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A Decade of Research Activities at the Department of Industrial Engineering: From Five Existing Departments to the Excellence in Research (Springer Aerospace Technology)

by Sergio De Rosa Nicola Bianco Agostino De Marco Michele Grassi

This open access book celebrates the decennial of the Department of Industrial Engineering of Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy. It covers the main research achievements developed at the department in the fields of aerospace, marine, energy, statistical, mechanical and management engineering. Five pre-existing departments merged in 2013, and the research results are here summarized to certify how important it was to join skills, expertise, and projects. The industrial engineering area is huge, but it is now dominated by the need to conceive and analyze new solutions, human and climate oriented to face with the actual challenges which dictate the new paradigm, which evolved from “is it feasible?” to “is it compatible with the environment and the human beings?”. There is still a lot to do, but the contents of this book demonstrate that the first steps have been done. All the researchers of the department have contributed to this book, more than 140 authors, and thus, it isthe collective outcome of the path they were able to perform all together, including administrative officers and technicians. It highlights the international relevance and multidisciplinarity of research at the university as well as the planned research lines for the next years.

A Decade of Upheaval: The Cultural Revolution in Rural China (Princeton Studies in Contemporary China #12)

by Dong Guoqiang Andrew G. Walder

A revealing exploration of political disruption and violence in a rural Chinese county during the Cultural RevolutionA Decade of Upheaval chronicles the surprising and dramatic political conflicts of a rural Chinese county over the course of the Cultural Revolution. Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources—including work diaries, interviews, internal party documents, and military directives—Dong Guoqiang and Andrew Walder uncover a previously unimagined level of strife in the countryside that began with the Red Guard Movement in 1966 and continued unabated until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976.Showing how the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution were not limited to urban areas, but reached far into isolated rural regions, Dong and Walder reveal that the intervention of military forces in 1967 encouraged factional divisions in Feng County because different branches of China’s armed forces took various sides in local disputes. The authors also lay bare how the fortunes of local political groups were closely tethered to unpredictable shifts in the decisions of government authorities in Beijing. Eventually, a backlash against suppression and victimization grew in the early 1970s and resulted in active protests, which presaged the settling of scores against radical Maoism.A meticulous look at how one overlooked region experienced the Cultural Revolution, A Decade of Upheaval illuminates the all-encompassing nature of one of the most unstable periods in modern Chinese history.

Decadence and Objectivity: Ideals for Work in the Post-consumer Society

by Lawrence Haworth

Haworth's concerns are urgent. Modern society, he argues, threatens to collapse under the burden of mindless growth. Its demands have begun to exhaust the world's resources. The pursuit of growth has hollowed out our social foundations. Advanced technology has emancipated us from toil but condemned us to work that is perceived as meaningless. The dissolution of traditional communities has resulted in a society which has no sense of common concern or public purpose. Most people live largely in private spheres, and value the public sphere only for its capacity to improve their private lives, a function which is exercised unevenly and is largely incidental to its purpose. Modern urban society is characterized by its 'decadence,' a pervasive lack of inspiring vision. In this book Haworth concerns himself with the conceptual foundations of social order and the options for a future society. He analyses two sharply contrasting systems, the one committed to individual satisfaction and independence and the other based on collective values and rewards. Both would retain advanced technology but restrain consumption. The leisure-oriented society would reduce the hours of work at a sacrifice of efficiency and at the expense of individual determination. This analysis provides the basis for a new model of what Haworth calls an 'objective' society, based on the ideals of responsibility, leisureliness, and professionalism. These ideals imply a sympathetic yet not strictly custodial attitude towards the natural world, a responsible use of human creativity and natural potential, a sense of absorption in the present (in the original Greek sense of leisure which is contrasted with the more recent association of leisure with discretionary time), and above all a sense of professional commitment. Commitment links individuals who locate the point of their lives outside themselves and their private interests in some work for which they have a distinctive talent and in the pursuit of which they experience a meaningful, shared existence. Lawrence Howarth offers a model, not a blueprint, but it is one that political scientists, economists, sociologists, urban planners, and all who are committed to improving the design of our society should consider carefully.

Decarbonisation Pathways for African Cities (Palgrave Studies in Climate Resilient Societies)

by Smith I Azubuike Ayodele Asekomeh Obindah Gershon

This book examines the pathways to decarbonising African cities, structured around strategies and applications in renewable energy, waste management, healthcare, telecommunication, education and governance reconfigurations for Petro-cities. Throughout the book the authors highlight infrastructural, governance and policy approaches to drive decarbonisation. Opening with chapters focused on propositions for solar urban planning and scope for decarbonisation in waste management the book then moves on to examine innovative strategies for a low-carbon healthcare sector. The authors then discuss the use of hybrid power systems at remote telecommunication sites, their deployment on university campuses, and how this can be optimised to reduce carbon emissions. Further chapters explore government, private sector and civil society actions for decarbonising Kenyan cities and an overview of the political economic choices for decarbonising Petro-cities. Finally, closing chapters propose mechanisms for translating COP26 takeaways to decarbonisation policies and a low-carbon framework for African cities.

Decarbonising Cities

by Vanessa Rauland Peter Newman

This book sets out some positive directions to move forward including government policy and regulatory options, an innovative GRID (Greening, Regenerative, Improvement Districts) scheme that can assist with funding and management, and the first steps towards an innovative carbon credit scheme for the built environment. Decarbonising cities is a global agenda with huge significance for the future of urban civilisation. Global demonstrations have shown that technology and design issues are largely solved. However, the mainstreaming of low carbon urban development, particularly at the precinct scale, currently lacks sufficient: standards for measuring carbon covering operational, embodied and transport emissions; assessment and decision-making tools to assist in design options; certifying processes for carbon neutrality within the built environment; and accreditation processes for enabling carbon credits to be generated from precinct-wide urban development. Numerous barriers are currently hindering greater adoption of high performance, low carbon developments, many of which relate to implementation and governance. How to enable and manage precinct-scale renewables and other low carbon technologies within an urban setting is a particular challenge.

Decarbonising the Built Environment: Charting the Transition

by Peter Newton Deo Prasad Alistair Sproul Stephen White

This book focuses on the challenge that Australia faces in transitioning to renewable energy and regenerating its cities via a transformation of its built environment. Both are necessary conditions for low carbon living in the 21st century. This is a global challenge represented by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and the IPCC’s Climate Change program and its focus on mitigation and adaptation. All nations must make significant contributions to this transformation. This book highlights the new knowledge and innovation that has emerged from research projects undertaken in the Co-operative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living between 2012 and 2019 – an initiative of the Australian Government’s Department of Industry, Science and Technology that is tasked with responding to the UN challenges. Four principal transition pathways were central to the CRC and provide the thematic structure to this volume. They focus on technology, buildings, precinct and city design, and human behaviour – and their interactions.

Decency and Excess: Global Aspirations and Material Deprivation on a Caribbean Sugar Plantation

by Samuel Martinez

Based on periodic ethnographic fieldwork over a span of fifteen years, Martinez shows how impoverished plantation dwellers find ways of coping with the alienation that would be expected while laboring to produce goods for the richer countries. Despite living in dire poverty, these workers live in a thoroughly commodified social environment. Ritual, eroticism, electronic media, household adornment, payday-weekend "binging" are ways even chronically poor plantation residents dream beyond reality. Yet plantation residents' efforts to live decently and escape from the dead hand of necessity also deepen existing divisions of ethnic identity and status. As the divide between "haves" and "have-nots" worsens as a result of neoliberal reform and the decline of sugar in international markets, this book reveals on an intensely human scale the coarsening of the social fabric of this and other communities of the world's poorer nations.

Decent People, Decent Company: How to Lead with Character at Work and in Life

by Robert L. Turknett Carolyn N. Turknett Kent C. Nelson

The inspiring people who lead with integrity, move things forward, garner commitment from others and are willing to ask the tough questions when necessary are the real leaders who generate and sustain cultures of character in organizations. Decent People, Decent Company puts the power to develop the core qualities of leadership character into the hands of anyone dedicated to bringing integrity, respect and personal responsibility back to the workplace. Drawing on more than 25 years of experience working with hundreds of CEOs, managers and teams, this innovative husband-and-wife team provides both the inspiration and the tools to help people move from asking "Why don't they?" to asking "What can I?" With their original and dynamic Leadership Character Model, the Turknetts have captured the essence of what it takes to revitalize attitudes and behavior, unleash leadership integrity and reinvigorate organizations. Decent People, Decent Company identifies the eight essential traits of leadership character: empathy, emotional mastery, lack of blame, humility, accountability, courage, self-confidence and focus on the whole. In chapters that focus on each quality, dozens of leaders bring to life the struggles and triumphs of developing the behaviors of character and ethical leadership required to bring out the best in everyone.

The Decent Society: Planning for Social Quality (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

by Roger Sapsford Pamela Abbott Claire Wallace

The search for ‘the Decent Society’ – a fit place in which to live – has informed policy at both governmental and international level. This book analyses its nature and devises a consistent way of measuring the concept world-wide on the basis of a coherent theory of agency within social structure. Influenced by classical sociology and by the economist Amartya Sen, the book posits that societies need to create (a) economic security, (b) social cohesion, (c) social inclusion, and (d) the conditions for empowerment. The model is interactive and recursive; each component provides the requirements for each of the others. This book outlines the sociopolitical framework underlying ’the Decent Society' and summarises a decade of research, some of which has had a formative impact on governments’ policies. The first half contains studies of social quality based on surveys in the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa, while the second half describes the construction of a Decent Society Index for comparing very different countries across the world. This book and the index it develops will be of interest both to academics and researchers in sociology, politics, economics, psychology, social policy and development studies and to policy-makers in government, local government and the NGOs.

Decent Work, Green Jobs and the Sustainable Economy: Solutions for Climate Change and Sustainable Development

by Peter Poschen

The challenges of achieving environmental sustainability and of generating decent work for all are closely linked. In this timely book, Poschen argues that an integrated approach to tackle these challenges is a necessity: the goal of environmentally sustainable economies will not be attained without the active contribution of the world of work. Decent Work, Green Jobs and the Sustainable Economy demonstrates that green jobs can be a key economic driver, as the world steps into the largely uncharted territory of building a sustainable and low-carbon global economy. Poschen shows that positive outcomes are possible, but require a clear understanding of the opportunities and challenges.Enterprises, workers and governments are not passive bystanders in the great transformation that is urgently needed in our economies. They are essential agents of change, able to develop new ways of working in sustainable enterprises that safeguard the environment, create decent jobs and foster social inclusion. This book highlights the solutions that the world of work offers for policy and practice to tackle climate change, achieve environmental sustainability and to build prosperous and cohesive societies. It is essential reading for those in business, aca­demia and government.

Decentering Biotechnology: Assemblages Built and Assemblages Masked

by Michael S. Carolan

Decentering Biotechnology explores the nature of technology, objects and patent law. Investigating the patenting of organic life and the manner in which artifacts of biotechnology are given their object-ive appearance, Carolan details the enrollment mechanisms that give biotechnology its momentum. Drawing on legal judgements and case studies, this fascinating book examines the nature of object-ification, as a thought and a thing, without which biotechnology, as it is done today, would not be possible. Unable to reject biotechnology per se, recognizing that such a rejection would essentialize the very object-ive categories shown to be manufactured, Carolan ultimately argues for doing biotechnology differently. A theoretically sophisticated analysis of the nature of objects and the role of technology as a form of life which shapes the social landscape, Decentering Biotechnology engages with questions of power, globalization, development, resistance, exclusion, and participation that arise from treating biological objects differently from conventional property forms. As such, it will appeal to social theorists, sociologists and philosophers, as well as scholars of law and science and technology studies.

Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace: A Guide for Equity and Inclusion

by Janice Gassam Asare

Your DEIJ efforts are stagnating because you continue to center whiteness. Creating a truly anti-racist organization requires learning how to identify and rectify the systemic, and often unconscious, centering of white culture and values in the workplace.Corporate America continues to struggle with racial equity in a post-George Floyd world. As the United States becomes more diverse and the public consciousness continues to shift, successful racial equity efforts in the workplace are needed now more than ever. Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace exposes the ways that white culture and expectations are centered in the modern American workplace and the fears within corporate spaces about talking candidly, openly, and honestly about whiteness, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.Readers will discover: A direct and straightforward analysis about what white-centering is An evaluation of the different ways that whiteness is centered in the workplace, such as bereavement and holiday policies and dress codes A guide on how to recognize and decenter whiteness within oneself and at work Solutions for people to contribute individually and systemically to anti-oppressionDecentering Whiteness in the Workplace provides a crucial guidebook with practical solutions for leaders, DEIJ practitioners, and anyone hoping to truly create an anti-racist workplace.

Decentralization and the Social Economics of Development: Lessons from Kenya

by John M. Omiti Andrew G. Mude Christopher B. Barrett

Barrett (applied economics and management, Cornell U. , US), Mude (International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya), and Omiti (Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis, Kenya) present research conducted under the auspices of the Strategies and Analysis for Growth and Access project, a USAID funded program cooperatively directed by Cornell and Clark Atlanta Universities. The specific subject of the research presented here concerns the effect of various forms of decentralization on rural development, individual and group empowerment, and rural well-being in Kenya, as well as the institutional correlates of successful and unsuccessful decentralization efforts.

Decentralized Applications: Harnessing Bitcoin's Blockchain Technology

by Siraj Raval

<p>Take advantage of Bitcoin’s underlying technology, the blockchain, to build massively scalable, decentralized applications known as dapps. In this practical guide, author Siraj Raval explains why dapps will become more widely used—and profitable—than today’s most popular web apps. You’ll learn how the blockchain’s cryptographically stored ledger, scarce-asset model, and peer-to-peer (P2P) technology provide a more flexible, better-incentivized structure than current software models. <p>Once you understand the theory behind dapps and what a thriving dapp ecosystem looks like, Raval shows you how to use existing tools to create a working dapp. You’ll then take a deep dive into the OpenBazaar decentralized market, and examine two case studies of successful dapps currently in use. <p> <li>Learn advances in distributed-system technology that make distributed data, wealth, identity, computing, and bandwidth possible <li>Build a Twitter clone with the Go language, distributed architecture, decentralized messaging app, and peer-to-peer data store <li>Learn about OpenBazaar’s decentralized market and its structure for supporting transactions <li>Explore Lighthouse, a decentralized crowdfunding project that rivals sites such as Kickstarter and IndieGogo <li>Take an in-depth look at La’Zooz, a P2P ridesharing app that transmits data directly between riders and drivers</li> </p>

Deception In The Marketplace: The Psychology of Deceptive Persuasion and Consumer Self-Protection

by David M. Boush Marian Friestad Peter Wright

This is the first scholarly book to fully address the topics of the psychology of deceptive persuasion in the marketplace and consumer self-protection. Deception permeates the American marketplace. Deceptive marketing harms consumers’ health, welfare and financial resources, reduces people’s privacy and self-esteem, and ultimately undermines trust in society. Individual consumers must try to protect themselves from marketers’ misleading communications by acquiring personal marketplace deception-protection skills that go beyond reliance on legal or regulatory protections. Understanding the psychology of deceptive persuasion and consumer self-protection should be a central goal for future consumer behavior research. The authors explore these questions. What makes persuasive communications misleading and deceptive? How do marketing managers decide to prevent or practice deception in planning their campaigns? What skills must consumers acquire to effectively cope with marketers’ deception tactics? What does research tell us about how people detect, neutralize and resist misleading persuasion attempts? What does research suggest about how to teach marketplace deception protection skills to adolescents and adults? Chapters cover theoretical perspectives on deceptive persuasion; different types of deception tactics; how deception-minded marketers think; prior research on how people cope with deceptiveness; the nature of marketplace deception protection skills; how people develop deception protection skills in adolescence and adulthood; prior research on teaching consumers marketplace deception protection skills; and societal issues such as regulatory frontiers, societal trust, and consumer education practices. This unique book is intended for scholars and researchers. It should be essential reading for upper level and graduate courses in consumer behavior, social psychology, communication, and marketing. Marketing practitioners and marketplace regulators will find it stimulating and authoritative, as will social scientists and educators who are concerned with consumer welfare.

Deception in Selection: Interviewees and the Psychology of Deceit

by Max A. Eggert

The latest research suggests that 33% of people lie deliberately to achieve employment. The costs of mis-hires are significant in terms of management time, selection and reselection costs and potential legal costs. There are 101 opportunities for applicants to economize with the truth, exaggerate or simply lie, both on their CV and at interview. They may be desperate in a competitive job market; they may think that exaggeration is an expected part of the process or they just rely on the fact that many employers still fail to make the most rudimentary of checks of what they are told. Max Eggert’s Deception in Selection will help you, the recruiter, to understand how and why candidates deceive. The book examines proven techniques and tactics to balance the interview game, to restore equity in the face of the clever approaches that sophisticated candidates bring to the interview. Although there is no foolproof way of identifying deception, you can, with practice, become amazingly accurate if there is a commitment to master the basics. The object of this book is to learn how to detect more effectively the fabrications that candidates present in selection situations that would have a direct adverse effect on their performance in the job. Reading it will encourage you to look at lying and truth telling in a new light and discover how pervasively lies and self-deception influence selection decisions. This is a must read guide from a best-selling business author for all those who participate in the selection process.

Decided Return Migration: Emotions, Citizenship, Home and Belonging in Bosnia and Herzegovina (IMISCOE Research Series)

by Aida Ibričević

This open access book creates conceptual links between political emotions, citizenship, home and belonging. The book describes that, in the case of decided return and reintegration to a post-conflict society and a fragmented state, like Bosnia and Herzegovina, the returnees do not conceptualize the emotional dimension of their BiH citizenship as home and belonging as this citizenship does not make them feel safe and secure. Instead, “feeling at home” is found in family, place and time, while belonging is categorized as ethnic, religious, relational, landscape, linguistic, and economic. The emotional dimension of the home state citizenship is constituted through a wide spectrum of emotions, ranging from anger, frustration, fear, guilt, shame, disappointment, nostalgia, powerlessness, to patriotic love, pride, defiance, joy, happiness and hope. This book provides a valuable resource to students and scholars of migration and diaspora studies, as well as political scientists, human geographers and anthropologists.

Deciphering Culture: Ordinary Curiosities and Subjective Narratives

by Gillian Swanson Jane Crisp Kay Ferres

Representation, subjectivity and sexuality continue to be central to scholarly inquiry in the humanities and social sciences. Deciphering Culture explores their relationship, each author taking a distinct approach to the concept of 'curiosity' as a way of deciphering the working of particular cultural formations. In the process they address a variety of topics including: * the historical formation of subjectivities, identities and differences* cultural conduct and habits of the self* everyday cultures and negotiation* consumption and the body* memory, history and autobiography* the ethics of critical and textual inquiry. This fascinating book will appeal to students and academics from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds in the social sciences and cultural studies.

Deciphering Goffman: The Structure of his Sociological Theory Revisited (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)

by Ramon Vargas Maseda

Challenging the ‘classical’ conception of Goffman’s sociology, this book offers a new interpretation based on a comprehensive examination of previous interpretations and critical assessments of Goffman’s work. Epistemologically, the book acknowledges the important but overlooked influences of both pluralism and particularly of pragmatism, where not only Simmel but also James and Dewey played a pivotal role in his work, thus rooting Goffman’s thought in symbolic interactionism. With attention to two central theoretical principles underlying his work—the pertinence of studying social interaction as given and the need and warrant to study face-to-face interaction in its own right—the author presents a rigorous examination of Goffman’s own writings to uncover the clear and recognizable process of systematization that Goffman followed throughout. In this manner, the book reveals the structure of Goffman’s theory by way of mapping the main themes, topics, concepts, empirical referents, methodological principles and theoretical frameworks relevant to the structure of his thought. A fresh examination of the structure of Goffman’s work that sheds light on the core of his unique approach, this new study of one of the central figures of sociology constitutes an important contribution to scholarship in social theory and the history of sociology.

Deciphering the City

by William A. Schwab

Well-written and extremely topical, Deciphering the City efficiently deals with the large and small issues facing cities today. A focus on globalization's impact on the role of cities, an explicit mission to drive home the applied nature of urban studies to students. This innovative text offers an exciting introduction to the history, issues, problems, potential solutions and challenges, facing cities in the developed and the developing world for the twenty-first century.Globalization has changed the roles of cities in the global economy and this text begins with an introduction to the phenomenon of globalization, and how the changes it has brought about have affected the social, political, and economic institutions of societies. The second section of the text concentrates on the psychology of the city and the community-building process, while the book's third section illustrates the structure of cities and their historical and emerging patterns. Deciphering the City makes studying the city a relevant and interesting subject necessary in understanding the functioning of today's world.

Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects

by Saskia Sassen

Saskia Sassen is Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics.

Deciphering Violence: The Cognitive Structure of Right and Wrong

by Karen A. Cerulo

In the current information age, Americans are bombarded daily with stories and images portraying a rising tide of violence. Drawing on media that includes television, newspaper, fiction, film, painting and photography, as well as interviews and focus groups, Karen Cerulo explores the ways in which individuals think about, depict and evaluate violence. Moving beyond typical studies that focus on violent story content, Deciphering Violence decodes the role of story structure itself and how the sequencing of facts can systematically influence our moral judgements of violent acts. The book identifies institutionalized forms of violent storytelling and raises new possibilities both for decreasing public tolerance of violence and increasing social control of the phenomenon.

Decision and Game Theory for Security: 12th International Conference, GameSec 2021, Virtual Event, October 25–27, 2021, Proceedings (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #13061)

by Branislav Bošanský Cleotilde Gonzalez Stefan Rass Arunesh Sinha

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security, GameSec 2021,held in October 2021. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 20 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. The papers focus on Theoretical Foundations in Equilibrium Computation; Machine Learning and Game Theory; Ransomware; Cyber-Physical Systems Security; Innovations in Attacks and Defenses.

Decision Costs and Democracy: Trade-offs in Institutional Design (Routledge Revivals)

by Robert A. Bohrer

This title was first published in 2001. This text addressses the variations in democratic institutional design and seeks to determine not only if these differences matter, but also to explain how they matter. Using data from established, economically weel-off systems, the book shows that not only are there a multitude of ways to construct a democracy but also how a democracy is constructed influences the outcomes produced by that system. That is to say, institutional differences create distinct incentives for behaviour that in turn influence the type of outcome produced.

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