This collection offers new research findings, innovations, and industrial technological developments in extractive metallurgy, energy and environment, and materials processing. Technical topics included in the book are thermodynamics and kinetics of metallurgical reactions, electrochemical processing of materials, plasma processing of materials, composite materials, ionic liquids, thermal energy storage, energy efficient and environmental cleaner technologies and process modeling. These topics are of interest not only to traditional base ferrous and non-ferrous metal industrial processes but also to new and upcoming technologies, and they play important roles in industrial growth and economy worldwide.

Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Research systematically outlines specific strategies to guide the student in designing and conducting empirical research. As with any undertaking that is based on skill development, the more you use the skill the more adept you become with the skill. The quality and usefulness of all research is only as good as the skills of the researcher and the clarity of the research study. This book is written primarily for graduate level producers of education and social science research. It is also appropriate for students who are proposing and conducting a research project as a culminating undergraduate requirement, and individuals and groups conducting research on topics independent of an informed means of assuming the role of researcher and embarking on a research study. It is written with the encouragement of learners who participated or will participate in research.

The first part of this new book concentrates on the office automation phenomenon. Chapter 1 sketches some of its disappointments and sets the stage for the chapters to follow. In Chapter 2, the author argues that images of organization incorporate what has been called a worldview and are thus inevitably relativistic in their orientation. This allows the author to criticize some common assumptions about the nature of organization, but it equally introduces a theme that is central to his theory, and that will be picked up again in a later chapter. Chapter 3 gets to the heart of his criticism of conventional theories of communication process, and in doing so allows the author to demonstrate the feet of clay of one of the sacred cows of our time: the concept of office work as information processing. The second part is concerned with theory and its implications. Chapter 4 describes the event of communication, in microcosm. Chapter 5 is an attempt to give this perception a more systematic presentation. Chapter 6 tries to understand the problem of operationalizing the theory, as a means to understanding, and studying the dynamics of conversation and of communication mediated through texts. Chapter 7 explores one implication of the theory, namely, the maintenance of requisite variety, within a conversational system. Chapter 8 concludes the presentation by a consideration of some of the implications of the theory for the conduct of research.