University Museum Monograph, 19

Researchers in the natural sciences are faced with problems that require a novel approach to improve the quality of forecasts of processes that are sensitive to environmental conditions. Nonlinearity of a system may significantly complicate the predictability of future states: a small variation of parameters can dramatically change the dynamics, while sensitive dependence of the initial state may severely limit the predictability horizon. Uncertainties also play a role. This volume addresses such problems by using tools from chaos theory and systems theory, adapted for the analysis of problems in the environmental sciences. Sensitive dependence on the initial state (chaos) and the parameters are analyzed using methods such as Lyapunov exponents and Monte Carlo simulation. Uncertainty in the structure and the values of parameters of a model is studied in relation to processes that depend on the environmental conditions. These methods also apply to biology and economics. For research workers at universities and (semi)governmental institutes for the environment, agriculture, ecology, meteorology and water management, and theoretical economists.

No part of the Nazi movement contributed more to Hitler's success than the Sturmabteilung (SA)—the notorious Brown Shirts. Bruce Campbell offers the first in-depth study in English of the men who held the three highest ranks in the SA. Organized on military lines and fired by radical nationalism, the Brown Shirts saw themselves as Germany's paramilitary saviors. Campbell reveals that the homogeneity of the SA leadership was based not on class or status, but on common experiences and training. Unlike other investigations of the Nazi party, The SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism focuses on the military and political activities of the Brown Shirts to show how they developed into SA Leaders. By tracing the activities, both individual and collective, of these men's adult lives through 1945, Campbell shows where members acquired the experience necessary to build, lead, and administer the SA. These men were instrumental in creating the Nazi concept of "political soldiering," combining military organization with political activism. Campbell's enlightening portrait of the SA, its history, and its relationship to the overall Nazi movement reveals how the organization's leaders reshaped the SA over time to adapt to Germany's changing political concerns.