Building the Most Complex Structure on Earth provides readers with a basic biological education an easy and understandable introduction into a new epigenetic theory of development and evolution. This is a novel theory that describes the epigenetic mechanisms of the development and evolution of animals and explains the colossal evolution and diversification of animals from a new post-genetic perspective. Modern biology has demonstrated the existence of a common genetic toolkit in the animal kingdom, but neither the number of genes nor the evolution of new genes is responsible for the development and evolution of animals. The failure to understand how the same genetic toolkit is used to produce millions of widely different animal forms remains a perplexing conundrum in modern biology. The novel theory shows that the development and evolution of the animal kingdom are functions of epigenetic mechanisms, which are the competent users of the genetic toolkit. - Provides a comprehensive view of the epigenetic aspects of reproduction, development, and evolution. - Highly rigorous, but simple enough for readers with only a basic knowledge of biology.

Why did the first civilizations emerge when and where they did? How did Islam become a unifying force in the world of its birth? What enabled the West to project its goods and power around the world from the fifteenth century on? Why was agriculture invented seven times and the steam engine just once?World-historical questions such as these, the subjects of major works by Jared Diamond, David Landes, and others, are now of great moment as global frictions increase. In a spirited and original contribution to this quickening discussion, two renowned historians, father and son, explore the webs that have drawn humans together in patterns of interaction and exchange, cooperation and competition, since earliest times. Whether small or large, loose or dense, these webs have provided the medium for the movement of ideas, goods, power, and money within and across cultures, societies, and nations. From the thin, localized webs that characterized agricultural communities twelve thousand years ago, through the denser, more interactive metropolitan webs that surrounded ancient Sumer, Athens, and Timbuktu, to the electrified global web that today envelops virtually the entire world in a maelstrom of cooperation and competition, J. R. McNeill and William H. McNeill show human webs to be a key component of world history and a revealing framework of analysis. Avoiding any determinism, environmental or cultural, the McNeills give us a synthesizing picture of the big patterns of world history in a rich, open-ended, concise account.

The design of tall buildings and complex structures involves challenging activities, including: scheme design, modelling, structural analysis and detailed design. This book provides structural designers with a systematic approach to anticipate and solve issues for tall buildings and complex structures. This book begins with a clear and rigorous exposition of theories behind designing tall buildings. After this is an explanation of basic issues encountered in the design process. This is followed by chapters concerning the design and analysis of tall building with different lateral stability systems, such as MRF, shear wall, core, outrigger, bracing, tube system, diagrid system and mega frame. The final three chapters explain the design principles and analysis methods for complex and special structures. With this book, researchers and designers will find a valuable reference on topics such as tall building systems, structure with complex geometry, Tensegrity structures, membrane structures and offshore structures. - Numerous worked-through examples of existing prestigious projects around the world (such as Jeddah Tower, Shanghai Tower, and Petronas Tower etc.) are provided to assist the reader's understanding of the topic - Provides the latest modelling methods in design such as BIM and Parametric Modelling technique - Detailed explanations of widely used programs in current design practice, such as SAP2000, ETABS, ANSYS, and Rhino - Modelling case studies for all types of tall buildings and complex structures, such as: Buttressed Core system, diagrid system, Tube system, Tensile structures and offshore structures etc.

Management in the Age of Digital Business Complexity focuses on how the digital age is changing management and vastly speeding up complexity dynamics. The recent coevolution of technologies has dramatically changed in just a few years how people and firms learn, communicate, and behave. Consequently, the process of how firms coevolve and the speed at which they coevolve has been dramatically changed in the digital age, and managerial methods are lagging way behind. Combining his own expertise with that of a number of specialist and international co-authors, McKelvey conveys how companies that fall behind digitally can quickly be driven out of business. The book has been created for academics seeking to upgrade management thinking into the modern digital age and vastly improve the change capabilities of firms facing digital-oriented competition.

Contemporary architecture, and the culture it reflects dependent as it is on fossil fuels, has contributed to the cause and necessity of a burgeoning green process that emerged over the past half century. This text is the first to offer a comprehensive critical history and analysis of the greening of architecture through accumulative reduction of negative environmental effects caused by buildings, urban designs and settlements. Describing the progressive development of green architecture from 1960 to 2010, it illustrates how it is ever evolving and ameliorated through alterations in form, technology, materials and use and it examines different places worldwide that represent a diversity of cultural and climatic contexts. The book is divided into seven chapters: with an overview of the environmental issues and the nature of green architecture in response to them, followed by an historic perspective of the pioneering evolution of green technology and architectural integration over the past five decades, and finally, providing the intransigent and culturally pervasive current examples within a wide range of geographic territories. The greening of architecture is seen as an evolutionary process that is informed by significant world events, climate change, environmental theories, movements in architecture, technological innovations, and seminal works in architecture and planning throughout each decade over the past fifty years. This time period is bounded on one end by the awareness of environmental problems beginning in the 1960's, the influential texts by Rachel Carson, E.F. Schumacher, Buckminster Fuller and Steward Brand, and the impact of the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973, and on the other end the pervasiveness of the necessary greening of architecture that includes, systemic reforms in architectural and urban design, land use planning, transportation, agriculture, and energy production found in the 2000's. The greening process moves from remediation to holistic models of architecture. Geographical landscapes give a global account of the greening process where some examples are parallel and sympathetic, and others are in clear contrast to one another with very individuated approaches. Certain events, like the Rio Summit in 1992 and Kyoto Protocol in 1997, and themes, such as the Hannover Principles in 2000, provide a dynamic ideological critique as well as a formal and technical discussion of the embodied and accumulative content of greening principles in architecture.

Excavations in Residential Areas of Tikal—Nonelite Groups Without Shrines is a two-volume presentation of the excavations carried out in and near small residential structures at Tikal, Guatemala, beginning in 1961. These reports show that Tikal was more than a ceremonial center; in addition to its numerous temples, the great Maya city was home to a large population of people. These volumes look at the residential structures themselves as well as domestic artifacts such as burials, ceramic test pits, chultuns. Tikal Report 20A is a descriptive presentation of the excavation data and includes nearly two hundred illustrations. Together with Tikal Report 20B, which reviews and interprets this data, this report augments the data presented in Tikal Reports 19 and 21.

From 1933 to 1941, Macon was the site of the largest archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Georgia and one of the most significant archaeological projects to be initiated by the federal government during the depression. The project was administered by the National Park Service and funded at times by such government programs as the Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Civil Works Administration. At its peak in 1955, more than eight hundred laborers were employed in more than a dozen separate excavations of prehistoric mounds and villages. The best-known excavations were conducted at the Macon Plateau site, the area President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed as the Ocmulgee National Monument in 1936. Although a wealth of material was recovered from the site in the 1930s, little provision was made for analyzing and reporting it. Consequently, much information is still unpublished. The sixteen essays in this volume were presented at a symposium to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Ocmulgee National Monument. The symposium provided archaeologists with an opportunity to update the work begun a half-century before and to bring it into the larger context of southeastern history and general advances in archaeological research and methodology. Among the topics discussed are platform mounds, settlement patterns, agronomic practices, earth lodges, human skeletal remains, Macon Plateau culture origins, relations of site inhabitants with other aboriginal societies and Europeans, and the challenges of administering excavations and park development.