This Handbook on Diversity and Inclusion Indices critically examines many of the popular and frequently cited indices related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) benchmarking and progress tracking. The goal is to provide a better understanding of the indices' construction, strengths and weaknesses, intended applications, contribution to research and progress towards diversity and equity goals. The editors include detailed reviews of 23 DEI indices including broader, more general measures as well as those that focus on a particular aspect of diversity (e.g., gender, religion). Included are indices that measure diversity, equity, and/or inclusion at organizational, national, and regional levels. The Handbook unpacks this wide range of indices to meet the needs of researchers, public policy makers, and general consumers of information.

This collection of ten critical essays is the first scholarly criticism of haiku by Sonia Sanchez, who has exemplified herself for six decades as a major figure in the Black Arts Movement, a central activist in civil rights and women's movements, and an internationally-known writer in American literature. Sanchez's haiku, as an integral and prominent part of contemporary African American poetry, have expressed not only her ideas of nature, beauty, and harmony but also her aesthetic experience of music, culture, and love. Aesthetically, this experience reflects a poetic mind which has helped the poet to shape or reimage her poetic spirit.

Since ancient times, writers and poets have grappled with death, dying, grief, and mourning in their works. The Final Crossing: Death and Dying in Literature compiles fifteen in-depth, scholarly, and original essays on death and dying in literature from around the globe and from different time periods. Written from a variety of critical perspectives, the essays target both scholars and serious students. Death and dying is an important area of study for a variety of disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, gerontology, medical ethics, healthcare science, health law, and literary studies. The Final Crossing is a landmark compendium of academic essays on death and dying in literary texts, such as the Iliad, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Hamlet, The Secret Garden, and The Grapes of Wrath. This collection of essays not only brings an international flavor, but also a unique angularity to the discourse on thanatology. The novelty of perspectives reflects the diverse cultural and intellectual backgrounds of the contributors. This diversity opens up a fresh conversation on a number of age-old questions related to "the final crossing." In this volume, readers will find an intriguing array of topics for further reflection and research.

Ethics, Literature, and Theory: An Introductory Reader brings together the work of contemporary scholars, teachers, and writers into lively discussion on the moral role of literature and the relationship between aesthetics, art, and ethics. Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives_from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon_contribute to literary criticism? What do we mean when we talk about ethical criticism and how does this differ from the common notion of censorship? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions including: literary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections among literature, religion and philosophy.

Dystopian fiction has captured the imaginations of countless readers as they consider life in worlds at once eerily similar and shockingly foreign to their own. Essays on Dystopian Fiction as Critique of Culture showcases the most recent research on dystopian fiction whose readership has surged dramatically since the 1990s. Sixteen chapters-written by scholars from the United States, England, Ireland, India, and Poland-explore literary and popular dystopian novels focusing on the genre as a form of social critique. The essays reveal how both literary and popular dystopias arise from the same impulse as utopian fiction: the desire for an idealized and always illusory society in which evil is purged and justice prevails. Written from a variety of critical perspectives, these essays explore some of the literary novels (such as The Lord of the Flies and The Heart Goes Last) as well as some new popular ones (such as The Giver, The Hunger Games, and The Strain Trilogy). The essays collected here hold value for both fans and scholars of dystopian literature, a genre that has demonstrated its mass market appeal and its validity as an area of academic study.

"Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts "considers the recent technological innovations and emerging concepts in bio-based civil infrastructure sustainability based on advances made in industrial biotechnology. Biomass derived energy productions are often advocated as a possible solution for our lack of a sustainable transportation fuel and the use of biofuel may partially offset energy requirements which fossil fuels currently fulfill. This complete life cycle analysis of the biofuel production process includes a comparison of possible economical and environmentally sound uses for the residue.

"Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts" covers a broad and detailed range of topics including:

. production capacity of hydrocarbons in the plant kingdom, algae, and microbes;

. biomass pretreatment for biofuel production;

. microbial fuel cells;

. sustainable use of biofuel co-products;

. bioeconomy and transportation infrastructure impacts and

. assessment of environmental risks and the life cycle of biofuels.

Researchers, practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students engaged in the study of bio-renewables will find "Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts" to be a useful and comprehensive research tool."

This book mainly focuses on cloud security and high performance computing for cloud auditing. The book discusses emerging challenges and techniques developed for high performance semantic cloud auditing, and presents the state of the art in cloud auditing, computing and security techniques with focus on technical aspects and feasibility of auditing issues in federated cloud computing environments. In summer 2011, the United States Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) CyberBAT Cloud Security and Auditing Team initiated the exploration of the cloud security challenges and future cloud auditing research directions that are covered in this book. This work was supported by the United States government funds from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the AFOSR Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Visiting Faculty Research Program (VFRP), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Health (NIH). All chapters were partially supported by the AFOSR Information Operations and Security Program extramural and intramural funds (AFOSR/RSL Program Manager: Dr. Robert Herklotz). Key Features: * Contains surveys of cyber threats and security issues in cloud computing and presents secure cloud architectures * Presents in-depth cloud auditing techniques, federated cloud security architectures, cloud access control models, and access assured information sharing technologies * Outlines a wide range of challenges and provides solutions to manage and control very large and complex data sets

"Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts" considers the recent technological innovations and emerging concepts in biobased energy production and coproducts utilization. Each chapter in this book has been carefully selected and contributed by experts in the field to provide a good understanding of the various challenges and opportunities associated with sustainable production of biofuel.

"Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts" covers a broad and detailed range of topics including:

production capacity of hydrocarbons in the plant kingdom, algae, and microbes;

biomass pretreatment for biofuel production;

microbial fuel cells;

sustainable use of biofuel co-products;

bioeconomy and transportation infrastructure impacts and

assessment of environmental risks and the life cycle of biofuels.

Researchers, practitioners, undergraduate and graduate students engaged in the study of biorenewables, and members of the well-informed public will find "Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts" to be a useful and comprehensive research tool, describing the state of the art and recent developments in this field.

"

Ethics, Literature, and Theory: An Introductory Reader brings together the work of contemporary scholars, teachers, and writers into lively discussion on the moral role of literature and the relationship between aesthetics, art, and ethics. Do the rich descriptions and narrative shapings of literature provide a valuable resource for readers, writers, philosophers, and everyday people to imagine and confront the ultimate questions of life? Do the human activities of storytelling and complex moral decision-making have a deep connection? What are the moral responsibilities of the artist, critic, and reader? What can religious perspectives-from Catholic to Protestant to Mormon-contribute to literary criticism? What do we mean when we talk about ethical criticism and how does this differ from the common notion of censorship? Thirty well known contributors reflect on these questions including: literary theorists Marshall Gregory, James Phelan, and Wayne Booth; philosophers Martha Nussbaum, Richard Hart, and Nina Rosenstand; and authors John Updike, Charles Johnson, Flannery O'Connor, and Bernard Malamud. Divided into four sections, with introductory matter and questions for discussion, this accessible anthology represents the most crucial work today exploring the interdisciplinary connections among literature, religion and philosophy.

This collection of ten critical essays is the first scholarly criticism of haiku by Sonia Sanchez, who has exemplified herself for six decades as a major figure in the Black Arts Movement, a central activist in civil rights and women's movements, and an internationally-known writer in American literature. Sanchez's haiku, as an integral and prominent part of contemporary African American poetry, have expressed not only her ideas of nature, beauty, and harmony but also her aesthetic experience of music, culture, and love. Aesthetically, this experience reflects a poetic mind which has helped the poet to shape or reimage her poetic spirit.

There is a large increase in interest in acupuncture by health care consumers. The three main reasons for this are medical effectiveness, cost effectiveness and the credibility that clinical trials and physiological research have provided. Acupuncture is rapidly moving out of the arena of "alternative" medicine, in large part again because it is grounded more firmly than other alternative treatments in research. The book provides the reader with the up-to-date information on the clinical bases of acupuncture.

Standard therapy for high grade glioma is a topic that is evolving, timely, and relevant. Guest Editors Isaac Yang, MD and Seunggu Han, MD have assembled a group of experts on management of high grade glioma. Some of the articles in this issue include: Use of language mapping to aid resection of eloquent gliomas; Clinical trials with immunotherapy; Clinical trials for small molecule inhibitors; Nanotechnology potential applications for GBM therapy; High Grade Gliomas in children; Modern Advances in Brain Tumor Treatments; Molecular pathways of Avastin interactions for the treatment of glioblastoma; and Quality of Life and Outcomes in Glioblastoma management.

Standard therapy for high grade glioma is a topic that is evolving, timely, and relevant.? Guest Editors Isaac Yang, MD and Seunggu Han, MD have assembled a group of experts to highlight the latest updates on various forms of management of high grade glioma.? Some of the articles included in this issue focus on Extent of Resection for Glioblastoma; Role of adjuvant radiation therapy; Survival benefit of the Temozolomide protocol; Alternative chemotherapeutic agents; The role of avastin; Radiology; Pseuodprogression and Treatment effect; Pathology; Medical Management; Management of insular gliomas; Use of motor mapping; GBM treatment with clinical trials for surgical resection; Clinical trials with immunotherapy; Clinical trials for small molecule inhibitors; Future role of CED for GBM treatment; Application of a vault nanoparticle therapy for GBM therapy; Management of high grade gliomas in pediatric populations; Targeting Glioma Stem Like Cells with a focus on CD 133; and Potential Role for STAT3 inhibitors in glioblastoma.

Gain a stronger foundation with optimal ground improvement

Before you break ground on a new structure, you need to analyze the structure of the ground. Expert analysis and optimization of the geo-materials on your site can mean the difference between a lasting structure and a school in a sinkhole. Sometimes problematic geology is expected because of the location, but other times it's only unearthed once construction has begun. You need to be able to quickly adapt your project plan to include an improvement to unfavorable ground before the project can safely continue.

"Principles and Practice of Ground Improvement" is the only comprehensive, up-to-date compendium of solutions to this critical aspect of civil engineering. Dr. Jie Han, registered Professional Engineer and preeminent voice in geotechnical engineering, is the ultimate guide to the methods and best practices of ground improvement. Han walks you through various ground improvement solutions and provides theoretical and practical advice for determining which technique fits each situation.Follow examples to find solutions to complex problemsComplete homework problems to tackle issues that present themselves in the fieldStudy design procedures for each technique to simplify field implementationBrush up on modern ground improvement technologies to keep abreast of all available options

"Principles and Practice of Ground Improvement" can be used as a textbook, and includes Powerpoint slides for instructors. It's also a handy field reference for contractors and installers who actually implement plans. There are many ground improvement solutions out there, but there is no single right answer to every situation. "Principles and Practice of Ground Improvement" will give you the information you need to analyze the problem, then design and implement the best possible solution.

This is the second book of a trilogy. The first book was Fordess. It was the finale and basically told the story of what and why. This is the second book, simply Fordess't. The first book fleshed out the matter-of-fact reality that the different characters portrayed. It asked the question, would everything be different if everything was different? It sounds simple enough, but the answer falls deeply into that deep, dark well. Is it all just relative like Plato and Uncle Albert suggests, or is it just rationale? Whatever the truth, the second book wonders whether or not the concept of relative or rational has any real relevance. The characters stumble through a myriad of supposed slings and arrows, searching for Godot. Unfortunately, the point seems to be that neither POV holds the absolute truth because there is no such thing. It's all about the "danger in being." All of the best-laid plans turn asunder. Throw the dice; it's all about chance and probability. The whole point of Fordess't is to play.

This is the second book of a trilogy. The first book was Fordess. It was the finale and basically told the story of what and why. This is the second book, simply Fordess't. The first book fleshed out the matter-of-fact reality that the different characters portrayed. It asked the question, would everything be different if everything was different? It sounds simple enough, but the answer falls deeply into that deep, dark well. Is it all just relative like Plato and Uncle Albert suggests, or is it just rationale? Whatever the truth, the second book wonders whether or not the concept of relative or rational has any real relevance. The characters stumble through a myriad of supposed slings and arrows, searching for Godot. Unfortunately, the point seems to be that neither POV holds the absolute truth because there is no such thing. It's all about the "danger in being." All of the best-laid plans turn asunder. Throw the dice; it's all about chance and probability. The whole point of Fordess't is to play.

All of my books ask the same question. If things were different, would things be different?

All of my books ask the same question. If things were different, would things be different?

The book is about the absolute. What would reality be if you had the opportunity to do whatever you wished, with only one stipulation. The prerequisite that you had to accept responsibility for all of your actions, would it really be any different than the reality you experience now? The story relates the effects of massive rationalizations that befall us all, regardless of the circumstances, it flows from the ridiculous, to the demonic, and asks the one unavoidable question, where am I, and how the hell did I get here? All of the players find themselves rolling the proverbial blind dice, and then making a random, disconnected choice based on serendipity, even the given reality is a juxtaposition between oblivion and the unknown. It's all about, " The Danger in Being," choices, and the slings and arrows that inevitably follow.