Testing

In applied linguistics, being explicit about ontologies of English, and how they underpin educational ideologies and professional practices, is essential. For the first time, this volume presents a critical examination of the ways in which English is conceptualised for learning, teaching, and assessment, from both social and cognitive perspectives. Written by a team of leading scholars, it considers the language in a range of contexts and domains, including: models and targets for EFL, ESL and EAL teaching and testing, and the contested dominance of native-speaker 'standard' varieties; English as a school subject, using England's educational system as an example; English as a lingua franca, where typically several languages and cultures are in contact; and English as broader social practice in a world characterised by unprecedented mobility and destabilisation. Readers are provided with a balanced set of perspectives on ontologies of English and a valuable resource for educational rese

Kaplan's AP Psychology Prep Plus 2020 & 2021 is revised to align with the latest exam. This edition features more than 1,000 practice questions in the book and online, complete explanations for every question, and a concise review of high-yield content to quickly build your skills and confidence. Test-like practice comes in 6 full-length exams, 18 pre- and post-chapter quizzes, and 9 online quizzes. Customizable study plans ensure that you make the most of the study time you have.We're so confident that Psychology Prep Plus offers the guidance you need that we guarantee it: after studying with our online resources and book, you'll score higher on the exam--or you'll get your money back.To access your online resources, go to kaptest.com/moreonline and follow the directions. You'll need your book handy to complete the process.The College Board has announced that the 2021 exam dates for AP World History: Modern will be May 11, May 20, or June 3, depending on the testing format. (Each

This extensively updated new edition provides an indispensable account of modern in-vitro fertilization practice, building upon the popularity of previous editions. The authors initially give a comprehensive review of the biology of human gametes and embryos, before outlining basic to advanced IVF techniques. New developments in practical techniques and understanding are discussed, including in-vitro maturation, vitrification, preservation of fertility for cancer patients, stem cell technology, preimplantation genetic testing, and the role of epigenetics and imprinting. The revised introduction also incorporates a 'refresher' study review of fundamental principles of cell and molecular biology, now updated with current knowledge of meiosis in human oocytes, embryo metabolism and basic principles of genome editing. With high-quality illustrations and extensive, up-to-date reading lists, it is a must-have textbook for trainee and practising embryologists, as well as clinicians who are in

Just like humans, animals and plants suffer from infectious diseases, which can critically threaten biodiversity. This book describes key studies that have driven our understanding of the ecology and evolution of wildlife diseases. Each chapter introduces the host and disease, and explains how that system has aided our general understanding of the evolution and spread of wildlife diseases, through the development and testing of important epidemiological and evolutionary theories. Questions addressed include: How do hosts and parasites co-evolve? What determines how fast a disease spreads through a population? How do co-infecting parasites interact? Why do hosts vary in parasite burden? Which factors determine parasite virulence and host resistance? How do parasites influence the spread of invasive species? How do we control infectious diseases in wildlife? This book will provide a valuable introduction to students new to the topic, and novel insights to researchers, professionals and p

Just like humans, animals and plants suffer from infectious diseases, which can critically threaten biodiversity. This book describes key studies that have driven our understanding of the ecology and evolution of wildlife diseases. Each chapter introduces the host and disease, and explains how that system has aided our general understanding of the evolution and spread of wildlife diseases, through the development and testing of important epidemiological and evolutionary theories. Questions addressed include: How do hosts and parasites co-evolve? What determines how fast a disease spreads through a population? How do co-infecting parasites interact? Why do hosts vary in parasite burden? Which factors determine parasite virulence and host resistance? How do parasites influence the spread of invasive species? How do we control infectious diseases in wildlife? This book will provide a valuable introduction to students new to the topic, and novel insights to researchers, professionals and p

This timely book fills an important gap in the literature of international relations, providing a thorough, up-to-date, empirically supported, and theoretically grounded analysis of how and why Turkish foreign policy has changed in recent years vis-à-vis the West. Presenting one of the first balancing studies that employs elite interviews as data, Turkey–West Relations develops a framework of intra-alliance opposition, classifying the tools of statecraft into three categories - boundary testing, boundary challenging, and boundary breaking. Six case studies are examined regarding Turkish foreign policy over the past nine years, exploring an array of topics including Turkey's foreign policy in relation to various nations and organizations, the refugee crisis, defense procurement, energy policies, and more. Dursun-Özkanca demonstrates how international, regional, issue-specific, and domestic factors may serve to explain Turkey's increasing boundary-breaking behavior. This book is crucial

This timely book fills an important gap in the literature of international relations, providing a thorough, up-to-date, empirically supported, and theoretically grounded analysis of how and why Turkish foreign policy has changed in recent years vis-à-vis the West. Presenting one of the first balancing studies that employs elite interviews as data, Turkey–West Relations develops a framework of intra-alliance opposition, classifying the tools of statecraft into three categories - boundary testing, boundary challenging, and boundary breaking. Six case studies are examined regarding Turkish foreign policy over the past nine years, exploring an array of topics including Turkey's foreign policy in relation to various nations and organizations, the refugee crisis, defense procurement, energy policies, and more. Dursun-Özkanca demonstrates how international, regional, issue-specific, and domestic factors may serve to explain Turkey's increasing boundary-breaking behavior. This book is crucial

Cluster analysis finds groups in data automatically. Most methods have been heuristic and leave open such central questions as: how many clusters are there? Which method should I use? How should I handle outliers? Classification assigns new observations to groups given previously classified observations, and also has open questions about parameter tuning, robustness and uncertainty assessment. This book frames cluster analysis and classification in terms of statistical models, thus yielding principled estimation, testing and prediction methods, and sound answers to the central questions. It builds the basic ideas in an accessible but rigorous way, with extensive data examples and R code; describes modern approaches to high-dimensional data and networks; and explains such recent advances as Bayesian regularization, non-Gaussian model-based clustering, cluster merging, variable selection, semi-supervised and robust classification, clustering of functional data, text and images, and co-cl

We are at a time when international law and the law of war are particularly important. The testing of nuclear weapons that is being used in the rhetoric surrounding threats of war is creating new fears and heightening current tensions. Richard Falk has for decades been an outspoken authority calling for nuclear disarmament and the enforcement of non-proliferation treaties. In this collection of essays, Falk examines the global threats to all humanity posed by nuclear weapons. He is not satisfied with accepting arms control measures as a managerial stopgap to these threats and seeks no less than to move the world back from the nuclear precipice and towards denuclearization. Falk's essays reflect the wisdom and innovative thinking he has brought to his long career as a scholar and activist, as he reminds nuclear weapons states of their obligation under international law and moral imperative to seek nuclear disarmament.

International crime and justice is an emerging field that covers crime and justice from a global perspective. This book introduces the nature of international and transnational crimes, theoretical foundations to understanding the relationship between social change and the waxing and waning of the crime opportunity structure, globalization, migration, culture conflicts, and the emerging legal frameworks for their prevention and control. It presents the challenges involved in delivering justice and international cooperative efforts to deter, detect, and respond to international and transnational crimes; and the need for international research and data resources to go beyond anecdote and impressionistic accounts to testing and developing theories to build the discipline that bring tangible improvements to the peace, security and well-being of the globalizing world. A timely analysis of a complex subject of international crime and justice for students, scholars, policymakers and advocates

International crime and justice is an emerging field that covers crime and justice from a global perspective. This book introduces the nature of international and transnational crimes, theoretical foundations to understanding the relationship between social change and the waxing and waning of the crime opportunity structure, globalization, migration, culture conflicts, and the emerging legal frameworks for their prevention and control. It presents the challenges involved in delivering justice and international cooperative efforts to deter, detect, and respond to international and transnational crimes; and the need for international research and data resources to go beyond anecdote and impressionistic accounts to testing and developing theories to build the discipline that bring tangible improvements to the peace, security and well-being of the globalizing world. A timely analysis of a complex subject of international crime and justice for students, scholars, policymakers and advocates

This book is a comprehensive account of the most recent developments in modern ophthalmic optics. It makes use of the powerful matrix formalism to describe curvature and power, providing a unified view of the optical and geometrical properties of lenses. This unified approach is applicable to the design and properties of not only spectacle lenses, but also contact and intraocular lenses (IOL). The newest developments in lens design, manufacturing and testing are discussed, with an emphasis on the description of free-form technology, which has surpassed traditional manufacturing methods and allows digital lenses to be specifically designed with the unique requirements of the user. Other important topics which are covered include modern lens materials, up-to-date lens measuring techniques, contact and intraocular lenses, progressive power lenses, low vision aids, ocular protection and coatings. Providing a broad overview of recent developments in the field, it is ideal for researchers, m

The more you practice, the better you get. Written by an experienced team of Member, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (MRCOG) question setters, this book contains 500 practice single best answer questions (SBAs) and extended matching questions (EMQs) for candidates undertaking the Part 2 MRCOG examination. It includes detailed explanations and key references to enable candidates to understand the reasoning and knowledge base behind the questions. All modules of the core curriculum are included, and detailed further sources are recommended for the inquisitive learner. The candidate can test their knowledge across the breadth of modules and identify areas for improvement and further revision. Following the 2015 format change to include SBAs, this book equips candidates with a full range of testing to develop familiarity with the format and prepare for high examination standards. Up to date, comprehensive and written by highly experienced examiners, this is a crucial reso

Do we need to reconsider scientific methodology in light of modern physics? Has the traditional scientific method become outdated, does it need to be defended against dangerous incursions, or has it always been different from what the canonical view suggests? To what extent should we accept non-empirical strategies for scientific theory assessment? Many core aspects of contemporary fundamental physics are far from empirically well-confirmed. There is controversy on the epistemic status of the corresponding theories, in particular cosmic inflation, the multiverse, and string theory. This collection of essays is based on the high profile workshop 'Why Trust a Theory?' and provides interdisciplinary perspectives on empirical testing in fundamental physics from leading physicists, philosophers and historians of science. Integrating different contemporary and historical positions, it will be of interest to philosophers of science and physicists, as well as anyone interested in the foundatio

本書從控制電機的基礎理論、電磁兼容的基礎、試驗方法、測試標準、電磁兼容抑制技術等角度對控制電機及其系統的電磁兼容問題進行了闡述，主要分為三個部分，第一部分為控制電機及其系統的基礎知識；第二部分和第三部分為電磁兼容基礎和電磁兼容測試；第四部分為電磁兼容性抑制技術。本書可供高校電機相關專業的師生參考，也可供電機企業及檢測認證機構的工程人員閱讀。

Hippocrates famously advised doctors 'it is far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has'. Yet 2,500 years later, 'personalised medicine', based on individual genetic profiling and the achievements of genomic research, claims to be revolutionary. In this book, experts from a wide range of disciplines critically examine this claim. They expand the discussion of personalised medicine beyond its usual scope to include many other highly topical issues, including: human nuclear genome transfer ('three-parent IVF'), stem cell-derived gametes, private umbilical cord blood banking, international trade in human organs, biobanks such as the US Precision Medicine Initiative, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, health and fitness self-monitoring. Although these technologies often prioritise individual choice, the original ideal of genomic research saw the human genome as 'the common heritage of humanity'. The authors question whether personalised medicine

Throughout the 1920s Mexico was rocked by attempted coups, assassinations, and popular revolts. Yet by the mid-1930s, the country boasted one of the most stable and durable political systems in Latin America. In the first book on party formation conducted at the regional level after the Mexican Revolution, Sarah Osten examines processes of political and social change that eventually gave rise to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which dominated Mexico's politics for the rest of the twentieth century. In analyzing the history of socialist parties in the southeastern states of Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, and Yucatán, Osten demonstrates that these 'laboratories of revolution' constituted a highly influential testing ground for new political traditions and institutional structures. The Mexican Revolution's Wake shows how the southeastern socialists provided a blueprint for a new kind of party that struck calculated balances between the objectives of elite and popular forces, and

商業銀行數據治理工作是整體數據治理工作的重要組成部分。同時，測試數據治理由於和軟件測試緊密相連，因此又具備治理目標和方法上的特殊性。本書首先回顧了商業銀行數據治理和軟件測試的發展概況，然後詳細介紹了測試數據治理的目標、範疇、架構、模型、生命週期、技術體系等方面的內容，全面闡述了商業銀行測試數據治理的體系。全書內容分成了理論篇、技術篇、擴展篇三大部分，各部分章節的內容循序漸進、逐層深入、環環相扣，覆

Digital SLR cameras have made it easier than ever before to photograph the night sky. Whether you're a beginner, nature photographer, or serious astronomer, this is the definitive handbook to capturing the heavens. Starting with simple projects for beginners such as cameras on tripods, it then moves onto more advanced projects including telescope photography and methods of astronomical research. With 80% revised and updated material, this new edition covers nightscapes, eclipses, using cameras with sky trackers and telescopes, and tools for identifying celestial objects and investigating them scientifically. Image processing is discussed in detail, with worked examples from three popular software packages - Nebulosity, Maxlm DL, and PixInsight. Rather than taking a recipe-book approach, Covington explains how your equipment works as well as offering advice on many practical considerations, such as choice of set-up and the testing of lenses, making this a comprehensive guide for anyone

The 2015 centenary of the publication of Einstein's general theory of relativity, and the first detection of gravitational waves have focused renewed attention on the question of whether Einstein was right. This review of experimental gravity provides a detailed survey of the intensive testing of Einstein's theory of gravity, including tests in the emerging strong-field dynamical regime. It discusses the theoretical frameworks needed to analyze gravitational theories and interpret experiments. Completely revised and updated, this new edition features coverage of new alternative theories of gravity, a unified treatment of gravitational radiation, and the implications of the latest binary pulsar observations. It spans the earliest tests involving the Solar System to the latest tests using gravitational waves detected from merging black holes and neutron stars. It is a comprehensive reference for researchers and graduate students working in general relativity, cosmology, particle physics

From the racially segregated 'Jim Crow' US South to the many electoral but hardly democratic local regimes in Argentina and other federal democracies, the political rights of citizens around the world are often curtailed by powerful subnational rulers. Hybrid Regimes within Democracies presents the first comprehensive study of democracy and authoritarianism in all the subnational units of a federation. The book focuses on Argentina, but also contains a comparative chapter that considers seven other federations including Germany, Mexico, and the United States. The in-depth and multidimensional description of subnational regimes in all Argentine provinces is complemented with an innovative explanation for the large differences between those that are democratic and those that are 'hybrid' - complex combinations of democratic and authoritarian elements. Putting forward and testing an original theory of subnational democracy, Gervasoni extends the rentier-state explanatory logic from resour

The global burden of neurological infectious diseases is huge. Sometimes the diagnosis is straightforward. On other occasions it may be difficult, especially because of the overlap with inflammatory neurological conditions. Delays or missed diagnoses can have devastating consequences for patients. This book brings together adult and pediatric clinical cases in neurological infection and inflammation, including important conditions for both developed countries and resource-poor settings. Clinical case studies are recognized as a useful learning tool for clinicians at all stages in their careers. Each real case works through the history, examination, and investigation findings to the diagnosis and treatment pathway. This is followed by discussion of the key issues, with the inclusion of historical or quirky facts. Many cases are supported online by a certified post-case quiz, testing the reader's clinical reasoning, integrative thinking, and problem-solving.

Offering an original reconceptualization of literary translation, Clive Scott argues against traditional approaches to the theory and practice of translation. Instead he suggests that translation should attend more to the phenomenology of reading, triggering creative textual thinking in the responsive reader rather than testing the hermeneutic skills of the professional translator. In this new guise, translation enlists the reader as an active participant in the constant re-fashioning of the text's structural, associative, intertextual and intersensory possibilities, so that our larger understanding of ecology, anthropology, comparative literature and aesthetics is fundamentally transformed and our sense of the expressive resources of language radically extended. Literary translation thus assumes an existential value which takes us beyond the text itself to how it situates us in the world, and what part it plays in the geography of human relationships.

Cooperative breeders are species in which individuals beyond a pair assist in the production of young in a single brood or litter. Although relatively rare, cooperative breeding is widespread taxonomically and continues to pose challenges to our understanding of the evolution of cooperation and altruistic behavior. Bringing together long-term studies of cooperatively breeding birds, mammals, and fish, this volume provides a synthesis of current studies in the field. The chapters are organised by individual studies of particular species or (in the case of mole-rats) two closely related cooperatively breeding species. Each focuses not only on describing behavior and ecology but also on testing evolutionary hypotheses for the form and function of the diverse and extraordinary cooperative breeding lifestyles that have been discovered. This unique and comprehensive text will be of interest to graduate students and researchers of behavioral ecology and the evolution of cooperation.

How do presidential candidates in new democracies choose their campaign strategies, and what strategies do they adopt? In contrast to the claim that campaigns around the world are becoming more similar to one another, Taylor Boas argues that new democracies are likely to develop nationally specific approaches to electioneering through a process called success contagion. The theory of success contagion holds that the first elected president to complete a successful term in office establishes a national model of campaign strategy that other candidates will adopt in the future. He develops this argument for the cases of Chile, Brazil, and Peru, drawing on interviews with campaign strategists and content analysis of candidates' television advertising from the 1980s through 2011. The author concludes by testing the argument in ten other new democracies around the world, demonstrating substantial support for the theory.

Throughout the 1920s Mexico was rocked by attempted coups, assassinations, and popular revolts. Yet by the mid-1930s, the country boasted one of the most stable and durable political systems in Latin America. In the first book on party formation conducted at the regional level after the Mexican Revolution, Sarah Osten examines processes of political and social change that eventually gave rise to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which dominated Mexico's politics for the rest of the twentieth century. In analyzing the history of socialist parties in the southeastern states of Campeche, Chiapas, Tabasco, and Yucatán, Osten demonstrates that these 'laboratories of revolution' constituted a highly influential testing ground for new political traditions and institutional structures. The Mexican Revolution's Wake shows how the southeastern socialists provided a blueprint for a new kind of party that struck calculated balances between the objectives of elite and popular forces, and

This fully updated second edition provides readers with all they need to understand the use of medical technology in patient care. Incorporating the most recent changes in healthcare, regulations, Standards, and technology, coverage is expanded to include new chapters on device testing, with a particular emphasis on safety inspections, and the interface of medical technology with the electronic medical record. A wide variety of medical instrumentation is discussed, focusing on device types and classifications, and including individual manufacturers as examples. It is designed for readers with a fundamental understanding of anatomy, physiology and medical terminology, as well as electronic concepts such as voltage, current, resistance, impedance, analog and digital signals, and sensors. Additional documents and solutions to end-of-chapter questions accompany the book online, providing biomedical engineering technicians with the resources and tools they need to become knowledgeable and e

Patients with nonepileptic seizures (NES) frequently present in neurology, psychiatry, psychology, and emergency departments. The disorder has been well-documented in the medical literature, and much is known about the phenomenology, ictal semiology, neurologic signs, psychiatric comorbidities, neuropsychological testing, and psychosocial aspects. Since the publication of the third edition in 2010, knowledge of treatments for NES has grown and new data have become available. Fully updated to reflect these developments, this fourth edition brings together the current knowledge of NES treatments, drawing on the experience of an international team of authors. An accompanying website features video-EEGs of seizures and videos of patient-clinician interactions, which will help readers with both diagnostic and management decisions. Tables clearly illustrating the differential diagnosis of various nonepileptic events give readers quick reference guides to aid diagnostic assessment. A valuable

Eye-tracking is quickly becoming a valuable tool in applied linguistics research as it provides a 'real-time', direct measure of cognitive processing effort. This book provides a straightforward introduction to the technology and how it might be used in language research. With a strong focus on the practicalities of designing eye-tracking studies that achieve the standard of other well-established experimental techniques, it provides valuable information about building and designing studies, touching on common challenges and problems, as well as solutions. Importantly, the book looks at the use of eye-tracking in a wide variety of applied contexts including reading, listening and multi-modal input, writing, testing, corpus linguistics, translation, stylistics, and computer-mediated communication. Each chapter finishes with a simple checklist to help researchers use eye-tracking in a wide variety of language studies. Discussion is grounded in concrete examples, which will allow users co

Eye-tracking is quickly becoming a valuable tool in applied linguistics research as it provides a 'real-time', direct measure of cognitive processing effort. This book provides a straightforward introduction to the technology and how it might be used in language research. With a strong focus on the practicalities of designing eye-tracking studies that achieve the standard of other well-established experimental techniques, it provides valuable information about building and designing studies, touching on common challenges and problems, as well as solutions. Importantly, the book looks at the use of eye-tracking in a wide variety of applied contexts including reading, listening and multi-modal input, writing, testing, corpus linguistics, translation, stylistics, and computer-mediated communication. Each chapter finishes with a simple checklist to help researchers use eye-tracking in a wide variety of language studies. Discussion is grounded in concrete examples, which will allow users co

A History of Early Modern Women's Writing is essential reading for students and scholars working in the field of early modern British literature and history. This collaborative book of twenty-two chapters offers an expansive, multifaceted narrative of British women's literary and textual production in the period stretching from the English Reformation to the Restoration. Chapters work together to trace the contours of a diverse body of early modern women's writing, aligning women's texts with the major literary, political, and cultural currents with which they engage. Contributors examine and take account of developments in critical theory, feminism, and gender studies that have influenced the reception, reading, and interpretation of early modern women's writing. This book explicates and interrogates significant methodological and critical developments in the past four decades, guiding and testing scholarship in this period of intense activity in the recovery, dissemination, and inter

The OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) component of the ABA Applied exam is a new concept that involves a number of 'live' practical stations in which candidates must demonstrate communication, professionalism and technical skills to the examiners. This book covers topics that are outlined in the ABA curriculum, presented in a way that emulates the OSCE exam setting, and will help candidates prepare for the exam and test their knowledge. Each station is constructed in clear, logical fashion to make the revision of individual topics more accessible. The sample questions and answers allow self-testing and are complemented by discussions, numerous illustrations and up-to-date clinical guidelines which follow modern-day anesthetic practice. The OSCE Guide for the ABA Applied Examination is a must-have resource which will help candidates further understand and prepare for the OSCE process.

A comprehensive guide to data analysis techniques for physical scientists, providing a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as seasoned researchers. The book begins with an extensive discussion of the foundational concepts and methods of probability and statistics under both the frequentist and Bayesian interpretations of probability. It next presents basic concepts and techniques used for measurements of particle production cross-sections, correlation functions, and particle identification. Much attention is devoted to notions of statistical and systematic errors, beginning with intuitive discussions and progressively introducing the more formal concepts of confidence intervals, credible range, and hypothesis testing. The book also includes an in-depth discussion of the methods used to unfold or correct data for instrumental effects associated with measurement and process noise as well as particle and event losses, before ending with a presentati

The bestselling official guide to the TOEFL iBT® test, from ETS, the maker of the test! Now expanded with a fourth authentic TOEFL iBT practice test. The new Official Guide to the TOEFL® Test is the b

Based on a course taught by the author, this book combines the theoretical underpinnings of statistics with the practical analysis of Earth sciences data using MATLAB. The book is organized to introduce the underlying concepts, and then extends these to the data, covering methods that are most applicable to Earth sciences. Topics include classical parametric estimation and hypothesis testing, and more advanced least squares-based, nonparametric, and resampling estimators. Multivariate data analysis, not often encountered in introductory texts, is presented later in the book, and compositional data is treated at the end. Datasets and bespoke MATLAB scripts used in the book are available online, as well as additional datasets and suggested questions for use by instructors. Aimed at entering graduate students and practicing researchers in the Earth and ocean sciences, this book is ideal for those who want to learn how to analyse data using MATLAB in a statistically-rigorous manner.

Bilingual and bicultural scholar Yeng-Seng Goh offers the first in-depth English language analysis of global Chinese, exploring the spread of Chinese beyond China and its emergence as a global language. Approaching the topic from a Singapore perspective, Goh uses this fascinating language ecosystem, with its unique bilingual language policy, as a case study for Chinese language learning. Offering clear insights into the pedagogy of teaching Chinese as an international language (TCIL), this book covers a range of important topics, such as the use of English in the teaching of Chinese, the teaching of Chinese by non-native teachers, information and communications technology in L2 learning and teaching, and the progressive testing of receptive skills. In doing so, it presents a new, integrative approach to the compilation of Chinese learner's dictionaries, an innovative bilingual hybrid model for training TCIL teachers, and a solid theoretical framework for Masters of Arts programmes in T

Black holes lie at the heart of some of the most fascinating astrophysical phenomena. IAU Symposium 324 marked the 100th anniversary of Schwarzschild's solution of Einstein's field equations predicting the existence of black holes. Our understanding of black holes has come an impressively long way since then, with the last major discovery being coalescing black holes producing gravitational waves, also predicted in 1916. In this volume, observational and theoretical experts discuss the current state-of-the-art in the astrophysics of black-hole systems and their exploitation in testing fundamental theories of physics. Topics span a wide range and include a historical review, the similarity and diversity of black hole systems, gamma ray bursts, tidal disruption events, active galactic nuclei, black hole systems as multi-messenger sources, and the opening of new observational horizons. This fresh review is especially useful to researchers and graduate students engaged in these exciting fi

During the Cold War, the United States conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific. The total explosive yield of these tests was 108 megatons, equivalent to the detonation of one Hiroshima bomb per day over nineteen years. These tests, particularly Castle Bravo, the largest one, had tragic consequences, including the irradiation of innocent people and the permanent displacement of many native Marshallese. Keith M. Parsons and Robert Zaballa tell the story of the development and testing of thermonuclear weapons and the effects of these tests on their victims and on the popular and intellectual culture. These events are also situated in their Cold War context and explained in terms of the prevailing hopes, fears, and beliefs of that age. In particular, the narrative highlights the obsessions and priorities of top American officials, such as Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

During the Cold War, the United States conducted atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific. The total explosive yield of these tests was 108 megatons, equivalent to the detonation of one Hiroshima bomb per day over nineteen years. These tests, particularly Castle Bravo, the largest one, had tragic consequences, including the irradiation of innocent people and the permanent displacement of many native Marshallese. Keith M. Parsons and Robert Zaballa tell the story of the development and testing of thermonuclear weapons and the effects of these tests on their victims and on the popular and intellectual culture. These events are also situated in their Cold War context and explained in terms of the prevailing hopes, fears, and beliefs of that age. In particular, the narrative highlights the obsessions and priorities of top American officials, such as Lewis L. Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission.

Descriptive complexity theory establishes a connection between the computational complexity of algorithmic problems (the computational resources required to solve the problems) and their descriptive complexity (the language resources required to describe the problems). This groundbreaking book approaches descriptive complexity from the angle of modern structural graph theory, specifically graph minor theory. It develops a 'definable structure theory' concerned with the logical definability of graph theoretic concepts such as tree decompositions and embeddings. The first part starts with an introduction to the background, from logic, complexity, and graph theory, and develops the theory up to first applications in descriptive complexity theory and graph isomorphism testing. It may serve as the basis for a graduate-level course. The second part is more advanced and mainly devoted to the proof of a single, previously unpublished theorem: properties of graphs with excluded minors are decid