invention of the airplane, yet the Wright brothers were convinced it had exerted an important influence. Tom Crouch argued in The Bishop's Boys that toys like these perfectly illustrated the significance of play for technological innovation. He wrote, "rotary-wing toys were to intrigue and inspire generations of children, a few of whom would, as adults, attempt to realize the dream of flight for themselves." If the first powered flight on 17 December 1903 represented a childhood dream realized, it was only the first step in the rapid evolution of the airplane from their flimsy kite-like contraption of wood and cloth to jet airliners and rockets in space. And, as extraordinary as the achievement of powered flight seemed in 1903, before the end of the century, space travel also would become a dream realized. Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin first circumnavigated Earth in April 1961, and, eight years later, American astronauts took the first steps for humankind on the Moon. It is with great pleasure that we introduce Realizing the Dream: Biographical Essays in Honor of the Centennial of Flight. These essays in celebration of the Wright brothers' first flight 100 years ago grew out of presentations by a group of prominent scholars in 2003 at a conference sponsored by the NASA History Division and held at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio. The volume focuses on the careers of some of the many men and women who helped to realize the dream of flight both through the atmosphere and beyond. These accounts are original and compelling because they examine the history of flight through the lens of biography. Collectively, these individuals helped to shape American aerospace history. There are obviously many other individuals that could, and arguably should, have been included in this collection, but we believe that the cross section of diverse individuals contained in this volume is important because it is symbolic of the dream of flight as a whole. These people all devoted their lives, and sometimes even sacrificed them, to the demands required for its realization. The reasons behind the dreams were diverse. The technological potential first demonstrated by the Wright brothers enabled those who followed them to use flight as a means of racial uplift, gender equalization, personal adventure, commercial gain, military superiority, and space exploration. The history of flight is more than a story of technology; it had important cultural consequences as well, and these are some of the themes that the following biographies explore. We have arranged the essays roughly chronologically, though the careers of the people described here often span more than one period of history. None of the people in this volume were inventors like the Wright brothers, but their contributions to flight were nevertheless significant. They were daredevil pilots, entrepreneurs, business men and women, military strategists, and managers of large-scale technology who advanced the art, science, and business of air and space travel, often through sheer force of character. The final paper serves as an epilogue as well as a tribute to the Wright brothers. It describes a reenactment of their important glider experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wrights' childhood dream was first realized.

The NASA History Program was first established in 1959 (a year after NASA itself was formed) and has continued to document and preserve the agency's remarkable history through a variety of products. The NASA History Division serves two key functions: fulfilling the mandate of the 1958 "Space Act" calling for NASA to disseminate aerospace information as widely as possible, and helping NASA managers understand and thus benefit from the study of past accomplishment and difficulties. NASA publishes documents on topics such as: Documentary History, Memoirs, Aeronautics and Space Report of the President, and many more. This is one of those documents.

"Science in Flux" traces the history of one of the most powerful nuclear test reactors in the United States and the only nuclear facility ever built by NASA. In the late 1950s NASA constructed Plum Brook Station on a vast tract of undeveloped land near Sandusky, Ohio. Once fully operational in 1963, it supported basic research for NASA's nuclear rocket program (NERVA). Plum Brook represents a significant, if largely forgotten, story of nuclear research, political change, and the professional culture of the scientists and engineers who devoted their lives to construct and operate the facility. In 1973, after only a decade of research, the government shut Plum Brook down before many of its experiments could be completed. Even the valiant attempt to redefine the reactor as an environmental analysis tool failed, and the facility went silent. The reactors lay in costly, but quiet standby for nearly a quarter-century before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided to decommission the reactors and clean up the site. The history of Plum Brook reveals the perils and potentials of that nuclear technology. As NASA, Congress, and space enthusiasts all begin looking once again at the nuclear option for sending humans to Mars, the echoes of Plum Brook's past will resonate with current policy and space initiatives.

During its maiden voyage in May 1962, a Centaur upper stage rocket, mated to an At l a sb o o s t e r, exploded 54 seconds after launch, engulfing the rocket in a huge fireball. In ve s t i g a t i o nre vealed that Centaur's light, stainless-steel tank had split open, spilling its liquid-hyd rogen fueld own its sides, where the flame of the rocket exhaust immediately ignited it. Coming less thana year after President Kennedy had made landing human beings on the Moon a national p r i o r i t y, the loss of Centaur was regarded as a serious setback for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). During the failure investigation, Homer Newell, Di rector of Space Sciences, ruefully declared: "Taming liquid hydrogen to the point where expensive oper-ational space missions can be committed to it has turned out to be more difficult than anyone supposed at the outset."

"Science in Flux" traces the history of one of the most powerful nuclear test reactors in the United States and the only nuclear facility ever built by NASA. In the late 1950s NASA constructed Plum Brook Station on a vast tract of undeveloped land near Sandusky, Ohio. Once fully operational in 1963, it supported basic research for NASA's nuclear rocket program (NERVA). Plum Brook represents a significant, if largely forgotten, story of nuclear research, political change, and the professional culture of the scientists and engineers who devoted their lives to construct and operate the facility. In 1973, after only a decade of research, the government shut Plum Brook down before many of its experiments could be completed. Even the valiant attempt to redefine the reactor as an environmental analysis tool failed, and the facility went silent. The reactors lay in costly, but quiet standby for nearly a quarter-century before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided to decommission the reactors and clean up the site. The history of Plum Brook reveals the perils and potentials of that nuclear technology. As NASA, Congress, and space enthusiasts all begin looking once again at the nuclear option for sending humans to Mars, the echoes of Plum Brook's past will resonate with current policy and space initiatives.