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Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East
by Peter Hill'An outstanding intellectual biography.' Eugene Rogan In 1813, high in the Lebanese mountains, a thirteen-year-old boy watches a solar eclipse. Will it foretell a war, a plague, the death of a prince? Mikha&’il Mishaqa&’s lifelong search for truth starts here. Soon he&’s reading Newtonian science and the radical ideas of Voltaire and Volney: he loses his religion, turning away from the Catholic Church. Thirty years later, as civil war rages in Syria, he finds a new faith – Evangelical Protestantism. His obstinate polemics scandalise his community. Then, in 1860, Mishaqa barely escapes death in the most notorious event in Damascus: a massacre of several thousand Christians. We are presented with a paradox: rational secularism and violent religious sectarianism grew up together. By tracing Mishaqa&’s life through this tumultuous era, when empires jostled for control, Peter Hill answers the question: What did people in the Middle East actually believe? It&’s a world where one man could be a Jew, an Orthodox Christian and a Sunni Muslim in turn, and a German missionary might walk naked in the streets of Valletta.
Dead Happy (HappyHead)
by Josh SilverBe prepared to be scared again in the nail-biting sequel to HappyHead. &‘One of the very best voices in YA right now.&’ Benjamin Dean FRIENDS, WELCOME TO ELMHALLOW. YOU ARE THE CHOSEN TEN. By some miracle, Seb has survived the HappyHead programme, only to find himself stranded on a remote island under the guidance of a freakishly beautiful couple. Far from home, Seb reluctantly teams up with Eleanor again and the pair are forced to compete in a series of ever stranger trials to prove their connection. All the while, he can&’t stop thinking about Finn. Determined to find him, Seb&’s search uncovers an even darker reality. Can he escape the island and expose the sinister truth behind HappyHead? &‘Brilliantly twisted – even better than the first.&’ Brandon Flynn 'The perfect sequel...heart-pounding and heart-wrenching.' A. F. Steadman, author of the Skandar series
Ka-boom!: The Science of Extremes
by David DarlingWhat&’s the brightest light on Earth? The coldest corner of the universe? The blackest material ever made? The most poisonous substance in nature? &‘You will learn something new in every chapter, on every page and probably in every paragraph. Hugely entertaining.&’ Kit Yates, author of The Maths of Life and Death Ka-boom! probes extremes of size and speed, depth and density, and reveals the stickiest, sweetest, smelliest and nastiest substances known to science. In an unabashed celebration of the exceptional, David Darling takes an enlightening journey through the universe&’s weirdest and most wonderful extremes. Travel to far-flung galaxies in pursuit of habitable planets and extra-terrestrial life. Journey to the rainforests of South America and discover the top-speed of the notoriously sluggish sloth. Find out how Earth&’s hardiest creatures – tardigrades or &‘water bears&’ – ended up living on the moon. And meet the scientists and engineers using these quirks of nature to design faster computers, produce greener energy and revolutionise space travel.
The Paris Novel: The gorgeously uplifting new novel about living - and eating - deliciously
by Ruth Reichl'No one writes about food like Ruth Reichl... I consider her essential nourishment.' NIGELLA LAWSON Ripping open the envelope, she read Celia's last words to her. There was just one line written on the paper: 'Go to Paris.' The last word anyone would use to describe Stella St. Vincent is adventurous. She's perfectly comfortable with the familiar, strict routines of her life as a copyeditor in New York. Or at least, she is until she receives a mysterious note from her late mother and a one-way plane ticket to Paris. Alone and overwhelmed in a foreign city, Stella avoids new people and ventures out as little as possible. But then she meets Jules, an octogenarian art collector with very different ideas about how she should spend her time in the French capital. And to start with, there's a vintage Dior dress with her name on it. Somewhere between the cramped shelves of Shakespeare and Company bookshop, the crisp tablecloths of the Brasserie Les Deux Magots and a pile of discarded paintings at a busy flea market, long-buried truths about Stella's own past begin to emerge. Soon she starts to wonder if there might not have been more to her mother's suggestion than she first suspected... 'Ruth Reichl is one of our greatest storytellers. No one writes as warmly and engagingly about the all-important intersection of food, life, love, and loss.' ALICE WATERS
Religious Truth for Our Time
by W. Montgomery WattOffering ways of addressing the intellectual and practical problems confronting today's religions, this study discusses the way forward for those who believe in the importance of religious faith in a multi-religious world. It also examines issues such as the limitations of human thought and language, and the role of world views which form the context within which different religions are borne. The author's other books include "Companion to the Qur'an" and "The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali".
New Pathways of Rural Education in China: Dynamic Changes of Small Schools (Research in Chinese Education)
by Jialing HanThis book summarizes and explores the development model and path of rural education in China, while also describing how small-scale schools can replicate this low-cost local experience. As the “nerve endings” of Chinese education system, rural small-scale schools have unique important values in guaranteeing equity in education and serving the compulsory education in rural areas. This book presents ten vivid stories of the transforming path of rural small-scale schools in China. It shows how the rural small-scale schools acted according to circumstances to enhance education quality, how they broke through the difficult situation and improved, and how they achieved the status of ‘small and beautiful’ and ‘small and good’. It explores a new path for rural education reform and aims to provide some inspirations on rural and urban education development.
Data-Centric Business and Applications: Modern Trends in Financial and Innovation Data Processes 2023. Volume 2 (Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies #194)
by Andriy Semenov Iryna Yepifanova Jana KajanováThis book examines aspects of financial and investment processes, as well as the application of information technology mechanisms to business and industrial management, using the experience of the Ukrainian economy as an example. An effective tool for supporting business data processing is combining modern information technologies and the latest achievements in economic theory. The variety of industrial sectors studied supports the continuous acquisition and use of efficient business analysis in organizations. In addition, the book elaborates on multidisciplinary concepts, examples, and practices that can be useful for researching the evolution of developments in the field. Also, in this book, there is a description of analysis methods for making decisions in business, finance, and innovation management.
Limits of AI - theoretical, practical, ethical (Technik im Fokus)
by Klaus Mainzer Reinhard KahleArtificial intelligence is a key technology with great expectations in science, industry, and everyday life. This book discusses both the perspectives and the limitations of this technology. This concerns the practical, theoretical, and conceptual challenges that AI has to face. In an early phase of symbolic AI, AI focused on formal programs (e.g., expert systems), in which rule-based knowledge was processed with the help of symbolic logic. Today, AI is dominated by statistics-based machine learning methods and Big Data. While this sub-symbolic AI is extremely successful (e.g., chatbots like ChatGPT), it is often not transparent. The book argues for explainable and reliable AI, in which the logical and mathematical foundations of AI-algorithms become understandable and verifiable.
RC Structures Strengthened with FRP for Earthquake Resistance (Composites Science and Technology)
by Shamsher Bahadur Singh C. V. R. MurtyThis book covers the merits and demerits of advanced composite materials with regard to their applications for earthquake-resistant applications. The chapters in the book are divided into the following main topics: (a) the processing and fabrication of fiber-reinforced polymer composite materials, (b) the mechanical characteristics of materials, (c) the design of strengthening and reinforcing systems for earthquake resistance of the deficient structural system, and (d) design of new earthquake-resistant structures using advanced composite materials. The chapters present experimental tests and numerical modeling of responses of various kinds of structural elements for predicting the load versus deflection response, energy absorption capacity, ductility index, energy ratios, failure modes, and load capacity. It also looks at different kinds of composite systems and their hybrid or functionally graded composites using advanced composite materials, such as carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP), aramid fiber-reinforced polymer (AFRP), basalt fiber-reinforced polymer (BFRP), and natural fiber-reinforced polymer (NFRP). The results presented in this book will be of high interest to scientists, researchers, students, and engineers working in the fields of advanced composite materials such as FRPs and other forms of composites for seismic retrofitting and strengthening of deficient structures. This book is helpful for teachers and (undergraduate, Master, and Ph.D.) students to develop a fundamental understanding of the design of earthquake-resistant design of structures (such as buildings, bridges, and industrial structures) using lightweight, durable, and sustainable FRP materials.
Art in the City, the City in Art (The Contemporary City)
by Elisha MasemannThis Book examines an interplay between discourses on the city that stress the need for rational-functional order and art’s imaginative deviations from the topdown structures of urban life. Moving between theory and praxis, the book situates the city as both a concept and physical construct through which lives and possibilities are shaped or defined. In response, certain modalities of art create spontaneous, non-rational and playful interludes that risk escape from the urban apparatus and a hyper-valorisation of rational order. A three-part framework is used to discuss this push-pull dynamic and to assess the strategies of shock, performative embodiment and intervention that emerged in post-war art movements and in contemporary performance and participatory art practices. The book examines how the disturbances introduced by artists throw the city construct into sharp relief, making it visible and activating momentary encounters where new modes of expression can emerge. This Book offers a new approach to interdisciplinary studies of art and urbanity. The book aims to delineate how the city—as concept and construct—is made visible through artistic practice and in turn challenged or interrogated. Students, researchers and professionals with an interest in the interaction between art and urban studies will discover a new perspective on how urban conditions and issues have been addressed through artistic practice. The book contributes to an evolving discourse in the urban humanities through an exposition of the city’s default construct that is made visible or reimagined through visual art in public spaces.
Empowering Education in Cambodia and Sri Lanka: Quality Improvement in Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century (Doing Higher Education)
by Sandra HummelThe anthology offers a distinctive perspective on a European Union-funded capacity-building initiative aimed at enhancing contemporary teaching competencies, with a specific emphasis on Sri Lanka and Cambodia. It discusses the augmentation of pedagogical skills and its consequential effects on both individual and societal levels. Furthermore, the anthology scrutinizes the collaborative efforts in international education, elucidating the strategies adopted to confront the challenges and leverage the opportunities encountered by higher education institutions.
Studies in Silk Road Archaeology
by Nai XiaThis book is a collection of Nai Xia’s quintessential works on Silk Road studies. A key resource in the field of Silk Road Archaeology, it features in-depth content, a broad range of material, careful textual research, and meticulous analysis. With thorough investigations of foreign coinage, silk textiles, and artifacts with foreign styles excavated in different parts of China, it explores the exchange between ancient China and Central Asia, Western Asia, and Europe. In particular, this book provides detailed descriptions of the economic and cultural ties between ancient China, Pre-Islamic Arabia, the Sasanian Empire, and the Byzantine Empire. The research propounds innovative theories on the history and evolution of East-West transportation routes, i.e., the overland Silk Road and the Maritime Silk Road. Based on the study of ancient relics and excavated artifacts, it points out that cultural exchange along the Silk Road was never unilateral, but instead, mutual influence and cooperation were obvious. Since ancient times, countries along the Silk Road have had a tradition of amicable foreign relations and the promotion of common interests. The book is intended for academics, scholars and researchers.
Drug Delivery Systems for Musculoskeletal Tissues
by Sumit MurabMusculoskeletal tissues are hard to heal if damaged by disease or trauma. If damaged, they cause pain and hinder regular movements of our bodies. Drug delivery systems that can be used for healing and regenerating these tissues need to be specialized to bear physiological loading on these tissues while helping in controlled release of drug or biomolecules for healing the tissue. This book discusses the pathology of orthopaedic diseases and the requirements of local drug delivery platforms that can help in the treatment of the pathology as well as regeneration of the tissue. The book also discusses in detail the mechanical properties and support that these systems provide to the damaged musculoskeletal tissues and how long-term healing and regeneration is possible. This is an ideal book for students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty at academic universities, and industry professionals who are working on drug delivery, orthopaedic diseases, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.
Activists in the Data Stream: The Practices of Daily Grassroots Politics in Southern Europe
by Alice Mattoni Diego CeccobelliAvailable Open Access digitally under CC-BY-ND licence This book pulls back the curtain on the link between activism, media and technology in the quiet times of politics when people are not protesting. Introducing the novel concept of the ‘data stream', it explores the intricate ways in which activists interact daily with various types of data and how they navigate the impact of digitalization and datafication on today’s grassroots politics. Through rich, empirical data from Greece, Spain and Italy, Activists in the Data Stream makes a nuanced contribution to our understanding of activists’ daily political engagement in an ever-changing media and political landscape.
Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
by Robin BernsteinAn award-winning historian tells a gripping, morally complicated story of murder, greed, race, and the true origins of prison for profit. In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial factories. There, “slaves of the state” were leased to private companies. The prisoners earned no wages, yet they manufactured furniture, animal harnesses, carpets, and combs, which consumers bought throughout the North. Then one young man challenged the system. In Freeman’s Challenge, Robin Bernstein tells the story of an Afro-Native teenager named William Freeman who was convicted of a horse theft he insisted he did not commit and sentenced to five years of hard labor in Auburn’s prison. Incensed at being forced to work without pay, Freeman demanded wages. His challenge triggered violence: first against him, then by him. Freeman committed a murder that terrified and bewildered white America. And white America struck back—with aftereffects that reverberate into our lives today in the persistent myth of inherent Black criminality. William Freeman’s unforgettable story reveals how the North invented prison for profit half a century before the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery “except as a punishment for crime”—and how Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and other African Americans invented strategies of resilience and resistance in a city dominated by a citadel of unfreedom. Through one Black man, his family, and his city, Bernstein tells an explosive, moving story about the entangled origins of prison for profit and anti-Black racism.
America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect versus Repair (Chicago Studies in American Politics)
by Rogers M. Smith Desmond KingA sobering portrait of the United States’ divided racial politics. For nearly two decades, Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King have charted the shifting racial policy alliances that have shaped American politics across different eras. In America’s New Racial Battle Lines, they show that US racial policy debates are undergoing fundamental change. Disputes over colorblind versus race-conscious policies have given way to new lines of conflict. Today’s conservatives promise to protect traditionalist, predominantly white, Christian Americans against what they call the “radical” Left. Meanwhile, today’s progressives seek not just to integrate American institutions but to more fully transform and “repair” pervasive systemic racism. Drawing on interviews with activists, surveys, social network analyses, and comprehensive reviews of federal, state, and local policies and advocacy groups, Smith and King map the memberships and goals of two rival racial policy alliances and delineate the contrasting stories each side tells. They also show that these increasingly polarized racial policy alliances are substantially funded on both the Left and Right. Placing today’s conflicts in theoretical and historical perspectives, Smith and King analyze where these intensifying clashes may take the nation in the years ahead. They highlight the great potential for mounting violence, as well as the remaining possibilities for finding common ground.
Hemodynamic Monitoring and Fluid Therapy during Surgery
by Alexandre Joosten Maxime Cannesson Robert G. HahnCombining two successful texts, Clinical Fluid Therapy in the Perioperative Setting, 2nd edition and Perioperative Hemodynamic Monitoring and Goal Directed Therapy, this revised volume provides a guide to fluid management and hemodynamic therapy for the perioperative practitioner. The book begins with an up-to-date overview of the basics before then exploring most of the current and controversial topics within hemodynamic monitoring and fluid therapy. This is followed by a section on practical use which explores hemodynamic and fluid therapy in various types of surgery and patient conditions. The book closes with a discussion of the future concepts in fluid and hemodynamic therapy ranging from microcirculation, to closed-loop and mobiles technologies. With contributions from the world's leading experts, chapters guide the reader in the application of fluid and hemodynamic therapy in all aspects of perioperative patient care. A valuable resource for those involved in perioperative patient management, including anaesthesiologists, intensivists, and surgeons.
Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala
by John MathiasHow can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? Uncommon Cause follows environmental justice activists in Kerala, India, as they seek out, avoid, or strive to overcome conflicts between their causes and their community ties. John Mathias finds two contrasting approaches, each offering distinct possibilities for an activist life. One set of activists repudiates community ties and resists normative pressures; for them, environmental justice becomes a way of transcending all local identities and affiliations, even humanity itself. Other activists seek to ground their activism in community belonging, to fight for their own people. Each approach produces its own dilemmas and offers its own insights into ethical tensions we all face between taking a stand and standing with others. In sharing Kerala activists’ diverse stories, Uncommon Cause offers a fresh perspective on environmental ethics, showing that environmentalism, even as it looks beyond merely human concerns, is still fundamentally about how we relate to other people.