Kate Petersen keeps her panic attacks to herself, until the day she experiences one in front of her boss. With her personal life in ruins, her job is all she’s got. When an important renewable energy assignment in an Eastern Cape surfing village comes up, she is allowed to take over only if she promises to get her anxiety under control. She decides not to tell her boss that he is sending her to the very place where all her troubles began with a tragedy which continues to haunt her.

Determined to put the past behind her, she arrives in St Francis Bay ready to placate environmental opposition to her employer’s planned wind farm. Trouble brews when she begins to fall for Matthew Sykes, the attentive vet and surfer who is still grieving the death of his wife. Meanwhile, the parochial locals escalate their protests, from peaceful resistance to creepy threats, and Kate is forced to confront her worst fears as well as risk exposing her fragile state of mind to Matthew and her client.

Then the violence intensifies and Matthew turns out to have a few secrets of his own. Kate understands that their growing relationship and her job are at stake, but she doesn’t know that her life is also in danger …

Winner of the Strelitzia Award from the Romance Writers Organisation of South Africa in 2017.

MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN 'A gripping evocative thriller set in Berlin's seedy underworld during the roaring Twenties.' -Mail on Sunday Babylon Berlin is the first book in the international-bestselling series from Volker Kutscher. Detective Inspector Gereon Rath is caught up in a web of drugs, sex, political intrigue, deception and murder as Germany teeters on the edge of Nazism. In 1929, Berlin is the vibrating metropolis of post-war Germany, full of bars, brothels and dissatisfied workers. Arriving in disgrace from Cologne, Gereon Rath is assigned to the Vice Squad. When a body bearing traces of torture turns up in the canal, Rath sees a chance to earn his way back into the homicide division. As he investigates, he discovers a gang of exiled Russians intent on purchasing arms with smuggled gold - but others are trying to get hold of the gold... and the guns. Finding himself up against both paramilitaries and organised criminals, Rath is so far in over his head that he misuses the insider knowledge of Charlotte, a typist in the homicide squad, to get ahead in his investigation. Even though he's falling in love with her. As Rath's mistakes and enemies pile up, he becomes the prime suspect in the murder - and he's running out of time to clear his name. About the Gereon Rath Mysteries 1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin's murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.

The rise of China poses a significant challenge to the existing, Western-dominated world economic order. The effectiveness of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is contingent on a smooth transition of the world’s economic center toward the Asia-Pacific Region. For Western investors, the vast market opportunities can be tempting. However, the lack of experience and knowledge of international management in China – a country with radically different business rules and cultural background – poses a substantial risk. This book provides comprehensive insights into the fast-changing business world in China. Based on the authors’ theoretical knowledge and invaluable years of practical experience, it discusses the various options for doing business in China, with current examples that demonstrate how European SMEs can successfully position themselves between multinational companies and local competitors. It also highlights new opportunities arising from China’s international involvement (New Silk Road, RCEP) and addresses risk management for European SMEs operating in China. Moreover, it sheds light on how to form relationships of mutual trust between Chinese policymakers and their advisors/cooperation partners from abroad. Readers with an interest in doing business in China will find this book particularly valuable.

MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN '[Kutscher's] trick is ingenious...He's created a portrait of an era through the lens of genre fiction.' -The New York Times Following international bestseller Babylon Berlin, Volker Kutscher takes us back to Berlin in the second Gereon Rath Mystery. In The Silent Death, Inspector Rath investigates crime and corruption in the shadow of the growing Nazi movement. March 1930. The film industry is changing rapidly, with talking films taking over the silver screen. Celebrated actress Betty Winter is killed when a spotlight falls on her during the filming of a new talkie. It looks like an unfortunate accident at first, but Gereon Rath finds clues that other detectives miss, all suggesting it was murder. The prime suspect is a runaway lighting technician, but the Rath's investigation points to a different explanation. Soon he is out on his own as tensions rise between rival film studios, and violence breaks out between Communists and Nazis. It's no time for distractions, so naturally that's when his father asks him for help with a case of blackmail, and ex-girlfriend Charly Ritter reaches out to talk about getting back together. With personal and professional destruction on the line, Rath will find himself fighting for the truth and his own life as all around him political factions fight for the soul of Berlin. About the Gereon Rath Mysteries 1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin's murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.

This book is intended as reference material for students and professors interested in air pollution modeling at the graduate level as well as researchers and professionals involved in developing and utilizing air pollution models. Current developments in air pollution modeling are explored as a series of contributions from researchers at the forefront of their field. This newest contribution on air pollution modeling and its application is focused on local, urban, regional and intercontinental modeling; emission modeling and processing; data assimilation and air quality forecasting; model assessment and evaluation; aerosol transformation. Additionally, this work also examines the relationship between air quality and human health and the effects of climate change on air quality. This work is a collection of selected papers presented at the 37th International Technical Meeting on Air Pollution Modeling and its Application, held in Hamburg, Germany, September 23-27, 2019.

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig confided in his autobiography: “I have a pretty thorough knowledge of history, but never, to my recollection, has it produced such madness in such gigantic proportions.” He was referring to Germany in 1923, a “year of lunacy,” defined by hyperinflation, violence, a political system on the verge of collapse, the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party and separatist movements threatening to rip apart the German nation. Most observers found it miraculous that the Weimar Republic—the first German democracy—was able to survive, though some of the more astute realised that the feral undercurrents unleashed that year could lead to much worse. Now, a century later, best-selling author Volker Ullrich draws on letters, memoirs, newspaper articles and other sources to present a riveting chronicle of one of the most difficult years any modern democracy has ever faced—one with haunting parallels to our own political moment.

This book provides analytical and numerical methods for the estimation of dimension characteristics (Hausdorff, Fractal, Caratheodory dimensions) for attractors and invariant sets of dynamical systems and cocycles generated by smooth differential equations or maps in finite-dimensional Euclidean spaces or on manifolds. It also discusses stability investigations using estimates based on Lyapunov functions and adapted metrics. Moreover, it introduces various types of Lyapunov dimensions of dynamical systems with respect to an invariant set, based on local, global and uniform Lyapunov exponents, and derives analytical formulas for the Lyapunov dimension of the attractors of the Henon and Lorenz systems. Lastly, the book presents estimates of the topological entropy for general dynamical systems in metric spaces and estimates of the topological dimension for orbit closures of almost periodic solutions to differential equations.

This book is an outcome of the 34th International Conference EnviroInfo 2020, hosted virtually in Nicosia, Cyprus by the Research Centre on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and Emerging Technologies (RISE). It presents a selection of papers that describe innovative scientific approaches and ongoing research in environmental informatics and the emerging field of environmental sustainability, promoted and facilitated by the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). The respective articles cover a broad range of scientific aspects including advances in core environmental informatics-related technologies such as earth observation, environmental modelling, big data and machine learning, robotics, smart agriculture and food solutions, renewable energy-based solutions, optimization of infrastructures, sustainable industrial processes, and citizen science, as well as applications of ICT solutions intended to support societal transformation processes toward the more sustainable management of resource use, transportation and energy supplies. Given its scope, the book is essential reading for scientists, experts and students in these fields of research. Chapter "Developing a Configuration System for a Simulation Game in the Domain of Urban CO2 Emissions Reduction" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This book brings together cutting-edge research on consulting in a single volume, thus helping to make the state-of-the-art in the field of consulting research more accessible, to promote better practices in business, and to spark further research. The respective articles approach consulting from very different angles, taking into account various approaches for and fields of consulting, consulting providers, clients and markets, as well as technologies and trends. The book will benefit all consultants who want to critically reflect on their own methods and approaches in light of recent scientific findings. It also offers a helpful guide for students in Management and IT-related courses who are either considering a career in consulting or want to be informed consulting clients. Lastly, the book provides a comprehensive review of current developments and trends in consulting that will foster future contributions in this important research field.

This book discusses in detail the special theory of relativity without including all the instruments of theoretical physics, enabling readers who are not budding theoretical physicists to develop competence in the field. An arbitrary but fixed inertial system is chosen, where the known velocity of light is measured. With respect to this system a moving clock loses time and a moving length contracts. The book then presents a definition of simultaneity for the other inertial frames without using the velocity of light. To do so it employs the known reciprocity principle, which in this context serves to provide a definition of simultaneity in the other inertial frames. As a consequence, the Lorentz transformation is deduced and the universal constancy of light is established. With the help of a lattice model of the special theory of relativity the book provides a deeper understanding of the relativistic effects. Further, it discusses the key STR experiments and formulates and solves 54 problems in detail.

This open access book includes contributions by leading researchers and industry thought leaders on various topics related to the essence of software engineering and their application in industrial projects. It offers a broad overview of research findings dealing with current practical software engineering issues and also pointers to potential future developments. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of adesso AG, adesso gathered some of the pioneers of software engineering including Manfred Broy, Ivar Jacobson and Carlo Ghezzi at a special symposium, where they presented their thoughts about latest software engineering research and which are part of this book. This way it offers readers a concise overview of the essence of software engineering, providing valuable insights into the latest methodological research findings and adesso's experience applying these results in real-world projects.

Covering technological aspects as well as the suitability and applicability of various kinds of uses, this handbook shows optimization strategies, techniques and assembly pathways to achieve the combination of complex, even three-dimensional structures with simple manufacturing steps. The authors provide information on markets, commercialization opportunities and aspects of mass or large-scale production as well as design tools, experimental techniques, novel materials, and ideas for future improvements. Not only do they weigh up cost versus quantity, they also consider CMOS and LIGA strategies.
Of interest to physicists, electronics engineers, materials scientists, institutional and industrial libraries as well as graduate students of the relevant disciplines.

One of the benefits of the constantly expanding world of technology is the new and improved technologies that allow students to not only benefit from this integration, but to also come to prefer a more technologically savvy instruction style. Enhancing Instruction with Visual Media: Utilizing Video and Lecture Capture offers unique approaches for integrating visual media into an instructional environment by covering the impact media has on student learning and various visual options to use in the classroom. Professors, researchers, and instructional designers will benefit from the practical applications and suggestions offered through the integration of instructional videos in the learning process.

This book discusses the opportunities and conditions that digital technology provides to extend, innovate and differentiate the services offered by consulting companies. It introduces suitable artefacts like web-based consulting platforms, consulting applications, semantic technologies and tools for data mining and collaboration. Furthermore it examines concepts to evaluate the virtualization of consulting processes and showcases how solutions can be developed to blend traditional and digital consulting models. Presenting state-of-the-art research and providing a comprehensive overview of the methods and techniques needed for digital transformation in the consulting industry, the book serves as both a guide and a roadmap for innovative consulting companies.

This is the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Strain-Hardening Cement-Based Composites (SHCC4), that was held at the Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany from 18 to 20 September 2017. The conference focused on advanced fiber-reinforced concrete materials such as strain-hardening cement-based composites (SHCC), textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) and high-performance fiber-reinforced cement-based composites (HPFRCC). All these new materials exhibit pseudo-ductile behavior resulting from the formation of multiple, fine cracks when subject to tensile loading. The use of such types of fiber-reinforced concrete could revolutionize the planning, development, dimensioning, structural and architectural design, construction of new and strengthening and repair of existing buildings and structures in many areas of application. The SHCC4 Conference was the follow-up of three previous successful international events in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2011, and Dordrecht, The Netherlands in 2014.

The authors examine the utility of the U.S. Government's whole-of-government (WoG) approach for responding to the challenging security demands of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They specifically discuss the strategic objectives of interagency cooperation particularly in the areas of peacebuilding and conflict management. Discussions range from the conceptual to the practical, with a focus on the challenges and desirability of interagency cooperation in international interventions. The book shares experiences and expertise on the need for and the future of an American grand strategy in an era characterized by increasingly complex security challenges and shrinking budgets. All authors agree that taking the status quo for granted is a major obstacle to developing a successful grand strategy and that government, military, international and nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector are all called upon to contribute their best talents and efforts to joint global peace and security activities. Included are viewpoints from academia, the military, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and industry. Despite the broad range of viewpoints, a number of overarching themes and tentative agreements emerged.

This book provides an in-depth insight into the emerging paradigm of End-User Development (EUD), discussing the diversity and potential for creating effective environments for end users. Containing a unique set of contributions from a number of international researchers and institutes, many relevant issues are discussed and solutions proposed, making important aspects of end-user development research available to a broader audience. Most people are familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that can effectively support users' goals still requires considerable programming expertise that cannot be expected of everyone. One of the fundamental challenges that lie ahead is the development of environments that enable users with little or no programming experience to develop and modify their own applications. The ultimate goal is to empower people to flexibly employ and personalise advanced inform ation and communication technologies.