This book explores the link between environmental knowledge management and the sustainability challenges being faced by organisations, individuals and society. Comprising both theoretical and empirical chapters, the volume describes how knowledge management and organisational learning can help achieve a sustainable tourism sector. Environmental knowledge has become one of the most important resources for organisations in the current competitive environment. Organisations need to turn their knowledge into agile structures to respond to the challenges resulting from current and future environmental challenges, and from increased competitiveness and social changes. It is therefore important for business decision-making processes to be based on environmental knowledge instead of relying on unconfirmed, often biased information. In this vein, reliable knowledge structures and a framework become an imperative for sustainable development. Development of these innovations shall be addressed through systematic mechanisms such as integration of sustainability and environmental issues, attention to technological innovation, improved absorptive capacity, targeting social challenges as well as investment in human resource development. The book will be of great value to students and researchers of social sciences with a focus on tourism, human geography, marketing, knowledge management and environmental studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Sustainable Tourism.

Research on Economic Inequality is a well-established publication of quality research. This 30th volume features insightful and original papers from the 9th Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ) meeting. Mobility and Inequality Trends begins by illustrating the trajectory of income inequality in the world over the course of recent decades before the second paper makes a crucial distinction between 'bad' inequality, which is detrimental to society, and 'good' inequality, which is beneficial. Focus then shifts to bad inequality, one paper covering the relationship between intergenerational elasticity and inequality of opportunity, and the second studying the relationship between intergenerational mobility and life satisfaction in Spain. The volume then progresses to defend the use of intermediate views of inequality when constructing indicators of social welfare obtained through the use of average income and the Gini coefficient before investigating the advantage of using a multifaceted approach to income mobility measurement. To conclude Mobility and Inequality Trends presents an intensive exploration of income inequality in China and then studies the effects of the policy measure "Minimum Living Income. Finally, the last paper studies the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on economic stimulus policies.

Stochastic Process Optimization using Aspen (R) Plus Bookshop Category: Chemical Engineering Optimization can be simply defined as "choosing the best alternative among a set of feasible options". In all the engineering areas, optimization has a wide range of applications, due to the high number of decisions involved in an engineering environment. Chemical engineering, and particularly process engineering, is not an exception; thus stochastic methods are a good option to solve optimization problems for the complex process engineering models. In this book, the combined use of the modular simulator Aspen (R) Plus and stochastic optimization methods, codified in MATLAB, is presented. Some basic concepts of optimization are first presented, then, strategies to use the simulator linked with the optimization algorithm are shown. Finally, examples of application for process engineering are discussed. The reader will learn how to link the process simulator Aspen (R) Plus and stochastic optimization algorithms to solve process design problems. They will gain ability to perform multi-objective optimization in several case studies. Key Features: * The book links simulation and optimization through numerical analyses and stochastic optimization techniques * Includes use of examples to illustrate the application of the concepts and specific guidance on the use of software (Aspen (R) Plus, Excel, MATLB) to set up and solve models representing complex problems. * Illustrates several examples of applications for the linking of simulation and optimization software with other packages for optimization purposes. * Provides specific information on how to implement stochastic optimization with process simulators. * Enable readers to identify practical and economic solutions to problems of industrial relevance, enhancing the safety, operation, environmental, and economic performance of chemical processes.

Stochastic Process Optimization using Aspen (R) Plus Bookshop Category: Chemical Engineering Optimization can be simply defined as "choosing the best alternative among a set of feasible options". In all the engineering areas, optimization has a wide range of applications, due to the high number of decisions involved in an engineering environment. Chemical engineering, and particularly process engineering, is not an exception; thus stochastic methods are a good option to solve optimization problems for the complex process engineering models. In this book, the combined use of the modular simulator Aspen (R) Plus and stochastic optimization methods, codified in MATLAB, is presented. Some basic concepts of optimization are first presented, then, strategies to use the simulator linked with the optimization algorithm are shown. Finally, examples of application for process engineering are discussed. The reader will learn how to link the process simulator Aspen (R) Plus and stochastic optimization algorithms to solve process design problems. They will gain ability to perform multi-objective optimization in several case studies. Key Features: * The book links simulation and optimization through numerical analyses and stochastic optimization techniques * Includes use of examples to illustrate the application of the concepts and specific guidance on the use of software (Aspen (R) Plus, Excel, MATLB) to set up and solve models representing complex problems. * Illustrates several examples of applications for the linking of simulation and optimization software with other packages for optimization purposes. * Provides specific information on how to implement stochastic optimization with process simulators. * Enable readers to identify practical and economic solutions to problems of industrial relevance, enhancing the safety, operation, environmental, and economic performance of chemical processes.

Research on Economic Inequality is a well-established publication of quality research. This 28th volume features insightful and original papers from the 8th Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ) meeting. The first paper of this volume illustrates the trajectory of income inequality in wealthy countries over the course of recent decades, while the second carries out a comprehensive assessment of income redistribution through taxes and transfers across OECD countries over the last two decades. The next two papers cover the topic of income mobility, one interpreting the Bartholomew index of mobility in terms of a directional mobility index, and the second providing a framework for the measurement of income mobility over a range of time periods. A fifth paper studies the potential equalization of rising educational attainment. The next paper investigates the effect the number of children within different age groups has on poverty. In the seventh, it is shown that a social planner who seeks to efficiently reduce the aggregate relative deprivation of the population, coincides with the Rawlsian social planner. Finally, the last paper generalizes the Oaxaca-Blinder approach to measure wage discrimination under imperfect information.

"Like Bolano, Vasquez is a master stylist and a virtuoso of patient pacing and intricate structure" LEV GROSSMAN, Time Magazine "Juan Gabriel Vasquez . . . has succeeded Garcia Marquez as the literary grandmaster of Colombia" ARIEL DORFMAN, New York Review of Books A morally complex, searing set of stories by the award-winning author of The Sound of Things Falling and The Shape of the Ruins (shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2019). A renowned photographer probes a traumatic incident in the life of a fellow guest at a countryside ranch. A chance meeting at a regimental reunion obliges a Korean War veteran to confront a shameful secret. And in the title story, an internet search for a book published in 1887 leads to the discovery of the life of a remarkable woman: Aurelia de Leon, who arrives in Colombia as a child orphan of the Great War, but as a free-spirited adult runs foul of her adoptive country's deep conservatism. The characters in Songs for the Flames are all men and women touched by violence - sometimes directly, sometimes tangentially - but the lives of all of them are irrevocably changed by the experience. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Research on Economic Inequality, volume 26, primarily contains papers presented at the 8th Society for the Study of Economic Inequality (ECINEQ) meeting. The papers cover such topics as the effect of inheritance taxation on the "pre-distribution" of income, and tax progressivity under alternative inequality definitions. Other papers address the evolution of wealth inequality (Piketty's "r-g"), the decomposition of the determinants of wage bi-polarization, a multidimensional analysis of food insecurity in Israel, and the "paradox of progress" (educational) in Latin America. Three papers address the intergenerational transmission of inequality, two of which focus on Europe and one which considers a wide variety of countries. The final two papers explore inequality (mis) perceptions and the influence of the political structure on stated inequality preferences.

This volume contains research on how we measure poverty, inequality and welfare and how we use such measurements to devise policies to deliver social mobility. It contains ten papers, some of which were presented at the third meeting of The Theory and Empirics of Poverty, Inequality and Mobility at Queen Mary University of London, London, October 2016. The volume begins with theoretical issues at the frontier of the literature. Three papers discuss the impact of social welfare policies on poverty measurement, and with innovations on the measurement of relative bipolarisation. Two papers address the conceptualisation of multidimensional poverty by incorporating inequality within the poor, and that of chronic poverty for time dependent analyses, with applications to India and Haiti, and Ethiopia respectively. The second half of the volume consists of empirical contributions, using novel techniques and datasets to investigate the dynamics of poverty and welfare. These studies track the dynamics of poverty using unique datasets for China, the Caucasus and Italy. The volume concludes with investigations about within-household inequalities between siblings due to the unequal effects of conditional cash transfers in Cambodia and a cross-country study on the effect of historical income inequality on entrepreneurship in developing countries.

The essays in this series offer fresh theoretical and methodological insights into the key issues in the field of economic inequality. The content is comprised of highly topical subject matter with key researchers in the field contributing.

Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Winner of the Alfaguara Prize Winner of the Gregor von Rezzori Prize 'A powerful, humane novel about a man trying to make sense of a war he didn't choose to fight' The Times 'The story is compelling but through Vasquez's vivid prose (rendered brilliantly into English by the award-winning translator Anne McLean) it also becomes haunting ... A poignant and perturbing tale about the inheritance of fear in a country scrabbling to regain its soul' Financial Times No sooner does he get to know Ricardo Laverde in a seedy billiard hall in Bogota than Antonio Yammara realises that the ex-pilot has a secret. Antonio's fascination with his new friend's life grows until the day Ricardo receives a mysterious, unmarked cassette. Shortly afterwards, he is shot dead on a street corner. Yammara's investigation into what happened leads back to the early 1960s, marijuana smuggling and a time before the cocaine trade trapped Colombia in a living nightmare.

Research on Economic Inequality, Volume 22 begins with papers of widespread interest on the impact of the Great Recession. The first paper addresses the impact of "asset meltdown" on the wealth of the US middle class, with disparate racial and ethnic impacts. The second studies poverty and inequality in the US in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The next topic is on the evolution of poverty and inequality in the world. One paper proposes a new methodology to measure global poverty and inequality, while the second analyzes the importance of considering not only the desperately poor but also those just above the subsistence level. Great interest for inequality researchers lies on the use of wealth data. Two approaches to this issue are presented. Firstly, several papers study wealth inequality directly. Secondly, a paper uses annuitized wealth data to augment the income measure of economic well-being. An emerging field in the study of economic well-being is the use of self-reported status and perceptions data. Three papers employ this type of data, investigating happiness inequality, perception of income inequality, and the existence of a "Great Gatsby Curve" for job mobility.

Economists are increasingly turning their attention to the measurement and causes of health inequality. This is in response to widespread concern that health disparities reflect social injustices but is also part of the trend away from the narrow focus on inequality in income to the more encompassing analysis of inequality in wellbeing. Researchers interested in the extent and causes of variation in wellbeing cannot but turn their analytical gaze on health inequalities. This volume contains methodological and empirical contributions from leading experts in health economics and economic inequality that add further momentum to a thriving field of research. The focus is on methods for the measurement of health inequalities (income related, multidimensional and inequalities of opportunity) as well as the analysis of their causes. The collection is essential reading for researchers already working on health inequality and provides an immediate reconnaissance of the frontiers for those entering this exciting field.

This volume contains both theoretical and applied on the concept of equality of opportunity which says that a society should guarantee its members equal access to advantage regardless of their circumstances, while holding them responsible for turning that access into actual advantage by the application of effort. Theoretical papers discuss to what extent some of the measures of inequality of opportunity meet the reward and the compensation principles, a new methodology for evaluating long-term income distributions, the implications of partial observability of individuals' circumstances on the measurement of inequality of opportunity and the advantages of applying segregation indices to study inequality in life chances. The applied work investigates how governments affect inequality of opportunity through the design of their tax and transfer schemes in 15 European countries, the changing role of circumstances for measuring inequality of opportunity in Chile, the existence of a poverty trap in Haiti and its consequences for equality of opportunity, and the correlation between circumstances and effort in the measurement of inequality of opportunity in U.S. during the period 1969-2007.

"One of the great novels to have been written in our language" MARIO VARGAS LLOSA "Beautifully written and gripping" Guardian He thought that memories were invisible like light, and just as smoke made light show, there must be a way for memories to be seen... In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It's a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family's life, and especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his republican family in Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Latin America, not only will do we discover a series of adventures extraordinary by any standards, but also a devastating portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit. Retrospective is a revelatory and unforgettable novel. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Advances and Developments in Biobutanol Production is a comprehensive reference on the production and purification of biobutanol, from the fundamentals to the latest advances. Focusing on selection of biomass, choice of pretreatments, biochemistry and design of fermentation, purification and biofuel application, the book also provides details on biorefinery design, lifecycle analysis, and offers perspectives on future developments. Through detailed analysis, chapters show readers how to overcome the challenges associated with the correct selection of raw material and adequate biomass pretreatment, the selection of microorganisms for fermenting biomass sugars, the purification of effluent coming from fermentation, and the high energy demands of production. Solutions are supported by step-by-step guidance on methodologies and processes, with lab and industry-scale case studies providing real-world examples of their implementation. This book provides readers with a unique and comprehensive reference on the production of biobutanol for biofuel that will be of interest to graduates, researchers and professionals involved in bioenergy and renewable energy.

This book describes for first time the synthesis and intensified process design in the production of top biofuels. The production of biofuels is not new. In 2019, global biofuel production levels reached 1,841 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day, in stark comparison to the 187 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day that was produced in 2000. Growth has largely been driven by policies that encourage the use and production of biofuels due to the perception that it could provide energy security and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in relevant sectors. From a technical point of view, almost all fuels from fossil resources could be substituted by their bio-based counterparts. However, the cost of bio-based production in many cases exceeds the cost of petrochemical production. Also, biofuels must be proven to perform at least as good as the petrochemical equivalent they are substituting and to have a lower environmental impact. The low price of crude oil acted as a barrier to biofuels production and producers focussed on the specific attributes of biofuels such as their complex structure to justify production costs. Also, the consumer demand for environmentally friendly products, population growth and limited supplies of non-renewable resources has now opened new windows of opportunity for biofuels. The industry is increasingly viewing chemical production from renewable resources as an attractive area for investment. This book uniquely introduces the application of new process intensification techniques that will allow the generation of clean, efficient and economical processes for biofuels in a competitive way in the market.

Improvements in Bio-Based Building Blocks Production Through Process Intensification and Sustainability Concepts discusses new information on the production and cost of bio-based building blocks. From a technical point-of-view, almost all industrial materials made from fossil resources can be substituted using bio-based counterparts. However, the cost of bio-based production in many cases exceeds the cost of petrochemical production. In addition, new products must be proven to perform at least as good as their petrochemical equivalents, have a lower environmental impact, meet consumer demand for environmentally-friendly products, factor in population growth, and account for limited supplies of non-renewables. This book outlines the application of process intensification techniques which allow for the generation of clean, efficient and economical processes for bio-based chemical blocks production.

Intensified processes have found widespread application in the chemical and petrochemical industries. The use of intensified systems allows for a reduction of operating costs and supports the "greening" of chemical processes. However, the design of intensified equipment requires special methodologies. This book describes the fundamentals and applications of these design methods, making it a valuable resource for use in both industry and academia.

"One of the great novels to have been written in our language" MARIO VARGAS LLOSA "Beautifully written and gripping" Guardian He thought that memories were invisible like light, and just as smoke made light show, there must be a way for memories to be seen... In October 2016, the real-life Colombian film director Sergio Cabrera is attending a retrospective of his films in Barcelona. It's a difficult time for him: his father, Fausto Cabrera, has just died; his marriage is in crisis; and his country has rejected peace agreements that might have ended more than fifty years of war. In the course of a few turbulent and intense days, Sergio will recall the events that marked the family's life, and especially his father's, his sister Marianella's and his own. From the Spanish Civil War to the exile of his republican family in Latin America, and from the Cultural Revolution in China to the guerrilla movements of 1960s Latin America, not only will do we discover a series of adventures extraordinary by any standards, but also a devastating portrait of the forces that for half a century turned the world upside down and created the one we now inhabit. Retrospective is a revelatory and unforgettable novel. Translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean

Failed knowledge management projects have one element in common: they fail to focus on the organization's core business functions and instead choose functions that are easy or might produce 'low-hanging fruit'. As a result, often even successful knowledge management projects add little value to the organization as they fail to address the pain points of the heart of the business. So how can knowledge management professionals position themselves for greatest success? In this practical guide, expert authors Alexeis Garcia-Perez, Juan Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro, Denise Bedford, Margo Thomas, and Susan Wakabayashi demonstrate how professionals can map knowledge resources to support business critical capabilities, and increase the impact of knowledge management projects. They also explain how to avoid investing in resources with low value, and how to develop strategies and action plans for different types of resources. Providing practical guidance for professionals, and including mini-case studies of successes and failures, this is an essential book for any knowledge management professional, researcher or student.

* National Bestseller
* Hailed by Edmund White as "a brilliant new novel" on the cover of the "New York Times Book Review"
* One of NPR's 6 Best Books of the Summer
* "Esquire "recommends "The Sound of Things Falling" "if you read only one book this month"
* Starred early reviews from" Publishers Weekly," "Booklist," "Library Journal," and "Kirkus"
* Lauded by Jonathan Franzen, E. L. Doctorow and many others
From a global literary star comes a prize-winning tour de force - an intimate portrayal of the drug wars in Colombia.
Juan Gabriel Vasquez has been hailed not only as one of South America's greatest literary stars, but also as one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation. In this gorgeously wrought, award-winning novel, Vasquez confronts the history of his home country, Colombia. In the city of Bogota, Antonio Yammara reads an article about a hippo that had escaped from a derelict zoo once owned by legendary Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The article transports Antonio back to when the war between Escobar's Medellin cartel and government forces played out violently in Colombia's streets and in the skies above. Back then, Antonio witnessed a friend's murder, an event that haunts him still. As he investigates, he discovers the many ways in which his own life and his friend's family have been shaped by his country's recent violent past. His journey leads him all the way back to the 1960s and a world on the brink of change: a time before narco-trafficking trapped a whole generation in a living nightmare. Vasquez is "one of the most original new voices of Latin American literature," according to Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, and "The Sound of Things Falling "is his most personal, most contemporary novel to date, a masterpiece that takes his writing--and will take his literary star--even higher.