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Since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis the prevailing economic development model based on an assumption of unlimited resources and, therefore, unlimited growth has been increasingly put into question by academics, policy-making agencies and even industry leaders themselves. Climate change, general environmental and natural resource degradation, widespread inequalities, and systemic governance failures are pressing capitalism to renew itself to deliver sustainable outcomes for a broader base of stakeholders. This has become known in more practical terms as the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and responsible investment movements. The pressure to change how we organise ourselves as societies and economies has implications for how large and small corporations, public or private, are governed and to the benefit of whom. This Handbook offers a rare combination of pluralistic and multidisciplinary perspectives from law, economics, finance and management, as well as an interesting mix of latest academic thinking and practical recommendations on ESG for boards and executive teams.Should companies be governed and managed for the benefit of their shareholders alone? Can companies be governed to deliver for shareholders as well as the broader stakeholder base? How can investors allocate capital to advance sustainability? Part I provides a pluralistic discussion of some of these fundamental questions besetting academics and practitioners alike while Part II examines recent regulatory developments and assesses what may need to change in terms of law and regulation to both hold companies to account for sustainability while enabling them to continue to provide vital goods and services. Part III of the book discusses how the different types of companies and investors are currently facing the sustainability imperative and incorporating ESG factors on how they operate and invest. The concluding chapter provides an overview of the key regulatory, ecosystem andboard-level gaps that require urgent and decisive action.

This book develops the core proposition that systems theory is an attempt to construct an ¿exact and scientific metaphysics,¿ a system of general ideas central to science that can be expressed mathematically. Collectively, these ideas would constitute a nonreductionist ¿theory of everything¿ unlike what is being sought in physics. Inherently transdisciplinary, systems theory offers ideas and methods that are relevant to all of the sciences and also to professional fields such as systems engineering, public policy, business, and social work. To demonstrate the generality and importance of the systems project, the book structures its content in three parts: Essay, Notes, and Commentary. The Essay section is a short distillation of systems ideas that illuminate the problems that many types of systems face. Commentary explains systems thinking, its value, and its relation to mainstream scientific knowledge. It shows how systems ideas revise our understanding of science and how they impact our views on religion, politics, and history. Finally, Notes contains all the mathematics in the book, as well as scientific, philosophical, and poetic content that is accessible to readers without a strong mathematical background.Elements and Relations is intended for researchers and students in the systems (complexity) field as well as related fields of social science modeling, systems biology and ecology, and cognitive science. It can be used as a textbook in systems courses at the undergraduate or graduate level and for STEM education. As much of the book does not require a background in mathematics, it is also suitable for general readers in the natural and social sciences as well as in the humanities, especially philosophy.

At the time of drafting the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), the drafters were hopeful that the document will be the response needed to ensure that the world would never again witness such atrocities as committed by the Nazi regime. While, arguably, there has been no such great loss of human lives as during WWII, genocidal incidents have and still take place. After WWII, we have witnessed the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, to name only a few. The responses to these atrocities have always been inadequate. Every time the world leaders would come together to renew their promise of ¿Never Again¿. However, the promise has never materialised. In 2014, Daesh unleashed genocide against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq. Before the world managed to shake off from the atrocities, in 2016, the Burmese military launched a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. This was followed by reports ofever-growing atrocities against Christian minorities in Nigeria. Without waiting too long, in 2018, China proceeded with its genocidal campaign against the Uyghur Muslims. In 2020, the Tigrayans became the victims of ethnic targeting. Five cases of mass atrocities that, in the space of just five years, all easily meet the legal definition of genocide. Again, the response that followed each case has been inadequate and unable to make a difference to the targeted communities. This legacy does not give much hope for the future. The question that this books hopes to address is what needs to change to ensure that we are better equipped to address genocide and prevent the crime in the future.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thousands of pupils attended boarding schools in various places across the globe. Their experiences were vastly different, yet they all had in common that they were separated from their families and childhood friends for a period of time in order to sleep, eat, learn and move within the limited spatial sites of the boarding school. This book frames these ¿boarding schools¿ as a global and transcultural phenomenon that is part of larger political and social developments of European imperialism, the Cold War, and independence movements. Drawing together case studies from colonial South Africa, colonial India, Dutch Indonesia, early twentieth-century Nigeria, Fascist Spain, Ghana, Nazi Germany, nineteenth-century Ireland, North America and the Soviet Union, this edited collection examines the ways in which boarding schools extracted pupils from their original social background in order to train, mold and shape them so that they could fit intothe perceived position in broader society. The book makes the broader argument that framing boarding schools as a global phenomenon is imperative for a deepened understanding of the global and transnational networks that linked people as well as ideas and practices of education and childhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The expanded 3rd edition of this established textbook offers an updated overview and review of the computational physics techniques used in materials modelling over different length and time scales. It describes in detail the theory and application of some of the most important methods used to simulate materials across the various levels of spatial and temporal resolution. Quantum mechanical methods such as the Hartree-Fock approximation for solving the Schrödinger equation at the smallest spatial resolution are discussed as well as the Molecular Dynamics and Monte-Carlo methods on the micro- and meso-scale up to macroscopic methods used predominantly in the Engineering world such as Finite Elements (FE) or Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH).Extensively updated throughout, this new edition includes additional sections on polymer theory, statistical physics and continuum theory, the latter being the basis of FE methods and SPH. Each chapter now first provides an overview ofthe key topics covered, with a new ¿key points¿ section at the end. The book is aimed at beginning or advanced graduate students who want to enter the field of computational science on multi-scales. It provides an in-depth overview of the basic physical, mathematical and numerical principles for modelling solids and fluids on the micro-, meso-, and macro-scale. With a set of exercises, selected solutions and several case studies, it is a suitable book for students in physics, engineering, and materials science, and a practical reference resource for those already using materials modelling and computational methods in their research.

This textbook provides a succinct introduction to algebraic topology. It follows a modern categorical approach from the beginning and gives ample motivation throughout so that students will find this an ideal first encounter to the field. Topics are treated in a self-contained manner, making this a convenient resource for instructors searching for a comprehensive overview of the area.It begins with an outline of category theory, establishing the concepts of functors, natural transformations, adjunction, limits, and colimits. As a first application, van Kampen's theorem is proven in the groupoid version. Following this, an excursion to cofibrations and homotopy pushouts yields an alternative formulation of the theorem that puts the computation of fundamental groups of attaching spaces on firm ground. Simplicial homology is then defined, motivating the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms, and the simplicial approximation theorem is proven. After verifying the axiomsfor singular homology, various versions of the Mayer-Vietoris sequence are derived and it is shown that homotopy classes of self-maps of spheres are classified by degree.The final chapter discusses cellular homology of CW complexes, culminating in the uniqueness theorem for ordinary homology.Introduction to Algebraic Topology is suitable for a single-semester graduate course on algebraic topology. It can also be used for self-study, with numerous examples, exercises, and motivating remarks included.

This book presents the basic theoretical concepts of dynamical systems with applications in population dynamics. Existence, uniqueness and stability of solutions, global attractors, bifurcations, center manifold and normal form theories are discussed with cutting-edge applications, including a Holling's predator-prey model with handling and searching predators and projecting the epidemic forward with varying level of public health interventions for COVID-19.As an interdisciplinary text, this book aims at bridging the gap between mathematics, biology and medicine by integrating relevant concepts from these subject areas, making it self-sufficient for the reader. It will be a valuable resource to graduate and advance undergraduate students for interdisciplinary research in the area of mathematics and population dynamics.