A guide that explores what enables systems engineers to be effective in their profession and reveals how organizations can help them attain success The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers offers an in-depth look at the proficiencies and personal qualities effective systems engineers require and the positions they should seek for successful careers. The book also gives employers practical strategies and tools to evaluate their systems engineers and advance them to higher performance. The authors explore why systems engineers are uncommon and how they can assess, improve, and cleverly leverage their uncommon strengths. These insights for being an ever more effective systems engineer apply equally well to classic engineers and project managers who secondarily do some systems engineering. The authors have written a guide to help systems engineers embrace the values that are most important to themselves and their organizations. Solidly based on interviews with over 350 systems engineers, classic engineers, and managers as well as detailed written career descriptions from 2500 systems engineers — The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers identifies behavioral patterns that effective systems engineers use to achieve success. This important resource: Offers aspiring systems engineers practical methods for success that are built on extensive empirical evidence and underlying theory Shows systems engineers how to visually document their relative strengths and weaknesses, map out their careers, and compare themselves to the best in their organizations – a rich set of tools for individuals, mentors, and organizations Offers practical guidance to managers and executives who lead systems engineering workforce improvement initiatives Written for systems engineers, their managers, business executives, those who do some systems engineering but primarily identify with other professions, as well as HR professionals, The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers offers the most comprehensive career guidance in the field available today.
Sparks fly for a city-smart woman and a rugged Rocky Mountain man in this “sharp, funny, and sinfully sexy” romance series debut (Maisey Yates, New York Times–bestselling author). Brandon Evans did the right thing when he threatened to expose his father’s illegal mining practices. But now the once-booming Gracely, Colorado, is all but a ghost town. Residents still cling to a long-held legend about the land’s healing powers. And Brandon has a plan to spin that legend into reality . . . Former PR consultant Lilly Preston moved to Gracely to give her nephew a better life. Now she’s working for Brandon’s company offering restorative Rocky Mountain vacations. But can she really get Mile High Adventures off the ground? Brandon thinks PR is pointless, and Lilly knows less than nothing about the outdoors. Which is exactly why they need each other—in ways neither ever imagined . . . “[A] deeply moving contemporary . . . The protagonists are refreshingly willing to be up front about their feelings and listen to each other, and readers will want to revisit their story often.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A guide that explores what enables systems engineers to be effective in their profession and reveals how organizations can help them attain success The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers offers an in-depth look at the proficiencies and personal qualities effective systems engineers require and the positions they should seek for successful careers. The book also gives employers practical strategies and tools to evaluate their systems engineers and advance them to higher performance. The authors explore why systems engineers are uncommon and how they can assess, improve, and cleverly leverage their uncommon strengths. These insights for being an ever more effective systems engineer apply equally well to classic engineers and project managers who secondarily do some systems engineering. The authors have written a guide to help systems engineers embrace the values that are most important to themselves and their organizations. Solidly based on interviews with over 350 systems engineers, classic engineers, and managers as well as detailed written career descriptions from 2500 systems engineers — The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers identifies behavioral patterns that effective systems engineers use to achieve success. This important resource: Offers aspiring systems engineers practical methods for success that are built on extensive empirical evidence and underlying theory Shows systems engineers how to visually document their relative strengths and weaknesses, map out their careers, and compare themselves to the best in their organizations – a rich set of tools for individuals, mentors, and organizations Offers practical guidance to managers and executives who lead systems engineering workforce improvement initiatives Written for systems engineers, their managers, business executives, those who do some systems engineering but primarily identify with other professions, as well as HR professionals, The Paradoxical Mindset of Systems Engineers offers the most comprehensive career guidance in the field available today.
The connections between religion and political discourse in the arena of American politics are profound and longstanding. By looking at the writings of American thinkers from colonial times to the present, this work argues for the consistency and permanence of the American religious vision as it relates to political life. Ideas including Manifest Destiny, America as "God's Country" and Americans as "God's People" are explored within this framework, as is how these ideals of American exceptionalism and the "City on the Hill" have survived and mutated into the current U.S. political climate. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedy to Deliberative Action investigates how democratic politics can unfold in creative and unexpected of ways even at the most trying of times. Drawing on three years of fieldwork in disaster-affected communities in Tacloban City, Philippines, this book presents ethnographic portraits of how typhoon survivors actively perform their suffering to secure political gains. Each chapter traces how victims are transformed to 'publics' that gain voice and visibility in the global public sphere through disruptive protests, collaborative projects, and political campaigns that elected the strongman Rodrigo Duterte to presidency. It also examines the micropolitics of silencing that lead communities to withdraw and lose interest in politics. These ethnographic descriptions come together in a theoretical project that makes a case for a multimodal view of deliberative action. It underscores the embodied, visual, performative and subtle ways in which affective political claims are constructed and received. It concludes by arguing that while emotions play a role in amplifying marginalized political claims, it also creates hierarchies of misery that renders some forms of suffering more deserving of compassion than others. The book invites readers to reflect on challenging ethical issues when examining political contexts defined by widespread depravity and dispossession, and the democratic ethos demanded of global publics in responding to others' suffering.
In Media Hot and Cold Nicole Starosielski examines the cultural dimensions of temperature to theorize the ways heat and cold can be used as a means of communication, subjugation, and control. Diving into the history of thermal media, from infrared cameras to thermostats to torture sweatboxes, Starosielski explores the many meanings and messages of temperature. During the twentieth century, heat and cold were broadcast through mass thermal media. Today, digital thermal media such as bodily air conditioners offer personalized forms of thermal communication and comfort. Although these new media promise to help mitigate the uneven effects of climate change, Starosielski shows how they can operate as a form of biopower by determining who has the ability to control their own thermal environment. In this way, thermal media can enact thermal violence in ways that reinforce racialized, colonial, gendered, and sexualized hierarchies. By outlining how the control of temperature reveals power relations, Starosielski offers a framework to better understand the dramatic transformations of hot and cold media in the twenty-first century.
INFOSTRUCTURE presents the vision of interactive and responsive urban public transport environments where new forms of communication and information access are enabled through an overlay of urban digital media technologies. Featuring research and projects undertaken by master students in architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney and Bachelor students in design computing at the University of Sydney, the book explores the augmentation of existing public transport environments with urban digital media technologies, to set in motion a transformation from infrastructure to 'infostructure(s).' Precedent based research and technology investigations underpin the twenty featured student projects, that address a nexus of space, urban media, sensor, and mobile phone technology. The research presented in this book is a foundation for a series of future infostructure projects.
You are not perfect. Never have been, never will be. And no matter how much experience you gain, how long you contemplate a decision, or who you seek counsel from, you will still make the occasional management misstep--a few of them. Guaranteed. And if you stay in management long enough, you will undoubtedly ask yourself questions such as:• Why do I sometimes feel threatened by my best people? • How do I remain cool in hot situations? • How can I ensure people hear what I say? • How can I cope more effectively with change? • Why have I lost so many of my best employees to the competition?The question is, will you wait for these mistakes to happen and then stay awake at night dwelling on these questions, or will you address them proactively so that you may discover the right solutions to apply now? Clinical and business psychologist Nicole Lipkin knows the stresses leaders face. In What Keeps Leaders Up at Night, she examines the common mistakes leaders make with their people. Featuring illuminating examples and exercises, this sleep-friendly book shines a bright light into the dark corners where all leaders struggle with their own shortcomings and presents smart solutions to the problems that arise as a result.
Overeating and obesity are on the rise. Despite public health warnings, availability of diet books and programs, and the stigma associated with obesity, many people find it difficult to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight. While there are many books on the topic of caloric or need-based eating, obesity and overeating can also result from eating that is not driven by hunger. Recent research found that excess food intake is largely driven by the palatability of food and the pleasure derived from eating. Hedonic Eating: How the Pleasure of Food Affects Our Brains and Behavior discusses the pleasurable aspects of food intake that may cause and perpetuate overconsumption. Broad in its scope, this book examines the various behavioral, biological, and social rewards of food. The comprehensive chapters cover topics ranging from the neurochemistry of food reward to the hotly debated concept of 'food addiction,' while providing relevant and up-to-date information from the current body of scientific literature regarding food reward.
This book is intended for human resources management academics, researchers, students, organizational leaders and managers, HR Practitioners, and those responsible for helping support employees in the 21st-century workplace. It offers a path forward to create an environment that will not only build a healthier workplace by providing appropriate and effective well-being interventions but also offers solutions to manage multi-generational and ‘holistic’ employees within the employment relationship. The book describes the factors that promote healthy and WELL organizations and introduces concepts and strategies to reduce workplace stress and mental health issues and improve workplace well-being toward sustained organizational success. Employers that embrace the corporate responsibility of promoting the health and well-being of multi-generational, holistic employees will reap cost savings, employee engagement, and productivity advantages, as well as a healthier and more productive workforce.
Much is talked and written about well-being in the workplace, but many wonder whether 'putting people first' is just a facade and that were it not for employment legislation, union representation and the high profile of human rights issues, employers would regard employees as a necessary burdensome financial evil, as in days gone by. Some scholarly research has focused on the reactions of employees to the quality of working life and well-being at work and much of this suggests high levels of dissatisfaction, disaffection and disengagement. In Workers' Voice, HRM Practice, and Leadership in the Public Sector: Multidimensional Well-Being at Work, Nicole Cvenkel avers that whilst it is known that public sector employees are even less satisfied than those in the private sector, there has been very little research into the effects of working life experiences on employee well-being in public sector organisations. There is even some doubt about whether a well-being philosophy that can be applied in the private sector can readily be extended to the public sector. The push towards New Public Management (NPM) means organisations continue to undergo significant reform processes around efficiency, costs and public service delivery. All these changes place additional demands on public sector employees who are at times also subject to intensive scrutiny by stakeholder groups, who may regard the recourse to well-being initiatives as a poor use of public funds. The author has researched in the UK local government sector and that is the setting for the debate in this book, about whether and how an employee well-being ideology can be successfully promoted and maintained in an NPM environment, given continuous reform and expenditure reduction. In a local government case organisation, the author has researched, limited resources, reduction in budgets, redundancies, increased workloads, lack of trust, and the existence of a 'controlled' working environment were all found to be central to a climate of bullying and unfairness. Although the organisation was committed to the adoption of HRM 'best practice' and initiatives geared towards promoting employees well-being, employees still believed they were being bullied and treated unfairly. It was found that different perspectives on the psychological contract, fairness, and bullying at work were highlighted by managerial and non-managerial employees. The author's conclusions contribute to a clearer understanding than hitherto of workers' voice in relation to work, leader-member exchanges, and well-being in the public sector and she offers a model depicting employees' understanding of what their quality of working life, line manager’s leadership and well-being should be, that might be used by organisational leaders, researchers, policy makers, Human Resources managers and other practitioners and consultants, to move towards a more holistic, multidimensional, well-being at work paradigm.
How do religious groups reinvent themselves in order to attract new audiences? How do they rebrand their messages and recast their rituals in order to make their followers more diverse? In Branding Bhakti, Nicole Karapanagiotis considers the new branding of the Hare Krishna Movement, or the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Known primarily for their orange robes, shaved heads, ecstatic dancing on the streets, and exuberant Hindu-style temple worship, many contemporary ISKCON groups are radically reinventing their public presentation and their style of worship in order to attract a global audience to their movement. Karapanagiotis explores their innovative and complex approaches in both the United States and India by following three new ISKCON brands aimed at gathering new followers. Each is led by a world-renowned ISKCON guru and his global disciples, and each is promoted through a mix of digital and social media and the construction of an innovative "worship-scape." These new spaces trade ISKCON's traditional temples for corporate work-life balance programs, posh yoga studios, urban spiritual lounges, edgy mantra clubs/lofts, and rural meditative retreat facilities. Branding Bhakti not only investigates the methods the ISKCON movement uses to position itself for growth but also highlights devotees' painful and complicated struggles as they work to transform their shrinking, sectarian movement into one with global religious appeal.
Dear Luv Guv: I totally get the mountain you created, walking each step of your daily COVID briefings with you, anticipating and coaching from my love of football, SCUBA Diving, Sea Captain and School of Hard Knocks experiences. I boldly critique your presentations as if you are a Divemaster. Please pardon, but my ideas oft preceded your daily briefings. Sharing this with my long-time friend and confidant via email, we joke, “Just Solving All The World’s Problems on Paper”. Home during Shelter-In-Place, I finally finish writing novels. You are positively portrayed except for our dads’ brash talk, a literary device I created to show New Yorkers, even politicians, are not that different from Midwestern farmers. Don’t worry, no one takes anything Dads say about daughter’s potential boyfriends seriously. As a Bible student, consider that Dad faults King David, a nearly perfect man in God’s eyes. Yes, of David and Goliath fame. On morning strolls on Heaven’s outskirts, your dad, the illustrious former Governor, finds my dad who eked his way into Heaven on a loophole I found. In my overactive imagination, our dads talk about our mutual single status. Your dad is intrigued by my ability to talk smack, my figure (always a strength), my brain (particularly in governance), and my knowledge of Football. They meddle, using Divine Intervention Tricks to help us together solve the COVID Crisis. Singles whether city or country, across the entire universe endure matchmaking. Despite all the hoopla and uproar, more unites us all than separates, excluding elitist greed and fear mongering designed to distract and separate Average Americans from money and opportunity. That gets me started down many rabbit holes and frequent laments “Where Have All The Heroes Gone?” P.S, I withhold judgment on your “The Boyfriend” take. I’ve learned to observe these things first.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In Civil Society's Democratic Potential, Nicole Bolleyer explores which civil society organizations (CSOs) contribute to democracy, how, and why. Organized civil society, including interest groups, political parties, and service-oriented associations, is traditionally considered a cornerstone of democracy. Constituting the organizational fabric between government and society, these organizations encompass a wide diversity of entities thought to fundamentally contribute to both democratic participation and representation. However, CSOs' readiness and ability to serve as venues for participation, vehicles of democratic representation, or indeed both at the same time, are increasingly questioned in political science, sociology, and voluntary sector research alike. Bringing those fields together, the author argues that two contrasting organizational templates - the 'voluntary association' and the 'professionalized voluntary organization' - allow theorizing fundamental trade-offs shaping CSOs' 'performance' on three dimensions accounting for their varying democratic contributions: participation, representation, and societal responsiveness. The study's innovative theoretical framework is examined using a mixed-methods design. The latter combines the analysis of survey data covering over 3000 CSOs across four European democracies with qualitative case studies of the evolution of three CSOs - a political party, an interest group, and a service-orientated organization - over several decades.
The health and well-being of people of working age are of fundamental importance to the future of work and organizational productivity globally. Growing evidence suggests that employee well-being at work can help improve physical and mental health, reduce health inequalities and offer improved opportunities for engagement, wellness at work, and productivity. The debate about the impact of working life on employee well-being has been intensified. Whilst the issue of employee well-being at work has reached a new level of importance in the minds of policy makers, managers, and employers there is still little evidence that attention has been paid to the worker’s voice in their evaluation of HRM practices, line management leadership, the quality of working life and well-being at work in organizations. Research within these areas remain relatively untapped. Furthermore, understanding employees expectations of the psycho-social factors affecting the employment relationship and employee well-being at work are all lacking in the evidence base. This book seeks to contribute to the debate in these areas.
Through a detailed and fascinating exploration of changing medical knowledge and practice, this book provides a timeline of humankind's understanding of physiological death. Anchored in Early Modern Britain, it explains how evolving medical theories challenged the ambiguous definition of death, instigating anxieties over the newly realized potential for officials to mistake a person's time of death. Fears of premature burials were materialized as newspapers across Europe printed hundreds of articles about people who had been misdiagnosed as dead and were then buried--or nearly buried--alive. These stories, tallied in this text, present the first contemporary statistic of how frequently misdiagnosed death led to premature burial during the eighteenth century. The public consciousness of premature burial manifested itself in many ways, including the necessity of having a wake before a funeral and the creation of safety coffins. This book also explores the folkloric phenomenon of the rising dead and the stories that inspired a number of authors including Coleridge, Byron and Stoker, who blended medical understanding with fiction to create vampire literature.
Essays are central to students’ and teachers’ development as thinkers in their fields. In Crafting Presence, Nicole B. Wallack develops an approach to teaching writing with the literary essay that holds promise for writing students, as well as for achieving a sense of common purpose currently lacking among professionals in composition, creative writing, and literature. Wallack analyzes examples drawn primarily from volumes of The Best American Essays to illuminate the most important quality of the essay as a literary form: the writer’s “presence.” She demonstrates how accounting for presence provides a flexible and rigorous heuristic for reading the contexts, formal elements, and purposes of essays. Such readings can help students learn writing principles, practices, and skills for crafting myriad presences rather than a single voice. Crafting Presence holds serious implications for writing pedagogy by providing new methods to help teachers and students become more insightful and confident readers and writers of essays. At a time when liberal arts education faces significant challenges, this important contribution to literary studies, composition, and creative writing shows how an essay-centered curriculum empowers students to show up in the world as public thinkers who must shape the “knowledge economy” of the twenty-first century.
Paradise is found in a vivid, colorful world under clear blue tropical waves, as sea turtles and bright fish become her dive buddies. She finds serenity in the serenade of a hot, young musician. His beautiful soul carries her to the outermost galaxies, but is this love or just her imagination? Love is delayed and faith is tested when a second musician enters the picture. She is caught between self-interest and national security—a decoy that makes Big Brother’s ever-watchful eyes cross. Solace is found beneath the placid Pacific until climate change brings winter waves, currents, and surf so strong that there may be no returning from the sea. How does one distinguish between coincidence and the intricate connection of life’s unseen undercurrents? Time moves on. Peace found beneath the ocean is not found on dry land as health concerns and bills overtake her. In her darkest hour, lessons are learned. The world crashes in on her soul like a tidal wave tossing her around the sea. She is caught in a tsunami, wave after wave after wave, with no way back to shore—or is there?
In July and August 2009, the federal government implemented the Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) program, or ¿Cash for Clunkers,¿ a temporary vehicle retirement program that offered consumers a monetary credit ($3,500 or $4,500) to trade in an older vehicle for a new, more fuel-efficient one. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was responsible for administering the program. This report examines: (1) what is known to date about the extent to which the CARS program achieved its objectives; (2) what stakeholders¿ experiences were with the CARS program; and (3) how the CARS program compares to other selected domestic and international vehicle retirement programs. Charts and tables.
Winner, 2024 E. Gene Smith Inner Asia Book Prize, Association for Asian Studies Honorable Mention, 2023 Joseph Levenson Prize Post-1900, Association for Asian Studies In the aftermath of the cataclysmic Maoist period, three Tibetan Buddhist scholars living and working in the People’s Republic of China became intellectual heroes. Renowned as the “Three Polymaths,” Tséten Zhabdrung (1910–1985), Mugé Samten (1914–1993), and Dungkar Lozang Trinlé (1927–1997) earned this symbolic title for their efforts to keep the lamp of the Dharma lit even in the darkest hour of Tibetan history. Lineages of the Literary reveals how the Three Polymaths negotiated the political tides of the twentieth century, shedding new light on Sino-Tibetan relations and Buddhism during this turbulent era. Nicole Willock explores their contributions to reviving Tibetan Buddhism, expanding Tibetan literary arts, and pioneering Tibetan studies as an academic discipline. Her sophisticated reading of Tibetan-language sources vivifies the capacious literary world of the Three Polymaths, including autobiography, Buddhist philosophy, poetic theory, and historiography. Whereas prevailing state-centric accounts place Tibetan religious figures in China in one of two roles, collaborator or resistance fighter, Willock shows how the Three Polymaths offer an alternative model of agency. She illuminates how they by turns safeguarded, taught, and celebrated Tibetan Buddhist knowledge, practices, and institutions after their near destruction during the Cultural Revolution. An interdisciplinary work spanning religious studies, history, literary studies, and social theory, Lineages of the Literary offers new insight into the categories of religion and the secular, the role of Tibetan Buddhist leaders in modern China, and the contested ground of Tibet.
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