A Materialist Theory of Justice offers an innovative (re)reading of justice that draws from diverse theoretical currents, tracing in the process an age-old tradition of critical thought.
The topic of this monograph falls within the, so-called, biologically motivated computing paradigm, in which biology provides the source of models and inspiration towards the development of computational intelligence and machine learning systems. Specifically, artificial immune systems are presented as a valid metaphor towards the creation of abstract and high level representations of biological components or functions that lay the foundations for an alternative machine learning paradigm. Therefore, focus is given on addressing the primary problems of Pattern Recognition by developing Artificial Immune System-based machine learning algorithms for the problems of Clustering, Classification and One-Class Classification. Pattern Classification, in particular, is studied within the context of the Class Imbalance Problem. The main source of inspiration stems from the fact that the Adaptive Immune System constitutes one of the most sophisticated biological systems that is exceptionally evolved in order to continuously address an extremely unbalanced pattern classification problem, namely, the self / non-self discrimination process. The experimental results presented in this monograph involve a wide range of degenerate binary classification problems where the minority class of interest is to be recognized against the vast volume of the majority class of negative patterns. In this context, Artificial Immune Systems are utilized for the development of personalized software as the core mechanism behind the implementation of Recommender Systems. The book will be useful to researchers, practitioners and graduate students dealing with Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning and their applications in Personalized Software and Recommender Systems. It is intended for both the expert/researcher in these fields, as well as for the general reader in the field of Computational Intelligence and, more generally, Computer Science who wishes to learn more about the field of Intelligent Computing Systems and its applications. An extensive list of bibliographic references at the end of each chapter guides the reader to probe further into application area of interest to him/her.
The topic of this monograph falls within the, so-called, biologically motivated computing paradigm, in which biology provides the source of models and inspiration towards the development of computational intelligence and machine learning systems. Specifically, artificial immune systems are presented as a valid metaphor towards the creation of abstract and high level representations of biological components or functions that lay the foundations for an alternative machine learning paradigm. Therefore, focus is given on addressing the primary problems of Pattern Recognition by developing Artificial Immune System-based machine learning algorithms for the problems of Clustering, Classification and One-Class Classification. Pattern Classification, in particular, is studied within the context of the Class Imbalance Problem. The main source of inspiration stems from the fact that the Adaptive Immune System constitutes one of the most sophisticated biological systems that is exceptionally evolved in order to continuously address an extremely unbalanced pattern classification problem, namely, the self / non-self discrimination process. The experimental results presented in this monograph involve a wide range of degenerate binary classification problems where the minority class of interest is to be recognized against the vast volume of the majority class of negative patterns. In this context, Artificial Immune Systems are utilized for the development of personalized software as the core mechanism behind the implementation of Recommender Systems. The book will be useful to researchers, practitioners and graduate students dealing with Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning and their applications in Personalized Software and Recommender Systems. It is intended for both the expert/researcher in these fields, as well as for the general reader in the field of Computational Intelligence and, more generally, Computer Science who wishes to learn more about the field of Intelligent Computing Systems and its applications. An extensive list of bibliographic references at the end of each chapter guides the reader to probe further into application area of interest to him/her.
An introduction to the Large-Eddy-Simulation (LES) method, geared primarily toward hydraulic and environmental engineers, the book covers special features of flows in water bodies and summarizes the experience gained with LES for calculating such flows. It can also be a valuable entry to the subject of LES for researchers and students in all fields of fluids engineering, and the applications part will be useful to researchers interested in the physics of flows governed by the dynamics of coherent structures.
Non-state actors are not new, but they have never before reached their present strength. Among the plethora of non-state actors are thousands, if not millions, of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which play a significant role in the global system and whose role is likely to increase in the future. The proliferation of NGOs is of such scale, scholars refer to it as a global associational revolution. By considering NGOs throughout much of the world, Kaloudis focuses on the reasons for the growth of NGOs particularly since the end of the Cold War, the functions of NGOs, assessment of NGOs, and their place in the global system. The author also shows the ambivalent and often paradoxical role of NGOs, which is reflected in the works of scholars and the actual behavior of NGOs themselves.
Although banking and sovereign debt crises are not unusual, the crisis that has unfolded across the world since 2007 has been unique in both its scale and scope. It has also been unusual in being both triggered by, and mainly affecting, developed economies. Starting with the US subprime mortgage crisis, and the recession in 2007-2009, the problem soon erupted into financial crisis in Europe. A few of these countries came to the brink of bankruptcy, and were rescued by the EU and the IMF on the condition they adopt austerity measures. The detrimental social effects of the crisis in both the US and Europe are still emerging. Although there have been several studies published on the US crisis in particular, there has so far been an absence of an accessible comparative overview of both crises. This insightful text aims to fill this gap, offering a critical overview of causes, policy responses, effects and future implications. Starting with the historical context and mutation of the crisis, the book explores the policies, regulations, and governance reforms that have been implemented to cope with the US subprime mortgage crisis. A parallel analysis considers the causes of the European sovereign debt crisis and the responses of the European Union (EU), examining why the EU is as yet unable to resolve the crisis. This book is supported with eResources that include essay questions and class discussion questions in order to assist students in their understanding. This uniquely comprehensive and readable overview will be of interest and relevance to those studying financial crises, financial governance, international economics and international political economy.
The overall objective of the audit was to assess and report to Parliament on how effectively the Department of Family and Community Services administers the CSHA and to identify any areas where improvements could be made.
Scattering theory deals with the interactions of waves with obstacles in their path, and low frequency scattering occurs when the obstacles involved are very small. This book gives an overview of the subject for graduates and researchers, for the first time unifying the theories covering acoustic, electromagnetic and elastic waves.
New Economic Constitutionalism in Europe focuses on the institutional mutation of constitutionalism following the major economic crisis in the Eurozone and globally. The main axis is that a new economic constitutionalism has arisen which trespasses on the conventional conceptual foundations and needs to be addressed with novel institutional vehicles. The author proposes an original and searching analysis of the significant constitutional evolutions that have taken place in member states in response to the global financial crisis. The book combines a sophisticated theoretical model of a new form of economic constitutionalism with detailed practical argumentation. This important new work provides a valuable addition to the understanding of this hugely important topic.
A Materialist Theory of Justice offers an innovative (re)reading of justice that draws from diverse theoretical currents, tracing in the process an age-old tradition of critical thought.
The objective of the audit was to assess the framework and systems that DHAC has in place to prevent, control, monitor, detect and investigate fraud. The ANAO concluded that DHAC had taken appropriate steps to protect Commonwealth resources under its administration from fraudulent misappropriation by developing a sound fraud control framework, the effectiveness of which is illustrated by the relatively low incidence of reported fraud in the department over the last few years. The framework also includes key elements for preventing and dealing with fraud in line with the Commonwealth's Fraud Control Policy.
This is a systematic presentation of quantum field theory from first principles, emphasizing both theoretical concepts and experimental applications. Starting from introductory quantum and classical mechanics, this book develops the quantum field theories that make up the 'Standard Model' of elementary processes. It derives the basic techniques and theorems that underly theory and experiment, including those that are the subject of theoretical development. Special attention is also given to the derivations of cross sections relevant to current high-energy experiments and to perturbative quantum chromodynamics, with examples drawn from electron-positron annihilation, deeply inelastic scattering and hadron-hadron scattering. The first half of the book introduces the basic ideas of field theory. The discussion of mathematical issues is everywhere pedagogical and self contained. Topics include the role of internal symmetry and relativistic invariance, the path integral, gauge theories and spontaneous symmetry breaking, and cross sections in the Standard Model and in the parton model. The material of this half is sufficient for an understanding of the Standard Model and its basic experimental consequences. The second half of the book deals with perturbative field theory beyond the lowest-order approximation. Exercises are included for each chapter, and several appendices complement the text.
From the white editorial authentication of slave narratives, to the cultural hybridity of the Harlem Renaissance, to the overtly independent publications of the Black Arts Movement, to the commercial power of Oprah's Book Club, African American textuality has been uniquely shaped by the contests for cultural power inherent in literary production and distribution. Always haunted by the commodification of blackness, African American literary production interfaces with the processes of publication and distribution in particularly charged ways. An energetic exploration of the struggles and complexities of African American print culture, this collection ranges across the history of African American literature, and the authors have much to contribute on such issues as editorial and archival preservation, canonization, and the "packaging" and repackaging of black-authored texts. Publishing Blackness aims to project African Americanist scholarship into the discourse of textual scholarship, provoking further work in a vital area of literary study.
Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy came from Kansas City to find nationwide fame in the later 1930s. The many records they made between 1929 and 1949 came to exemplify the Kansas City style of jazz, but they were also criticized for their populism and inauthenticity. In The Recordings of Andy Kirk' and his Clouds of Joy, George Burrows considers these records as representing negotiations over racialized styles between black jazz musicians and the racist music industry during a vital period of popularity and change for American jazz. The book explores the way that these reformative negotiations shaped and can be heard in the recorded music. By comparing the band's appropriation of musical styles to the manipulation of masks in black forms of blackface performance--both signifying and subverting racist conceptions of black authenticity--it reveals how the dynamic between black musicians, their audiences and critics impacted upon jazz as a practice and conception.
This book systematically addresses Bourdieu’s key ideas and concepts in the context of Marxist thought. In this book, Bourdieu’s central theoretical points are analyzed within a political, sociological and politico-economic framework which allows for the development of a sequential narrative of his key ideas. Thus, the authors are able to highlight the theoretical consistencies and political conclusions which can be derived from Bourdieu’s work. For example, Bourdieu’s anti-neoliberal narrative is correlated with his analysis of class, and especially with his canonization of the petty bourgeoisie and its strategy for a reformed anti-neoliberal capitalism. The book also analyzes this coherent synthesis of Bourdieu’s work in the context of Marxist political economy, including not only Marx but also Lenin, Althusser and Poulantzas. In this context, the book explores Bourdieu’s work on the state, class strategy, socialism and capitalism. This unique perspective will be of great interest to social scientists, particularly in economics, politics and sociology, working on Bourdieu, Marx and capitalism.
Since the 1970s, Europe's last Marxist-Leninist terroriststhe Greek Revolutionary Organization 17 November have waged a violent campaign against US and NATO personnel, Turkish diplomats and members of the Greeks military and business elite. In May 2000 they assassinated a top British diplomat in Athens in a daring daylight attack. Yet no one suspected of belonging to the organization, let alone of being involved in its terror campaign, has ever been arrested. This is the first book to deal with revolutionary terrorism in Greece. Tracing the history of 17 November, Kassimeris demonstrates how it has persevered with a one-dimensional view of a world peopled by heroes and villains, that has precluded the emergence of a coherent ideology. Combining fanatical nationalism, contempt for the existing order, and the cult of violence for its own sake, 17 November has stubbornly refused to accept that its eclectic belief system is incompatible with modern democratic principles. Unlike Italy's Red Brigades or Germany's Red Army Faction, which both assailed "the capitalist state and its agents," 17 November hopes to create an insurrectionary mood that will propel the Greeks into revolutionary political action without disrupting society as a whole. As such, 17 November's terror campaign has been an audacious protest aimed at discrediting and humiliating the Greek establishment and the US government, but one that has never sought to develop widespread revolutionary guerrilla warfare.
This book focuses on the mathematical potential and computational efficiency of the Boundary Element Method (BEM) for modeling seismic wave propagation in either continuous or discrete inhomogeneous elastic/viscoelastic, isotropic/anisotropic media containing multiple cavities, cracks, inclusions and surface topography. BEM models may take into account the entire seismic wave path from the seismic source through the geological deposits all the way up to the local site under consideration. The general presentation of the theoretical basis of elastodynamics for inhomogeneous and heterogeneous continua in the first part is followed by the analytical derivation of fundamental solutions and Green's functions for the governing field equations by the usage of Fourier and Radon transforms. The numerical implementation of the BEM is for antiplane in the second part as well as for plane strain boundary value problems in the third part. Verification studies and parametric analysis appear throughout the book, as do both recent references and seminal ones from the past. Since the background of the authors is in solid mechanics and mathematical physics, the presented BEM formulations are valid for many areas such as civil engineering, geophysics, material science and all others concerning elastic wave propagation through inhomogeneous and heterogeneous media. The material presented in this book is suitable for self-study. The book is written at a level suitable for advanced undergraduates or beginning graduate students in solid mechanics, computational mechanics and fracture mechanics.
In this thesis two variants of the fast variable elimination method are developed. They are intuitive, simple to implement and give results which are in very good agreement with those found from numerical simulations. The relative simplicity of the techniques makes them ideal for applying to problems featuring demographic stochasticity, for experts and non-experts alike. Within the context of mathematical modelling, fast variable elimination is one of the central tools with which one can simplify a multivariate problem. When used in the context of of deterministic systems, the theory is quite standard, but when stochastic effects are present, it becomes less straightforward to apply. While the introductory and background chapters form an excellent primer to the theory of stochastic population dynamics, the techniques developed can be applied to systems exhibiting a separation of timescales in a variety of fields including population genetics, ecology and epidemiology.
Greece's New Political Economy traces the course of Greece from a postwar developmental state to its current participation in the Euro-zone. Taking an innovative comparative approach, George Pagoulatos examines the political economy of financial interventionism and liberalization, banking politics, relations between the government and central bank, the winners and losers of financial reform, the effects of globalization and EMU and the implications of the new economic role of the state. This book will be an indispensable reference work for anyone seeking to understand the Greek political economy in the light of major contemporary debates.
The portrayal of Greece by the international press during the financial crisis has been seen by many independent observers as very harsh. The Greeks have often been blamed for a myriad of international political problems and external economic factors beyond their control. In this original and insightful work George Tzogopoulos examines international newspaper coverage of the unfolding economic crisis in Greece. American, British, French, German and Italian broadsheet and tabloid coverage is carefully analysed. The Greek Crisis in the Media debates and dissects the extent to which the Greek response to the financial crisis has been given fair and balanced coverage by the press and questions how far politics and national stereotypes have played their part in the reporting of events. By placing the Greek experiences and treatment alongside those of other EU members such as Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, Tzogopoulos examines and highlights similarities and differences in the ways in which different countries tackled the challenges they faced during this crucial period and explores how and why the world's media reported these events.
The book presents the first comprehensive account of how economists, engineers and industrialists mapped out the economic future of Greece in the aftermath of civil war devastation. It documents the policy debate that took place among Greece and its sponsors about the future course of the economy, the required investment and their financing. Through historical narrative, archival sources and oral history, this book offers a better understanding of the achievements proclaimed by many economists as an “economic miracle”.
This timely book presents Applications in Recommender Systems which are making recommendations using machine learning algorithms trained via examples of content the user likes or dislikes. Recommender systems built on the assumption of availability of both positive and negative examples do not perform well when negative examples are rare. It is exactly this problem that the authors address in the monograph at hand. Specifically, the books approach is based on one-class classification methodologies that have been appearing in recent machine learning research. The blending of recommender systems and one-class classification provides a new very fertile field for research, innovation and development with potential applications in “big data” as well as “sparse data” problems. The book will be useful to researchers, practitioners and graduate students dealing with problems of extensive and complex data. It is intended for both the expert/researcher in the fields of Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Recommender Systems, as well as for the general reader in the fields of Applied and Computer Science who wishes to learn more about the emerging discipline of Recommender Systems and their applications. Finally, the book provides an extended list of bibliographic references which covers the relevant literature completely.
Stay on top of the rapid changes sweeping endocrinology today with the latest information on important selected topics in The Handbook of Endocrinology. This extensive two-volume text provides an impressive breadth and depth of coverage difficult to find in other sources. After a broad survey of the functions of major endocrine glands, the book launches into detailed reviews of both established and hot, new research areas. Selected topics include:
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