The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism's most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature's Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx's ninteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism's blind faith in "natural law." However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and social phenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin's social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin's social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Digital Business, TrustBus 2010, held in Bilbao, Spain, in August 2010. The papers are organized in topical sections on prevention systems; privacy; access control; security and trust concepts; and security for dynamic collaborations.

The two-volume set LNCS 9242 + 9243 constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Intelligence Science and Big Data Engineering, IScIDE 2015, held in Suzhou, China, in June 2015. The total of 126 papers presented in the proceedings was carefully reviewed and selected from 416 submissions. They deal with big data, neural networks, image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition and graphics, object detection, dimensionality reduction and manifold learning, unsupervised learning and clustering, anomaly detection, semi-supervised learning.

Illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. The global ecological crisis is upon us. From global warming to the long-term implications of ocean acidification, air and water pollution, deforestation, and the omnipresent dangers of nuclear technology the future of our planetary home is threatened. Yet in the midst of the unfolding crisis, the conventional ideologies of the twentieth century and their representations of nature remain unchallenged by both the defenders of capitalism and capitalism’s most radical critics. The Distortion of Nature’s Image illustrates how the anti-naturalism of late capitalist society, in which nature is reified into the emptiness of mere matter, simply a thing to be dominated, is subtly complemented by the failure of the Left to go both beyond the historic limitations of Marx’s nineteenth-century viewpoint and beyond anarchism’s blind faith in “natural law.” However, an alternative for comprehending nature and the ecological crisis as historical and socialphenomena remains open in the dialectical naturalism of Western Marxism and Murray Bookchin’s social ecology. By examining in closer detail how Bookchin’s social ecology politicizes the concept of nature, as well as how precursory models in Western Marxist thought provide a foundation for this, Damian Gerber illustrates how the notion of an ecological society remains a decisively political question. “There are very few studies that bring anarchism into conversation with an ecological focus. Gerber’s book does this in extraordinary form, offering a critical but balanced overview.” — Simon Springer, author of The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation

This interdisciplinary book explores the science and spirituality nexus in the Pacific Islands Region and as such makes a critical contribution to sustainable climate change adaptation in Oceania. In addition to presenting case studies, literary analyses, field projects, and empirical research, the book describes faith-engaged approaches through the prism of: • Context: past, present, and future prospects• Theory: concepts, narratives, and theoretical frameworks• Practice: empirical research and praxis-informed case examples• Doctrine: scriptural contributions and perspectives• Engagement: enlisting religious stakeholders and constituencies Comprising peer-reviewed works by scholars, professionals, and practitioners from across Oceania, the book closes a critical gap in the literature and represents a groundbreaking contribution to holistic climate change adaptation in the Pacific Islands Region that is scientifically sound, spiritually attuned, locally meaningful, and contextually compelling.

What if 2000 years ago was the catalyst that changed EVERYTHING? What if Hosea and Isaiah saw something that we haven't fully grasped. Note from the author..... "My heart for you as you read this book is that you see that you are absolutely perfect in the Father's eyes! You can't become more perfect than you already are. His heart is captivated by you! He won't be more captivated by you if you try harder, learn more, or finally get your act together! He is passionate about you right NOW. He sees your life, your struggles, your pain, and insecurities….He sees how you see yourself. And He's calling you to go with Him on an intimate journey to discover the you that He sees. The you who is ALREADY perfect, complete, whole, and beautiful! This book is meant to challenge how you see God. My hope is that you realize that God is not waiting for you to do more before He moves on your behalf. But rather embrace the FULL, dramatic, hyper-grace reality of IT IS FINISHED!"

The book encompasses the state-of-the-art visual quality assessment (VQA) and learning based visual quality assessment (LB-VQA) by providing a comprehensive overview of the existing relevant methods. It delivers the readers the basic knowledge, systematic overview and new development of VQA. It also encompasses the preliminary knowledge of Machine Learning (ML) to VQA tasks and newly developed ML techniques for the purpose. Hence, firstly, it is particularly helpful to the beginner-readers (including research students) to enter into VQA field in general and LB-VQA one in particular. Secondly, new development in VQA and LB-VQA particularly are detailed in this book, which will give peer researchers and engineers new insights in VQA.