Renewable Energy and Sustainable Buildings


Book Description

This book contains selected papers presented during the World Renewable Energy Network’s 28thanniversary congress at the University of Kingston in London. The forum highlighted the integration of renewables and sustainable buildings as the best means to combat climate change. In-depth chapters written by the world’s leading experts highlight the most current research and technological breakthroughs and discuss policy, renewable energy technologies and applications in all sectors – for heating and cooling, agricultural applications, water, desalination, industrial applications and for the transport sectors. Presents cutting-edge research in green building and renewable energy from all over the world; Covers the most up-to-date research developments, government policies, business models, best practices and innovations; Contains case studies and examples to enhance practical application of the technologies.




Highly Complex Syllable Structure


Book Description

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language whose strongest cross-linguistic patterns are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure. Syllable patterns involving long sequences of consonants are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized, with few approaches treating these as natural or unproblematic structures. This book is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The two aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that they constitute a distinct linguistic type, and (ii) to identify possible diachronic paths and natural mechanisms by which these patterns come about in the history of a language. These issues are investigated in a diversified sample of 100 languages, 25 of which have highly complex syllable patterns. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.




ECEG2013- 13th European Conference on eGovernment


Book Description

These proceedings represent the work of authors at the 13th European Conference on e-Government (ECEG 2013). The Conference this year is hosted by the Iuniversity of Insubria in Como, Italy. The Conference Chair is Professor Walter Castelnovo and the Programme Chair is Professor Elena Ferrari, both are fro the Department of Theoretical and Applied Sciences at the University of Insubria. The opening keynote address is given by Dr Gianluca Misuraca from the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Seville, Spain and Gianluca is addressing the topic "eGovernment: Past, Present & Future: A policy-research perspective for renewing governance in the digital age". The second day of the conference is opened by Dr Antoinio Cordella from the London School of Economics, London, UK, who will talk about "Public value creation: the new challenge for e-government policies". ECEG brings together, researchers, Government officials and practitioners in the area of e-Government from around the world. Participants are able to share their research findings and explore the latest developments and trends in the field which can then be disseminated to the wider community. With an initial submission of 153 abstracts, after the double blind, peer review process there are papers published in these Conference Proceedings from 40 countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Croatia, Denmark, Eygpt, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, UK and USA. This will ensure a very interesting two days.




Warlord Democrats in Africa


Book Description

Post-war democratization has been identified as a crucial mechanism to build peace in war-ridden societies, supposedly allowing belligerents to compete through ballots rather than bullets. A byproduct of this process, however, is that military leaders often become an integral part of the new democratic system, using resources and networks generated from the previous war to dominate the emerging political landscape. The crucial and thus-far overlooked question to be addressed, therefore, is what effect the inclusion of ex-militaries into electoral politics has on post-war security. Can 'warlord democrats' make a positive contribution by shepherding their wartime constituencies to support the building of peace and democracy, or are they likely to use their electoral platforms to sponsor political violence and keep war-affected communities mobilized through aggressive discourses? This important volume, containing a wealth of fresh empirical detail and theoretical insight, and focussing on some of Africa's most high-profile political figures – from Paul Kagame to Riek Machar to Afonso Dhlakama – represents a crucial intervention in the literature of post-war democratization.




Textbook of Israeli Hebrew


Book Description

The aim of this book is to enable the student to read, write, and speak acceptable Israeli Hebrew and to understand less complex biblical Hebrew. A unique feature is the author's use of the principles of structural analysis. For students who are not acquainted with a language other than English, he elucidates those features of the language that are unfamiliar in the structure of English. The student is trained, from the first, to read "unvocalized" script as the native reader does, and "reading clues" (word and phrase patterns) are provided for this purpose. The work is organized into sections that can be worked through in an academic year—presentation of features, text samples, exercises, grammatical synopses, and individual and comprehensive glossaries. This text may be used by teachers without specialized training in linguistics. It can be used by self-teaching students as well as by those at college level, and it will valuable for immigrants to Israel.







Selected Topics in the Chemistry of Natural Products


Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world. Francis Fukuyama, author of the bestselling The End of History and the Last Man and one of our most important political thinkers, provides a sweeping account of how today’s basic political institutions developed. The first of a major two-volume work, The Origins of Political Order begins with politics among our primate ancestors and follows the story through the emergence of tribal societies, the growth of the first modern state in China, the beginning of the rule of law in India and the Middle East, and the development of political accountability in Europe up until the eve of the French Revolution. Drawing on a vast body of knowledge—history, evolutionary biology, archaeology, and economics—Fukuyama has produced a brilliant, provocative work that offers fresh insights on the origins of democratic societies and raises essential questions about the nature of politics and its discontents.




Prosodic Detail in Neapolitan Italian


Book Description

Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody.




Highly complex syllable structure: A typological and diachronic study


Book Description

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language whose strongest cross-linguistic patterns are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure. Syllable patterns involving long sequences of consonants are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized, with few approaches treating these as natural or unproblematic structures. This book is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The two aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that they constitute a distinct linguistic type, and (ii) to identify possible diachronic paths and natural mechanisms by which these patterns come about in the history of a language. These issues are investigated in a diversified sample of 100 languages, 25 of which have highly complex syllable patterns. Languages with highly complex syllable structure are characterized by a number of phonetic, phonological, and morphological features which serve to set them apart from languages with simpler syllable patterns. These include specific segmental and suprasegmental properties, a higher prevalence of vowel reduction processes with extreme outcomes, and higher average morpheme/word ratios. The results suggest that highly complex syllable structure is a linguistic type distinct from but sharing some characteristics with other proposed holistic phonological types, including stress-timed and consonantal languages. The results point to word stress and specific patterns of gestural organization as playing important roles in the diachronic development of these patterns out of simpler syllable structures.




Water, Energy & Food Sustainability in the Middle East


Book Description

This book provides a survey of technologies available to tackle the problems associated with climate change in the energy, water and food security nexus with a special focus on the Middle East. It is divided into three main sections. The energy Section consists of six chapters, the water section of seven chapters and finally the food security section has six chapters. The individual chapters are authored by experts and provide discussions and in-depth views on the current status of each topic.