In astonishing and unflinching detail, a noted science journalist explains how Earth's climate will be impacted with every degree of increase in global warming--and what can be done about it now.

Driven by the need to achieve superior control performances for robots with hyper degrees of freedom, the virtual decomposition control approach is thoroughly presented in this book. This approach uses subsystem (such as links and joints of a complex robot) dynamics to conduct control design, while guaranteeing the stability and convergence of the entire complex robot without compromising the rigorousness of the system analysis. The central concept of this approach is the definition of the virtual stability. The stability of the entire complex robot is mathematically equivalent to the virtual stability of every subsystem. This fact allows us to convert a large problem to a few simple problems with mathematical certainty. This book comprises fourteen chapters. The first five chapters form the foundation of this approach. The remaining nine chapters are relatively independent. Starting from Chapter 6, each chapter deals with a particular type of systems including motor/transmission assemblies, hydraulic robots, coordinated multiple robots, space robots, humanoid robots, adaptive teleoperation, and modular robot manipulators. At the end, the extensions of this approach to distributed-parameter systems and to electrical circuits are given, paving the way for other applications to follow. This book is intended for practitioners, researchers, and graduate students who have acquired fundamental knowledge on robotics and control systems and have been committed to achieving the best control performances on complex robotics systems and beyond.

A mafia-connected billionaire and innocent mafia princess are forced together to fend off their rivals. When the enemies surface, will their shot at love survive? As one of the most powerful men in the world, I will do whatever it takes to keep Katarina safe from our enemies, even if I have to protect the headstrong princess from herself. Katarina flees from the brutality of the criminal underworld, the label of being daughter to the ruthless crime boss, and away from me. Forced together in a dangerous power struggle with the ruthless crime family, neither of us can deny the sheer magnetism of our growing devotion. But our rivals strike back with a vengeance, and things go disastrously wrong. Katarina is forced to fight back with all the instincts of her birthright. The daughter of the brutal kingpin goes head-to-head with our enemies. But will our love survive the rival's vendetta and the stark realities in this ruthless world? Degrees of Control is the explosive third book in the Cruel Deceptions collection by Via Mari. It is a deliciously dark, forced proximity, opposites attract, billionaire mafia romance. You will love this collection where the passion is fiery, loyalty is fierce, and the stakes are high. This story is full of suspenseful twists and turns, leaving you on the edge of your seat one moment and fanning yourself the next. Each novel builds on the next. It is most enjoyable read from beginning to end with a guaranteed HEA in the final book, Degrees of Power.

Katarina Meilers is a smart professional design consultant, emotionally scarred by her mother's past and that of her own. She is content with immersion in work until she finds herself enthralled by the deep green eyes and quirky smile of Chase Prestian, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world. Chase is unrelenting in his pursuit and Katarina is defenseless against the palpable magnetism that exists between them. She finds herself plunged into a world of ostentatious wealth, danger, and a journey of sexual exploration that ignites her deepest, darkest desires. When Katarina learns the truth about his past, and her own, she must overcome naivete and a deep-seated mistrust to determine if she can accept the domineering traits of a man whose tendencies for control know no bounds.

Zeelie wonders if they’re in danger. When temperatures soar to 47 degrees one hot summer day, 12-year-old Zeelie hopes the nearby bushfires everyone’s talking about aren’t heading towards her family’s new home. What will they do if the wind changes direction? What about their belongings and their beloved pets? And why hasn’t her mum and brother returned from Melbourne? Nothing can prepare Zeelie for what’s to come.

This book must not be ignored. It really is our final warning. Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse.

America’s higher education system is failing its students. In the space of a generation, we have gone from being the best-educated society in the world to one surpassed by eleven other nations in college graduation rates. Higher education is evolving into a caste system with separate and unequal tiers that take in students from different socio-economic backgrounds and leave them more unequal than when they first enrolled. Until the 1970s, the United States had a proud history of promoting higher education for its citizens. The Morrill Act, the G.I. Bill and Pell Grants enabled Americans from across the income spectrum to attend college and the nation led the world in the percentage of young adults with baccalaureate degrees. Yet since 1980, progress has stalled. Young adults from low to middle income families are not much more likely to graduate from college than four decades ago. When less advantaged students do attend, they are largely sequestered into inferior and often profit-driven institutions, from which many emerge without degrees—and shouldering crushing levels of debt. In Degrees of Inequality, acclaimed political scientist Suzanne Mettler explains why the system has gone so horribly wrong and why the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for so many. In her eye-opening account, she illuminates how political partisanship has overshadowed America’s commitment to equal access to higher education. As politicians capitulate to corporate interests, owners of for-profit colleges benefit, but for far too many students, higher education leaves them with little besides crippling student loan debt. Meanwhile, the nation’s public universities have shifted the burden of rising costs onto students. In an era when a college degree is more linked than ever before to individual—and societal—well-being, these pressures conspire to make it increasingly difficult for students to stay in school long enough to graduate. By abandoning their commitment to students, politicians are imperiling our highest ideals as a nation. Degrees of Inequality offers an impassioned call to reform a higher education system that has come to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, socioeconomic inequality in America.

A little Dan Brown conspiracy mixed with a touch of Philip K. Dick sci-fi, "A Matter of Degrees" weaves a genre-bending tale of conspiracy, cover-ups, and murder, featuring beloved characters from Marcoux's earlier novels, "Facades" and "Back to Salem."