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This book brings social movements into the study of market formation and industry growth. It starts from the observation that while wind power stands out as a renewable energy success story in some countries and regions, it has failed to reach its true potential in many countries and has had an uneven global development. The book offers an interpretation that differs from the dominant technological and economic perspectives. It develops a model that argues that the development of the wind energy industry is influenced by interactions between the environmental movement, the social context, and natural resources. The model identifies three main pathways through which the environmental movement influences the development of the wind energy industry. The first pathway is the influence that environmental activists and organizations have on energy policymakers' decisions to adopt and implement pro‐renewable energy policies. The second pathway is the influence that environmental groups and activists have on energy consumers. The third pathway is the influence of the environmental movement on energy professionals. The empirical study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses. Case studies focus on Canada, Denmark, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The conclusion argues that environmentalist “global winds of change” are almost as important as the atmospheric winds for the development of the wind energy industry around the world. It also presents a few implications for future studies of industry creation and energy sector growth.

Bird flight has always intrigued mankind. This book provides an up-to-date account of the existing knowledge on the subject, offering new insights and challenges some established views. A brief history of the science of flight introduces the basic physical principles governing aerial locomotion. This is followed by chapters on the flight-related functional morphology. The anatomy of the flight apparatus includes the wings, tail, and body. Treatment of the wings emphasizes the difference in shape of the arm and hand part. The structural complexity and mechanical properties of feathers receive special attention. Aerodynamic principles used by birds are explained in theory by applying Newton’s laws, and in practice by showing the direction and velocity of the flow around the arm and hand wing. The Archaeopteryx fossils remain crucial to the understanding of the evolution of bird flight despite the recent discovery of a range of well-preserved ancient birds. A novel hypothesis explaining the enigmatic details of the Archaeopteryx remains and challenges established theories regarding the origin of bird flight. Take-off, flapping flight, gliding, and landing are the basic ingredients of bird flight, and birds use a variety of flight styles from hovering to soaring. Muscles are the engines that generate the forces required to control the wings and tail, and to work during flapping motion. The energy required to fly can be estimated or measured directly, and a comparison of the empirical results, provides insights into the trend in metabolic costs of flight of birds varying in shape and mass from hummingbirds to albatrosses.

This book offers a survey of nuclear physics at low energies and discusses similarities to mesoscopic systems. It addresses systems at finite excitations of the internal degrees of freedom where collective motion exhibits features typical of transport processes for small and isolated systems. The importance of quantum aspects is investigated both with respect to the microscopic damping mechanism and to the nature of the transport equations. It is vital to account for nuclear collective motion being self-sustained, which in the end implies a highly nonlinear coupling between internal and collective degrees of freedom, a feature which in the literature all too often is ignored. The book is to be considered self-contained. The first part introduces basic elements of nuclear physics and guides to a modern understanding of collective motion as a transport process. This overview is supplemented in the second part with more advanced approaches to nuclear dynamics. The third part deals with special aspects of mesoscopic systems for which close analogies with nuclear physics are given. In the fourth part, the theoretical tools are discussed in greater detail. These include nuclear reaction theory, thermostatics and statistical mechanics, linear response theory, functional integrals, and various aspects of transport theory.

This book examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century—fueled by coal and steam engines—redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabilized. This book challenges the view that the outsourcing of heavy industry overseas is the cause, arguing that a Third Industrial Revolution driven by new information and communication technologies has played a major stabilizing role. It offers new perspectives on the challenges posed today by climate change and peak oil, demonstrating that although the path of modern economic development has vastly increased our energy use, it has not been a story of ever-rising and continuous consumption. The book sheds light on the often lengthy and complex changes needed for new energy systems to emerge, the role of energy resources in economic growth, and the importance of energy efficiency in promoting growth and reducing future energy demand.

Is the universe infinite, or does it have an edge beyond which there is, quite literally, nothing? Do we live in the only possible universe? Why does it have one time and three space dimensions — or does it? What is it made of? What does it mean when we hear that a new particle has been discovered? Will quantum mechanics eventually break down and give way to a totally new description of the world, one whose features we cannot even begin to imagine? This book aims to give a general overview of what physicists think they do and do not know in some representative frontier areas of contemporary physics. After sketching out the historical background, the book goes on to discuss the current situation and some of the open problems of cosmology, high-energy physics, and condensed-matter physics. This book focuses not so much on recent achievements as on the fundamental problems at the heart of the subject, and emphasizes the provisional nature of our present understanding of things.

Recent literary and cultural criticism has taken a spatial turn. This book locates this development within the opposition between a space of things and a space of words, tracing various aspects of its emergence from the geopolitical idea of ‘closed space’ which developed in the early 20th century to the influence of Saussurean linguistics in contemporary criticism and theory. The focus of the study is the work of Joseph Conrad, in whom the opposition between a space of words and a space of things is strikingly figured. Part I deals with several versions of closed space to raise questions about the relations between geography, language, and interpretation. Part II deals with the agitation around finitude and the limit, and the desperate attempt to discover in the resources of language a means of liberation. Through these ideas the book explores some of the more disreputable, marginal, or unglimpsed elements in modernism — including the rise of spy fiction, anarchist geography, the spiritualist movement, the invention of artificial languages, the history of laughter, and solar energy. Among the figures drawn into dialogue with Conrad are John Buchan, Woolf, Joyce, Peter Kropotkin, René de Saussure (brother of the famous Ferdinand), Henri Bergson, the filmmakers George Méliès and Carol Reed and, in particular, Michel Foucault — this ‘nouvelle cartographe’ as Gilles Deleuze described him — whose anxious negotiation with spatial ideas touches the book's deepest understanding.

Semiconductor sensors patterned at the micron scale combined with custom-designed integrated circuits have revolutionized semiconductor radiation detector systems. Designs covering many square meters with millions of signal channels are now commonplace in high-energy physics and the technology is finding its way into many other fields, ranging from astrophysics to experiments at synchrotron light sources and medical imaging. This book presents a discussion of the many facets of highly integrated semiconductor detector systems, covering sensors, signal processing, transistors, circuits, low-noise electronics, and radiation effects. To lay a basis for the more detailed discussions in the book and aid in understanding how these different elements combine to form functional detector systems, the text includes introductions to semiconductor physics, diodes, detectors, signal formation, transistors, amplifier circuits, electronic noise mechanisms, and signal processing. A chapter on digital electronics includes key elements of analog-to-digital converters and an introduction to digital signal processing. The physics of radiation damage in semiconductor devices is discussed and applied to detectors and electronics. The diversity of design approaches is illustrated in a chapter describing systems in high-energy physics, astronomy, and astrophysics. Finally, a chapter ‘Why things don't work’, discusses common pitfalls, covering interference mechanisms such as power supply noise, microphonics, and shared current paths (‘ground loops’), together with mitigation techniques for pickup noise reduction, both at the circuit and system level. Beginning at a basic level, the book provides a unique introduction to a key area of modern science.

The environment, and how humans affect it, is more of a concern now than ever. We are constantly told that halting climate change requires raising awareness, changing attitudes, and finally altering behaviors among the general public—and doing it fast. New information, attitudes, and actions, it is conventionally assumed, will necessarily follow one from the other. However, this approach ignores much of what is known about attitudes in general and environmental attitudes in particular—a huge gap lies between what we say and what we do. Solving environmental problems requires a scientific understanding of public attitudes. Like rocks in a swollen river, attitudes often lie beneath the surface—hard to see, and even harder to move or change. This book helps us read the water and negotiate its hidden obstacles, explaining what attitudes are, how they change and influence behavior. Rather than trying to change attitudes, we need to design solutions and policies with attitudes in mind. Heberlein illustrates these points by tracing the attitudes of the well-known environmentalist Aldo Leopold, while tying social psychology to real-world behaviors throughout the book. Bringing together theory and practice, this book provides a realistic understanding of why and how attitudes matter when it comes to environmental problems; and how, by balancing natural with social science, we can step back from false assumptions and unproductive, frustrating programs to work toward fostering successful, effective environmental action.

Apophatic theology claims that God is unknowable, and this book investigates the earliest stages of Christian apophaticism. It focuses on the writings of Clement of Alexandria (around AD 200): his view of language and esotericism, various aspects of his concept of God, his Logos-theology as well as his epistemology in relation to God. Clement holds that God is unknowable. God’s unknowability, however, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers. The traditional view today is that the distinction between essence and energies is first developed by the Cappadocian Fathers in the late 4th century. It is the author’s claim, however, that an apophatic view of God as well as the distinction between essence and energies can already be found in Clement. In order to understand better Clement’s theological priorities and emphases, his social, religious, and philosophical milieu in ancient Alexandria is also taken into consideration. In addition, Clement’s thinking is seen against the background of Middle Platonism and its concept of God.