Sabermetrics, the systematic analysis of baseball statistics, has evolved over time to resemble something of a science, attracting fans from diverse professional and educational backgrounds, all fascinated by both the analysis itself and the objective insights it provides into the game. Although fans and analysts have devoted exhaustive efforts to developing statistics that measure offensive performance, defensive metrics have historically been deemed too difficult to measure accurately and objectively. In Wizardry: Baseball's All-Time Greatest Fielders Revealed, Michael Humphreys introduces a system that conclusively quantifies fielding statistics and compares player performance from as early as 1893 by estimating how many runs each fielder "saved" or "allowed." While a number of methods for analyzing defense have recently gained exposure, they rely on expensive proprietary data held by professional sports statistics companies and only capture information drawn from the contemporary era. Humphreys' method, Defensive Runs Analysis (DRA), makes unique use of free, open source data available to the average fan and incorporates equalizing historical factors to place players from different eras on equal footing. Wizardry is the first book to systematically rank and profile the greatest fielders at each position from throughout major league history. To frame and validate his results, the author tests DRA data against other well-known statistical measures and also presents an analysis of other defensive statistical metrics. Casual fans with little mathematical background will appreciate Wizardry's accessible style while professional statisticians will value the opportunity to validate Humphreys' methodology and results. Given the topic and the author's presentation of the material, the book will draw in both the serious, baseball statistics audience and the average fan.

In the 1980s families other than those made up of the natural mother, father, and siblings were increasing in number. Originally published in 1988, this book looks at these ‘alternative’ families and considers the psychological and social consequences of growing up in a family where the genetic link between parents and children is missing or incomplete. The authors discuss adoption, fostering, stepfamilies, and parenthood by donor insemination, as well as such areas as ‘womb-leasing’ and homosexual parenthood, considered controversial at the time. A recurring theme is whether, when, and what to tell children of their extrafamilial origins, and how they and other family members react to the knowledge. Families with a Difference is a comprehensive new analysis of the changing nature of family life in western society which, in the aftermath of the influential Warnock Report in 1984, would have been important reading for students and professionals in social policy, social work, psychology, and the social aspects of medicine.

There has been widespread dissatisfaction with accepted models for predicting the conditions that people will find thermally comfortable in buildings. These models require knowledge about clothing and activity, but can give little guidance on how to quantify them in any future situation. This has forced designers to make assumptions about people's future behaviour based on very little information and, as a result, encouraged static design indoor temperatures. This book is the second in a three volume set covering all aspects of Adaptive Thermal Comfort. The first part narrates the development of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort from its early beginnings in the 1960s. It discusses recent work in the field and suggests ways in which it can be developed and modelled. Such models can be used to set dynamic, interactive standards for thermal comfort which will help overcome the problems inherited from the past. The second part of the volume engages with the practical and theoretical problems encountered in field studies and in their statistical analysis, providing guidance towards their resolution, so that valid conclusions may be drawn from such studies.

The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation examines contemporary political violence and atrocity in the context of the crisis of the nation-state. It explores the way violence is used to unmake the social world and how its product: suffering, is used to try to remake the social world. Humphrey considers both the unmaking of the world through torture, war, urbicide and ethnic cleansing and the resultant remaking of the world through testimony and witnessing in the forums of truth commissions and trials. The discussion thus moves from terror to trauma.

The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation examines contemporary political violence and atrocity in the context of the crisis of the nation-state. It explores the way violence is used to unmake the social world and how its product: suffering, is used to try to remake the social world. Humphrey considers both the unmaking of the world through torture, war, urbicide and ethnic cleansing and the resultant remaking of the world through testimony and witnessing in the forums of truth commissions and trials. The discussion thus moves from terror to trauma.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203361644

Over the past 20 years, the growing shortage of adoptable infants in Britain and the United States has resulted in a number of couples acquiring their family from abroad, yet the effort needed to acquire such a child from another country is enormous. So what exactly are the costs, hazards and emotional difficulties involved, and why do some couples feel that this is their only chance of becoming adoptive parents? "Inter-Country Adoption" charts the experiences of eight couples who between them have adopted eleven children from South America, India and Sri Lanka who ranged in age from four months to seven years. The main emphasis of these first-hand accounts is on the events leading up to the decision to adopt from abroad and on the obstacle course which followed and which involved dealing with the authorities in Britain and in the child's country of origin. The final two chapters are by an academic social worker and a parliamentary campaigner who examine the legal and ethical considerations of inter-country adoption.

The fundamental function of buildings is to provide safe and healthy shelter. For the fortunate they also provide comfort and delight. In the twentieth century comfort became a 'product' produced by machines and run on cheap energy. In a world where fossil fuels are becoming ever scarcer and more expensive, and the climate more extreme, the challenge of designing comfortable buildings today requires a new approach. This timely book is the first in a trilogy from leaders in the field which will provide just that. It explains, in a clear and comprehensible manner, how we stay comfortable by using our bodies, minds, buildings and their systems to adapt to indoor and outdoor conditions which change with the weather and the climate. The book is in two sections. The first introduces the principles on which the theory of adaptive thermal comfort is based. The second explains how to use field studies to measure thermal comfort in practice and to analyze the data gathered. Architects have gradually passed responsibility for building performance to service engineers who are largely trained to see comfort as the product , designed using simplistic comfort models. The result has contributed to a shift to buildings that use ever more energy. A growing international consensus now calls for low-energy buildings. This means designers must first produce robust, passive structures that provide occupants with many opportunities to make changes to suit their environmental needs. Ventilation using free, natural energy should be preferred and mechanical conditioning only used when the climate demands it. This book outlines the theory of adaptive thermal comfort that is essential to understand and inform such building designs. This book should be required reading for all students, teachers and practitioners of architecture, building engineering and management for all who have a role in producing, and occupying, twenty-first century adaptive, low-car

There has been widespread dissatisfaction with accepted models for predicting the conditions that people will find thermally comfortable in buildings. These models require knowledge about clothing and activity, but can give little guidance on how to quantify them in any future situation. This has forced designers to make assumptions about people's future behaviour based on very little information and, as a result, encouraged static design indoor temperatures. This book is the second in a three volume set covering all aspects of Adaptive Thermal Comfort. The first part narrates the development of the adaptive approach to thermal comfort from its early beginnings in the 1960s. It discusses recent work in the field and suggests ways in which it can be developed and modelled. Such models can be used to set dynamic, interactive standards for thermal comfort which will help overcome the problems inherited from the past. The second part of the volume engages with the practical and theoretical problems encountered in field studies and in their statistical analysis, providing guidance towards their resolution, so that valid conclusions may be drawn from such studies.

The fundamental function of buildings is to provide safe and healthy shelter. For the fortunate they also provide comfort and delight. In the twentieth century comfort became a 'product' produced by machines and run on cheap energy. In a world where fossil fuels are becoming ever scarcer and more expensive, and the climate more extreme, the challenge of designing comfortable buildings today requires a new approach. This timely book is the first in a trilogy from leaders in the field which will provide just that. It explains, in a clear and comprehensible manner, how we stay comfortable by using our bodies, minds, buildings and their systems to adapt to indoor and outdoor conditions which change with the weather and the climate. The book is in two sections. The first introduces the principles on which the theory of adaptive thermal comfort is based. The second explains how to use field studies to measure thermal comfort in practice and to analyze the data gathered. Architects have gradually passed responsibility for building performance to service engineers who are largely trained to see comfort as the 'product', designed using simplistic comfort models. The result has contributed to a shift to buildings that use ever more energy. A growing international consensus now calls for low-energy buildings. This means designers must first produce robust, passive structures that provide occupants with many opportunities to make changes to suit their environmental needs. Ventilation using free, natural energy should be preferred and mechanical conditioning only used when the climate demands it. This book outlines the theory of adaptive thermal comfort that is essential to understand and inform such building designs. This book should be required reading for all students, teachers and practitioners of architecture, building engineering and management - for all who have a role in producing, and occupying, twenty-first century adaptive, low-carbon, comfortable buildings.