With contributions from leading religious studies scholars this is a comprehensive overview of the relationship between religion and death. This is the first and only book to be written at an accessible undergraduate level and has the potential to be adopted widely. This new edition has been thoroughly updated to cover new debates and developments for example end of life ethics and the hospice movement. This new edition also considers emerging phenomena such as public shrines, the COVID-19 pandemic, funeral celebrants, death with dignity, spiritual bereavement groups, and online funeral practices.

With contributions from leading religious studies scholars this is a comprehensive overview of the relationship between religion and death. This is the first and only book to be written at an accessible undergraduate level and has the potential to be adopted widely. This new edition has been thoroughly updated to cover new debates and developments for example end of life ethics and the hospice movement. This new edition also considers emerging phenomena such as public shrines, the COVID-19 pandemic, funeral celebrants, death with dignity, spiritual bereavement groups, and online funeral practices.

The highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas placed a greater onus on higher education institutions to provide evidence supporting the need for affirmative action policies on their respective campuses. It is now more critical than ever that institutional leaders and scholars understand the evidence in support of race consideration in admissions as well as the challenges of the post-Fisher landscape. This important volume shares information documented for the Fisher case and provides empirical evidence to help inform scholarly conversation and institutions' decisions regarding race-conscious practices in higher education. With contributions from scholars and experts involved in the Fisher case, this edited volume documents and shares lessons learned from the collaborative efforts of the social science, educational, and legal communities. Affirmative Action and Racial Equity is a critical resource for higher education scholars and administrators to understand the nuances of the affirmative action legal debate and to identify the challenges and potential strategies toward racial equity and inclusion moving forward.

Taking an up-to-date and truly global approach, this volume presents a wide range of phenomena in politeness research, and discusses key developments in the field. Covering eight major world languages as well as several language varieties, a team of leading scholars provide a multilingual and multicultural perspective on various speech acts and emic conceptualisations of politeness, and a diachronic view of the field. Most significantly, the volume focuses on the latest trends in the field, such as metapragmatic approaches to im/politeness, politeness and globalization, politeness in computer mediated communication, and politeness and prosody, spanning a wide range of methodologies and types of data, including naturally occurring conversations, role plays, email messages, social media, online discussion forums, ethnographic interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, experiments and language corpora.

This book gathers the very best academic research to date on prison regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Grounded in solid ethnographic work, each chapter explores the informal dynamics of prisons in diverse territories and countries of the region - Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic - while theorizing how day-to-day life for the incarcerated has been forged in tandem between prison facilities and the outside world. The editors and contributors to this volume ask: how have fastest-rising incarceration rates in the world affected civilians' lives in different national contexts? How do groups of prisoners form broader and more integrated 'carceral communities' across day-to-day relations of exchange and reciprocity with guards, lawyers, family, associates, and assorted neighbors? What differences exist between carceral communities from one national context to another? Last but not least, how do carceral communities, contrary to popular opinion, necessarily become a productive force for the good and welfare of incarcerated subjects, in addition to being a potential source of troubling violence and insecurity? This edited collection represents the most rigorous scholarship to date on the prison regimes of Latin America and the Caribbean, exploring the methodological value of ethnographic reflexivity inside prisons and theorizing how daily life for the incarcerated challenges preconceptions of prisoner subjectivity, so-called prison gangs, and bio-political order. Sacha Darke is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at University of Westminster, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Law at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Affiliate of King's Brazil Institute, King's College London, UK. Chris Garces is Research Professor of Anthropology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, and Visiting Lecturer in Law at Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador. Luis Duno-Gottberg is Professor at Rice University, USA. He specializes in Caribbean culture, with emphasis on race and ethnicity, politics, violence, and visual culture. Andres Antillano is Professor in Criminology at Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuala.

This book gathers the very best academic research to date on prison regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean. Grounded in solid ethnographic work, each chapter explores the informal dynamics of prisons in diverse territories and countries of the region - Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic - while theorizing how day-to-day life for the incarcerated has been forged in tandem between prison facilities and the outside world. The editors and contributors to this volume ask: how have fastest-rising incarceration rates in the world affected civilians' lives in different national contexts? How do groups of prisoners form broader and more integrated 'carceral communities' across day-to-day relations of exchange and reciprocity with guards, lawyers, family, associates, and assorted neighbors? What differences exist between carceral communities from one national context to another? Last but not least, how do carceral communities, contrary to popular opinion, necessarily become a productive force for the good and welfare of incarcerated subjects, in addition to being a potential source of troubling violence and insecurity? This edited collection represents the most rigorous scholarship to date on the prison regimes of Latin America and the Caribbean, exploring the methodological value of ethnographic reflexivity inside prisons and theorizing how daily life for the incarcerated challenges preconceptions of prisoner subjectivity, so-called prison gangs, and bio-political order. Sacha Darke is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at University of Westminster, UK, Visiting Lecturer in Law at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Affiliate of King's Brazil Institute, King's College London, UK. Chris Garces is Research Professor of Anthropology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, and Visiting Lecturer in Law at Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador. Luis Duno-Gottberg is Professor at Rice University, USA. He specializes in Caribbean culture, with emphasis on race and ethnicity, politics, violence, and visual culture. Andres Antillano is Professor in Criminology at Universidad Central de Venezuela, Venezuala.

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of globalization's impact on the Brazilian legal profession. Employing original data from nine empirical studies, the book details how Brazil's need to restructure its economy and manage its global relationships contributed to the emergence of a new 'corporate legal sector' - a sector marked by increasingly large and sophisticated law firms and in-house legal departments. This corporate legal sector in turn helped to reshape other parts of the Brazilian legal profession, including legal education, pro bono practices, the regulation of legal services, and the state's legal capacity in international economic law. The book, the second in a series on Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies, will be of interest to academics, lawyers, and policymakers concerned with the role that a rapidly globalizing legal profession is playing in the development of key emerging economies, and how these countries are integrating into the global market for legal services.

This book integrates multiple criteria concepts and methods for problems within the Risk, Reliability and Maintenance (RRM) context. The concepts and foundations related to RRM are considered for this integration with multicriteria approaches. In the book, a general framework for building decision models is presented and this is illustrated in various chapters by discussing many different decision models related to the RRM context. The scope of the book is related to ways of how to integrate Applied Probability and Decision Making. In Applied Probability, this mainly includes: decision analysis and reliability theory, amongst other topics closely related to risk analysis and maintenance. In Decision Making, it includes a broad range of topics in MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) and MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding; also known as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis). In addition to decision analysis, some of the topics related to Mathematical Programming area are briefly considered, such as multiobjective optimization, since methods related to these topics have been applied to the context of RRM. The book addresses an innovative treatment for the decision making in RRM, thereby improving the integration of fundamental concepts from the areas of both RRM and decision making. This is accomplished by presenting an overview of the literature on decision making in RRM. Some pitfalls of decision models when applying them to RRM in practice are discussed and guidance on overcoming these drawbacks is offered. The procedure enables multicriteria models to be built for the RRM context, including guidance on choosing an appropriate multicriteria method for a particular problem faced in the RRM context. The book also includes many research advances in these topics. Most of the multicriteria decision models that are described are specific applications that have been influenced by this research and the advances in this field. Multicriteria and Multiobjective Models for Risk, Reliability and Maintenance Decision Analysis is implicitly structured in three parts, with 12 chapters. The first part deals with MCDM/A concepts methods and decision processes. The second part presents the main concepts and foundations of RRM. Finally the third part deals with specific decision problems in the RRM context approached with MCDM/A models.

This book integrates multiple criteria concepts and methods for problems within the Risk, Reliability and Maintenance (RRM) context. The concepts and foundations related to RRM are considered for this integration with multicriteria approaches. In the book, a general framework for building decision models is presented and this is illustrated in various chapters by discussing many different decision models related to the RRM context. The scope of the book is related to ways of how to integrate Applied Probability and Decision Making. In Applied Probability, this mainly includes: decision analysis and reliability theory, amongst other topics closely related to risk analysis and maintenance. In Decision Making, it includes a broad range of topics in MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) and MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding; also known as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis). In addition to decision analysis, some of the topics related to Mathematical Programming area are briefly considered, such as multiobjective optimization, since methods related to these topics have been applied to the context of RRM. The book addresses an innovative treatment for the decision making in RRM, thereby improving the integration of fundamental concepts from the areas of both RRM and decision making. This is accomplished by presenting an overview of the literature on decision making in RRM. Some pitfalls of decision models when applying them to RRM in practice are discussed and guidance on overcoming these drawbacks is offered. The procedure enables multicriteria models to be built for the RRM context, including guidance on choosing an appropriate multicriteria method for a particular problem faced in the RRM context. The book also includes many research advances in these topics. Most of the multicriteria decision models that are described are specific applications that have been influenced by this research and the advances in this field. Multicriteria and Multiobjective Models for Risk, Reliability and Maintenance Decision Analysis is implicitly structured in three parts, with 12 chapters. The first part deals with MCDM/A concepts methods and decision processes. The second part presents the main concepts and foundations of RRM. Finally the third part deals with specific decision problems in the RRM context approached with MCDM/A models.

Real Talk: Reality Television and Discourse Analysis in Action is the first book to examine the discourse of reality television. It provides state-of-the-art contextualization chapters on relevant concepts and methods, followed by rigorous case studies of the discourse practices that characterise a wide range of generic and linguistic / cultural contexts, including dating shows in China and Spain, docudramas in Argentina and New Zealand, and talent shows in the UK and the USA. These are structured in relation to two key themes: identity and aggression. This book will be essential reading for upper-level undergraduates and graduates in linguistics, discourse analysis and media studies, as well as for practitioners in these fields.

This is the first book to examine the discourse of reality television. Chapters provide rigorous case studies of the discourse practices that characterise a wide range of generic and linguistic/cultural contexts, including dating shows in China and Spain, docudramas in Argentina and New Zealand, and talent shows in the UK and USA.

Using relevant mathematical proofs and case studies illustrating design and application issues, this book demonstrates this powerful technique in the light of research on neural networks, which allow the identification of nonlinear models without the complicated and costly development of models based on physical laws.

Humans are often extraordinary at performing practical reasoning. There are cases where the human computer, slow as it is, is faster than any artificial intelligence system. Are we faster because of the way we perceive knowledge as opposed to the way we represent it?

The authors address this question by presenting neural network models that integrate the two most fundamental phenomena of cognition: our ability to learn from experience, and our ability to reason from what has been learned. This book is the first to offer a self-contained presentation of neural network models for a number of computer science logics, including modal, temporal, and epistemic logics. By using a graphical presentation, it explains neural networks through a sound neural-symbolic integration methodology, and it focuses on the benefits of integrating effective robust learning with expressive reasoning capabilities.

The book will be invaluable reading for academic researchers, graduate students, and senior undergraduates in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive science and engineering. It will also be of interest to computational logicians, and professional specialists on applications of cognitive, hybrid and artificial intelligence systems.

Humans are often extraordinary at performing practical reasoning. There are cases where the human computer, slow as it is, is faster than any artificial intelligence system. Are we faster because of the way we perceive knowledge as opposed to the way we represent it?

The authors address this question by presenting neural network models that integrate the two most fundamental phenomena of cognition: our ability to learn from experience, and our ability to reason from what has been learned. This book is the first to offer a self-contained presentation of neural network models for a number of computer science logics, including modal, temporal, and epistemic logics. By using a graphical presentation, it explains neural networks through a sound neural-symbolic integration methodology, and it focuses on the benefits of integrating effective robust learning with expressive reasoning capabilities.

The book will be invaluable reading for academic researchers, graduate students, and senior undergraduates in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive science and engineering. It will also be of interest to computational logicians, and professional specialists on applications of cognitive, hybrid and artificial intelligence systems.

Returning to Spain after fighting in the Battle of Lepanto and other Mediterranean campaigns against the Turks, the soldier Miguel de Cervantes was captured by Barbary pirates and taken captive to Algiers. The five years he spent in the Algerian bagnios or prison-houses (1575-1580) made an indelible impression on his works. From the first plays and narratives written after his release to his posthumous novel, the story of Cervantes's traumatic experience continuously speaks through his writings. "Cervantes in Algiers" offers a comprehensive view of his life as a slave and, particularly, of the lingering effects this traumatic experience had on his literary production.

No work has documented in such vivid and illuminating detail the socio-political world of sixteenth-century Algiers, Cervantes's life in the prison-house, his four escape attempts, and the conditions of his final ransom. Garces's portrait of a sophisticated multi-ethnic culture in Algiers, moreover, is likely to open up new discussions about early modern encounters between Christians and Muslims. By bringing together evidence from many different sources, historical and literary, Garces reconstructs the relations between Christians, Muslims, and renegades in a number of Cervantes's writings.

The idea that survivors of captivity need to repeat their story in order to survive (an insight invoked from Coleridge to Primo Levi to Dori Laub) explains not only Cervantes's storytelling but also the book that theorizes it so compellingly. As a former captive herself (a hostage of Colombian guerrillas), the author reads and listens to Cervantes with another ear.

The last few decades have witnessed tremendous developments in nonlinear control theory. One of the most important of these is the model-based method of feedback linearisation in which a nonlinear system is transformed into a linear system by means of state feedback and nonlinear transformations. After feedback linearisation, a system can be dealt with by linear controller design. The extension of these techniques to include MIMO systems allows for the further simplification of controller design by decoupling the system. Strategies for Feedback Linearisation demonstrates this powerful technique in the light of research on neural networks which allow the identification of nonlinear models without the complicated and costly development of models based on physical laws. Dynamic or recurrent neural networks have inherent properties that allow them to approximate nonlinear dynamic systems. Strategies for the identification of nonlinear systems using such neural networks are presented in this monograph together with the use of such models for the design and application of input-output linearisation and decoupling methods. Strategies for Feedback Linearisation is written to serve academic and industrial researchers in non-linear control and system identification and practising control engineers interested in their application to real-world industrial systems. The reader will gain a balanced view of theoretical and practical issues: relevant mathematical proofs are provided as are case studies illustrating design and application issues.

Artificial Intelligence is concerned with producing devices that help or replace human beings in their daily activities. Neural-symbolic learning systems play a central role in this task by combining, and trying to benefit from, the advantages of both the neural and symbolic paradigms of artificial intelligence. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the field of neural-symbolic learning systems, and an invaluable overview of the latest research issues in this area. It is divided into three sections, covering the main topics of neural-symbolic integration - theoretical advances in knowledge representation and learning, knowledge extraction from trained neural networks, and inconsistency handling in neural-symbolic systems. Each section provides a balance of theory and practice, giving the results of applications using real-world problems in areas such as DNA sequence analysis, power systems fault diagnosis, and software requirements specifications. Neural-Symbolic Learning Systems will be invaluable reading for researchers and graduate students in Engineering, Computing Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Neurocomputing. It will also be of interest to Intelligent Systems practitioners and anyone interested in applications of hybrid artificial intelligence systems.

Parishes are the missing middle in studies of American Catholicism. Between individual Catholics and a global institution, the thousands of local parishes are where Catholicism gets remade. American Parishes showcases what social forces shape parishes, what parishes do, how they do it, and what this says about the future of Catholicism in the United States. Expounding an embedded field approach, this book displays the numerous forces currently reshaping American parishes. It draws from sociology of religion, culture, organizations, and race to illuminate basic parish processes, like leadership and education, and ongoing parish struggles like conflict and multiculturalism. American Parishes brings together contemporary data, methods, and questions to establish a sociological re-engagement with Catholic parishes and a Catholic re-engagement with sociological analysis. Contributions by leading social scientists highlight how community, geography, and authority intersect within parishes. It illuminates and analyzes how growing racial diversity, an aging religious population, and neighborhood change affect the inner workings of parishes. Contributors: Gary J. Adler Jr., Nancy Ammerman, Mary Jo Bane, Tricia C. Bruce, John A. Coleman, S.J., Kathleen Garces-Foley, Mary Gray, Brett Hoover, Courtney Ann Irby, Tia Noelle Pratt, and Brian Starks

The highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas placed a greater onus on higher education institutions to provide evidence supporting the need for affirmative action policies on their respective campuses. It is now more critical than ever that institutional leaders and scholars understand the evidence in support of race consideration in admissions as well as the challenges of the post-Fisher landscape. This important volume shares information documented for the Fisher case and provides empirical evidence to help inform scholarly conversation and institutions' decisions regarding race-conscious practices in higher education. With contributions from scholars and experts involved in the Fisher case, this edited volume documents and shares lessons learned from the collaborative efforts of the social science, educational, and legal communities. Affirmative Action and Racial Equity is a critical resource for higher education scholars and administrators to understand the nuances of the affirmative action legal debate and to identify the challenges and potential strategies toward racial equity and inclusion moving forward.

Relocating Identities in Latin American Cultures explores the perpetually changing notion of Latin American identity, particularly as illustrated in literature and other forms of cultural expression. Editor Elizabeth Montes GarcA (c)s has gathered contributions from specialists who examine the effects of such major phenomena as migration, globalization, and gender on the construct of Latin American identities, and, as such, are reshaping the traditional understanding of Latin America's cultural history. The contributors to this volume are experts in Latin American literature and culture. Covering a diverse range of genres from poetry to film, their essays explore themes such as feminism, deconstruction, and postcolonial theory as they are reflected in the Latin American cultural milieu. With contributions by: Nayibe Bermudez Barrios Norman Cheadle Rita De Grandis Elizabeth Montes Garces Paola Hernandez Myriam Osorio Claudine Potvin Mercedes Rowinsky-Guerts Catherine Den Tandt Luis Torres Richard Young

Award-winning poet and author Helen Mort describes the collection of poetry, paintings, artwork, and ideas found in The Quiet Woman as, "life-changing and affirming, alive to grief but full of defiance". The comedy screen-writer Maggie Rowe describes the book and its author as, "a miracle". Emily's 40 poems and 40 pieces of art grapple openly with and embrace questions of womanhood, faith, doubt, motherhood, radical theology, suicide, embodiment, female empowerment, abuse, domesticity, mysticism, ecology, love, loss, religion, inclusion, imperfection, spirituality, pain, deconstruction, self-love, and surrender. The Quiet Woman is for anyone who is reaching for words that bring comfort and hope. It's for anyone seeking to redefine the traditional image of a Quiet Woman. A woman who is Quiet because she's breathing in, filling her lungs, ready to roar. A woman who is Quiet because she doesn't need to ask for outside validation. A woman who is Quiet because she's busy getting the rest she needs in order to thrive. A woman who is Quiet because she's focused on listening intently to her own voice.

There is a growing demand for strategies to address the impact of polymers and plastics in ecosystems. The principles of green chemistry offer a good source of such strategies. Ecofriendly Functional Polymers: An Approach from Application-Targeted Green Chemistry provides a holistic overview of polymer chemistry, development, and applications in the context of these sustainability-driven principles. It encourages researchers to consider the principles of green chemistry, environmental impacts, and end-user needs as integral aspects for consideration at the earliest stages of any design process, and draws together key aspects of polymer chemistry, organic synthesis, experimental design, and applications in a single volume. Beginning with an authoritative guide to fundamental polymer chemistry and its impact in the current environmental context, the book then discusses a range of key theoretical and experimental aspects of designing eco-friendly functional polymers. Applications of ecofriendly functional polymers across an entire range of fields are discussed, and a selection of case studies highlights the implementation of theoretical and experimental information to address a broad selection of issues.

Modeling, Operation, and Analysis of DC Grids presents a unified vision of direct current grids with their core analysis techniques, uniting power electronics, power systems, and multiple scales of applications. Part one presents high power applications such as HVDC transmission for wind energy, faults and protections in HVDC lines, stability analysis and inertia emulation. The second part addresses current applications in low voltage such as microgrids, power trains and aircraft applications. All chapters are self-contained with numerical and experimental analysis.

This innovative edited collection presents new insights into emerging debates around digital communication practices. It brings together research by leading international experts to examine methods and approaches, multimodality, face and identity, across five thematically organised sections. Its contributors revise current paradigms in view of past, present, and future research and analyse how users deploy the wealth of multimodal resources afforded by digital technologies to undertake tasks and to enact identity. In its concluding section it identifies the ideologies that underpin the construction of digital texts in the social world. This important contribution to digital discourse studies will have interdisciplinary appeal across the fields of linguistics, socio-linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, gender studies, multimodality, media and communication studies.