James McKee – författare

In 2005, researchers from four Australian universities and CSIRO joined forces with environmental managers from three state agencies and six regional catchment management authorities to answer the question: ''Can we detect the influence of public environmental programs on the condition of our natural resources?'' This was prompted by a series of national audits of Australia''s environmental programs that could find no evidence of public investment improving the condition of waterways, soils and native vegetation, despite major public programs investing more than $4.2 billion in environmental repair over the last 20 years.

Landscape Logic describes how this collaboration of 42 researchers and environmental managers went about the research. It describes what they found and what they learned about the challenge of attributing cause to environmental change. While public programs had been responsible for increase in vegetation extent, there was less evidence for improvement in vegetation condition and water quality. In many cases critical levels of intervention had not been reached, interventions were not sufficiently mature to have had any measurable impact, monitoring had not been designed to match the spatial and temporal scales of the interventions, and interventions lacked sufficiently clear objectives and metrics to ever be detectable. In the process, however, new knowledge emerged on disturbance thresholds in river condition, diagnosing sources of pollution in river systems, and the application and uptake of state-and-transition and Bayesian network models to environmental management.

The findings discussed in this book provide valuable messages for environmental managers, land managers, researchers and policy makers.

In today''s world, terrorism is rampant. The definition of terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or the threat of violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." This means that there are forces attempting to inhibit our freedom by any means possible. James McKee''s Measure of Peace: Hitler''s Diaphragm Bomb reimagines the birth of terrorism in postaEUR"World War II South America. In this spy thriller, James McKee explores the rise of neoaEUR"Nazism and the men and women standing against the greatest evil the world has ever known. Measure of Peace is a tale of patriotism, adventure, and sacrifice that will captivate the imagination of readers all over the world.

One way to study algebraic integers is to associate them with combinatorial objects, such as integer matrices. In some of these combinatorial settings the analogues of several notorious open problems have been solved, and the book sets out this recent work. Many Mahler measure results are proved for restricted setsof polynomials, such as for totally real polynomials, and reciprocal polynomials of integer symmetric as well as symmetrizable matrices. For reference, the book includes appendices providing necessary background from algebraic number theory, graph theory, and other prerequisites, along with tables of one- and two-variable integer polynomials with small Mahler measure. All theorems are well motivated and presented in an accessible way. Numerous exercises at various levels are given, including some for computer programming. A wide range of stimulating open problems is also included. At the end of each chapter there is a glossary of newly introduced concepts and definitions.

Around the Unit Circle is written in a friendly, lucid, enjoyable style, without sacrificing mathematical rigour. It is intended for lecture courses at the graduate level, and will also be a valuable reference for researchers interested in Mahler measure. Essentially self-contained, this textbook should also be accessible to well-prepared upper-level undergraduates.