A revealing look at the dark side of the electronics industry and global efforts to move it toward greater sustainability and accountability.

Challenging the Chip is the first comprehensive examination of the impacts of electronics manufacturing on workers and local environments around the world. The essays in this volume contribute to a collaborative international discourse of citizens, workers, health professionals, academics, labour leaders, environmental activists, and others with the common goal of developing alternative visions for the regulation and sustainable development of manufacturing, assembly/disassembly, and waste disposal in the global electronics industry. Contributors from Asia, North America, Europe, and Latin America provide multidimensional perspectives on the science and the politics of environmental and social justice, documenting the efforts of community and labour activists, government agencies, and others in introducing more sustainable systems of production to one of the world's largest manufacturing industries.

A collection of 21 reports on recent research conducted in the area of alpha-keto dehydrogenase complexes reveals their central role in cellular metabolism and regulations sites. The implications in medical research range from defects in regulation linked to diabetes, heart disease, and obesity, and inherited and acquired immune diseases such as maple syrup urine disease and biliary cirrhosis. The volume integrates structure-function relationships, gene regulation, and genetic defects, and extends the variety of experimental approaches in each area. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: • The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients • The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping • The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.