This book examines laughter in the Shakespearean theatre, in the context of a cultural history of early modern laughter. Aimed at an informed readership as well as graduate students and scholars in the field of Shakespeare studies, it is the first study to focus specifically on laughter, not comedy. It looks at various strands of the early modern discourse on laughter, ranging from medical treatises and courtesy manuals to Puritan tracts and jestbook literature. It argues that few cultural...

"In 1932, Durgabati Ghose, an upper middle-class Bengali woman accompanied her husband on a trip across Europe. The Westward Traveller (originally Paschimjatriki) is an enchanting written record of this four-month long sojourn. Filtered through her upper middle-class upbringing and perceptions, the narrative is observant—not only emphasising on a sense of place, space and landscape, but also an aesthetic, intrinsic appreciation of every destination. The writing comes alive in the author’s eve...

This text traces developments in rational drug discovery and combinatorial library design with contributions from 50 leading scientists in academia and industry who offer coverage of basic principles, design strategies, methodologies, software tools and algorithms, and applications. It outlines the fundamentals of pharmacophore modelling and 3D Qua

A comprehensive and gripping narrative'---Vikram Sampath, author, historian and Fellow of Royal Historical Society'A must-read'---Sandeep Unnithan, managing editor, India TodayThere are not many Indian heroes whose lives have been as dramatic and adventurous as that of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. That, however, is an assessment of his life based on what is widely known about him. These often revolve around his resignation from the Indian Civil Service, joining the freedom movement, to be e...

How the smartphone can become a personal concierge (not a stalker) in the mobile marketing revolution of smarter companies, value-seeking consumers, and curated offers.Consumers create a data trail by tapping their phones; businesses can tap into this trail to harness the power of the more than three trillion dollar mobile economy. According to Anindya Ghose, a global authority on the mobile economy, this two-way exchange can benefit both customers and businesses. ...

Cryptocurrency. DeFi. Web3. Fintech. The Metaverse. AI. The future of money is here.The world of money is rapidly changing, but what does it all really mean? Exploring key developments such as blockchain, DeFi, AI and the metaverse, the book brings these technical topics to vivid life via narrative deep dives into selected founders and their companies.Spanning multiple geographies from London to Lagos, via Ahmedabad, Dubai, Hong Kong, Karachi and more, ...

Second Lieutenant Jonah Forrest is finding out that having infinite lives doesn't make war any easier. Sure, downloading into a cloned body when you die is better than the alternative, but that doesn't make a Hell-Spider's claws hurt any less. Or his General's orders for suicide missions any more sane.But when his First Lieutenant gets killed in action, really killed, and when a captured Hell-Spider offers a way to get combat 'kills' without taking on the enemy, Forrest and his Inf...

Shakespeare in Jest draws fascinating parallels between Shakespeare's humour and contemporary humour. Indira Ghose argues that while many of Shakespeare's jokes no longer work for us, his humour was crucial in shaping comedy in today's entertainment industry.The book looks at a wide variety of plays and reads them in conjunction with examples from contemporary culture, from stand-up comedy to late night shows. Ghose shows the importance of jokes, the functions of which are...

In the Penhari Parganas, a district in pre-Independence Bengal, a young man prepares to leave for Calcutta. Amidst apprehensions, and warnings about the perils of the big city, he revisits his adolescence—his search for a profession among carpenters, watch-repairers and potters, all of whom advise him to become a scholar instead; a summer spent teaching Santali children, and his first exciting brush with love at the school; a foolhardy pony-ride which broke his back; and his intense re-ena...

How AI can positively impact so many aspects of our daily lives, from health and wellness to work, education, and home life.Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful general-purpose technology that is reshaping the modern economy, but misperceptions about AI stand in the way of harnessing it for the betterment of humanity. In Thrive, Ravi Bapna and Anindya Ghose counter the backlash by showcasing how AI is positively influencing the aspects of our daily l...

This book discusses the extent and nature of COVID-19 pandemic in India and its effect on the society and economy. The suggested management practices discussed here are also not stereotype. At the same time, it highlights deficiency in development fundamentals in India on several dimensions, especially health, education, quality of public spending, taxation orientation, external trade involvement across states, etc., deficiencies which create an inbuilt bottleneck toward the creation of a ...

This book provides a comprehensive account of the glowworm swarm optimization (GSO) algorithm, including details of the underlying ideas, theoretical foundations, algorithm development, various applications, and MATLAB programs for the basic GSO algorithm. It also discusses several research problems at different levels of sophistication that can be attempted by interested researchers. The generality of the GSO algorithm is evident in its application to diverse problems ranging from optimiz...