The Earth has entered a new age-the Anthropocene-in which humans are the most powerful influence on global ecology. Since the mid-twentieth century, the accelerating pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a massive uncontrolled experiment. The Great Acceleration explains its causes and consequences, highlighting the role of energy systems, as well as trends in climate change, urbanization, and environmentalism. More than any other factor, human dependence on fossil fuels inaugurated the Anthropocene. Before 1700, people used little in the way of fossil fuels, but over the next two hundred years coal became the most important energy source. When oil entered the picture, coal and oil soon accounted for seventy-five percent of human energy use. This allowed far more economic activity and produced a higher standard of living than people had ever known-but it created far more ecological disruption. We are now living in the Anthropocene. The period from 1945 to the present represents the most anomalous period in the history of humanity's relationship with the biosphere. Three-quarters of the carbon dioxide humans have contributed to the atmosphere has accumulated since World War II ended, and the number of people on Earth has nearly tripled. So far, humans have dramatically altered the planet's biogeochemical systems without consciously managing them. If we try to control these systems through geoengineering, we will inaugurate another stage of the Anthropocene. Where it might lead, no one can say for sure.

Global Interdependence provides a new account of world history from the end of World War II to the present, an era when transnational communities began to challenge the long domination of the nation-state. In this single-volume survey, leading scholars elucidate the political, economic, cultural, and environmental forces that have shaped the planet in the past sixty years. Offering fresh insight into international politics since 1945, Wilfried Loth examines how miscalculations by both the United States and the Soviet Union brought about a Cold War conflict that was not necessarily inevitable. Thomas Zeiler explains how American free-market principles spurred the creation of an entirely new economic order--a global system in which goods and money flowed across national borders at an unprecedented rate, fueling growth for some nations while also creating inequalities in large parts of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. From an environmental viewpoint, J. R. McNeill and Peter Engelke contend that humanity has entered a new epoch, the Anthropocene era, in which massive industrialization and population growth have become the most powerful influences upon global ecology. Petra Goedde analyzes how globalization has impacted indigenous cultures and questions the extent to which a generic culture has erased distinctiveness and authenticity. She shows how, paradoxically, the more cultures blended, the more diversified they became as well. Combining these different perspectives, volume editor Akira Iriye presents a model of transnational historiography in which individuals and groups enter history not primarily as citizens of a country but as migrants, tourists, artists, and missionaries--actors who create networks that transcend traditional geopolitical boundaries.

Forschung und Entwicklung (FuE) stellt eine wesentliche Voraussetzung zur langfristigen Existenzsicherung von Unternehmen dar. Schneller technischer Wandel und sich verkurzende Produktlebenszyklen erfordern mehr und mehr ein koordiniertes, an der unternehmerischen Gesamtzielsetzung ausgerichtetes Vorgehen aller involvierten Bereiche bei der Planung und Durchfuhrung von FuE-Vorhaben. In dieser Arbeit werden Ansatzpunkte zur Integration von FuE in die unternehmerische Planung und Steuerung aufgezeigt. Integration umfasst dabei sowohl die Abstimmung gleichrangiger als auch die Abstimmung uber- und untergeordneter Teilplane. Aufgrund der Bedeutung fur die langfristige Entwicklung des Unternehmens wird FuE zunachst in die Planung und Uberwachung strategischer Programme einbezogen. Fur die Umsetzung der strategischen Programme werden entsprechende Projekte formuliert, die dann im Rahmen des operativen Managements durchgefuhrt werden. Eine weitere Funktion des operativen Managements besteht in der Abstimmung von strategischen FuE-Vorhaben mit den laufenden operativen Aktivitaten. Die Abstimmung der einzelnen Vorhaben vor dem Hintergrund begrenzter betrieblicher Ressourcen wird mit Hilfe von ausgewahlten Verfahren der linearen Planungsrechnung bei der periodischen Projektprogrammplanung vorgenommen. Dabei werden exakte Verfahren zur Formulierung von Programmentwurfen, lineare Fuzzy-Set-Modelle zur Ableitung von Kompromisslosungen und ein weiteres Verfahren zur Bestimmung von optimalen Steuerungsmassnahmen vorgestellt.