Browse Results

Showing 15,976 through 16,000 of 31,206 results

Marshall and Worthing's The Construction of Houses

by Derek Worthing Duncan Marshall Roger Heath Nigel Dann

The sixth edition of The Construction of Houses builds on the success of the previous five editions. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles and processes of the construction of houses and their services. As such it is aimed at providing a broad understanding of domestic building construction for students as part of their academic studies and as a useful information source for practitioners. The existing chapters have all been updated and most of them expanded to take account of changes to dwelling house construction since the last edition and there are new chapters on ‘Modern Methods of Construction’ and ‘Regulatory controls and building standards’. Additionally, many new and/or updated photographs and diagrams have been added. As with the previous editions, the authors have concentrated on presenting current mainstream approaches to the construction of houses. The detailed, yet accessible, text that is supported by hundreds of coloured photographs and diagrams provides clear explanations of the many complex processes that go into the building of a house. A deeper insight into modern construction is also given by the book’s consideration of historical building techniques from the 18th century onwards in order to illustrate how and why we build houses in the way we do now.

Marshes and Swamps

by Gail Gibbons

Marshes and swamps are wetlands covering six percent of Earth's land area. They are a storage place for one of our most precious resources, water. They are also a defense against land erosion and home to many endangered plants and animals. Here is information about how marshes and swamps differ, their importance in the balance of nature, and the different kinds of life found in them. Fascinating facts about marshes and swamps are included.

Martian Aeolian Geomorphology: An Introduction

by Chao Li Zhibao Dong Ping Lü

This book covers Martian Aeolian Geomorphology and is organized around three main foci. The first focus is about advancing our understanding of aeolian geomorphology through research on Martian aeolian landforms. Chapters 1 through 4 provide essential knowledge for understanding the aeolian geomorphology of Mars. Among them, Chapters 1 and 2 provide readers with a clear understanding of the significance, scientific status and methodology of the study of aeolian geomorphology on Mars. Chapters 3 introduces the physics of aeolian geomorphology and Chapter 4 presents an overview of Mars. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to the Martian atmosphere, and Martian sediments respectively, constituting the dynamic conditions and the material basis for the formation of aeolian landforms, their basic characteristics, the processes that control their formation and evolution, and comparisons with Earth. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss the geomorphological types, morphology and distribution of dunes on Mars, and extract information on the developmental environment and processes that control dune landforms. The second focus of this book concerns the unique characteristics of Martian aeolian landforms. Chapters 9 and 10 provide thorough introductions to several unique Martian aeolian landforms. The third focus is to provide a textbook for graduate students. To facilitate understanding of Martian aeolian landforms and deepen the reader’s comprehension of current aeolian geomorphological theories, we connect the characteristics of various aspects of Martian aeolian landforms with the relevant theories, and especially the classical theories that have stood the test of time. At the same time, we try to present different viewpoints and hypotheses on relevant scientific issues, leaving readers with wide room for innovative thinking. The book’s 12 chapters are ordered to start with an overview of fundamental knowledge (Chapters 1to 4), continue (Chapters 5 to 11) by describing the book’s core content, and conclude (Chapters 12 ) by relating what we believe about Mars to what we know about Earth.

Martin Waldseemüller’s 'Carta marina' of 1516: Study and Transcription of the Long Legends

by Chet Van Duzer

This open access book presents the first detailed study of one of the most important masterpieces of Renaissance cartography, Martin Waldseemüller’s Carta marina of 1516. By transcribing, translating into English, and detailing the sources of all of the descriptive texts on the map, as well as the sources of many of the images, the book makes the map available to scholars in a wholly unprecedented way. In addition, the book provides revealing insights into how Waldseemüller went about making the map -- information that can’t be found in any other source. The Carta marina is the result of Waldseemüller’s radical re-evaluation of what a world map should be; he essentially started from scratch when he created it, rejecting the Ptolemaic model and other sources he had used in creating his 1507 map, and added more descriptive texts and a wealth of illustrations. Given its content, the book offers an essential reference work not only on this map, but also for anyone working in sixteenth-century European cartography.

Marveling at Minerals: Do You Dig Earth Science (Searchlight books™)

by Sally M. Walker

Minerals are fascinating resources that have a variety of uses. A diamond is a mineral that is sought after for its beauty. Salt is a useful mineral that adds flavor.

Marvelous Microfossils: Creators, Timekeepers, Architects

by Patrick de De Wever

Training a powerful lens on the microscopic wonders of the universe, hundreds of photos, both exquisite and strange, accompany this startling exposé of a secret world invisibly evolving around us for billions of years.Silver Winner of the 2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Nature & EnvironmentMicrofossils—the most abundant, ancient, and easily accessible of Earth's fossils—are also the most important. Their ubiquity is such that every person on the planet touches or uses them every single day, and yet few of us even realize they exist. Despite being the sole witnesses of 3 billion years of evolutionary history, these diminutive fungi, plants, and animals are themselves invisible to the eye. In this microscopic bestiary, prominent geologist, paleontologist, and scholar Patrick De Wever lifts the veil on their mysterious world.Marvelous Microfossils lays out the basics of what microfossils are before moving on to the history, tools, and methods of investigating them. The author describes the applications of their study, both practical and sublime. Microfossils, he explains, are indispensable in age-dating and paleoenvironmental reconstruction, which guide enormous investments in the oil, gas, and mining industries. De Wever shares surprising stories of how microfossils made the Chunnel possible and have unmasked perpetrators in jewel heists and murder investigations. He also reveals that microfossils created the stunning white cliffs on the north coast of France, graced the tables of the Medici family, and represent our best hope for discovering life on the exoplanets at the outer edges of our solar system. Describing the many strange and beautiful groups of known microfossils in detail, De Wever combines lyrical prose with hundreds of arresting color images, from delicate nineteenth-century drawings of phytoplankton drafted by Ernst Haeckel, the "father of ecology," to cutting-edge scanning electron microscope photographs of billion-year-old acritarchs. De Wever's ode to the invisible world around us allows readers to peer directly into a minute microcosm with massive implications, even traversing eons to show us how life arose on Earth.

Marx and Nature

by Paul Burkett

A Red and Green Perspective

Maryland Geography: An Introduction

by James DiLisio

A grand tour of Maryland’s geographic past through the lens of today’s landscape.When he first laid eyes on the countryside around Chesapeake Bay in 1608, records reveal, Captain John Smith exclaimed, "Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitation." In Maryland Geography, James DiLisio—another admirer of the Free State—pays tribute to Maryland’s rich cultural, historical, and geographical heritage. This up-to-date, in-depth account interprets the contemporary environmental conditions of the "Marylandscape" by emphasizing its evolving political and socioeconomic contours.This closely researched volume, which is loaded with instructive charts and maps, is the result of DiLisio’s lifelong fascination with the geography of his adopted state and his thirty-five years teaching Maryland geography at Towson University. Arguing that regional geography is a product of both natural and human events, Maryland Geography provides an account of the vital geographical stage that the people of Maryland have created.DiLisio touches on Maryland’s pre-European American Indian heritage, post-colonial agriculture, and shifting industrial geography, as well as the degradation of the Chesapeake Bay and the rise of the modern economy. He considers the emergence of the isolated Eastern Shore; the rural tobacco land of southern Maryland; the rugged mining area of western Maryland; the prosperous, mixed farming area of the Piedmont; and the metropolitan Baltimore-Washington corridor. More than descriptive, the book examines major trends in the state—natural, economic, and demographic—in a way that prompts thinking about the consequences of growth and unbridled development. Aimed at college-level geography students, the book will also be of great interest to general readers, historians, politicians, and anyone involved in making policies relating to Maryland places.

Masonry: Building Pathologies and Design (Building Pathology and Rehabilitation #22)

by João M. P. Q. Delgado

This book presents a collection of recent research works related to blast resistant design, building pathologies, seismic coating, bottle-shaped concrete struts, delayed ettringite formation and waterproofing. It features eight chapters on building pathologies as well as a detailed set of references and suggestions for further reading. Offering a systematic review of the current state of knowledge, it is a valuable resource for scientists, students, practitioners, and lecturers in various scientific and engineering disciplines, including civil and materials engineering, as well as and other interested parties.

Mass Customisation and Personalisation in Architecture and Construction

by Frank T. Piller Poorang A.E. Piroozfar

Challenged by the recent economic crisis, the building and construction industry is currently seeking new orientation and strategies. Here mass customisation is uncovered as a key strategy in helping to meet this challenge. The term mass customisation denotes an offering that meets the demands of each individual customer, whilst still being produced with mass production efficiency. Today mass customisation is emerging from a pilot stage into a scalable and sustainable strategy... The first dedicated publication of its kind, this book provides a forum for the concept within an applied and highly innovative context. The book includes contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers and practitioners in the field from across the world, including Kasper S. Vibaek, Steve Kendall, Martin Bechthold, Mitchell M. Tseng, and Masa Noguchi. Bringing together this panel of experts who have carried out research both in academia and practice, this book provides an overview of state-of-the-art practice related to the concept of customisation and personalisation within the built environment.

Mass Dimension One Fermions (Cambridge Monographs on Mathematical Physics)

by Dharam Ahluwalia

In 2005, Dharam Ahluwalia and Daniel Grumiller reported an unexpected theoretical discovery of mass dimension one fermions. These are an entirely new class of spin one half particles, and because of their mass dimensionality mismatch with the standard model fermions they are a first-principle dark matter candidate. Written by one of the physicists involved in the discovery, this is the first book to outline the discovery of mass dimension one fermions. Using a foundation of Lorentz algebra it provides a detailed construction of the eigenspinors of the charge conjugation operator (Elko) and their properties. The theory of dual spaces is then covered, before mass dimension one fermions are discussed in detail. With mass dimension one fermions having applications to cosmology and high energy physics, this book is essential for graduate students and researchers in quantum field theory, mathematical physics, and particle theory.

Mass Term Effect on Fractional Quantum Hall States of Dirac Particles (Springer Theses)

by Kouki Yonaga

This book presents the high-precision analysis of ground states and low-energy excitations in fractional quantum Hall states formed by Dirac electrons, which have attracted a great deal of attention. In particular the author focuses on the physics of fractional quantum Hall states in graphene on a hexagonal boron nitride substrate, which was recently implemented in experiments. The numerical approach employed in the book, which uses an exact numerical diagonalization of an effective model Hamiltonian on a Haldane’s sphere based on pseudopotential representation of electron interaction, provides a better understanding of the recent experiments. The book reviews various aspects of quantum Hall effect: a brief history, recent experiments with graphene, and fundamental theories on integer and fractional Hall effects. It allows readers to quickly grasp the physics of quantum Hall states of Dirac fermions, and to catch up on latest research on the quantum Hall effect in graphene.

Mass Tourism in a Small World

by David Harrison Richard Sharpley

This new book reviews all aspects of the phenomenon of mass tourism. It covers theoretical perspectives (including political economy, ethics, sustainability and environmentalism), the historical context, and the current challenges to domestic, intra-regional and international mass tourism. As tourism and tourist numbers continue to grow around the world, it becomes increasingly important that this subject is studied in depth and best practice applied in real-life situations. This book: - Is the first to address a range of theoretical issues relating to mass tourism; - Uses a wide selection of case studies to translate theory into practice, covering the historical rise and fall of UK seaside resorts, the increase in Chinese tourism, conflict between different mass tourism groups, destination transformation from mass to niche tourism, and specific problems facing cruise ships; - Is written by a range of international, established authors to give a global perspective on the subject. Finishing with a speculative chapter identifying potential future trends and challenges, this book forms an essential resource for all researchers and students within tourism studies.

Mass Transfer Dynamics of Contaminants in Fractured Media

by Yong Huang Zhi Dou Zhifang Zhou Jinguo Wang

This book focuses on many aspects of mass transfer dynamics of contamination in fractured media. First, it discusses the concept, structure and properties of fractured media. It then traces topics such as basic law of seepage in fractured media, the basic mass transfer theory of fractured media, numerical simulation of mass transfer process in fractured media, mathematical model and parameter inversion of mass transfer in fractured media and the frontier of mass transfer in fractured media. The book is a comprehensive reference for both graduate students and scientific and technological teams working in the fields of hydrogeology, water conservation, mining and civil engineering, environmental engineering, transportation, civil air defense and national defense.

Massivbauweise mit Lehm: Beispiele für eine historische und moderne Bauweise (essentials)

by Dietmar Schäfer

Das Buch beschäftigt sich mit den Massivlehmbauweisen in Europa. Es werden Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede der jeweiligen Lehmbautechnologien aufgezeigt.

Massive Suburbanization: (Re)Building the Global Periphery (Global Suburbanisms)

by Roger Keil K. Murat Guney Murat Ucoglu

Providing a systematic overview of large-scale housing projects, Massive Suburbanization investigates the building and rebuilding of urban peripheries on a global scale. Offering a universal inter-referencing point for research on the dynamics of "massive suburbia," this book builds a new discussion pertaining to the problems of the urban periphery, urbanization, and the neoliberal production of space. Conceptual and empirical chapters revisit the classic cases of large-scale suburban building in Canada, the former Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, and the United States and examine the new peripheral estates in China, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, the Philippines, South Africa, and Turkey. The contributors examine a broad variety of cases that speak to the building or redevelopment of large-scale peripheral housing estates, tower neighbourhoods, Grands Ensembles, Groβwohnsiedlungen, and Toplu Konut. Concerned with state and corporate policy for building suburban estates, Massive Suburbanization confronts the politics surrounding local inhabitants and their "right to the suburb."

Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy

by John Agnew Stuart Crobridge

For over two hundred years the domination of some countries by others has been intrinsic to international relations, with national economic and political strength viewed as essential to a nation's survival and global position. Mastering Space identifies the essential features of this "state-centredness" and suggests an optimistic alternative more in keeping with the contemporary post-Cold War climate. Drawing on recent geopolitical thinking, the authors claim that the dynamism of the international political economy has been obscured through excessive attention on the state as an unchanging actor. Dealing with such topical issues as Japan's rise to economic dominance and America's perceived decline, as well as the global impact of continued geographical change, the book discusses the role of geographical organization in the global political economy, and the impact of increasing economic globalisation and political fragmentation in future international relations. The authors identify the present time as crucial to the global political economy, and explore the possibilities of moving the world from mastering space to real reciprocity between peoples and places. John Agnew is a Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. Stuart Corbridge is a lecturer in Geography at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College.

Mastering the Circular Economy: A Practical Approach to the Circular Business Model Transformation

by Ed Weenk Rozanne Henzen

Global consumption of raw materials currently goes beyond the earth's regenerative capacity, but the circular economy offers a more sustainable model which also provides new business opportunities. Mastering the Circular Economy is an introduction to circularity from a business and value chain management perspective. With many reflections and exercises throughout, the book draws a direct link between relevant recent theory and practice and offers students and practitioners a deeper understanding of the topic. It looks at both the macro and micro context of the circular economy, from the government and societal view to the impact of new business models in an individual company. Starting from the corporate imperative of moving from linear to circular business models, Mastering the Circular Economy covers the associated opportunities and challenges for organizations, from regulation and risk to value chain collaboration, reverse logistics and product quality. Part two of the book helps students to pull together everything they've learned and see how the concepts play out in the real world by guiding them through application in the online business simulation game The Blue Connection (free basic access is included with the book). Readers are continuously asked to reflect on the choices they would make in different roles to demonstrate a full understanding of the strategic and operational implications of the circular economy.

Masterminding Nature

by Margaret Derry

In Masterminding Nature, Margaret Derry examines the evolution of modern animal breeding from the invention of improved breeding methodologies in eighteenth-century England to the application of molecular genetics in the 1980s and 1990s. A clear and concise introduction to the science and practice of artificial selection, Derry's book puts the history of breeding in its scientific, commercial, and social context.Masterminding Nature explains why animal breeders continued to use eighteenth-century techniques well into the twentieth century, why the chicken industry was the first to use genetics in its breeding programs, and why it was the dairy cattle industry that embraced quantitative genetics and artificial insemination in the 1970s, as well as answering many other questions. Following the story right up to the present, the book concludes with an insightful analysis of today's complex relationships between biology, industry, and ethics.

Masters of Tonewood: The Hidden Art of Fine Stringed-Instrument Making

by Jeffrey Greene

The wood used by master craftsmen to create many of the world’s legendary stringed instruments—violins and cellos, mandolins and guitars—comes from seven near-mythic European forests. In his latest book, Jeffrey Greene takes the reader into those woodlands and into luthiers’ workshops to show us how the world’s finest instruments not only contribute to great musical art but are prized works of art in themselves.Masters of Tonewood describes the "hidden life" of stringed instruments, beginning with the unique wood, expertly chosen and sometimes cured for decades, that gives them voices that rivet audiences. Greene takes us to forests in Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Romania, Poland, and the Czech Republic. We are introduced to the acoustical and aesthetic properties of the spruce that Stradivari treasured, and the mystery of why just one in a thousand maple trees contains decorative figuring worthy of the highest-quality instruments. Greene visits the greatest traditional centers of this craft, from Spain to the United States. He recounts the ideas and experiences of tonewood millers, luthiers, and musicians and discusses their concerns about environmental issues associated with a tradition dependent on ancient woodlands in a modern world.

Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth

by Phaedra Daipha

Though we commonly make them the butt of our jokes, weather forecasters are in fact exceptionally good at managing uncertainty. They consistently do a better job calibrating their performance than stockbrokers, physicians, or other decision-making experts precisely because they receive feedback on their decisions in near real time. Following forecasters in their quest for truth and accuracy, therefore, holds the key to the analytically elusive process of decision making as it actually happens. In Masters of Uncertainty, Phaedra Daipha develops a new conceptual framework for the process of decision making, after spending years immersed in the life of a northeastern office of the National Weather Service. Arguing that predicting the weather will always be more craft than science, Daipha shows how forecasters have made a virtue of the unpredictability of the weather. Impressive data infrastructures and powerful computer models are still only a substitute for the real thing outside, and so forecasters also enlist improvisational collage techniques and an omnivorous appetite for information to create a locally meaningful forecast on their computer screens. Intent on capturing decision making in action, Daipha takes the reader through engrossing firsthand accounts of several forecasting episodes (hits and misses) and offers a rare fly-on-the-wall insight into the process and challenges of producing meteorological predictions come rain or come shine. Combining rich detail with lucid argument, Masters of Uncertainty advances a theory of decision making that foregrounds the pragmatic and situated nature of expert cognition and casts into new light how we make decisions in the digital age.

Masters of the Lost Land: The Untold Story of the Amazon and the Violent Fight for the World's Last Frontier

by Heriberto Araujo

In the tradition of Killers of the Flower Moon, a haunting murder mystery revealing the human story behind one of the most devastating crimes of our time: the ruthless destruction of the Amazon rain forest—and anyone who stands in the wayDeep in the heart of the Amazon, the city of Rondon do Pará, Brazil, lived for decades in the shadow of land barons, or fazendeiros, who maintained control of the region through unscrupulous land grabs and egregious human rights violations. They razed and burned the jungle, expelled small-scale farmers and Indigenous tribes from their lands, and treated their farmhands as slaves—all with impunity. The only true opposition came from Rondon’s small but robust farmworkers’ union, led by the charismatic Dezinho, who fought to put power back into the hands of the people who called the Amazon home. But when Dezinho was assassinated in cold blood, it seemed the farmworkers’ struggle had come to a violent and fruitless end.What no one anticipated was that this event would bring forth an unlikely hero: Dezinho’s widow. Against great odds, and at extreme personal risk, Maria Joel, now a single mother of four young children, used her ingenuity and unwavering support from union members to bring her husband’s killer to account in court. Her campaign gained unexpected momentum, helping to bring international attention to the dire situation in Rondon, from Brazil’s president Lula to international celebrities and civil rights groups.Maria Joel’s fight for justice had far-reaching implications: it unearthed a chilling world of corruption and lawlessness rooted in Brazil’s quest to turn the largest rain forest on earth into an economic frontier. As more details came out, it began to look increasingly likely that Dezinho’s killer, a reluctant and inexperienced gunman, was just one piece of a larger criminal consortium, with ties leading all the way up to one of the region’s most powerful and notorious fazendeiros of all.Featuring groundbreaking revelations and exclusive interviews, this gripping work of narrative nonfiction is the culmination of journalist Heriberto Araujo’s years-long investigation in the heart of the Amazon. Set against the backdrop of appalling deforestation rates and resultant superfires, Masters of the Lost Land vividly reveals the human story behind the loss of—and fierce crusade to protect—one of our greatest resources in the fight against climate change and one of the last wild places on earth.

Materan Contradictions: Architecture, Preservation and Politics (Ashgate Studies In Architecture Ser.)

by Anne Parmly Toxey

Shaped by encrusted layers of development spanning millennia, the southern Italian city of Matera is the ultimate palimpsest. Known as the Sassi, the majority of the ancient city is composed of thousands of structures carved into a limestone cliff and clinging to its walls. The resultant menagerie of forms possesses a surprising visual uniformity and an ineffable allure. Conversely, in the 1950s Matera also served as a crucible for Italian postwar urban and architectural theory, witnessed by the Neorealist, modernist expansion of the city that developed in aversion to the Sassi. In another about-face, the previously disparaged cave city has now been recast as a major tourist destination, UNESCO World Heritage Monument, and test subject for ideas and methods of preservation. Set within a sociopolitical and architectural history of Matera from 1950 to the present, this book analyses the contemporary effects of preservation on the city and surrounding province. More broadly, it examines the relationship between and interdependence of preservation and modernism within architectural thought. To understand inconsistencies inherent to preservation, in particular its effect of catalyzing change, the study lays bare planners' and developers' use of preservation, especially for economic goals and political will. The work asserts that preservation is not a passive, curatorial pursuit: it is a cloaked manifestation of modernism and a powerful tool often used to control economies. The study demonstrates that preservation also serves to influence societies through the shaping of memory and circulation of narratives.

Material Concerns: Pollution, Profit and Quality of Life

by Tim Jackson

Material Concerns offers new perspectives on key environmental issues - pollution prevention, ecological economics, limits to sustainability, consumer behaviour and government policy. The first non-technical introduction to preventative environmental management, Material Concerns offers realistic prospects for improving the quality of life.

Material Cycling of Wetland Soils Driven by Freeze-Thaw Effects

by Xiaofei Yu

Freezing and thawing of soils is a common phenomenon in the winter-cold zone. The thesis titled "Material Cycling of Wetland Soils Driven by Freeze-Thaw Effects" systematically explores the freeze-thaw effects on the accumulation and release processes of carbon and nitrogen in wetland soils, which is a good step toward the investigation of biogeochemical processes in wetlands in seasonal freeze-thaw areas. It is also developing strategies aimed at global warming effects on the accumulation and release of carbon and nitrogen in wetlands. Dr. Xiaofei Yu works at the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

Refine Search

Showing 15,976 through 16,000 of 31,206 results