Suchergebnisse

The 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station led to serious radioactive contamination of the environment. Due to transportation by seasonal wind and ocean currents, these radioactive materials have now been observed in many places in the Northern Hemisphere. This book provides a unique summary of the environmental impact of the unprecedented accident. It covers how radioactive materials were transported through the atmosphere, oceans and land. The techniques used to investigate the deposition and migration processes are also discussed including atmospheric observation, soil mapping, forest and ecosystem investigations, and numerical simulations. With chapters written by international experts, this is a crucial resource for researchers working on the dispersion and impact of radionuclides in the environment. It also provides essential knowledge for nuclear engineers, social scientists and policymakers to help develop suitable mitigation measures to prepare for similar large-scale natural hazards in the future

Towns and villages are sometimes viewed as minor, even quaint, spots, whereas this book boldly reconceptualizes these places as important dynamic environmental 'hotspots'. Multitudes of towns and villages with nearly half the world's population characterize perhaps half the global land surface. The book's pages feature ecological patterns, processes, and change, as well as human dimensions, both within towns and in strong connections and effects on surrounding agricultural land, forest land, and arid land. Towns, small to large, and villages are examined with spatial and cultural lenses. Ecological dimensions - water, soil and air systems, together with habitats, plants, wildlife and biodiversity - are highlighted. A concluding section presents concepts for making better towns and better land. From a pioneer in both landscape ecology and urban ecology, this highly international town ecology book opens an important frontier for researchers, students, professors, and professionals including environmental, town, and conservation planners

This book offers an up-to-date, comprehensive coverage of stochastic dominance and its related concepts in a unified framework. A method for ordering probability distributions, stochastic dominance has grown in importance recently as a way to measure comparisons in welfare economics, inequality studies, health economics, insurance wages, and trade patterns. Whang pays particular attention to inferential methods and applications, citing and summarizing various empirical studies in order to relate the econometric methods with real applications and using computer codes to enable the practical implementation of these methods. Intuitive explanations throughout the book ensure that readers understand the basic technical tools of stochastic dominance

Some background on ordinary differential equations -- Pragmatic introduction to stochastic differential equations -- Itô calculus and stochastic differential equations -- Probability distributions and statistics of SDEs -- Statistics of linear stochastic differential equations -- Useful theorems and formulas for SDEs -- Numerical simulation of SDEs -- Approximation of non-linear SDEs -- Filtering and smoothing theory -- Parameter estimation in SDE models -- Stochastic differential equations in machine learning.

Coined barely two decades ago, the Anthropocene has become one of the most influential and controversial terms in environmental policy. Yet it remains an ambivalent and contested formulation, giving rise to a multitude of unexpected, and often uncomfortable, conversations. This book traces in detail a broad variety of such 'Anthropocene encounters': in science, philosophy and literary fiction. It asks what it means to 'think green' in a time when nature no longer offers a stable backdrop to political analysis. Do familiar political categories and concepts, such as democracy, justice, power and time, hold when confronted with a world radically transformed by humans? The book responds by inviting more radical political thought, plural forms of engagement, and extended ethical commitments, making it a fascinating and timely volume for graduate students and researchers working in earth system governance, environmental politics and studies of the Anthropocene

Over the past decades, public trust in medical professionals has steadily declined. This decline of trust and its replacement by ever tighter regulations is increasingly frustrating physicians. However, most discussions of trust are either abstract philosophical discussions or social science investigations not easily accessible to clinicians. The authors, one a surgeon-turned-philosopher, the other an analytical philosopher working in medical ethics, joined their expertise to write a book which straddles the gap between the practical and theoretical. Using an approach grounded in the methods of conceptual analysis found in analytical philosophy which also draws from approaches to medical diagnosis, the authors have conceived an internally coherent and comprehensive definition of trust to help elucidate the concept and explain its decline in the medical context. This book should appeal to all interested in the ongoing debate about the decline of trust - be it as medical professionals, medical ethicists, medical lawyers, or philosophers

This collection applies the characterisations of children and childhood made in Deleuze and Guattari's work to concerns that have shaped our idea of the child. Bringing together established and new voices, the authors consider aspects of children's lives such as time, language, gender, affect, religion, atmosphere and schooling

As corruption continues to be a persistent problem in India, concerned citizens believe empowered police agencies independent of political control are effective ways to deal with corrupt officials and politicians. What is corruption and how is it facilitated? What are the appropriate agencies to combat corruption professionally in India? Why are these not effective in deterring corrupt practices? Are the alternative solutions to tackle corruption successful? This book seeks to engage with these questions, discuss and analyze them, and conduct a thorough analysis of law, bureaucratic organizations, official data, case studies and comparative international institutions. It analyzes vast data to argue that a corrupt state only maintains the façade of rule of law but will not permit any inquiry beyond that of individual deviance. Using criminological perspectives, it presents a novel mechanism, the 'Doctrine of Good Housekeeping', for public officials to combat and prevent corruption within their own institutions

This collection is one of the first to explore the everyday lives, political engagements and social practices of Scotland's Muslim communities. Themes include: education, health and well-being; sexuality, gender and age; integration, multiculturalism and citizenship; and heritage, media and representation

"The Makassar annals Translated and edited by William Cummings. Beginning in the 1630s, a series of annalists at the main courts of Makassar began keeping records with dated entries that recorded a wide variety of specific historical information about a wide variety of topics, including the births and deaths of notable individuals, the actions of rulers, the spread of Islam, trade and diplomacy, the built environment, ritual activity, warfare, internal political struggles, social and kinship relations, eclipses and comets, and more. These Lontaraq bilang were a clear departure in form and function from the genealogically-structured chronicles being composed about the ruling families of Gowa and Talloq in the same era. By the end of 1751, nearly 2400 entries had been completed. These records are a rich lode of information for scholars interested in virtually any aspect of life in premodern Makassar, and are a rare and precious resource for scholars of Southeast Asia. This is the first English translation and annotation of the annals. William Cummings is an associate professor of history at the University of South Florida. He is the author of Making blood white; Historical transformation in early modern Makassar, A chain of kings; The Makassarese chronicles of Gowa and Talloq, and numerous articles about Makassarese history and culture"--Publisher's description