Search results for ""experiment""

Mathematical and Computational Modeling Illustrates the application of mathematical and computational modeling in a variety of disciplines With an emphasis on the interdisciplinary nature of mathematical and computational modeling, Mathematical and Computational Modeling: With Applications in the Natural and Social Sciences, Engineering, and the Arts features chapters written by well-known, international experts in these fields and presents readers with a host of state-of-theart achievements in the development of mathematical modeling and computational experiment methodology. The book is a valuable guide to the methods, ideas, and tools of applied and computational mathematics as they apply to other disciplines such as the natural and social sciences, engineering, and technology. The book also features: Rigorous mathematical procedures and applications as the driving force behind mathematical innovation and discovery Numerous examples from a wide range of disciplines to emphasize the multidisciplinary application and universality of applied mathematics and mathematical modeling Original results on both fundamental theoretical and applied developments in diverse areas of human knowledge Discussions that promote interdisciplinary interactions between mathematicians, scientists, and engineers Mathematical and Computational Modeling: With Applications in the Natural and Social Sciences, Engineering, and the Arts is an ideal resource for professionals in various areas of mathematical and statistical sciences, modeling and simulation, physics, computer science, engineering, biology and chemistry, and industrial and computational engineering. The book also serves as an excellent textbook for graduate courses in mathematical modeling, applied mathematics, numerical methods, operations research, and optimization.

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Inverse problems have been the focus of a growing number of research efforts over the last 40 years-and rightly so. The ability to determine a "cause" from an observed "effect" is a powerful one. Researchers now have at their disposal a variety of techniques for solving inverse problems, techniques that go well beyond those useful for relatively simple parameter estimation problems. The question is, where can one find a single, comprehensive resource that details these methods?The answer is the Inverse Engineering Handbook. Leading experts in inverse problems have joined forces to produce the definitive reference that allows readers to understand, implement, and benefit from a variety of problem-solving techniques. Each chapter details a method developed or refined by its contributor, who provides clear explanations, examples, and in many cases, software algorithms. The presentation begins with methods for parameter estimation, which build a bridge to boundary function estimation problems. The techniques addressed include sequential function estimation, mollification, space marching techniques, and adjoint, Monte Carlo, and gradient-based methods. Discussions also cover important experimental aspects, including experiment design and the effects of uncertain parameters.While many of the examples presented focus on heat transfer, the techniques discussed are applicable to a wide range of inverse problems. Anyone interested in inverse problems, regardless of their specialty, will find the Inverse Engineering Handbook to be a unique and invaluable compendium of up-to-date techniques.

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This history of a single town in Bohemia casts new light on nationalism in Central Europe between the Springtime of Nations in 1848 and the Cold War. Jeremy King tells the story of both German and Czech-speaking Budweis/Budaejovice, which belonged to the Habsburg Monarchy until 1918, and then to Czechoslovakia, Hitler's Third Reich, and Czechoslovakia again. Residents, at first simply "Budweisers," or Habsburg subjects with mostly local loyalties, gradually became Czechs or Germans. Who became Czech, though, and who German? What did it mean to be one or the other? In answering these questions, King shows how an epochal, region-wide contest for power found expression in Budweis/Budaejovice not only through elections but through clubs, schools, boycotts, breweries, a remarkable constitutional experiment, a couple of riots, and much more. In tracing the nationalization of politics from small and sometimes comic beginnings to the genocide and mass expulsions of the 1940s, he also rejects traditional interpretive frameworks. Writing not a national history but a history of nationhood, both Czech and German, King recovers a nonnational dimension to the past. Embodied locally by Budweisers and more generally by the Habsburg state, that dimension has long been blocked from view by a national rhetoric of race and ethnicity. King's Czech-Habsburg-German narrative, in addition to capturing the dynamism and complexity of Bohemian politics, participates in broader scholarly discussions concerning the nature of nationalism.

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In 1994, workers broke ground on China’s Three Gorges Dam. By its completion in 2012, the dam had transformed the ecology of the Yangzi River, displaced over a million people, and forever altered a landscape immortalized in centuries of literature and art. The controversial history of the dam is well known; what this book uncovers are its unexpected connections to the cultural traditions it seems to sever. By reconsidering the dam in relation to the aesthetic history of the Three Gorges region over more than two millennia, Fixing Landscape offers radically new ways of thinking about cultural and spatial production in contemporary China.Corey Byrnes argues that this monumental feat of engineering can only be understood by confronting its status as a techno-poetic act, a form of landscaping indebted to both the technical knowledge of engineers and to the poetic legacies of the Gorges as cultural site. Synthesizing methods drawn from premodern, modern, and contemporary Chinese studies, as well as from critical geography, art history, and the environmental humanities, Byrnes offers innovative readings of eighth-century poetry, paintings from the twelfth through twenty-first centuries, contemporary film, nineteenth-century British travelogues, and Chinese and Western maps, among other sources. Fixing Landscape shows that premodern poetry and visual art have something urgent to tell us about a contemporary experiment in spatial production. Poems and paintings may not build dams, but Byrnes argues that the Three Gorges Dam would not exist as we know it without them.

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The fourth book in the Science of Discworld series, and this time around dealing with THE REALLY BIG QUESTIONS, Terry Pratchett’s brilliant new Discworld story Judgement Day is annotated with very big footnotes (the interleaving chapters) by mathematician Ian Stewart and biologist Jack Cohen, to bring you a mind-mangling combination of fiction, cutting-edge science and philosophy.Marjorie Daw is a librarian, and takes her job – and indeed the truth of words – very seriously. She doesn’t know it, but her world and ours – Roundworld – is in big trouble. On Discworld, a colossal row is brewing…The Wizards of Unseen University feel responsible for Roundworld (as one would for a pet gerbil). After all, they brought it into existence by bungling an experiment in Quantum ThaumoDynamics. But legal action is being brought against them by Omnians, who say that the Wizards’ god-like actions make a mockery of their noble religion.As the finest legal brains in Discworld (a zombie and a priest) gird their loins to do battle – and when the Great Big Thing in the High Energy Magic Laboratory is switched on – Marjorie Daw finds herself thrown across the multiverse and right in the middle of the whole explosive affair. As God, the Universe and, frankly, Everything Else is investigated by the trio, you can expect world-bearing elephants, quantum gravity in the Escher-verse, evolutionary design, eternal inflation, dark matter, disbelief systems – and an in-depth study of how to invent a better mousetrap.

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The theories of Karl Marx and the practical existence of the Soviet Union are inseparable in the public imagination, but for all the wrong reasons. This book provides detailed analyses of both Marx’s theory of history and the course of Russian and Soviet development and delivers a new and insightful approach to the relationship between the two. Most analyses of the Soviet Union, from any perspective, focus on trying to explain the failure to establish socialism, giving too much weight to the political pronouncements of the regime. But, for Marx, this approach to historical explanation is back-to-front, it's the political tail wagging the economic dog. When we move our focus from the stated aims of building socialism, and look at what actually happened in Russia from emancipation in the 1860s, through the Soviet era to the 1990s, we can clearly see the patterns which Marx identified as the essential features of the transition from feudalism to capitalism in England from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth. As such, the Soviet experiment forms an important part of Russia’s transition from feudalism to capitalism and provides an excellent example of the underlying forces at play in the course of historical development. Unlearning Marx will surprise Marx’s admirers and his detractors alike, and not only shed new light on Marxism's relationship with the Soviet Union, but on his ongoing relationship with our world.

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You have a great idea, now what? That first mile--where an innovation moves from an idea on paper to the market--is often plagued by failure. In fact, less than one percent of ideas launched by big companies end up having real impact. The ideas aren't the problem. It's the process. The First Mile focuses on the critical moment when an innovator moves from planning to reality. It is a perilous place where hidden traps snare entrepreneurs and roadblocks slow innovators inside large companies. In this practical and enlightening manual, strategic adviser Scott Anthony equips innovators with new tools, questions, and examples to speed through this crucial early stage of innovation. You'll learn: * How to evaluate your idea's strengths and weaknesses using the "DEFT" process--Document, Evaluate, Focus, and Test * Fourteen recipes from an "experiment cookbook" to gain confidence in your idea or business * Why "spinouts," "wrong turns," and other challenges commonly trip up innovation--and the practical strategies you can use to avoid them * Why innovators need to seek chaos in an age of constant change--and other essential leadership skills Drawing on his decade of experience as an innovation adviser and investor, Anthony describes hard-won lessons from disruptive start-ups and global giants alike. The First Mile will give you the knowledge and confidence to travel this perilous--but ultimately promising--terrain. The first mile can be a scary place, but you don't have to traverse it alone. This book can help.

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to do to ensure survival, and (2) principles for designing organizational structures in such a way that they can realize the required functions adequately. In the course of their elaboration, we will show that these principles are general – i.e., that they hold for all organizations. 1.5 Conceptual Background To describe organizations as social systems conducting experiments and to present principles for designing an infrastructure supporting the “social experiment,” we use concepts from (organizational) cybernetics, social systems theory, and Aristotle’s ethics. In this book, we hope to show that concepts from these traditions – as introduced by their relevant representatives – can be integrated into a framework supporting our perspective on organizations. To this purpose, we introduce, in each of the following chapters, relevant concepts from an author “belonging” to one of these three traditions and show how these concepts contribute to describing organizations as social experiments (in Part I of the book), to formulating principles for the design of functions and organization structures supporting meaningful survival (Part II), and to formulating principles for the design of organization structures enabling the rich sense of meaningful survival (Part III). Of course, the relevance of cybernetics, social systems theory and Aristotle’s ethics can only be understood in full, after they have been treated in more detail – but based on what we said above, it may already be possible to see why these theories have been chosen as conceptual background.

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Although Eastern Europe has been part of the Christian world for more than a thousand years, its spiritual identity remains a mystery. This mystery, says Sergei Prokofieff, can only fully be solved by looking behind external events and seeking spiritual - meta-historical - dimensions of reality. In illuminating the maya of outer history, Prokofieff reveals the forces that have been at work to hinder the progress of mankind: the materialistic Brotherhoods of the West and the occult aspects of both Jesuitism and Bolshevism. These adversary groups have created a 'karma of materialism', that the eastern Slavic peoples have taken upon themselves out of their 'exalted willingness for sacrifice'. Prokofieff shows how, from the earliest times, the future 'conscience of humanity' flowed from hidden mystery centres in Hibernia, to the eastern Slavic peoples. As a result, qualities of 'compassion, patience and willingness for sacrifice' developed in their souls, creating a truly Christian 'Grail mood'. Despite incalculable suffering - from the persecutions of the Mongol hordes to the Bolshevik experiment of the last century - this quality has become an unconquerable force. Will humanity be able to use the present opportunity granted by this sacrifice to fulfil the primary purposes of the present cultural epoch? Can the future mysteries of the Holy Grail be fulfilled? In this momentous work, breathtaking in its scope and detail, the author attempts a truly esoteric approach, penetrating to the spiritual wellsprings of Eastern Europe in the light of Rudolf Steiner's research.

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"Immensely entertaining." —Newsday"Poignant and remarkable." —Philadelphia Inquirer"Warm, compassionate, engaging, and thought-provoking." —Washington Post"With a subtle ominousness, Yamashita sets up her hopeful, prideful characters—and, in the process, the entire genre of pioneer lit—for a fall." —Village Voice"A splendid multi-generational novel . . . rich in history and character." —San Francisco ChronicleParticularly insightful." —Library Journal"Informative and timely." —Kirkus"Yamashita's heightened sense of passion and absurdity, and respect for inevitability and personality, infuse this engrossing multigenerational immigrant saga with energy, affection, and humor." —Booklist"This enriching novel introduces Western readers to an unusual cultural experiment, and makes vivid a crucial chapter in Japanese assimilation into the West." —Publishers Weekly The story of an idealistic band of Japanese immigrants, who arrive in Brazil in 1925 to carve a utopia out of the jungle. The dream of creating a new world, the cost of idealism, the symbiotic tie between a people and the land they settle, and the changes demanded by a new generation, all collide in this multigenerational saga.Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Through the Arc of the Rain Forest, Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel, and Anime Wong, all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award.

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Celebrate Your Creative Self helps you act upon your artistic inspirations and joyfully appreciate the creative process. You'll develop the skills you need to express yourself and explore your favorite mediums. Inside, 22 step-by-step demonstrations will help you experiment with your creative process using new surfaces, mediums and unique tools. You'll learn to: Capture and manipulate light in your work Try out new and unusual painting surfaces Break the "rules" of color composition that inhibit your creativity Create your own dynamic designs for paintings with more impact Add layers of meaning to your work with the symbolism inherent in both man-made objects and natural elements Imbue your work with a touch of fantasy and recapture the magic you remember from childhood Move beyond traditional 2-dimensional painting into 3-dimensional reconstruction Once you've built up such a repertoire of skills, you'll be able to turn any idea into finished art by applying the techniques that best accommodate your inspiration. You'll also learn how to tap the deepest recesses of your creative wellspring by taking risks, getting personal and making meaningful statements with your work. No matter what your medium, no matter what your level of skill, Celebrate Your Creative Self can help make your artistic dreams a reality!*Note to readers: This book is a paperback reprint of the Celebrate Your Creative Self hardcover edition (2001). It has an updated cover and adjusted subtitle, though the interior content is the same.

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This frightening classic tale is now available in an exclusive collector's edition, featuring beautiful cover art from artist Laci Fowler and decorative interior pages, making it ideal for fiction lovers and book collectors alike.Beloved by horror fans across the globe,?Frankenstein?explores the terror of what happens when humanity plays God. This time-honored classic is now available as an exclusive collector's edition.Whether you're buying it as a gift or for yourself, this remarkable edition features: A beautiful, high-end hardcover featuring Laci Fowler’s distinctive hand-painted art Embossed cover art and gold foiling Decorative interior pages featuring pull quotes throughout Matching ribbon marker and gold page edges? Part of a 4-volume collection including?The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,?The Great Gatsby, and?The Return of Sherlock Holmes Shattered by grief, the unstable Victor Frankenstein conducts a bizarre experiment, using electricity to shock inanimate matter and create an enormous man-like monster. Terrified by his own actions, Victor abandons his creation to the wilderness. Years later, the intelligent and hideous Creature finds his creator and demands his right to happiness. A tragedy of murderous rage and the fatal consequences of revenge, Mary Shelley's iconic novel has been terrifying readers since the nineteenth century.Exploring the dark themes of birth and creation, loneliness, ambition, and the destructive power of revenge, this unique collector’s edition presents Shelley’s frightening tale of otherworldly adventures in a giftable new way.

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As alarm over global warming spreads, a radical idea is gaining momentum. Forget cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists argue. Instead, bounce sunlight back into space by pumping reflective nanoparticles into the atmosphere. Launch mirrors into orbit around the Earth. Make clouds thicker and brighter to create a "planetary thermostat." These ideas might sound like science fiction, but in fact they are part of a very old story. For more than a century, scientists, soldiers, and charlatans have tried to manipulate weather and climate, and like them, today's climate engineers wildly exaggerate what is possible. Scarcely considering the political, military, and ethical implications of managing the world's climate, these individuals hatch schemes with potential consequences that far outweigh anything their predecessors might have faced. Showing what can happen when fixing the sky becomes a dangerous experiment in pseudoscience, James Rodger Fleming traces the tragicomic history of the rainmakers, rain fakers, weather warriors, and climate engineers who have been both full of ideas and full of themselves. Weaving together stories from elite science, cutting-edge technology, and popular culture, Fleming examines issues of health and navigation in the 1830s, drought in the 1890s, aircraft safety in the 1930s, and world conflict since the 1940s. Killer hurricanes, ozone depletion, and global warming fuel the fantasies of today. Based on archival and primary research, Fleming's original story speaks to anyone who has a stake in sustaining the planet.

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35 YEARS IN THE MAKING: THE MOST ANTICIPATED GRAPHIC NOVEL IN RECENT HISTORY *A GUARDIAN 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK*The year is 1964. Bailey doesn't realize he is about to fulfil his tragic destiny when he walks into a US Army recruitment office. Secretive, damaged, innocent, trying to forget a past and looking for a future, Bobby is the perfect candidate for a secret US government experiment, an unholy continuation of a genetics program that was discovered in Nazi Germany nearly 20 years earlier in the waning days of World War II. Bailey's only ally and protector, Sergeant McFarland, intervenes, which sets off a chain of cascading events that spin out of everyone's control. As the monsters of the title multiply, becoming real and metaphorical, the story reaches a crescendo of moral reckoning.A 360-page tour de force of visual storytelling, Monsters' narrative canvas is copious: part familial drama, part thriller, part metaphysical journey, it is an intimate portrait of individuals struggling to reclaim their lives and an epic political odyssey that plays across two generations of American history.Monsters is rendered in Barry Windsor-Smith's impeccable pen-and-ink technique, the visual storytelling, with its sensitivity to gesture and composition, the most sophisticated of the artist's career. There are passages of heartbreaking tenderness, of excruciating pain, of redemption and sacrifice, and devastating violence. Monsters is surely one of the most intense graphic novels ever drawn.

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'Syrian cuisine deserves a high place in our culinary knowledge and Itab and Dina, with their brilliant recipes and fascinating stories, are the perfect authors to do this' Ruth Rogers'So much more than a cookbook' Evening Standard'I give this to everyone as a present... and it's always a total hit. The recipes are easy to follow, beautifully presented and perfect for anyone keen to experiment with oh-so-trendy Middle Eastern flavours.' Harriet Addison, The TimesSyria has always been the marketplace for the most delicious ingredients from East and West, a meeting-point for travellers and traders, where spices and sweetness collide. Nothing unites and inspires Syrians as much as food. Even now, in possibly the country's darkest hour, Syrian families in tiny flats from Beirut to Berlin are searching out the best tomatoes, lemons, pomegranates and parsley to recreate the taste of home.Friends and passionate cooks Itab and Dina met Syrian women in the Middle East and Europe to collect together the very best recipes from one of the world's greatest food cultures. They spent months cooking with them, learning their recipes and listening to stories of home. From hot yoghurt soup with turmeric to cherry meatballs, this is a delicious celebration of the unique taste, culture and food of Syria - and a celebration of everything that food and memory can mean to an individual, to a family and to a nation.

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Shakespeare and Collaborative Writing offers a rich account of Shakespeare's artistic development in, against, and beyond collaboration. We see him afresh as a poetic innovator in continual flux, and in continual artistic debt: an author shaped by others in a collaborative network of intellectual influence and dynamic interchange, and, the book argues, one that he helped substantially to create. In considering collaboration as a practice defining almost all of his earliest works, it shows that he was particularly active in its development in the early theatre scene of his nascent career, changing our sense of his development as a creative artist quite radically. Chapters exploring collaboration via theatre history, book history, and attribution debates complement the central three chapters detailing the different phases of Shakespeare's collaborative work, which reorient our shifting sense of what it meant to him, and what he gained from it, at these other key moments of his artistic career. In reconstructing the circumstances and outcomes of his pairings with other dramatists, and scrutinizing more closely their artistic contributions, Shakespeare and Collaborative Writing reconsiders the ways in which they influenced and challenged him to adapt and experiment with his writing in ways that go beyond the features of his solo-authored canon. In undertaking a rigorous appreciation of the structures and poetics of his co-authored works, this book presents them as distinctive works of art that transform our understanding of Shakespeare the poet, dramatist, and enduring cultural icon.

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This book is a thorough introduction to climate science and global change. The author is a geologist who has spent much of his life investigating the climate of Earth from a time when it was warm and dinosaurs roamed the land, to today's changing climate. Bill Hay takes you on a journey to understand how the climate system works. He explores how humans are unintentionally conducting a grand uncontrolled experiment which is leading to unanticipated changes. We follow the twisting path of seemingly unrelated discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and even mathematics to learn how they led to our present knowledge of how our planet works. He explains why the weather is becoming increasingly chaotic as our planet warms at a rate far faster than at any time in its geologic past. He speculates on possible future outcomes, and suggests that nature itself may make some unexpected course corrections. Although the book is written for the layman with little knowledge of science or mathematics, it includes information from many diverse fields to provide even those actively working in the field of climatology with a broader view of this developing drama. Experimenting on a Small Planet is a must read for anyone having more than a casual interest in global warming and climate change - one of the most important and challenging issues of our time. This new edition includes actual data from climate science into 2021. Numerous Powerpoint slides can be downloaded to allow lecturers and teachers to more effectively use the book as a basis for climate change education.

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Love StoryThey played games with each other –he with her head,she with his legs.Then he gave back her head,a little worn out,and she – I'm not surewhat she did with his legs,this is as much as I know.Kristin Dimitrova (translated by Andy Croft)This anthology is the result of an exciting cross-cultural 'experiment' in which four well-known British poets who live and work in the North-East of England – Andy Croft, Mark Robinson, Linda France and W. N. Herbert – worked collaboratively with four leading young Bulgarian poets – Kristin Dimitrova, Georgi Gospodinov, Nadya Radulova and the male poet who goes under the name of 'VBV'. On a number of visits to Bulgaria, and working in a totally unfamiliar cultural environment on the very edge of Europe (the 'Near East'), the British poets got to know, and began to translate, the work of their Bulgarian counterparts. The Bulgarians visited Newcastle, embarking upon a relationship with the home-territories of the British poets (the 'North East'). The eight poets painstakingly refined their translations of the Bulgarian poems and the British poets contributed their own poems about visiting Bulgaria – not touristic notes but rather maps of the type of engagement found in the translations. "It seemed to me", W. N. Herbert writes, "that this project was as much about an encounter between people and places as it was about an encounter with texts. It was about the collisions and interactions of cultures, not just the friendships formed but the shifts in our historical imaginations."

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Reconstructs the constitutive role that German actresses played on and off the stage in shaping not only modernist theater aesthetics and performance practices, but also influential strains of modern thought. Around 1900, German and Austrian actresses had allure and status, apparent autonomy, and unconventional lifestyles. They presented a complex problem socially and aesthetically, one tied to the so-called Woman Question and to the contested status of modernity. For modernists, the actress's socioeconomic mobility and defiance of gender norms opened space to contest social and moral strictures, and her mutability offered a means to experiment with identity. For conservatives, on the other hand, female performance could support antifeminist convictions and validate masculine authority by positing woman as nothing but a false surface shaped by productive male forces. Influential male-authored texts from the period thereby disavowed female subjectivity per se by equating "woman" and "actress." S. E. Jackson establishes the actress as a key figure in a discursive matrix surrounding modernity, gender, and subjectivity. Her central argument is that because the figure of the actress bridged such varied fields of thought, women who were actresses had a consequential impact that resonated in and far beyond the theater - but has not been explored. Examining archival sources such as theater reviews and writing by actresses in direct relation to canonical aesthetic and philosophical texts, The Problem of the Actress reconstructs the constitutive role that womenplayed on and off the stage in shaping not only modernist theater aesthetics and performance practices, but also influential strains of modern thought.

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In the early decades of the American Republic, American soldiers demonstrated and defined their beliefs about the nature of American republicanism and how they, as citizens and soldiers, were participants in the republican experiment through their service. In For Liberty and the Republic, Ricardo A. Herrera examines the relationship between soldier and citizen from the War of Independence through the first year of the Civil War. The work analyzes an idealized republican ideology as a component of soldiering in both peace and war. Herrera argues that American soldiers’ belief system—the military ethos of republicanism—drew from the larger body of American political thought. This ethos illustrated and informed soldiers’ faith in an inseparable connection between bearing arms on behalf of the republic, and earning and holding citizenship in it. Despite the undeniable existence of customs, organizations, and behaviors that were uniquely military, the officers and enlisted men of the regular army, states’ militias, and wartime volunteers were the products of their society, and they imparted what they understood as important elements of American thought into their service. Drawing from military and personal correspondence, journals, orderly books, militia constitutions, and other documents in over forty archives in twenty-three states, Herrera maps five broad, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing threads of thought constituting soldiers’ beliefs: Virtue; Legitimacy; Self-governance; Glory, Honor, and Fame; and the National Mission. Spanning periods of war and peace, these five themes constituted a coherent and long-lived body of ideas that informed American soldiers’ sense of identity for generations.

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_______________ The 50 Fantastic Ideas series is packed full of fun, original, skills-based activities for Early Years practitioners to use with children aged 0-5. Each activity features step-by-step guidance, a list of resources, and a detailed explanation of the skills children will learn. Creative, simple, and highly effective, this series is a must-have for every Early Years setting. You only need to watch children to know that boys and girls learn differently! It’s not that girls don’t like to be outdoors, to get messy or to be noisily active, they do – they are just able control their muscles at a younger age, so they can sit, watch and listen to adults more easily. They can also manipulate materials and tools such as pencils (called fine motor skills) earlier than many boys, so they are ready for the reading and writing activities in school. But we must resist the temptation to think that boys are not as good as girls – they are just different. Their skills and interests draw them to activities that are big, adventurous, risky and messy, and of course, they love being outside. All children like pretend play, but this is sometimes limited to domestic activity in the home corner, rather than allowing boys to experiment with roles often associated with grown-up men. This book offers you fifty ideas for things that make the most of the ways boys learn, capturing their interest and helping them to learn. Many offer opportunities for early writing, mathematics and reading, as well as technology, science and role-play.

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Why are so many kids (and adults) like you bored by science? Simple: you've had no real contact with it. You might read about incredibly expensive scientific projects, but your hands-on experience is probably limited to the same tired experiments - like baking soda and vinegar "volcanoes." Not any longer. Make Magazine's "Punk Science" issue (volume 31) shows you how you can become a real, cutting-edge amateur scientist. Find out how high school and college students can get an introduction to modern biology research through affordable biotech labs provided by Otyp, a small Michigan-based biotechnology company. And learn how a cooperative network of schools and research groups, called PEER, enables students to learn science by working on real projects with people in the field - including the DECA (Distributed Electronic Cosmic-Ray) Observatory that uses Android phones to generate a real-time cosmic-ray flux map of a large area. This issue also shows you how to create these fascinating projects on your own: RoboRoach - Surgically modify a cockroach with a wireless electronic circuit so that you can control it to turn left or right by micro-stimulating its antenna nerves. Lord Kelvin's Thunderstorm - a little-known, classic science experiment that generates high-voltage "lightning" sparks by dripping water through metal rings. An automatic Ball/Toy Launcher for Dogs that will keep your pet entertained and exercised while you're away. A True Mirror, which shows what you look like to other people. Pick up a copy of Make today and get involved with real science.

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A celebration of and behind-the-scenes look at Jerry Seinfeld’s groundbreaking streaming series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.Over eleven seasons and eighty-four episodes, Jerry Seinfeld drove around in classic cars, grabbing coffee and chatting with the funniest people alive. He reminisced with the late Garry Shandling; bantered with legends Steve Martin, Tina Fey, and Eddie Murphy; reunited with the cast of Seinfeld; and even paid a visit to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office. These and dozens of other guests talked about the intricacies of stand-up, the evolution of their careers and personal lives, and whatever else popped into their brilliant minds. The result was not only a hilarious collection of casual yet intimate conversations – a rare opportunity for viewers to witness their favourite performers unscripted and unvarnished – but arguably the most important historical archive about the art of comedy ever amassed.Now that archive is preserved in the form of a gorgeously designed and carefully curated book. Seinfeld has hand-picked the show’s keenest insights and funniest exchanges. Also included is a fascinating oral history featuring interviews with dozens of crew members, executives, guests, and Seinfeld himself that details how this scrappy creative experiment landed unprecedented access to the White House, earned multiple Emmy nominations, and helped lead the streaming revolution.Featuring a newly written introduction by Seinfeld and filled with beautiful never-before-seen production photos, this book is essential reading for comedy lovers, car aficionados, coffee connoisseurs, and Jerry Seinfeld fans.

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Provides an introduction to the various statistical techniques involved in medical research and drug development with a focus on estimating the success probability of an experiment Success Probability Estimation with Applications to Clinical Trials details the use of success probability estimation in both the planning and analyzing of clinical trials and in widely used statistical tests. Devoted to both statisticians and non-statisticians who are involved in clinical trials, Part I of the book presents new concepts related to success probability estimation and their usefulness in clinical trials, and each section begins with a non-technical explanation of the presented concepts. Part II delves deeper into the techniques for success probability estimation and features applications to both reproducibility probability estimation and conservative sample size estimation. Success Probability Estimation with Applications to Clinical Trials: • Addresses the theoretical and practical aspects of the topic and introduces new and promising techniques in the statistical and pharmaceutical industries Features practical solutions for problems that are often encountered in clinical trials Includes success probability estimation for widely used statistical tests, such as parametric and nonparametric models Focuses on experimental planning, specifically the sample size of clinical trials using phase II results and data for planning phase III trials Introduces statistical concepts related to success probability estimation and their usefulness in clinical trials Success Probability Estimation with Applications to Clinical Trials is an ideal reference for statisticians and biostatisticians in the pharmaceutical industry as well as researchers and practitioners in medical centers who are actively involved in health policy, clinical research, and the design and evaluation of clinical trials.

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Cárdenas Compromised is a political and institutional history of Mexico’s urban and rural labor in the Yucatán region during the regime of Lázaro Cárdenas from 1934 to 1940. Drawing on archival materials, both official and popular, Fallaw combines narrative, individual case studies, and focused political analysis to reexamine and dispel long-cherished beliefs about the Cardenista era.For historical, geographical, and ethnic reasons, Yucatán was the center of large-scale land reform after the Mexican Revolution. A long-standing revolutionary tradition, combined with a harsh division between a powerful white minority and a poor, Maya-speaking majority, made the region the perfect site for Cárdenas to experiment by launching an ambitious top-down project to mobilize the rural poor along ethnic and class lines. The regime encouraged rural peasants to form collectives, hacienda workers to unionize, and urban laborers to strike. It also attempted to mobilize young people and women, to challenge Yucatán’s traditional, patriarchal social structure, to reach out to Mayan communities, and to democratize the political process. Although the project ultimately failed, political dialogue over Cárdenas’s efforts continues. Rejecting both revisionist (anti-Cárdenas) and neopopulist (pro-Cárdenas) interpretations, Fallaw overturns the notion that the state allowed no room for the agency of local actors. By focusing on historical connections across class, political, and regional lines, Fallaw transforms ideas on Cardenismo that have long been accepted not only in Yucatán but throughout Mexico.This book will appeal to scholars of Mexican history and of Latin American state formation, as well as to sociologists and political scientists interested in modern Mexico.

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A compelling account of South Africa’s post-Apartheid democracyAt a time when many democracies are under strain around the world, Until We Have Won Our Liberty shines new light on the signal achievements of one of the contemporary era’s most closely watched transitions away from minority rule. South Africa’s democratic development has been messy, fiercely contested, and sometimes violent. But as Evan Lieberman argues, it has also offered a voice to the voiceless, unprecedented levels of government accountability, and tangible improvements in quality of life.Lieberman opens with a first-hand account of the hard-fought 2019 national election, and how it played out in Mogale City, a post-Apartheid municipality created from Black African townships and White Afrikaner suburbs. From this launching point, he examines the complexities of South Africa’s multiracial society and the unprecedented democratic experiment that began with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. While acknowledging the enormous challenges many South Africans continue to face—including unemployment, inequality, and discrimination—Lieberman draws on the country’s history and the experience of comparable countries to demonstrate that elected Black-led governments have, without resorting to political extremism, improved the lives of millions. In the context of open and competitive politics, citizens have gained access to housing, basic services, and dignified treatment to a greater extent than during any prior period.Countering much of the conventional wisdom about contemporary South Africa, Until We Have Won Our Liberty offers hope for the enduring impact of democratic ideals.

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When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to “corrupt” Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruption—rooted in ideals of civic virtue—was a driving force at the Constitutional Convention.For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United.In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.

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Our government is failing us. From health care to immigration, from the tax code to climate change, our political institutions cannot deal effectively with the challenges of modern society. Why the dysfunction? Contemporary reformers single out the usual suspects, including polarization and the rise in campaign spending. But what if the roots go much deeper, to the nation's founding?In Relic , William G. Howell and Terry M. Moe point to the Constitution as the main culprit. The framers designed the Constitution some 225 years ago for a simple, agrarian society. But the government they created, with a parochial Congress at its centre, is ill-equipped to address the serious social problems that arise in a complex, postindustrial nation. We are prisoners of the past, burdened with an antiquated government that cannot make effective policy, and often cannot do anything at all.The solution is to update the Constitution for modern times. This can be accomplished, Howell and Moe argue, through reforms that push Congress and all its pathologies to the periphery of the lawmaking process, and bring presidents,whose concern for their legacy drives them to seek coherent policy solutions,to the centre of decision making. As Howell and Moe reveal, the key to effective government for modern America is a more powerful presidency. Relic is a provocative and essential book for our era of political dysfunction and popular despair. It sheds new light on what is wrong with our government and what can be done about it, challenging us to reconsider the very foundation of the American experiment.

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Exposes the invisible ways in which white Christian privilege disadvantages racial and religious minorities in America The United States is recognized as the most religiously diverse country in the world, and yet its laws and customs, which many have come to see as normal features of American life, actually keep the Constitutional ideal of “religious freedom for all” from becoming a reality. Christian beliefs, norms, and practices infuse our society; they are embedded in our institutions, creating the structures and expectations that define the idea of “Americanness.” Religious minorities still struggle for recognition and for the opportunity to be treated as fully and equally legitimate members of American society. From the courtroom to the classroom, their scriptures and practices are viewed with suspicion, and bias embedded in centuries of Supreme Court rulings create structural disadvantages that endure today. In White Christian Privilege, Khyati Y. Joshi traces Christianity’s influence on the American experiment from before the founding of the Republic to the social movements of today. Mapping the way through centuries of slavery, westward expansion, immigration, and citizenship laws, she also reveals the ways Christian privilege in the United States has always been entangled with notions of White supremacy. Through the voices of Christians and religious minorities, Joshi explores how Christian privilege and White racial norms affect the lives of all Americans, often in subtle ways that society overlooks. By shining a light on the inequalities these privileges create, Joshi points the way forward, urging readers to help remake America as a diverse democracy with a commitment to true religious freedom.

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In 1930 pioneering female gallerist Lucy Wertheim opened The Wertheim Gallery in London. Wertheim challenged the established art scene conventions; she was a woman without formal art training, driven by intuition and a belief that young British artists should have the same opportunities as their European counterparts. Adventure in Art is Lucy's 1947 autobiography, telling the story of her career in the British Modernist era. Republished by Unicorn to coincide with the forthcoming Towner Eastbourne exhibition, A Life in Art: Lucy Wertheim & Reuniting the Twenties Group (Summer 2022), this book brings to a contemporary audience the trials and tribulations of a key participant in the male-dominated art world in the first half of the twentieth century. Lucy Wertheim's discerning eye and business acumen helped to propel big names such as Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, Cedric Morris, Henry Moore and Frances Hodgkins into the mainstream. With three commissioned essays - the first by Frances Spalding (Lucy Wertheim - Her Gallery in Context); the second by Ariane Banks (Lucy Wertheim - A Pioneering Woman and Her Contemporaries); the third by Towner's Collections & Exhibitions Curator, Karen Taylor (Lucy Wertheim - Her 'Forty-One Year Experiment' [1930-71]) - this new edition not only brings Lucy Carrington Wertheim's words and deeds back into our conscience, but it also publishes over 70 artworks, many of which are featured in the Towner exhibition, as well as newly photographed ephemera from the Estate's extensive archive. Together, this exhibition and book will significantly reset the accepted narrative, and shine a light on a neglected corner of mid-twentieth century art history.

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Little crafters will become little scientists as they explore, experiment, make, and create their way through every STEAM project.Learn through play with this hands-on crafty science book that introduces inquisitive children to the wonders of science through craft projects with everyday objects.The Simple Science Activity Book contains more than 20 fun-filled craft projects, each accompanied by a ‘What’s the science?’ section explaining how key scientific concepts work. Children can enjoy getting stuck in and learn how to make a toy raft and discover what makes their boat float, or how to create an ice sculpture and learn about the changing states of solids and liquids. They’ll discover the world around them like they’ve never seen it before!This hands-on science activity book for children offers: - Over 20 activities that are easy for children aged 5-7 to do on their own, with only a handful of steps requiring an adult to help.- A range of different projects, including art, photography, crafts, cooking, and gardening, all using everyday objects found in and around the home.- An introduction to key skills like problem-solving, observation, and hands-on learning through fun scientific experiments. With The Simple Science Activity Book, difficult concepts like buoyancy, gravity, and aerodynamics become meaningful and accessible to young children through play. Award-winning author Jane Bull combines art, craft, and cooking activities with solid scientific learning, showing children that science, technology, engineering, art, and maths are all around us – and in everything we make and do!

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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.

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The ubiquity of gluten-containing grains, such as barley, wheat, and rye, in modern-day brewing has prevented many potential consumers from fully enjoying the craft beer revolution. Individuals who have celiac disease, nonceliac gluten intolerance, or gluten sensitivity (as well as those who simply feel better when they avoid gluten) have historically been unable to enjoy today's characterful beers. But many other types of grain can be used to brew beer of all styles; such alternative grains greatly expand the options available to beer lovers and brewers who cannot or choose not to ingest gluten, or those who just want to experiment with new and interesting flavors. Gluten-Free Brewing includes a discussion of available gluten-free ingredients, how to source them, and how to malt them. Explore the world of ancient grains and adjuncts and learn how today's malted and roasted varieties can be used to brew to-style beers. Learn about different mashing techniques, when to use them, what additional ingredients and enzymes can help throughout the brewing process, and how they can deliver specific flavors in your beer. Take a deep dive into recipe formulation and fermentation challenges, as well as flavor, body, head retention, and color considerations when using these not-so-alternative grains to create mainstream flavors. More than 30 tested recipes are included to help brewers explore British, German, Belgian, New World, and ancient-style beers. Gluten-Free Brewing will teach you how to brew full-flavored, world-class gluten-free beers.

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A handsome, affordable edition of the legendary modern classic. “Enduring power.” —The New York TimesFrankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, is often referred to as one the most important literary works of all time. Having been adapted and reprinted thousands of times, and often cited as the birth of the gothic novel and the science fiction genre, Frankenstein has captivated readers for centuries. It is the haunting tale of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque and cognizant being through a scientific experiment. “The monster,” as it’s frequently referred to throughout the novel, consists of sewn body parts from multiple cadavers being used for scientific research.On a dark, stormy night, the creature is brought to life by being shocked with an electrical current harnessed from a lightning storm. The novel explores scientific practices such as galvanism, as well as the ethical repercussions of bringing the deceased back to life.With its grim, but gripping narrative, Frankenstein is the classic story of life and death, humanity and monstrosity, and blurring the lines in between.Packaged in handsome and affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential literary works. The series features literary phenomena with influence and themes so great that, after their publication, they changed literature forever. From the musings of literary geniuses such as Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to the striking personal narratives from Harriet Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our literary history through the words of the exceptional few.

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The discipline of economics is not what it used to be. Over the last few decades, economists have begun a revolutionary reorientation in how we look at the world, and this has major implications for politics, policy, and our everyday lives. For years, conventional economists told us an incomplete story that leaned on the comfortable precision of mathematical abstraction and ignored the complexity of the real world with all of its uncertainties, unknowns, and ongoing evolution. What economists left out of the story were the positive forces of creativity, innovation, and advancing technology that propel economies forward. Economists did not describe the dynamic process that leads to new pharmaceuticals, cell phones, Web-based information services--forces that fundamentally alter how we live our daily lives. Economists also left out the negative forces that can hold economies back: bad governance, counterproductive social practices, and patterns of taking wealth instead of creating it. They took for granted secure property rights, honest public servants, and the willingness of individuals to experiment and adapt to novelty. From Poverty to Prosperity is not Tipping Point or Freakonomics. Those books offer a smorgasbord of fascinating findings in economics and sociology, but the findings are only loosely related. From Poverty to Prosperity on the other hand, tells a big picture story about the huge differences in the standard of living across time and across borders. It is a story that draws on research from the world's most important economists and eschews the conventional wisdom for a new, more inclusive, vision of the world and how it works.

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"Many artists seek to attain immortality through their art, but few would expect their work to outlast the human race and live on for billions of years. As Canadian poet Christian Bök has realized, it all comes down to the durability of your materials."—The Guardian Internationally best-selling poet Christian Bök has spent more than ten years writing what promises to be the first example of "living poetry." After successfully demonstrating his concept in a colony of E. coli, Bök is on the verge of enciphering a beautiful, anomalous poem into the genome of an unkillable bacterium (Deinococcus radiodurans), which can, in turn, "read" his text, responding to it by manufacturing a viable, benign protein, whose sequence of amino acids enciphers yet another poem. The engineered organism might conceivably serve as a post-apocalyptic archive, capable of outlasting our civilization. Book I of The Xenotext constitutes a kind of "demonic grimoire," providing a scientific framework for the project with a series of poems, texts, and illustrations. A Virgilian welcome to the Inferno, Book I is the "orphic" volume in a diptych, addressing the pastoral heritage of poets, who have sought to supplant nature in both beauty and terror. The book sets the conceptual groundwork for the second volume, which will document the experiment itself. The Xenotext is experimental poetry in the truest sense of the term. Christian Bök is the author of Crystallography (1994) and Eunoia (2001), which won the Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

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Trade agreements have become politicized in part because of public concerns that trade rules constrain regulatory decisions. How much international obligations constrain state behaviour, however, is contested in the International Relations literature. This book seeks to explain whether, why, and how jurisdictions comply with inconvenient international obligations. It does so through detailed process tracing of European Union (EU) policies found incompatible with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules: its ban on hormone-treated beef, its banana trade regime, its moratorium on the approval of genetically modified crops, its sugar export subsidies, and its anti-dumping duties on bed linen from India. It uses the adverse rulings as the 'treatment' in a 'natural experiment', contrasting the policy-relevant politics before and after each ruling. The case studies are supplemented by a qualitative comparative analysis of all EU policies found to contravene WTO rules that had to be changed by the end of 2019. The book contributes to debates on the impact of international institutions, on the effectiveness of the WTO, and on the nature of the EU as an international actor. It argues that the preferences of policy makers (the 'supply' of policy change) matter more than demands from societal actors in determining whether compliance occurs. It also argues that while policy change in response to adverse WTO rulings is the norm (good news for trade), WTO members do resist obligations that would compromise cherished policy objectives (good news for legitimacy). This volume contends that the EU's compliance performance is like that of most WTO members; it is not a unique international actor.

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To celebrate 60 years of sailing Scottish waters, the author single-handedly sailed Halcyon, a 32' wooden yawl, from Fairlie on the Clyde, round the Mull of Kintyre by way of numerous inner islands to Barra in the Outer Hebrides and to the Atlantic side of the islands, not often visited by cruising yachts. Bad weather forced a diversion to explore the sea lochs of the west coast of Harris and Lewis, the islands of Taransay (of the BBC's Castaway series) and Scarp, famed for its ingenious 'Rocket Post' experiment. While visiting these numerous islands, he met local people and experienced the sometimes violent extremes of weather such as when he was storm-bound in Stornoway for several days. There are stories galore about the island people, snippets of interesting history, legends and folklore, tales of the sea and island life, the Hebridean fishermen and lighthouses - thus uncovering another dimension of island life. Bob recounts his travels and tales, some previously unpublished, in a relaxed and highly-readable style. As well as being a unique travel book, it is an insight into the rapidly-changing ways of island life and a useful sailing guide to the Western Isles and anchorages in the Hebrides. It would be of immeasurable help to sailors keen to venture into some of the lesser-known sailing areas of Western Scotland. This vivid and entertaining story of adventurous sailing among Scotland's beautiful but challenging Western Isles will be enjoyed by keen sailors and armchair travellers alike - a truly memorable journey of over 1000 miles!

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In the early decades of the American Republic, American soldiers demonstrated and defined their beliefs about the nature of American republicanism and how they, as citizens and soldiers, were participants in the republican experiment through their service. In For Liberty and the Republic, Ricardo A. Herrera examines the relationship between soldier and citizen from the War of Independence through the first year of the Civil War. The work analyzes an idealized republican ideology as a component of soldiering in both peace and war. Herrera argues that American soldiers’ belief system—the military ethos of republicanism—drew from the larger body of American political thought. This ethos illustrated and informed soldiers’ faith in an inseparable connection between bearing arms on behalf of the republic, and earning and holding citizenship in it. Despite the undeniable existence of customs, organizations, and behaviors that were uniquely military, the officers and enlisted men of the regular army, states’ militias, and wartime volunteers were the products of their society, and they imparted what they understood as important elements of American thought into their service. Drawing from military and personal correspondence, journals, orderly books, militia constitutions, and other documents in over forty archives in twenty-three states, Herrera maps five broad, interrelated, and mutually reinforcing threads of thought constituting soldiers’ beliefs: Virtue; Legitimacy; Self-governance; Glory, Honor, and Fame; and the National Mission. Spanning periods of war and peace, these five themes constituted a coherent and long-lived body of ideas that informed American soldiers’ sense of identity for generations.

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In this age of globalization, process improvement practitioners must be able to comprehend and work with the different standards and frameworks used around the world. While many systems and software engineering organizations rely on a single standard as the primary driver of process improvement efforts (CMMI®-based process improvement in the U.S. and ISO 9001 around the world), the most successful incorporate multiple frameworks. Process Improvement with CMMI® v1.2 and ISO Standards helps users become more versatile in using multiple process standards when creating organizational and project processes.Compares and Contrasts Different StandardsThe book begins by discussing the motivations for process improvement, the factors that make improvement difficult, and the conditions and activities that enable improvement. It examines the structure and content of Capability Maturity Model IntegrationSM, version 1.2, provides summaries of several ISO standards, and discusses the detailed relationships between four specific ISO standards (ISO 9001, ISO 15288, ISO 12207, and ISO 20000) and CMMI. The book concludes by addressing the synergy and use of multiple frameworks, discussing the process of conducting appraisals against multiple frameworks, and examining the collection of objective evidence required by each standard and appraisal method. The authors also discuss similarities and differences among the appraisal and certification approaches.Free DownloadsThis volume is highly supplemented with numerous appendices to clarify material and a website is provided where readers can download detailed maps and corresponding correlation matrices. This bonus material allows users to further experiment with the framework relationships and be more equipped to deal with the myriad of standards and frameworks they may encounter.

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This book examines the 'Know How Fund', Britain’s bilateral technical assistance programme in post-communist central and eastern Europe, devised in response to the end of the Cold War.The Know How Fund (KHF) was the technical assistance programme which Margaret Thatcher’s government launched in the spring of 1989 to encourage Poland’s transition from communism to democracy and free-market capitalism. It was subsequently extended to other countries of central and eastern Europe and might be considered a novel experiment in what the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, would later term ‘transformational diplomacy’. Drawing upon still-closed records of the Cabinet Office, the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, this book explores the political origins of the KHF. In particular, the author examines its influence upon the transitional process in the lands of the former Soviet bloc; its part in attenuating the potentially destabilising effects of revolutionary change in Europe; the interdepartmental cooperation and rivalry to which its administration gave rise in Whitehall; and the links forged between officials and the worlds of business, finance and academe in project design and implementation. The volume offers new insights into Britain’s reactions to the collapse of communism in central Europe and the Soviet Union; the role of aid in the making and conduct of British foreign policy; and the significance of New Labour’s establishment of DFID as a separate government department.This book will be of much interest to students of British Foreign Policy, Diplomacy Studies, European history, Post-Communist Transitions and IR in general.

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The Manly Masquerade unravels the complex ways men were defined as men in Renaissance Italy through readings of a vast array of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century evidence: medical and travel literature; theology; law; myth; conduct books; and plays, chivalric romances, and novellas by authors including Machiavelli, Tasso, and Ariosto. Valeria Finucci shows how ideas of masculinity were formed in the midst of acute anxiety about paternity by highlighting the beliefs—widely held at the time—that conception could occur without a paternal imprimatur or through a woman’s encounter with an animal, or even that a pregnant woman’s imagination could erase the father’s "signature" from the fetus. Against these visions of reproduction gone awry, Finucci looks at how concepts of masculinity were tied to issues of paternity through social standing, legal matters, and inheritance practices.Highlighting the fissures running through Italian Renaissance ideas of manliness, Finucci describes how, alongside pervasive images of the virile, sexually active man, early modern Italian culture recognized the existence of hermaphrodites and started to experiment with a new kind of sexuality by manufacturing a non-man: the castrato. Following the creation of castrati, the Church forbade the marriage of all non-procreative men, and, in this move, Finucci identifies a powerful legitimation of the view that what makes men is not the possession of male organs or the ability to have sex, but the capability to father. Through analysis, anecdote, and rich cultural description, The Manly Masquerade exposes the "real" early modern man: the paterfamilias.

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A book that finally demystifies Newton’s experiments in alchemyWhen Isaac Newton’s alchemical papers surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1936, the quantity and seeming incoherence of the manuscripts were shocking. No longer the exemplar of Enlightenment rationality, the legendary physicist suddenly became “the last of the magicians.” Newton the Alchemist unlocks the secrets of Newton’s alchemical quest, providing a radically new understanding of the uncommon genius who probed nature at its deepest levels in pursuit of empirical knowledge.In this evocative and superbly written book, William Newman blends in-depth analysis of newly available texts with laboratory replications of Newton’s actual experiments in alchemy. He does not justify Newton’s alchemical research as part of a religious search for God in the physical world, nor does he argue that Newton studied alchemy to learn about gravitational attraction. Newman traces the evolution of Newton’s alchemical ideas and practices over a span of more than three decades, showing how they proved fruitful in diverse scientific fields. A precise experimenter in the realm of “chymistry,” Newton put the riddles of alchemy to the test in his lab. He also used ideas drawn from the alchemical texts to great effect in his optical experimentation. In his hands, alchemy was a tool for attaining the material benefits associated with the philosopher’s stone and an instrument for acquiring scientific knowledge of the most sophisticated kind.Newton the Alchemist provides rare insights into a man who was neither Enlightenment rationalist nor irrational magus, but rather an alchemist who sought through experiment and empiricism to alter nature at its very heart.

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For some, the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others, it violates the proper domains of both religion and politics. Yet, while there has been much discussion of the idea and ideals of the Islamic state, its possibilities and impossibilities, surprisingly little has been written about how this political formation is lived. For Love of the Prophet looks at the Republic of Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic statehood. Focusing not on state institutions, but rather on the daily life that goes on in their shadows, Noah Salomon's careful ethnography examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst. Salomon investigates Sudan at a crucial moment in its history--balanced between unity and partition, secular and religious politics, peace and war--when those who desired an Islamic state were rethinking the political form under which they had lived for nearly a generation. Countering the dominant discourse, Salomon depicts contemporary Islamic politics not as a response to secularism and Westernization but as a node in a much longer conversation within Islamic thought, augmented and reappropriated as state projects of Islamic reform became objects of debate and controversy. Among the first books to delve into the making of the modern Islamic state, For Love of the Prophet reveals both novel political ideals and new articulations of Islam as it is rethought through the lens of the nation.

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From George Washington's decision to buy time for the new nation by signing the less-than-ideal Jay Treaty with Great Britain in 1795 to George W. Bush's order of a military intervention in Iraq in 2003, the matter of who is president of the United States is of the utmost importance. In this book, Fred Greenstein examines the leadership styles of the earliest presidents, men who served at a time when it was by no means certain that the American experiment in free government would succeed. In his groundbreaking book The Presidential Difference, Greenstein evaluated the personal strengths and weaknesses of the modern presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Here, he takes us back to the very founding of the republic to apply the same yardsticks to the first seven presidents from Washington to Andrew Jackson, giving his no-nonsense assessment of the qualities that did and did not serve them well in office. For each president, Greenstein provides a concise history of his life and presidency, and evaluates him in the areas of public communication, organizational capacity, political skill, policy vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence. Washington, for example, used his organizational prowess--honed as a military commander and plantation owner--to lead an orderly administration. In contrast, John Adams was erudite but emotionally volatile, and his presidency was an organizational disaster. Inventing the Job of President explains how these early presidents and their successors shaped the American presidency we know today and helped the new republic prosper despite profound challenges at home and abroad.

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“Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourteenth day of the present month.”With these words to the assembled members of the Senate and House of Representatives on April 30, 1789, George Washington inaugurated the American experiment. It was a momentous occasion and an immensely important moment for the nation. Never before had a people dared to invent a system of government quite like the one that Washington was preparing to lead, and the tensions between hope and skepticism ran high.In this book, distinguished scholar of early America Stephen Howard Browne chronicles the efforts of the first president of the United States of America to unite the nation through ceremony, celebrations, and oratory. The story follows Washington on his journey from Mount Vernon to the site of the inauguration in Manhattan, recounting the festivities—speeches, parades, dances, music, food, and flag-waving—that greeted the president-elect along the way. Considering the persuasive power of this procession, Browne captures in detail the pageantry, anxiety, and spirit of the nation to arrive at a more nuanced and richly textured perspective on what it took to launch the modern republican state. Compellingly written and artfully argued, The First Inauguration tells the story of the early republic—and of a president who, by his words and comportment, provides a model of leadership and democratic governance for today.

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How does the imagination work? How can it lead to both reverie and scientific insight? In this book, Kieran M. Murphy sheds new light on these perennial questions by showing how they have been closely tied to the history of electromagnetism.The discovery in 1820 of a mysterious relationship between electricity and magnetism led not only to technological inventions—such as the dynamo and telegraph, which ushered in the “electric age”—but also to a profound reconceptualization of nature and the role the imagination plays in it. From the literary experiments of Edgar Allan Poe, Honoré de Balzac, Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, and André Breton to the creative leaps of Michael Faraday and Albert Einstein, Murphy illuminates how electromagnetism legitimized imaginative modes of reasoning based on a more acute sense of interconnection and a renewed interest in how metonymic relations could reveal the order of things.Murphy organizes his study around real and imagined electromagnetic devices, ranging from Faraday’s world-changing induction experiment to new types of chains and automata, in order to demonstrate how they provided a material foundation for rethinking the nature of difference and relation in physical and metaphysical explorations of the world, human relationships, language, and binaries such as life and death. This overlooked exchange between science and literature brings a fresh perspective to the critical debates that shaped the nineteenth century.Extensively researched and convincingly argued, this pathbreaking book addresses a significant lacuna in modern literary criticism and deepens our understanding of both the history of literature and the history of scientific thinking.

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At the dawn of the radio age in the 1920s, a settler-mystic living on northwest coast of British Columbia invented radio mind: Frederick Du Vernet—Anglican archbishop and self-declared scientist—announced a psychic channel by which minds could telepathically communicate across distance. Retelling Du Vernet’s imaginative experiment, Pamela Klassen shows us how agents of colonialism built metaphysical traditions on land they claimed to have conquered. Following Du Vernet’s journey westward from Toronto to Ojibwe territory and across the young nation of Canada, Pamela Klassen examines how contests over the mediation of stories—via photography, maps, printing presses, and radio—lucidly reveal the spiritual work of colonial settlement. A city builder who bargained away Indigenous land to make way for the railroad, Du Vernet knew that he lived on the territory of Ts’msyen, Nisga’a, and Haida nations who had never ceded their land to the onrush of Canadian settlers. He condemned the devastating effects on Indigenous families of the residential schools run by his church while still serving that church. Testifying to the power of radio mind with evidence from the apostle Paul and the philosopher Henri Bergson, Du Vernet found a way to explain the world that he, his church and his country made. Expanding approaches to religion and media studies to ask how sovereignty is made through stories, Klassen shows how the spiritual invention of colonial nations takes place at the same time that Indigenous peoples—including Indigenous Christians—resist colonial dispossession through stories and spirits of their own.

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