Tag: Fragile

Free Download Simon A. Levin, "Fragile Dominion: Complexity and the Commons"
English | 2000 | pages: 265 | ISBN: 073820319X, 0738201111 | PDF | 26,8 mb
We all know that our planet is losing its biological diversity at an alarming rate, with frightening implications for our future. But when does an ecosystem hit the breaking point? In this important book, Princeton biologist Simon Levin offers general readers the first look at how the new science of complexity can help to solve our looming ecological crisis. Levin argues that our biosphere is the classic embodiment of what scientists call complex adaptive systems. By exploring how such systems work, we can determine how they might fail: How much loss can an ecosystem bear before it starts to collapse? How resilient are these systems? Do they in fact hover at the edge of chaos? A deeply original work on one of the most pressing issues of our time, Fragile Dominion is a powerful appeal to understand and protect the global commons."

Free Download Fragile Heritage in Chinese Ruralities: Enacting Architectural Tools to Valorize Historical Palimpsests by Gerardo Semprebon
English | PDF EPUB (True) | 2024 | 248 Pages | ISBN : 3031775163 | 193.3 MB

Free Download Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City by Adam Brookes
English | September 1, 2022 | ISBN: 1784743798 | 384 pages | PDF | 32 Mb
The gripping true story of the intrepid curators who saved China’s finest art from the ravages of the Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

Free Download Fragile Objects: Soft Matter, Hard Science, and the Thrill of Discovery By Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Jacques Badoz (auth.)
1996 | 189 Pages | ISBN: 1461275288 | PDF | 6 MB
Over the past few decades we have learned a great deal about the behavior of such materials as liquid crystals, emulsions and colloids, polymers, and complex molecules. These materials, called "soft matter" ("matière fragile" in French), have neither the rigid structure and crystalline symmetry of a solid nor the uniformity and disorder of a fluid or a gas. They have unusual and fascinating properties: some change their viscosity at our beck and call; others form layers of two-dimensional liquids; some are polarized, their molecules all oriented in the same direction and turning in unison at our command; others make up the foams, bubbles, waxes, gums, and many other items we take for granted every day. De Gennes, one of the world’s leading experts on these strange forms of matter, here addresses topics ranging from soft-matter physics – the formation of rubber, the nature and uses of gum arabic, the wetting and de-wetting of surfaces, and the mysterious properties of bubbles and foams – to the activities of science: the role of individual or team work, the relation of discovery to correction, and the interplay of conscience and knowledge. In the best tradition of science writing, this book teaches us about both our world and ourselves.

Free Download Sonja Grimm, Nicolas Lemay-Hebert, "The Political Invention of Fragile States: The Power of Ideas"
English | 2014 | ISBN: 1138801534, 1138209724 | EPUB | pages: 162 | 0.4 mb
This book investigates the emergence, the dissemination and the reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. Contributors investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the OECD, the European Union and the G7+ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept.

Free Download John M. Owen IV, "The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order "
English | ISBN: 0300260733 | 2023 | 352 pages | PDF | 2 MB
How democracies compete with autocracies to bias international order in their favor-and why democracies are losing

Free Download W. Patrick McCray, "Glassmaking in Renaissance Venice: The Fragile Craft"
English | 1999 | ISBN: 0754600505 | EPUB | pages: 272 | 3.8 mb
The transformation of the Venetian glass industry during the Renaissance was not only a technical phenomenon, but also a social one. In this volume, Patrick McCray examines the demand, production and distribution of glass and glassmaking technology during this period and evaluates several key topics, including the nature of Renaissance demand for certain luxury goods, the interaction between industry and government in the Renaissance, and technological change as a social process. McCray places in its broader economic and cultural context a craft and industry that has been traditionally viewed primarily through the surviving artefacts held in museum collections. McCray explores the social and economic context of glassmaking in Venice, from the guild and state level down to the workings of the individual glass house. He tracks the dissemination of Venetian-style glassmaking throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and its effects on Venice’s glass industry. Integrating evidence from a wide variety of sources – written documents such as shop records and recipe books, pictorial representations of glass and glassmaking, and the careful physical and chemical analysis of glass pieces that have survived to the present – he examines the relation between consumer demand and technological change. In the process, he traces the organizational changes that signified a transition from an older and more traditional manner of ‘artisan’ manufacture to a modern, ‘factory-style’ manner of production.

Free Download Brian Ganson, Achim Wennmann, "Business and Conflict in Fragile States: The Case for Pragmatic Solutions"
English | 2016 | ISBN: 1138213977 | EPUB | pages: 234 | 0.7 mb
Large-scale investments in fragile states – in Latin America, Africa, the former Soviet Union and Asia – become magnets for conflict, which undermines business, development and security.

Free Download Slavoj Zizek, "The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?"
English | 2009 | ISBN: 1844673022 | PDF | pages: 183 | 10.2 mb
One of the signal features of our era is the re-emergence of the ‘sacred’ in all its different guises, from New Age paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within cultural and political theory. The wager of Žižek’s The Fragile Absolute – published here with a new preface by the author – is that Christianity and Marxism can fight together against the contemporary onslought of vapid spiritualism. The revolutionary core of the Christian legacy is too precious to be left to the fundamentalists.

Free Download Sovereignty Sharing in Fragile States by John D. Ciorciari
English | March 16, 2021 | ISBN: 1503613666 | True EPUB | 328 pages | 0.8 MB
In fragile states, domestic and international actors sometimes take the momentous step of sharing sovereign authority to provide basic public services and build the rule of law. While sovereignty sharing can help address gaps in governance, it is inherently difficult, risking redundancy, confusion over roles, and feuds between partners when their interests diverge.