Systems

The classic book on systems thinking—with more than half a million copies sold worldwide! "This is a fabulous book... This book opened my mind and reshaped the way I think about investing."—Forbes "Thinking in Systems is required reading for anyone hoping to run a successful company, community, or country. Learning how to think in systems is now part of change-agent literacy. And this is the best book of its kind."—Hunter Lovins In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth—the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet—Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001. Thinking in Systems is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life. Some of the biggest problems facing the world—war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation—are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking. While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner. In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.

Computer Networks: A Systems Approach, Fifth Edition, explores the key principles of computer networking, with examples drawn from the real world of network and protocol design. Using the Internet as the primary example, this best-selling and classic textbook explains various protocols and networking technologies. The systems-oriented approach encourages students to think about how individual network components fit into a larger, complex system of interactions. This book has a completely updated content with expanded coverage of the topics of utmost importance to networking professionals and students, including P2P, wireless, network security, and network applications such as e-mail and the Web, IP telephony and video streaming, and peer-to-peer file sharing. There is now increased focus on application layer issues where innovative and exciting research and design is currently the center of attention. Other topics include network design and architecture; the ways users can connect to a network; the concepts of switching, routing, and internetworking; end-to-end protocols; congestion control and resource allocation; and end-to-end data. Each chapter includes a problem statement, which introduces issues to be examined; shaded sidebars that elaborate on a topic or introduce a related advanced topic; What’s Next? discussions that deal with emerging issues in research, the commercial world, or society; and exercises. This book is written for graduate or upper-division undergraduate classes in computer networking. It will also be useful for industry professionals retraining for network-related assignments, as well as for network practitioners seeking to understand the workings of network protocols and the big picture of networking. Completely updated content with expanded coverage of the topics of utmost importance to networking professionals and students, including P2P, wireless, security, and applications Increased focus on application layer issues where innovative and exciting research and design is currently the center of attention Free downloadable network simulation software and lab experiments manual available

"This book is organized around three concepts fundamental to OS construction: virtualization (of CPU and memory), concurrency (locks and condition variables), and persistence (disks, RAIDS, and file systems"--Back cover.

Learn more information about Earth’s most sophisticated machines - the human body. Encourage your child to seek further knowledge beyond the classroom. This science book can be used to review the organs and organ systems. But if you buy a copy ahead, your child can use it as advance reading material to improve grades in school. Grab a copy today.

Indigenous Food Systems addresses the disproportionate levels of food-related health disparities among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people in Canada, seeking solutions to food insecurity and promoting well-being for current and future generations of Indigenous people. Through research and case studies, Indigenous and non-Indigenous food scholars and community practitioners explore salient features, practices, and contemporary challenges of Indigenous food systems across Canada. Highlighting Indigenous communities’ voices, the contributing authors document collaborative initiatives between Indigenous communities, organizations, and non-Indigenous allies to counteract the colonial and ecologically destructive monopolization of food systems. This timely and engaging collection celebrates strategies to revitalize Indigenous food systems, such as achieving cultural resurgence and food sovereignty; sharing and mobilizing diverse knowledges and voices; and reviewing and reformulating existing policies, research, and programs to improve the health, well-being, and food security of Indigenous and Canadian populations. Indigenous Food Systems is a critical resource for students in Indigenous studies, public health, anthropology, and the social sciences as well as a vital reader for policymakers, researchers, and community practitioners.

'Cavadino and Dignan's Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach looks across national boundaries to see how penal systems differ and why. It is hands-down the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on the subject and should become a staple textbook for use in law and social science courses on comparative penal policy and practice' - Michael H. Tonry, University of Minnesota 'This book is an important addition to the literature on punishment. It is a highly readable and very well researched overview of some of the major differences in punitiveness between neo-liberal, corporatist and social democratic countries... This is a major contribution to comparative penology by two of the leading authors in this field' - Alison Liebling, Director of the Prisons Research Centre, UK 'A major and seminal work' - David Downes, Professor Emeritus at the London School of Economics Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach is a comprehensive and original introduction to the comparative study of punishment. Analysing twelve countries, Cavadino and Dignan offer an integrated and theoretically rigorous approach to comparative penology. They draw upon material provided by a team of eminent penologists to produce an important and highly readable contribution to scholarship in this area. Early chapters introduce the reader to comparative penology, set out the theoretical framework and consider whether there is currently a 'global penal crisis'. Each country is then discussed in turn. Chapters on comparative youth justice and the privatization of prisons follow. Comparisons between countries are drawn within each chapter, giving the reader a synoptic and truly comparative vision of penality in different jurisdictions.

This book is devoted to a systems-theoretical presentation of the main results of applying the systemic yoyo model and relevant analytical tools to the topics of money and financial institutions. The author presents the main concepts and results of the subject matter in the language of systems science, which has in the past century prompted revolutionary applicati ons of systems research in various subfields of traditional disciplines. This volume applies a brand new logic of reasoning to some of the unsett led problems in the area of money and banking. Due to the particular systemic approach employed, the reader will be able to see how different economic activities are implicitly related to each other and how financial decisions are holistically made in reference to seemingly unrelated events. That is, the learning of this particular subject matter takes place at a different, more elevated level, from which, among others, economies are respectively seen as both closed and open systems; their interactions emulate those of rotational pools of fluids. This book can be used as a textbook for researchers and graduate students in economics, finance, systems science, and mathematical / systems modeling. It will also be useful as a reference book for applied economists and various policy makers.