It is becoming evident that satisfying the ever-increasing global demand for energy is having a major impact on the environment. The technologies required to minimize such impacts are discussed here in an in-depth overview and review of a broad spectrum of energy and environmental issues. The first five sections of the book deal directly with scientific and technological topics: the production, transportation, and utilization of electric power; thermal science and engineering for energy conservation/utilization processes; gas hydrates; multiphase mechanics for energy and environmental technology; pollutants and radioactive wastes in the earth. The sixth section, unique in a book of this type, focuses on education, recording a panel discussion on solutions to problems of energy and environment. For specialists and nonspecialists alike, the book is thus a valuable guide to the technological challenges for the future.

Quantum networks build on entanglement and quantum measurement to achieve tasks that are beyond the reach of classical systems. Using quantum effects, we can detect the presence of eavesdroppers, raise the sensitivity of scientific instruments such as telescopes, or teleport quantum data from one location to another. Long-distance entanglement can be used to execute important tasks such as Byzantine agreement and leader election in fewer rounds of communication than classical systems, improving the efficiency of operations that are critical in distributed systems.

Although scholars have emphasized the importance of women’s networks for civil society in twentieth-century Japan, Women and Networks in Nineteenth-Century Japan is the first book to tackle the subject for the contentious and consequential nineteenth century. The essays traverse the divide when Japan started transforming itself from a decentralized to a centralized government, from legally imposed restrictions on movement to the breakdown of travel barriers, and from ad hoc schooling to compulsory elementary school education. As these essays suggest, such changes had a profound impact on women and their roles in networks. Rather than pursue a common methodology, the authors take diverse approaches to this topic that open up fruitful avenues for further exploration. Most of the essays in this volume are by Japanese scholars; their inclusion here provides either an introduction to their work or the opportunity to explore their scholarship further. Because women are often invisible in historical documentation, the authors use a range of sources (such as diaries, letters, and legal documents) to reconstruct the familial, neighborhood, religious, political, work, and travel networks that women maintained, constructed, or found themselves in, sometimes against their will. In so doing, most but not all of the authors try to decenter historical narratives built on men’s activities and men’s occupational and status-based networks, and instead recover women’s activities in more localized groupings and personal associations.

The Intelligent Decision Technologies (IDT) International Conference encourages an interchange of research on intelligent systems and intelligent technologies that enhance or improve decision making. The focus of IDT is interdisciplinary and includes research on all aspects of intelligent decision technologies, from fundamental development to real applications. IDT has the potential to expand their support of decision making in such areas as finance, accounting, marketing, healthcare, medical and diagnostic systems, military decisions, production and operation, networks, traffic management, crisis response, human-machine interfaces, financial and stock market monitoring and prediction, and robotics. Intelligent decision systems implement advances in intelligent agents, fuzzy logic, multi-agent systems, artificial neural networks, and genetic algorithms, among others. Emerging areas of active research include virtual decision environments, social networking, 3D human-machine interfaces, cognitive interfaces, collaborative systems, intelligent web mining, e-commerce, e-learning, e-business, bioinformatics, evolvable systems, virtual humans, and designer drugs. This volume contains papers from the Fourth KES International Symposium on Intelligent Decision Technologies (KES IDT’12), hosted by researchers in Nagoya University and other institutions in Japan. This book contains chapters based on papers selected from a large number of submissions for consideration for the conference from the international community. The volume represents the current leading thought in intelligent decision technologies.

This handbook is a reference work providing a comprehensive, objective and comparative overview of Space Law. The global space economy reached $330 billion in 2015, with a growth rate of 9 per cent vis-à-vis the previous year. Consequently, Space Law is changing and expanding expeditiously, especially at the national level. More laws and regulations are being adopted by space-faring nations, while more countries are adapting their Space Laws and regulations related to activities in outer space. More regulatory bodies are being created, while more regulatory diversity (from public law to private law) is being instituted as increasing and innovative activities are undertaken by private entities which employ new technologies and business initiatives. At the international level, Space Law (both hard law and soft law) is expanding in certain areas, especially in satellite broadcasting and telecommunications. The Routledge Handbook of Space Law summarises the existing state of knowledge on a comprehensive range of topics and aspires to set the future international research agenda by indicating gaps and inconsistencies in the existing law and highlighting emerging legal issues. Unlike other books on the subject, it addresses major international and national legal aspects of particular space activities and issues, rather than providing commentary on or explanations about a particular Space Law treaty or national regulation. Drawing together contributions from leading academic scholars and practicing lawyers from around the world, the volume is divided into five key parts: • Part I: General Principles of International Space Law • Part II: International Law of Space Applications • Part III: National Regulation of Space Activities • Part IV: National Regulation of Navigational Satellite Systems • Part V: Commercial Aspects of Space Law This handbook is both practical and theoretical in scope, and may serve as a reference tool to academics, professionals and policy-makers with an interest in Space Law.