DANIELS - Böcker

The World's Writing Systems meets the need for a definitive volume on the major historical and modern writing systems of the world. Comprising more than eighty articles contributed by expert scholars in the field, the work is organized in twelve units, each dealing with a particular group of writing systems defined historically, geographically, or conceptually. Each unit begins with an introductory article providing the social and cultural context in which the group of writing systems was created and developed. Articles on individual scripts detail the historical origin of the writing system in question, its structure (with tables showing the forms of the written symbols), and its relationship to the phonology of the corresponding spoken language. Each writing system is illustrated by a passage of text, accompanied by a romanized version, a phonetic transcription, and a modern English translation. Each article concludes with a bibliography.Units are arranged according to the chronological development of writing systems and their historical relationship within geographical areas. First, there is a discussion of the earliest scripts of the ancient Near East. Subsequent units focus on the scripts of East Asia, the writing systems of Europe, Asia, and Africa that have descended from ancient West Semitic ("Phoenician"), and the scripts of South and Southeast Asia. Other units deal with the recent and ongoing process of decipherment of ancient writing systems; the adaptation of traditional scripts to new languages; new scripts invented in modern times; and graphic systems for numerical, music, and movement notation. The result is a comprehensive resource of all of the major writing systems of the world.

On 28 May 1980, 55 female midshipmen graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy for the very first time in history. These interviews, recorded between 1984 and 1987, document the early Navy career perspectives of six of those pioneering women: Sandy Daniels, Tina-Marie D’Ercole, Maureen P. Foley (now Maureen Foley Nunez), Chrystal A. Lewis (now Chrystal Lewis Campbell), Barbette Henry Lowndes, and Pamela Wacek Svendsen. In her for preface to this collection of oral histories,Vice Admiral Jan Tighe, USN, notes of these women, "Those of us that entered the Academy in their wake benefited greatly from the struggles of that first class. We also likely suffered from their mistakes, whether perceived or actual, based on truth or fiction since these legends persisted in the memories of the brigade upper-class midshipmen that the first class left behind. While generations of women who came after them have had a role in shaping the environment for women at the Academy today, I doubt any of our experiences compare to that of the first class. "Their varying perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences share some important similarities, most notably the fact that they were not prepared or aware of the quite hostile environment they were entering in 1976. Nor could they have prepared themselves to be ostracized by peers, seniors, and in some cases faculty members as most came from loving and supportive families and friends who had accurately heralded them in high school as leaders, scholars, athletes, or all three."

The use of programmable electronic systems (PES) in industry has grown considerably with the availability of microcomputers. These systems offer many benefits to the designer and user in providing more comprehensive control of industrial processes, enviroments, machine tools and in robot installations. As confidence grows with the application of PES, users and manufacturers are considering incorporating safety functions within the requirements and functions of the PES. This book represents the proceedings of the Programmable Electronic Systems Safety Symposium (PES-3) held in Guernsey, Channel Islands, May 28th - 30th 1986, which presented the guidance available to users, designers and safety assessors of programmable electronic systems. This guidance is applicable for many real and potential risk and safety situations in a wide variety of industries ranging from nuclear power plants and industrial robotics, to machine tools and chemical process controllers. The original impetus to hold the Symposium came from a two year collaborative project partially funded by the Commission of the European Communities under the 1979-83 Informatics Initiative. The sponsors of the Symposium studied the assessment, architecture and performance of industrial programmable electronic systems, with particular reference to robotics. The group of papers in the first session give the first public report of the results of this project. The session was Chaired by H Fangmeyer from the Commission's Joint Research Centre at Ispra, Italy, who was the Commission's Project Manager throughout the collaboration.