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The Vertical Farm: Scientific Advances and Technological Developments (Nextgen Agriculture)
by Chittaranjan Kole Kheir Al-Kodmany Andrew Keong Ng Abel TabladaAmid economic uncertainties, fluctuating oil prices, and a rising environmental consciousness, the need for sustainable and efficient food production has become dire. The Vertical Farm: Scientific Advances and Technological Developments systematically navigates the realm of vertical farming (VF), rooted in a robust, scientific foundation. Unveiling the intricate convergence of plant biology, environmental science, and agronomy, it provides a profound understanding of contemporary agriculture. The book spans lighting systems and climate control mechanisms, focusing on sustainability. From small urban initiatives to significant commercial endeavors, real-world case studies showcase VF's adaptability, scalability, and resilience. Addressing multiple challenges, the book explores economic considerations and public perceptions, recognizing their roles in fostering meaningful advancements in agricultural innovation.A volume in the Nextgen Agriculture series, this book is valuable to scientists, practitioners, and students in urban agriculture and planning, horticulture, engineering, landscape architecture, and plant/technology sciences.
The Vertical Transportation Handbook
by George R. Strakosch Robert S. CaporaleThis new edition of a one-of-a-kind handbook provides an essential updating to keep the book current with technology and practice. New coverage of topics such as machine-room-less systems and current operation and control procedures, ensures that this revision maintains its standing as the premier general reference on vertical transportation. A team of new contributors has been assembled to shepherd the book into this new edition and provide the expertise to keep it up to date in future editions. A new copublishing partnership with Elevator World Magazine ensures that the quality of the revision is kept at the highest level, enabled by Elevator World's Editor, Bob Caporale, joining George Strakosch as co-editor.
The Vestigial Heart: A Novel of the Robot Age
by Carme TorrasA thirteen-year-old girl wakes up in a future where human emotions are extinct and people rely on personal-assistant robots to navigate daily life. Imagine a future in which many human emotions are extinct, and “emotional masseuses” try to help people recover those lost sensations. Individuals rely on personal-assistant robots to navigate daily life. Students are taught not to think but to employ search programs. Companies protect their intellectual property by erasing the memory of their employees. And then imagine what it would feel like to be a sweet, smart thirteen-year-old girl from the twenty-first century who wakes from a cryogenically induced sleep into this strange world. This is the compelling story told by Carme Torras in this prize-winning science fiction novel. We meet Celia, brought back to life when a cure is found for her formerly terminal disease, and Lu, Celia's adoptive mother, protective but mystified by her new daughter. There is Leo, a bioengineer, who is developing a “creativity prosthesis” to augment humans' atrophied capacities, and the eccentric robotics mogul Dr. Craft. And there is Silvana, an emotional masseuse who reads old books to research the power of emotion. Silvana sees Celia as a living, breathing example of the emotions and feelings that are now out of reach for most people. Torras, a prominent roboticist, weaves provocative ethical issues into her story. What kind of robots do we want when robot companions become as common as personal computers are now? Is it the responsibility of researchers to design robots that make the human mind evolve in a certain way? An appendix provides readers with a list of ethics questions raised by the book.
The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers
by Tom Standagehe Victorian Internet tells the colorful story of the telegraph's creation and remarkable impact, and of the visionaries, oddballs, and eccentrics who pioneered it, from the eighteenth-century French scientist Jean-Antoine Nollet to Samuel F. B. Morse and Thomas Edison.
The Victorians: Volume 1
by Luís Manuel Mendonça de CarvalhoThe Victorians: A Botanical Perspective, Volume 1 offers a unique re-evaluation of the Victorian Age and presents a new historiography based on plants. It examines the use of gutta-percha in the development of electrical measurements; provides a detailed history of cocoa and the forced labor in the São Tomé and Príncipe Islands; explores the beauty, imagination, and order of William and May Morris’ flowers; uncovers the world of Charles Darwin and the Victorian Botany Culture; highlights the crucial role of the Wardian Case in the global transport of plants; reveals the connection between Mid-Victorian Botany and Microscopy; offers glimpses of the colonial collections at the 1862 London Exhibition; explains how botany was connected with the development of photography; evokes the desire for a return to Nature and a simple life; and, finally, takes us on a journey through the history of violets.
The Vicuña
by Kristi Anne Stølen Mariela Borgnia Verónica Benítez Jane C. Wheeler Hugo Yacobaccio Jerry Laker Renaudeau d' Arc Nadine Desmond Mcneill Cristian Bonacic Marcelo Cassini Gabriela Lichtenstein Yanina Arzamendia Pete Goddard Bibiana Vilá Jessica Gimpel Ana Wawrzyk Javier García Gomez Iain GordonThe vicuña is one of the few success stories of wildlife conservation. The focus is now shifting from protection to sustainable use. Internationally, policy development has followed the community-based conservation paradigm, which holds that economic benefits from wildlife management practices bring greater commitment on the part of local communities to protect both the species and its habitat. This book takes the position that sustainability is not guaranteed by sustainable use, and that both education and regulation are required to prevent the proliferation of unsustainable practices. The research from the countries presented in this book demonstrate the animal welfare, ecological, economic, social, and conservation trade-offs, which exist between different management systems. This links economics, social and conservation research to provide a unique insight into the viability of community-based wildlife management of a species which until recently was viewed simply as a conservation priority.
The Video Games Textbook: History, Business, Technology
by Brian J. WardygaThe Video Games Textbook takes the history of video games to another level, with visually-stimulating, comprehensive, and chronological chapters that are relevant and easy to read for a variety of students. Every chapter is a journey into a different era or area of gaming, where readers emerge with a strong sense of how video games evolved, why they succeeded or failed, and the impact they had on the industry and human culture. Written to capture the attention and interest of both domestic and international college students, each chapter contains a list of objectives and key terms, illustrative timelines, arcade summaries, images and technical specifications of all major consoles.
The Vienna LTE-Advanced Simulators
by Markus Rupp Stefan Schwarz Martin TaranetzThis book introducesthe Vienna Simulator Suite for 3rd-Generation Partnership Project(3GPP)-compatible Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) simulators and presentsapplications to demonstrate their uses for describing, designing, and optimizingwireless cellular LTE-A networks. Part One addresses LTEand LTE-A link level techniques. As there has been high demand for the downlink(DL) simulator, it constitutes the central focus of the majority of thechapters. This part of the book reports on relevant highlights, includingsingle-user (SU), multi-user (MU) and single-input-single-output (SISO) as wellas multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transmissions. Furthermore, itsummarizes the optimal pilot pattern for high-speed communications as well asdifferent synchronization issues. One chapter is devoted to experiments thatshow how the link level simulator can provide input to a testbed. This sectionalso uses measurements to present and validate fundamental results onorthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions that are notlimited to LTE-A. One chapter exclusively deals with the newest tool, theuplink (UL) link level simulator, and presents cutting-edge results. In turn, Part Twofocuses on system-level simulations. From early on, system-level simulations havebeen in high demand, as people are naturally seeking answers when scenarioswith numerous base stations and hundreds of users are investigated. This partnot only explains how mathematical abstraction can be employed to speed upsimulations by several hundred times without sacrificing precision, but alsoillustrates new theories on how to abstract large urban heterogeneous networkswith indoor small cells. It also reports on advanced applications such as trainand car transmissions to demonstrate the tools' capabilities.
The Vietnam War (Great Battles for Boys)
by Sibella Giorello Joe GiorelloFrom first-person accounts to front-line battlefield action reports, boys will learn about the Vietnam War, including the politics that sent American soldiers into this deadly and disastrous conflict. <p><p> Written in an engaging style and with dozens of historical photos, Great Battles for Boys captivates even the most reluctant readers. Boys learn about the military strategies, tactics, and weapons that won (or lost) the most significant battles of world history. <p><p> Boys also learn about the difference between democracy and Communism, and how that difference helped fuel the United States’ entry into another country's civil war.
The View From Serendip
by Arthur C. ClarkeThis book includes many articles on the personal universe of Arthur C. Clarke, including life at home on his island paradise, in ancient times called Serendip, then Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, his continuing involmement with space travel from the earliest days as a member of the British interplanetary Society to his coverage of the Apollo moon shots for CBS television, to the world of 2001 ... or what's in store for us in the nest 20 years, and more
The Virtual (Key Ideas)
by Rob ShieldsThis book looks at the origins and the many contemporary meanings of the virtual. Rob Shields shows how the construction of virtual worlds has a long history. He examines the many forms of faith and hysteria that have surrounded computer technologies in recent years. Moving beyond the technologies themselves he shows how the virtual plays a role in our daily lives at every level. The virtual is also an essential concept needed to manage innovation and risk. It is real but not actual, ideal but not abstract. The virtual, he argues, has become one of the key organizing principles of contemporary society in the public realms of politics, business and consumption as well as in our private lives.
The Virtual Future
by William Sims BainbridgeThe newest communication technologies are profoundly changing the world's politics, economies, and cultures, but the specific implications of online game worlds remain mysterious. The Virtual Future employs theories and methods from social science to explore nine very different virtual futures: The Matrix Online, Tabula Rasa, Anarchy Online, Entropia Universe, Star Trek Online, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade, and The Chronicles of Riddick. Each presents a different picture of how technology and society could evolve in coming centuries, but one theme runs through all of them, the attempt to escape the Earth and seek new destinies among the stars. Four decades after the last trip to the moon, a new conception of spaceflight is emerging. Rather than rockets shooting humans across vast physical distances to sterile rocks that lack the resources to sustain life, perhaps robot space probes and orbiting telescopes will glean information about the universe, that humans can then experience inside computer-generated environments much closer to home. All nine of these fantastically rich multiplayer masterpieces have shown myriads of people that really radical alternatives to contemporary society could exist, and has served as a laboratory for examining the consequences. Each is a prototype of new social forms, a utopian subculture, and a simulation of technologies that have yet to be invented. They draw upon several different traditions of science fiction and academic philosophy, and they were created in several nations. By comparing these nine role-playing fantasies, we can better consider what kind of world we want to inhabit in the real future.
The Virtual Mind: Designing the Logic to Approximate Human Thinking (Chapman & Hall/CRC Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Series)
by Niklas HagebackThe Virtual Mind: Designing the Logic to Approximate Human Thinking, through an in-depth and multidisciplinary review, outlines and defines the underpinnings for modelling human thinking through approximating the mind. Whilst there are plenty of efforts underway trying to mimic the brain, its complexities have so far proven insurmountable. But replicating the abstract notion of the mind provides a viable and quicker route. Broadly, the mind consists of a conscious and an unconscious part with separate logic schemes and these absorbs reality in diverging chunks, with the former truncated through narratives and norms and the latter able to amass broader perceptions of reality. These are held together and controlled through a governing mechanism. With the replication and establishment of the mind’s mechanistic rules and dynamic constants, tested through a big data approach from public media, it allows for standardization and machine generated human thinking, a Virtual Mind.A virtual mind is able to cover a wide array of applications, in particular forecasting of human behavior and decision-making. In essence, the whole socioeconomic spectra can be captured, including politics, financial markets and consumer patterns. Another area of potential application would be to augment various game software and of course, it would be applicable for the man-machine connect.The book guides the reader on how to develop and produce a machine generated virtual mind in a step-by-step manner. It is a must for anyone with an interest in artificial intelligence, the design and construction of the next generation of computer logic and it provides an enhanced understanding of mankind’s greatest mystery, the workings of the mind. Niklas Hageback has extensive experience of risk modelling and financial analytics working at tier-one financial institutions and consulting firms, such as Deutsche Bank, KPMG, and Goldman Sachs, where he held regional executive risk management and oversight roles in both Europe and Asia.
The Virtual University: The Internet and Resource-based Learning (Open and Flexible Learning Series)
by Howard Freeman Bernard Scott Steve Ryan Daxa PatelA discussion of the increased accessibility to the Internet and how this has lead to a variety of resources being used for learning. Case studies and examples show the benefits of using the Internet as part of resource-based learning.
The Virtual Vandal: The Drone Pursuit; The Sonic Breach; Restricted Access; The Virtual Vandal (Tom Swift Inventors' Academy #4)
by Victor AppletonTom and his friends attend a science camp in this fourth novel in Tom Swift Inventors&’ Academy—perfect for fans of The Hardy Boys or Alex Rider. Every year, Swift Academy students go to a nearby summer camp to field-test their inventions. Tom and his friends have been working hard on all their projects, but they&’re most thrilled about Noah&’s new virtual reality simulation. They can&’t wait for it to go live, and everyone is looking forward to running tests at the camp. Nothing dulls their excitement, not even when a mysterious prankster starts messing with people&’s inventions. But things take a nosedive when the pranks turn into vandalism. To make matters worse, clues point to Tom&’s friend, Sam, as the one responsible. With Sam&’s reputation and student projects on the line, it&’s up to Tom and his friends to unmask the true vandal. And when Noah&’s simulation enters the arena, they quickly discover they&’re not the only ones meeting in virtual reality…
The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist's Guide to Enlightenment
by Amit GoswamiA thrilling synthesis of science and mysticism by a quantum physicist reared in the Hindu tradition with a thorough knowledge of Indian sacred literature. Goswami offers solid, scientific explanations for the concept of universal consciousness and the existence of mind beyond the function of the brain. Thoughtful readers will love his ingenious mix of data and ideas from Eastern philosophy, transpersonal psychology, and quantum physics to explore the scientific principles for why and how spiritual practice works.
The Visual Neuroscience of Robotic Grasping
by Eris Chinellato Angel P. PobilThis book presents interdisciplinary research that pursues the mutual enrichment of neuroscience and robotics. Building on experimental work, and on the wealth of literature regarding the two cortical pathways of visual processing - the dorsal and ventral streams - we define and implement, computationally and on a real robot, a functional model of the brain areas involved in vision-based grasping actions. Grasping in robotics is largely an unsolved problem, and we show how the bio-inspired approach is successful in dealing with some fundamental issues of the task. Our robotic system can safely perform grasping actions on different unmodeled objects, denoting especially reliable visual and visuomotor skills. The computational model and the robotic experiments help in validating theories on the mechanisms employed by the brain areas more directly involved in grasping actions. This book offers new insights and research hypotheses regarding such mechanisms, especially for what concerns the interaction between the dorsal and ventral streams. Moreover, it helps in establishing a common research framework for neuroscientists and roboticists regarding research on brain functions.
The Vitamin E Factor: The miraculous antioxidant for the prevention and treatment of heart disease, cancer, and aging
by Andreas PapasIt is too early to conclude that vitamin E has all the beneficial effects attributed to it, but even if only 25% of current expectations were to be fulfilled, vitamin E would become an important weapon against a range of chronic diseases.The book is not simply scientific and education but also a please to read.
The Vitreous State
by Ivan S. Gutzow Jürn W.P. SchmelzerThis book summarizes the experimental evidence and modern classical and theoretical approaches in understanding the vitreous state, from structural problems, over equilibrium and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, to statistical physics. Glasses, and especially silicate glasses, are only the best known representatives of this particular physical state of matter. Other typical representatives include organic polymer glasses, and many other easily vitrifying organic and inorganic substances, technically important materials, amidst them vitreous water and vitrified aqueous solutions, and also many metallic alloy systems. Some of these systems only form glasses under particular conditions, e.g. through ultra-rapid cooling. This book describes the properties and the formation of both every-day technical glasses and especially of such more exotic forms of vitreous matter. It is a unique source of knowledge and new ideas for materials scientists, engineers and researchers working on condensed matter. The new edition emphasizes latest experimental findings and modern theories, explaining the kinetics of glass formation, the relaxation and stabilization of glasses and their crystallization in terms of new models, derived from the framework of the thermodynamics of irreversible processes. It shows how the properties of common technical glasses, window glass, or the vitreous ice kernel of comets can be used to develop a new understanding of the existence of matter in various, unusual forms. The described theories can even find application for the description of lasers and interesting unusual processes in the universe.
The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet
by Joseph TurowYour voice as biometric data, and how marketers are using it to manipulate you Only three decades ago, it was inconceivable that virtually entire populations would be carrying around wireless phones wherever they went, or that peoples&’ exact locations could be tracked by those devices. We now take both for granted. Even just a decade ago the idea that individuals&’ voices could be used to identify and draw inferences about them as they shopped or interacted with retailers seemed like something out of a science fiction novel. Yet a new business sector is emerging to do exactly that. The first in-depth examination of the voice intelligence industry, The Voice Catchers exposes how artificial intelligence is enabling personalized marketing and discrimination through voice analysis. Amazon and Google have numerous patents pertaining to voice profiling, and even now their smart speakers are extracting and using voice prints for identification and more. Customer service centers are already approaching every caller based on what they conclude a caller&’s voice reveals about that person&’s emotions, sentiments, and personality, often in real time. In fact, many scientists believe that a person&’s weight, height, age, and race, not to mention any illnesses they may have, can also be identified from the sound of that individual&’s voice. Ultimately not only marketers, but also politicians and governments, may use voice profiling to infer personal characteristics for selfish interests and not for the benefit of a citizen or of society as a whole. Leading communications scholar Joseph Turow places the voice intelligence industry in historical perspective, explores its contemporary developments, and offers a clarion call for regulating this rising surveillance regime.
The Void Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, The Evolutionary Void (Commonwealth: The Void Trilogy)
by Peter F. HamiltonPeter F. Hamilton's extraordinary far-future epics recall the golden age of science fiction, as practiced by Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Nowhere is that legacy more in evidence than in The Void Trilogy. Taking place twelve hundred years after the events of Hamilton's Commonwealth novels, The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void, and The Evolutionary Void are Hamilton at his most ambitious and daringly imaginative--and now all three are together for the first time in this addictive eBook bundle. Contains an exhilarating preview of Peter F. Hamilton's highly anticipated novel, The Abyss Beyond Dreams, set in the same universe as The Void Trilogy. THE DREAMING VOID THE TEMPORAL VOID THE EVOLUTIONARY VOID The year is 3589. At the very heart of the galaxy is the Void, a self-contained microuniverse that cannot be stopped as it expands in all directions, consuming everything in its path. Even the oldest and most technologically advanced of the galaxy's sentient races, the Raiel, do not know its origin or its purpose. Then Inigo, an astrophysicist, begins having vivid dreams. Inside the Void, Inigo sees paradise. Thanks to the gaiafield, a neural entanglement wired into most humans, those dreams are shared by hundreds of millions--and a religion, the Living Dream, is born, with Inigo as its prophet. But then he vanishes. A new wave of dreams broadcast by an unknown Second Dreamer serves as the impetus for a massive Pilgrimage into the Void, which could trigger an accelerated devourment phase that will swallow up thousands of worlds. Thus begins a desperate race to find Inigo and avert catastrophe. Praise for The Void Trilogy The Dreaming Void "Peter F. Hamilton is the owner of the most powerful imagination in science fiction, author of immense, complex far-future sagas. The Dreaming Void is his best yet."--Ken Follett "A real spellbinder from a master storyteller . . . dozens of scenarios, a surprisingly well-delineated cast of thousands, plotting enough to delight the most Machiavellian of readers."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Amazing storytelling . . . Hamilton is the clear heir to Heinlein in my view."--Marc Andreessen, founder, Netscape The Temporal Void "Fusing elements of hard SF with adventure fantasy tropes, Hamilton has singlehandedly raised the bar for grand-scale speculative storytelling."--Publishers Weekly "A great, sprawling, ripping yarn reminiscent of Golden Age Science Fiction."--SF Crowsnest "A gripping story, with the fates of two universes at stake."--SF Site The Evolutionary Void "Satisfying and powerful . . . Space Opera doesn't get much more epic than Peter F. Hamilton, something proven in spades in The Evolutionary Void."--SFFWorld "Spiced with plenty of action and intrigue."--San Jose Mercury News "The author's mastery of the art of the 'big story' earns him a place among the leading authors of dynastic SF."--Library Journal
The Volunteer Force: A Social and Political History 1859-1908 (Routledge Revivals)
by Hugh CunninghamOriginally published in 1975, The Volunteer Force is a study of the part-time military force which came into being to meet the mid-nineteenth century fear of French invasion. It survived and grew for fifty years until in 1908 it was renamed and remodelled as the Territorial Force. Composed initially of middle-class and often middle-aged gentlemen who elected their own officers and paid for their own equipment, the Volunteer Force soon became youthful and working-class, with appointed middle-class officers, a Government subsidy, and a minor military role as an adjunct to the Regular Army. This book examines the origins of the Force, the transformation in its social composition, the difficulties in finding officers who were ‘gentlemen’, the ambiguous status, of the Force both in the local community and in the Regular Army, and the political influence which the Force exerted in the early twentieth century. Above all it is concerned with the reasons for and the implications of enrolment; publicists argued that the Force was the embodiment of patriotism, and an indication of working-class loyalty to established institutions.
The Vortex and The Jet: A Journey into the Beauty and Mystery of Flight
by Reiner DecherThis open access book is an introduction for the lay reader to understand the basics of flight. The exposure is to the mysteries of lift generation by wings and the basic function of the jet propulsion engine. The text relies on simple descriptions of the physics of air flow without unduly involving mathematics. The text is richly illustrated with sketches and photographs to enrich verbal descriptions. The book takes the viewpoint that a reader does not have a background in the engineering of airplane components but is interested in the subject. The description is in terms of easy-to-understand terminology, occasional use of humor, references to everyday experiences, and occasionally to an algebraic relationship when that is unavoidable. This book would serve a student aspiring to be an engineer to begin grappling with the phenomena involved and the techniques used to analyze these phenomena. The practitioner, as well as the beginner, in the art of flying an airplane is well served with the knowledge exposed here. The text makes no apology for technical complexity. Its introduction is rigorous and provides a sound footing for further study.
The Voyage of Thought: Navigating Knowledge across the Sixteenth-Century World
by Michael WintroubThe Voyage of Thought is a micro-historical and cross-disciplinary analysis of the texts and contexts that informed the remarkable journey of the French ship captain, merchant, and poet, Jean Parmentier, from Dieppe to Sumatra in 1529. In tracing the itinerary of this voyage, Michael Wintroub examines an early attempt by the French to challenge Spanish and Portuguese oceanic hegemony and to carve out an empire in the Indies. He investigates the commercial, cultural, and religious lives of provincial humanists, including their relationship to the classical authorities they revered, the literary culture they cultivated, the techniques of oceanic navigation they pioneered, and the distant peoples with whom they came into contact. Ideal for graduate students and scholars, this journey into the history of science describes the manifold and often contradictory genealogies of the modern in the early modern world.
The WTO and Food Security
by Sachin Kumar SharmaThis book examines the public stockholding policies of selected developing countries from the perspective of WTO rules and assesses whether the provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) could hamper these countries' efforts to address the challenges of food security. Further, it highlights the need to amend the provisions of the AoA to make WTO rules just and fair for the millions of people suffering from hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. This book highlights that 12 countries namely China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Zambia and Zimbabwe are facing or will face problems in implementing the food security policies due to the provisions under AoA. These provisions need to be amended for permitting developing countries to address hunger and undernourishment. Progress in WTO negotiations on public stockholding for food security purposes are also discussed and analysed. The findings of this study greatly benefit trade negotiators, policymakers, civil society, farmers groups, researchers, students and academics interested in issues related to the WTO, agriculture and food security.