Gregory Fairchild introduces readers to the rising set of entrepreneurs whose efforts to reach marginalized groups are reshaping the emerging markets of the United States. He explores how minority-owned and community-development institutions are achieving innovations in financial services to further economic development and reduce inequality.

Emerging focuses on the skills necessary for academic writing in any discipline—and offers concrete strategies for improving those skills. Author Barclay Barrios uses an inquiry-based approach to help students understand and write about a variety of texts, while innovative assignment sequences explore the important but unsettled issues that shape our lives, such as How is technology changing us?, How can you make a difference in the world?, and a central question of our time, How can we get along? Thought-provoking, contemporary readings help students address those questions in meaningful ways. Fifteen new readings and updated writing assignments keep Emerging in tune with current ideas that will challenge students to think beyond their own experiences—and beyond the classroom.

An investigation of intelligence as an emergent phenomenon, integrating the perspectives of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. Emergence—the formation of global patterns from solely local interactions—is a frequent and fascinating theme in the scientific literature both popular and academic. In this book, Keith Downing undertakes a systematic investigation of the widespread (if often vague) claim that intelligence is an emergent phenomenon. Downing focuses on neural networks, both natural and artificial, and how their adaptability in three time frames—phylogenetic (evolutionary), ontogenetic (developmental), and epigenetic (lifetime learning)—underlie the emergence of cognition. Integrating the perspectives of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, Downing provides a series of concrete examples of neurocognitive emergence. Doing so, he offers a new motivation for the expanded use of bio-inspired concepts in artificial intelligence (AI), in the subfield known as Bio-AI. One of Downing's central claims is that two key concepts from traditional AI, search and representation, are key to understanding emergent intelligence as well. He first offers introductory chapters on five core concepts: emergent phenomena, formal search processes, representational issues in Bio-AI, artificial neural networks (ANNs), and evolutionary algorithms (EAs). Intermediate chapters delve deeper into search, representation, and emergence in ANNs, EAs, and evolving brains. Finally, advanced chapters on evolving artificial neural networks and information-theoretic approaches to assessing emergence in neural systems synthesize earlier topics to provide some perspective, predictions, and pointers for the future of Bio-AI.

The best way to select emerging markets to exploit is to evaluate their size or growth potential, right? Not according to Krishna Palepu and Tarun Khanna. In Winning in Emerging Markets, these leading scholars on the subject present a decidedly different framework for making this crucial choice. The authors argue that the primary exploitable characteristic of emerging markets is the lack of institutions (credit-card systems, intellectual-property adjudication, data research firms) that facilitate efficient business operations. While such "institutional voids" present challenges, they also provide major opportunities-for multinationals and local contenders. Palepu and Khanna provide a playbook for assessing emerging markets' potential and for crafting strategies for succeeding in those markets. They explain how to: · Spot institutional voids in developing economies, including in product, labor, and capital markets, as well as social and political systems · Identify opportunities to fill those voids; for example, by building or improving market institutions yourself · Exploit those opportunities through a rigorous five-phase process, including studying the market over time and acquiring new capabilities Packed with vivid examples and practical toolkits, Winning in Emerging Markets is a crucial resource for any company seeking to define and execute business strategy in developing economies.

How can emerging technologies display, reveal and negotiate difficult, dissonant, negative or undesirable heritage? Emerging technologies in museums have the potential to reveal unheard or silenced stories, challenge preconceptions, encourage emotional responses, introduce the unexpected, and overall provide alternative experiences. By examining varied theoretical approaches and case studies, authors demonstrate how “awkward”, contested, and rarely discussed subjects and stories are treated – or can be potentially treated - in a museum setting with the use of the latest technology.

The concept of »worldmaking« is based on the idea that ›the world‹ is not given, but rather produced through language, actions, ideas and perception. This collection of essays takes a closer look at various hybrid and disparate worlds related to dance and choreography. Coming from a broad range of different backgrounds and disciplines, the authors inquire into the ways of producing ›dance worlds‹: through artistic practice, discourse and media, choreographic form and dance material. The essays in this volume critically reflect the predominant topos of dance as something fleeting and ephemeral - an embodiment of the Other in modernity. Moreover, they demonstrate that there is more than just one universal »world of dance«, but rather a multitude of interrelated dance worlds with more emerging every day.

A novel both timely and prophetic, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia is a hopeful antidote to the environmental concerns of today, set in an ecologically sound future society. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as the “newest name after Wells, Verne, Huxley, and Orwell,” Callenbach offers a visionary blueprint for the survival of our planet . . . and our future. Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a “stable-state” ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, this isolated, mysterious nation is welcoming its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston. Skeptical yet curious about this green new world, Weston is determined to report his findings objectively. But from the start, he’s alternately impressed and unsettled by the laws governing Ecotopia’s earth-friendly agenda: energy-efficient “mini-cities” to eliminate urban sprawl, zero-tolerance pollution control, tree worship, ritual war games, and a woman-dominated government that has instituted such peaceful revolutions as the twenty-hour workweek and employee ownership of farms and businesses. His old beliefs challenged, his cynicism replaced by hope, Weston meets a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman and undertakes a relationship whose intensity will lead him to a critical choice between two worlds.