Introduction to Comparative Politics provides students with carefully selected readings that familiarize them with substantive issues and the methodological tools found within comparative politics, a major subfield of political science. The readings introduce students to philosophical and methodological traditions used to explain political phenomena, as well as standard analyses of power, authority, democracy, and authoritarianism. Students learn how analytical methods can provide insight into diverging patterns of domination and conflict within and between states. Additional readings explore various sources of the growing conflict and disorder within and between states and major challenges to the future of states and their citizens. Each chapter includes post-reading questions to stimulate critical thought, reflection, and lively discussion. Introduction to Comparative Politics provides students with a sampling of key themes and methods used to uncover important insights regarding political issues. The text is ideal for courses and programs in political science.

The ability of societies to manage the current transition to an innovation-driven learning economy is determined by the capacity of existing institutions to facilitate the changes underway. Individual and social learning dynamics are critical to the innovation process and essential for developing and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage. The crucial issue is: how well suited are the institutions of a region, nation or international regime to the task of coping with the dramatic changes currently underway in the global economy?

Many of the most important properties of materials in high-technology applications are strongly influenced or even controlled by the presence of solid interfaces. In this work, leading international authorities review the broad range of subjects in this field focusing on the atomic level properties of solid interfaces.

A boy-meets-ghoul story at 100 miles-per-hour! Ken Takamoto is a wannabe racer stuck at home for the summer, with only his mother for company. Dante Willow is a ghost stuck in the car he crashed while racing his rival twenty years ago. When they meet by chance, Ken has the answer to both their problems: enter the local racing league Hex Americana and win the annual Grand Prix. If they win, Dante can pass on to the afterlife and Ken can keep Dante's fixed-up car to go anywhere he wants. What starts as a simple plan becomes a wild summer full of witches, gnomes, feelings, magical chickens, and more as they prepare for the big race. Will Ken and Dante finish first? Can they even make it to the finish line? And more importantly, what happens when this racing duo blooms into something more? Bursting to the brim with crazy monsters, blazing automotive action, deep-rooted mysteries, and small-town secrets, HEX AMERICANA is the race everyone’s dying to win!

The lives of three men who made the Russian Revolution possible Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin are the focus of this biographical account of the rise of socialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bertram Wolfe, a political scientist and historian of Russia, knew Trotsky and Stalin personally, and here brings his profound insider's knowledge to bear on his subjects. Three Who Made a Revolution recounts the early lives and influences of the three leaders, and shows the development of their diverging ideologies as decades gave strength to their cause and brought Russia closer to its turning point, a revolution that would alter the course of the twentieth century."

Known for his grand public murals, Diego Rivera (1886-1957) is one of Mexico's most revered artists. His paintings are marked by a unique fusion of European sophistication, revolutionary political turmoil, and the heritage and personality of his native country. Based on extensive interviews with the artist, his four wives (including Frida Kahlo), and his friends, colleagues, and opponents, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera captures Rivera's complex personality--sometimes delightful, frequently infuriating and always fascinating--as well as his development into one of the twentieth century's greatest artist.

Molt is an important avian life history event in which feathers are shed and replaced. The timing, duration, seasonality, extent and pattern of molt follows certain strategies and this book reviews and describes these strategies for nearly 190 species based on information gathered from a 30-year study of Central Amazonian birds. Most species accounts are illustrated with several color photos focusing on wing and tail feather molt, molt limits, and how to use these patterns to accurately age birds. Published in collaboration with and on behalf of the American Ornithological Society, this volume in the highly-regarded Studies in Avian Biology series is a rich source of life history information for ornithologists working on tropical birds.

This book provides some of the elements of a general theory of totalitarianism with specific analysis of its manifestations in the various aspects of Soviet life. It will be useful in making clearer the conformation behind the calculated and bewildering changes in the day-to-day Soviet line.

Molt is an important avian life history event in which feathers are shed and replaced. The timing, duration, seasonality, extent and pattern of molt follows certain strategies and this book reviews and describes these strategies for nearly 190 species based on information gathered from a 30-year study of Central Amazonian birds. Most species accounts are illustrated with several color photos focusing on wing and tail feather molt, molt limits, and how to use these patterns to accurately age birds. Published in collaboration with and on behalf of the American Ornithological Society, this volume in the highly-regarded Studies in Avian Biology series is a rich source of life history information for ornithologists working on tropical birds.

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas after water vapor in the atmosphere of the earth. More than 98% of the carbon of the atmosphere-ocean system is stored in the oceans as dissolved inorganic carbon. The key for understanding critical processes of the marine carbon cycle is a sound knowledge of the seawater carbonate chemistry, including equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties as well as stable isotope fractionation.
Presenting the first coherent text describing equilibrium and nonequilibrium properties and stable isotope fractionation among the elements of the carbonate system. This volume presents an overview and a synthesis of these subjects which should be useful for graduate students and researchers in various fields such as biogeochemistry, chemical oceanography, paleoceanography, marine biology, marine chemistry, marine geology, and others.
The volume includes an introduction to the equilibrium properties of the carbonate system in which basic concepts such as equilibrium constants, alkalinity, pH scales, and buffering are discussed. It also deals with the nonequilibrium properties of the seawater carbonate chemistry. Whereas principle of chemical kinetics are recapitulated, reaction rates and relaxation times of the carbonate system are considered in details. The book also provides a general introduction to stable isotope fractionation and describes the partitioning of carbon, oxygen, and boron isotopes between the species of the carbonate system. The appendix contains formulas for the equilibrium constants of the carbonate system, mathematical expressions to calculate carbonate system parameters, answers to exercises and more.

In this pithy yet compact book, David Wolf, provides business owners and PR practitioners with a roadmap to corporate credibility in China. Laced with thoughtful advice and braced with illustrative cases, Public Relations in China strips out the jargon and offers something rare: a practical handbook for building and defending a brand in China.

Noise in physical systems - as a consequence of the corpuscular nature of matter - conveys information about microscopic mechanisms determining the macroscopic behavior of the system. Besides being a source of information, noise also represents a source of annoying disturbances which affect information transMission along a physical system. Therefore, noise analysis can promote our insight into the behavior of a physical system, as well as our knowledge of the natural constraints imposed upon physical-information transmission channels and devices. In recent years the continuous scientific and technical interest in noise problems has led to a remarkable progress in the understanding of noise phenomena. This progress is reflected by the rich material presented at the Fifth International Conference on Noise in Physical Systems. The conference papers originally published in these proceedings cover the various aspects of today's noise research in the fields of solid-state devices, l/f-noise, magnetic and superconducting materials, measuring methods, and theory of fluctuations. Each session of the conference was introduced by one or two invited review lectures which are included in these proceedings in full length. The 12 invited papers and more than 40 contributed papers on specific topics (only three of them have been omitted from the proceedings since they will be published elsewhere) provide a comprehensive survey of the current state-of-the-art and recent advances of noise analysis.

New information about disease transmission, dietary and economic linkage, and the continuing international focus on conservation and primate research have created a surge of interest in primates, and focus on the diverse interaction of human and nonhuman primates has become an important component in primatological and ethnographic studies. By examining the diverse and fascinating range of relationships between humans and other primates and observing how this plays a critical role in conservation practice and programs, Primates Face to Face disseminates the information gained from the anthropological study of nonhuman primates to the wider academic and non-academic world.

In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe transforms our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform through an environmental and technological history of water management in the emblematic Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the long Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) engineers' distribution of water paradoxically undermined land distribution. In so doing, he highlights the intrinsic tension engineers faced between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for development during the contentious modernization of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots, regardless of their access to land. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government's decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted development policies.

In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe transforms our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform through an environmental and technological history of water management in the emblematic Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the long Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) engineers' distribution of water paradoxically undermined land distribution. In so doing, he highlights the intrinsic tension engineers faced between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for development during the contentious modernization of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots, regardless of their access to land. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government's decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted development policies.

As our closest evolutionary relatives, nonhuman primates are integral elements in our mythologies, diets and scientific paradigms, yet most species now face an uncertain future through exploitation for the pet and bushmeat trades as well as progressive habitat loss. New information about disease transmission, dietary and economic linkage, and the continuing international focus on conservation and primate research have created a surge of interest in primates, and focus on the diverse interaction of human and nonhuman primates has become an important component in primatological and ethnographic studies. By examining the diverse and fascinating range of relationships between humans and other primates, and how this plays a critical role in conservation practice and programs, Primates Face to Face disseminates the information gained from the anthropological study of nonhuman primates to the wider academic and non-academic world.

How well suited are the institutions of a region, nation or international regime to the task of coping with the dramatic changes currently underway in the global economy? This volume examines this issue.

'Wolfe has an important story to tell and as a virologist at the forefront of pandemic forecasting, he is the perfect person to tell it' Guardian In The Viral Storm award-winning biologist Nathan Wolfe - known as 'the Indiana Jones of virus hunters' for his work in jungles and rain forests across the world - shows why we are so vulnerable to a global pandemic. The Viral Storm examines how viruses like HIV, swine flu, and bird flu have almost wiped us out in the past - and may do so in the future. It explores why modern life makes us so at risk to global pandemics, and what new technologies can do to prevent them. Wolfe's provocative vision may leave you feeling distinctly uncomfortable - but it will reveal exactly what it is we are up against. 'An excellent piece of scientific gothic, rich in descriptions of the threat we face from emerging viruses' Nature 'Part autobiography, part warning ... enthralling' BBC Focus 'Quietly terrifying ... It's hard not to feel a bit feverish at times while reading' Boston Globe 'The plague-ridden future imagined by this authoritative, measured, yet gripping book is extremely alarming' Sunday Times 'Nathan Wolfe is saving the world from near-inevitable pandemic ... a kick-ass book' Mary Roach, author of Stiff 'The world's most prominent virus hunter' New Yorker 'A good place to start preparing for what might come' New Humanist