scholarly journals Introductory Chapter: Introduction to Carbon Nanotubes- Redefining the World of Electronics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kunal Datta ◽  
Prasanta Kumar Ghosh ◽  
Arti Rushi
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Hannah Holleman

This introductory chapter provides a background of the 1930s Dust Bowl on the U.S. southern plains, where the ancient grasslands that protected the soil from prairie winds and rains and nourished regional species were destroyed within just a few decades, following the violent opening of the plains to white settlement and the global market in the 1800s. Under pressure from the vagaries of the world economy, settlers sheared the land to expand cash-crop agriculture and ranching. As major drought descended on the plains, winds and static electricity lifted the desiccated, exposed topsoil, forming dust storms on an unprecedented scale. Such massive loss of soil and continued dry conditions meant the land could no longer support life as it once had. By the end of the 1930s, tens of thousands of people were displaced. Hence, when scientists today predict the increasing possibility of Dust Bowl-like conditions, they are signaling a particular kind of extreme ecological and social change.


Author(s):  
Raymond Pierotti ◽  
Brandy R. Fogg

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between humans and wolves. The relationship began as coevolutionary, with the species cooperating at times but also capable of functioning independently. This state of affairs dominated early stages of the relationship between the two species and may have persisted for 20,000 years or longer. In other parts of the world, for example, southern Asia, humans began to shape wolves into clearly domestic forms: animals phenotypically distinct from wolves, especially in body size. This latter process involves various aspects of the wolf gene pool being essentially divided, with many individuals staying true wolves while others changed in form, becoming what people now describe as “dogs” without losing their genetic links to their wolf ancestry or their ability to interbreed with wolves.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujoy Kumar Saha

The present book starts with an introductory chapter in which the contents of the previous book have been dealt with in a whole new perspective and the ways and means to move forward towards global peace have been delineated in the concluding chapter of the book. In the process, “Life, Mind, Brain, Cognition, Existentialism, Matter, Memory, Consciousness, Mysticism, Ontology, Psychology, Parapsychology, Ecology and Phenomenology” have been dealt with. This is followed by the discussion of “ Philosophy, Renaissance, Soul, Theosophy, Cosmology, Universe, The Witness and The Ultimate Truth”. It has been revealed that there is a whole new world of Existence on a new uncharted plane; the present day world-drama is not matured enough and not qualified enough with a sense of unselfishness to foster Global Peace. None-the-less, the destiny of the world and the whole human race, nay the entire manifested world is set to reach a spirited esoteric plane of Blissful Existence, this being a matter of eternity. The current situation in this planet is no more than a transitory phase.


Author(s):  
Harold James

This introductory chapter sketches a brief portrait of the Krupp company. It first explores the various symbolisms of the Krupp name over the years, the criticisms and praise leveled at the company, and considers how this company had become as iconic as was and is, especially in the world of business. The chapter examines three themes which it credits with the development of the Krupp company: the absence of an exclusive focus on profitability, an acknowledgement that technically advanced enterprises exist in an international and even global system, and the company's position between family affairs on the one hand and the establishment of a business organization on the other.


Author(s):  
Anna Sun

This introductory chapter talks about the confusions and controversies over the religious nature of Confucianism. It argues that the confusions come mainly from three sources. First, they come from the conceptualization of Confucianism as a world religion at the end of the nineteenth century in Europe, which was a historical product of the emergence of the “world religions” paradigm in the West. Second, they are caused by the problematic way in which Confucianism—and Chinese religions in general—has been studied and represented by questions which are based on a Judeo-Christian framework that cannot capture the complexity of Chinese religious life. Finally, confusion arises from the often contradictory development of Confucianism in today's China.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Arunabh Ghosh

This introductory chapter introduces a “crisis of counting” during the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In its simplest form, the crisis in the PRC was understood as a problem of building a centralized statistical system. At the heart of the varied solutions attempted by Chinese statisticians was a contentious debate about the very nature of social reality and the place and efficacy of mathematical statistics—in particular, probability theory—in ascertaining that reality. This debate played out against a backdrop populated by three divergent methodological approaches to statistics and statistical work. After all, abstract ideas about the nature of the world, whether defined by chance or certainty, have real world consequences. Chinese deliberations over such questions and their engagement with the Ethnographic, Exhaustive, and Stochastic approaches during the 1950s exemplify some of those consequences. The chapter unpacks these choices and traces how statistics in its various forms—as a (social) science, as a profession, and as an activity—came to be formulated and practiced, shedding light on fundamental questions germane to the histories of the People's Republic, statistics and data, and mid-century science.


Author(s):  
Michael Harris

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book is about how it feels to live a mathematician's double life: one life within this framework of professional autonomy, answerable only to their colleagues, and the other life in the world at large. It is written for readers without specialized training, which means it is primarily an account of mathematics as a way of life. Technical material is introduced only when it serves to illustrate a point and, as far as possible, only at the level of dinner-party conversation. The reader is warned at the outset that the author's objective is not to arrive at definitive conclusions but rather to elaborate on what Herbert Mehrtens calls “the usual answer to the question of what mathematics is,” namely, by pointing: “This is how one does mathematics.”


Author(s):  
Brenda Hollweg ◽  
Igor Krstić

In this introductory chapter readers are made familiar with the expanding research field of essayistic filmmaking in world cinema-contexts around the globe. Brenda Hollweg and Igor Krstíc argue that the essay film is a privileged political and ethical tool by means of which filmmakers around the world approach historically specific and locally, geographically concrete issues against larger global issues and universal concerns. The chapter also includes a genealogical overview of important moments in the development of essay filmmaking, particularly during the 1920s and 1960s, and provides readers with short abstracts on the individual chapters and their specific transnationally inflected case studies on essay film practitioners from around the world.


Author(s):  
Lila Caimari

This introductory chapter begins with the author's account of the origins of the present volume, which can be traced back to her interest in a late nineteenth-century set of concepts, images, and metaphors that grew up around the figure of the modern criminal. It then discusses the population growth in Buenos Aires, which jumped from about 1.5 to 2.5 million in the two decades between the world wars and the corresponding urban expansion. This sets the stage for a description of the book's purpose, namely to explore the many dimensions of porteño life in the early decades of the twentieth century: its vital network of neighborhood associations, its literacy campaigns, its grassroots politics, its many reformist projects, and so forth.


Author(s):  
Adam M. Messinger

This chapter invites readers into the hidden world of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, and queer (LGBTQ) people. It begins by debunking common myths of LGBTQ IPV, myths that have been shaped in part by homophobia, transphobia, and a historic emphasis on heterosexual-cisgender (HC) relationships in the global IPV-prevention movement. Unfortunately, even today, these myths contribute to systemic failings in how LGBTQ IPV is addressed throughout the world. Collectively, these myths and the lack of concrete support for LGBTQ victims have rendered LGBTQ IPV largely invisible. This chapter—and, indeed, the book—contends that many answers to this problem actually already exist in research, if only they could be extracted. With this in mind, the goal of this book is to comprehensively review the past forty years of LGBTQ IPV English-language research from throughout the world—the first book to do so. Just as significantly, the book mines this literature for evidence-based tips regarding future policy, practice, and research, tips that are shared at the close of each chapter. This introductory chapter concludes with a brief guide to the upcoming chapters and the terminology used throughout the book.


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