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La secrétaire: roman (Relais)
By Alexandre Wickham. 2001
Laetitia Rossi, secrétaire du directeur financier de la CGP, conglomérat aux multiples activités, voit un jour son compte bancaire crédité…
de 600 millions de francs. D'où proviennent-ils ? Laetitia pourra-t-elle les garder ? A partir de cet instant, elle se retrouve plongée au coeur des intrigues d'un véritable empire. Elle découvre un univers qu'elle côtoyait tous les jours sans le connaître.La société de provocation: essai sur l'obscénité des riches (Lettres libres)
By Dahlia Namian. 2023
Bernés par les prestidigitations des ultrariches, nous regardons ceux-ci, stupéfaits, dilapider les ressources de la planète. Dans son roman Chien…
blanc, Romain Gary appelle "société de provocation" cet ordre social où l'exhibitionnisme de la richesse érige en vertu la démesure et le luxe ostentatoire tout en privant une part de plus en plus large de la population des moyens de satisfaire ses besoins réels. Ce pamphlet cinglant énumère et analyse les mille façons qu'ont les ultrariches de nous nuire, et invite à rompre avec cette société de provocationThe war below: Lithium, copper, and the global battle to power our future
By Ernest Scheyder. 2024
An unprecedented look inside the global battle to power our lives from acclaimed Reuters reporter Ernest Scheyder. A new economic…
war for critical minerals has begun, and The War Below is an urgent dispatch from its front lines. To build electric vehicles, solar panels, cell phones, and millions of other devices means the world must dig more mines to extract lithium, copper, and other vital building blocks. But mines are deeply unpopular, even as they have a role to play in fighting climate change and powering crucial technologies. These tensions have sparked a worldwide reckoning over the sourcing of necessary materials, and no one understands the complexities of these issues better than Ernest Scheyder, whose exclusive access to sites around the globe has allowed him to gain unparalleled insights into a future without fossil fuels. The War Below reveals the explosive brawl among industry titans, conservationists, community groups, policymakers, and many others over whether some places are too special to mine or whether the habitats of rare plants, sensitive ecosystems, Indigenous holy sites, and other places should be dug up for their riches. With vivid and engaging writing, Scheyder shows the human toll of this war and explains why recycling and other newer technologies have struggled to gain widespread use. He also expertly chronicles Washington's attempts to wean itself off supplies from China, the global leader in mineral production and processing. The War Below paints a powerfully honest and nuanced picture of what is at stake in this new fight for energy independence, revealing how America and the rest of the world's hunt for the "new oil" directly affects us allOur Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada's Housing Crisis
By Gregor Craigie. 2024
An urgent and illuminating examination of the unrelenting housing crisis Canadians find ourselves facing, by Balsillie Prize finalist and CBC…
Radio host Gregor Craigie, Our Crumbling Foundation offers real-life solutions from around the world and hope for new housing innovation in the face of seemingly impossible obstacles.Canada is experiencing a housing shortage. Although house prices in major Canadian cities appear to have topped out in early 2023, new housing isn’t coming onto the market quickly enough. Rising interest rates have only tightened the pressure on buyers, and renters, too, as rising mortgage rates cost landlords more, which are passed along to tenants in rent increases. Even with the recent federal budget commitment to bring more housing online by 2030, there will still be a shortfall of 3.5 million homes by 2030.Gregor Craigie is a CBC journalist in Victoria, one of the highest-priced housing markets in the country. On his daily radio show On The Island he's been talking for over 15 years to local experts and to those across the country about housing. Craigie has travelled to many of the places he profiles in the book, and in his interviews with Canadians he presents the human face of the shortfall as he speaks with renters, owners and homeless people, exploring their varying predicaments and perspectives. He then shows, through comparable profiles of people across the globe, how other North American and international jurisdictions (Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Helsinki, Singapore, Ireland, to name a few) are housing their citizens better, faster and with determination—solutions that could be put into practice here.With passion, knowledge and vigour, Craigie explains how Canada reached this critical impasse and will convince those who may not yet recognize how badly our entire country is in need of change. Our Crumbling Foundation provides hope for finding our way out of the crisis by recommending a number of approaches at all levels of government. The prescription for how we’re going to house ourselves and do so equitably, requires not just a business solution, nor simply a social solution.Nomadland: Surviving america in the twenty-first century
By Jessica Bruder. 2017
From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people…
who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short, they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers, forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers, or "workampers." Building on her groundbreaking Harper's cover story, "The End of Retirement," which brought attention to these formerly settled members of the middle class, Jessica Bruder follows one such RVer, Linda, between physically taxing seasonal jobs and reunions of her new van-dweller family, or "vanily." Bruder tells a compelling, eye-opening tale of both the economy's dark underbelly and the extraordinary resilience, creativity, and hope of these hardworking, quintessential Americans?many of them single women?who have traded rootedness for the dream of a better lifeThis book presents a new way of thinking about quantum mechanics and machine learning by merging the two. Quantum mechanics…
and machine learning may seem theoretically disparate, but their link becomes clear through the density matrix operator which can be readily approximated by neural network models, permitting a formulation of quantum physics in which physical observables can be computed via neural networks. As well as demonstrating the natural affinity of quantum physics and machine learning, this viewpoint opens rich possibilities in terms of computation, efficient hardware, and scalability. One can also obtain trainable models to optimize applications and fine-tune theories, such as approximation of the ground state in many body systems, and boosting quantum circuits’ performance. The book begins with the introduction of programming tools and basic concepts of machine learning, with necessary background material from quantum mechanics and quantum information also provided. This enables the basic building blocks, neural network models for vacuum states, to be introduced. The highlights that follow include: non-classical state representations, with squeezers and beam splitters used to implement the primary layers for quantum computing; boson sampling with neural network models; an overview of available quantum computing platforms, their models, and their programming; and neural network models as a variational ansatz for many-body Hamiltonian ground states with applications to Ising machines and solitons. The book emphasizes coding, with many open source examples in Python and TensorFlow, while MATLAB and Mathematica routines clarify and validate proofs. This book is essential reading for graduate students and researchers who want to develop both the requisite physics and coding knowledge to understand the rich interplay of quantum mechanics and machine learning.Fundamentals of NMR and MRI: From Quantum Principles to Medical Applications
By Fatemeh Khashami. 2024
This book bridges the gap between physical foundations and medical applications of the NMR and MRI technologies, making them accessible…
to both physicists and biomedical scientists. The physical basis of these technologies is discussed in a manner that can be easily understood by scientists from different backgrounds, aiding them in gaining a clearer understanding of the subject.. For instance, the medical applications of NMR and MRI technologies are described in a way that is accessible to physicists. Moreover, geometrical descriptions and specific mathematical tools are used to facilitate the visualizations of many concepts. Furthermore, the book covers modern technologies such as hyperpolarization and several other state-of-the-art techniques, along with their foundations.Arab-Israel Normalisation of Ties: Global Perspectives
By Najimdeen Bakare. 2024
This book focuses on rapprochement and normalisation between Israel and some Arab countries within the context of global and regional…
geopolitics, bringing together broader perspectives on transformations resulting from this. The analysis is rooted in a historical and cultural construction of the region as an Islamic sphere viewing Israel as a perpetuation of the Western colonial project in the region. It analyses how this normalisation must not be treated as a novel phenomenon, but as a reconstruction of the past and continuity in tradition geared at regional stability, signifying a wider shift in the structure of the global international system. The first section addresses the international perspectives of the changing dynamics through the lens of US domestic politics, disengagement plans, China’s increasing understanding of the geopolitics of the Abrahamic world. It equally pays enough attention to the attendant implications of this normalisation. The second section of the book explores the reflections of regional (state and non-state) actors, such as Turkey, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, and Hezbollah, and the catalysing effects of this normalisation within and beyond the region. The book is a rich resource for scholars of regional and international relations, in particular Middle East studies. It provides useful reading material for both undergraduate and graduate students of Political Science, think tanks, diplomats, and IR experts and policy analysts, who are desirous of having rich theoretical and empirical underpinnings of unfolding realities in the larger Middle East.Economics and Property: The Estates Gazette Guide
By Danny Myers. 2019
a clear and easy-to-read introduction to any property economics module in a degree leading to a profession in real estate,…
surveying, construction and other related built environment fields Full colour figures and packed with features such as: glossary, chapter objectives and summaries, glossary, case studies, tutorial readingsSustainable Economy and Emerging Markets
By Stefania Paladini, Suresh George. 2020
Sustainable Economy and Emerging Markets provides a snapshot of the different dimensions of sustainability and analyses how they interact and…
configure themselves, case by case, in selected emerging economies. The parameters of economic growth in developing economies are explored in the context of systems, climate change, and environmental challenges.With contributions from a range of business academics, economists, and practitioners, this book conveys a picture of the complex nature of the new global business environment, especially the geopolitical dynamics of emerging countries, and breaks down the challenges across geographic fault lines, offering insights into current business practice. By adopting an in-depth case study approach, this edited book offers and discusses examples from several emerging markets and elucidates how these organisations have modelled business based on sustainable development in its various forms. This book will prove valuable reading for students and scholars of international business, international trade, sustainability, and development.The Rise and Fall of the Oil Nation Venezuela
By Carlos A. Rossi. 2023
This book explains why Venezuela is so rich in natural resources—it has been producing oil since 1922 and harbors the…
largest oil reserves in the world—and yet it is also a failed nation of class-divided citizens exhibiting deep poverty in a corrupt, incompetent state. Venezuela is a bipolar nation, where two marked poles in the society exist which have historical origins and are mutually exclusive.The book provides a critical analysis of Venezuela's history, economy and politics and explains the context and implications of the bipolar poles, known as the elite pole and the resentful pole. Both, it shows, have done serious harm to Venezuela’s prosperity.The author describes the vicious circle of oil wealth, corruption, inefficiency and world market dependency and gives recommendations for a better future.Advanced Methods of Joint Inversion and Fusion of Multiphysics Data (Advances in Geological Science)
By Michael S. Zhdanov. 2023
Different physical or geophysical methods provide information about distinctive physical properties of the objects, e.g., rock formations and mineralization. In…
many cases, this information is mutually complementary, which makes it natural for consideration in a joint inversion of the multiphysics data. Inversion of the observed data for a particular experiment is subject to considerable uncertainty and ambiguity. One productive approach to reducing uncertainty is to invert several types of data jointly. Nonuniqueness can also be reduced by incorporating additional information derived from available a priori knowledge about the target to reduce the search space for the solution. This additional information can be incorporated in the form of a joint inversion of multiphysics data.Generally established joint inversion methods, however, are inadequate for incorporating typical physical or geological complexity. For example, analytic, empirical, or statistical correlations between different physical properties may exist for only part of the model, and their specific form may be unknown. Features or structures that are present in the data of one physical method may not be present in the data generated by another physical method or may not be equally resolvable.This book presents and illustrates several advanced, new approaches to joint inversion and data fusion, which do not require a priori knowledge of specific empirical or statistical relationships between the different model parameters or their attributes. These approaches include the following novel methods, among others: 1) the Gramian method, which enforces the correlation between different parameters; 2) joint total variation functional or joint focusing stabilizers, e.g., minimum support and minimum gradient support constraints; 3) data fusion employing a joint minimum entropy stabilizer, which yields the simplest multiphysics solution that fits the multi-modal data. In addition, the book describes the principles of using artificial intelligence (AI) in solving multiphysics inverse problems. The book also presents in detail both the mathematical principles of these advanced approaches to joint inversion of multiphysics data and successful case histories of regional-scale and deposit-scale geophysical studies to illustrate their indicated advantages.21st Century Sports: How Technologies Will Change Sports in the Digital Age (Future of Business and Finance)
By Sascha L. Schmidt. 2024
Discover the exciting future of sports in the digital age with "21st Century Sports: How Technologies Will Change Sports in…
the Digital Age." This thought-provoking book, now in its second edition, delves into the transformative power of technology on the world of sports within the next five to ten years and beyond. Written by esteemed academics from prestigious institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Queensland University of Technology, and the University of Cambridge, alongside seasoned practitioners with extensive technological expertise, this collection of essays offers profound insights. Through their comprehensive analysis, the authors explore the profound impacts of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, blockchain, web3 and robotics on sports. Uncover how these technologies will revolutionize not only the nature of sports itself but also consumer behavior and existing business models. Athletes, entrepreneurs, and innovators working in the sports and other industries will find invaluable guidance to identify trendsetting technologies, gain deeper insights into their implications, and stay ahead of the competition, both on and off the field. In this new edition, a special focus is given to technology convergence, featuring chapters on the future of fandom, sports in the third connected age and in new digital worlds like the Metaverse. This book is your gateway to the dynamic world where technology and sports intersect, offering a compelling vision of what lies ahead.Strategic Management
By Frank T. Rothaermel. 2024
Frank T. Rothaermel wrote Strategic Management 6e from the ground up because the world has changed dramatically since 5e was…
published (in January 2020). Events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, war, and disenchantment with the economic system profoundly impact how leaders run companies in their quest for competitive advantage. Rothaermel 6e synthesizes and integrates conceptual frameworks, empirical research, and practical applications with current real-world examples to help students make sense of a fast-changing and complex world. Rothaermel 6e is industry-leading in diversity and inclusion by featuring leaders with different backgrounds and companies that today’s students can relate to and thus internalize the knowledge acquired. The new 6e prepares students with the foundation they need to understand how companies gain and sustain competitive advantage while developing skills to become successful leaders capable of making well-reasoned strategic decisions.Empire of Rubber: Firestone's Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia
By Gregg Mitman. 2021
An ambitious and shocking exposé of America's hidden empire in Liberia, run by the storied Firestone corporation, and its long…
shadow in the early 1920s, Americans owned 80 percent of the world's automobiles and consumed 75 percent of the world's rubber. But only one percent of the world's rubber grew under the U.S. flag, creating a bottleneck that hampered the nation's explosive economic expansion. To solve its conundrum, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company turned to a tiny West African nation, Liberia, founded in 1847 as a free Black republic. Empire of Rubber tells a sweeping story of capitalism, racial exploitation, and environmental devastation, as Firestone transformed Liberia into America's rubber empire. Historian and filmmaker Gregg Mitman scoured remote archives to unearth a history of promises unfulfilled for the vast numbers of Liberians who toiled on rubber plantations built on taken land. Mitman reveals a history of racial segregation and medical experimentation that reflected Jim Crow America--on African soil. As Firestone reaped fortunes, wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few elites, fostering widespread inequalities that fed unrest, rebellions, and, eventually, civil war. A riveting narrative of ecology and disease, of commerce and science, and of racial politics and political maneuvering, Empire of Rubber uncovers the hidden story of a corporate empire whose tentacles reach into the present.The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy
By Moiya McTier. 2022
In this approachable and fascinating biography of the galaxy, an astrophysicist and folklorist details everything humans have discovered—from the Milky…
Way's formation to its eventual death, and what else there is to learn about the universe we call home. After a few billion years of bearing witness to life on Earth, of watching one hundred billion humans go about their day-to-day lives, of feeling unbelievably lonely, and of hearing its own story told by others, The Milky Way would like a chance to speak for itself. All one hundred billion stars and fifty undecillion tons of gas of it. It all began some thirteen billion years ago, when clouds of gas scattered through the universe's primordial plasma just could not keep their metaphorical hands off each other. They succumbed to their gravitational attraction, and the galaxy we know as the Milky Way was born. Since then, the galaxy has watched as dark energy pushed away its first friends, as humans mythologized its name and purpose, and as galactic archaeologists have worked to determine its true age (rude). The Milky Way has absorbed supermassive (an actual technical term) black holes, made enemies of a few galactic neighbors, and mourned the deaths of countless stars. Our home galaxy has even fallen in love. After all this time, the Milky Way finally feels that it's amassed enough experience for the juicy tell-all we've all been waiting for. Its fascinating autobiography recounts the history and future of the universe in accessible but scientific detail, presenting a summary of human astronomical knowledge thus far that is unquestionably out of this world. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND SCIENCENET NAMED A BEST AUDIOBOOK OF 2022 BY BOOKPAGEMoney in the Twenty-First Century: Cheap, Mobile, and Digital
By Prof. Richard Holden. 2024
An economist examines three modern forces that have redefined what "money" means, who controls it, and what the future of…
finance might look like. Money is increasingly cheap, digital, and mobile. In Money in the Twenty-First Century, economist Richard Holden examines the virtues and risks of low interest rates, mobile money, and cryptocurrencies, and explains how these three elemental forces will continue to play out—in our wallets, on the blockchain, and throughout major economies—in the decades to come. Holden weaves in the stories of three people who have exerted massive influence over the future of modern money: US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin, and Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India and chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Moving from micro to macro, Holden investigates the infrastructure that permits digital transactions, the currencies that underpin them, the race for control of those currencies, shifts in policy and the international monetary system, and the impact on our politics of money in the digital age. Ultimately, Money in the Twenty-First Century asks if governments can keep these three tectonic powers of low interest rates, mobile money, and decentralized finance under control.Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists
By Fred A. Wolf. 1981
World renowned physicist Fred Alan Wolf explains the scientific concepts of quantum mechanics in accessible language for nonscientists.Winner of the…
National Book AwardTaking the Quantum Leap entertainingly traces the history of physics from the observations of the early Greeks through the discoveries of Galileo and Newton to the dazzling theories of such scientists as Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Bohm. This humanized view of science opens up the mind-stretching visions of how quantum mechanics, God, human thought, and will are related, and provides profound implications for our understanding of the nature of reality and our relationship to the cosmos.“The prose, indeed, is exhilarating, and exhibits a passion to explain—humorously . . . Wolf provides commendable explanations of visions and revisions of atomic models; he is fin, in particular, on the Uncertainty Principle . . . Enjoy the book for its bravura.” —Kirkus ReviewsRoutledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality (Routledge International Handbooks)
By Riccardo Viale. 2021
Herbert Simon’s renowned theory of bounded rationality is principally interested in cognitive constraints and environmental factors and influences which prevent…
people from thinking or behaving according to formal rationality. Simon’s theory has been expanded in numerous directions and taken up by various disciplines with an interest in how humans think and behave. This includes philosophy, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, economics, political science, sociology, management, and organization studies.The Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality draws together an international team of leading experts to survey the recent literature and the latest developments in these related fields. The chapters feature entries on key behavioural phenomena, including reasoning, judgement, decision making, uncertainty, risk, heuristics and biases, and fast and frugal heuristics. The text also examines current ideas such as fast and slow thinking, nudge, ecological rationality, evolutionary psychology, embodied cognition, and neurophilosophy. Overall, the volume serves to provide the most complete state-of-the-art collection on bounded rationality available.This book is essential reading for students and scholars of economics, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, political sciences, and philosophy.This book focuses in detail on data science and data analysis and emphasizes the importance of data engineering and data…
management in the design of big data applications. The author uses patterns discovered in a collection of big data applications to provide design principles for hypothesis generation, integrating big data processing and management, machine learning and data mining techniques. The book proposes and explains innovative principles for interpreting hypotheses by integrating micro-explanations (those based on the explanation of analytical models and individual decisions within them) with macro-explanations (those based on applied processes and model generation). Practical case studies are used to demonstrate how hypothesis-generation and -interpretation technologies work. These are based on “social infrastructure” applications like in-bound tourism, disaster management, lunar and planetary exploration, and treatment of infectious diseases. The novel methods and technologies proposed in Hypothesis Generation and Interpretation are supported by the incorporation of historical perspectives on science and an emphasis on the origin and development of the ideas behind their design principles and patterns. Academic investigators and practitioners working on the further development and application of hypothesis generation and interpretation in big data computing, with backgrounds in data science and engineering, or the study of problem solving and scientific methods or who employ those ideas in fields like machine learning will find this book of considerable interest.