This book is concerned with the question of inequality - which points to a major structural problem in intra-national and inter-national respect. It covers the tension between the rich and poor in less developed countries as well as within richer countries in the process of globalisation. The main topics are the scope of disparities between the rich and poor, people's perception of wealth and poverty, and the concomitants of inequality which shape this relationship and influence its socio-economic consequences. In the tradition of social reporting, the book brings together authors from 15 countries, documenting a broad range of the international inequality debate. The results are related to the trends of socio-economic development, to statistical problems of measuring inequality, and to socio-political problems of integrating society in the facing the challenge of dividing forces. The book is of interest for everybody who wants to understand the tensions of modern world.

This book introduces a new and powerful approach based on rigorous process simulations conducted with professional simulators like HYSYS to predict the performance of supersonic separators (SS). The book addresses the utilization of SSs for the offshore processing of CO2-rich natural gas as an alternative to Joule-Thomson expansion, glycol absorption, membrane permeation and chemical absorption. It describes and analyzes the conventional offshore processing of CO2-rich natural gas, discussing the advantages of SS in terms of cost and power consumption. The book offers a comprehensive framework for modeling SS units, describing the physical principles of SS in detail. The thermodynamic multiphase sound speed is also discussed at the light shed by a classical analysis based on the Landau Model of phase transitions. A complete framework is presented for modelling and simulating SS units within HYSYS environment. A special chapter is dedicated to the performance of SSs for removing CO2 from CO2-rich natural gas, taking into account the limitations of CO2 freeze-out in various scenarios of gas feed in terms of CO2 content, pressure and temperature.

The objective of this book is to discuss the current status of research and development of boron-rich solids as sensors, ultra-high temperature ceramics, thermoelectrics, and armor. Novel biological and chemical sensors made of stiff and light-weight boron-rich solids are very exciting and efficient for applications in medical diagnoses, environmental surveillance and the detection of pathogen and biological/chemical terrorism agents. Ultra-high temperature ceramic composites exhibit excellent oxidation and corrosion resistance for hypersonic vehicle applications. Boron-rich solids are also promising candidates for high-temperature thermoelectric conversion. Armor is another very important application of boron-rich solids, since most of them exhibit very high hardness, which makes them perfect candidates with high resistance to ballistic impact. The following topical areas are presented: •Boron-rich solids: science and technology •Synthesis and sintering strategies of boron rich solids •Microcantilever sensors •Screening of the possible boron-based thermoelectric conversion materials; •Ultra-high temperature ZrB2 and HfB2 based composites •Magnetic, transport and high-pressure properties of boron-rich solids •Restrictions of the sensor dimensions for chemical detection •Armor

This book provides qualitative molecular orbital and valence-bond descriptions of the electronic structures for electron-rich molecules, with strong emphasis given to the valence-bond approach. Electron-rich molecules form an extremely large class of molecules, and the results of quantum mechanical studies from different laboratories indicate that qualitative valence-bond descriptions for many of these molecules are incomplete in so far as they usually omit "long-bond" Lewis structures from elementary descriptions of bonding. For example, the usual representation for the electronic structure of the ground-state for 03 involves resonance between the (+1 o and Until standard Lewis structures ~ ~ (-I . b:'" ~d· . . . . , recently, any contribution to resonance of the "long-bond" (or spin-paired o •• / •• ,. . has been largely ignored. diradica~ Lewis structure However, it :0 . 0. . e-. . . . . ______ " has now been calculated to be a very important structure. For the ground-states of numerous other systems, calculations also indicate that "long-bond" structures are more important than is usually supposed, and therefore they should frequently be included in qualitative valence-bond descriptions of electronic structure. The book describes how this may be done, and some of the resulting consequences for the interpretation of the electronic structure, bond properties and reactivities of various electron-rich molecules. When appropriate, molecular orbital and valence bond descriptions of bonding are compared, and relationships that exist between them are derived.

This book focuses on the political economy of privatization, and addresses the questions 'What are the driving forces behind this development and how can the variation be explained?' which are of both theoretical and empirical interest. The volume addresses the political economy of privatization in advanced democracies in the last 30 years.