Aphids are among the major global pest groups, causing serious economic damage to many food and commodity crops in most parts of the world. This revision and update of the well-received first edition published ten years ago reflects the expansion of research in genomics, endosymbionts and semiochemicals, as well as the shift from control of aphids with insecticides to a more integrated approach imposed by increasing resistance in the aphids and government restrictions on pesticides. The bo...

The first part of the book defines the concept of uncertainties and the mathematical frameworks that will be used for uncertainty modeling. The application to system reliability assessment illustrates the concept. In the second part, evidential networks as a new tool to model uncertainty in reliability and risk analysis is proposed and described. Then it is applied on SIS performance assessment and in risk analysis of a heat sink. In the third part, Bayesian and evidential networks are use...

At the age of only 36, Sir Mark Sykes was signatory to the Sykes-Picot agreement, one of the most reviled treaties of modern times. A century later, Christopher Sykes’ lively biography of his grandfather reassesses his life and work, and the political instability and violence in the Middle East attributed to it.The Sykes–Picot agreement was drawn by the eponymousBritish and French diplomats in 1916 to determine the divideof the collapsing empire in th...

Chester the Cat is talented, handsome and charming—think of a feline Jason Bourne who is so gifted he makes Albert Einstein look stupid. With his street-smart business acumen and catnip-induced superpowers, Chester has overcome his less-than-perfect start to life to create a cat empire. He is director of Chester’s School of the Feline Arts, where he instructs other cats on how to take charge of their destinies . . . and owners.With hilarious wit and heartfelt vulnerability, Chester...

A powerful and thrilling adventure in the heart of one of the worst places on this world – a potential paradise turned into hell by human greed and barbarity. An uncompromising denunciation of the tragedy of Kivu. The province of Kivu in the Congo is rich in rare and precious minerals such as coltan, which is vital to our modern technology. However, that wealth is coveted by so many, within the Congo or abroad, that the entire region is a permanent bloodbath. François Daans, a young Belgia...

All eight series of the comedy drama series set in a Donegal town in the 1950s and '60s'Christopher Fitz-Simon's writing is a delicious mix of gentle and sharp' The GuardianIreland in the fifties, and the days of mass tourism and indoor plumbing have not yet come to rural Co. Donegal. But in the small, sleepy town of Ballylenon, change is coming, and trouble is brewing.A power struggle is under way for control of t...

"All first-rate criticism first defines what we are confronting," the late, great jazz critic Whitney Balliett once wrote. By that measure, the essays of Christopher Hitchens are in the first tier. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we grapple with first principles-the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization-principles that, to endure, must be defended anew...

When A Single Man was originally published, it shocked many by its frank, sympathetic, and moving portrayal of a gay man in midlife. George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, and determines to persist in the routines of his daily life; the course of A Single Man spans twenty-four hours in an ordinary day. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his inter...

In 1878, two young stage magicians clash in the dark during the course of a fraudulent séance. From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose each other.Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers—but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other’s ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magician’s craft can command, the highest misdirection and the darkest science. Blood will be spille...

On June 8, 2010, while on a book tour for his bestselling memoir, Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens was stricken in his New York hotel room with excruciating pain in his chest and thorax. As he would later write in the first of a series of award-winning columns for Vanity Fair, he suddenly found himself being deported "from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady." Over the next eighteen months, until his death in Houston on December 15, 20...

An exposé of how society pays for corporations' "free lunch" and the cost of environmental damage, low wages, systemic discrimination, and cheap goods.In an age when business leaders solemnly profess dedication to principles of environmental and social justice, Christopher Marquis’s provocative investigation into the real costs of doing business reveals the way that leaders of the corporate world gaslight to evade responsibilities by privatizing pr...

Wrestling with Difficult Stakeholders offers practical, validated techniques that all employees, from recent graduates to experienced managers, can apply to their interactions with a range of difficult people in their businesses and lives. The ability to deal with difficult stakeholders is essential when interacting with others in the workplace. It’s important to identify the reasons why we find them difficult and explore our response to them. In this interactive handbook, you will learn p...