This book presents research and developments in the virtual, augmented technology and mixed-reality used in language learning and teaching. It provides the readers with a comprehensive overview of contextual language learning with the support of immersive technology. From theoretical foundations, methodological issues, the features of virtual and augmented reality, and educational practices of language learning, to the future of immersive technology for and research on language learning. During the past two decades, abundant research on different realities has recognized the potential of language learning in virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality environments (Wang et al., 2020; Lin & Lan, 2015). Given insufficient studies of Chinese learning in immersive contexts reported in existing literature, this book includes several excellent studies about using immersive technologies for Chinese learning in addition to other foreign langue learning, such as English as a foreign language (EFL). Since learning Chinese has grown significantly as a global trend, the authors vitally consolidate and synthesize various theoretical foundations, visions, and recent research and practices in the context of Chinese teaching from broader and more diverse perspectives. On the other hand, the chapters about EFL learning also shed light on the research on contextual language learning. Thus, the chapters included in this book will likely provide readers with a deep and extensive understanding of the potential of the smart combination of immersive technologies and language learning. More issues for future research will undoubtedly be inspired by reading the chapters in this book.

This book presents research and developments in the virtual, augmented technology and mixed-reality used in language learning and teaching. It provides the readers with a comprehensive overview of contextual language learning with the support of immersive technology. From theoretical foundations, methodological issues, the features of virtual and augmented reality, and educational practices of language learning, to the future of immersive technology for and research on language learning. During the past two decades, abundant research on different realities has recognized the potential of language learning in virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality environments (Wang et al., 2020; Lin & Lan, 2015). Given insufficient studies of Chinese learning in immersive contexts reported in existing literature, this book includes several excellent studies about using immersive technologies for Chinese learning in addition to other foreign langue learning, such as English as a foreign language (EFL). Since learning Chinese has grown significantly as a global trend, the authors vitally consolidate and synthesize various theoretical foundations, visions, and recent research and practices in the context of Chinese teaching from broader and more diverse perspectives. On the other hand, the chapters about EFL learning also shed light on the research on contextual language learning. Thus, the chapters included in this book will likely provide readers with a deep and extensive understanding of the potential of the smart combination of immersive technologies and language learning. More issues for future research will undoubtedly be inspired by reading the chapters in this book.

Gateway to the Underground. David Anderson in this third book of the David Anderson-Action-Thriller series finds himself sucked into a vortex of corruption and death as he is kidnapped by the Russian mafia for delivery to Somalian Pirates in the Indian Ocean to be sold into slavery in Central Asia. The pirates and their Russian Mafia connections soon learn that Anderson is their worse nightmare. Come follow the action packed thriller as it sweeps the reader from the jungles of Somalia to the gold coast of France, leading to a dramatic conclusion in Khartoum, Sudan.

In September 2008 America was nearly brought to its knees by the melt down of its financial systems. The age of digital trading along with unsound practices that were not closely monitored were blamed, in fact, Hedge Funds were not regulated at all. Combined with the build up of toxic paper in the sub-prime mortgage industry a widespread meltdown occured, but many experienced traders still do not believe electronic systems were the main culprit. Instead suspicions still run deep that America was attacked by those who understood our systems and that we will be attacked again when our currency has been diluted and we are hit by stagflation. Scott Grant uses the basis of factual history to weave a hypothetical action thriller that explodes from cover to cover. Once you read this story you will never look at a bank in the same way again.

East Of Egypt is a fictional story that uses the CIA's sordid history of drug production, to support its secret wars in Asia and the Middle East. It spins a tale of betrayal and survival in the Golden Triangle. From the Mekong to Hong Kong, each page finds the reader glued in suspense. The story is a psychological thriller that weaves its way into the darkest shadows of an Asia few outsiders ever see. Bill Murphy and David Anderson, two ex-CIA field operatives, use their training from the CIA and begin to thrive as drug merchants until a war between themselves and the triad societies of Hong Kong take the story in an explosive new direction.

It doesn't always reveal itself in black and white relief but the majority of mankind does have a collective conscience. It has been shocked too often by Roman Candle personages from time to time such as the likes of Genghis Khan, Xerxes Hitler and Stalin, just to name a few. Most slaughtered for no other reason than to monopolize power. Hitler stands out not because he also desired unlimited power, but instead because he genuinely hated his victims and because he perverted science to impose a nightmarish agenda to murder them on a global scale, in order to make room for a master race. In this work of fiction, real events in history are used to tell the story of a Scandinavian woman who was forced to bear a blonde, blue eyed child for Hitler's goal of establishing a single pure blooded Aryan race the world over. There were many victims, not the least of whom were the Lebensborn orphans, some of whom were murdered by angry Norwegian men after the German defeat. This story examines this little discussed part of World War II history as seen through the eyes of those who should in many ways be used as a warning to future genetic scientists who become involved in uncharted moral territory. Hitler came close to winning World War II. The very reason he didn't win was because ultimately he lacked long term vision. His pathological hatred for Jews and the so called hybrid races made himself and his National Socialists world class pariahs. Blinded by his early military successes his invasion of the U.S.S.R. during the winter squandered his military resources and doomed the Reich. His greatest lack of vision perhaps, involved shunning his nuclear scientist's efforts to develop nuclear weapons, no doubt because he didn't fully understand, or believe their potential. Today the Jews are still hated by Iran's leaders who openly declare genocidal ambitions. Iran's scientists work feverishly to develop nuclear tipped missiles while America constructs a geopolitical strategy of "Leading From Behind." Today we do not face a eugenic agenda for the creation of an Aryan race. Instead we are confronted with a forced change of our beliefs to appease a terrorist movement that seeks to establish a pantheism of fundamental Islam by any means necessary in order to establish a global caliphate. We have no solid international laws, or treaties, to guide and control genetic research. Science does not involve itself with moral questions. Politically we are drifting, leaderless. Not into uncharted territory but much worse, we spiral from behind directly into the brutal, unlearned lessons of history. Scott Grant April, 2014

Artspace critic Dave Hickey once identified the Fort Worth Circle as ""Texas' first indigenous group of consciously cosmopolitan and irrefutably modern artists."" Their work, he wrote, ""represents the fruit of a special time in the culture of the western United States.""This book chronicles the Circle's distinctive output during the 1940s, the decade of their genesis and greatest innovation. These ""genuine citizens of the world,"" as Hickey called them, possessed an unconventional vision that radically sidestepped the traditional art of post-Depression Texas. Drawing from their own fertile imaginations, the members of the Circle responded to modern art by creating a unique aesthetic based on contemporary surrealism and abstraction.Published by the Amon Carter Museum to coincide with an exhibition by the same title, ""Intimate Modernism: Fort Worth Circle Artists in the 1940s"" is a ""must have"" for any library of American modernism and the art of Texas.The catalogue also includes succinct biographies, accompanied by photographs, of each of the eleven artists of the Fort Worth Circle; a bibliography; exhibition checklist; and brief foreword.