ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: Die sozialwissenschaftliche Dissertation nimmt den derzeitigen DIY-Trend, konkret den Handarbeitstrend, in den Fokus. Welche individuellen Gründe und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen bewegen die Menschen, wieder gemeinsam und/oder allein zu nähen und zu stricken, alte Dinge aufzuwerten oder anders zu nutzen bzw. einfach kreativ zu sein? Ist es der Wunsch nach dem Besonderen, die Abgrenzung von Anderen, der wiedererwachte Sinn für Gemeinschaft oder die Freude an der praktischen Arbeit? Und nicht zuletzt, gibt es eine Verbindung von Handarbeit zu einer nachhaltig orientierten Lebensweise? Ist Handarbeit eine soziale Innovation? Die Untersuchung basiert auf dem bereichsspezifischen Lebensstilkonzept, welches verschiedene gesellschaftliche Ebenen, die individuelle, gemeinschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Ebene, einschließt. Nach einer historischen Betrachtung der Handarbeit und einer ebenen-spezifischen Literaturschau einschließlich der Auswertung von Experteninterviews zum Thema Handarbeit erfolgt im empirischen Teil die Inhaltsanalyse von zwölf leitfadengestützten problemzentrierten Interviews mit Personen, die in ihrer Freizeit handarbeiten. Die Untersuchung bestätigt die forschungsleitenden Annahmen. Es wird deutlich, dass bei der Herausbildung der Affinität zur Handarbeit alle drei gesellschaftlichen Ebenen relevant sind: Individuelle Vorerfahrungen und Motivationen spielen ebenso eine Rolle wie die Gemeinschaft und Vernetzung mit Anderen.Gesellschaftlich betrachtet zeigt die Arbeit, dass die historischen Brüche in der Bedeutung der Handarbeit für deren heutigen Stellenwert relevant sind. Handarbeit - und im weiteren Sinne DIY - wird als soziale Innovation wahrgenommen und kann bewusstseinsbildend hinsichtlich nachhaltig orientierter Lebensweisen wirken.

Description / Table of Contents: Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. China’s Arctic Policy -- Chapter 3. Japan’s Arctic Policy -- Chapter 4. Arctic Policy of South Korea (Republic of Korea) -- Chapter 5. Singapore’s Arctic Policy -- Chapter 6. India’s Arctic Policy -- Chapter 7. Conclusions

Description / Table of Contents: This book examines the growing interest by Asian states, which are normally considered as ‘outsiders’ in the Arctic governance system. Whilst existing research asserts that Asian states are mostly interested in the economic aspect of the changing Arctic, including its mineral and fossil sources and the opening up of new sea routes, the book argues that the relation between Asian states and the Arctic is much more complex and dynamic, grounded in their unique perspective on national security and the role of economic development in securing their national interests. Aki Tonami is Researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She received her Ph.D from Kyoto University, Japan, and has worked as Research Advisor for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. She has written extensively on East Asian environmental foreign policy, and her research interests include environmental governance, economic diplomacy, and the Polar Regions

Description / Table of Contents: Adair Turner became chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority just as the global financial crisis struck in 2008, and he played a leading role in redesigning global financial regulation. In this eye-opening book, he sets the record straight about what really caused the crisis. It didn't happen because banks are too big to fail--our addiction to private debt is to blame. Between Debt and the Devil challenges the belief that we need credit growth to fuel economic growth, and that rising debt is okay as long as inflation remains low. In fact, most credit is not needed for economic growth--but it drives real estate booms and busts and leads to financial crisis and depression. Turner explains why public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and why debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution. Banks need far more capital, real estate lending must be restricted, and we need to tackle inequality and mitigate the relentless rise of real estate prices. Turner also debunks the big myth about fiat money--the erroneous notion that printing money will lead to harmful inflation. To escape the mess created by past policy errors, we sometimes need to monetize government debt and finance fiscal deficits with central-bank money. Between Debt and the Devil shows why we need to reject the assumption that private credit is essential to growth and fiat money is inevitably dangerous. Each has its advantages, and each creates risks that public policy must consciously balance.

Description / Table of Contents: This work summarizes the historical progression of the field of lithium (Li) isotope studies and provides a comprehensive yet succinct overview of the research applications toward which they have been directed. In synthesizing the historical and current research, the volume also suggests prospective future directions of study. Not even a full decade has passed since the publication of a broadly inclusive summary of Li isotope research around the globe (Tomascak, 2004). In this short time, the use of this isotope system in the investigation of geo- and cosmochemical questions has increased dramatically, due, in part, to the advent of new analytical technology at the end of the last millennium. Lithium, as a light element that forms low-charge, moderate-sized ions, manifests a number of chemical properties that make its stable isotope system useful in a wide array of geo- and cosmochemical research fields.  

Description / Table of Contents: This manuscript sets out a process for estimating fatalities in collapsed buildings due to ground shaking in an earthquake. The aim of this research is to supplement current earthquake loss estimation with fatality rates (percentage of occupants killed) for use in models which are based on recent empirical information on deaths from earthquakes. This document specifically explores the lethality potential to occupants of collapsed structures. Whilst earthquake casualty modeling has admittedly suffered from a lack of post-earthquake collection of data and rigour in assessing these data, recent earthquakes such as 2008 Wenchuan (China) and 2011 Christchurch (New Zealand) have brought to light some important findings. Under the auspices of US Geological Survey’s PAGER, empirical fatality data related to collapses of buildings from significant earthquakes in the past 40 years have been thoroughly examined. Through detailed investigations of fatal building collapses and the volume reductions within these buildings, important clues related to the lethality potential of different failure mechanisms of global modern and older construction types were found. The gathered evidence forms the basis of the derivation of a set of fatality rates for use in loss models. The set of judgment-based rates are for 31 global building types. This significant advancement in casualty modeling, the resolutions and quality of available data, the important assumptions made, and the final derivation of fatality rates are discussed here. This document contributes to global efforts to develop a way of estimating probable earthquake fatalities very rapidly after an earthquake has taken place. The fatality rates proposed here can be incorporated directly into earthquake loss estimation models where fatalities are derived from collapses of different types of buildings

Description / Table of Contents: This book presents an analysis of land and water resources in Siberia, initially characterizing the landscapes, their ecosystems, crucial processes, human impacts on soil and water quality, and the status quo of available research. Further chapters deal with modern monitoring and management methods that can lead to a significant knowledge shift and initiate sustainable soil and water resources use. These include soil hydrological laboratory measurement methods; process-based field evaluation methods for land and water quality; remote sensing and GIS technology-based landscape monitoring methods; process and ecosystem modeling approaches; methods of resource and process evaluation and functional soil mapping; and tools for controlling agricultural land use systems. More than 15 of these concrete monitoring and management tools can immediately be incorporated into research and practice. Maintaining the functions of great landscapes for future generations will be the reward for these efforts

Description / Table of Contents: Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion

Description / Table of Contents: These proceedings contain a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the International Symposium on Geodesy for Earthquake and Natural Hazards (GENAH), Matsushima, Japan, 22-26 July, 2014. The scientific sessions focused on monitoring temporal and spatial changes in Earth's lithosphere and atmosphere using geodetic satellite systems, high rate GNSS as well as high resolution imaging (InSAR, Lidar). Researchers in various fields of geodesy discussed the role of geodesy in disaster mitigation and how groups with different techniques can collaborate toward such a goal.

Description / Table of Contents: "Electrifying, provocative, and controversial when first published thirty years ago, Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is even more relevant today, when the divisions that she so eloquently challenges--of human and machine but also of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location--are increasingly complex. The subsequent "Companion Species Manifesto," which further questions the human-nonhuman disjunction, is no less urgently needed in our time of environmental crisis and profound polarization. Manifestly Haraway brings together these momentous manifestos to expose the continuity and ramifying force of Haraway's thought, whose significance emerges with engaging immediacy in a sustained conversation between the author and her long-term friend and colleague Cary Wolfe. Reading cyborgs and companion species through and with each other, Haraway and Wolfe join in a wide-ranging exchange on the history and meaning of the manifestos in the context of biopolitics, feminism, Marxism, human-nonhuman relationships, making kin, literary tropes, material semiotics, the negative way of knowing, secular Catholicism, and more. The conversation ends by revealing the early stages of Haraway's "Chthulucene Manifesto," in tension with the teleologies of the doleful Anthropocene and the exterminationist Capitalocene. Deeply dedicated to a diverse and robust earthly flourishing, Manifestly Haraway promises to reignite needed discussion in and out of the academy about biologies, technologies, histories, and still possible futures. "--

Description / Table of Contents: Foreword -- part 1. Introduction -- Magnetic fields at largest universal strengths : overview -- Physics in very strong magnetic fields : an introduction -- part 2. Magnetic fields in stars -- Observations of strong magnetic fields in nondegenerate stars -- Magnetic field generation in stars -- Magnetic white dwarfs -- part 3. Neutron stars -- Neutron stars : thermal emitters -- Radio pulsars -- Neutron stars : cooling and transport -- Magnetic fields of neutron stars in X-ray binaries -- Magnetars : properties, origin, and evolution -- part 4. Accretion, winds, jets -- Accretion and outflows from magnetized stars -- Pulsar wind nebulae -- Disks and jets : gravity, rotation, and magnetic fields -- part 5. Physical processes -- gamma ray bursts as sources of strong magnetic fields -- Relativistic shocks, particle acceleration, and magnetization -- Relativistic magnetic reconnection and Its astrophysical applications

Description / Table of Contents: Applied math and machine learning basics. Linear algebra -- Probability and information theory -- Numerical computation -- Machine learning basics -- Deep networks: modern practices. Deep feedforward networks -- Regularization for deep learning -- Optimization for training deep models -- Convolutional networks -- Sequence modeling: recurrent and recursive nets -- Practical methodology -- Applications -- Deep learning research. Linear factor models -- Autoencoders -- Representation learning -- Structured probabilistic models for deep learning -- Monte Carlo methods -- Confronting the partition function -- Approximate inference -- Deep generative models

Description / Table of Contents: This edited volume emphasizes risk and crisis communication principles and practices within the up-to the minute context of new technologies, a new focus on resiliency, and global environmental change. It includes contributions from experts from around the globe whose research, advocacy, teaching, work, or service in the natural or social sciences deals with risk communication and/or management surrounding natural and technological disasters, with a particular focus on climate change-related phenomena. Resilience and good communication are intimately linked and with climate change precipitating more numerous and onerous weather-related catastrophes, a conversation on resilience is timely and necessary. The goal is robust communities that are able to withstand the shock of disaster. Communicating well under ordinary circumstances is challenging; communicating during a crisis is extraordinarily difficult. This book is dedicated to all those who have directly or indirectly suffered the effects of climate change end extreme events with the hope that the advance of knowledge, implementation of sound science and appropriate policies, and use of effective communication will help in reducing their vulnerability while also improving resilience in the face of often devastating natural and technological disasters

Description / Table of Contents: How relevant are the classic theories of agrarian change in the contemporary context? This volume explores this question by focusing upon the defining features of agrarian transformation in the 21st century: the financialization of food and agriculture, the blurring of rural and urban livelihoods through migration and other economic activities, forest transition, climate change, rural indebtedness, the co-evolution of social policy and moral economies, and changing property relations. Combined, the eleven contributions to

Description / Table of Contents: The Yukon Coast in Canada is an ice-rich permafrost coast and highly sensitive to changing environmental conditions. Retrogressive thaw slumps are a common thermoerosion feature along this coast, and develop through the thawing of exposed ice-rich permafrost on slopes and removal of accumulating debris. They contribute large amounts of sediment, including organic carbon and nitrogen, to the nearshore zone. The objective of this study was to 1) identify the climatic and geomorphological drivers of sediment-meltwater release, 2) quantify the amount of released meltwater, sediment, organic carbon and nitrogen, and 3) project the evolution of sediment-meltwater release of retrogressive thaw slumps in a changing future climate. The analysis is based on data collected over 18 days in July 2013 and 18 days in August 2012. A cut-throat flume was set up in the main sediment-meltwater channel of the largest retrogressive thaw slump on Herschel Island. In addition, two weather stations, one on top of the undisturbed tundra and one on the…

Description / Table of Contents: This volume defines, illustrates, and challenges the field on environmental political theory. Through a broad range of approaches, it shows how scholars have used concepts, methods, and arguments from political theory and closely related disciplines to address contemporary environmental problems.

Description / Table of Contents: The starting point for this study is the observation that with increasing frequency, international legal norms directly address and engage individuals. For instance, individual rights under international law appear to arise from extradition treaties, treaties of friendship and establishment, double taxation agreements, transport treaties, intellectual property treaties, investment protection treaties, treaties on the legal status of foreigners, and the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. On the side of duties, the criminal responsibility of individuals under international law has in recent decades been fleshed out by the work of the ad hoc criminal tribunals and the International Criminal Court".

Description / Table of Contents: Widespread landscape changes are presently observed in the Arctic and are most likely to accelerate in the future, in particular in permafrost regions which are sensitive to climate warming. To assess current and future developments, it is crucial to understand past environmental dynamics in these landscapes. Causes and interactions of environmental variability can hardly be resolved by instrumental records covering modern time scales. However, long-term environmental variability is recorded in paleoenvironmental archives. Lake sediments are important archives that allow reconstruction of local limnogeological processes as well as past environmental changes driven directly or indirectly by climate dynamics. This study aims at reconstructing Late Quaternary permafrost and thermokarst dynamics in central-eastern Beringia, the terrestrial land mass connecting Eurasia and North America during glacial sea-level low stands. In order to investigate development, processes and influence of thermokarst dynamics, several sediment cores from extant lakes and drained lake basins were analyzed to answer the following research questions: 1. When did permafrost degradation and thermokarst lake development take place and what were enhancing and inhibiting environmental factors? 2. What are the dominant processes during thermokarst lake development and how are they reflected in proxy records? 3. How did, and still do, thermokarst dynamics contribute to the inventory and properties of organic matter in sediments and the carbon cycle? Methods applied in this study are based upon a multi-proxy approach combining sedimentological, geochemical, geochronological, and micropaleontological analyses, as well as analyses of stable isotopes and hydrochemistry of pore-water and ice. Modern field observations of water quality and basin morphometrics complete the environmental investigations. The investigated sediment cores reveal permafrost degradation and thermokarst dynamics on different time scales. The analysis of a sediment core from GG basin on the northern Seward Peninsula (Alaska) shows prevalent terrestrial accumulation of yedoma throughout the Early to Mid Wisconsin with intermediate wet conditions at around 44.5 to 41.5 ka BP. This first wetland development was terminated by the accumulation of a 1-meter-thick airfall tephra most likely originating from the South Killeak Maar eruption at 42 ka BP. A depositional hiatus between 22.5 and 0.23 ka BP may indicate thermokarst lake formation in the surrounding of the site which forms a yedoma upland till today. The thermokarst lake forming GG basin initiated 230 ± 30 cal a BP and drained in Spring 2005 AD. Four years after drainage the lake talik was still unfrozen below 268 cm depth. A permafrost core from Mama Rhonda basin on the northern Seward Peninsula preserved a full lacustrine record including several lake phases. The first lake generation developed at 11.8 cal ka BP during the Lateglacial-Early Holocene transition; its old basin (Grandma Rhonda) is still partially preserved at the southern margin of the study basin. Around 9.0 cal ka BP a shallow and more dynamic thermokarst lake developed with actively eroding shorelines and potentially intermediate shallow water or wetland phases (Mama Rhonda). Mama Rhonda lake drainage at 1.1 cal ka BP was followed by gradual accumulation of terrestrial peat and top-down refreezing of the lake talik. A significant lower organic carbon content was measured in Grandma Rhonda deposits (mean TOC of 2.5 wt%) than in Mama Rhonda deposits (mean TOC of 7.9 wt%) highlighting the impact of thermokarst dynamics on biogeochemical cycling in different lake generations by thawing and mobilization of organic carbon into the lake system. Proximal and distal sediment cores from Peatball Lake on the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska revealed young thermokarst dynamics since about 1,400 years along a depositional gradient based on reconstructions from shoreline expansion rates and absolute dating results. After its initiation as a remnant pond of a previous drained lake basin, a rapidly deepening lake with increasing oxygenation of the water column is evident from laminated sediments, and higher Fe/Ti and Fe/S ratios in the sediment. The sediment record archived characterizing shifts in depositional regimes and sediment sources from upland deposits and re-deposited sediments from drained thaw lake basins depending on the gradually changing shoreline configuration. These changes are evident from alternating organic inputs into the lake system which highlights the potential for thermokarst lakes to recycle old carbon from degrading permafrost deposits of its catchment. The lake sediment record from Herschel Island in the Yukon (Canada) covers the full Holocene period. After its initiation as a thermokarst lake at 11.7 cal ka BP and intense thermokarst activity until 10.0 cal ka BP, the steady sedimentation was interrupted by a depositional hiatus at 1.6 cal ka BP which likely resulted from lake drainage or allochthonous slumping due to collapsing shore lines. The specific setting of the lake on a push moraine composed of marine deposits is reflected in the sedimentary record. Freshening of the maturing lake is indicated by decreasing electrical conductivity in pore-water. Alternation of marine to freshwater ostracods and foraminifera confirms decreasing salinity as well but also reflects episodical re-deposition of allochthonous marine sediments. Based on permafrost and lacustrine sediment records, this thesis shows examples of the Late Quaternary evolution of typical Arctic permafrost landscapes in central-eastern Beringia and the complex interaction of local disturbance processes, regional environmental dynamics and global climate patterns. This study confirms that thermokarst lakes are important agents of organic matter recycling in complex and continuously changing landscapes.

Description / Table of Contents: Array Indexing: Accessing Single ElementsArray Slicing: Accessing Subarrays; Reshaping of Arrays; Array Concatenation and Splitting; Computation on NumPy Arrays: Universal Functions; The Slowness of Loops; Introducing UFuncs; Exploring NumPy's UFuncs; Advanced Ufunc Features; Ufuncs: Learning More; Aggregations: Min, Max, and Everything in Between; Summing the Values in an Array; Minimum and Maximum; Example: What Is the Average Height of US Presidents?; Computation on Arrays: Broadcasting; Introducing Broadcasting; Rules of Broadcasting; Broadcasting in Practice

Description / Table of Contents: This proceedings contains a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the IAG Scientific Assembly, Postdam, Germany, 1-6 September, 2013. The scientific sessions were focussed on the definition, implementation and scientific applications of reference frames; gravity field determination and applications; the observation and assessment of earth hazards. It presents a collection of the contributions on the applications of earth rotations dynamics, on observation systems and services as well as on imaging and positioning techniques and its applications.

Description / Table of Contents: "One of the world's leading economists of inequality, Branko Milanovic presents a bold new account of the dynamics that drive inequality on a global scale. Drawing on vast data sets and cutting-edge research, he explains the benign and malign forces that make inequality rise and fall within and among nations. He also reveals who has been helped the most by globalization, who has been held back, and what policies might tilt the balance toward economic justice. Global Inequality takes us back hundreds of years, and as far around the world as data allow, to show that inequality moves in cycles, fueled by war and disease, technological disruption, access to education, and redistribution. The recent surge of inequality in the West has been driven by the revolution in technology, just as the Industrial Revolution drove inequality 150 years ago. But even as inequality has soared within nations, it has fallen dramatically among nations, as middle-class incomes in China and India have drawn closer to the stagnating incomes of the middle classes in the developed world. A more open migration policy would reduce global inequality even further. Both American and Chinese inequality seem well entrenched and self-reproducing, though it is difficult to predict if current trends will be derailed by emerging plutocracy, populism, or war. For those who want to understand how we got where we are, where we may be heading, and what policies might help reverse that course, Milanovic's compelling explanation is the ideal place to start."--Provided by publisher

Description / Table of Contents: Front matter -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Contributors -- 1. They've 'never had it so good': the rise and rise of the super-rich and wealth inequality -- 2. Reconsidering the super-rich: variations, structural conditions and urban consequences -- PART I WEALTH, SELF AND SOCIETY -- 3. Historical geographies of wealth: opportunities, institutions and accumulation, c. 1800-1930 -- 4. On plutonomy: economy, power and the wealthy few in the second Gilded Age -- 5. Interrogating the legitimacy of extreme wealth: a moral economic perspective

Description / Table of Contents: 6. Billionaire philanthropy: 'decaf capitalism' -- 7. Making money and making a self: the moral career of entrepreneurs -- 8. Taking up Caletrío's challenge: silence and the construction of wealth eliteness in Jamie Johnson's documentary film Born Rich -- 9. 'One time I'ma show you how to get rich!' Rap music, wealth and the rise of the hip-hop mogul -- 10. Biographies of illicit super-wealth -- PART II LIVING WEALTHY -- 11. Capital city? London's housing markets and the 'super-rich' -- 12. The residential spaces of the super-rich

Description / Table of Contents: 13. Reconfiguring places - wealth and the transformation of rural areas -- 14. Performing wealth and status: observing super-yachts and the super-rich in Monaco -- 15. Flights of indulgence (or how the very wealthy fly): the aeromobile patterns and practices of the super-rich -- 16. Looking at luxury: consuming luxury fashion in global cities -- 17. The luxury of nature: the environmental consequences of super-rich lives -- PART III WEALTH AND POWER -- 18. Attracting wealth: crafting immigration policy to attract the rich -- 19. Sovereign wealth and the nation-state

Description / Table of Contents: 20. Super-rich capitalism: managing and preserving private wealth management in the offshore world -- 21. Troubling tax havens: multi-jurisdictional arbitrage and corporate tax footprint reduction -- 22. No change there! Wealth and oil -- Index

Description / Table of Contents: Fewer than 100 people own and control more wealth than 50 per cent of the world's population. The Handbook on Wealth and the Super-Rich is a unique examination of both the lives and lifestyles of the super-rich, as well as the processes that underpin super-wealth generation and its unequal distribution. Drawing on a multiplicity of international examples, leading experts from across the social sciences offer a landmark multidisciplinary contribution to emerging analyses of the global super-rich and their astonishing wealth. The book's 22 accessible and coherently organised chapters cover a ran

Description / Table of Contents: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I FROM CUNEIFORM TO CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION -- 1 Finance and Writing -- 2 Finance and Urbanism -- 3 Financial Architecture -- 4 Mesopotamian Twilight -- 5 Athenian Finance -- 6 Monetary Revolution -- 7 Roman Finance -- PART II THE FINANCIAL LEGACY OF CHINA -- 8 China's First Financial World -- 9 Unity and Bureaucracy -- 10 Financial Divergence -- PART III THE EUROPEAN CRUCIBLE -- 11 The Temple and Finance -- 12 Venice -- 13 Fibonacci and Finance -- 14 Immortal Bonds

Description / Table of Contents: 15 The Discovery of Chance -- 16 Efficient Markets -- 17 Europe, Inc. -- 18 Corporations and Exploration -- 19 A Projecting Age -- 20 A Bubble in France -- 21 According to Hoyle -- 22 Securitization and Debt -- PART IV THE EMERGENCE OF GLOBAL MARKETS -- 23 Marx and Markets -- 24 China's Financiers -- 25 The Russian Bear -- 26 Keynes to the Rescue -- 27 The New Financial World -- 28 Re-Engineering the Future -- 29 Post-War Theory -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Illustration Credits -- Index

Description / Table of Contents: The global financial crisis has led to more and more focus on corporate governance and financial institutions. There has been much coverage in the media about various corporate governance related issues in banks and other financial institutions, such as executive directors' remuneration and bankers' bonuses, board composition and board diversity. This book, dedicated to the corporate governance of banks and other financial institutions, makes a timely and accessible contribution to the literature in this area. The contributors are experts in their field with in-depth knowledge of the various countries including Italy, the UK, Germany, the US, China, Japan, Brazil, Russia, Australia and Nigeria, plus a chapter on Islamic financial institutions, covered in this book. Overall, the engagingly written chapters highlight many of the shortcomings of corporate governance which have led to financial scandals, whilst indicating areas where corporate governance can be strengthened and improved.Adding depth and accessibility to existing corporate governance books, this Handbook is ideal as a teaching and learning tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students. For directors and the general business and wider stakeholder communities concerned with corporate governance, it is an essential resource

Description / Table of Contents: An account of the results of the 2 March 1987 earthquake in the eastern Bay of Plenty and the aftermath's effects on the people and places on the Rangitaiki Plains

Description / Table of Contents: This book provides a balanced and up-to-date overview of the multidimensional change taking place in the Arctic regions. Against this background, the role of the European Union regarding Arctic developments is considered, including the ongoing process of formulating an umbrella EU Arctic policy. In particular, the themes of climate change, maritime transport, fisheries, offshore oil and gas extraction, mining, land use and sociocultural change are discussed. The book comprises primarily an updated and expanded version of the report 'Strategic Assessment of Development of the Arctic: An assessment conducted for the European Union', produced for the European Commission. The report was to a great extent based on the interaction with Arctic stakeholders

Description / Table of Contents: "Over the last few years the Arctic has become a region of growing interest to the international community. Major environmental, economic, social, and security issues are all in evidence within its borders today. Many feel that there is an urgent need to establish an effective governance structure for the area. The Arctic Council has offered a basic forum for circumpolar consultation and cooperation over the past two decades. However, it has not been an easy undertaking and the organization has had to wrestle with a series of internal and external impediments that have hindered its forward progress. This volume explores the efforts of Sweden, a recent Chair of the Arctic Council, to build an enhanced framework for consensus-building and governance within the circumpolar region. It examines its efforts to provide focused leadership for the Arctic Council and to advance the environmental protection and sustainable development missions of the organization. It considers the various means by which Sweden utilized its position as chair of the Arctic Council to promote its program for action in both these areas. It also explores how this leadership position enabled it to foster necessary organizational reform within the body. The book gives new insight into how both the formal and informal 'powers of the chair' can be utilized to facilitate institutional growth and change. It also provides new and useful understanding of how a small country like Sweden can harness key elements of 'soft power' to advance its foreign policy objectives in the Arctic. The author closely followed the undertakings of the Swedish Chairmanship team over its two years at the helm of this emerging Arctic international organization. He witnessed its several successes and a few of its disappointments. The volume offers a behind the scene view of the challenges and opportunities faced by contemporary diplomats as they pursue their efforts at international organization"--

Description / Table of Contents: Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of figures -- List of contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Foreword -- Climates of history, cultures of climate -- Epistemic climates -- Time, representation, agency -- Enduring bad faith -- Notes -- References -- Part I: Climates of history -- Chapter 1: Voices of endurance: climate and the power of oral history -- Valuing oral history -- Endurance -- Drought 'makes who we are' -- Weathering loss -- Dwelling in uncertainty -- Listening for change -- Living with future drought -- Notes -- References

Description / Table of Contents: Chapter 2: Rethinking seasons: changing climate, changing time -- Indigenous seasons -- Western seasons: the weather, climate, calendar nexus -- The idea vs history -- Climate change and the seasons -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3: The terrestrial envelope: Joseph Fourier's geological speculation -- Introduction: poiesis of other worlds -- Science studies and imagination -- Fourier's demonstration -- The scene of imagination -- Infinite cold -- Geological speculation -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 4: Melancholy and the continent of fire -- Forest Gallery, Melbourne

Description / Table of Contents: Emerging environmental histories -- Moving through time -- Climatic seasonal encounters -- Melancholic environmental memorial -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 5: The Anthropocene and the long seventeenth century: 1550-1750 -- Early modern poetic and philosophical critique -- The seventeenth century age of crisis -- The Columbian Exchange -- The Anthropocene -- Notes -- References -- Part II: Climates of writing -- Chapter 6: Change beyond belief: fictions of (the) Enlightenment and Simpson's 'climate change suite' -- Enlightenment atmospheres of belief -- Notes -- References

Description / Table of Contents: Chapter 7: Fuels and humans, bíos and zoe -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 8: The 'foreign grave' motif in Victorian medicine and literature -- The medical debate -- Exchanges between literature and medicine -- The literary life of the foreign grave motif -- Conclusion -- References -- Chapter 9: Climate change and literary history -- What does climate mean? -- Climate, climat, 'climate' -- Wittgenstein's atmospheres -- Climate, clima, clinamen -- Writing climatic culture -- Climate, race, milieu and moment -- For a literary history of climate change -- Notes -- References

Description / Table of Contents: Part III: Climates of politics -- Chapter 10: Climate change: politics, excess, sovereignty -- Politics -- Excess -- Sovereignty -- Conclusion -- Note -- References -- Chapter 11: Para-religions of climate change: humanity, eco-nihilism, apocalypse -- The Anthropocene as object of (dis)belief -- Is not/il y a -- Gaia revisited -- The last man's party -- Dark temples, sordid churches: 'new religious movements' -- Moral panic, apocalypse and other bourgeois pastimes -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 12: Litigation, activism, and the paradox of lawfulness in an age of climate change

Description / Table of Contents: Lawfulness and climate change litigation

Description / Table of Contents: 1. Climatic Adaptation of Boreal and Temperate Tree Species -- 2. Dynamic Modelling of the Annual Cycle -- 3. The Annual Phenological Cycle -- 4. The Annual Cycle of Photosynthesis in Evergreen Conifers -- 5. The Annual Cycle of Frost Hardiness -- 6. Evolutionary Aspects of the Annual Cycle -- 7. Upscaling to Higher Levels of Organisation -- 8. The Annual Cycle Under Changing Climatic Conditions -- 9. Concluding Remarks

Description / Table of Contents: This book provides an overview of how boreal and temperate tree species have adapted their annual development cycle to the seasonally varying climatic conditions. Therefore, the frost hardy dormant phase, and the susceptible growth phase, are synchronized with the seasonality of the climate. The volume discusses the annual cycle, including various attributes such as timing of bud burst and other phenological events, seasonality of photosynthetic capacity or the frost hardiness of the trees. During the last few decades dynamic ecophysiological models have been used increasingly in studies of the annual cycle, particularly when projecting the ecological effects of climate change. The main emphasis of this volume is on combining modelling with experimental studies, and on the importance of the biological realism of the models

Description / Table of Contents: The power of technology? -- Risk and responsibility? -- The ethical anatomy of disasters? -- Remaking nature? -- Tinkering with humans? -- Information's wild frontiers? -- Whose knowledge, whose property? -- Reclaiming the future? -- The ethics of invention?

Description / Table of Contents: In times of climate change and public debt, a concern for intergenerational justice should lead us to have a closer look at theories of intergenerational justice. It should also press us to provide institutional design proposals to change the decision-making world that surrounds us. This book provides an exhaustive overview of the most important institutional proposals as well as a systematic and theoretical discussion of their respective features and advantages. It focuses on institutional proposals aimed at taking the interests of future generations more seriously, and does so from the perspective of applied political philosophy, being explicit about the underlying normative choices and the latest developments in the social sciences. It provides citizens, activists, firms, charities, public authorities, policy-analysts, students, and academics with the body of knowledge necessary to understand what our institutional options are and what they entail if we are concerned about today's excessive short-termism

Description / Table of Contents: "Over the last few years Asian governments have taken a stronger approach to the Arctic, culminating with permanent-observer status to the Arctic Council for China, India, Japan, Singapore and South-Korea in May 2013. This groundbreaking book brings together the latest research in emerging Asian interests for the Arctic region, and the implications thereof this change has for the future. This book covers Arctic shipping, fisheries and mineral extraction. It analyzes key Asian countries' policies, positions and activities. The book also demonstrates that there are common aspects which attract Asian countries to the Arctic, such as a concern for climate change, but there are also important national differences. From the Arctic Council to UNCLOS, Arctic governance mechanisms are thoroughly presented and analyzed"--

Description / Table of Contents: "With over half of the world's population now living in urban areas, the ability to model and understand the structure and dynamics of cities is becoming increasingly valuable. Combining new data with tools and concepts from statistical physics and urban economics, this book presents a modern and interdisciplinary perspective on cities and urban systems. Both empirical observations and theoretical approaches are critically reviewed, with particular emphasis placed on derivations of classical models and results, along with analysis of their limits and validity. Key aspects of cities are thoroughly analyzed, including mobility patterns, the impact of multimodality, the coupling between different transportation modes, the evolution of infrastructure networks, spatial and social organisation, and interactions between cities. Drawing upon knowledge and methods from areas of mathematics, physics, economics and geography, the resulting quantitative description of cities will be of interest to all those studying and researching how to model these complex systems"--

Description / Table of Contents: Contents: 1. Introduction; Part I. Approach, Method and Concepts: 2. Explaining environmental performance; 3. Preferences in environmental politics; 4. The institutional settings in 21 OECD countries; Part II. Environmental Performance in 21 OECD Countries: 5. Measuring environmental performance; 6. Aggregating environmental performance data; Part III. Analysis: 7. Domestic politics; 8. International politics; 9. The nexus of domestic and international politics; 10. Conclusion

Description / Table of Contents: "As the world faces the prospect of climate change, nuclear disasters, and water scarcity, it is clear that environmental degradation is an increasingly serious challenge with economic and social consequences. In this book, Detlef Jahn analyzes political processes in a macro-comparative study in order to estimate the role of politics in the field of environmental performance in 21 OECD countries. His model demonstrates various styles of politics used to combat environmental degradation. He finds that economic and environmental performance are still closely linked, and that moving towards a service society does not by itself solve the environmental challenge. The close relationship of these areas was made strikingly clear in the economic crisis of the new millennium. He argues that economic globalization fosters environmental deterioration, and undermines efforts in domestic politics and international coordination to improve the environmental record"--

Description / Table of Contents: As the shale revolution continues in North America, unconventional resource markets are emerging on every continent. In the next eight to ten years, more than 100,000 wells and one- to two-million hydraulic fracturing stages could be executed, resulting in close to one trillion dollars in industry spending. This growth has prompted professionals experienced in conventional oil and gas exploitation and development to acquire practical knowledge of the unconventional realm. Unconventional Oil and Gas Resources: Exploitation and Development provides a comprehensive understanding of the latest advances in the exploitation and development of unconventional resources. With an emphasis on shale, this book: Addresses all aspects of the exploitation and development process, from data mining and accounting to drilling, completion, stimulation, production, and environmental issues. Offers in-depth coverage of sub-surface measurements (geological, geophysical, petrophysical, geochemical, and geomechanical) and their interpretation. Discusses the use of microseismic, fiber optic, and tracer reservoir monitoring technologies and JewelSuite™ reservoir modeling software. Presents the viewpoints of internationally respected experts and researchers from leading exploration and production (E&P) companies and academic institutions