Understanding the creeping crisis
This book explores a special species of trouble afflicting modern societies: creeping crises. These crises evolve over time, reveal themselves in different ways, and resist comprehensive responses despite periodic public attention. As a result, these crises continue to creep in front of our eyes. This book begins by defining the concept of a creeping crisis, showing how existing literature fails to properly define and explore this phenomenon and outlining the challenges such crises pose to practitioners. Drawing on ongoing research, this book presents a diverse set of case studies on: antimicrobial resistance, climate change-induced migration, energy extraction, big data, Covid-19, migration, foreign fighters, and cyberattacks
Understanding society and natural eesources : Forging new strands of integration across the social sciences
In this edited open access book leading scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds wrestle with social science integration opportunities and challenges. This book explores the growing concern of how best to achieve effective integration of the social science disciplines as a means for furthering natural resource social science and environmental problem solving. The chapters provide an overview of the history, vision, advances, examples, and methods that could lead to integration.
Understanding Risks and Uncertainties in Energy and Climate Policy : Multidisciplinary Methods and Tools for a Low Carbon Society
This book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies’ implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.
Understanding Programming Languages
This book is about describing the meaning of programming languages. While a compiler or an interpreter offers a form of formal description of a language, it is not something that can be used as a basis for reasoning about that language nor can it serve as a definition of a programming language itself since this must allow a range of implementations. By writing a formal semantics of a language a designer can yield a far shorter description and tease out, analyse and record design choices.Early in the book the author introduces a simple notation, a meta-language, used to record descriptions of the semantics of languages. In a practical approach, he considers dozens of issues that arise in current programming languages and the key techniques that must be mastered in order to write the required formal semantic descriptions. The book concludes with a discussion of the eight key challenges: delimiting a language (concrete representation), delimiting the abstract content of a language, recording semantics (deterministic languages), operational semantics (non-determinism), context dependency, modelling sharing, modelling concurrency, and modelling exits.
Understanding Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics : Foundations, Applications, Frontiers
Our time is characterized by an explosion of information and by an accel- ation of knowledge. A book cannot compete with the huge amount of data available on the Web. However, to assimilate all this information, it is n- essary to structure our knowledge in a useful conceptual framework. The purpose of the present work is to provide such a structure for students and researchers interested by the current state of the art of non-equilibrium th- modynamics. The main features of the book are a concise and critical pres- tation of the basic ideas, illustrated by a series of examples, selected not only for their pedagogical value but also for the perspectives o?ered by recent technological advances. This book is aimed at students and researchers in physics, chemistry, engineering, material sciences, and biology. We have been guided by two apparently antagonistic objectives: gener- ity and simplicity. To make the book accessible to a large audience of n- specialists, we have decided about a simpli?ed but rigorous presentation. Emphasis is put on the underlying physical background without sacri?cing mathematical rigour, the several formalisms being illustrated by a list of - amplesandproblems.
Understanding Models for Learning and Instruction : Essays in Honor of Norbert M. Seel
For more than 25 years, the pioneering research and theories of Norbert Seel have had a profound impact on educational thought in mathematics. In this special tribute, an international panel of researchers present the current state of model-based education: its research, methodology, and technology. Fifteen stimulating, sometimes playful chapters link the multiple ways of constructing knowledge (and domains as diverse as cognitive science, computer science, and philosophy) to the complex real world of skill development; generalize model-based theories into educational settings; and explain how to design and evaluate model-centered learning environments. Extensive reading lists, provocative graphics, and a wealth of cultural touchstones from the Bible to Bob Dylan make Understanding Models for Learning and Instruction an accessible yet thought provoking collection.
Understanding drugs markets : An analysis of medicines, regulations and pharmaceutical systems in the global south
Highlights the influence of the countries colonial and post-colonial history on their models for state regulation, production, and distribution, explores the determining role transnational actors as well as industries from the North but also and increasingly from the South play in influencing local pharmaceutical markets and looks at the behaviour of health care professionals and individuals. Stepping back, the authors then unpick the pharmaceuticalization process and the multiple regulations at stake by looking at the workings of, and linkages between, (biomedical health) pharmaceutical systems, (representatives of companies) industries, actors in private distribution, and consumer practices.
Understanding Biology Using Peptides ; Proceedings of the Nineteenth American Peptide Symposium
Understanding Biology Using Peptides: Proceedings of the 19th American Peptide Symposium highlights many of the recent developments in peptide science, with a particular emphasis on how these advances are being applied to basic problems in biology and medicine. Specific topics covered include novel synthetic strategies, peptides in biological signaling, post-translational modifications of peptides and proteins, peptide quaternary structure in material science and disease, and peptides as tools in drug discovery.
Understanding acoustics : An experimentalist’s view of sound and vibration
Focuses on experiments and on approximation techniques rather than mathematical rigor. The second edition has benefited from comments and corrections provided by many acousticians, in particular those who have used the first edition in undergraduate and graduate courses. For example, phasor notation has been added to clearly distinguish complex variables, and there is a new section on radiation from an unbaffled piston
Understanding 3D Animation Using Maya
Many animators and designers would like to supplement their Maya learning with a less-technical, more helpful book. This self-study manual is both a general guide for understanding 3-D computer graphics and a specific guide for learning the fundamentals of Maya: workspace, modeling, animation, shading, lighting, and rendering. Understanding 3-D Animation Using Maya covers these fundamentals in each chapter so that readers gain increasingly detailed knowledge. After an initial 'concepts' section launches each chapter, hands-on tutorials are provided, as well as a chapter project that progressively adds newly learned material and culminates in the final animated short.
Undergraduate Algebra
Undergraduate Algebra is a text for the standard undergraduate algebra course. It concentrates on the basic structures and results of algebra, discussing groups, rings, modules, fields, polynomials, finite fields, Galois Theory, and other topics. The author has also included a chapter on groups of matrices which is unique in a book at this level. Throughout the book, the author strikes a balance between abstraction and concrete results, which enhance each other. Illustrative examples accompany the general theory. Numerous exercises range from the computational to the theoretical, complementing results from the main text.
Underactuated Robotic Hands
Grasping and manipulation skills are at the core of the development of modern robotic systems. With the introduction of robotics in new applications involving unstructured environments (e.g. space, undersea, surgery). The purpose of this book is to summarize years of research and to present, in an attractive format, the expertise developed by the authors on a new technology for grasping—namely underactuation—which has achieved great success both in theory and in practice. This book is not intended to be used as a textbook but could be used as a reference at the post-graduate level.
Unconventional Computing ; 7th International Conference, UC 2008 Vienna, Austria, August 25-28, 2008. Proceedings
The book is devoted to all aspects of unconventional computation ranging from theoretical and experimental aspects to various applications. Typical topics are: natural computing including quantum, cellular, molecular, neural and evolutionary computing, chaos and dynamical system-based computing, and various proposals for computations that go beyond the Turing model.
Unconventional Computation ; Vol. 3699 ; 4th International Conference, UC 2005, Sevilla, Spain, October 3-7, Proceedings
The Fourth International Conference on Unconventional Computation, UC 2005, organized under the auspices of EATCS by the Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science and the Department of C- puter Science and Arti?cial Intelligence of the University of Seville, was held in Seville, October 3-7, 2005.
Unconventional Computation ; 6th International Conference, UC 2007, Kingston, Canada, August 13-17, 2007, Proceedings
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Unconventional Computation, UC 2007,organized under the auspices of the EATCS by the Centre for Discrete Math.
Uncertainty, Rationality, and Agency
This book is about Rational Agents, which can be humans, players in a game, software programs or institutions. Typically, such agents are uncertain about the state of affairs or the state of other agents, and under this partial information they have to decide on which action to take next. This book collects chapters that give formal accounts not only of Uncertainty, Rationality and Agency, but also of their interaction: what are rational criteria to accept certain beliefs, or to modify them; how can degrees of beliefs guide an agent in making decisions; why distinguish between practical and epistemic rationality when agents try to coordinate; what must be common beliefs between agents about each other's rationality in order to act rationally themselves; can an agent assign probabilities to planned actions; how to formalise assumptions about a rational speaker in a conversation obeying Gricean maxims.
Uncertainty Reasoning for the Semantic Web I ; ISWC International Workshops, URSW 2005-2007, Revised Selected and Invited Papers
Represents the first comprehensive compilation of state-of-the-art research approaches to uncertainty reasoning in the context of the semantic Web, capturing different models of uncertainty and approaches to deductive as well as inductive reasoning with uncertain formal knowledge.
Uncertainty in the Electric Power Industry : Methods and Models for Decision Support
Examines the uncertainties power companies are facing and develops models to describe them – including an innovative approach combining fundamental and finance models for price modeling. The optimization of generation and trading portfolios under uncertainty is discussed with particular focus on CHP and is linked to risk management. Here the concept of integral earnings at risk is developed to provide a theoretically sound combination of value at risk and profit at risk approaches, adapted to real market structures and market liquidity. Also methods for supporting long-term investment decisions are presented: technology assessment based on experience curves and operation simulation for fuel cells and a real options approach with endogenous electricity prices.
Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering ; Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering (ICUME 2021), June 7–8, 2021
Reports on methods and technologies to describe, evaluate and control uncertainty in mechanical engineering applications. It brings together contributions by engineers, mathematicians and legal experts, offering a multidisciplinary perspective on the main issues affecting uncertainty throughout the complete system lifetime, which includes process and product planning, development, production and usage. The book is based on the proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Uncertainty in Mechanical Engineering (ICUME 2021), organized by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 805 of the TU Darmstadt, and held online on June 7–8, 2021. All in all, it offers a timely resource for researchers, graduate students and practitioners in the field of mechanical engineering, production engineering and engineering optimization.
Uncertainty in Engineering : Introduction to Methods and Applications
Provides an introduction to uncertainty quantification in engineering. Starting with preliminaries on Bayesian statistics and Monte Carlo methods, followed by material on imprecise probabilities, it then focuses on reliability theory and simulation methods for complex systems. The final two chapters discuss various aspects of aerospace engineering, considering stochastic model updating from an imprecise Bayesian perspective, and uncertainty quantification for aerospace flight modelling.



















