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This book defines a straightforward way to analyse fictional characters through data. It shows how a data-led approach can produce rich analyses of characters, their surrounding storyworlds, and their authors across time and different types of media. It uses the Marvel Comics¿ character, Doctor Doom as its main case study, and demonstrates the advantages of this approach by comparing the results to those taken from a survey of fan attitudes. It also uses the methodology to analyse the differences between the American and British characters who share the name "Dennis The Menace". Finally, it offers a range of further uses for the tool. All datasets and tools are made available to download, so that other researchers can use the methodology and compare their own results to those generated in the book.

This book uses game theory to analyze the strategies developed in negotiation processes. Offering a detailed analysis of competition and cooperation, it explores various bargaining strategies that result from the application of Nash equilibrium and mixed strategies. Employing a blend of game theory and real-world examples, the authors describe typical negotiation scenarios and unveil the art of negotiation strategy ¿ dissecting both competitive and cooperative tactics.This comprehensive analysis explores the multifaceted dimensions of negotiation, highlighting not only formal aspects but also the economic, social, political, and human factors at play. The authors discuss the basic structures of cooperative and non-cooperative games and conduct a comprehensive analysis of the language games that take place in negotiations. They examine how negotiators belonging to different forms of life can trade with each other when their respective language games are different and prone tomisinterpretation. The book also probes arbitration and mediation as conflict-resolution tools within this intricate landscape. Designed for the curious minds seeking insight into negotiation strategies, as well as students and scholars of diverse fields, this book fosters an understanding of negotiation's labyrinthine pathways. "Dynamics of Rational Negotiation" unlocks the door to negotiation's complexities, inviting readers to unravel the layers of human interaction.

This distinctive book deconstructs the foundational elements of Russian foreign policy from a Russian perspective and with references to Russian sources, rather than the typical Western perspective. The author Olga Raluca Chiriac situates her work at the intersection of strategic studies and cognitive psychology, offering an analysis that goes deep into the roots of Russian strategic behavior, especially socio-cultural elements such as attitudes towards the West, language, culture. She highlights Russiäs unique decision-making process, sometimes overt and other times covert. The book aims to present a mechanism for analysis in both strategic choices and foreign policy, but it also points out that countries and nations are complicated entities, all having a particular historical experience, generational trauma, culture and traditions.

This book aims at meeting the challenge of getting along with today¿s unprecedented rate of innovation supported by disruptive digital technologies, which changed the perception of the productivity and effectiveness and opened a gateway to more than ever dynamic advances in solving the important societal challenges."Disruptive Information Technologies for a Smart Society" is the proceedings book of the 13th International conference for information society and technologies that brings together experts from various fields to discuss the latest advancements in software engineering, machine learning, digital water, and ICT for health and sport.The book and the conference serve as a platform for researchers of all career stages in technical sciences, especially Ph.D. students, practitioners, and industry experts in health care, energy, Fintech, AI, and other areas to share and learn on the cutting-edge technologies and stay at the forefront of these rapidly evolving fields.

This book examines the challenges of intercultural management in sub-Saharan Africa. It presents a case study of Vasco Silva, a Portuguese businessman who established a successful business in Luanda, Angola. After four years of growth, Silva encounters a culture shock due to a wild strike by his employees. He embarks on a deep cultural exploration using the Hofstede 6D model and the Toyota-management tool Genchi Genbutsu (go and see for yourself). Gradually, Silva gains an understanding of effective leadership in the Angolan context, unraveling important features of local culture and initiating an organizational change project. This work contributes to the ongoing discourse in African management literature, particularly regarding the integration of modern and contemporary traditional organizational and leadership concepts. It responds to the demand for descriptive accounts of hybrid case studies of confluencing cultures. Scholars of African management philosophy and business leaders can utilize this case study to explore indigenous African notions in a business setting, demonstrating the performative characteristics of local leadership forms and the adaptability required for success in foreign business environments

This collection explores the methods and challenges of containing corrosive and abrasive materials at extreme temperatures, whether they are used across commodities or technology specific. There is much to be learned from cross-commodity and cross-technology perspectives and this collection creates a platform for the exchange of ideas on the challenges, solutions, failures, and successes in furnace containment designs and applications while bringing together perspectives from industry, design houses, and research institutions. Topics include, but are not limited to: · Advances in furnace lining design philosophies· Advances in furnace design configurations and other design considerations· Problems experienced and their solutions implemented during construction and commissioning· Integration of new concepts into old smelters· Back to basics: refractory materials, shells, and cooling systems· Maintaining and monitoring· Process control and slag design· Lessons learned

This book takes a fresh approach to the London Blitz by viewing this time through individual local boroughs of the metropolis. The term ¿London Blitz¿ means that culturally we have become accustomed to understanding that the actual blitz experience was the same wherever in the capital one happened to be, despite some areas being hit more than others. This book illustrates how there were many London blitzes, not one, influenced by a myriad of metropolitan localities, and giving rise to an agency of locality that helped to shape the lived blitz experience. By walking through the streets of London, this book conducts a local area analysis, witnessing the blitz through six London localities, representative of the assorted administrative, economic, and socio-political variables prevalent in wartime London. Covering air raids alongside topics like the provision of shelters, homelessness, and communal feeding, it shows how any history of the London Blitz must acknowledge that it was an experience reflective of a varied metropolis.

This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the 15th International Conference, MEDES 2023, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, May 5¿7, 2023The 29 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The papers focus on the following topics: Design Issues & BlockChain, Query Processing and Visualization, Learning Issues, Services and Systems, Business and Communication Technologies, Digital Twin and Security, Architecture Technologies, Time and Text Management.

This collection covers various aspects of the fundamentals, synthesis, analysis, design, monitoring, and control of metals, materials, and metallurgical processes and phenomena. This volume will focus on the fundamentals of iron and steel production including ladle processing, casting, rolling, forging, and subsequent surface treatments. Topics represented include, but are not limited to: ¿ Use of artificial intelligence or big data in the control or optimization of industrial processes¿ Modelling or optimization of recycle streams and scrap loops¿ Measurement and control in hostile environments¿ Modeling transport phenomena in materials processing and metallurgical processes involving iron, steel, nonferrous metals, and composites¿ Thermodynamics, kinetics, andphysical chemistry of materials processes and modelling thereof

¿This book offers a fresh perspective on smart tourism, introducing unique frameworks and insights with the potential to shape the industry's future. It explores the convergence of technology, tourism, and smart cities, emphasizing the use of smartphones, social media data, AI, blockchain, crowdsourcing, and crowdsensing to enhance tourism experiences.What sets it apart is its focus on practical solutions that require minimal infrastructure investments, making it accessible to a wide range of stakeholders. This book addresses knowledge gaps and proposes cutting-edge frameworks for smart tourism development. It is intended for researchers, academics, and professionals in tourism, technology, and urban planning.Key uses of this book include providing a comprehensive overview of the evolving smart tourism landscape and serving as a valuable resource for researchers and educators in this dynamic field.

This book examines the impact of artificial intelligence on competition and antitrust in today's global digital economy. It scrutinizes the economic and legal ramifications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), addressing the challenges it presents to competition and the law.Beginning with an analysis of AI's developments across various economic sectors, the book highlights the need for updated legislation. It focuses on the digital economy, emphasizing digital platforms' role in shaping competition. Econometric investigations and a novel index assess competition's influence on foreign direct investment and multinational enterprises. Comparing competition practices across jurisdictions like the EU, US, Germany, and China, the book uncovers commonalities and differences in competition law principles. It also explores various theories on competition and competition law, seeking convergence or divergence.This book is an essential resource for scholars, legal professionals,policymakers, and anyone seeking a better understanding of how AI is reshaping competition and antitrust in the digital age.

This book presents papers submitted at 32nd International Conference on Organization and Technology of Maintenance (OTO 2023) held on December 12, 2023, at Osijek, Republic of Croatia.The objective of this conference is to promote, standardize, and support efforts to gain new knowledge in areas that are intimately tied to technical and social systems and where maintenance of any kind is of utmost importance. By bringing together experts from various fields, this conference aims to foster collaboration and the exchange of ideas, ultimately leading to advancements in both technical and social systems. Additionally, it seeks to create a platform for discussing best practices and innovative approaches in maintenance, ensuring the sustainability and efficiency of these systems in the long run. Furthermore, the upkeep of technological and social systems, along with their accessibility and dependability, significantly influences the long-term sustainability and economic feasibility of their functioning. Periodic and condition-based maintenance are integral components of the various systems, influencing their operational efforts and outcomes. By providing a space for professionals to exchange ideas and experiences, this platform facilitates the identification and implementation of cutting-edge maintenance strategies. Moreover, it recognizes the importance of addressing emerging challenges such as digitalization and environmental impact in order to ensure the continued effectiveness of these systems.Conference topics will address maintenance challenges in the areas of machine design, maintenance technologies in general, organization and management of maintenance proposals and procedures, quality management in system maintenance, information systems, product life cycle management, design for maintainability, material and structural properties, diagnosis and prediction of failures and breakdowns, design optimization for maintenance, analysis of maintenanceefficiency and cost-effectiveness, civil, mechanical and electrical engineering, etc.

This book is to provide a comprehensive reference for professionals in the field of data science and applications: artificial intelligence, big data, IoT, and blockchain. In summary, this book is expected to function as a helpful resource and manual, enabling readers to navigate the intricate domain of artificial intelligence, the Internet of things (IoT), and blockchain in smart environments. This book covers many topics related to integrating AI, IoT, blockchain, and smart environments. It begins by laying a solid foundation, introducing each technology's fundamental concepts and principles. Subsequent chapters explore applications and real-world use cases, demonstrating how AI, IoT, and blockchain can effectively address critical challenges within data science and applications.

Medical errors can have serious consequences, often resulting in harm to patients or even death. In the last decades the issue of the 2nd victim was raised, emphasizing the impact of being involved in an adverse event on the ability of caregivers to provide high quality and safe treatment. In 1999, the American Institute of Medicine (IOM) declared that rather than assigning blame for these errors, professional investigations should be carried out to identify what caused them and prevent similar events from reoccurring in the future focusing on systemic factors. It is estimated that in the US alone, there are between 250,000 to 400,000 preventable deaths annually due to medical errors, costing over 15 billion dollars per year. In response to this challenging issue, a team of medical professionals has created a comprehensive textbook on the subject of safety and risk management in medicine. This book covers a range of topics, including basic principles and concepts, the scope of iatrogenic harm, the development of risk management in medicine, and the organizational safety culture. Emphasis is placed on the human and organizational factors that contribute to medical errors, as well as practical methods and tools for coping effectively with this phenomenon. The book is based on extensive practical experience in promoting patient safety in a variety of medical organizations. In addition, the book includes a large chapter on risk management during epidemics, which has become increasingly relevant in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This textbook is a must-read for anyone involved in patient care, including doctors, nurses, managers, pharmacists, psychologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and students in all medical professions. By promoting a culture of safety and risk management, we can work towards reducing the number of preventable medical errors and improving patient outcomes.

This book presents various models and approaches, specific proposals, and recommendations on a whole range of areas for smart cities' development. This book proposes to look at the problem through a broad overview of all elements of a smart city as a single system: smart governance, smart buildings, smart transportation, smart tourism destinations, smart economy, and smart environment.The book is intended for both young and experienced scientists who want to get acquainted with the latest trends and data for using them in their research.

This book presents the recent developments in immunomodulatory biomaterials for cell-based therapies in various diseases, including diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and bone regeneration. The authors first cover the fundamentals of conventional immunology and immunomodulation, before focusing on the history, advantages, and challenges of cell therapies. Biological cell therapy has gained immense attention for various diseases due to unique advantages it has over chemical drugs regarding cost, ease of production, toxicity, and therapeutic efficacy. However, these cell-based therapies need an inert delivery system that can locally deliver cells and minimally elicit foreign body response. The book discusses the foreign body response to the immunomodulatory biomaterials as well as the current and future strategies for potential mitigation of considerable immune responses toward immunomodulatory biomaterials and devices.

In this book, various chaos maps are embedded in eleven efficient and well-known metaheuristics and a significant improvement in the optimization results is achieved. The two basic steps of metaheuristic algorithms consist of exploration and exploitation. The imbalance between these stages causes serious problems for metaheuristic algorithms, which are immature convergence and stopping in local optima. Chaos maps with chaotic jumps can save algorithms from being trapped in local optima and lead to convergence toward global optima. Embedding these maps in the exploration phase, exploitation phase, or both simultaneously corresponds to three efficient and useful scenarios. By creating competition between different modes and increasing diversity in the search space and creating sudden jumps in the search phase, improvements are achieved for chaotic algorithms. Four Chaotic Algorithms, including Chaotic Cyclical Parthenogenesis Algorithm, Chaotic Water Evaporation Optimization, Chaotic Tug-of-War Optimization, and Chaotic Thermal Exchange Optimization are developed.

Active Objects are a programming paradigm that supports a non-competitive, data-driven concurrency model. This renders active object languages to be well-suited for simulation, data race-free programming, and formal verification. Concepts from active objects made their way into languages such as Rust, ABS, Akka, JavaScript, and Go. This is the first comprehensive state-of-art overview on the subject, the invited contributions are written by experts in the areas of distributed systems, formal methods, and programming languages.

This book addresses two of the most relevant yet understudied questions in field of International Political Economy (IPE): 1) what explains the trade policy preferences of the organizations that represent economic producers in the political sphere?; and 2) how they are formed? Specifically, it focuses on the evolution of the preferences of industry peak organizations in Brazil and Argentina, the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) -and the Sao Paulo Federation of Industries (FIESP) - in the first case, and the Argentine Industrial Union (UIA) in the second, regarding Mercosur's preferential trade agreements (PTA) negotiation agenda between 2010 and 2020. The author proposes a novel explanation, which combines elements from the open economy politics (OEP) paradigm with insights from ideational IPE. This book will appeal to research scholars, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students, policymakers and professionals working in the fields of trade and industrial policies, trade agreements and negotiations, regionalism and government-business relations.

This book starts with the rationale for creating an FCM by contrast to other techniques for participatory modeling, as this rationale is a key element to justify the adoption of techniques in a research paper. Fuzzy cognitive mapping is an active research field with over 20,000 publications devoted to externalizing the qualitative perspectives or ¿mental models¿ of individuals and groups. Since the emergence of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) back in the 80s, new algorithms have been developed to reduce bias, facilitate the externalization process, or efficiently utilize quantitative data via machine learning. It covers the development of an FCM with participants through a traditional in-person setting, drawing from the experience of practitioners and highlighting solutions to commonly encountered challenges. The book continues with introducing principles of simulations with FCMs as a tool to perform what-if scenario analysis, while extending those principles to more elaborated simulation scenarios where FCMs and agent-based modeling are combined. Once an FCM model is obtained, the book then details the analytical tools available for practitioners (e.g., to identify the most important factors) and provides examples to aid in the interpretation of results. The discussion concerning relevant extensions is equally pertinent, which are devoted to increasing the expressiveness of the FCM formalism in problems involving uncertainty. The last four chapters focus on building FCM models from historical data. These models are typically needed when facing multi-output prediction or pattern classification problems. In that regard, the book smoothly guides the reader from simple approaches to more elaborated algorithms, symbolizing the noticeable progress of this field in the last 35 years. Problems, recent references, and functional codes are included in each chapter to provide practice and support further learning from practitioners and researchers.

Universities have long been dominated by a philosophy of inquiry that may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that, in order to do justice to the basic humanitarian aim of helping to promote human welfare, academic inquiry must, in the first instance, seek knowledge and technological know-how. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help promote human welfare. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual and humanitarian disaster. It violates three of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable, and as a result fails to give priority to the task of helping humanity resolve those conflicts and problems of living, such as the climate and nature crises, that need to be resolved if we are to make progress to a better world ¿ a world in which there is peace, democracy, justice, liberty, and sustainable prosperity, for all. Very few academics today are aware of this rationality scandal. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in universities around the world, wherever possible, so that academic inquiry puts all four rules of rational problem solving into practice, and becomes rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to make progress towards a better world. Knowledge-inquiry needs to become wisdom-inquiry, rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world.

This book aims at introducing students into the modern analytical foundations to treat problems and situations in the Calculus of Variations solidly and rigorously. Since no background is taken for granted or assumed, as the textbook pretends to be self-contained, areas like basic Functional Analysis and Sobolev spaces are studied to the point that chapters devoted to these topics can be utilized by themselves as an introduction to these important parts of Analysis. The material in this regard has been selected to serve the needs of classical variational problems, leaving broader treatments for more advanced and specialized courses in those areas. It should not be forgotten that problems in the Calculus of Variations historically played a crucial role in pushing Functional Analysis as a discipline on its own right. The style is intentionally didactic. After a first general chapter to place optimization problems in infinite-dimensional spaces in perspective, the first part of the book focuses on the initial important concepts in Functional Analysis and introduces Sobolev spaces in dimension one as a preliminary, simpler case (much in the same way as in the successful book of H. Brezis). Once the analytical framework is covered, one-dimensional variational problems are examined in detail including numerous examples and exercises. The second part dwells, again as a first-round, on another important chapter of Functional Analysis that students should be exposed to, and that eventually will find some applications in subsequent chapters. The first chapter of this part examines continuous operators and the important principles associated with mappings between functional spaces; and another one focuses on compact operators and their fundamental and remarkable properties for Analysis. Finally, the third part advances to multi-dimensional Sobolev spaces and the corresponding problems in the Calculus of Variations. In this setting, problems become much more involved and, for this same reason, much more interesting and appealing. In particular, the final chapter dives into a number of advanced topics, some of which reflect a personal taste. Other possibilities stressing other kinds of problems are possible. In summary, the text pretends to help students with their first exposure to the modern calculus of variations and the analytical foundation associated with it. In particular, it covers an extended introduction to basic functional analysis and to Sobolev spaces. The tone of the text and the set of proposed exercises will facilitate progressive understanding until the need for further challenges beyond the topics addressed here will push students to more advanced horizons.

Campus Fictions argues that the academic novel balances utopian and regressive tendencies, reinforcing the crises we face in higher learning while simultaneously signposting hope for a worn institution. Whether a bestseller such as Erich Segal ¿s romance Love Story (1970) or wonkier fare such as Don DeLillös White Noise (1985), the academic novel mystifies the academy not only to a wide public but alsöworse¿to readers who might describe themselves as sympathetic to higher learning. The book takes an eclectic approach to the academic novel with chapters discussing, for example, the genre¿s rampant anti-intellectualism and its work refusals, studying novels such as Ishmael Reed¿s Japanese by Spring (1993) and Julie Schumacher¿s Dear Committee Members (2014). The book is also accompanied by the ¿Directory of the American Campus Novel ¿ file, which tracks the genre by year, by setting, and by other datapoints that readers might make use of. Responding directly to Jeffrey Williams, the renowned scholar of critical university studies who implores faculty to ¿teach the university,¿ the book ¿s conclusion describes strategies for putting these novels into circulation in the classroom. Through this breadth, Campus Fictions establishes the importance of maintaining hope in the field of critical university studies, which tends toward apocalypticism and perhaps therefore toward disengagement.

We are currently witnessing the emergence of a ¿third culture¿, driven by unprecedented developments that are changing the playing field. These include advances in AI, big data analysis and robotics. The traditional ¿two cultures¿ view (S. P. Snow) distinguishes between the sciences and the humanities. The wisdoms these two cultures offer are separated from each other, with little to no interaction or mutual comprehension. However, over the past two decades, and for the first time in human history, a new, third culture has appeared. This new culture, rooted in new technologies, not only pursues its own form of rationality but also supports advances in the original two cultures, deepening and expanding our individual and collective consciousness so that we can see more and do better. It will eventually give rise to new forms of consciousness based not on biochemical signals, but on copper wires and lithium chips. These new machine intelligences will change the world and force us to realise: we are no longer alone. The human species¿ position in the twenty-first century will be fundamentally redefined: not as a conductor leading the orchestra, but a single string player within it.

This book comprises the papers presented at the 22nd UK Workshop on Computational Intelligence (UKCI 2023), held at Aston University, Birmingham, the UK, during 6 to 8 September 2023. UKCI is the flagship AI conference of the UK and Europe held annually. In UKCI 2023, a total of 63 papers were received from 11 countries including the UK, India, Germany, China, Japan, Australia, Italy, Thailand, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia; of these, 50 were accepted for presentation. The review process was rigorous, wherein three reviews were provided for all papers, with some having four reviews. This book highlights the latest research developments in computational intelligence and its applications. It covers both conventional and advanced techniques in fuzzy systems, neural networks, evolutionary computation, machine learning, deep learning, federated learning, data mining, cognitive computing, intelligent robotics, optimization methods, hybrid methods, and applications of computational intelligence. The book offers a valuable reference guide for readers with expertise in computational intelligence or who are seeking a comprehensive and timely review of the latest trends in computational intelligence. Special emphasis is placed on novel methods and their use in a wide range of application areas, updating both academics and professionals on the state of the art.

The year 2021 marked the five-hundredth anniversary of Christianity in the Philippines. With over 90% of the Filipin@s (Filipino/as) in the country and more than eight million around the world identifying as Christian, they are a significant force reshaping global Christianity. The fifth centenary called for celebration, reflection, and critique. This book represents the voices of theologians in the Philippines, the United States, Australia, and around the world examining Christianity in the Philippines through a postcolonial theological lens that suggests the desire to go beyond the colonial in all its contemporary manifestations. Part 1, ¿Rethinking the Encounters,¿ focuses on introducing the context of Christianity¿s arrival in the archipelago and its effect on its peoples. Part 2, ¿Reappropriation, Resistance, and Decolonization,¿ grapples with the enduring presence of coloniality in Filipin@ religious practices. It also celebrates the ways Christianity has been critically and creatively reimagined.

This book is a useful source of knowledge for engineers and scientists in the field of mechanics of deformation and destruction of composite materials.In Chapter 1 three-dimensional equations of elasticity theory composed for the case of finite displacements and deformations of solids have been analyzed. It is found that the generally accepted simplifications known in the literature and carried out for the case of small deformations result in equations that are considered to be absolutely correct and consistent in all scientific and educational literature on mechanics of deformable solid bodies. However, this conclusion is not sufficiently well-founded as confirmed by formulation and solution of problems on the basis of generally accepted equations for determining both the stress-strain state (SSS) and the critical loads and buckling modes. In Chapter 2 the theoretical and experimental methods for determining the mechanical characteristics of fiber-reinforced plastics (FRPs) based on tensile and compression tests of flat specimens with [0]s , [±90]s, and [±45]2s lay-ups are analyzed. For FRPs with [±45]2s lay-ups, relations are derived for determining the components of lamina strains and stresses in the orthotropy axes of FRP monolayer in terms of axial strains and Poisson ratios of specimens measured in experiments. In Chapter 3 the structure of a unidirectional fibre composite of two types ELUR-P carbon fibre based on KhT-118 cold-curing binder and HSE 180 REM prepreg based on hot-curing binder has been studied. The diameters of fibres and fibre bundles (filaments) of both types of composites have been measured. Based on the results of the analysis of the composite material structure, a refined formulation of the linearised problems of a refined statement of linearized problems on flat internal multiscale buckling modes of a rigid lamina with either fibers or a fiber bundle is presented taking into account their interaction with an epoxy matrix. In Chapter 4 for shells of a layered structure based on the Timoshenkös model, taking into account the transverse compression used for each layer, two versions of two-dimensional equations are constructed that describe geometrically nonlinear deformation with arbitrary displacements and small deformations. The formulation of a linear problem on the initial (subcritical) stress-strain state of a test specimen from a unidirectional fibrous composite with the [900]s structure during tension-compression tests with shear is given. A numerical method for solving the formulated problem is developed, which is based on the reduction of the original problem to a system of integro-algebraic equations and the search for their numerical solution by the finite sum method. In Chapter 5 conclusions were done and directions for further research have been identified.

This book contains the proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Energy Engineering and Environmental Engineering (ICEEEE2023) that was held on August 6-8 2023 in Singapore. ICEEEE2023 is organized by Beijing Jiaotong University and Newcastle University. This book provides an international forum for discussion and communication of energy and environmental engineering.It is expected to report the latest technological developments in the fields developed by academic researchers and industrial practitioners, with a focus on renewable energy technologies and systems, energy efficiency and conservation, environmental pollution and control, sustainable development, and green cities. The contents of this proceedings will be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers alike.

The Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) is a management methodology for developing the sustainable performance of organizations. It finds its roots in a socially responsible vision of capitalism and its originality is to offer a unique management model useful for sustainably managing people and providing socially responsible consulting, as well as for carrying out research-interventions and creating knowledge. This book is the first to present in a synthetic way and illustrate with case studies the political, managerial and scientific dimensions of SEAM.This methodology has been successfully tested on thousands of companies and organizations from 48 different countries since 1974 and distinguished by prestigious French and American academies. It aims to convert the hidden costs of social dissatisfaction (absenteeism, excessive staff turnover, underproductivity) into economic value for the organization, which can be used to increase salaries, self-financedinvestments, master budgets or remunerate shareholders. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of management, as well as practitioners and consultants.

Life in the Age of Insulin offers a straightforward and jargon-free narrative account of how insulin was discovered, what it does, why people still struggle to obtain it, and what the future might hold. It tells of the creative power that emerges when many people work towards a common goal, and of collective strength founded upon the limitations of individuals. It envisages a future of competitive insulin pricing and revolutionary therapies, kindling hope for health equity.With over 70 million insulin users world-wide, this book bridges the gap for patients and families. It will appeal to health professionals, to those intrigued by science, and to anyone who likes a good story.Life in the Age of Insulin is an empathetic and enlightening saga of science, society and human resilience.