Magnetic energy release plays an important role in a wide variety of cosmic objects such as the Sun, stellar coronae, stellar and galactic accretion disks and pulsars. The observed radio, X-ray and gamma-ray emission often directly results from magnetic `flares', implying that these processes are spatially fragmented and of an impulsive nature. A true understanding of these processes requires a combined magnetohydrodynamical and plasma physical approach. Fragmented Energy Release in Sun and Stars: the Interface between MHD and Plasma Physics provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary summary of magnetic energy release in the Sun and stars, in accretion disks, in pulsar magnetospheres and in laboratory plasmas. These proceedings include papers on both theoretical and observational aspects. Fragmented Energy Release in Sun and Stars: the Interface between MHD and Plasma Physics is for researchers in the fields of solar physics, stellar astrophysics and (laboratory) plasma physics and is a useful resource book for graduate level astrophysics courses.

Suppose you have a dispute with your neighbour, and wish to secure redress for losses incurred. How might the issue be resolved? Is it worth the cost and time delay to take the issue to court? Or is there some other approach? Over the past few decades a range of alternative, dispute resolution programmes have emerged to settle conflicts informally, outside the courtroom. Drawing on real life experiences of community mediation practices in British Columbia, Canada, the author explores informal justice as an event rendered possible by the fragmentation of justice under postmodern conditions. He develops some of Foucault's ideas on governmentality to erect an analytical framework that does not view community mediation as necessarily empowering, or an inevitable expansion of state control. The analysis identifies how one might engage with current versions of community justice and yet avoid the political apathy that too often accompanies such criticism.

Drawing extensively on international and European law, international and national case law, as well as academic writings, this study offers a comprehensive and critical analysis on the issue of non-state actors in refugee law.

The European Union is the world's largest economic entity, with half a billion people and a gross domestic product slightly larger than the United States. It is the largest exporter, the largest foreign aid donor, the largest source of foreign investment, and a magnet for migrants. But its decision-making powers are often fragmented and ineffective. To date there has been no comprehensive study of European international economic relations. This book fills that gap. It examines the main areas of Europe's foreign economic policy: trade, development, external competition policy, migration, and external energy/environment policy. This book explains why it is time for the EU to wake up to its global responsibilities, and why, in the absence of reform of its governance system, Europe risks remaining a fragmented power.

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent's overall belief state is divided into several sub-states-fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s, and has recently attracted increased attention. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation's role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.

Here is the first major work that examines the benefits of applying social understanding to addiction. The author demonstrates how a social perspective shifts the paradigm from viewing a person in terms of "particles" to viewing a person in terms of relationships. This reorientation creates promising new opportunities for intervention. The book discusses recent advances in theories on community capacity building, resilience, and social ecology alongside their practical applications. Written in an engaging style, the book features numerous vignettes, key points, and illustrations that help you apply the material in your own practice.

While urban preservation is almost as old as cities themselves, it has become increasingly controversial in modern cities. In this book, Yue Zhang presents a cross-national comparative analysis of the politics of urban preservation. Based on comprehensive archival research and more than two hundred in-depth interviews in Beijing, Chicago, and Paris, Zhang finds that urban preservation provides a tool for diverse political and social actors to frame their propositions and advance their favored courses of action. In cities from West to East, divergent political and economic interests have caused urban preservation to become contested. Exploring three of the world’s great cities, Zhang deftly navigates readers through each case study, illustrating the complexities of the politics of urban preservation in each city. In Beijing, urban preservation was integral to promoting economic growth and enhancing the city’s image during the lead-up to the 2008 Olympics; in Chicago, it is used to increase property values and revitalize neighborhoods; and in Paris, it offers a channel for national and municipal governments to compete for control over urban space. Although urban preservation serves various purposes in these cities, Zhang explains how different types of political fragmentation have affected the implementation of preservation initiatives in predictable ways, thus generating distinct patterns of urban preservation. A comparative urban politics study of unusual breadth, The Fragmented Politics of Urban Preservation gives us insight into the complex policy process of urban preservation through which political institutions are intertwined with interests and inclinations, fundamentally shaping the direction of urban development, the physical forms of cities, and the lives of citizens.

Marco Just Quiles offers new perspectives on how domestic and external factors interact to shape variations in local state capacity. Using Bolivia as a case, he applies quantitative and qualitative methods to decode the nexus between global interdependencies, subnational bargaining processes, and diverging configurations of public service provision at the local level. Relying in part on newly compiled indicators, the author presents the ways in which shifting distributional coalitions between regional elites, central governments and their connections with international markets in different periods of the last century have produced the contemporary fragmentation of stateness in Bolivia.

Many of the basic issues of political science have been addressed by pluralist theory, which focuses on the competing interests of a democratic polity, their organization, and their influence on policy. Andrew McFarland shows that this approach still provides a promising foundation for understanding the American political process.