'The Great Shift' is a key contribution toward our ability to evolve consciously. Covering major themes of self, social & systemic evolution, this is a comprehensive plan of action on all levels. Like a Medici of the 21st century, Robin Wood serves as a catalyst for the next Renaissance, for a global dream of a thriving civilization on a thriving planet. Gathering people, knowledge, creativity, innovations, know-how, and new systems, bringing business genius to the business of planetary evolution, he calls each of us to be an evolutionary pioneer. This book is a blueprint for planetary evolution: How to get from 'Here,' breakdown and collapse, to 'There,' breakthroughs to an actual new world. In time. You'll develop a 2nd Renaissance perspective, together with a set of practices that enable us to become 'world-centric,' to create, lead, strategize, engage, design & shift our own life, career & participation in the evolution of the world.

This is the 1st edition of the book Handbook on Managing Infertility (Meeting the Challenges in Low-Resource Settings). The text is comprehensive, updated as per the present day requirements in the subject of infertility. In this edition of the book an effort is made to highlight the special problems and hurdles to provide infertility treatment in low resource setups. The book has 26 chapters. The first chapter deals with history of human assisted reproductive technology. Chapter two provides a comprehensive description of infertility in developing world. Next four chapters are dedicated to ART unit in low resource setting. Chapters from 9 to 12 deal with different conditions associated with infertility. Subsequent chapters describe setting up of ART unit, assisted reproductive technology and law and ethics related to ART. A comprehensive index is given at last.

The third and final in a series, this text bridges the conceptual foundations of capacity development and the difficulties and practical realities in the field. It demystifies the process of capacity development to make it more user-friendly. The book has two parts. The first shows how long-standing development dilemmas can be turned into opportunities for capacity development and societal transformation. It proposes a set of principles to guide the search for context-specific approaches as the norm, and based on these default principles the authors explore relevant issues in comprehensible stages through a capacity lens. The second part is a compilation of experiences and lessons from around the world, to showcase promising initiatives and innovative solutions. It forms a casebook of insights and good (rather than best) practices on how development stakeholders can turn development dilemmas into opportunities tailored to the needs of their societies.

Energy access is an essential prerequisite for economic, social, and human development. The 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly recognized affordable and clean energy as a key factor in development, alongside education and poverty alleviation. The UN Sustainable Energy for All initiative (SEforALL) mobilizes international donors, countries, and the private sector to help people in developing countries gain access to modern energy services.To assist in support of SEgorALL goals, this joint study of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) provides a comprehensive review of energy poverty policies and programs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). This report measures the progress and impact of energy-access programs and also documents the experience of successful projects. This study reviews cutting-edge methodologies to assist in program design, shares of experiences of successful programs and develops a vision for reaching sustainable energy for all in the LAC region. With electricity coverage at more than 96 percent, LAC is close to becoming the world’s first developing region to achieve universal access to electricity. Despite recent progress, within LAC there are still substantial pockets of energy poverty. Approximately 21.8 million people are without electricity access. More than 80 million people rely on firewood and charcoal for cooking that is burned in fuel-inefficient, primitive stoves. These traditional cooking technologies emit a significant amount of indoor air pollution (IAP), which has been linked to respiratory illnesses and adverse environmental impacts. Thus, in addition to promoting electricity, energy access programs also might give priority to the promotion of cleaner methods cooking by making available better stoves and cleaner burning fuels at reasonable costs. The report also explores ways to measure energy poverty and monitor energy access in developing countries. The accuracy and effectiveness of tools such as the IEA’s household energy data efforts and the Global Tracking Framework depend on collecting information through standardized national surveys. Approaches to measure energy poverty and monitor energy access have increasingly focused on the provision of energy services such as lighting, space conditioning and cooking. The transition from low-quality energy services to more modern forms can be accomplished in different ways. As households in developing countries adopt electricity and clean methods of cooking, they benefit from higher quality, lower cost and convenient to use appliances. However, measuring the societal and developmental benefits of energy investments--though difficult--is important. Two basic approaches have evolved over the years to measure the benefits of energy access: (i) consumer surplus and (ii) regression-based techniques. The consumer surplus approach evaluates the economic benefits of energy services through measuring increased demand resulting from lower costs of such energy end uses such as lighting, radio and television. When possible, rigorous impact evaluation techniques based on multivariate models can be used to more directly measure the socioeconomic benefits associated with energy access and modern energy services including higher income and improved education. In recent years, new approaches for meeting the requirements of modern and sustainable energy services have emerged. Due to technical and market changes, new types of equipment have become available for providing energy services to rural areas. In LAC, three basic models have been developed to provide rural populations with electricity service: (i) main grid extension, (ii) community networks, and (iii) individual home-based systems (including clean cookstoves).

The field of geoengineering is at a crossroads where the path to high-tech solutions meets the path to expanding applications of geotechnology. In this report, the term "geoengineering" includes all types of engineering that deal with Earth materials, such as geotechnical engineering, geological engineering, hydrological engineering, and Earth-related parts of petroleum engineering and mining engineering. The rapid expansion of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology begs the question of how these new approaches might come to play in developing better solutions for geotechnological problems. This report presents a vision for the future of geotechnology aimed at National Science Foundation (NSF) program managers, the geological and geotechnical engineering community as a whole, and other interested parties, including Congress, federal and state agencies, industry, academia, and other stakeholders in geoengineering research. Some of the ideas may be close to reality whereas others may turn out to be elusive, but they all present possibilities to strive for and potential goals for the future. Geoengineers are poised to expand their roles and lead in finding solutions for modern Earth systems problems, such as global change, emissions-free energy supply, global water supply, and urban systems.

The future security, economic growth, and competitiveness of the United States depend on its capacity to innovate. Major sources of innovative capacity are the new knowledge and trained students generated by U.S. research universities. However, many of the complex technical and societal problems the United States faces cannot be addressed by the traditional model of individual university research groups headed by a single principal investigator. Instead, they can only be solved if researchers from multiple institutions and with diverse expertise combine their efforts. The National Science Foundation (NSF), among other federal agencies, began to explore the potential of such center-scale research programs in the 1970s and 1980s; in many ways, the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) program is its flagship program in this regard. The ERCs are "interdisciplinary, multi-institutional centers that join academia, industry, and government in partnership to produce transformational engineered systems and engineering graduates who are adept at innovation and primed for leadership in the global economy. To ensure that the ERCs continue to be a source of innovation, economic development, and educational excellence, A New Vision for Center-Based Engineering Research explores the future of center-based engineering research, the skills needed for effective center leadership, and opportunities to enhance engineering education through the centers.

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