Pirates, it is frequently claimed, have existed since the dawn of history, as long as there has been traff ic and commerce at sea.1 Presumably, the origins of piracy would thus be sometime in the pre-historic past, when people f irst took to the sea for commercial purposes, probably around eight thousand years ago, along the coast of the Persian Gulf.2 Historical records over close to three and…
he authority of contemporary science is fuelled by its achievements. The extraordinary experimental success of the Standard Model of particle physics and of the descrip-tion of quantum mechanical interactions between those particles, the observational data confirming the Big Bang theory and the age of the universe, as well as the discovery of its accelerating expansion (not to mention more spec…
In the history of education, the question of how computers were introduced into European classrooms has so far been largely neglected. This edited volume strives to address this gap. The contributions shed light on the computerization of general education from a historical perspective, by looking closely at the different actors, political rationales and ideologies, as well as financial, politic…
This ebook stands at an intersection of science and art. From its origins, NASA has studied our planet in novel ways, using ingenious tools to study physical processes at work—from beneath the crust to the edge of the atmosphere. We look at it in macrocosm and microcosm, from the flow of one mountain stream to the flow of jet streams. Most of all, we look at Earth as a system, examining the c…
The Encyclopedic Dictionary of International Finance and Banking is written and compiled for working professionals engaged in the fields of international finance, global trade, foreign investments, and banking. It may be used for day-to-day practice and for technical research. The Encyclopedic Dictionary is a practical reference of proven techniques, strategies, and approaches that are successf…
In the two decades since the debut of the Digital Earth (DE) vision, a con-certed international effort has engaged in nurturing the development of a technologyframework and harnessing applications to preserve the planet and sustain humansocieties. Evolutionary threads can be traced to key historic and multidisciplinaryfoundations, which were presciently articulated and represented at the first …
In the past few decades, scholars have celebrated the end of history and pro-claimed its rebirth. Outside the walls of the academy, in the media, it is easy to find claims that readers and viewers are “witnessing” (or consuming) history, that certain events, from pie- eating contests to war catastrophes and natural phenomena, are “historical.” Govern…
This food preservation manual is written to assist the parent or club leader in teaching young people about food safety and preservation through hands-on activities. If you are introducing yourself or youth to the world of food preservation, this is a fun place to begin! As a leader you will need this manual, which includes lists of materials and handouts to be copied. Each youth should have th…
The various multidimensional derivatives take on more complicated forms in non-Cartesian coordinates such as cylindrical or spherical. You can derive the Laplacian for these other coordinate systems by changing variables and rewriting the unit vectors starting from the above Cartesian expression. Throughout this book we will often encounter sets of linear equations. (They are called linear equa…
For more than 150 years, since the publication of On the Origin of Species, biologists have focused on understanding the evolutionary chronicle of diversification and extinction, and the underlying evolutionary processes that have produced it. Although progress in evolutionary biology has been steady since Darwin’s time, developments in the last 20 years have ushered in a golden era of evolut…