When Raphael Cilento drafted his unpublished autobiography, he called it ‘The World, My Oyster’. Some of the other titles he considered—such as ‘Confessions of an International Character’, ‘20th Century Spotlight’, ‘Mankind in the Raw’ and ‘Tapestry of Humanity’—similarly evoked his international career. Other alternatives—such as ‘Topical Confessions of a Tropical D…
A semi-popular science book on reproductive genetics: why, you may ask? Because reproduc-tion is the central theme in both biology and evolutionary biology.How can a species persist? The relay baton in the form of the fusion of the egg and sperm cell creates a new generation that gets to run another lap and pass on the baton. What lies behind this metaphor, and how does it work? What are the im…
Security Sector Reform (SSR) is at a crossroads. SSR concepts and practices are embedded in international efforts to promote peace, security and development. They are widely considered an essential element of many multilateral and bilateral stabilization efforts and are a standard feature of the post-conflict toolkit.1 SSR is routinely commended for the way it can integrate siloe…
This book offers exciting and often surprising insights into one hundred diseases that have emerged over the past century. The authors focus on the period from 1923, when Radboud University was founded, to 2023, the university's centennial anniversary. All of the diseases included in this book have left an indelible mark on the century in which they emerged, in either a scientific and/or socio-…
One frequently discussedconvexdistributed optimization method is the Alternat-ing Direction of Multipliers Method (ADMM)[3],whichisalsoappliedincontextofAC OPF[1,4,5].ADMMoften yields promising results even for large-scalepower systems [4]. However,ADMMsometimes requires a specific partitioningtechnique and/or a feasible initialization in combination with high consensus-v…
Complex technology has been around ever since the start of computers. MaxwellNewman’sfirst programmable computer Colossus in 1943 cracking World War IIcryptography was a truly complex system at that time (Haigh & Ceruzzi,2021). In1965 Gordon Moore posited that the number of transistors on microchips doublesevery 2 years, implying that the technical developments underlying our increasinglycomp…
Why do some people appear to obtain a disproportionate share of income and wealth? The French economist Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, frames the problem in a rather old-fashioned way as a tussle between capital and labour. His main thesis is that inequality is rising because the rate of return on capital, held disproportionately by the wealthy, exc…
When the volcano Tambora erupted in Indonesia in 1815, as many as 100,000 people perished as a result of the blast and an ensuing famine caused by the destruction of rice fields on Sumbawa and neighboring islands. Gases and dust particles ejected into the atmosphere changed weather patterns around the world, resulting in the infamous ''year without a summer'' in North America, food riots in Eur…
Our aim in this chapter is to show and discuss what is lost in digital trans-lations as the welfare state and society increasingly use digital technology in welfare production. We argue that there are several unintended conse-quences we need to be attentive to regarding digitalising society and our welfare production, distribution, and consumption. In addition, there is a need to make what is l…
Realize your psychic potential with the Tarot! Everyone is psychic to one degree or another. And with The Everything Tarot Book, 2nd Edition, you’ll unlock the mysteries of the cards and thus boost your innate psychic abilities. Completely revised, this easy-to-use guide has everything you need to conduct complete Tarot readings for yourself and others. The Tarot deck has been used for …