Computer ScienceScience & MathematicsEconomics & FinanceBusiness & ManagementPolitics & GovernmentHistoryPhilosophy
Transgovernance
'Transgovernance: Advancing Sustainability Governance' analyses what implications recent and ongoing changes in the relations between politics, science and media – together characterized as the emergence of a knowledge democracy – may have for governance for sustainable development, on global and other levels of societal decision mak...
Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road
This book discusses socio-environmental interactions in the middle to late Holocene, covering specific areas along the ancient Silk Road regions. Over twenty chapters provide insight into this topic from various disciplinary angles and perspectives, ranging from archaeology, paleoclimatology, antiquity, historical geography, agriculture, carving ar...
Coming to Terms with Superdiversity
This book discusses Rotterdam as clear example of a superdiverse city that is only reluctantly coming to terms with this new reality. Rotterdam, as is true for many post-industrial cities, has seen a considerable backlash against migration and diversity: the populist party Leefbaar Rotterdam of the late Pim Fortuyn is already for many years the lar...
Architecture and the Novel under the Italian Fascist Regime
Architecture and the Novel under the Italian Fascist Regime discusses the relationship between the novel and architecture during the Fascist period in Italy (1922-1943). By looking at two profoundly diverse aesthetic phenomena within the context of the creation of a Fascist State art, Billiani and Pennacchietti argue that an effort of construction,...
Using Blocks in Ruby
Unannounced and unmarked, blocks turn up all over Ruby programs. Their use ranges from some of Ruby's most basic structures, such as loops, to some of its most sophisticated tricks. Similar to closures or lambdas in other languages, blocks enable some of Ruby's vaunted efficiency. Blocks even allow other people to write some of the code y...
Disability, Health and Human Development
This book introduces the human development model to define disability and map its links with health and wellbeing, based on Sen's capability approach. The author uses panel survey data with internationally comparable questions on disability for Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. It presents evidence on the prevalence of disability and its ...
Robotics
This book introduces readers to robotics, industrial robot mechanisms, and types of robots, e.g. parallel robots, mobile robots and humanoid robots. The book is based on over 20 years of teaching robotics and has been extensively class tested and praised for its simplicity.It addresses the following subjects: a general introduction to robotics; bas...
The Web as History
he World Wide Web has now been in use for more than 20 years. From early browsers to today's principal source of information, entertainment and much else, the Web is an integral part of our daily lives, to the extent that some people believe 'if it's not online, it doesn't exist.' While this statement is not entirely true, ...
Niche Wars
Australia invoked the ANZUS Alliance following the Al Qaeda attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. But unlike the calls to arms at the onset of the world wars, Australia decided to make only carefully calibrated force contributions in support of the US-led coalition campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why is this so? Niche Wars examin...
AI based Robot Safe Learning and Control
This open book mainly focuses on the safe control of robot manipulators. The control schemes are mainly developed based on dynamic neural network, which is an important theoretical branch of deep reinforcement learning. In order to enhance the safety performance of robot systems, the control strategies include adaptive tracking control for robots w...
Geographic Citizen Science Design
Little did Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and other 'gentlemen scientists' know, when they were making their scientific discoveries, that some centuries later they would inspire a new field of scientific practice and innovation, called citizen science. The current growth and availability of citizen science projects and relevant applications...
Developing a Sense of Place
How do cultural planners and policymakers work through the arts to create communities? What do artists need to build a sense of place in their community? To discuss these issues, Developing a Sense of Place brings together new models and case studies, each drawn from a specific geographical or socio-cultural context. Selected for their lasting ...
A Book on Photography
The fact that current compact cameras produce good (or at least, adequate) pictures in most photographic situations is at the root of this book. The main aim of the book is to show how such a camera can be operated and its controls tweaked to cover many different photographic conditions and requirements. (To put it another way, the chief goal of th...
The Essence of Mathematics
It is increasingly clear that the shapes of reality - whether of the natural world, or of the built environment - are in some profound sense mathematical. Therefore it would benefit students and educated adults to understand what makes mathematics itself 'tick', and to appreciate why its shapes, patterns and formulae provide us with preci...
Geometry with an Introduction to Cosmic Topology
Geometry with an Introduction to Cosmic Topology approaches geometry through the lens of questions that have ignited the imagination of stargazers since antiquity. What is the shape of the universe? Does the universe have an edge? Is it infinitely big? This text develops non-Euclidean geometry and geometry on surfaces at a level appropriate for ...
Contemporary Mathematics
Contemporary Mathematics is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements for a liberal arts mathematics course. This resource provides stand-alone sections with a focus on showing relevance in the features as well as the examples, exercises, and exposition. Contemporary Mathematics integrates technology applications, projects, and highlight...