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This book is devoted to problems of shape identification in the context of (inverse) scattering problems and problems of impedance tomography. In contrast to traditional methods which are based on iterative schemes of solving sequences of corresponding direct problems, this book presents a completely different method. The Factorization Method avoids the need to solve the (time consuming) direct problems. Furthermore, no a-priori information about the type of scatterer (penetrable or impenetrable), type of boundary condition, or number of components is needed. The Factorization Method can be considered as an example of a Sampling Method. The book aims to construct a binary criterium on the known data to decide whether or not a given point z is inside or outside the unknown domain D. By choosing a grid of sampling points z in a region known to contain D, the characteristic function of D can be computed (in the case of finite data only approximately). The book also introduces some alternative Sampling Methods.

Literature is a source of understanding and insight into the human condition. Yet ever since Aristotle, philosophers have struggled to provide a plausible account of how this can be the case. For surely the fictionality, the sheer invented character, of the literary work means that literature concerns itself not with the real world but with other worlds — what are commonly called fictional worlds. How is it, then, that fictions can tell us something of consequence about reality? This book offers a novel and intriguing account of the relationship between literature and life, and shows that literature's great cultural and cognitive value is inseparable from its fictionality and inventiveness.

Important results in the applied welfare literature are used to extend a conventional Harberger cost-benefit analysis. A conventional welfare equation is obtained for marginal policy changes in a general equilibrium economy with tax distortions. It is extended to accommodate internationally traded goods, time, income taxes, and non-tax distortions, including externalities, non-competitive behaviour, public goods, and price-quantity controls. The welfare analysis is developed in stages, and where possible is explained using diagrams, to make it more amenable to the different institutional arrangements encountered in applied work. Computable welfare expressions are solved using demand-supply elasticities. In a conventional cost-benefit analysis, lump sum transfers are used to separate the welfare effects of individual policy variables. This is important because it allows policy evaluation to be divided across specialist agencies. These transfers are carefully examined to identify the important role played by the marginal social cost of public funds (MCF) in policy evaluation when governments balance their budgets with distorting taxes. This book separates income effects for marginal policy changes in the shadow value of government revenue. As a scaling coefficient that converts efficiency effects into dollar changes in private surplus, it makes income effects irrelevant in single (aggregated) consumer economies, and conveniently isolates distributional effects in heterogeneous consumer economies. This decomposition is used to test for Pareto improvements, and to examine the separate, but related roles of the shadow value of government revenue and the MCF in applied work.

One of the most widespread words in medicine is the placebo and placebo effect, although it is not always clear what it means exactly. Recent progress in biomedical research has allowed a better clarification of the placebo effect. This is an active psychobiological phenomenon which takes place in the patient's brain and that is capable of influencing both the course of a disease and the response to a therapy. The psychosocial context around the patient is crucial to placebo effects, for example the doctor's words and attitudes, and this may have a profound impact on the patient's brain which, in turn, may affect several physiological functions of the body. This book emphasizes that there is not a single placebo effect but many. The book critically reviews them in different medical conditions, such as pain, neurological disorders, psychiatric and behavioural disorders, immune and endocrine systems, cardiovascular and respiratory systems, gastrointestinal and genitourinary disorders, as well as some special conditions, such as oncology, surgery, sports medicine, and acupuncture.

This book presents a series of chapters which develops the author's distinctive view of the relation of thought to language. The key idea is ‘occasion-sensitivity’: what it is for words to express a given concept is for them to be apt for contributing to any of many different conditions of correctness (notably truth conditions). Since words mean what they do by expressing a given concept, it follows that meaning does not determine truth conditions. This view ties thoughts less tightly to the linguistic forms which express them than traditional views of the matter, and in two directions: a given linguistic form, meaning fixed, may express an indefinite variety of thoughts; one thought can be expressed in an indefinite number of syntactically and semantically distinct ways. The book highlights the importance of this view for linguistic theory, and shows how it gives new form to a variety of traditional philosophical problems.

This book explains how the three main mechanisms of globalization — international trade, international migration, and international capital flows — alter working conditions (particularly wages, work hours, and job safety) and labor rights (freedom of association, nondiscrimination, and the elimination of forced and child labor). An important sub-theme is the relative importance of international markets and international regulation in providing improvements in labor conditions around the world. The book presents evidence on how labor conditions changed during the late 20th-century globalization, and on how economic growth, international trade, migration, and multinational companies influence labor conditions around the world. Drawing on analyses of an international database on labor conditions prepared for this study and on numerous research studies, the book finds a general improvement in labor conditions during the late 20th century and documents the positive influence of economic development on those conditions. Chapters on the role of trade, migration, and multinational companies find that each mechanism of globalization is associated with the improvements in working conditions and with improvements in most labor rights. In contrast, the evidence does not support the view that increasing economic integration initiates an international race to the bottom that produces sweatshop labor conditions. The book also considers the influence of national and international labor regulations on working conditions and labor rights around the world. The evidence indicates that in contrast with trade, migration, and international capital flows, labor standards regulation has had a limited role in advancing labor conditions. The book concludes by showing how several policies that create opportunities for targeted worker groups show promise for supplementing the positive effects of globalization on labor conditions.

This book is a response to the growing disenchantment in the Western world with contemporary life. It provides rationally justified answers to questions about the meaning of life, the basis of morality, the contingencies of human lives, the prevalence of evil, the nature and extent of human responsibility, and the sources of values we prize. It offers a realistic view of the human condition that rejects both facile optimism and gloomy pessimism; acknowledges that we are vulnerable to contingencies we cannot fully control; defends a humanistic understanding of our condition; recognizes that the values worth pursuing are plural, often conflicting, and that there are many reasonable conceptions of well‐being. It emphasizes the importance of facing the fact that man's inhumanity to man is widespread. It rejects as simple‐minded both the view that human nature is basically good and that it is basically bad, and argues that our well‐being depends on coping with the complex truth that human nature is basically complicated. It argues that the scheme of things is indifferent to our fortunes and that we can rely only on our own resources to make what we can of our lives.

This book introduces the modern field of 3+1 numerical relativity. It has been written in a way as to be as self-contained as possible, and assumes a basic knowledge of special relativity. Starting from a brief introduction to general relativity, it discusses the different concepts and tools necessary for the fully consistent numerical simulation of relativistic astrophysical systems, with strong and dynamical gravitational fields. Among the topics discussed in detail are the following: the initial data problem, hyperbolic reductions of the field equations, gauge conditions, the evolution of black hole space-times, relativistic hydrodynamics, gravitational wave extraction, and numerical methods. There is also a final chapter with examples of some simple numerical space-times.

Why is there a material world? Why is it fundamentally mathematical? This book explores a seventeenth‐century answer to these questions as it emerged from the works of Descartes and Leibniz. What we learn is the sense in which these philosophers held that an analysis of the material world must inevitably lead to mathematics, and that mathematics must inevitably take matter as its object. Here the connection between matter and mathematics was cast in terms of the conditions of intelligibility—matter is what underwrote the very intelligibility of mathematics. Thus, in every world in which mathematics in intelligible, matter exists, and vice versa. On this view, then, matter is not seen as a cosmic anomaly or divine afterthought, but as an essential constituent of the universe. As the title of the book asserts: matter matters.

This book studies international treaty ratification processes in multiple issue areas. This study sets out to fill a gap in political science scholarship by investigating the role that international and domestic political actors and conditions play in the critical, post-commitment phase of cooperation. The book employs the comparative case study method, drawing on original research, elite interviews, and discursive analyses of government documents in Europe, Australia, and North America. Cases examine a select number of treaties on trade cooperation, the environment, European integration, and the nuclear nonproliferation regime. It concludes that the role of norms and executive strategies play an especially significant role in shaping ratification outcomes. It is argued that the book will appeal to a broad audience interested in the question of whether international treaties remain powerful instruments for cooperation in the twenty-first century.

This book looks at how large organizations have managed and adapted to changing conditions of employment shaped by the recent economic and political environment. Additional data are presented based on evidence from other significant actors such as agency employment firms and trade unions. The book also engages with important North American debates on the changing nature of work, careers, and employment.