[Review of the book \u3ci\u3eIncome Distribution in Less Developed Countries\u3c/i\u3e]

[Excerpt] This book by R. M. Sundrum, a professor at the Australian National University and former director of the World Bank, is a compilation of issues, ideas, and data on income distribution in less developed countries (LDCs). Each chapter or section has something meaningful to say, and for this reason the book bears careful study. However, no overarching theme or approach is apparent, so the reader is likely to come away with numerous small lessons about distribution and development but few larger conclusions

[Review of] Allen L. Woll and Randall M. Miller. Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography

Allen Woll and Randall Miller in Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television have compiled in one volume the writings about the images of ethnic and racial groups in American television and film. Woll and Miller state in their Introduction that the purpose of their book was to attempt to unite the work (the nature and importance of mass media stereotypes and their effects on society) from a wide variety of disciplines, languages and fields of study in order to expand the vistas of scholarly research in this area. Ethnic and Racial Images is divided into twelve chapters, with each considering specific ethnic or racial groups: (in alphabetical order) Afro-Americans, Arabs, Asians, East Europeans and Russians, Germans, Hispanic Americans, Irish, Italians, Jews, and Native Americans. The first chapter is a general overview of the subject of racial and ethnic images and the final chapter is a kind of miscellaneous section entitled Others which includes Africans, Armenians, Dutch, East Indians, Greeks, Hawaiians, Louisiana Cajuns, Norwegians, Swedes, and Turks

Quantum discrete breathers

We review recent studies about quantum discrete breathers. We describe their basic properties in comparison with their classical counterparts, and the ways they may be addressed theoretically in different quantum lattice models including either bosonic or fermionic excitations. We also review recent experimental work in the field.Comment: 49 pages, 36 figures, some corrected typos, and the section "Conclusions and outlook" was added. Chapter for a book edited by S. Keshavamurthy and P. Schlagheck with title "Dynamical Tunneling: Theory and Experiment

Instruments for Promotion and Assurance of Public Integrity

“The instruments” for supporting the strategies and programmes of public integrity represent a part of a general public integrity framework, comprising also the issue of ethics and public integrity, the legal framework, training and obviously the best practices used successfully by the public organisations. The current paper comprises the instruments concerning the integrity of civil service or institutional organisations, as well as their audit. The paper represents the fourth section of the book: “Public integrity: Theories and Practical Instruments,” published recently by NISPAcee. The first chapter of the paper refers on a large extent to the civil servants’ career, meritocracy, motivation of the civil servants as well as to Whistleblower. The second chapter is dedicated to the instruments concerning the institutional organisations, risk areas for corruption, indicators and transparency, blacklisting. In the third chapter, the audit instruments are aimed at the governmental mechanisms, comprising the method of audit of taxes, public contracts, electronic data etc. The theoretical approaches are accompanied by relevant examples from different statespublic integrity, legal framework, audit, civil service

The Ring and the book : texts, and the texture of experience : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

The following discussion of The Ring and the Book suggests that the primary concern of the poem is with language. Chapter One of the discussion attempts to lay a broad base for the relation of language to the poem. It takes the form of a prelude intro­ducing the later chapters and suggests that the overriding concern with language includes the poem, itself, as a linguistic construct. A dis­tinction is drawn between the language of ordinary discourse, which is the immediate subject of the poem, and the language of artistic dis­course, which is the medium of the poem, but which in turn becomes the subject of consideration. The interpenetration of subject and medium, it is suggested, res­ults from Browning's recognition that language is a temporal and ongoing process, and that, therefore, a prior, static truth cannot be conclus ively expressed in language. Rather, art may embrace the processional nature of ordinary discourse within the context of artistic discourse, in order to provide a structure of "the experience of experience". Chapter Two suggests that Browning's method of foregrounding the relationship between language and experience is one of a disruptive juxtaposition of texts. Such a method demonstrates how the style of representation conditions, and supplants, experience: how the medium supplants the subject. Book I, it is argued, becomes an implicit and explicit education in how to read The Ring and the Book, functioning as a paradigm for the later monologues. The discussion of Book I is central to this study; the method of the poem, and the concerns that method foregrounds, are established in Book I (a section of the poem that is rarely discussed in any detail). Primarily, the disruptive texts of Book I dramatise the author fragmen­ting the "whole" story into stylistically conflicting representations; the fragmentation disrupts the conclusiveness implicit in any represen­tation. The "story", or narrative, becomes displaced, and the poem becomes, rather, a cumulative ongoing texture of linguistic representations. Chapter Three considers the problem of climax in a disruptive play of texts. In Book X and Book XI, the language of ordinary discourse in the poem reaches what I would term a plateau of linguistic intensities: the Pope and Guido become the disruptively juxtaposed poles between which the other characters inhabit the world through language. Chapter Three provides a link between the discussion of Book I and the discussion of Book XII which concludes this study. Chapter Four argues that the plateau of linguistic intensities reached in Book X and Book XI is maintained in Book XII. Browning, firstly, includes in his poem the truth of the negative intensity of language: that it is the temporal medium by which experience dis­sipates, even as that experience unfolds in language. The completing intensity of language in the poem, however, is the presence of the implied author in Book XII. The language of artistic discourse counters the limitations and fallibilities of the language of ordinary discourse, not by escaping, or being conclusively above, those limitations, but by embodying them in a true way. The artistic discourse therefore becomes a processional embodiment of truth, from which a conclusive truth may not be separated

Discrete Planning

This chapter provides introductory concepts that serve as an entry point into other parts of the book. The planning problems considered here are the simplest to describe because the state space will be finite in most cases. When it is not finite, it will at least be countably infinite (i.e., a unique integer may be assigned to every state). Therefore, no geometric models or differential equations will be needed to characterize the discrete planning problems. Furthermore, no forms of uncertainty will be considered, which avoids complications such as probability theory. All models are completely known and predictable. There are three main parts to this chapter. Sections 2.1 and 2.2 define and present search methods for feasible planning, in which the only concern is to reach a goal state. The search methods will be used throughout the book in numerous other contexts, including motion planning in continuous state spaces. Following feasible planning, Section 2.3 addresses the problem of optimal planning. The principle of optimality, or the dynamic programming principle, [1] provides a key insight that greatly reduces the computation effort in many planning algorithms