Adulthood is taken for granted. It connotes the end of childhood, the resolution to the “storm and stress” period of adolescence. This conception is strongly entrenched in the sociology of youth and the sociology of the life course as well as in the policy arena. At the same time, adulthood itself remains unarticulated; journey’s end remains conceptually fixed and theoretically uncontested. Adulthood, then, is both central to the social imagination and neglected as an area of sociological investigation, something that has been noted by sociologists over the last four decades. Going beyond the overwhelmingly psychological literature, this book draws on original qualitative research and theories of social recognition and thus presents a first step towards filling an important gap in our understanding of the meaning of adulthood.

The gripping, entertaining, and vividly-told narrative of a radical discovery that sent shockwaves through the scientific community and forever changed the way we understand the world. Werner Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” challenged centuries of scientific understanding, placed him in direct opposition to Albert Einstein, and put Niels Bohr in the middle of one of the most heated debates in scientific history. Heisenberg’s theorem stated that there were physical limits to what we could know about sub-atomic particles; this “uncertainty” would have shocking implications. In a riveting and lively account, David Lindley captures this critical episode and explains one of the most important scientific discoveries in history, which has since transcended the boundaries of science and influenced everything from literary theory to television.

Introduction: crisis of certainty -- Cotton guesses -- The daily "probabilities"--Weather prophecies -- Economies of the future -- Promises of love and money -- Epilogue: specters of uncertainty

Uncertainties in Modern Power Systems combines several aspects of uncertainty management in power systems at the planning and operation stages within an integrated framework. This book provides the state-of-the-art in electric network planning, including time-scales, reliability, quality, optimal allocation of compensators and distributed generators, mathematical formulation, and search algorithms. The book introduces innovative research outcomes, programs, algorithms, and approaches that consolidate the present status and future opportunities and challenges of power systems. The book also offers a comprehensive description of the overall process in terms of understanding, creating, data gathering, and managing complex electrical engineering applications with uncertainties. This reference is useful for researchers, engineers, and operators in power distribution systems. - Includes innovative research outcomes, programs, algorithms, and approaches that consolidate current status and future of modern power systems - Discusses how uncertainties will impact on the performance of power systems - Offers solutions to significant challenges in power systems planning to achieve the best operational performance of the different electric power sectors

Scholars from a range of disciplines interrogate terms relevant to critical studies of big data, from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability. This pathbreaking work offers an interdisciplinary perspective on big data, interrogating key terms. Scholars from a range of disciplines interrogate concepts relevant to critical studies of big data--arranged glossary style, from from abuse and aggregate to visualization and vulnerability--both challenging conventional usage of such often-used terms as prediction and objectivity and introducing such unfamiliar ones as overfitting and copynorm. The contributors include both leading researchers, including N. Katherine Hayles, Johanna Drucker and Lisa Gitelman, and such emerging agenda-setting scholars as Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts and Nicole Starosielski.

The Postmodern Chronotope is an innovative interdisciplinary study of the contemporary. It will be of special interest to anyone interested in relations between postmodernism, geography and contemporary fiction. Some claim that postmodernism questions history and historical bases to culture; some say it is about loss of affect, loss of depth models, and superficiality; others claim it follows from the conditions of post-industrial society; and others cite commodification of place, Disneyfication, simulation and post-tourist spectacle as evidence that postmodernism is wedded to late capitalism. Whatever postmodernism is, or turns out to have been, it is bound up in rethinking and reworking space and time, and Paul Smethurst’s intervention here is to introduce the postmodern chronotope as a term through which these spatial and temporal shifts might be apprehended. The postmodern chronotope constitutes a postmodern world-view and postmodern way of seeing. In a sense it is the natural successor to a modernist way of seeing defined through cubism, montage and relativity. The book is arranged as follows: • Part 1 is an interdisciplinary study casting a wide net across a range of cultural, social and scientific activity, from chaos theory to cinema, from architecture to performance art, from IT to tourism. • Part 2 offers original readings of a selection of postmodern novels, including Graham Swift’s Waterland and Out of this World, Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor and First Light, Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, J. M. Coetzee’s Foe, Marina Warner’s Indigo, Caryl Phillips’ Cambridge, and Don DeLillo’s The Names and Ratner’s Star.