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The Vegan
by Andrew LipsteinHerschel Caine is a master of the universe. His hedge fund, built on the miracle of machine learning, is inches away from systematically sapping profits from the market. His SoHo offices (shoes optional, therapy required) are ready for desperate investors to flood through the doors. But on May 12, his mind is elsewhere-at his Cobble Hill townhouse and the dinner party designed to impress his flawless neighbours. When the soiree falters, Herschel concocts a prank that goes horrifically awry, plunging him into a tailspin of guilt and regret. As Herschel's perfect world starts to slip away, he clings to the moral clarity he finds in the last place he'd expect: a sudden connection with his neighbour's dog.A wildly inventive, reality-bending trip, The Vegan holds a mirror up to its reader and poses a question only a hedge fund manager could: is purity a convertible asset? The more Herschel disavows his original sin, and the more it threatens to be revealed, the more it becomes something else entirely: a way into a forgotten world of animals, nature, and life beyond words. Andrew Lipstein, the author of Last Resort, a novel that 'you'll think about . . . for weeks after you read the last pages' (Los Angeles Times), challenges our ideas of contemporary morality in his scintillating, provocative second novel.
The Vegetable Gardener's Guide to Permaculture: Creating an Edible Ecosystem
by Julie Thompson Christopher Shein“A masterful distillation of permaculture in a way that is easy to apply to our gardens, farms, and lives today.” —David Cody, founder, Urban Permaculture Institute Once a fringe topic, permaculture is moving to the mainstream as gardeners who are ready to take their organic gardening to the next level are discovering the wisdom of a simple system that emphasizes the idea that by taking care of the earth, the earth takes care of you.The Vegetable Gardener's Guide to Permaculture teaches gardeners of every skill—with any size space—how to live in harmony with both nature and neighbors to produce and share an abundant food supply with minimal effort. Permaculture teacher Christopher Shein highlights everything you need to know to start living off the land lightly, including how to create rich, healthy, and low-cost soil, blend a functional food garden and decorative landscape, share the bounty with others, and much more.
The Vegetation of the Iberian Peninsula
by Javier LoidiWith contributions by 70 Spanish and Portuguese flora and vegetation experts, this book offers an updated and comprehensive synthesis of the plant communities of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands. It is divided into two volumes, the first of which addresses the general history, geography, bioclimatology, flora, vegetation dynamics and biogeography of the area. It also provides a detailed description of the vegetation of 9 territorial sectors of the central and northern half of the area by selected regional experts. In the second volume, a first section describes the vegetation of the remaining 5 sectors, while a second section examines particular features of coasts, high mountains, aquatic environments, gypsum and dolomite areas, invasive plants, biodiversity and human-shaped landscapes. It is a valuable resource for scientists as all the basic information is offered for research documenting purposes, for conservationists as it is framed within the Habitat Directive typology, and for anyone interested in the terrestrial ecosystems of that part of the world.
The Vegetation of the Iberian Peninsula
by Javier LoidiWith contributions by 70 Spanish and Portuguese flora and vegetation experts, this book offers an updated and comprehensive synthesis of the plant communities of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands. It is divided into two volumes, the first of which addresses the general history, geography, bioclimatology, flora, vegetation dynamics and biogeography of the area. It also provides a detailed description of the vegetation of 9 territorial sectors of the central and northern half of the area by selected regional experts. In the second volume, a first section describes the vegetation of the remaining 5 sectors, while a second section examines particular features of coasts, high mountains, aquatic environments, gypsum and dolomite areas, invasive plants, biodiversity and human-shaped landscapes. It is a valuable resource for scientists as all the basic information is offered for research documenting purposes, for conservationists as it is framed within the Habitat Directive typology, and for anyone interested in the terrestrial ecosystems of that part of the world.
The Vehicle Diesel Engine Start-up Process: Operational and Environmental Aspects (Innovations in Environmental Engineering)
by Paweł DroździelThe start-up process constitutes one of the most important states of vehicle internal combustion engine operation. It enables the internal combustion engine to run autonomously in neutral gear. Increased emission of toxic components of exhaust gases, significant wear intensity of friction pairs of the engine, and occurrence of sudden overloads in the vehicle electrical start-up system can be observed during the start-up process. The Vehicle Diesel Engine Start-up Process: Operational and Environmental Aspects offers insight into the start-up process of a vehicle's diesel engine and is the result of the author’s academic research carried out for more than 25 years. The book discusses the impact of road transport on the natural environment of humans, with special attention to toxic emissions from diesel engines in particular. The multi-stage start-up process of an internal combustion engine is analyzed in terms of actual operation of vehicles in a selected transport system. Attention is also paid to the main factors that influence the start-up parameters of a diesel engine. The book is aimed at professionals and academics in mechanical engineering with an interest in environmental and operational aspects of internal combustion engines.
The Veiled Web
by Catherine Asaro&“A near-future layering of East and West, of religion and technology . . . and of love and its loss—all woven into an intriguing tapestry.&” —Diana Gabaldon, bestselling author of the Outlander seriesWinner of the Homer Award for Best Science Fiction Novel A renowned prima ballerina, Lucia del Mar is far more comfortable expressing herself through dance than with words. Shy and introverted, she spends most of her spare time on her laptop. Still, Lucia&’s job forces her out of her comfort zone, which is how she winds up at a White House reception where she meets Rashid al-Jazari, the wealthy CEO of a multinational corporation. Although attracted to him, Lucia can&’t help but feel awkward and shrugs off their encounter as a one-time event. Not realizing he feels a similar attraction, she never imagines Rashid will seek out her performances; he is the last person she expects to see when her dance company travels to Italy. Their reunion takes an even more unexpected turn when they&’re both drugged and kidnapped. Although they overcome their abductors, it leaves them stranded in North Africa. For her own safety, Lucia agrees to marry Rashid, at least for the time being. As she recovers at his family compound in Morocco, reeling from their brush with danger, she struggles to fit into a culture she knows nothing about—and to deal with her growing feelings for Rashid. At the same time, at his secret office there, Rashid is developing a dramatic leap forward in artificial intelligence combined with virtual reality. He finds himself plunged into a fight for control of his work against powerful international forces, and caught in the middle, Lucia is swept into that battle . . . &“A terrific novel, ripping a path from today&’s headlines to tomorrow&’s realities.&” —Robert J. Sawyer, Nebula Award–winning author
The Velestino Hoard: Casting Light on the Byzantine 'Dark Ages' (New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture)
by Florin Curta Bartłomiej Szymon SzmoniewskiThis book examines the remarkable Velestino hoard, found in Thessaly in the 1920s, and analyses the light that this collection of artifacts sheds on a poorly studied period of Byzantine history, and on largely neglected aspects of Byzantine civilization. Many collections of Byzantine gold- and silverware, such as Vrap and Seuso, have been surrounded by controversy. None, however, has been under more suspicion than the Velestino hoard, particularly with regards to its authenticity. The hoard contains no gold and no silver, and is in fact a collection of bronze and leaden plaques, some with human, and others with animal or geometric representations. The authors examine three distinct aspects of the hoard: the iconography of its components, the method of its production, and the function of those components. The conclusions that they reached provide valuable new insights into eighth-century Byzantine culture. The book explores the Byzantine cultural and political context of the Velestino hoard and will appeal to historians and art historians of early Byzantium, as well as archaeologists and historians of early medieval technologies.
The Verbal Communication of Emotions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
by Susan R. FussellThis book pulls together new research and theory on the verbal communication of emotions by an international, cross-disciplinary group of recognized experts in affective communication. The book's goal is to provide readers with a comprehensive view of current research and encourage cross-disciplinary interaction. Topics include analyses of literal and figurative expressions for emotions, studies of the use of metaphor and other figurative expressions for emotion, analysis of the role of conversational partners in creating emotional meaning, and the effects of culture on emotional communication. The chapters are organized into three broad areas: background theory, figurative language use, and social/cultural aspects of emotional communication. Part I reviews fundamental issues in the verbal communication of emotion. Part II examines the role of metaphor and other figures of speech in emotional communication in both everyday language and psychotherapeutic contexts. Part III looks at ways emotions are embedded in larger socio-culture processes. Taken as a whole, the chapters provide a comprehensive look at the current state of research on the use of language in affective communication and suggest a number of interesting directions for future research.
The Verdict of Battle: The Law Of Victory And The Making Of Modern War
by James Q. WhitmanToday, war is considered a last resort for resolving disagreements. But a day of staged slaughter on the battlefield was once seen as a legitimate means of settling political disputes. James Whitman argues that pitched battle was essentially a trial with a lawful verdict. And when this contained form of battle ceased to exist, the law of victory gave way to the rule of unbridled force. The Verdict of Battle explains why the ritualized violence of the past was more effective than modern warfare in bringing carnage to an end, and why humanitarian laws that cling to a notion of war as evil have led to longer, more barbaric conflicts. Belief that sovereigns could, by rights, wage war for profit made the eighteenth century battle’s golden age. A pitched battle was understood as a kind of legal proceeding in which both sides agreed to be bound by the result. To the victor went the spoils, including the fate of kingdoms. But with the nineteenth-century decline of monarchical legitimacy and the rise of republican sentiment, the public no longer accepted the verdict of pitched battles. Ideology rather than politics became war’s just cause. And because modern humanitarian law provided no means for declaring a victor or dispensing spoils at the end of battle, the violence of war dragged on. The most dangerous wars, Whitman asserts in this iconoclastic tour de force, are the lawless wars we wage today to remake the world in the name of higher moral imperatives.
The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century
by Dickson Despommier"The vertical farm is a world-changing innovation whose time has come. Dickson Despommier's visionary book provides a blueprint for securing the world's food supply and at the same time solving one of the gravest environmental crises facing us today."--StingImagine a world where every town has their own local food source, grown in the safest way possible, where no drop of water or particle of light is wasted, and where a simple elevator ride can transport you to nature's grocery store - imagine the world of the vertical farm.When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. Despommier's stroke of genius, the vertical farm, has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Despommier explains how the vertical farm will have an incredible impact on changing the face of this planet for future generations. Despommier takes readers on an incredible journey inside the vertical farm, buildings filled with fruits and vegetables that will provide local food sources for entire cities. Vertical farms will allow us to: - Grow food 24 hours a day, 365 days a year- Protect crops from unpredictable and harmful weather - Re-use water collected from the indoor environment- Provide jobs for residents - Eliminate use of pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides- Drastically reduce dependence on fossil fuels - Prevent crop loss due to shipping or storage- Stop agricultural runoffVertical farms can be built in abandoned buildings and on deserted lots, transforming our cities into urban landscapes which will provide fresh food grown and harvested just around the corner. Possibly the most important aspect of vertical farms is that they can built by nations with little or no arable land, transforming nations which are currently unable to farm into top food producers. In the tradition of the bestselling The World Without Us, The Vertical Farm is a completely original landmark work destined to become an instant classic.
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…