The ISKO UK Biennial Conference, 4th - 5th July, 2011, London honoured the life and achievements of Brian C Vickery. This book celebrates his influence on the development of the information profession, with contributions from over 50 authors to address research and developments in knowledge organization.

Proceedings from the ninth International Conference on Artificial Life; papers by scientists of many disciplines focusing on the principles of organization and applications of complex, life-like systems. Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary effort to investigate the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of life-like processes. The young field brings a powerful set of tools to the study of how high-level behavior can arise in systems governed by simple rules of interaction. Some of the fundamental questions include: What are the principles of evolution, learning, and growth that can be understood well enough to simulate as an information process? Can robots be built faster and more cheaply by mimicking biology than by the product design process used for automobiles and airplanes? How can we unify theories from dynamical systems, game theory, evolution, computing, geophysics, and cognition? The field has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of life itself through computer models, and has led to novel solutions to complex real-world problems across high technology and human society. This elite biennial meeting has grown from a small workshop in Santa Fe to a major international conference. This ninth volume of the proceedings of the international A-life conference reflects the growing quality and impact of this interdisciplinary scientific community.

This book presents the proceedings of the IDEAS Conference, which is intended as a forum for a new generation of researchers. IDEAS is an arena that encourages researchers to defy their field's boundaries, leveraging disciplinary mindset into contributions to broad domains within the Science, Technology, Engineering, Entrepreneurship, and Management. Further, IDEAS explores novel questions and challenges existing policies and practices on how to apply science and technology as an input to design more innovative and sustainable systems that promote human well-being.

Inverse eigenvalue problems arise in a remarkable variety of applications and associated with any inverse eigenvalue problem are two fundamental questions--the theoretical issue of solvability and the practical issue of computability. Both questions are difficult and challenging. In this text, the authors discuss the fundamental questions, some known results, many applications, mathematical properties, a variety of numerical techniques, as well as several open problems.This is the first book in the authoritative Numerical Mathematics and Scientific Computation series to cover numerical linear algebra, a broad area of numerical analysis. Authored by two world-renowned researchers, the book is aimed at graduates and researchers in applied mathematics, engineering and computer science and makes an ideal graduate text.

These proceedings carry some of the papers delivered at the 14th Biennial Labour History Conference, 11-13 February 2015. Titled Fighting Against War: Peace Activism in the Twentieth Century, the conference was held at the University of Melbourne. A conference book of refereed papers has been published under that title and these proceedings carry the non-refereed papers received for publication. There is one exception to that rule: the paper written by Warwick Eather and Drew Cottle, published below, which underwent double-blind refereeing. It is an important paper, which demonstrates with compelling evidence that the rabbit was anything but a curse to the many men, women, and children who took advantage of the rabbit industry’s resilience during the economic storms for much of the twentieth century. It exemplifies how meticulous research in labour history can provide an entirely new understanding of an otherwise much-maligned animal in Australia. The next three papers all concern opposition to nuclear testing, from the 1950s to the 1980s. When read together, they provide a convincing argument for the importance and efficacy of the diverse anti-nuclear movements in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Whilst there are inevitable overlaps, these papers emphasise different and often neglected dimensions: the struggle for recognition of and compensation for the devastating effects of nuclear testing; the internal dynamics of the various nuclear disarmament organisations; and an evaluation of their impact on government policy, culminating in the Rarotonga Treaty of 1985. The last three papers cover aspects of World War I, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. The first focuses on the role of one redoubtable woman, Ettie Rout, in challenging popular misconceptions about venereal disease held by military authorities and the soldiers themselves. The next paper examines the life of a Czech Lutheran pastor, Professor Josef Hromádka, who visited Australia twice during the 1950s. Hromádka attempted to juggle Christianity with Socialism, which – in the prevailing climate of strident anti-communism – provoked hostile receptions and Cold War invective. The final paper in this collection brings to life, through the reflections of a “participant observer”, the preparations, conduct and impact of Adelaide’s largest anti-war demonstration: the protest against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 organised by the NoWar collective. Its efforts, undertaken by a broad range of rank and file activists, is a fitting reminder, and exemplar, of the theme of our conference: peace activism in the twentieth century.

Fire of Motion offers a selection of papers from the tenth biennial National Ordo Templi Orientis Conference (NOTOCON) of the United States Grand Lodge of O.T.O., held in the Valley of Austin, Texas, in 2015 EV. The papers in this volume cover a wide range of esoteric traditions including: practical matters such as developing a life-long magical practice, the magick of food and feasts, working with the goddess Hekate, and exercises to better understand and cope with death; mundane matters like what to do and how to prepare when approached by the media; historical papers on Rosicrucian orders, the notion of Secret Chiefs, and Deputy Grand Master Lon Milo DuQuette's reflections on his forty years in the Order; and, of course, Saturday evening's keynote address by the United States National Grand Master Sabazius. Together these papers represent some of best modern practical and scholarly work available on Ordo Templi Orientis, Thelema, and the magick of Aleister Crowley.The first NOTOCON conference took place in 1997 EV in Akron, Ohio, and has since been held on alternate years in different cities around the United States. Fire of Motion is the fifth collection of papers from the national conference to be made available, following the inaugural volume Beauty & Strength for the 2007 EV conference.Ordo Templi Orientis is an international fraternal order of men and women devoted to the pursuit of individual liberty, the study of magick, and the promulgation of the Law of Thelema. Founded in the early twentieth century, it has been shaped by such leading lights as Carl Kellner, Theodor Reuss, Aleister Crowley, Karl Germer and Grady Louis McMurtry.

The PowerSkin Conference aims to address the role of building skinsto accomplish a carbon neutral building stock. Topics such as buildingoperation, embodied energy, energy generation and storage in context offacades, structure and environment are considered."